Table of Contents

• Preface

1. East and West from a Spiritual Point of View
2. The Present from the Viewpoint of the Present
3. The Mechanistic, Eugenic and Hygienic Aspects of the Future
4. Social and Antisocial Instincts
5. Specters of the Old Testament in the Nationalism of the Present
6. The Innate Capacities of the Nations of the World

• Notes

• Appendix

• Download

Preface

In these lectures, given just days after the ending of World War I, Steiner describes the new developments in mechanics, politics, and economy as well as new capacities and methods in the West and the East. He reveals their fruitful potentialities but also the dangers of their abuse. He also discusses social and antisocial instincts, specters of the Old Testament in the nationalism of the present, and the innate capacities of various nations.

These lectures, originally published in English with the title, In the Changed Conditions of the Times (from the lecture series entitled, Fundamental Social Requirements of Our Time), were given in Dornach, Switzerland, November–December, 1918. They were translated from the German by Olin D. Wannamaker and are included in Die soziale Grundforderung unserer Zeit

1
East and West from a Spiritual Point of View

29 November 1918, Dornach

In my last lecture dealing with present events, I called your attention to the necessities of a social order resulting from the impulses of the modern age. I must expressly emphasize the fact that I do not by any means wish to develop a program. You all know how little importance I attach to such things. They are mere abstractions. What I have discussed with you is not an abstraction, but a reality. I have expressed the matter in the following way to various persons with whom, in the course of the last few years, I have spoken of these impelling social forces as something inevitable. I have said that what we are seeking to set forth, which is something utterly different from an abstract program, will by its own connection with the impelling forces of history come to realization in the world within the next twenty or thirty years. "You have the choice" — I could express myself at that time in this way because people still had the choice, as they do not any longer possess it — "You have the choice between adopting a rational attitude and accepting such things, or realizing later that these things will come about in the most chaotic way through cataclysms and revolutions." There is no other alternative in these things in the course of world history, and the demand simply faces us today to understand such things as proceed from the impulses actually at work in the world. As I have repeatedly declared, this is not a time when each person can say that believes this or that will happen or ought to happen, but it is a time when the only person who can speak effectively in regard to the necessities of the age is one who is able to perceive what bears within itself the impelling force for its realization in the course of the times.

Now, it is most important to understand that it was impossible for me to give you anything more than a sketch of what I am compelled to view as a necessity embodying the impulse to realization. In order to establish a connection with what has already been said, I shall repeat briefly today what I then spoke about, that is, that the confusion in the social structure that has gradually led to these catastrophic events of recent years over the whole world must be set aside, and it is imperative to replace it by that threefold organization of the social structure of which I spoke to you at our last meeting. You have seen that the outcome of this threefold organization will be to distribute into separate spheres what has hitherto constituted, in a confused fashion, the basis of the seemingly unitary organization of the state.

It will be distributed among three spheres, the first of which I designated as the political, or security, order; the second, as the sphere of the social organization, the economic organization; the third, as the sphere of free spiritual production. These three spheres will be integrated independently of each other, each in its own way. Indeed, this will become manifest within the net few decades even to those persons who are unwilling today to understand it. We shall escape the great perils toward which the world is still continuing to move only if we endeavor to understand these things, but we shall not understand them unless we really study them thoroughly. In order that what follows may not be misunderstood, I should like once more to emphasize that it is not our business either to create the social question or to discuss it in any merely theoretical way. In the light of our recent reflections, you will already have seen that the social question actually exists, that it must be accepted as a factor, as an actuality, and that it can be grasped and understood only in the same way in which an occurrence of nature must be understood.

You will already have seen that everything I set forth here last Sunday as constituting the necessary impulses leading to the future is of such a nature as to supersede, in a just and legitimate way, the elements left over from ancient times in our social structure, elements that permeate it destructively through and through. Especially if you reflect more deeply on the practical results of what I said to you last Sunday, will you see that these practical results of the social organization of which I spoke are of such a character as to supersede in a suitable way what those who call themselves socialists but who live in illusions rather than in realities, wish to overcome in an impractical way. What must be superseded — as will become clear to you upon deeper reflection over what was said last Sunday — is the membering of the social structure according to classes. What must be achieved in harmony with the period of consciousness in which we live, the fifth post-Atlantean epoch, is that the human being as such shall take the place of the ancient distinctions according to classes. For this reason it would be disastrous if what I developed before you here last Sunday should be confused with something that is perpetuated in our contemporary social organization out of past ages. Something extends into our social organization from the Greek period that must be superseded according to the principles holding sway in the course of world events. The differentiation of humanity according to the ancient Greek classification into husbandmen, soldiers, and teachers must be superseded by the very thing I brought to your attention last Sunday. It is the differentiation according to classes that brings chaos into our contemporary social structure. This differentiation will be superseded by the fact that human beings will not be divided in any way according to classes under the organization of society of which I spoke to you last Sunday. In the very nature of things, these classes will completely disappear. It is in this direction that historic necessity moves.

Man, as a living being and not as an abstraction, shall bring about the connections among the three spheres of society. We are by no means dealing with a differentiation according to classes, as husbandmen, soldiers and teachers, when we say that we must move forward toward political justice, economic organization, and free spiritual production. What this signifies is that relationships shall be integrated in this way, and that it will be impossible for human beings to belong to a single class when the relationships are really integrated in this way. The human being exists within the social structure and he himself forms the connecting link among the different elements integrated in these relationships. There will not be a separate economic class, a separate class of producers, but a structure of economic relationships. In the same way, there will not be a special class of "teachers" but the relationships will be such that spiritual production will be free in its own nature. Likewise, there will not be a separate class of soldiers, but the effort will be made gradually to achieve for the first sphere of the social order in a liberal democratic manner that for which a confused struggle now proceeds on behalf of all three spheres.

The very essence of the matter is the truth that the passage from ancient times to modern times makes it imperative that the human being shall take his place in the world. There is no possibility of our reaching an understanding of the demands of our age otherwise than by acquiring the capacity to understand human beings. This can be achieved, of course, only on the basis of those perceptions that a science of the spirit
brings to light.

As I recently declared, what I have developed before you must be viewed against the broad background of world history. I have set before you certain things from the content of this historic tableau. In order that we may now continue further in describing such conditions as I began to explain to you last Sunday, I wish to lay a foundation today derived somewhat more from occult sources in order to make it clear to you that the manner of dealing with these things cannot be one in which each person thinks out something for himself in utter disregard of the facts of the case, but that the way to deal with these things is to view them in accordance with the actual movement of events. Here my point of departure must be the statement that the first necessity in developing the social structure is to base it upon social understanding. Indeed, this is the very thing that has been lacking for decades. The realm we here touch upon is one in which the greatest number of blunders have been made. A great majority of persons in positions of leadership have been utterly lacking in social understanding. It is not surprising, therefore, that such revolutionary movements as we now have in Central Europe seem to people like something springing out of the earth, something for which they have had no preparation. They do not appear as something unexpected to people who have a social understanding but I fear that people will continue still to be permeated by the mood that filled them before the year 1914. Just as the World War, obviously hanging over the heads of everyone at that time, came as a surprise, people will still behave in even more vital matters in just the same way. They will still continue to sleep while the social movement, which is spreading over the whole world, breaks in upon them. Because of the phlegmatic habits of thought now characterizing humanity, it may be just as impossible to prevent this as it was to prevent mankind from permitting the present catastrophe to overwhelm it unprepared.

What really matters most of all is to learn the truth that human beings must not conduct themselves in one way or another in the various parts of the world according to abstract notions, but that, the moment their conduct may have social consequences, they must choose their course according to how they are impelled to act by the impulses existent in the sequence of cosmic events into which man himself is integrated. An elementary fact is utterly ignored by people even today. I say this on the basis of experience, for I have been compelled in recent years to the discuss these matters with men belonging to varied professions and classes, and I know the response one meets when these things are discussed. I refer to the fact that people of the East and the West — and everyone will take part in the future shaping of things — are quite unlike one another in their impulses, and are different in what they will for themselves. Indeed, if we pay attention only to the social environment nearest to us, we shall reach no clear judgment as to what is proceeding as a matter of necessity in the world. We reach a clear judgment only when — and I must once more employ this expression — we form our judgment about things according to the impulses existing in the universal course of events. The people of the West, of Western European states and their appendage America, will have their say. The people of Eastern Europe, with its Asiatic hinterland, will have their say during the next two or three decades, but their manner of speaking will vary greatly among themselves, for human beings in various parts of the world necessarily have different conceptions regarding what man feels and must inevitably feel as a necessity of his human dignity and his nature as man.

We cannot discuss these things unless we see clearly that events must necessarily occur in the future that people would like best of all to avoid. I told you last Sunday that it is simply impossible for effectual, fruitful social ideas to be discovered in future by any other path than the one that leads in the search for truths beyond the threshold of ordinary physical consciousness. Within the limits of ordinary physical consciousness there are no effectual social ideas. For this reason, as I explained last Sunday, these social ideas, which are truly effectual, must come to people. But this statement implies at the same time that it will not do to shrink back in future from acquainting oneself, so far as this is possible for each person, with the real nature of the threshold of the spiritual world. Within the limits of everyday life and science, humanity may continue for a long time on its beaten path without becoming acquainted with the threshold of the spiritual world. In these fields we can get along as well as is absolutely necessary. But, as regards social life, it is not possible to get along without giving attention to what is here called the threshold of the spiritual world. There exists within people of the present age — still unconscious, of course, but thrusting ever more upward into consciousness — the impulse to bring about such a social structure as will permit every person to be, as his nature demands, a human being.

By no means clearly, and yet in an instinctive way, people in all regions of the earth feel the meaning of human dignity, of an existence worthy of the human being. The abstract social democrat of the present time believes that it is a simple matter to express in an international way the meaning of human dignity, human rights, etc. This cannot be done. If these things are to be expressed, it is imperative that we bear in mind the truth that the real conception of the human being belongs inherently beyond the threshold of the spiritual world, since man really belongs to the world of spirit and soul. In other words, a true and comprehensive conception of what the human being is can come to us only from beyond the threshold of the spiritual world.

In reality, the conception does come from this source. Even if the American, Briton, Frenchman, German, Chinese, Japanese or Russian speaks to you of the human being, expressing quite unsatisfactory conceptions and ideas, there yet dwells in his subconsciousness something far more comprehensive, but something that must be clearly grasped. This more comprehensive thing dwelling there struggles to rise into consciousness. In other words, we may say that historic evolution has progressed to the point where an image of the human being lives in the hearts of men. Without giving attention to this image of the human being, it is impossible to develop any social understanding. This image is alive but it lives only in the subconsciousness. The moment that it struggles upward into consciousness and really enters there, it can be grasped only by means of the capacities belonging to the form of consciousness that is in its nature super-sensible — at least, by means of these capacities in the conceptual field, as they have been taken up by sound common sense.

An image of the human being lives in those persons who are engaged at present in the social struggle that may remain unconscious and only instinctive so long as the impulse is lacking to see the matter clearly. If, however, there is a desire to arrive at clarity, it can be done only by irradiating the matter with the light that comes from the other side of the threshold. Then it becomes obvious to the objective spiritual observer that the image of the human being lurking instinctively in human souls varies greatly in people belonging to the West and those belonging to the East. This will become an enormously important question in the future. It plays a role in all actual conditions. It plays a role in the Russian chaos, in the revolution in Middle Europe, in the confusion that is in its early stages in the West, even all the way to America. In other words, what is in process of development must be viewed in the light of super-sensible consciousness if it is to be understood. It must be grasped by means of the capacities that are derived from super-sensible consciousness.

There is no approach from the side of sensory consciousness that will enable us to understand what dwells instinctively as an image of man both in the peoples of the West and of the East.

In order to achieve this understanding, however, it is necessary that you acquaint yourselves with two things. First, with the peculiar manner in which something that actually obsesses the subconsciousness of a person rises up into real super-sensible consciousness. A person learns in two different ways through the Guardian of the Threshold how something that is stirring chaotically in his instincts and does not belong to the person, for only what a person consciously grasps belongs to him, appears before him. Things that instinctively obsess a person appear in one case before the Guardian of the Threshold in such a way that they seem like external perceptions. It is an hallucination, an external perception, actually appearing before the person and presenting itself like something externally perceived. That is the specter character. When something that has lived instinctively and chaotically in an individual comes to be known clearly in the presence of the Guardian of the Threshold, where all instincts cease and everything begins to be known consciously and to take its place in the free spiritual life, such an instinctive living element may appear as a specter. The person is then rid of it as an instinct. There is no need for fear because of the fact that such a thing appears as a specter. This is the sole way in which the person can get rid of it. He sees it in external objectivity and what has been chaotically stirring within him is really before him in the form of a specter. This is one of the forms.

The other form in which such an instinctive thing may appear is that of a nightmare. This is not an external perception but an oppressive feeling or the aftereffects in the form of a vision of something that oppresses one. It is an imaginative experience but it may at the same time be felt as a nightmare. What exists instinctively in the person must come to manifestation either as a nightmare or as a specter if it is to be brought up into consciousness.

Just as every instinct living in a person must gradually rise to a higher level either as a specter or as a nightmare, if the person is to become fully human, so must what lives unconsciously and instinctively as the feeling of human dignity, as the image of man in the West and the East appear to him in one form or the other and be understood by him but understood primarily through sound common sense. Thus, it may happen that the practicing spiritual scientist will be able to show that some things appear as nightmares, others as specters. What a spiritual scientist experiences on the basis of his observations will be expressed by him in words applicable to historical or other conceptions in order to render it possible for what he has experienced to be grasped by the sound common sense of those who do not yet possess the occult capacities necessary for seeing these things.

The fact that a person does not actually behold these things is not in the least a valid excuse for not accepting them, since everything perceived is presented in such concepts as can be grasped by sound common sense. Confidence in the person who does see these things should not go beyond believing that he can give suggestions. It is not necessary to believe him because, if a person employs his own powers diligently without preconception, everything that is declared to be true can always be grasped with sound common sense.

Now, the situation is such that those instincts living in the West, as constituting the image of the human being and striving toward a social structure, appear before the Guardian of the Threshold as specters. The image of the human being living in the people of Eastern Europe with its Asiatic hinterland, manifests itself as a nightmare. The occult fact is simply that, if you ask an American, and this is most marked in the case of America, to describe what he feels to be the image of true human dignity, and you work over this image in an occult way and carry it all the way to the Guardian of the Threshold, and then observe what you experience in his presence in connection with this image, it appears before you as a specter. If you prevail upon an Asiatic or an informed Russian to describe what they conceive as the image of man, it will work upon you, if it is carried all the way to the Guardian of the Threshold, as a nightmare.

What I am saying to you here is only a description of an occult experience that has its basis in historical impulses and events because what takes form instinctively in the hearts and souls of men grows also out of historical substrata. The peoples of the West — Britons, Frenchmen, Italians, Spaniards, Americans — because of certain historical stimuli in the course of their development from ancient times up to their present state, have permitted to take root in their hearts, not in full clear consciousness but in an instinctive way, such an image of the human being as can be described when we study historical stimuli adequately.

These images of Eastern and Western man must be replaced by what can actually be discovered by means of spiritual scientific research. This alone can become the basis for a true social order, not one that will be dominated by either specters or nightmares. If we investigate in the right way the question as to why the Western image of the human being is a specter, we shall discover, after taking into account all the historical substrata, that the specter of the ancient Roman Empire lies at the bottom of the instincts that have led to the image of the human being in the Western parts of the world. They are the instincts that have now led, for example, to the so-called Wilson program for the West, upon which so much praise is being lavished. Everything that has gradually developed in the course of history that possesses a thoroughly outmoded character, that is, a luciferic-ahrimanic character, and is not suitable for the immediate present but is a specter from earlier ages, constitutes the specter of Romanism. Of course, there is much in Western culture that does not belong at all to Romanism. In English-speaking regions you naturally find much that has no such connection. Even in the truly Latin countries there is much that has no connection with Romanism. That, however, is not the important matter. The important fact is the image of the human being insofar as he is supposed to enter into the social structure. In all these regions this is wholly determined instinctively by what has taken form within Roman culture. It continues to be altogether the product of the Latin way of thinking, belonging to the fourth post-Atlantean culture. This is nothing that really possesses life but is something that haunts the present like a ghost of the dead. It is this specter that appears to the objective occult observer when he undertakes to form an image of what is intended to be made dominant over the world under the influence of the West.

It serves no useful purpose to make assertions regarding these things without the necessary knowledge. That is no longer in keeping with the status of humanity in the present epoch. What must be taken into account is the necessity of acquiring a clear view of these things. The specter of Romanism is haunting the West. When I recently called your attention to the future destiny of various peoples of the West, especially the French, this is closely related to the fact that they have clung most firmly of all to the Roman specter. Their whole instinctive temperament and fundamental character would not permit them to get rid of this Roman specter. This, then, is one aspect of the matter, that pertaining to the West.

The other aspect is that a certain image of the human being, to the extent that he should take his place in the social structure, dominates also in the East. This image is of such character that there tends to come about even now through the very necessity of things something I have always spoken of. The sixth cultural epoch is in its preparatory stages in Eastern Europe. If we view the matter, however, from the standpoint of the present age, what is still alive in Eastern Europe, including its Asiatic hinterland, is not yet the image of the human being that will in future be developed in a natural way even though it is the duty of humanity even today to develop it through knowledge. On the contrary, it is an image that appears as a nightmare when we take it and approach the Guardian of the Threshold in order there to observe it.

This image, in turn, appears as a nightmare because the instincts that are nourished in the East and become effective in the determination of this image are nourished by, a force that is not yet perfect. This force will not reach its highest level of development until the future, until the sixth post-Atlantean cultural epoch. This force actually requires an impulse to support it. Before the consciousness awakes — and consciousness must, indeed, first awaken in the East — this force requires an instinctive basis. It is this instinctive basis, still living in the peoples of the East when they form their image of man, that works as a nightmare. Just as all the impulses left over from Romanism have their influence as ancient lingering impulses in the formation of man's image in the West, so does this instinctive foundation work as a nightmare but one that is to give a support, the effect of which ought to be precisely that of bringing the people of the East to the point of freeing themselves from the nightmare. It has this effect in a strange manner, working just as a nightmare does when it has been overcome after we have awakened and have seen clearly what actually has happened. This force that must work there in the East is not something from the past, but rather something that is working in our own epoch for the first time. It is made up of the forces proceeding from the British Empire. Just as the image of the human being in the West has been made into a specter through the stimuli of Romanism, so is the image of the human being so stamped upon the soul in the East that what will continue for a long time into the future as the undertakings of the British Empire becomes a nightmare.

These two things produce the result that what was conscious in the Roman Empire continues to live unconsciously in a ghostly way in the West. The British-American impulse toward world empire that is in process of preparation and is active in the present epoch, manifests itself as a nightmare, as the counter force of a nightmare in order that the peoples of the East may awaken to a conscious and adequate image of man.

It is not pleasant to state these things at the present time, to listen to them is equally unpleasant. The simple truth is, however, that we have arrived at an epoch in the evolution of world history when nothing can be achieved unless people take cognizance of the things in the world on the basis of their knowledge, their full consciousness, and really acquaint themselves objectively with what exists in the world. No progress can be made in any other way. What has been happening in our time is of such a nature as to compel men in a certain sense to reverse the direction of these events. Things must not continue longer in such a way that, just as men have permitted themselves for a
long time to be compelled to think in a certain way, they shall again permit themselves to be compelled to think entirely different thoughts for the simple reason that everything has been turned upside down in a certain region of the earth. It is possible to make the acquaintance today of people who, within a few weeks have suddenly evolved from gallant royalists into extreme republicans and all other imaginable sorts of things. Nothing helpful to humanity could previously be accomplished by those who were royalists out of compulsion, and nothing helpful can come now from those who are today socialists as a matter of compulsion, or who have even become bolshevists after having been true royalists. There are even such individuals as this.

What is necessary is neither the one nor the other of these things. What is necessary is that we shall come to see that only what proceeds from the free decision of the free human soul can be beneficial, that is, what the human being decides for himself through the use of his powers of reflection, through the use of his heart and most of all his insight. That is what really matters. Otherwise, we shall observe repeatedly that things will be viewed in one way or another under the force of circumstances. A person who considered Ludendorff a great field marshall six weeks ago and who calls him a criminal today, for instance, if he has no reason for either of these judgments and cannot form them through the free decision of a free heart, is of just as little use in the evolution of humanity in the one case as in the other. It is not sufficient that a statement is abstractly true, though generally one statement is as false as the other, but that we shall develop the capacity for forming real judgments. In this matter spiritual science may constitute a really excellent guidance
for you.

I am constantly being made aware that statements I make here or elsewhere in the field of spiritual science are considered difficult to understand. This is due simply to the fact that people do not really have the will to apply their sound common sense in full measure to these things. They are considered difficult to understand because people do not find it sufficiently comfortable to lay hold of them.

In the course of these reflections I have made various statements in regard to this so-called war catastrophe of recent years and its origin. I hope that what has happened in the last few weeks will be seen to be a complete confirmation of what I have said for many years to you and to others in regard to these matters. Nothing has come about that fails to harmonize with what has here been asserted. Indeed, you can see the map I drew on the blackboard here years ago coming to reality during these very days.

What is said here, however, must not be taken in the sense of a Sunday afternoon sermon, but in the sense intended; that is, as something asserted on the basis of the actual impelling forces that either have been realized or are driving toward realization. For this reason I shall not hesitate to call your attention repeatedly to certain matters of method, even if this involves repetition. These questions of method are most important of all in the field of spiritual-scientific knowledge, which is so necessary for our age. What this science of the spirit makes of our souls is far more important than the acquisition of a merely abstract acquaintance with one truth or another.

We can observe repeatedly that the sort of soul structure that comes about through spiritual science is serviceable precisely in the comprehension of the immediate events of the times. How often have I emphasized in the course of these years the fact that it is really terrible for people to repeat continually, as they have done, the easy questions, "Who is to blame for the world catastrophe of this war? Is it the Central Powers or the Entente? Or is it heaven knows who?" These questions as to who is to blame simply cannot be answered in any fundamental sense. What is really important is the correct and definite statement of the question. Only thus can we arrive at a sufficient, fundamental, actual insight, but it is utterly useless in the case of many persons of the present time to appeal to this insight. For example, much of what is now being reported from Paris reminds me of other things bearing upon this unhappy situation, things that happened earlier in Berlin or elsewhere. It is not a matter of any consequence to form one's judgment in accordance with what is permitted or not permitted — especially a judgment about questions of fact — but what matters is that this judgment should be formed on the basis of a free consideration, formed by the free mind itself. That is what really matters.

If you will recall various things I have said here in recent weeks, you will see that the events meanwhile have confirmed many of my statements. For instance, I explained to you that it is utterly wrong to discuss these things in such a way, so satisfying to many persons, as to discover on the side of the Central Powers what is called "guilt" in connection with the World War. But I have said to you that the governments of the Central Powers have contributed to the World War in an essential way through their idiotic methods. What I explained to you even in the most recent lectures has during this week been completely confirmed by the disclosures made by the government of Bavaria. They, that is, the publication of the letters exchanged between the government of Bavaria and the Bavarian Envoy in Berlin, Count Lerchenfeld-Koefering, are in complete agreement with my explanations. Through such events the picture I have given you for years, which I had to give in such a way that I was continually tracing things back to the right form of questions regarding them, will become clearer. It is a certain service — and even such things as these may now be openly mentioned — that has been undertaken by this Kurt Eisner in the publication of these things, a service by one who has come in a strange way out of prison to the post of premier. At a time when so much is said in regard to persons who have made themselves unworthy of their official positions, it is certainly permissible to speak also about such a person as the present Premier of Bavaria, though we feed not lavish praise upon him for this reason.

Naturally, in accordance with the karma of each person and the manner in which he is stationed in the world by his karma, he will be able to pass one judgment or another in one place or another in the world, or ought to pass such a judgment. If we desire to achieve a social understanding, as I have said in various connections, the most important thing of all is that we shall acquire an understanding of the human being, interest in human beings, a differentiated interest in persons, that we should desire to know human beings. It is this that must constitute the task, the most important task of the future. But we must acquire a certain instinct, if you will permit me to use this expression, for forming judgments on the basis of symptoms. It is for this reason that I delivered the lecture on history as symptomatology. Such a person as this Premier of Bavaria, Kurt Eisner, is vividly present before our minds, for instance, when we consider the following facts. I say this to you now not for the purpose of bringing to your attention something actual, but to illustrate a bit of psychology, a bit of the science of the human
soul.

Before there had been any declaration of war, either from the left or from the right, in the last days of July 1914, Kurt Eisner said in Munich, "If a world war really comes about, not only will the nations tear each other to pieces, but every throne in Central Europe will fall. This will be the inevitable consequence!" He remained true to his convictions. Throughout these years he continued to assemble a little group of men in Munich, always pursued by the police, and to speak to them. When a strike occurred at a particularly serious moment in the developments of recent years in Germany, he was sentenced to prison, and he has now ascended from prison to the premiership of Bavaria. He is a human being molded in a single piece. I do not mean to praise him because conditions are now such that even such a person may make blunder after blunder. But I wish to describe an example of what must really be considered. What is needed is that we shall rightly estimate as symptoms the occurrences confronting us in the world, that from the symptoms we shall reach conclusions regarding what lies behind them — if we do not possess the capacity of seeing through the symptoms the spirit at work behind them. We must at least strive to reach through the symptoms a vision of the spiritual that lies behind them. Especially in the future will it be necessary that mutual understanding shall come about between human beings. The social question is not to be solved by cliches, programs or Leninisms, but by an understanding between man and man — such an understanding, however, as can be acquired only when we are able to recognize the human being as an external manifestation of the eternal.

If you consider what have said, that in the West the human being produces the effect of a specter in the presence of the Guardian of the Threshold and in the East that of a nightmare you will receive in a certain way the necessary stimulus for obtaining a true view of the conditions of the present time. In the West an image of the human being that is on a descending path and appears, therefore, as a specter; in the East an image that is ascending, but that must not be accepted in its present form since it is still merely an imagination of an oppressive nightmare and will appear in its true form only after this nightmare has been overcome. The conditions are such, therefore, that we must gain a deeper insight if we wish to participate at all in discussions of the social problem. The matters into which we must acquire a deeper insight are such as pertain to the character of our thinking, and the manner in which this thinking streams forth from the whole human being, differentiated in the case of individual personalities over the whole earth.

The reason why this ghost of Romanism could acquire so profound an influence is that the thinking characteristic of the Old Testament world view has not yet been surmounted in the essential nature of human thought. Christianity is really only at its beginning. Christianity has not yet progressed sufficiently to have really permeated human hearts and minds. What was necessary to prevent this has been brought about by the Roman Church, which in its theology is completely under the influence of the specter of ancient Romanism. As I have often indicated, the Roman Church has contributed more toward hindering the introduction of the image of Christ into human hearts and minds than it has helped because the conceptions that have been applied within the Roman Church for the purpose of comprehending the Christ are all taken from the social and political structure of the ancient Roman Empire. Even though human beings do not know this, it works within their instincts.

Now, the conceptions that were dominant in the Old Testament, that must be designated primarily as conceptions of Old Testament Judaism, and that took their worldly form in Romanism, which is in the worldly sphere the same thing as Judaism was in the spiritual sphere even though it is in opposition to Judaism, have come over into our own epoch by way of Romanism; they haunt our age in spectral forms. This Old Testament thinking, unpermeated by the Christ must be found in its true origin within the human being. We must ask ourselves the question, "Upon what forces does such thinking as that of the Old Testament depend?"

This thinking depends upon what can be inherited with the blood from generation to generation. The capacity to think in the manner characteristic of the Old Testament is inherited with the blood in the succession of human beings. What we inherit as capacities from our fathers through the simple fact that we are born as human beings, that we ere embryonic human beings before our birth — what we inherit as the power of thinking, what lives in our blood, is Old Testament thinking. Our thinking is made up of two members, two parts. One part of our thinking consists in what we possess by reason of our development up to our birth, what we inherit from our forefathers or from our maternal ancestors. We are able to think in the Old Testament way because we have been embryos. This was the essential characteristic also of the ancient Jewish people that, in the world in which we live between birth and death, they did not wish to learn anything in addition to what the human being brings with him as a capacity because of the fact that he was an embryo up to the time of his birth. The only way that you can conceive of Old Testament thinking with real understanding is to say to yourself, "This is the kind of thinking that we possess by reason of the fact that we have been embryos."

The kind of thinking that is added to this is what we have to acquire for ourselves in the course of our development beyond the embryonic period. For the purposes of certain external needs man acquires a variety of experiences, but he does not carry this process all the way the transformation of his thinking. Thus, even today Old Testament thinking continues to exert its influence far more than is generally supposed. People do not permeate the experiences through which they pass here with the thinking that is actually the consequences of these experiences. This is done only in the most limited measure and for the most part instinctively. At least the experiences through which people pass are not pursued by them to the stage of the birth of a special kind of thinking. This is done only by the true occultist whose development has been in accordance with the present age. In his case the life lived is so ordered that he awakes again, just as a child awakes after it is born. One who conducts his life in accordance with my book Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment, goes through this process a second time. He relates himself to his normal nature as the ordinary man relates himself to the embryo. In ordinary life people conduct themselves in such a way that, although they are compelled to go through experiences, they apply only the kind of thinking to them that they have acquired by reason of the fact that they have been embryos. It is thus that people go about having heir experiences but are not willing to proceed further. They apply to these experiences as a thinking content, especially as the character of their thinking, the form of their thinking, what the embryonic life has given them. In other words, they apply what is inherited in the blood from generation to generation.

One fact is of fundamental importance. The Mystery of Golgotha can never be grasped in its special nature by means of the kind of thinking that we possess because of our embryonic development. For that reason I have explained to you also in the lectures given during my present stay here that the Mystery of Golgotha is something that cannot be comprehended by means of ordinary physical thinking. This is something that will always be denied by honest individuals so long as they remain at the state of physical thinking. The Mystery of Golgotha and everything permeated by the Christ, must be grasped, not by means of what is derived from the moon but by what is derived from the sun; that is, from the standpoint that one attains after birth during the present life. This is the great distinction between what is permeated by the Christ and what is not so permeated. Whatever is not permeated by the Christ is mastered by a kind of thinking inherited in the blood stream. A comprehension of the world that is permeated by the Christ spirit is mastered by the kind of thinking that must be acquired by the individual human being as a personality in this world, through the experiences of life, by spiritualizing these experiences in the manner explained in Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment.

This is the essential fact. The kind of thinking we possess because of our embryonic development leads to the recognition of the Godhead only as the Father. The kind of thinking that is acquired in this world through the personal life after the embryonic stage leads to the recognition of the Godhead also as the Son.

Now, the influence of this tendency to make use only of the kind of thinking that belonged to Jehovah persisted even into the nineteenth century. But this thinking is suited to grasp only that element in the human being that belongs within the order of nature. This condition came about through the fact that the Jehovah divinity, who, as you know, was one of the Seven Elohim, gained the mastery of human consciousness and suppressed the other Elohim at an early period. The other Elohim were in this way thrust into the sphere of so-called illusion and were supposed to be fantastic beings. But this came about because the Jehovah divinity temporarily supplanted these spirits and permeated human consciousness with what alone can be developed as a power from the pre-embryonic time.

This continued into the nineteenth century. Human nature came under the influence of lower elemental spiritual entities who were working against the endeavors of the Elohim, through the fact that the Jehovah divinity dethroned the other Elohim in a certain sense. They, however, made themselves effective only through the personality of Christ, and they will continue to make them-elves effective one after another in the most varied ways.

Thus, the evolution of consciousness was such because the Jehovah divinity had placed himself as sole ruler and had dethroned the others. Through the fact that the others had been dethroned, human nature came under the influence of beings lower than the Elohim. Thus, not only does Jehovah continue his influence even into the nineteenth century, but so also do gods of a lower character instead of the Elohim. I have always told you that Christianity is really still in its beginning but even after it had become widely disseminated humanity did not yet understand it for the reason that men did not immediately accept the influence of the Elohim. They continued to be attached to the Jehovah thinking, to the kind of thinking awakened by the embryonic force, and also because they remained under the influence of the opponents of the Elohim.

During the nineteenth century — indeed, precisely during the fifth decade of that century, which I have often designated as an important turning point — the situation became such that Jehovah himself was gradually overpowered in his influence upon human consciousness through the dominance of those lower spirits he had evoked. The result was that, since only the element in the human being that is bound to the natural order of things, to the blood, can be comprehended by means of the forces of Jehovah, man's earlier seeking for the one God in nature was transmuted, because of the influence of the opposing elements, into mere atheistic natural science; that is, to mere atheistic scientific thinking and to merely utilitarian thinking in the field of practical life.

This must be grasped firmly as regards the fifth decade, the period mentioned. The fact that Jehovah could not free himself from the spirits he had evoked led to the transition of Old Testament thinking into the atheistic science of the modern age. This in the field of social thinking has become marx ism or something similar. Thus, a thinking under the influence of natural science holds sway in the field of the social life.

This is connected with much that is happening in the immediate present. Old Testament thinking in human beings today is transformed into naturalism. Against this kind of thinking neither what comes from the West as the image of man, nor what comes from the East, can provide an adequate defense because this thinking prevents man from acquiring actual and true insight.

It is perfectly obvious at present that people are opposed to the acquisition of insight. This sometimes takes on a pathological form. The so-called war history of the last two years, as I have recently said, will be a psychiatric account, socially psychiatric. The course of events, as these have occurred, is such that, when put together in the proper order, they provide for those who are familiar with them the best symptomatology for the social psychiatry of recent years and of the years to follow. Only it is necessary, of course, to deal with psychiatry also with more delicate hands and in a manner somewhat different from that of materialistic medicine. Otherwise we shall never bring to light in the right way the psychiatry to be studied, for example, in the person of Ludendorff. But it is precisely a considerable portion of the most recent history of our times that must be viewed in this light.

You will be able to recall that, from the beginning of the catastrophe, I have repeatedly and emphatically declared on the occasion of one or another irresponsible assertion that this particular war catastrophe will render it impossible to write history on the basis of mere documents and the results of archival research. The manner in which this catastrophe became possible will be understood only by one who comes to realize clearly that the most decisive occurrence that took place at the end of July and the beginning of August, 1914 occurred because of a dimmed condition in human consciousness. Men over the whole earth were in a state of dimmed consciousness, and occurrences were brought about through the influence of ahrimanic powers in these dimmed consciousnesses. In other words, things will have to be unveiled through a knowledge of spiritual-scientific facts. This is something that must simply be perceived. The time is past when events can be rightly explained on the basis of mere documents, in the manner in which Rancke wrote history, or someone else in some other field — Buckle, or others. This is important. Mere sympathies and antipathies determine nothing when the right guidance for one's judgment is needed. Judgments, however, have been formed in recent years, and are still being formed primarily according to sympathies and antipathies. Certainly, correct judgments are formed even under the influence of sympathy and antipathy, but these do not signify much as regards a person's grasp by means of his judgment of the factual world. The manner in which one sort of opinion or another becomes epidemic can be subjected to special studies if we trace the development of opinions among people during recent years. What have millions of persons believed in Central Europe, and what will they believe? What is believed in the rest of the world? This continued in Central Europe as long as possible; outside of Central Europe it will continue even longer. But what is really needed is that the habit shall be formed at last of learning from the events themselves. Events shall be observed for the purpose of forming judgments on the basis of these events.

It is to be desired that the weight of events shall have some determining, decisive influence upon people, and especially the way in which events have taken their course in the present period. This way is quite new; earlier events came about differently. Today, things diametrically opposed to one another come together.

I called your attention last time to the fact that the transplantation of bolshevism into Russia was an impulse derived essentially from Ludendorff. These things, which it was naturally not necessary to mention outside the region of the Central Powers, have been stated there often enough. People would not listen. I repeatedly had the following experience. It is highly significant and I once referred to it here, but I desire that it shall not be forgotten, for I shall gradually narrate all these things so that the world shall learn what has really been happening. The writing I have prepared consisted of two parts. The second part contained what I have sketched for you as the social relationships but arranged in a form suited for that time. The first part contained what I considered it necessary that I should discuss and disseminate in the manner indicated. I have met persons who have read what I wrote and who answered me by saying, "Yes, indeed, but to carry out the first point you make would lead inevitably to the abdication of the German Kaiser." Of course, I could only reply, "If it leads to that, it will simply be necessary that it should lead to that." World history has confirmed this. This abdication had to come. It should not have come, however, in the way in which it actually occurred, but ought to have come from a free inner decision. Most assuredly this would have resulted from my very first point. Naturally, the first point did not read, "The German Kaiser must abdicate," but it made a definite demand. If this had been carried out, the abdication would have occurred long ago under entirely different circumstances from those that actually took place.

I could never bring people to understand that what had there been written down was an utterance derived from reality. Regarding that one point also no further progress was made. As I was stating the matter to a minister of foreign affairs, I said to him also, "Well, you have the choice either to be reasonable and employ reason in bringing things to pass, or to experience revolutions, which must occur in the course of the next decades, and will begin soon."

Just as truly as this was necessary, which directs attention to a somewhat greater perspective, so was it true that the German Kaiser had to be induced to abdicate, and that a proposal was made looking in this direction. But, when this statement was made, which was based upon a more limited perspective than the other, it was simply something regarding which it was not permissible even to speak, and of which not even a serious discussion was allowed.

Thus it did not require these last events to render obvious the unsound mind of Ludendorff, but this could have been known long before. I was able long ago to point this out. But, as you know, in regard to spiritual science the situation is such that people shrink in terror from it, because they are afraid of it. Fear in heart and mind is something that plays a great and tremendous role in the minds of people at the present time. It appears under the most varied masks. Indeed, anxiety of soul, unwillingness to come into contact with a thing, whatever it may be, is what plays a special role at the present time. It is with this objective in mind that we must view events and we then recognize them as symptoms for things that lie much deeper. Just consider an event of the last few days.

That things would turn out as they have turned out now could have been known long ago by any thoughtful observer of conditions in Germany and of the German army. Only it was Ludendorff who came to realize for the first time on August 8th, 1918, that he could not win the victory. He was the "practical person." Bear in mind all that I have said to you from time to time about "practical persons," about the impracticality of practical persons! He was a practical person, who proved to be wrong under all circumstances, who came to realize at the very last, on August 8th, that he could not win the victory with the army available to him. Men of insight had known this since September 16, 1914; it was impossible to win the victory with this army. Now, what did Ludendorff do? He summoned Ballin to him in order that Ballin should go at last to the Kaiser and should tell him what the situation was, since Ballin was on terms of close friendship with him. You will ask whether there was no imperial chancellor at that time. Yes, there was an imperial chancellor, but has name was Hertling. Was there no minister of foreign affairs? There was one, but he was Herr von Hintze, who had come out of ,the most stupefying atmosphere of the court. There was also a Reichstag, and other things likewise — of such appendices of the life of the nation it is scarcely worthwhile in our time to speak. So Ludendorff summoned Ballin to him and proposed to him that he explain the situation to the Supreme War Lord. Ballin set out for the Kaiser's residence — of course, always at a distance from the actual events, except when Ludendorff himself found it opportune to announce that this or that action had been undertaken in the presence of His Majesty, the Supreme War Lord. Anyone who understood the situation knew what significance to attach to the word "presence." So Ballin, who had long been a well-known and clever man, set out toward Wilhelmshohe, in order to enlighten the Kaiser. This would naturally have been possible only if he had been able to speak to the Kaiser alone, which he could have done at any time if the Kaiser had not once struck him on his cheek with a lady's fan, or something of the kind, when Ballin at an earlier time, at the beginning of the war, had wished to explain something to him. But he consented to go, in spite of the affectionate slap given him with the lady's fan. He consented to go because of the critical situation, in order to explain the situation to his old friend. But the latter summoned Herr von Berg to be present, and he knew how to change the subject of a conversation — as the Kaiser obviously wished, for he did not wish to hear the truth. So the conversation never touched upon what should have been discussed.

I relate this only as a matter of psychology. You have here a person who Stands in the midst of the most critical events and who is afraid of the truth, brought to him by another person, and will not permit it to reach him. Here you see the situation in a clear light. The same phenomenon is common at the present time. So Ballin was not able to convince the Supreme War Lord because he simply could not present the matter to him. Ludendorff summoned Herr von Hintze, and reached an agreement with him that an armistice should be asked of the Entente. This was immediately after August 8, 1918. Herr von Hintze promised to appeal to Wilson. But nothing happened until toward October 1918, in spite of the fact that it was clear that the very thing was a matter of necessity that actually occurred under the most unfortunate ministry of Prince Max von Baden many weeks later. Prince Max von Baden wished to go to Berlin and do something entirely different, but Ludendorff explained that an armistice must be proposed within twenty-four hours to avoid the greatest disaster. Prince Max von Baden did this against his earlier decision.

After five days, Ludendorff declared that he had really blundered, and that it would not have been necessary!

This is an example of the way in which practical persons, highly respected practical persons — to whom, however, there is not the least ground for showing respect — intervene in world events but from what points of view and with what forces of thought! This is also an opportunity for studying how opinions become epidemic. The opinion that Hindenburg and Ludendorff are "great men" has spread everywhere with epidemic violence, whereas they were in so sense really great men, not even from the standpoint of their limited profession. These catastrophic occurrences are especially characteristic in showing how false judgments are formed. Witticisms alone have often hit the mark. If you go to Berlin now — most of you have probably not been in Berlin in recent years — you will see in the vicinity of the Victory Column, near that great cuspidor (indeed, the Reichstag building really looks like a huge cuspidor), in that vicinity you will see a remarkable structure. There stands "Hindenburg," a great, gigantic, most horrible statue of wood. Every "patriot" has driven a nail into this statue so that it has gradually had nails hammered into it everywhere. Only the wit of Berlin has correctly evaluated this. The saying is that, when he was finally entirely nailed up (Ganz vernagelt=absolutely stupid) he would be placed in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

All these things ought to be considered especially from the viewpoint of which I have often spoken — from the standpoint of the symptomatology of history as well as the symptomatology of events that have any relationship to human beings. The external world gives only symptoms, and we arrive at the truth only when we learn to recognize these symptoms in their nature as such.

2
The Present from the Viewpoint of the Present

30 November 1918, Dornach

When you consider the fundamental basis of our anthroposophically oriented science of the spirit in comparison with other so-called world views — and there are many now appearing — you will note especially one characteristic. This is the fact that spiritual science as a view of the world and of life endeavors actually to apply to the whole of human life, to everything that the human being encounters in life, what it seeks to establish through research in the spiritual worlds. Whoever has a feeling for what is essential in the urgent problems and impelling forces of our present time will probably be able to achieve for himself an understanding of the fact that the tremendous need of the present and of the immediate future is to be found just here, that is, in connecting directly with life itself the comprehensive ideas constituting world conceptions. Among the causes that have brought about the present catastrophic situation of humanity, not the least significant is the fact that the world views held by human beings, whether rooted in religion, science, or aesthetics, have all gradually lost their connection with life in the course of time. There has existed a tendency — we might call it a perverse tendency — to separate the so-called daily practical life, in the most comprehensive sense of the word, from what men seek in their effort to satisfy their needs in the realm of religion and world conceptions. Just reflect how life during the last centuries has gradually taken on such form that people have carried on their external activities, were practical men as the saying goes, and conducted their lives according to practical principles, and then applied half an hour each day more or less, or no time at all, or Sunday, to the satisfaction of those needs of the heart and soul that impel them to seek for a connection with the divine spiritual element permeating the world.

All this will be utterly changed if an anthroposophically oriented science of the spirit can take possession of the minds and hearts of men. This will take on such a character that thoughts will stream forth from this world view that will be applicable to life itself in all its aspects, thus enabling us to judge life with true insight. The principle of the Sunday vesper sermon shall by no means be that of our anthroposophically directed world conception, but the whole of life shall be permeated on all days of the week and on Sunday forenoon as well with what can be given to humanity by the anthroposophical comprehension of the world. Because such has not been the case up to the present time, the world has gradually drifted into chaos. People have neglected to direct their attention to what has really been happening in their immediate vicinity and they are now surprised because the results of this oversight are clearly manifest. They will be still more surprised in the future as these results become more clearly manifest.

Under no circumstances should we fail to pay attention today to what is spreading among people over the entire earth. With the powers of judgment that enable us to see into the great impulses at work in world events, we must endeavor to find our way into what confronts human hearts and minds today, in part in such an enigmatic way; that is, into what is threatening to transform the social structure into a chaos. It will not do to continue further in such a way that we decide simply to let come what may without endeavoring to penetrate into things with a sound power of judgment.

It is necessary to abandon the basic maxim that says,"This is an everyday matter, this is secular, it belongs to the external life; we turn our backs on this and direct our attention toward the spiritual and divine." This must come to an end. The time must begin in which even the most trivial everyday matter must be brought into connection with the spiritual and divine; that is, the time in which what is derived from the spiritual life shall no longer be viewed only from the most extremely abstract point of view.

In the course of these reflections, I have stated that a favorable change in the social movement cannot come about in any other way than through an increase in the interest that a person feels in another human being. A social structure is something men create in company with one another. Its ills cannot be healed unless the person knows that he is really within this order, unless he is within the social structure in his attitude of mind. The unsound element in the present epoch, which has brought about this catastrophe, lies in the neglect of people to acquire any sort of attitude of mind toward the way in which a person belongs to a social community. The interest that binds us as human beings to other human beings has come to an end in spite of the belief frequently manifested by people that they do have such an interest. Most certainly the past theosophical maxim, "I love all human beings; I have an interest in all human beings," is not effective; it is abstract; it does not lay hold upon real life and laying hold upon real life is what really matters. This must be understood in a deeper sense. A lack of understanding of real life has been the characteristic of recent centuries. Now, these recent centuries have brought about the present situation without a realization of this process on the pap of humanity, and they will cause future situations. In the historic life of humanity, conditions cannot be what they should be unless people accompany what is happening, what occurs among them in the social life, with their thinking. But the events that have occurred over a relatively long time cannot be accompanied thus unless we acquire a sound sense for certain phenomena.

To an objective observer it has been all too obvious that administrations and governments have been conducted and are being conducted according to fundamental principles that were really out of date centuries ago, whereas life has naturally moved forward during recent centuries. An essential element that has entered into the evolution of humanity is modern industrialism, which has created the whole modern proletariat. But this genesis of the modern proletariat has not been accompanied by thinking. The leading classes have continued to live in the old manner, administering their positions of leadership as they have been accustomed to do for centuries. Without their doing anything about it, without their having even accompanied the process of world history with their thinking, the modern proletariat has evolved out of the existing facts, actual occurrences, and the rise of modern industrialism. This began essentially with the invention of the mechanical loom and spinning machine in the eighteenth century. Thus the destiny of world history for the present and the immediate future depends upon what is going on in the world in the heads of the modern proletariat — what haunts them, you may say, like a specter. This proletariat is striving for power through majority control and it is to be considered in its actions just as we consider the results of natural events and elemental occurrences. It should not be looked upon as something to be criticized that may please or displease us. The proletariat must be judged in its actions somewhat as we judge an earthquake or a tidal wave of the sea, or anything else of the kind.

We are now seeing the preliminary stages of what takes its rise from the modern proletariat — or, better expressed, from the tendencies and feelings of the modern proletariat. Like the action of an advance guard we observe what is known to us in a certain aspect in Russian bolshevism. This Russian bolshevism as I have often declared, is not in harmony with the original disposition of the Russian people. It has been introduced from without. But this is not a matter of any consequence if we wish to face the facts since it actually exists within the regions that formerly constituted the Empire of the Czar. It has taken root there, and it must be observed like a phenomenon of nature that has the tendency to spread. In observing such a thing as Russian bolshevism it is most important of all to disregard secondary phenomena. We must pay attention to the matter of main importance. The fact that bolshevism had its beginning in 1917, and that it was accompanied by certain external phenomena, may have been determined by certain obvious causes. I have said to you that even the incompetence of Ludendorff and also various other things have not been free of responsibility for the actual outbreak of bolshevism. But all this must be eliminated if we wish to view things in a fruitful way, and we must pay attention to the active forces that are alive in this Russian bolshevism. We must simply ask ourselves as a mere matter of fact what the objective of Russian bolshevism is and how it is related to the whole evolution of humanity. Beyond question, it is not something ephemeral and transitory. Rather, it is a phenomenon of far-reaching consequences in world history. It is exceedingly important that we should examine the basic structure as visualized by Russian bolshevism in order to be able to reflect upon it in a certain way as it emerges from deeper impelling forces of the world.

If we consider the fundamental characteristics of Russian bolshevism, we must conclude that its first endeavor aims at the destruction of what we have characterized in the marxian sense as the bourgeoisie. It is a fundamental maxim, so to speak, to destroy, root and branch, as something harmful in the evolution of humanity according to their point of view, everything that has taken its rise in the evolution of history as the bourgeois class. Bolshevism is to arrive at this objective in various ways. First, it aims at the removal of all class distinctions. Bolshevism does not direct its efforts toward such factual removal of the distinctions into classes and ranks as I have presented them to you. Bolshevism itself thinks in a wholly bourgeois manner, and what I have introduced to you is not conceived in a bourgeois but a human manner. Bolshevism intends to overcome the differentiation among classes and ranks in its own way. It says to itself that the contemporary states are constructed on the basis of the bourgeois conception of life, so the forms of the contemporary states must disappear. Everything that is a subordinate outgrowth of the bourgeois social class in the contemporary states such as the police system, the military system, the system of justice must disappear. In other words, what has been created by the bourgeoisie for its security and its administration of justice must disappear with the bourgeois class. The whole administration and organization of the social structure must pass into the hands of the proletariat. Through this process the state, as it has existed until now, will die away and the proletariat will administer the whole human structure, the whole community life of society.

This cannot be achieved by means of the old system of arrangements that the bourgeois class had created for itself. It cannot be achieved by the election of a Reichstag or any other sort of body of representatives of the people, chosen on the basis of any sort of suffrage, as this has been done under the conception of life characteristic of the bourgeois class.

If such representative bodies continued to be elected, only the bourgeois class would perpetuate itself in these bodies. In other words, such representative bodies, under whatever system of suffrage chosen, would not render possible the attainment of the goals that are there striven for. Therefore, the matter of importance is that such measures shall now really be applied as have their origin in the proletariat itself, such as cannot come to birth in any middle class head, since a middle class head inevitably conceives only such regulations as must be abolished. Nothing whatever can be expected, therefore, from any kind of national or state assembly, but something is to be expected solely from a dictatorship of the proletariat. This means that the entire social structure must be handed over to a dictatorship of the proletariat. Only the proletariat will have the inclination actually to eliminate the bourgeois class from the world because, should persons of the bourgeois class be members of representative bodies, they would have no inclination to eliminate themselves from the world. That is what is really necessary, that the whole bourgeois class shall be deprived of its rights. Thus, the only persons who can exercise an influence upon the social structure must be those who belong to the proletariat in the true sense, that is, only those who perform labor, who are useful to the community.

Consequently, according to this proletariat world conception, a person who causes others to perform any sort of service for him, and remunerates them for this, cannot have the right to vote. That is, whoever employs persons, engages persons to serve him and remunerates them for their service, has no right to participate in any way in the social structure, and has no right, therefore, to a vote. Neither does anyone possess the right to vote who lives on income from his property or who profits from income. Nor does a person who is engaged in trade have the right to vote or one who is a distributor and does not perform any practical labor. In other words, all who live by means of income, who employ other persons and remunerate them, who are engaged in trade or are middle men, are excluded from being representatives of the government when the dictatorship of the proletariat takes control. During the continuance of this dictatorship of the proletariat, there is no general freedom of speech, no freedom of assembly, no freedom to organize, but only those who are engaged in actual labor can hold meetings or form organizations. All others are deprived of freedom of speech, the right to assembly, and the right to organize societies or unions. Likewise, only those enjoy the freedom of the press who perform practical labor. The press of the bourgeois class is suppressed, and not tolerated.

These are, in a general way, the guiding principles, we may say, during the transitional stage. After these principles have been dominant for a certain length of time the proletariat world conception expects from their operation that only men engaged in practical labor will exist. Only the proletariat will continue to exist. The bourgeois class will have been exterminated.

To these things, which have primary importance for the transitional period, will then be added those that have permanent significance. To these belongs, for example, the universal obligation to work. Every person is under obligation to produce by labor something useful to the community.

A decisive principle of a permanent character is the termination of the right to private ownership of real estate. Larger estates are handed over to agricultural communes. According to this proletariat world view, there will exist in future no private ownership of land. Industrial establishments, establishments of entrepreneurs are confiscated and passed under the control of society, being administered by the centralized administration of the workers, at the head of which is the Supreme Soviet for the national economy. This is simply bolshevism in Russia. Ranks are taken over by the state. A universal system of bookkeeping is instituted, embracing the entire community and comprising all production. All foreign trade of this single communal entity is made communal, that is, the establishments are taken over by the state.
These are, in a general way, the fundamental principles constituting the ideal of Trotsky and Lenin, and you will see clearly in them the cardinal points of what is willed by the modern proletariat.

It does not suffice, of course, to be informed each day by the newspapers that a certain number of bloody deeds have been done by bolshevism. If we compare the bloody deeds done by bolshevism with the immense number of those done by reason of this war, the deeds of bolshevism obviously become an insignificant affair. The really important thing is to see what has been hitherto overlooked and neglected in order that the evolution of humanity may in the future be followed with our thinking. It is really necessary that we fix our attention, first in our hearts and then with our minds, upon these things that are so intimately connected with the progressive evolution of humanity. It is precisely the mission of the science of the spirit to fix our attention upon these things with our minds and hearts. The time must come to an end in which lazy pastors and priests preach to the people from the pulpit every Sunday theoretical stuff having no connection with life for the so-called warming of their souls. On the contrary, a condition must begin in which everyone who desires to participate in spiritual life shall be in duty bound to look into life, to establish an immediate connection with life. No small share in the responsibility for the misfortune of the present time rests upon the fact that those who have been custodians of the religious feelings of humanity for a long time past have preached to people from their pulpits such things as actually have no relationship whatever with life. They have directed discourses for the sole purpose of providing the people with insipid stuff for their hearts and souls that affected them in a pleasant way but never grasped life. It is for this reason that life has remained without spirit and has finally fallen into chaos. You may seek for much of the responsibility, for which recompense is required at present, precisely in the stupid discourses of those who have been the custodians of the religious feelings of people and who have had no relationship with life. What have they achieved of all that must take place in the epoch during which a whole new humanity in the form of the proletariat has evolved? What have these people achieved who have proclaimed useless stuff from their pulpits, such stuff that it has been desired by people only because they wished to delude themselves with all sorts of illusions regarding the realities of life? This is a serious time and things must be viewed in a serious light.

What has been said regarding the necessity for individuals to acquire an interest in one another must not be regarded only in a manner harmonizing with the mood presented in the Sunday vesper sermon. It must be considered according to the profound indication it gives in regard to the social structure of the present age.

Consider a concrete example. How many people there are today who have an abstract and confused conception of their own personal lives! If they ask themselves, for example, "What do I live on?" — for the most part, they do not do this, but if they did it once, they would say to themselves, "Why, on my money." Among those who say to themselves, "I live on my money," there are many who have inherited this money from their parents. They suppose they live on their money, inherited from their fathers, but we cannot live on money. Money is not something on which we can live. Here it is necessary at last to begin to reflect. This question is intimately connected with the real interest that one individual has in another. Anyone who thinks he lives on the money he has inherited, for example, or has acquired in any way whatever except by receiving money for work, as is the custom today — whoever lives in this way and supposes that he can live on money has no interest in his fellow men because no one can live on money. We must eat, and what we eat has been produced by a human being. We must have clothing. What we wear must be made through the labor of people. In order that I may put on a coat or a pair of trousers, human beings must expend their strength in labor for hours. They work for me. It is on this labor that I live, not on my money. My money has no value other than that of giving me the power to make use of the labor of others. Under the social conditions of the present time, we do not begin to have an interest in our fellow men until we answer that question in the proper way, until we hold the picture in our minds of a certain number of persons working for a certain number of hours in order that I may live within the social structure. It is of no importance to give ourselves a comfortable feeling by saying, "I love people." No one loves people if he supposes that he is living on his money and does not in the least conceive how people work for him in order to produce even the minimum necessary for his life.

But the thought that a certain number of persons labor in order that we may possess the minimum necessities of life is inseparable from another. It is the thought that we must recompense society, not with money but with work in exchange for the work that has been done for us. We feel an interest in our fellow men only when we are led to feel obligated to recompense in some form of labor the amount of labor that has been performed for us. To give our money to our fellow men only signifies that we are able to hold our fellow men on a leash as bound slaves and that we can compel them to labor for us.

Permit me to ask whether you cannot answer out of your experience the question how many men realize that money is only a claim upon human strength employed in labor, that money is only a means for gaining power. How many persons really see clearly that they could not even exist in this physical world but for the labor of other persons upon which they depend for what they demand for their lives? The feeling of obligation to the society in which we live is the beginning of the interest that is required for a sound social order.

It is necessary to reflect about these things, otherwise we ascend in an unwholesome way into spiritual abstractions and do not rise in a wholesome way from physical reality to spiritual reality. The lack of interest in the social structure has characterized precisely these last centuries. During recent centuries, men have gradually formed the habit of developing a real interest in the matter of social impulses only with regard to their own respected persons. In greater or lesser degree everything has borne in a roundabout way only upon one's personality. A wholesome social life is possible only when interest in one's own respected personality is broadened into a genuine social interest. In this connection the bourgeoisie may well ask themselves what they have neglected.

Just consider the following fact. There is such a thing as a spiritual culture. There are cultural objects. To select one example, there are works of art. Now, ask yourselves to how many people these works of art are accessible. Or, rather ask yourselves to how many persons these works of art are utterly inaccessible. For how many persons do these works of art actually not exist. But just calculate how many persons must labor in order that these works of art may exist. One or another work of art is in Rome. One or another bourgeois can travel to Rome. Just add up the total of how much labor must be performed by creative workers, etc., etc., — these etceteras will never come to an end — in order that this bourgeois, when he travels to Rome, may see something that is there for him because he is a bourgeois, but is not there for all those persons who are now beginning to give expression to their proletariat conception of life. This very habit has taken form among the bourgeois of looking upon enjoyment as something self-evident. But enjoyment should really never be accepted without repaying its equivalent to the whole of society. It is not because of any element in the natural or spiritual order that some part of society should be deprived. Time and space are only artificial hindrances. The fact that the Sistine Madonna remains forever in Dresden, and can be seen only by those persons who are able to go to Dresden, is only a by-product of the bourgeois world conception. The Sistine Madonna is movable, and can be taken to all parts of the world. This is only one example, but the necessary steps can be taken to make sure that whatever is enjoyed by one may also be enjoyed by others.

Although I have given only one example, I always choose them to exemplify and clarify everything else. We need only to strike such a note, as you see, in order to touch upon many matters that people have really not thought of at all, but have simply taken as something self-evident. Even within our own circle, where this could so easily be understood, people do not always reflect that everything we receive obligates us to return an equivalent to society and not simply enjoy.

Now, from all that I have presented to you as examples, which could be multiplied not only a hundredfold but a thousandfold, this question will be obvious to you. "How can the situation be otherwise if money is really only a means for acquiring power?" This is already answered in that fundamental social principle I introduced last week because that is a peculiarity of what I introduced to you as a sort of social science taken from the spiritual world. It is just as certain as mathematics. In connection with the things I have presented to you, there is no question of anyone's looking into practical life and saying, "Now then, we must first investigate whether things really are so." No; what I introduced to you as a social science derived from spiritual science is much like the theorem of Pythagoras. If you consider Pythagoras's theorem, if you know that the square of the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides of a right angle triangle, it is impossible that anything should exist within the world of experience to contradict this. On the contrary, you must apply this fundamental principle everywhere. So it is with the fundamental principle I introduced to you as underlying social science and social life. Everything that a person acquires in such a way that it is received in exchange for his work within the social system has an unwholesome effect. A wholesome condition results within the social system only when the human being has to support his life, not by his own work, but from other sources within society. This seemingly contradicts what I have just said, but only seemingly. What will render work valuable will be the fact that it will no longer be remunerated.

The goal toward which we must work — of course, in a rational and not a bolshevistic way — must be that of separating work from the provision of the means of existence. I have recently explained this. When no one is any longer recompensed for his work, then money will lose its value as a means for acquiring power over work. There is no other means for overcoming the misuse that has been perpetuated with mere money than by forming the social structure in such a way that no one be recompensed for his work, and that the provision of the means of existence shall be achieved from an entirely different source. It will then naturally be impossible to use money for the purpose of compelling anyone to work.

Most of the questions that now arise appear in such a form that they are confusedly understood. If they are to be lifted into a clear light, this can happen only by means of spiritual science. Money must never in future be the equivalent for human labor, but only for inanimate commodities. Only inanimate commodities will be acquired in future by means of money, not human labor.

This is of the utmost importance. Now, just consider the fact that in the proletariat world conception the idea that labor is a commodity stares us in the face in all sorts of forms. Indeed, the fact that labor in modern industrialism has become in the most conspicuous way a commodity is one of the fundamental principles of marxism, one of those fundamental principles by means of which Marx was most successful in winning followers among the proletariat. Here you see that a demand appears from an entirely different quarter and in a confused and chaotic fashion, that must, nevertheless, be fulfilled, but from an entirely different direction. This is characteristic of social demands of the present, that, to the extent that they appear instinctively, they are due to entirely justified and sound instincts. They arise, however, from a chaotic social structure. For this reason they are in a confused form that necessarily leads to confusion. So it is in many fields. It is necessary for this reason really to lay hold upon a spiritual-scientific view of the world because only this can result in true social healing.

Now, you will ask whether this will bring about a change. For example, if a person inherits his money, he will still continue to purchase commodities with the money he inherited, and the labor of other persons is surely concealed in these commodities. So nothing is changed, you will say. Certainly, if you think abstractly, nothing is changed. But, if you will look into the whole effect that comes about when the provision of the means of existence is separated from labor, you will form a different opinion. In the sphere of reality, the situation is not such that we simply draw abstract conclusions, but there things produce their actual results. If it actually comes about that the provision of the means of existence is separated from the performance of labor, inheritances will no longer exist. This will produce such a modification of the social structure that people will not come into possession of money in any other way than for the acquisition of commodities. When something is conceived as a reality, it has all sorts of effects. Among other things this separation of the provision of the means of existence from labor has one quite peculiar effect. Indeed, when we speak of realities, we cannot so express ourselves as to say, "But I do not see why this should be so." You might just as well say, "But I do not see why morphine should cause sleep." This also does not come to you as a conclusion out of a mere interrelationship of concepts. It becomes manifest only when you actually trace the effect.

There is something extremely unnatural today in the social order. This consists in the fact that money increases when a person simply possesses it. It is put in a bank and interest is paid on it. This is the most unnatural thing that could possibly exist. It is really utterly nonsensical. The person does nothing whatever. He simply banks the money, which he may not even have acquired by labor but may have inherited, and he receives interest on it. This is utter nonsense. But it will become a matter of necessity when the provision of the means of existence is separated from labor that money shall be used when it exists, when it is produced as the equivalent of commodities that exist. It must be used. It must be put into circulation and the actual effect will be that money does not increase but that it diminishes. If at the present time a person possesses a certain sum of money, he will have approximately twice that amount in fourteen years under a normal rate of interest, and he will have done nothing except merely to wait. If you think thus of the transformation of the social order, as this must occur under the influence of this one fundamental principle that I have presented to you, then money will not increase but will diminish. After a certain number of years, the bank notes I acquired before the beginning of those years will no longer have any value. They will have matured and become valueless.

In this way the trend will become natural in the social structure toward bringing about such conditions that mere money, which is nothing more than a note, an indication that a person possesses a certain power over the labor of human beings, will lose its value after a certain length of time if it has not been put into circulation. In other words, it will not increase, but will progressively diminish and, after fourteen years or perhaps a somewhat longer time, will reach the zero point. If you are millionaires today, you will not be double millionaires after fourteen years but you will be broke unless you have earned something additional in the meantime.

Of course, I am aware that people wriggle as if they had been bitten by fleas when this is mentioned at the present time — if you will permit such a comparison. I know this, and I would not have employed this comparison but for the extraordinary movements I observed in the audience!

Since, however, the situation is such that this matter causes people to feel as if fleas had bitten them, we have bolshevism. Just search for the true causes and there they are. You will never be able to free the world of what is coming to the surface unless you determine really to penetrate into the truth.

The fact that the truth is unpleasant makes no difference. An essential part of the education of humanity today and in the immediate future will consist in putting an end to the belief that truths can be controlled according to subjective estimates, subjective sympathies and antipathies. But spiritual science, if it is grasped with a sound human intelligence, can solve this problem of money because it can also be considered spiritually.

Nothing is accomplished by that vague way of talking I have heard even among anthroposophists who hold money in their hands and say, "This is Ahriman." At present money signifies an equivalent for commodities and labor. It constitutes a claim upon something that actually occurs. If we pass over from mere abstractions to realities, if we reflect, then, when a person has ten one hundred mark notes and pays these to someone, he causes the labor of a certain number of persons to pass as an equivalent from hand to hand. Because these notes possess the power to cause a certain number of persons to work, he then actually stands within life with all its branches and impulses. He will no longer continue to be satisfied with the mere abstraction, the unthinking abstraction, of the payment of money, but he will ask himself, "What is the significance of the fact that I cause ten one hundred mark notes to pass from hand to hand, thus bringing it about that a certain number of persons endowed with head, heart and mind must perform labor? What is the significance of that?"

The answer to such a question can be afforded, in the last analysis, only by a spiritual observation of the matter. Let us take the most extreme example. Suppose someone who has never put forth an effort in behalf of humanity has money. There are such cases. I will consider this extreme instance. Someone who has never put forth an effort in behalf of humanity has money. He buys something for himself with this money. Indeed, he is enabled to fashion for himself an altogether pleasant life by reason of the fact that he possesses this money, which is a claim upon human labor. Fine! This person is not necessarily a bad human being. He may even be a good man; indeed, he may be an industrious person. People frequently simply fail to see into the social structure. They do not possess an interest in their fellow men, that is, in the real social structure. People suppose that they love human beings when they buy something for themselves with their inherited money, for example, or when they even give it away. When it is given away, the only result is that we cause a certain number of persons to work for those to whom the money is given. It is simply a means for acquiring power. The fact that it is a claim upon labor makes it the means for acquiring power.

But this situation has simply come into existence and developed to this stage. This is a reflection of something else. It is a reflection of what I mentioned in the preceding lecture. I there called your attention to the fact that the Jehovah divinity has controlled the world for a certain length of time through the fact that he won a complete victory over the other Elohim, and that he can no longer save himself from the spirits thus aroused. He drove his companions, the other six Elohim, from the field. Because of this, what the human being experiences even in the embryo has acquired complete dominance in human consciousness. The six other forces, which are not experienced by man in the embryo, have thereby been rendered inactive. They have thereby come under the influence of lower spiritual entities. In the fifth decade of the last century, as I have said, Jehovah could no longer save himself. Since the Jehovah wisdom acquired in the embryonic state renders it possible to grasp the conception of providence only in external nature, crass atheistic natural science has invaded the world. The reflection of this, the fact that money simply passes from one person to another without any transfer of commodities, consists in the circulation of money apart from the circulation of commodities.

No matter with what energy a person may exert himself in any field, the ahrimanic power lives in what seems to be produced by money as money. You cannot inherit without having a certain amount of ahrimanic power transferred with the money. There is no other possibility of possessing money within the social structure in a wholesome way than by possessing it in a Christian way; that is, by acquiring money only by means of what one develops between birth and death. In other words, the way in which a person comes into possession of money must not be a reflection of what is related to Jehovah even though the fact that we are born, that we pass from the embryo into the external life, is something that pertains to him. The reflection of this, I say, is the fact that we inherit money. Those characteristics that we inherit with the blood are inherited through the laws of nature. Money that we inherit and do not earn would be a reflection of this.

The fact that Christian consciousness has not yet taken its place in the world, that the social structure is still brought about by means of the ancient Jehovah wisdom or its specter, the Roman conception of the state, has brought about everything that has led to one aspect of the present unfortunate situation.

I said that the matter must not be considered so abstractly when money produces money, but we must view it in its reality. Whenever money produces money it is something that occurs only on the physical plane, whereas what constitutes the human being is always connected with the spiritual world.

What are you doing, then, when you perform no labor but you have money that people must work to get? The human being then has to bring to market what constitutes his heavenly share and you give him only what is earthly. You pay him with the merely earthly, the purely ahrimanic. You see, this is the spiritual aspect of the matter. Wherever Ahriman is at work, only destruction can come about.

This, again, is an unpleasant truth. But it does not help at all when a person says to himself, "Now, really, I am otherwise a respectable individual and I am doing nothing wrong, therefore, when I use my income to pay for this or that." The actual fact is that you give Ahriman in exchange for God. Of course, we are frequently compelled to do this within the present social structure, but we should not play the ostrich game and conceal this fact from ourselves. Rather should we face the truth because what the future is to bring depends upon our doing so. Much of what has broken in upon humanity with such calamitous results has occurred for the reason that people close their eyes and the eyes of their souls in the presence of the truth. They have fabricated for themselves abstract concepts of right and wrong, and have been unwilling to deal with the real and the concrete. In regard to this we shall speak further tomorrow, when we shall lift our discussion into spiritual heights.

3
The Mechanistic, Eugenic and Hygienic Aspects of the Future

1 December 1918, Dornach

What I have had in mind in the course of these reflections has been to cast light upon the form that social thinking should take today. I should like now to add something to what we have already discussed that may make it possible for you to lift these things to a higher level. This is really necessary just because of the special demands of the spirit of our epoch. Everything that I have presented to you and will still present, I hope you will consider, if I may repeat this request, not as a criticism of the existing conditions of the times, but simply to provide material suitable for giving direction to our judgment that may provide the foundation for a general survey of conditions characterized by the necessary insight. The spiritual-scientific point of view cannot be that of providing a social critique but solely that of calling attention to these things without pessimism or optimism. Yet this fact compels us, naturally, to use words that will be understood by some persons to be intended as criticism of one or another of the social classes. Such is not the case. When we speak here of the bourgeoisie, it is as if we were speaking of an inevitable historical phenomenon, and not for the purpose of raising any objection to what has simply been unavoidable according to certain spiritual-scientific points of view. I beg you to understand in the same way also what I shall present to you today.

Let us take as our point of departure the comprehensive motive force that underlies in powerful form the present social demands of the proletariat, just as it underlies all or many human movements. This force is more or less clearly expressed, but it is also instinctive, unconscious, confused, and unclear' though nonetheless fundamental in these movements. This consists in the fact that a certain ideal exists for bringing about a social order that will be satisfying in all its aspects. If we wish to describe in a radical way what is thus basic in these things, there is reason to say that an endeavor is made to think out and to realize a social order that will bring about a paradise on earth, or at least that happy state worthy of the human being that is looked upon by the proletariat population at the present time as something to be desired. This is called the "solution of the social problem." What I have just said is inherent in the instinct behind what is called the solution of the social problem.

Now, in considering the expression "solution of the social problem," it is necessary that the spiritual scientist, who should not surrender himself to illusions in any field but should fix his attention upon realities, shall in this case also indulge in no illusions. The essential fact in this field is that those who are striving for these things do not proceed from a standpoint free of illusions, but from a point of view confronted by a great number of such illusions, especially the fundamental illusion that it is possible to solve the social problem.

The fact that in our epoch there is no consciousness of the difference between the physical plane and the spiritual world, but the physical plane is looked upon in a certain instinctive way as the only world, is connected with the other fact that it longs to create a paradise on this physical plane. Because of this conception our epoch is compelled to believe that the human being is condemned either never to achieve justice, the harmonizing of his impulses and needs, or else to find these things within the physical earthy existence.

The physical plane, however, manifests itself to one who observes the world imaginatively, and thus takes cognizance of actual reality, in such a way that he must declare there is no perfection in this world but only imperfection. Thus, it is impossible to speak at all of an absolutely complete solution of the social problem. You may endeavor in any way you please, on the basis of all the profoundest knowledge, to solve the social problem, yet it will never be solved in the sense in which many persons expect the solution in our day. But this need not lead anyone to say that if the social problem is simply not to be solved, we should permit the old nonsense to continue on its course. The truth is that the course of things resembles the action of a pendulum: the force for the upward swing is gained in the downward swing. In other words, just as the opposite force is accumulated by the downward swing and is then used in the upward swing, such is the case also in the rhythmical succession characterizing the historic life of humanity. What you may consider for a certain epoch as the most perfect social order, or even as any social order at all, wears out when you have once brought it to realization, and leads after a certain time once more to disorder. The evolutionary life is not such that it steadily ascends, but its course consists in ebb and flow; it progresses with a wave movement. The best that you may be able to establish, when once realized on the physical plane, gives rise to conditions that lead to its own destruction after the necessary length of time. The state of humanity would be entirely different if this irrevocable law in the historic course of events were adequately recognized. It would not then be supposed possible in the absolute sense of the word to establish a paradise on earth, but people would be compelled to give attention to the cyclic law of humanity's evolution. As we exclude from consideration an absolute answer to the question, "What should be the form of social life?" we shall do the right thing by asking ourselves what must be done for our epoch? What are the exact demands of the motive forces of our fifth post-Atlantean epoch? What actually demands to be made a reality? With the consciousness that what is brought to realization will inevitably be destroyed in turn in the course of the cyclic reversals, we are compelled to see clearly that we can think socially also only in this relative way when we recognize the impelling evolutionary forces of a definite epoch. It is imperatively necessary to work in harmony with reality. We are working against reality when we suppose that we shall be able to accomplish anything by means of abstract and absolute ideals.

For the spiritual scientist, therefore, who desires to fix his attention upon reality and not illusion, the question takes the limited form of what bears the impulse within it to be brought to realization within the actual situation of the immediate present?

Our explanations of yesterday also were intended to be considered from this point of view. You interpret me quite wrongly if you suppose that I mean an absolute paradise will be brought about through the fact, let us say, that what is produced by labor will be separated from labor. On the contrary, I consider this, on the basis of the profound laws of the evolution of humanity, only as something that must necessarily occur at the present time. What is anchored in all the instincts of man, toward which the proletariat conception of life especially is striving, even if they sometimes push things to the extreme of such demands as those I enumerated to you yesterday as the demands of bolshevism — behind what people have in their consciousness there lies, of course, what they instinctively will to bring to realization. Anyone who directs his effort toward reality does not pay attention to programs proposed to him, not even that of the Russian Soviet Republic, but he endeavors to see what is still in instinctive form today behind these things that people express outwardly with stammering tongues. This is what really matters. Otherwise, if we do not view the matter thus, we shall never deal with these things in the right way. What men are instinctively striving for is absolutely inherent in the fundamental character of our fifth post-Atlantean epoch, which is essentially different from the fourth epoch, the Greco-Latin, and likewise from the preceding third, the Egypto-Chaldean. Men of today, in their social relationships — not as individuals, but in social group relationships — must will something absolutely definite.

Instinctively they do actually will this. They will today what could not have been willed in the fourth post-Atlantean epoch, or even up to the fifteenth century of our Christian era. They will today an existence worthy of the human being, that is, the fulfillment as a reflection in the social order of what they vaguely sense in this epoch as the ideal for humanity. Men will today instinctively that what the human being is in himself shall be reflected in the social structure.

During the third post-Atlantean epoch, the Egypto-Chaldean, this was different, and different likewise still earlier during the second epoch. In the second epoch, the ancient Persian, the human being was still entirely in his inner nature; man was then still a being of wholly inner nature. He did not then demand instinctively to find duplicated in the external world what he possessed inwardly as his needs. He did not need a social structure that would enable him to recognize in external things what he possessed inwardly as impulse, instincts and needs. Then came the third post-Atlantean epoch, the Egypto-Chaldean, and the human being demanded that the part of his being that was connected with his head should appear to him in the mirror of external social reality. So we observe that, from the third post-Atlantean epoch on, from the Egypto-Chaldean epoch, the endeavor was made to achieve a theocratic social arrangement in which everything pertaining to theocratic social institutions was in some way permeated by religion. The rest remained still instinctive. What was connected with the second man, the breast and breathing man, and what was connected with the metabolic man, remained instinctive. The human being did not yet think at all of seeing these reflected in the mirror of the external order. In the ancient Persian epoch there was also only an instinctive religion, guided by those initiated in Zarathustrianism. But everything that the human being developed was still inward and instinctive. He did not yet feel any need to seek things in external reflection in the social structure. He began during the period that ended approximately with the founding of the ancient Roman kingdom, the actual year was 747 B.C., to demand that what could live as though in his head should be found again in the social order.

Then came the epoch that began in the eighth century, 747 B.C., and ended in the fifteenth century A.D., the Greco-Latin epoch. Man then demanded that two members of his being, the head man and the rhythmic, breathing, breast man should be reflected externally in the social structure. What constituted the ancient theocratic order, but now only in an echo, had to be reflected. As a matter of fact, the real theocratic institutions bear a close resemblance to the third post-Atlantean epoch and this includes even the institutions of the Catholic Church. This continued, and something new was added to it that was derived especially from the Greco-Latin epoch. The external institutions of the res publica, those institutions that have to do with the administration of the external life so far as justice and injustice and such things come into consideration were added. Man now demanded as regards two members of his being that he should not only bear these within himself but should see them reflected externally as in a mirror.

For instance, you do not understand Greek culture if you do not know that the situation was such that the merely metabolic life, which is expressed externally in the economic structure, still remained instinctive, inner and without the need of external reflection. The tendency to demand an external reflection for this appeared first in the fifteenth century of the Christian era. If you study history in its reality, not in the form of legends fabricated within our so-called science of history, you will find confirmed even externally what I have told you on the basis of occult knowledge about the Greek slave class and slavery, without whose existence the Greek culture we so greatly admire would be unthinkable. This can be conceived as existing in the social structure only when we know that this whole fourth post-Atlantean epoch was dominated by the striving for an external system of institutions in the field of law and religion, but not yet for any other than an instinctive economic order.

It is our own epoch, the time that begins in the fifteenth century of the Christian era, in which the demand was first made to see the whole three-membered human being as a picture also in his external social structure.

We must, therefore, study the three-membered human being today since, for the first time, he develops a threefold instinct to have in the external structure, in the community structure, what I have mentioned to you, that is, firstly, a spiritual sphere, which has its own administration and its own structure, secondly, a sphere of administration, of security and order — a political sphere — that is likewise self-sufficing, and, thirdly, an economic sphere, because our epoch demands for the first time this economic sphere in external organization. The demand to see the human being brought to realization and pictured in the social structure arises as an instinct in our epoch. This is the deeper reason why it is no longer a mere economic instinct that is at work. The economic class that has just been created, the proletariat, strives toward the goal of setting up the economic structure externally just as consciously as the fourth post-Atlantean epoch set up the administrative structure of the system of laws, and the third post-Atlantean epoch, the Egypto-Chaldean, the theocratic structure.

This is the inner reason. Only by giving attention to this inner reason can you judge rightly the conditions of the present time, and you will then understand why I had to present to you this threefold social order a week ago. It has certainly not been invented as programs are invented today by innumerable societies, but it is asserted on the basis of those forces that can be observed if we enter into the reality of evolution. We must come to the point, for time is pressing in that direction, when the impelling evolutionary forces within the development of humanity shall really be understood concretely and objectively. Time is pressing in that direction. People still struggle against this. It is really astonishing even if we observe those who make the furthest advance. A short time ago a book was published entitled Letters of a Lady to Walther Rathenau Concerning the Transcendence of Coming Events. All sorts of things are, of course, discussed in this book. For example:

It is the intention of this pamphlet to publish the essential intuitional contents of epistolary writings. Personal communications have been excluded since they have no immediate relationship to this. The result is the elimination of the fragmentary letter form, and thus also the constant repetition of the customary salutations and conclusions. A lady endowed as a seeress communicates here to the author of the book, Of Things To Come, her unusual experience and knowledge in regard to the new soul of the time and the new birth of the world. The powers of the future struggling today for a higher form of life manifest themselves here in an individual human destiny as the experienced reality of the new soul powers.

It is strange that many things are here spoken of, but one observes something curious. The lady discovers that man can develop higher spiritual faculties and that genuine realities can be perceived only by means of these. The book really comes to an end with this. Its last chapter is entitled, Cosmic Conclusions Regarding the World Soul and the Human Soul. But the book proceeds no further than to the insight that a person can possess higher faculties and not to the point of telling what he actually perceives by means of these higher faculties. It is as if one should say to a person, "You have eyes," but then not bring him to the point of seeing anything of reality with them. A strange attitude is taken by certain persons with reference to spiritual science. They actually shrink back in terror even if we merely begin to speak of what can be seen. One should like to say to an author such as this lady, "You admit that higher faculties may evolve in the human being. Spiritual science exists in order to report what one sees precisely in connection with important matters if these higher faculties are evolved." But people shrink back from this and do not want to listen.

You see how urgently the time impels us to reach the point where spiritual science wills to arrive, and how meanwhile there are jumbled together in people those things of which I spoke in the latest issue of the magazine, "Das Reich," edited by Alexander von Bernus, in my article entitled Luciferic and Ahrimanic Elements In Our Contemporary History, in the Life of Man. This is all in such a tangled mass in the human soul that even those who admit that it is possible to see a spiritual reality as a genuine reality that can be beheld regard as a fantastic person anyone who speaks concretely of such a spiritual reality.

I have referred to this lady simply because she is not a unique phenomenon. What appears in her appears in many individuals. It is actually a characteristic of the time that even though people feel impelled to look beyond the ordinary external reality, they still withdraw and refrain from doing so. In this book for example, attention is called to a certain relationship between human beings and cosmic forces. But one should not try, let us say, to explain to these people the content of my book, An Outline of Occult Science, in which these relationships are expounded. They then shrink back. But we do not gain an insight into social matters, which must be considered as I have told you, if we simply admit that it is possible to see and do not consider what can be seen. It is of enormous importance to realize this. Otherwise, we shall always make the mistake already pointed out in the first sentences I uttered today of making an absolute principle out of something that is valid concretely for the individual single case — so that the question is asked, for example, in regard to the social problem, "How must human institutions be set up throughout the world?" But this question is really not presented to us. Human beings in various parts of the earth differ from one another, and in the future this differentiation will increase. Utterly unreal thoughts are expressed by one, therefore, who supposes that it is possible to proceed socially in the same way in Russia, China, South America, Germany or France. Such a one expresses absolute thoughts where individual and relative thoughts alone correspond with reality. It is extremely important that this fact be clearly seen.

During recent years, when it was so important that these things should be understood in the appropriate places, it has been a source of great distress to me that they have simply been misunderstood. You will recall that I drew a map here two years ago that is now becoming a reality, and I did not show this map only to you. I presented the map at that time to explain how the impelling forces are moving from a certain side, since it is a law that, if we know these impelling forces, if we take cognizance of them, if we grasp them in our consciousness, they may be corrected in a certain way and given a different direction. It is important that this should be comprehended.

But no one in a responsible position has taken cognizance of these things, or taken them earnestly in the real sense of the word. Present events certainly show that they should have been taken earnestly.

Now the fact that must be taken into consideration in connection with these things is that, in regard to certain fundamental laws of world evolution, nothing is actually known in a comprehensive way such that this knowledge is brought into external application anywhere except within certain secret societies of the English-speaking peoples. This is something that it is important to observe. Secret societies among other peoples are fundamentally only a matter of empty phrases. Secret societies among the English-speaking peoples, on the contrary, are sources from which truths are acquired in certain ways by means of which things can be guided politically. I may speak of them some time, but it would take us too far afield today. Thus we may say that those forces flowing from these secret societies into the politics of the West move actually in accordance with history. They reckon with the laws of historic evolution. It is not necessary that in external matters everything shall be correct even to the dotting of the last "i". What matters is whether the person proceeds in accordance with historic evolution in an objective sense, or whether he proceeds as a dilettante following his arbitrary notions.

The politics of Central Europe, for example, were predominantly amateur politics, utterly without relation to any historical law. The politics that were not amateurish, that followed the facts — or, if I may use the crass expression, professional politics — were those of the English-speaking peoples, the British Empire and its annex, America. This is the great difference, and this is the significant point that must be clearly seen. Its importance lies in the fact that what was known in those circles is actually flowing into the world of reality. It also flows into the instincts behind those persons who occupy positions as political representatives, even if they act only out of political instincts. Behind these are the forces to which I am now referring. You need not inquire, therefore, whether Northcliff or even Lloyd George is initiated to one degree or another into these forces. This is not what counts. The decisive question is whether or not there is a possibility that they may conduct themselves in accordance with these forces. They need to take up in their instincts alone what runs parallel with these forces. But there is such a possibility; this does happen, and these forces act in the general direction of world history. This is the essential point, and it is possible to act successfully within the interrelationships of world history only when one really takes up into one's knowledge what is going on in this manner in the world. Otherwise, the other person, who is acting knowingly in accordance with world history, or causing such action, always has the power, while the one who knows nothing of it is powerless. It is in this way that power may master powerlessness. This is an external occurrence. But the victory of power over powerlessness in these things depends, in the last analysis, upon the difference' between knowing and not knowing. It is this that must be clearly grasped.

It is important also to see that the chaos now in its initial stages in the East and in Central Europe demonstrates how terrible everything was that pretended to bring political order into this chaos but has now been swept away. But what is happening now in Central and Eastern Europe demonstrates that nothing but dilettantism permeates public life in this region. In the West, among the English-speaking population of the world, there is dominant everywhere by no means dilettantism, but — if I may be permitted to use the crass expression — an expert consideration of these things.

This is what will determine the form of the history of the coming decades. No matter what lofty ideals may be set up in Central and Eastern Europe, no matter how much good will may be manifested in one or another set of programs, nothing will be accomplished in this way if people are not able to take their departure from the motive forces that are derived in the same or even in a better way from the other side of the threshold of consciousness, just as the motive forces of the West, of the English-speaking peoples, are taken in the last analysis from the other side of the threshold of consciousness.

Those friends who have heard these things discussed that I have presented to you for years precisely as I am doing today, have always made a mistake in this connection and it is generally difficult to persuade even our best friends to abandon it. This is the mistake of thinking, "But what good does it do to say to people that one thing or another has its origin in certain secret centers of the West? Surely it is necessary to convince them first that there are such secret societies." It has often been thought that the most important thing would be to awaken the conviction that such secret societies exist, but this is not what should receive primary consideration. You will meet with little response if you undertake to convince statesmen of the calibre of a Kuhlmann, let us say, that there are secret societies in possession of such impelling forces, but that is by no means the important point. Indeed, it is a blunder when this is considered fundamental. The fact that this is considered fundamental is due to the affectation of mystery brought over from the bad habits of the old Theosophical Society and still to be found even among anthroposophists. If anyone utters the word secret or occult and is able to refer to anything whatsoever that is secret or occult, what an altogether special distinction he thus confers upon himself! But this is not something that can produce favorable results when we are dealing with external realities. What matters is that we shall show how things occur and simply point out what anyone can understand with his sound common sense. Within those societies dealing with such occult truths as have a bearing upon reality, the principle was observed, for example, that after the Empire of the Russian Czar had been overthrown for the benefit of the Russian people, a political course would have to be pursued that would provide an opportunity to undertake socialistic experiments in Russia. People will not undertake them in Western countries because in those regions they are not considered advantageous or desirable.

So long as I simply assert that this has been stated in secret societies, it may be doubted. But, if it is pointed out that the whole direction of politics is such that this principle evidently underlies it, people are then within reality with their ordinary sound common sense. The important matter is that a feeling for reality should be awakened.

What has been developed in Russia is, fundamentally, only a realization of what has been purposed in the West. The fact that up to the present time only unskillful socialistic experiments are carried out by non-Englishmen, that things come to realization by all sorts of roundabout paths, is so well-known by these societies that they suffer no serious headaches because of them. They know that the important thing is to bring these countries to the point where socialistic experiments become unavoidable. If these are then conducted in connection with ignorance of the nature of a social order, one then actually forms the social order related to these lands and makes oneself the director of the socialistic experiment.

You see, the holding back of a certain kind of occult knowledge that is carefully practiced in these centers gives rise to enormous power. The opposite side cannot save itself in any way from this power except by acquiring this knowledge and confronting this power with it.

In this field there can be no discussion of guilt or innocence. Here we must speak simply of the inevitable, of things that must come to pass because they already exist under the surface, because they are at work in the realm of forces that are not yet phenomena. They are already forces, however, and will become phenomena.

Surely I need scarcely emphasize that I hold fast to what I have always asserted. The real being of the German people cannot perish. This real being of the German people must search for its path but it is important that it shall be able to find its path, that it shall not follow false roads in its search, and shall not search in ways where there is no knowledge. Do not interpret, therefore, what I shall now say in such a sense as to make it in the least contradictory of what I have asserted over a period of years. Things always have two sides and what I have indicated to you is, in large measure, a matter of the will. It is possible for this to be paralyzed if forces are brought into play also from the opposite side but these forces must rest upon knowledge, not upon an amateurish lack of it.

You see the essence of the thing is that if no resistance is raised from the East, and by the East I mean the whole region lying from the Rhine eastward even into Asia, British world domination will develop after the destruction of the Roman-Latin French element in the way intended by those forces that I have indicated once more today, as I have frequently done already, as lying behind the instincts. For this reason it is important that, in dealing with what Woodrow Wilson says, we shall not employ merely that kind of thinking generally developed in people today. Rather, what appears only in the instincts even in such a person as Woodrow Wilson should be grasped by means of a deeper knowledge. When formulated into all kinds of maxims, this infatuates people, and when it comes from Wilson's mind, infatuates for the sole reason that his mind is possessed in a certain way by subconscious forces.

The really important fact is that in groups in the West who keep their knowledge secret the greatest pains are taken to see that things shall develop in such a way as to insure under all circumstances the mastery of the West over the East. Whatever people may say today on the basis of their consciousness, the goal striven for is to establish a caste of masters in the West and a caste of economic slaves in the East, beginning with the Rhine and extending eastward all the way into Asia. This does not mean a caste of slaves in the ancient Greek sense, but a caste of economic slaves organized in a socialistic way to take up all sorts of impossibilities in the social structure that then shall not be applied among the English-speaking peoples. The essence of the matter is to make the English-speaking peoples into a population of masters of the world.

Now this is rightly thought out from that side in the most comprehensive sense. I now reach the proper place for the explanation of something that I beg you really to receive in full awareness of the fact that if such assertions are made today, they are made under the pressure and urgency of contemporary events and must really not be received except in an earnest sense. What I am here asserting is most carefully kept secret by the centers in the West to which I have often referred. It is considered obvious in the West that the people of the East shall not be permitted to know anything of these matters that these Western persons possess in the form of knowledge, as I have already said, through methods I may later discuss. They possess these things as knowledge in such a way that, since the others are not to know of them, world mastery shall be established through their help. This is the only possible method for attaining their ends.

Beginning with this fifth post-Atlantean epoch, definite forces will become prominent in the evolution of humanity. Human evolution is, of course, moving forward. Within the limits of the brief span of time that comes under the survey of anthropology or history in the field of external materialistic science, it is never possible to form a judgment regarding the forces manifest in the evolution of humanity. Little in the external process of development has undergone any change within this limited span of time. On the basis of this knowledge no one knows, for example, how utterly different things looked, even in the second epoch, not to mention the first or others still farther back. This can be known only through spiritual science. Only through spiritual science, likewise, is it possible to indicate the forces that will develop in future in a wholly elemental manner out of the nature of man. The fact that such forces, which will transform life on earth, will develop out of the human being is known in those secret centers. It is this that is concealed from the East by people in the West who intend to retain it themselves. It is known, moreover, that these capacities, possessed by man today only in their very first beginning, will be threefold in their nature. They will evolve out of the nature of man in the same way in which other capacities have come into existence in the course of humanity's evolution.

This threefold capacity, of which every knowing person within these secret circles speaks — these three capacities that will evolve in human nature, I must make intelligible to you in the following way. First, there are the capacities having to do with so-called material occultism. By means of this capacity — and this is precisely the ideal of British secret societies — certain social forms at present basic within the industrial system shall be set up on an entirely different foundation. Every knowing member of these secret circles is aware that, solely by means of certain capacities that are still latent but evolving in man, and with the help of the law of harmonious oscillations, machines and mechanical constructions and other things can be set in motion. A small indication is to be found in what I connected with the person of Strader in my Mystery Dramas.

These things are at present in process of development. They are guarded as secrets within those secret circles in the field of material occultism. Motors can be set in motion, into activity, by an insignificant human influence through a knowledge of the corresponding curve of oscillation. By means of this principle it will be possible to substitute merely mechanical forces for human forces in many things. The number of human beings on the earth today in actual fact is 1,400,000,000. Labor is performed however, not only by these 1,400,000,000 persons — as I once explained here — but so much labor is performed in a merely mechanical way that we say the earth is really inhabited by 2,000,000,000 persons. The others are simply machines. That is, if the work that is done by machines had to be done by people without machines, it would be necessary to have 600,000,000 more persons on the earth. If what I am now discussing with you under the name of mechanistic occultism enters into the field of practical action, which is the ideal of those secret centers, it will be possible to accomplish the work not only of 500,000,000 or 600,000,000 but of 1,080,000,000 persons. The possibility will thus come about of rendering unnecessary nine-tenths of the work of individuals within the regions of the English-speaking peoples. Mechanistic occultism will not only render it possible to do without nine-tenths of the labor still performed at present by human hands, but will give the possibility also of paralyzing every uprising attempted by the then dissatisfied masses of humanity.

The capacity to set motors in motion according to the laws of reciprocal oscillations will develop on a great scale among the English-speaking peoples. This is known in their secret circles, and is counted upon as the means whereby the mastery over the rest of the population of the earth shall be achieved even in the course of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch. Something else is known also in those circles. It is known that there are two other capacities that will likewise develop. One, which I shall venture to call the eugenic capacity, will evolve primarily among people of the East, of Russia and the Asiatic hinterland. It is also known in those secret circles of the West that this eugenic occultism will not evolve out of the inborn potentialities of the English-speaking peoples, but only of the inborn potentialities belonging precisely to the Asiatic and the Russian populations. These facts are known in the secret circles of the West. They are taken into account and are looked upon as constituting certain motive forces that must become active in future evolution.

By the eugenic capacity I mean the removal of the reproduction of human beings from the sphere of mere arbitrary impulse and accident. Among the peoples of the East there will gradually develop a brilliantly clear knowledge as to how the laws of population, the laws of peopling the earth, must run parallel with certain cosmic phenomena. From this information they will know that, if conception is brought about in accord with certain constellations of the stars, opportunities will thus be given for souls that are either good or evil in their natures to obtain access for earthly incarnation. This capacity will be acquired only by those individuals who constitute the continuation of races, the continuation in the blood stream, of the Asiatic population. They will be able simply to see in detail how what works today chaotically and arbitrarily in conception and birth can be brought into harmony with the great laws of the cosmos in individual concrete cases. Here abstract laws are of no avail. What will be acquired is a concrete single capacity in which it will be known in individual cases whether or not a conception should occur at a particular time.

This knowledge, which will make it possible to bring down from the heavens the impelling forces for the moralizing or demoralizing of the earth through the nature of man himself, this special capacity evolves as a continuation of the blood capacity in the races of the East. What evolves as a capacity there I call eugenic occultism. This is the second capacity — the capacity that will prevent the evolution of humanity as regards conception and birth from taking its course according to arbitrary impulses, and more or less accidentally. I beg you to consider the enormous social consequences, the enormous social motive forces that enter here! These capacities are latent. It is well known in those secret circles of the English-speaking peoples that these capacities will evolve among the peoples of the East. They know that they themselves will not possess these capacities within their own potentialities bestowed upon them through birth. They know that the earth could not reach its goal, could not pass over from earth to Jupiter — indeed, they know that the earth would within a relatively short time diverge from the path leading to its goal if only the forces belonging to the West should be employed. It would gradually come about that only a soulless population could evolve in the West, a population that would be as soulless as possible. This is known. For this reason these people endeavor to develop within their own circles, through their capacities, mechanistic occultism. The endeavor is also made to establish a mastery over those peoples who will develop eugenic occultism. Every instructed person in the circles of the West says, for example, "It is necessary that we rule over India for the reason that only through the continuation of what comes out of Indian bodies — when this unites with what tends in the West in a wholly different direction, in the direction of mechanistic occultism — can bodies come into existence in which souls will be able to incarnate in future who will carry the earth over to its future evolutionary stages." The English-speaking occultists know that they cannot depend upon the bodies that come out of the fundamental character of their own people, and so they strive to possess the mastery over a people who will provide bodies with the help of which the evolution of the earth may be carried forward in the future.

The American occultists know that they can never carry over into the future what they will to carry over unless they nurture what will develop in the form of bodies for the future within the Russian population through its eugenic occult potentialities, unless they gain the mastery of this, so that a social union can gradually come into existence between their own decadent race characteristics and the germinating psychic race characteristics of European Russia.

I must speak to you also regarding a third capacity, which is latent today but which will evolve. This is what I venture to call the hygienic occult capacity. Now we have all three: the materialistic occult capacity, the eugenic occult capacity, and the hygienic occult capacity. This hygienic occult capacity is well on its way and will not be long, relatively speaking, in arriving. This capacity will come to maturity simply through the insight that human life, in its course from birth to death, progresses in a manner identical with the process of an illness. Processes of illnesses are, in other words, only special and radical transmutations of the quite ordinary, normal life process taking its course between birth and death, except that we bear within ourselves not only the forces that create illness but also those that heal. These healing forces, as every occultist knows, are precisely the same as those that are applied when a person acquires occult capacities, in which case these forces are transmuted into the forces of knowledge. The healing power innate in the human organism, when transmuted into knowledge, gives occult forms of knowledge.

Now, every knowing person in the Western circles is aware that materialistic medicine will have no basis in the future. As soon as the hygienic occult capacities evolve, a person will need no external material medicine, but the possibility will exist of treating prophylactically in a psychic way to prevent those illnesses that do not arise through karmic causes because karmic illnesses cannot be influenced. Everything in this respect will change. This seems at present like a mere fantasy, but it is actually something that will soon come about. Now, the situation is such that these three faculties will not come into existence equally among all the peoples of the earth. Indeed, you have already seen the differentiation. This differentiation has to do, naturally, only with the bodies and not with the souls, which always pass, of course, from race to race, from people to people. But with the bodies this differentiation has much to do. From the bodies of the English-speaking peoples the possibility of developing eugenic occult capacities in the future through birth can never arise. It is precisely in the West that these will be applied, but the manner in which they will be applied will be that a mastery will be established over the Eastern lands, and marriages will be brought about between people of the West and people of the East. Thus use will be made of what can be learned only from the people of the East.

The potentiality of hygienic occult capacities is present in special measure among the people of the Central countries. English-speaking people cannot acquire the hygienic occult capacities through their inborn potentialities, but they can acquire these capacities in their development in the course of time between birth and death. These can become acquired characteristics during that time. In the case of the population occupying the area approximately eastward from the Rhine and all the way into Asia, these capacities will be present on the basis of birth. The population of the Central countries cannot acquire the eugenic occult potentialities through birth, but may acquire them in the course of their lives if they become apprentices of the people of the East. It is in this way that these capacities will be distributed. The people of the East will have not the least capacity for material occultism; they will be able to receive this only when it is given to them, when it is not kept secret from them. It will always be possible to keep it secret, especially when the others are so stupid as not to believe in things that are asserted by a person who is in a position to see into them. In other words the people of the East and those of the Central countries will have to receive material occultism from the West. They will receive its benefits, its products. Hygienic occultism will develop primarily in the Central countries, and eugenic occultism in the Eastern lands. It will be necessary, however, for intercommunication to exist between people. This is something that must be taken up into the impelling forces of the social order of the future. It makes it imperative for people to see that they will be able to live in future throughout the world only as total human beings. If an American should wish to live only as an American, although he would be able to achieve the loftiest material results, he would condemn himself to the fate of never progressing beyond earthly evolution. If he should not seek social relationships with the East, he would condemn himself to being bound within the earthly sphere after a certain incarnation, haunting the sphere of the earth like a ghost. The earth would be drawn away from its cosmic connections, and all these souls would have to be like ghosts. Correspondingly, if the people of the East should not take up the materialism of the West with their eugenic occult capacities that pull down the earth, the Eastern man would lose the earth. He would be drawn into some sort of mere psychic-spiritual evolution, and he would lose the earthly evolution. The earth would sink away under him as it were, and he would not be able to possess the fruit of the earthly evolution.

Mutual confidence among men in a profound inner sense is what must come about. This is manifest through their remarkable future evolution.

Within the intelligent minds of those centers of the West, a purpose exists to foster things only in the way in which they can foster them. It is not the business of Westerners to pay particular attention to what is evolving in the East from the viewpoint of the Eastern person; what evolves among others must simply be left to those others.

This is something that must be inscribed deeply upon our souls, that we arrive at a point here where guilt or innocence or similar concepts lose their significance, where the fact to bear in mind is that we must take these things in with the utmost earnestness, in the profoundest sense of the word, for the reason that these things embody a knowledge that alone is capable of passing over into the guidance of humanity in the future.

These things are of great importance, and it is important that we should view them in a certain way. Just consider that I have told you that three kinds of occult capacities will evolve and will intertwine over the entire earth, differentiated according to different peoples, in harmony with those of the West, of the Central countries, and of the East. I have said, indeed, that they will so intertwine that the people of the West will possess the potentialities of material occultism from birth, but will be able to acquire hygienic occultism; that those of the Middle countries will possess through birth primarily the potentiality for hygienic occultism, but will be able to acquire for themselves — if it is given to them — a material occultism from the West and a eugenic from the East; that those of the East will possess from birth the potentiality for eugenic occultism, but will be able to acquire for themselves from the Middle countries hygienic occultism.

These capacities appear differentiated, distributed among the humanity of the world, but at the same time in such a way that they intertwine. Through this intertwining will the future social bond of community life be determined throughout the world. But there are hindrances against the development of these capacities. These hindrances are manifold in character, and their action is really complicated.

For example, in the case of the people of the Central countries and the Eastern lands it is an important hindrance to the evolution of these capacities, especially their evolution in a knowing way, when strong antipathies against the people of the Western countries are active within them. Then these things cannot be viewed objectively. This is a hindrance in the evolution of these capacities.

But the potentiality of developing another occult capacity is also even strengthened in a certain way if it is developed out of a certain instinct of hatred. This is a strange phenomenon. We often ask ourselves, and we are dealing here with something that must be considered quite objectively, why such senseless abuse has been practiced in the Western countries. This also comes out of the instinct tending toward these capacities. For what constitutes the profoundest impelling forces in Western occultism is fostered by nothing more powerfully than by the development of feelings that are untrue but are sensed as in some way holy, and that can represent the people of the East and especially those of the Central countries as barbarians. The potentialities of material occultism, for example, are fostered by the attitude of mind constituting the so-called crusading temperament in America. This consists in the feeling that America is called to spread over the whole earth freedom and justice and I know not what other beautiful things. Of course, the people there believe that. What I am saying here has nothing to do with fault finding. The people believe that they are engaged in a crusade, but this belief in something false constitutes a support working in a certain direction. If a person should consciously make an untrue statement, he would not have this support. For this reason, what is now happening is tremendously helpful on the one side and a hindrance on the other in the development of those capacities that we must assert to be still latent at the present time in the case of most individuals who bear within themselves the will toward evolution in the future and are destined to influence profoundly the social structure of humanity.

Just think how everything that is happening at the present time is rendered luminous and transparent with understanding and insight when you fix your attention upon those backgrounds, and realize clearly that the subconscious instincts dealt with in our reflections lie back of everything that is constantly uttered today in a conscious way.

The most important fact in this connection, however, is that it is precisely the English-speaking peoples who, by reason of quite special evolutionary processes, possess occult centers where these things are known.

It is also known what capacities they will possess in future as members of the English-speaking population, and what capacities they will lack. They know how they must arrange the social structure in order that they may be able to subject to their purposes what is deficient in them.

It is the instincts that work in the direction of such things, and these instincts have already exerted their influence. They have exerted an enormous influence, a highly significant influence.

One especially useful means that can be set in motion by Western occultism when things are to be directed into the wrong channels consists in so influencing the East that it shall continue to hold fast in future to its ancient inclination toward the development of religion alone without science. The leaders of Western secret circles will take pains to see that nothing shall exist in their own regions constituting mere religion or mere science, but that there shall be a synthesis of both, the reciprocal influence of knowledge and faith. They will also take pains to see that this science shall work only in secret, that it shall permeate, for example, only the more important affairs of humanity and the political guidance of the world through the achievement of world dominion by the British. Contrariwise, if the East refrains as completely as possible from permeating religious conceptions with science, this will be enormously helpful in the spread of this world dominion.

Now just consider how everything Russian favors precisely this Western effort. The aspiration to be pious still continues in Russia, but not an aspiration to permeate the content of this piety with a science of the spirit. The aspiration remains in a certain way within an unclear mysticism, which would constitute an excellent means for supporting the dominion over the East that is willed by the West.

From another point of view, what is undertaken is to render science, which belongs to the earth, as theistic as possible. Just here the future of the English-speaking peoples has been most fruitful in recent times. They have achieved something tremendous by spreading throughout the world, in a fundamental sense, their scientific trend, that is, science void of religion, atheistic science. This has become the ruling power over the whole earth. Goetheanism, which is the opposite of this, quite consciously its opposite, could not develop even in the country of Goethe himself. It is an almost unknown affair in Goethe's own land! The dominating intellect in science today is kept completely harmonious with what is intended to become publicly manifest as the external expression of that science practiced by those circles in secret. They are, however, practiced there as a synthesis between science and religion. Thus there is atheistic science for the external world, but for the inner circles that are to guide the course of world events there is a science that also constitutes religion, and a religion constituting science.

The East can be kept in hand best of all if a religion without science can be maintained there. The Central countries can be kept in hand best if there can be grafted upon them a science void of religion, since religion cannot be grafted upon them. These things are aided in full consciousness by those who constitute the knowing ones within the circles we have mentioned, and instinctively by the others. Since the ruling powers of the Central countries, surviving from ancient times, have been swept away, there is nothing at present in the Central countries that can be put in their place. This makes it extraordinarily difficult, too, to form a correct judgment of the whole state of things at present in its world-historical setting. The whole world has been occupied with the question of guilt and of causes in connection with this war catastrophe. But all things will be illuminated only when we consider them against the background of the effective forces that do not come to manifestation in the external phenomena. Precisely for the reasons that have been set forth today, it is not possible to form opinions in regard to these things according to the categories, the thought categories, within which judgments are generally formed when the question of guilt or innocence is raised.

I am fully aware that at the present time, when Wilson has actually been called the Pope of the twentieth century, not in a disparaging but in an approving sense on the ground that he is justifiably the lay Pope of the twentieth century — I am well aware that even in the Central countries a confused judgment will gradually develop in regard to the course of this "war," as it is called, for the reason that the correct statements of the questions are overlooked. Every document will confirm what I am saying, but they must be viewed in the light of what underlies them. It is most of all necessary to be able to form a judgment, which cannot be reached in this case by anyone except the person who can throw some light upon these things from beyond the threshold. I fear that the events now occurring day by day, we might say, will cause increasingly false methods of judgment to become prevalent, that an increasingly small number of persons will be inclined to deal with the questions in such a way as to produce fruitful results. I suppose that people will have curious ideas when they are informed now, for example, by the press — this might or might not be true — that the abdicated German Kaiser says, "I was really not even present when the war began; I was really not present at all. This was done by Bethman and Jagow! They did this." (You have probably read this in the most recent papers.)

It is, naturally, unheard of that such a statement has been made by this mouth, obviously unheard of! But secretly influenced judgments, which are pushed into false ways by such things, are present everywhere. You see, what it-is necessary to bear in mind in this connection is that we must really give thorough consideration to the facts in order to be able to state the right questions. If we realize this, we shall then see that we should not view so superficially as is generally done the profound, tragic necessity lying at the bottom of this catastrophe. Even the superficial events must not be viewed superficially.

I will call your attention to an instance and you will see immediately why I select such an individual detail. Some time ago I undertook to make it clear to you that many sequences of events, sequences of facts, took place in Germany that beyond doubt might really have led to the war but were then broken off and did not lead to the war, whereas what actually led to the war did not have any real connection with these other things. I will not repeat today what I have already said to you in this connection. I should like, however, to have you consider one thing in order that you may see how in the course of world history, things that serve as external symptoms coincide, we might say, whereas the great affairs of which I have spoken to you today are behind these.

The question might be raised whether the whole war catastrophe, as it has come about since July or August 1914, might under certain circumstances have taken a different course. I shall not enter at present into the question whether or not this catastrophe as such could have been avoided — we shall have to turn to another page for that — but I will raise the question whether this catastrophe might have taken a different course.

Now, it might have taken a different course. This is entirely conceivable although there is nothing more than a methodological value in such statements after the event. It is entirely conceivable, both on the basis of the events and also on the basis of the occult backgrounds, that the whole catastrophe might have taken a different course. We have to form judgments according to a series of strata. What I am saying is valid only as regards a certain stratum of the facts. Within this stratum of the facts, something like the following might be arrived at in our judgment. We might say that it is conceivable that the war might have begun in 1914 in such a way that the German army would have marched toward the East and there would have been a time of waiting to see whether a beginning of war in the East would have led likewise to war in the West. It is conceivable that the main body of the German army might have been led against Russia and a mere defensive position taken up in the West, and that the Germans would then have waited to see whether or not the French, who were not bound in such a case by any treaty, would have attacked. The French would have had no obligation imposed upon them by a treaty at that moment if there had been no declaration of war in the East but the Germans had simply waited for the Russian armies actually to attack. They would certainly have attacked; there can be no doubt that they would have attacked. I do not deny that a different hypothesis might have been valid five years earlier, pointing in a different direction, but this was no longer possible in 1914. Within this stratum of the facts it is possible to conceive that the war might have taken its main direction toward the East. This might have been possible.

Yet, as things were, it was impossible. In spite of everything, it was still actually impossible for the reason that there was no plan of campaign with reference to the East. The idea had never been conceived that the event, the casus belli, could take place in any other way than that Germany would be provoked into an attack against Russia, and that the condition attaching to the treaty between Russia and France would thus apply to France, so that Germany would have to wage a war on two fronts. Under the influence of the axiom that had taken form in the German system of strategy from the beginning of the twentieth century, every consideration began with the idea that this war on two fronts could not be conducted in any other way than offensively. The only plan of campaign existing was to force France into a separate peace by means of a sudden invasion toward the West through Belgium — this was certainly an illusion, but such illusions existed — and then to hurl the masses of the army toward the East.

Now, I beg you to consider the nature of such a plan of strategy. Every detail for every day is calculated. There is an exact calculation as to how long it is permissible to wait from the day when the Russian general mobilization occurs until the first command is given for German mobilization, which cannot then be delayed but must continue further, because the Russian general mobilization constitutes the first impetus. On the day. thereafter, the second day thereafter, and the third day thereafter, this must take place. If there is a delay for a single day after the Russian general mobilization, the entire plan is thrown into confusion and can no longer be carried out. It is this that I beg you to consider. Such a thing as this therewith took its course, which was actually decisive at a moment when there was absolutely no Central European policy. This is naturally the essential point: there was no Central European policy. For von Bethman still continues today to talk nonsense. People were in despair when Bethman uttered his most unbelievable and impossible statements in the German Reichstag, and he continues still to utter them. There was absolutely no policy, but only strategy, but a strategy developed on the basis of one perfectly definite contingent event. Here it was not possible to change anything. Here nothing could be changed even with respect to the hour.

In other words, I beg you to reflect that it was not necessary according to the external causative circumstances for anyone in Germany to wish for a war; it had to occur in any case. It was not at all necessary to wish for it. I beg you to give attention to this fact. It had to begin for the simple reason that, the moment Russia issued the order for general mobilization, the thought arose in the mind of the German Commander-in-Chief, quite automatically and inevitably, "Now I must mobilize." From that point on, everything proceeded automatically. This by no means occurred for the reason that it had been willed. It occurred for the reason that it had been prepared years before.

The attack through Belgium against France was to follow quite automatically upon the Russian general mobilization because this was considered the only rational thing to do. The Kaiser could not be told this for the reason, as I have already related to you, that people knew he was so indiscreet that, if this were said to him today, the whole world would know it tomorrow. The fact that the attack was to be through Belgium he learned first at the actual time of mobilization. Such things as this have happened many times. I beg you to give consideration to these things, and you will then say to yourselves that it was certainly not at all necessary for anyone inside Germany to will it. The war had to occur. I say this, however, on the condition that we shall remain within this stratum of facts. You may naturally pass over to a different stratum of the facts, but there you become involved in complicated questions.

The facts are such that something great that becomes a catastrophe for humanity, reminds us of the story of the good Rector Kaltenbrunner that I related to you in connection with Hamerling. Recall how I related this to you. I said to you that, if we let our minds rest upon the poetic personality of Robert Hamerling and understand him, we shall say to ourselves that what is effective in this personality is due in great measure to the fact that he went to Trieste at a certain definite time as a teacher in a German secondary school and that he was able to go from there on vacations to Venice. In other words, that he came to the shore of the Adriatic. The whole inner structure of soul of this Hamerling is due to the fact that he was able to live in Trieste on the Adriatic, as a teacher in a secondary school. This was the only thing he could do according to the preceding course of his development. How did he happen to go there? I told you that while he was a substitute teacher in Graz, he wrote an application for a position that had become vacant in Budapest. Now, just consider this. He sent an application there. If the official had received this and approved it, Hamerling would have spent the whole ten years in Budapest. His entire poetic personality would have been eliminated; it would not have existed. Anyone who knows this personality knows that this is true. How did it come about that he did not go to Budapest, but to Trieste? The good Rector Kaltenbrunner to whom the application had first to be delivered forgot all about the matter and left the application in his desk drawer so long that the position in Budapest was filled. After the position was filled and Hamerling said, "Good Heavens! I should have been so happy to get that position in Budapest!" the good Rector Kaltenbrunner blushed and said, "Bless my soul! I completely forgot your application. It is still lying in my desk drawer." So Hamerling was saved from going to Budapest. The next time that Hamerling applied for a position in Trieste, the good Rector Kaltenbrunner, in the light of the preceding occurrence, did not forget to pass on the application. Hamerling came to Trieste and thereby became the Hamerling. Now I ask you whether the good Rector Kaltenbrunner gave Hamerling his place in the world as a poet. Yet there is no other primary cause among the external phenomena to explain this except that Hamerling became the real Hamerling through the fact that the good Kaltenbrunner, Rector in Graz in Steiermark, blundered. The simple fact is that it is possible to get under the surface of things only when we practice symptomatology. This guides us to the correct estimate of the external phenomena and to seeing what stands behind the symptoms. This is the really important point. This is what I should like to arrive at more and more.

When we survey the catastrophe of the present time, it is by no means a simple matter to find our way out of all the confusion. Just consider the great difficulty we face. Suppose that Lord Grey should undertake to prove, on the basis of the external documents alone, that he was entirely free of blame in connection with the outbreak of the war. Of course, this is the easiest thing in the world to prove. On the basis of the external documents it is possible to present the most convincing evidence that the British Government was not in any way to blame for the outbreak of this war. But what matters in all cases is the question as to how much weight attaches to this evidence. You can get under the surface of these things only if you state the question as I have stated it here before you for a number of years. "Would it have been possible, for example, for the British Government to prevent the invasion of Belgium?" Then you must say, "Yes, it would have been able to do so." That is just what I demanded in my Memorandum, that unadorned facts should be presented to the world. These would naturally have brought it about that the gentleman who has now deserted and gone to Holland would even then have been obliged in some way to vanish. Perhaps this has something to do with the fact that my Memorandum has received so little favorable response even in the case of those who could have formed a judgment of it. But I demanded that the events should be narrated from minute to minute — unadorned, without any coloring — the events that occurred at the same time in Berlin and in London between 4:30 Saturday afternoon — Saturday afternoon, you know, mobilization was ordered in Berlin at about 4:30, between 4:30 on Saturday afternoon and 10:30 that night. These decisive events, into which nothing enters of all those things about which the world has talked, afford the proof if they are simply narrated, that it would have been possible for the British Government to prevent the invasion of Belgium. It was not prevented. For that reason at 10:30 Saturday night, the only command to which His Majesty had aroused himself, contrary to the will of German strategy, this only command, that the army should be halted, that it should not be made to march toward the West but should be made to take a defensive position in the West — this sole order was countermanded at about 10:30 Saturday night, and the old strategy was adhered to. But the events must, then, be truly related from minute to minute, the facts merely narrated, which occurred between Saturday afternoon at 4:30 and Saturday night at approximately 10:30. From this there will then naturally result an entirely different picture. Most important of all it will lead to the correct formulation of questions.

It is to be feared that the public in all parts of the world will permit itself to be influenced by what is discovered in the archives, but the particular decisive facts that occurred between 4:30 on Saturday afternoon and 10:30 Saturday night, will probably never find their way out of the archives to the world. They have apparently never even been written down; that is, they have actually been written down but in such a way that the writings will never be found in the archives.

You see it is discretion in forming judgments that must also be attained. If this discretion in forming judgments can be gained it will be a great help toward the development of those latent capacities of which I have spoken to you today, which must develop in the future of humanity, differentiated in a threefold way in the various parts of the world. You will then discover that what I described to you a week ago as the only justifiable solution of the social problem so far as we can speak today in the sense indicated of such a solution, was by no means developed from mere intellectual ideas as an abstract program.

4
Social and Antisocial Instincts

6 December 1918, Dornach

In my last lecture I expressly emphasized that a condition constituting a paradise — if we may use the word again as I employed it then — is impossible on the physical plane. For this reason, all so-called solutions of the social problem, which purpose more or less consciously or unconsciously to bring about such a lasting paradisaical state upon the physical plane, rest necessarily upon illusions. It is in the light of this assertion that I beg you to receive the explanations I give in regard to the characteristic phenomena of the present time because there certainly exists in the actuality of our time a definite demand for the social shaping of humanity's relationships. The thing that matters is that this question shall not be made abstract, that the question shall not be taken in an absolute sense, but — as, indeed, I said to you the last time — that we shall develop on the basis of spiritual-scientific knowledge an insight into precisely what is necessary for our time. We shall now have something to say in regard to just what is necessary for today as considered in the light of the presuppositions of spiritual science.

When social problems or social demands are discussed today, what is generally most completely overlooked is the fact that the social problem cannot really be grasped at all in a manner suited to the requirements of our times without a more intimate knowledge of the being of man. No matter what social programs are thought out, no matter what ideal social conditions we may desire to bring about, if the point of departure is not an understanding of the human being as such, if the objective is not in accordance with the more intimate knowledge of man, everything will remain fruitless. I have pointed out to you that the social organization of which I have spoken, this threefold social organization that I have been impelled to present as the important demand of our time, is valid for the present age for the reason that it centers attention upon the knowledge of the human being in every single detail. This is a knowledge of man in his present nature in this actual point of time within the fifth post-Atlantean epoch. It is from this point of view that I beg you to consider all the explanations that I shall present.

The foremost consideration is the fact that such a social order as is demanded by contemporary conditions cannot be established apart from a conscious knowledge of the requirement that man shall be aware of himself in his relationship to what is social.

We may say that, of all forms of knowledge, the knowledge of the human being himself is decidedly the most difficult. Thus, in the ancient mysteries, "Know thyself" was set up as the loftiest goal for human endeavor. What is especially difficult for the human being today is the realization of all that works within him out of the cosmos, of how much is at work within him. Since man has become especially easy-going today precisely in his thinking, in his conceptions, he likes best of all to conceive of himself in the simplest way possible. But the actual truth is that man is by no means a simple being. By means of mere arbitrary conceptions nothing whatever can be accomplished concerning this reality, and in social relationships, likewise, man is by no means a simple being. Precisely in social relationships he is such a being, we might even say, as he would ardently desire not to be; he would prefer with the utmost intensity to be different from what he is. It may be said that the human being is really extraordinarily fond of himself. This cannot possibly be questioned. The human being is extraordinarily fond of himself and it is this self-love that causes man to transform self-knowledge into a source of illusions. For instance, a man prefers not to admit that he is only a half-way social being and that to the extent of the other half he is antisocial.

Now, a matter-of-fact and positive admission that man is at the same time a social and an antisocial being is a fundamental requirement for a social knowledge of humanity. A person may very well say, "I aspire to become a social being." Indeed, he must say this, since, if he is not a social being, he simply cannot live rightly with his fellow men. Yet it is characteristic of human nature at the same time to struggle constantly in opposition to what is social, to remain continuously an antisocial being.

We have repeatedly, from the most varied points of view, considered the human being in accordance with the threefold character of his soul, according to thinking, or conceiving, feeling and willing. Today we may also thus consider him in his social relationships from this point of view. Foremost of all, we must see clearly as regards conceiving, thinking, that in this inner activity there is a source of the antisocial in the human being that is tremendously significant. Through the fact that man is a thinking being, he is antisocial. In this matter only the science of the spirit has any access to the truth of things because it is only the science of the spirit that can cast light upon the question as to how we stand in general as human beings related to other human beings.

When is the right relationship established, then, between man and man for the ordinary everyday consciousness — or, better expressed, for the ordinary everyday life? Well, when this right relationship between man and man is established, undoubtedly the social order also is then existent. But it is a curious fact — we might say unfortunately, but the one who knows says necessarily — that we develop a right relationship between man and man only in sleep. Only when we are asleep do we establish a true and straightforward relationship between man and man. The moment you turn your back on the ordinary day consciousness while you are in the state of dreamless sleep between falling asleep and waking, you are then, with regard to your thinking — and I speak now solely with regard to conceiving and thinking — a social being. The moment you awake, you begin to develop through your conceptual life, through your thinking, antisocial impulses. It is really necessary to realize how complicated human relationships in society become through the fact that a person takes the right relationship toward other persons only in sleep. I have indicated this in various ways from other points of view. I have pointed out, for example, that a person can be thoroughly chauvinistic while awake, but that, when he is asleep, he is placed actually in the midst of those persons, is associated with those persons, especially with their folk spirit, whom he hates most of all while awake. Against this fact nothing can be done. Sleep is a social leveler. But, since modern science is unwilling to know anything whatever about sleep, it will be a long time before science will accept what I have just said.

We enter through our thinking into still another antisocial stream in the waking state. Suppose you stand face to face with a person. In truth we confront all human beings only through confronting individual persons. You are a thinking human being, naturally, since you would not be human if you were not a thinking being. I am speaking now only about thinking; we shall speak later about feeling and willing. From the point of view of feeling and willing some objection might be raised, but what I am now saying is correct as regards the standpoint of conceiving. When you stand as a conceiving, thinking human being in the presence of another person, it is a strange fact that the reciprocal relationship that comes about between man and man brings into existence in your subconsciousness the tendency to be put to sleep by the other person. You are actually put to sleep in your subconsciousness by the other person. This is the normal relationship between man and man. When you come together, the one strives — and, naturally, the relationship is reciprocal — to put to sleep the subconscious of the other. What must you do, therefore, as a thinking person? (Of course, everything that I am telling you takes place in the subconscious. It is a fact even if it does not arise into ordinary consciousness.) Thus, when you come into the presence of a person, he puts you to sleep; that is, he puts your thinking to sleep, not your feeling and willing. Now, if you wish to continue to be a thinking human being, you must defend yourself inwardly against this. You must activate your thinking. You have to take defensive measures against being put to sleep. Confronting another person always means that we must force ourselves to awake; we must wake up; we must free ourselves from what this person wills to do to us.

Such things actually occur in life, and we actually comprehend life only when we view it in a spiritual-scientific way. If you speak to a person, or even if you are merely in the company of a person, this means that you must continuously keep yourself awake against his endeavor to put you to sleep in your thinking. Of course, this does not come into the ordinary consciousness, but it works within the human being. It works in him as an antisocial impulse. In a certain sense every person confronts us as an enemy of conceptual life, as an enemy of our thinking. We must defend our thinking against the other person. This requires that we are in great measure antisocial beings as regards our conceptual life, our thinking, and can become social beings only by educating ourselves. If we were not compelled constantly to practice this protection, to which we are compelled through the necessity within which we live — if we did not have to practice constantly this protection against the other person, we could be social human beings in our thinking. But, since we must practice this, it is of utmost importance for us to realize perfectly clearly that it is possible for us to become social beings, to become such through self-discipline, but that as thinking human beings we are not actually social already.

From this fact it becomes clear that no assertions whatever can be made regarding the social question without investigating the life of the soul and the fact that man is a thinking being because the social question penetrates into extremely intimate matters in human life. Whoever does not take account of the fact that man simply develops antisocial impulses when he thinks will arrive at no clarity in regard to the social problem.

During sleep things are easy for us. First of all, we are simply sleeping. There, in other words, bridges can be built connecting all men. In the waking state the other person, as he confronts us, seeks to put us to sleep in order that a bridge may be built to him, and we do the same to him. But we must protect ourselves against this. Otherwise we should simply be deprived of our thinking consciousness in our intercourse with human beings.

Thus it is not so easy to enunciate social demands since most persons who set forth social demands do not become at all conscious of the depth to which the antisocial is rooted in human nature. People are least of all inclined to state such things to themselves as self-knowledge. It might become easy for them if they would simply admit, not that they alone are antisocial beings, but that they possess this quality in common with all other persons. Even when a person admits that human beings are in general antisocial beings as thinkers, everyone, as regards himself, secretly clings to the reservation that he is an exception. Even if he does not state this fully to himself, yet there always shines dimly and secretly in his consciousness the thought that he is an exception and the others are antisocial beings as thinkers. The truth is that it becomes exceedingly difficult for people to take seriously the fact that it is not possible as a man to be something, but it is still always possible as a man to become something.

This is a fact, however, that has a special and fundamental connection with those things that can be learned in our time. It is really possible today, as one would not have been willing to do five or six years ago, to point out that certain injuries and deficiencies in human nature that have made themselves perfectly obvious exist in all parts of the world. People strive to delude themselves in regard to this necessity of becoming something. Most of all they endeavor to call attention to what they are, not to what they will to become. For instance, you will find that a great number of persons belonging within the Entente and the Americans think within the limits of what they are simply by reason of the fact that they belong to the Entente or to America. They do not need to become something. They need only to point out how different they are from the evil human beings of the Central European countries, showing how black they are, whereas they alone are white. This is something that has spread an illusion regarding human beings over vast areas of the earth and it will inevitably in the course of time bring a terrible penalty. This habit of willing to be something and not willing to become something is an element kept in the background as an opposition to the science of the spirit. The science of the spirit cannot do otherwise than to call the attention of people to the fact that it is necessary constantly to become something and that a person simply cannot be some sort of finished thing. People deceive themselves in a terrible way about themselves when they believe they can point to something absolute that determines a sort of special perfection in their case. In man everything not in the process of becoming evidences an imperfection. What I have said to you regarding the human being as thinker, and regarding the antisocial impulses begotten by him as such, has still another important aspect.

Man alternates in a way between the social and the antisocial, just as he alternates between waking and sleeping. We might even say that sleeping is social and waking is antisocial, and just as man must alternate between waking and sleeping in order to live a wholesome life, so must he alternate between the social and the antisocial. But it is just this fact that becomes conspicuous when we reflect about human life. For you see, a person may thus tend more or less toward the one or the other, just as a person may tend more or less toward sleeping or waking. There are persons who sleep beyond the normal amount. In other words, they, in the condition of a swinging pendulum in which the human being must be between sleeping and waking, simply tend toward one side of the scale. In the same way a person may cultivate within himself in greater measure either the social or the antisocial impulses. Men are in this respect differentiated individually in that one cultivates more the social and another the antisocial impulses. If we possess a knowledge of human beings in any measure, we can differentiate persons in this way.

Now, I said that there is another aspect of this matter. The antisocial in us is connected with the fact that we protect ourselves in a certain way against being put to sleep. But something else is connected with this. It makes us ill. Even if noticeable diseases do not arise from this cause — but even such noticeable diseases do often arise — yet the antisocial nature of man belongs among the causes of illness. Thus it will be easily intelligible to you that the social nature of man at the same time possesses a healing quality, something that gives life. But you see from all this how extraordinary human nature is. A person cannot heal himself by means of the social elements in his nature without in a certain way putting himself to sleep. As he tears himself away from this social element, he strengthens his thinking consciousness, but becomes antisocial. But in this way he also lames his healing forces, which are in his subconsciousness, in his organism. Thus the social and antisocial impulses present in the human being produce their effects even to the extent of determining a sound or an ill constitution of life.

One who develops a knowledge of man in this direction will be able to trace a great number of more or less genuine illnesses back to his antisocial nature. The state of illness depends, much more than is supposed, upon the antisocial nature of man, especially as regards those illnesses that are often genuine but that manifest themselves outwardly in some such thing as moodiness, in all sorts of self-torturing, torturing of others, and in the struggle to get through something disagreeable. All such things are connected with an unsound organic constitution, and they gradually develop when a person is strongly inclined toward antisocial impulses. In any case, it ought to be entirely clear that an important mystery of human life is here concealed. This mystery of life, important both for the teacher and also for man's self-education if it is known in a living and not merely theoretic way, means that a person acquires the inclination to take his own life strenuously in hand, to think about mastering the antisocial element in order to reach the mastery of it. Many persons would cure themselves not only of their moodiness but also of all kinds of ailments if they would thoroughly investigate their own antisocial impulses. But this must be done in a serious way. This must be done without self love because it is something of the utmost importance for our lives.

This is what must be said in regard to the social and the antisocial elements in the human being in reference to his conceptual life, or his thinking.

In addition, man is a feeling being, and there is something peculiar, in turn, as regards his feelings. In respect to feeling man is also not so simple as he would like to think. Feeling between two human beings, in other words, shows a most paradoxical peculiarity. Feeling has the peculiar characteristic of being inclined to give us an untrue sentiment in regard to the other person. The first inclination in the subconsciousness of a person in intercourse between human beings always consists in the fact that an untrue sentiment arises in his subconsciousness regarding the other person. In our lives we must, first of all, continually oppose this untrue sentiment. One who knows life will easily observe that those persons who are not inclined to show an interest in other persons are really critical about almost all persons — at least after a certain time. This is really a peculiarity of a great many persons. They love one person or another for a certain length of time but, when this time has passed, something is aroused in their nature and they begin in some way to be critical of the other, to hold something or other against him. Often the person himself does not know what he has against the other because these things take their course to a large extent in subconsciousness. This is due to the fact that the subconscious simply has a tendency actually to falsify the picture that we form of the other person. We must learn to know the other person more deeply, and we shall then see that we must erase falsification in the picture we have acquired of him.

Paradoxical as it may sound a good maxim to live by, even though there would have to be exceptions, would be to endeavor always to correct in some way the image of the human being that becomes fixed in our subconscious, which has the tendency to judge human beings according to sympathies and antipathies. Even life itself demands this of us. Just as life requires us to be thinking persons and we thus become antisocial, so does life — and what I am telling you is based upon facts — demand that we judge according to sympathies and antipathies. But every judgment based upon sympathies and antipathies is falsified. There is no real judgment that is correct if it is formed according to sympathies and antipathies. Since the subconscious in the feelings is governed by sympathy and antipathy, it always sketches a false picture of the other person. We simply cannot form in our subconscious a true picture of him. To be sure, we often have a picture that is too favorable, but the picture is always formed according to sympathies and antipathies, and there is nothing we can do except simply to admit this fact and to admit that, in this regard also as human beings, we simply cannot be something but can only become something. Especially as regards our relationship in feeling with other individuals we must simply lead a "waiting" life. We must not act in accordance with the image of them that presses upward out of the subconscious into consciousness, but we must endeavor to live with people, and we shall see that the social attitude evolves out of the antisocial attitude that one really always has.

For this reason it is of special importance to study the feeling life of man to the extent that it is antisocial. Whereas the thinking life is antisocial because he must protect himself against falling asleep, the feeling life is antisocial because he governs his intercourse with other persons according to sympathy and antipathy, and from the beginning injects false currents of feeling into society. What comes from people through the influence of sympathies and antipathies is certain from the beginning to interject antisocial currents of life into human society.

Paradoxical as it may sound, we might say that a social community would be possible only if people did not live in sympathies and antipathies, but in that case they would not be human beings. You see clearly from this that man is at the same time a social and antisocial being, and that what we call the "social" question requires that we enter into intimate details of his nature. If we do not do so we shall never attain to a solution of the social question for any period of time whatever.

As regards the will acting between individuals it is really striking and paradoxical to discover what a complicated being man is. You know, of course, that not only sympathies and antipathies play their roles in the relationship between individuals as regards the will — as these do also to the extent that we are feeling beings — but that here inclinations and disinclinations which pass into action also play a role. That is, sympathies and antipathies in action, in their expression, in their manifestation, play a special role. One person is related to another person according to how he is influenced by his special sympathy toward the person, the special degree of love that he brings to meet the other person. There an unconscious inspiration plays a strange role. For everything that envelops all relationships in will between people must be viewed in the light of the impelling force that underlies these volitional relationships, that is, in the light of the love that plays its role in greater or lesser degree. Indeed, individuals cause their will impulses, which are active in this way from one to the other, to be sustained by this love that is active between them.

Regarding the feeling of love, people are subject in preeminent degree to a great illusion, which requires a greater measure of correction than the ordinary sympathies and antipathies in their feelings. However strange it may seem to the ordinary consciousness, it is entirely true that the love manifesting itself between one person and another, if it is not spiritualized — and love is actually seldom spiritualized in ordinary life, even though I am not speaking merely of sexual love or love resting upon a sexual foundation, but in general of the love of one person for another — is not really love as such, but an image the person makes of love. It is generally nothing more than a terrible illusion, because the love one person believes he feels toward another is for the most part nothing but self-love. A person supposes that he loves another, but in this love really is loving himself. You see here a source of an antisocial disposition that must be the source also of a terrible self-deception. In other words, a person may suppose that he is giving himself up in an overwhelming love for another person, while he really does not love the other person at all. What he feels as a state of rapture in his own soul in association with the other person, what he experiences within himself by reason of the fact that he is in the presence of the other person, that he makes declarations of love, if you please, to the other person — this is what he really loves. In the whole thing the person loves himself as he kindles this self-love in his social relationship with the other person.

This is an important mystery in human life and it is of enormous importance. This love that a person supposes is real, but that is really only self-love, self-seeking, egoism, masked egoism — and in the great majority of cases the love that plays its role between people and is called love is only masked egoism — is the source of the greatest imaginable and the most widespread antisocial impulses. Through this self-love masked as real love, a person becomes in preeminent degree an antisocial being. He becomes an antisocial being through the fact that he buries himself within, most of all when he is unaware of it, or wishes to know nothing of it.

Thus you see that the person who speaks about social demands, especially as regards contemporary humanity, must consider fully such soul states. We must simply ask, "How shall human beings arrive at any social structure in their common life if they will not learn to understand how much self-seeking is embodied in so-called love, in the love of one's neighbor?"

Thus love can actually become an enormously strong force working in the direction of the antisocial life. It may be asserted that a person, when he is not working upon himself, when he does not undertake self-discipline, is invariably an antisocial being when he loves. Love as such, as it inheres in the nature of man, unless the person is practicing self-discipline, is predestined to be antisocial, for it is exclusive. Once more, this is no criticism. Many of the requirements of life are connected with the fact that love must be exclusive. In the very nature of things, a father will love his own son more than a strange child, but this is antisocial. If people assert, as the habit is nowadays, that man is social, this is nonsense; for man is just as strongly antisocial as he is social. Life itself makes him antisocial.

For this reason, if you imagine such a state of paradise established on earth, which can never exist but is striven for because people love the unreal always more than the real, if we think of such a state of paradise as having been established, or even such a super-paradise as Lenin, Trotsky and Kurt Eisner would have on earth, innumerable individuals would within a short time be obliged to oppose this. It would not be possible for them to remain human in it for the reason that only the social impulses would find satisfaction in such a state, and the antisocial impulses would immediately be aroused. This is just as inevitable as it is that a pendulum does not swing only toward one side. The moment we should establish a state of paradise, the antisocial impulses would necessarily be roused into action. If what Lenin, Trotsky and Kurt Eisner desire should be realized, it would be transformed into the opposite in the briefest possible time through the action of the antisocial impulses. This is simply the nature of life. It alternates between ebb and flow. If people do not understand this, they simply do not understand anything about the world. We frequently hear it said that the ideal of community life within a state is a democracy. Good! Let us assume„that the ideal of community life in a state is a democracy, but, should this be introduced anywhere, in its last phase it would inevitably bring about its own destruction. The tendency of democracy is inevitably such that, when the democrats are together, one is always endeavoring to overcome the other; the one always wishes to have his way against the other. This goes without saying. Transferred into the realm of reality, a democratic order leads to the opposite side. There is no other possibility in life. Democracies will always, after a certain length of time, die as the result of their own democratic nature. These are things that are of enormous importance for an understanding of life.

Besides, there is the additional peculiarity that the most essential characteristics of man during the fifth post-Atlantean epoch are antisocial. The consciousness that is based upon thinking must be developed during this period. For this reason this period will manifest the antisocial impulses outwardly in maximum degree and through the very nature of man. Through these antisocial impulses, he will bring about more or less distressing conditions. The reaction against the antisocial will be manifest, in turn, in the outcry in favor of socialism. It must be understood that ebb and flow always alternate.

In the last analysis, suppose that you should really socialize the community. This would bring about such conditions in the relationships between individuals that we should all simply be forever asleep. Social intercourse would be a means for going to sleep. At present you can scarcely imagine this because you will not think out in a concrete way how things would look in a so-called socialistic republic. But this socialistic republic would actually be a great place of sleep for human conceptual capacities. We can understand that there are longings for something of the kind, but longing for sleep is always present in many people. We must simply understand what the inner necessities of life are, and must not content ourselves with wishing for what suits us or is pleasing to us because the thing that a person does not possess is generally pleasing to him. What he has he generally fails to appreciate.

From these considerations we see that, when we speak about the social problem, the most important thing of all is to investigate the intimate elements in the nature of man, and to learn this human nature in such a way that we learn how social and antisocial impulses often become entangled in such knots as to create a chaos beyond clarification. This is the reason why it is so difficult to discuss the social question. This particular problem can scarcely be discussed in any way whatever unless one has the inclination really to delve down into the intimate characteristics of the human being, for example, to go into the question of why the bourgeoisie embody in themselves an antisocial impulse. The mere fact of belonging to the bourgeois class gives rise to,.antisocial impulses, because being a member of the bourgeois class means essentially that one creates a sphere in life where a peaceful existence is possible. From close investigation of this aspiration of the bourgeois, we discover that, in accordance with peculiarities of our contemporary epoch, he wishes to create for himself on an economic basis an island of life where he can pass his time in sleep so far as surrounding conditions are concerned, with the sole exception of special life habits that he has developed in accordance with his subjective antipathies or sympathies. Thus he does not crave the kind of sleep that is sought by the proletarian who is continually kept awake because his consciousness is not put to sleep on the existing economic foundation and who therefore yearns for the sleep of the social order. This is, in truth, an important psychological perception. Ownership puts a person to sleep; the necessity of struggling in life wakes one up. Being put to sleep through ownership causes a person to develop antisocial impulses because he does not crave social sleep. Continuous stimulation by the necessities of learning and existence awakens the craving to fall asleep in the social relationships.

These things must be taken into thorough consideration; otherwise we do not in the least understand the present time. Now, it may be said that, in spite of everything, our fifth post-Atlantean epoch does strive, in a certain manner, toward socialization in the form that I recently analyzed here. The things about which I have talked will come into existence either through human reason if people will adjust themselves to these things, or through cataclysms and revolutions if they will not. Man is striving toward this threefold order of society in the fifth post-Atlantean epoch and it must come into existence. In short, our epoch is striving toward a certain socialization.

But this socialization is not possible, as is evident on the basis of all sorts of reflections we have presented here, unless something else accompanies it. Socialization can be related only to the external structure of society. But in this particular fifth post-Atlantean epoch such socialization can really consist only in the suppression of consciousness, of the thinking consciousness, in the suppression of antisocial human instincts. In other words, the social structure must in a certain way bring about the suppression of antisocial instincts in our conceptual life. There must be something to counterbalance this. In some way a balance must be brought about in the matter, but it can be established only provided all enslavement of thought, the mastery of the thinking of one man by another that has come from earlier epochs in which it was justified, shall be eliminated from the world with the process of socialization. This requires that the freedom of the spiritual life shall come about in the future side by side with the organizing of economic conditions. Only this freedom of the spiritual life renders it possible that we shall be so related as man to main that we shall see in another person standing before us a particular human being, not human beings in general. The program of a Woodrow Wilson speaks of human beings in general, but this generalized human being, the abstract man, does not exist. What exists is always the single, individual human being. We can become interested in him, in turn, only through our full humanity, not through mere thinking. When we Wilsonize, sketching an abstract picture of a human being, we extinguish what we should develop in the relationship of man to man.

The thing of essential importance for the future is that absolute freedom of thought must come about; socializing without this is inconceivable. Therefore, the process of socializing must be connected with the elimination of all enslavement of thought, whether this enslavement is fostered by what certain societies of the English-speaking peoples practice, which I have sufficiently described to you, or through Roman Catholicism. They are worthy of each other, and it is exceedingly important that we should see clearly the inner relationship of the two. It is extremely important that no lack of clarity shall hold sway at the present time, especially in reference to such things. You may tell a Jesuit what I have said to you regarding the peculiarity of those secret societies of the English-speaking peoples. He will be delighted to have a confirmation of the point of view he represents. But you must understand clearly that, if you wish to stand upon the basis of spiritual science, you cannot identify your objection to these secret societies with the objection manifested by the Jesuit. It is a strange fact that, in this field, people show all too little power of discriminating judgment.

I have recently called attention even in public lectures to the fact that what matters is not only what a person says but that we must always consider what sort of spirit permeates what is said. I used the example of the sentences from Woodrow Wilson and from Hermann Grimm sounding so much alike. I mention this for the reason that you will come to realize in ever increasing measure that a seeming opposition will arise on that side against the English-American secret societies just as we on our side must oppose them, but only by a seeming opposition. What has come out in the December number of the Stimmen der Zeit makes a grotesquely comical impression upon a person who sees into the actual facts because it is obvious that what must be opposed in the English-American secret societies is precisely the same thing that must be opposed in Jesuitism. They face one another as two powers, unable to exist side by side, face each other, the one battling against the other. Neither the one nor the other possesses the least real, objective interest; the interest in both cases has to do with the party, with the order.

It is especially important that we should get rid altogether of the habit of thinking only of the content and not of the standpoint from which anything is introduced 'into the world. If something that is valid for a certain epoch is introduced from a certain point of view, it may be beneficial, it may possess healing power. If introduced by another force, it may be something either utterly laughable or even injurious. This is a fact that must be considered especially at the present time. It will become ever increasingly clear that when two persons make the same statement, it is not the same thing, varying according to the background behind it. After all these testings that life has brought to us during the last three or four years, it is imperative that we shall at last really give attention to such things and really delve into them.

There is not yet much evidence of any such delving. For example, people will continue to ask how one thing or another is to be arranged, how it is to be done, in order that it shall be right. The truth is that, if you set up one thing or another here or there, but do not put persons in charge who think in accordance with the meaning of our epoch, no matter whether you make the best or the worst arrangement, the result will be injurious. The matter of real importance today is that man shall really grasp the truth that it is necessary for him to become. He cannot rest upon anything he already is, but must continue in the process of becoming. Moreover, he must understand how actually to see into reality. To do this people are extremely disinclined, as I have emphasized from the most varied points of view. In all sorts of things, and especially in regard to conditions of the times, people are so strongly inclined not actually to touch reality but to take things according to what suits them. Forming a judgment that is really objective is, naturally, not so easy as forming one that aims most directly toward easy formulation. Judgments that are objective are not readily reduced to formulas, especially when they take hold of the social, the human, or the political life, because in these fields the opposite of what is assumed is almost always true. Only when the effort is made not to form any judgment regarding such relationships, but to form pictures — in other words, when we ascend to the imaginative life — shall we take the path that is approximately right. In our epoch it is of special importance to make the effort to form pictures, not really abstract, isolated judgments. It must be pictures, too, that will open a path to socialization. Then what is required besides is that no socializing is possible unless the person becomes spiritually scientific — in other words, free on the one hand in thinking, and spiritually scientific on the other.

The underlying basis of this I have pointed out even in public lectures, for instance, the public lecture in Basel. I said that certain persons who think in a materialistic way, seeking to understand everything on the basis of evolution in the successive series of animals, say, "Well, now, in the animals we have the beginnings of social instincts; these develop in men into moralities." But the things that became social instincts in animals are antisocial if they are lifted up to the human plane. Precisely what is social in the animal is antisocial in preeminent degree in the human being! People simply do not wish to investigate the various lines needed in the real picture of things, but form their judgments rashly. The right relationship between man and man comes about when we conceive man as a spiritual being, not when we conceive him only with regard to his animal nature; in this he is preeminently antisocial. But it is possible to conceive a man as a spiritual being only when we grasp the whole world in the light of its spiritual foundations. These three things, (social organization, freedom of thought, spiritual science) are simply inseparable one from the other. They belong together. In our fifth post-Atlantean epoch one of these cannot possibly be developed without the other. It will be especially necessary that people shall accustom themselves not to view unthinkingly such things as the fact that an antisocial nature is inherent in every individual. We might say, if we chose to express ourselves in a trivial way, that the curing of the ills of this epoch depends largely upon whether people will cease to be so intensely fond of themselves. This is the characteristic mark of the present-day person, that he is so fond of himself. If you differentiate again, he is fond of his thinking, his feeling, his willing, and when he has become attached to his thinking, he will not give it up.

A person who can truly think knows something that is by no means unimportant, that is, that he once thought wrongly in regard to everything concerning which he now thinks rightly. The truth is that we actually know correctly only what we have experienced the effect of in the soul life when we think wrongly regarding it. But people do not willingly investigate such inner states of development. It is for this reason that people have so little mutual understanding at the present time. I will give you an example. The proletariat world view, of which I have often spoken to you, maintains that the way in which men form their concepts, the entire idealogical superstructure, depends upon economic conditions, so that they form their political ideas according to their economic situations.

Anyone who can investigate such conceptions will find that this idea is in great measure justified, almost entirely justified as regards the development of the epoch since the sixteenth century. What people have been thinking since the sixteenth century is almost entirely the result of economic conditions. This is not true in an absolute sense but it is relatively justified in large measure. But this fact simply cannot penetrate such a head as that of a professor of national economics. For instance, a national economist is teaching in a university not far from here — his name is Michel — who says that this is false because it can be proven that political ideas are not formed on the basis of economic conditions, but that economic conditions are modified in special measure through political ideas. This Professor Michel then points to the continental embargo of Napoleon, by means of which certain branches of industry, let us say, were absolutely uprooted in Italy or in England and others introduced. Thus, says he, we have here a most striking example of how economic conditions were determined by political ideas, by the continental embargo. He introduces still other examples. I know that, if a hundred people read this book by Professor Michel, they will be convinced that what he says is true because it is developed with the most rigorous logic. It seems to be absolutely true but it is ridiculously false for the reason that all the examples introduced have to be treated according to the same scheme applying to the continental embargo. Certainly the continental embargo brought it about that certain industries in Italy had to be changed, but this change in industries brought about no modification whatever in the economic relationship between employer and worker. This is precisely the characteristic factor. All of this falls out as if from a sieve or a barrel without any bottom. In other words this economic theory of Professor Michel is a barrel without a bottom. Everything that he presents falls out of it as if from a barrel without a bottom, since the proletariat world view does not in the least maintain, for example, that the silk industry of Florence was not developed because of such an idea as the continental embargo, this industry having not previously existed, and on the other hand that it did not develop in England. But, in spite of the fact that the continental embargo can drive one industry to one place and another to another, nothing whatever is modified in the economic relationships between entrepreneur and worker. These are the decisive factors. Thus do such things fall out of the great course of the economic events with their idealogical superstructure, so that precisely the continental embargo in its effect fails completely to prove what Professor Michel wishes to prove.

Now, ask yourselves why such a person as Professor Michel takes up his stand upon his theory as contrasted with the proletariat way of thinking. For the simple reason that he is in love with his way of thinking and is not in the least capable of delving into the thinking of the proletariat. In other words, he falls immediately asleep. This is a latent falling asleep. The moment he ought to reflect upon proletariat thinking, he falls asleep. In this situation he can maintain his upright position only as he develops the thoughts with which he is in love.

We must investigate in this way the psychic factors. Our age is simply the epoch in which it is necessary and important to investigate psychic factors. Otherwise, it is impossible to understand what is necessary in our times and it will never be possible to reach any sort of sound judgments regarding these difficult tragic conditions. Only sound judgments can and will really guide us out of the misery of the present period. There is no occasion for pessimism in a comprehensive sense but there is every occasion for reversing our judgments. Most of all is there occasion for every individual person in greatest possible measure to reverse his judgment.

We must say that the manner in which persons utter their judgment today while sleeping, as it were, and how quickly they forget from one time to another even when the spaces of time are ever so brief, is truly remarkable. We shall certainly experience in special degree how people will forget all the phrases they have uttered in regard to justice and the necessity to battle for justice against injustice. We shall experience that most people who have spoken in this way a short time ago about "justice" will forget this and will not in the least see that, in the immediate future, by far the greatest number of those who have spoken about "justice" will be interested simply in bringing to dominance quite ordinary power. Naturally, we are not to think ill of them on this account but we ought simply to see clearly that, when a person has spoken on the one hand about right, he should not overlook the fact that the greatest outcry has to do, in the last analysis, with power and the impulse to grasp power. This is not to be held against these people, as I have said. Yet it will be unpleasant to see how those who only a short time ago were always talking about justice, will make themselves dominant. We have no reason to be surprised at this. But those who have participated, and come to agreement in all this talking ought to be astonished when they discover how completely the picture has changed! They ought at least then to become aware how strongly inclined the human being is to form his judgments according to illusions and not according to realities.

5
Specters of the Old Testament in the Nationalism of the Present

7 December 1918, Dornach

It is often difficult for a person to find his bearings within the course of world events, especially when they are considered from a higher point of view. People are so very loath to view the truth without prejudice, which often resolves certain conflicts of life only after long periods of time. They would like only too well to be guided by the reins of the cosmic powers, even though they do not admit this to themselves. It becomes especially difficult for a person to find his bearings in an unprejudiced way when he is compelled in any single incarnation to live in such a catastrophic time as the present. He likes then to ask why the gods permit such things. He does not like to ask about the necessities of life. He always has in the background a longing to have everything as comfortable as possible.

In such a time as ours, man must behold all sorts of things that are in course of preparation from chaos. Chaos is necessary for the total course of events, and he must often take up his position in the midst of the chaotic, as well as in what has been harmonized. Especially is our fifth post-Atlantean epoch such a time as causes man to pass through much that is chaotic. But this is connected with the entire characteristic, the whole nature, of this epoch. We are living at a time in which man must pass through those impelling forces in the course of evolution that set him upon his own feet and permeate him with individual consciousness. We are living in the epoch of the consciousness soul.

Now, after all that we have considered, in connection with which we have brought together a great variety of things that may be suited to make our age understandable to us, we must ask ourselves what is the most profound characteristic of the evolution of the consciousness soul in our epoch. The profoundest characteristic of this epoch is that man must become acquainted in the most profound and the most intense way with all those forces that oppose the harmonizing of humanity as a whole. For this reason a conscious knowledge of those ahrimanic and luciferic powers working against man must gradually spread. If he should not pass through these evolutionary impulses in which the luciferic and ahrimanic forces are participating, he would not arrive at the complete use of his consciousness, and thus at the development of his consciousness soul.

This integration of the consciousness soul into human nature has to be recognized as a strongly antisocial impulse. Thus we have in our epoch the peculiar fact that the manifestation of social ideals appears as a reaction against what is striving to emerge out of the innermost nature of man, a reaction against the evolution of individual consciousness. What I mean to say is that the reason we have such an outcry about the need of socializing is that the innermost nature of man, precisely in our age, is most violently opposed to this socializing. For this reason it is necessary that we should obtain a view of everything in the cosmos, in the universe, that sustains a certain relationship to man, in order that we may become aware of the relationship existing between the antisocial impulses streaming today out of the depths of human souls and the clamor for social harmonizing, working like a reaction to what streams forth from the inner nature of the human soul. It is simply necessary that we should come to see clearly that man represents in his life a state of balance between conflicting powers. Every conception characterized by the idea of mere duality — a good and an evil principle — will always fail to illuminate life. Life can be illuminated only when we represent it from the point of view of a trinity, in which one element represents a state of balance and the two others represent the opposite poles, between which the state of balance tends to move continually like a pendulum. This is the reason for the Trinity we undertake to represent in our Group ^[1] the Representative of Man balancing Ahriman and Lucifer, which is to constitute the middle point of this building.

This consciousness of a state of balance for which one strives, but that is always in danger of swinging toward the one or the other side, must become the essential element in the world conception of this fifth post-Atlantean epoch. As man passes through the stage of the consciousness soul, he develops toward the spirit self. This epoch of the evolution of the consciousness soul will continue for a long time. But within reality things do not proceed in such a way that one always follows the other in a beautiful scheme. On the contrary, one is telescoped in a way into the other. While we are developing in ever stronger measure the consciousness soul, there is always waiting in the background the spirit self that will then develop during the sixth post-Atlantean epoch just as strongly as the consciousness soul during this fifth epoch. Just as strongly as the consciousness soul works antisocially in its development, will the spirit self work socially. Thus we may say that, during this epoch, man develops from the innermost impelling forces of his soul what is antisocial, but behind this something spiritually social exerts its influence. This spiritually social element that is exerting its influence in the background will appear in its essential nature when the light of the spirit self shall dawn in the sixth post-Atlantean epoch. It is not surprising therefore, that in this fifth post-Atlantean epoch what can enter livingly and in a well-ordered way into humanity only during the sixth epoch appears in all sorts of abstruse, extreme forms.

Man is exposed during the fifth post-Atlantean epoch to the preliminary disturbing movements of what is to come during the sixth post-Atlantean epoch. Everything will depend upon the acquisition of an understanding of what we must pass through during this fifth post-Atlantean epoch. The antisocial instincts will play a tremendous role, and they can be restrained and integrated into a true social life only in the way that I recently explained. To assist him, man shall employ the social science that is to be derived from a general spiritual science.

Behind all the many struggles, therefore, of the present time, and also of the immediate future, the social question will remain in the background because its time has not yet come. But we must repeat from all possible points of view the fact that this social formation that is demanded cannot attain to real life unless it enters into a union with two other things. In the sixth post-Atlantean epoch, this union will appear more or less spontaneously. During this fifth epoch, social life must be regulated through the fostering of spiritual science. Every effort to regulate social life outside the sphere of spiritual science will lead only to chaos and radicalism, bringing about unhappiness for humanity. As regards a social shaping of life, this fifth post-Atlantean epoch is dependent in preeminent degree upon the science of the spirit. Just consider what I referred to yesterday and also recently in a public lecture in Basel. Just consider that man has mastered a nature that is distributed over the whole animal kingdom. He is the conqueror of the animal nature; he bears the animal nature within him.

Naive Darwinism maintains that human morality is only the development of the social impulse among animals. The social impulses are inborn in the animal, and they become, just to the extent that they are social impulses in the animal, antisocial impulses in man. He can awaken again to a social life only when he grows above what has developed as an antisocial impulse in him out of the animal nature. This is the truth. Thus, if we wish to represent the human being schematically from this point of view, we may say that man overcomes and develops beyond animality. What is social in the animal becomes antisocial in man. But he grows into spirituality and within the spiritual he may again achieve the social for himself. At a higher stage than the one that man has reached in the epoch of the consciousness soul, where he has grown out of animality, he will gain the social element. This shines amid the chaos of this middle stage where he now is.

This must be supplemented by two other facts. When the socializing process becomes manifest as an elemental impulse as a demand within humanity, this socializing alone must always bring a curse. The socializing process can become a blessing only if it is linked with two other things that must develop during the entire course of our postAtlantean age, up to the seventh post-Atlantean epoch. This may occur only when it is linked with what may be called the free life of thought and an insight into the spiritual nature of the world lying behind the sensible nature. Socializing without a science of the spirit and without freedom of thought is an impossibility. This is simply an objective truth. But man must awaken to freedom of thought; he must make himself ripe for freedom of thought precisely during our epoch of the consciousness soul.

Why must he awake to freedom of thought?

During the course of human evolution, man has come in a certain respect to a decisive point in this fifth post-Atlantean epoch. Up to this fifth epoch he possessed the possibility of having the prenatal time continue its influence into the postnatal life. Let us grasp this quite clearly. Up to our epoch man has borne forces within him that are not acquired by him during the course of life but were possessed by him when, as the expression goes, he first beheld the light of the world, when he was born. These were imprinted upon him during the embryonic time. These forces that were impressed upon man during the embryonic time and that then continue to work throughout life, were possessed by man up to the fourth post-Atlantean epoch. Only now do we face a great crisis in the evolution of humanity through the fact that these forces can no longer be determinative; they can no longer work in such an elemental manner as hitherto. In other words, during this fifth postAtlantean epoch man will be in much greater measure exposed to the impressions of life, because forces opposing the impressions of life, which were acquired in the embryonic period before birth, are losing their sustaining power. This fact is something of enormous importance.

Only in one respect was life even prior to this time such that man could acquire something between birth and death, something that was not imprinted upon him during the embryonic time. But this was possible only because of the following facts. We explained yesterday the peculiar phenomena of sleep in relation to social life. When man is asleep, his ego and astral body are outside the physical and the etheric body. There is a different relationship between the ego and the astral body, on the one hand, and the physical and etheric bodies on the other hand during sleep from that existing in the waking state. While man is asleep, he stands in a different relationship to his physical and etheric bodies. Now, there is a certain resemblance between our sleep and our embryonic period — a resemblance, not an identity. In a certain sense, our life during the period from sleeping to waking is similar to the life that we live from conception — or actually three weeks thereafter — until birth — again similar, not identical. While we rest as an infant in the body of our mother, our life is similar to what we experience later during sleep, except that during sleep we breathe the outer air. For this reason I have to say only "similar" but not "identical." We do not breathe the outer air when we rest in the body of the mother. We are stimulated to breathe the outer air when we are born.

Thus, in this way life during sleep is different from the embryonic life. Now hold firmly to the fact that, while the human being is sleeping, his life is in many respects similar to that of the embryonic state except that something is at work that can occur only between birth and death and not in the embryonic life. Breathing works here. The fact that man breathes the outer air causes his organism to be influenced in a certain way. But everything that influences our organism affects the totality of our life-expressions, even our psychic expression. Because we breathe, we understand the world otherwise than if we did not breathe.

Now, there was a cultural element in the evolution of humanity. We touch upon a significant mystery of human evolution when we undertake to explain this. This was the Old Testament cultural element, which was permeated in an especially profound way for its initiates by the fact that man is different, by reason of the breathing between birth and death, from the embryonic life, which is otherwise like the life of sleep. It was upon this inner knowledge of the nature of breathing that the relationship between the old Jewish initiates, the Hebrew initiates of the Old Testament, and their Jehovah God was based. The Jehovah God manifested himself, as we need only learn from the Bible, to his people. Which was the people of Jehovah? It was the people who had a peculiar relationship to this truth of breathing that I have just explained. This is the reason why precisely this people received the revelation that man became man when the breath of life was given to him.

We acquire a special understanding when this is developed on the basis of the nature of human breathing. We acquire an understanding of the life of abstract thinking, which was called in the Old Testament the life of law, an understanding of the reception of abstract thoughts. Strange as this may seem at present to materialistic thought, it is nevertheless true that the human power of creating abstractions is determined essentially by the breathing process. The fact that man can abstract, that he can conceive abstract thoughts, just as laws are abstract thoughts, is connected with his breathing process and even physiologically with his breathing process. The instrument of abstract thinking is, of course, the brain. This brain is involved in a continual rhythm synchronized with the breathing rhythm. I have already spoken here repeatedly in regard to this relationship of the brain rhythm with the breathing rhythm. I have explained to you how the brain is floating in the cerebral fluid, and how this fluid, when the air is breathed out, flows down through the spinal column and empties below into the abdominal cavity; how the fluid is pressed upward again when the air is breathed in so that a continual vibration occurs: with exhalation, a sinking of the cerebral fluid; with inhalation, an ascent of the cerebral fluid and the immersion of the brain in the cerebral fluid. The capacity of the human being to form abstractions is connected even physiologically with this rhythm of the breathing process.

A people who based things in special measure upon the breathing process was likewise the people of the abstraction process. For this reason the initiates could impart a special revelation to their people, as they perceived things in their Jehovah manner, because this revelation was completely adapted to the process of abstract thinking. This is the secret of the Old Testament revelation. Man received a wisdom that was adapted to the abstracting capacity, the capacity of abstract thinking. Jehovah wisdom is adapted to abstract thinking.

As regards this Jehovah wisdom, man is asleep in the ordinary state of consciousness. The Jehovah initiates simply received in connection with their initiation what man experiences through his breath from falling asleep until waking. Because of this fact, persons who love half-truths have often designated Jehovah as the divinity who regulates sleep. This is true also. He imparted to man that element of wisdom that he would experience if he should become as clairvoyant as the initiates became, and should experience consciously the life between falling asleep and waking. Now, this was not experienced by the ordinary consciousness in the Old Testament times, but was given to man as a revelation, so that he thus received as revelation in this Jehovah wisdom that through which they had to sleep. It was necessary to sleep through this, since otherwise the life process could not continue.

This is the essential element of the Old Testament culture. The night wisdom was revealed as Jehovah wisdom. To a certain extent — but I beg you to note that I say to a certain extent — this possibility for man was exhausted during the period when the Mystery of Golgotha drew near because this wisdom, which is in a sense the wisdom of sleep and breathing, is one-seventh of all the wisdom that man must develop in the course of his evolution. It is the wisdom of a single one of the Elohim, that is, Jehovah. The other six-sevenths could and can come to humanity only as the Christ impulse flows into mankind. We may thus say that, as Jehovah revealed himself, he revealed the wisdom of night and breathing in anticipation. The six other Elohim, constituting in their totality together with the seventh Elohim the Christ impulse, reveal all other wisdom, which comes to man between birth and death otherwise than through breathing.

Within the life of Old Testament culture man would have been entirely antisocial if Jehovah had not revealed the social element to his people in that abstract law that regulated and harmonized their life.

Now, Jehovah was able to gain complete control for himself by thrusting back the other Elohim, as I have explained to you, and dethroning them in a certain way. This caused other, lower spiritual entities to come in contact with human nature and to take possession of it. Man was exposed to these other entities, so that we have two conditions in the course of Old Testament evolution: first, the harmonizing Jehovah wisdom in what was given to the Jews as their Law, which included at the same time their social life; second, what opposed this social union, the lower entities coming close to human nature because the other Elohim were not yet given access in the time before the Mystery of Golgotha. These lower entities directed their powerful attacks in an antisocial sense against the Jehovah element.

It is a peculiar fact that, in the middle of the nineteenth century, in the fifth decade, Jehovah ceased in a certain sense to master the opposing spirits with his influence, so that they acquired special power. Not until the course of the nineteenth century was it really necessary for the first time that the Christ impulse, which had previously been only in a preliminary stage as I have often pointed out, should really be understood. Human culture could not progress further without this impulse and it was the social element particularly that stood face to face with this important crisis. It was necessary that the Christ impulse should be understood for the future. Without an understanding of this Christ impulse, no social demand takes the direction leading to any sort of wholesome objective.

The almost twenty centuries during which Christianity has previously been disseminated were only preparatory stages for the real understanding of the Christ impulse because the Christ impulse can be understood only in the spirit. Everything happens gradually. In our critical times, when we face a crisis in regard to just those things I have called to your attention, the situation is as follows. The instinct leading toward a mere Jehovah wisdom still extends into our age as a remnant, tending toward the wisdom that depended upon what was acquired during the embryonic life and is modified only by the unconscious breathing process. The Jehovah wisdom requires a revelation in order to enter our consciousness. This sufficed up to the time when the consciousness soul had not yet evolved to a certain degree. Now, since the consciousness soul has evolved to this degree, humanity cannot get along further with Jehovah wisdom that is adapted to the breathing, but it is invariably true that an effort is made to continue to get along with something that has become insufficient according to inner necessities. Since, for the life between birth and death, what is 'connected with the breathing remains unconscious, the Jewish culture was a folk culture, not an individualized culture of humanity. It was a folk culture in which everything is related to the descent from a common tribal father. Jewish revelation is, in its essential nature, a revelation adapted to the Jewish people, because it takes account of what is acquired during the embryonic life and is modified only through an unconscious element, the breathing process.

What is the result of this fact in our critical times? The result is that those who will not become adherents of the Christ wisdom that brings into the human being the other element, acquired during the life between birth and death apart from the breathing process, wish to continue in their relationship to the Jehovah wisdom and to have humanity established only on the basis of folk cultures. The present clamor in favor of an organization consisting of individuals from mere peoples is a retarded ahrimanic demand for the establishment of such a culture, in which all the peoples represent only folk cultures, that is, Old Testament cultures. The peoples in all parts of the world are to become like the Jewish Old Testament people. This is the demand of Woodrow Wilson.

We are here touching upon a most profound mystery, which will be unveiled in the greatest variety of forms. A social element that is antisocial as regards the whole of humanity and undertakes to base the social life upon individual peoples alone is striving to come to manifestation as an ahrimanic element. The cultural impulse of the Old Testament is to be maintained in an ahrimanic form.

Thus you see things are not so simple as people suppose in thinking that it is necessary only to think out one thing or another in order to propose ideals to men. We must be able to look into reality. We must be able to say what really governs and develops its powers amid these realities. Man is faced, in fact, with the prospect of not being able any longer to base his life upon the merely unconscious or of finding it necessary to base his life upon the conscious element within life between birth and death. The unconscious depends upon the breathing process and thus inevitably upon what is connected with the breathing process, upon the blood circulation, that is, upon the line of descent, upon connections by blood, upon heredity. The culture that must come into existence cannot base the social order upon mere blood connections because these blood connections yield only one-seventh of what must be established in the culture of humanity. The other six-sevenths must be added through the Christ impulse: In the fifth epoch, one; in the sixth epoch, the second; in the seventh epoch, the third. The rest stretch out into the following periods of time. For this reason there must gradually develop in humanity what is connected with the true Christ impulse, and what is related to the mere Jehovah impulse must be superseded.

Typically, far-reaching endeavors of the Jehovah impulse will take place, for the last time, in what the proletariat understands as international socialism. In essence, this is the last stirring of the Jehovah impulse. We face the strange situation that every people will become a Jehovah people, and every people will at the same time demand the right to spread its own Jehovah cult, its own socialism, throughout the world.

These will be the two contending forces between which a balance must be found. In all that comes to manifestation as objective necessity in the course of humanity's evolution there mingles the feeling, the sentiment, of human beings who take one relation or another to the various national groups, and who work disturbingly within the objectively inevitable course of evolution. Through the Jehovah wisdom one of the seven doors to the union of humanity has been opened. A second door will be opened when it shall come to be known that what man bears with him as the physical and the etheric nature becomes ill in the course of life. Naturally, I do not refer to an acute illness, but in our fifth epoch life is identical with a gradual process of becoming ill. This has been true since the fourth epoch; it is especially true in the fifth epoch. The life process is the same thing, only gradual in its stages, as an acute illness, except that this takes a more rapid course. If, therefore, an acute illness must be cured by a specific healing process, something must enter also into human life that brings healing.

In short, the natural life of human beings, from the fifth post-Atlantean epoch on will be a sort of continual, gradual becoming ill. All influences of education and of culture must be directed to the objective of making well. In a certain way, this is the first true activation of the Christ impulse: healing. This is the special mission of Christ in the fifth post-Atlantean epoch — to be the Healer, the One who heals. The other forms of the Christ impulse must remain in the background. For the sixth post-Atlantean epoch, the Christ impulse must work in the direction of seership. There the spirit self comes to development within which man cannot live without seership. In the seventh postAtlantean epoch a sort of prophetic nature will develop as the third element, since it must, indeed, pass prophetically over into an entirely new period. The other three members of the sixfold Christ Being will do their work in the following periods. Thus must the Christ impulse find its way into humanity, as the element that permeates mankind with social warmth in the course of the present and the two following cultural epochs, that is, as the healing process, the seer process and the prophetic process. This is the real living entrance of the Christ impulse. This will interpenetrate other things necessary for evolution that we have already mentioned. One door has been opened through the Jehovah wisdom, but this door became unusable in the middle of the nineteenth century. If mankind should pass through this door alone, the only result that can follow would be that all peoples would in a way develop Hebraic cultures, each in its own form. Other doors must be opened. Initiation wisdom, which will become known through a second, third, and fourth door, must be added to the wisdom that has become known through the Jehovah door. Only in this way can man grow into other connections than those that are regulated by the bonds of blood and breath.

This constitutes, in turn, the critical element of our age. It is a fact that human beings wish to preserve a regulation of the world order according to the bonds of blood, coming in an ahrimanic way out of ancient times, but that an inner necessity strives outward beyond these bonds of blood. In the future what controls the social life cannot proceed from anything having to do with kinship. On the contrary, only what the soul itself in its own free decision can experience as regulating the social order will be valid. An inner necessity will so guide men that everything that penetrates into the social order out of mere bonds of blood will be eliminated. All such things enter into manifestation at first tumultuously. In our age there must evolve spirit knowledge and freedom of thought, especially freedom of thought in the religious realm. The science of the spirit must develop for the reason that man must enter into relationship with man. But man is spirit. Man can enter into relationship with man only when the approach is from the spirit. The relationship into which men entered at earlier stages had its origin in the unconscious spirit vibrating in the blood, in accordance with Jehovah wisdom, which leads only to abstraction. That to which the men must next be led must be something grasped within the soul. The heathen peoples had their myths in pictorial form, created through atavism in ancient cultural forms. The Jewish people had its abstractions, not myths, but abstractions: the Law. This has continued its existence. This was the first elevation of the human being to the conceptual force and into the force of thought. But from humanity's present view of the matter, which is only the revival of the command, "Thou shalt make unto thyself no image," man must revert to the capacity of the soul that can once more, and this time consciously, form images. It is only in images, in imaginations, that the social life also can be rightly established in the future. The social life could be regulated only as regards a single people in abstractions, and the regulation for a people in social relationships was that of the Old Testament. The next form of regulation of the social life will depend upon the capacity to exercise in a conscious way the same force that once existed atavistically, in unconscious or half-conscious form, in man's myth building capacity. Men would be completely filled with antisocial instincts if they should endeavor to continue disseminating mere abstract laws. They must come again by way of their world conception, to the pictorial. Out of this conscious myth creation there will arise also the possibility for the development of the social element in the intercourse of man with man.

You may look at such a sculptural form as that of our Group: the Representative of Man, Lucifer and Ahriman. There you confront for the first time what is working in the whole human being, because man is the state of balance between the luciferic and the ahrimanic. If you permeate yourself in actual life with the impulse to confront every person in such a way that you correctly see this trinity in him, then do you begin to understand him. This is an essential capacity, bearing within itself the impulse to evolve in this fifth post-Atlantean epoch. Thus we shall no longer pass by one another as one specter passes another, so that we form no picture of each other but merely define the other person with our abstract concepts. The truth is that we do nothing more at the present time We pass by each other as if we were specters. One specter forms the conception, "That is a nice fellow," and the other, "That is not such a nice fellow" ... "That is a bad man" . . . "That is a good man," — all sorts of such abstract concepts. In the intercourse of man with man we have nothing but a bundle of abstract concepts. This is the essential thing that has entered into humanity out of the Old Testament form of life: "Make unto thyself no image." It must inevitably lead to an antisocial life if we should continue it further. What is flowing out from the innermost nature of man, striving toward realization, is that, when one individual confronts another, a picture shall stream forth in a certain way from the other person, a picture of that special form of balance manifested individually by everyone. But this requires, of course, the heightened interest that I have often described to you as the foundation of social life, which each person should take in the other person. At present we have not yet any intense interest in another person. It is for this reason that we criticize him, that we pass judgment upon him, that we form our judgments according to sympathies and antipathies and not according to the objective picture that leaps to meet us from the other.

This capacity to be mystically stimulated in a certain way as we confront another person will come to realization. It will enter as a special social impulse into human life. On the one hand, the consciousness soul is striving to come in an antisocial way to complete domination in this fifth post-Atlantean epoch. On the other hand, something else is striving outward from the nature of man, that is, a capacity to form pictures of the human beings with whom we live. It is here that the social impulses arise, the social instincts. The simple fact is that these things lie at a far greater depth than is ordinarily supposed when people talk about the social and the antisocial.

Now the question may arise in your minds as to how we shall gradually attain to the capacity of causing the picture of the other person to leap to meet us. It is in life that we must gain this capacity. Jehovah capacities are given to us at birth; we evolve them in the embryonic life. The culture of the future will not make things so comfortable for people. The capacities a person must manifest will have to be developed during the course of his life. Far more concrete and definite principles must enter into education than those that are now being brought into dominance in such an utterly confused manner in today's pedagogy. It is most important of all that the instinct shall be implanted in people to look back more frequently during this life, but in the right way. What people develop at present as memories of earlier experience is marked as yet for the most part by a selfish character. If a person looks back in a more unselfish way to what he has experienced in childhood, youth, etc. — according to the age he has reached — there emerges as if out of the gray depths of the spirit various persons who have had something to do with his life in all sorts of relationships.

Look back into your life and pay less attention to what interests you in your own respectable person and much more to those figures that have come into contact with you, educating you, befriending you, assisting you, perhaps also injuring you — often injuring you in a helpful way. One thing will then become evident to you and that is how little reason a person really has to ascribe to himself what he has become. Often something important in us is due to the fact that one person or another came into contact with us at a certain age, and — perhaps, without knowing it himself, or perhaps, being fully aware of the fact — drew our attention to something or other. In a comprehensive sense, a really unselfishly conducted survey of our lives is made up of all sorts of things that do not give us occasion to immerse ourselves selfishly in our own being, to brood over ourselves egotistically, but lead us to broaden our views to include those figures who came into contact with us. Let us immerse ourselves with real love in what has come into our life. We shall often discover that what evoked an antipathy in us at a certain period is no longer so disagreeable to us when a sufficient length of time has passed because we begin to see an inner connection. The fact that we had to be affected in an unpleasant way at a certain time by one person or another might have been useful to us. We often gain more from the harm that a person does to us than from the furtherance afforded us by another. It would be advantageous to a person if he more frequently exercised such a survey of his life, and should permeate his life with the convictions flowing from his self observation. "How little occasion I really have to occupy myself with myself! How immeasurably richer my life becomes when I look back to all those who have entered my life!" In this way we free ourselves from ourselves when we carry out such an unselfish survey. We then escape from that terrible evil of our times, to which so many fall victims, of brooding over ourselves. It is so extremely necessary that we should free ourselves from this brooding over ourselves. Anyone who has once felt the power of such self-observation as I have just described will find himself far too uninteresting to spend much time brooding over his own life. Unlimited illumination is cast over this life of ours when we see it irradiated with what enters into it from the gray depths of the spirit.

But this has such a germinating power over us that we really acquire the imaginative forces necessary to confront the contemporary human being in such a way that in him the thing is manifest that appears to us only after many years in our backward survey of those figures with whom we have lived together. We thus acquire such a capacity that pictures actually come to meet us from the individuals we confront.
The cultivation of the social life, which in earlier times had its source only in the bonds of blood, does not depend so much upon any sort of socialistic programs, but upon man's becoming a spiritual-social being. He will become such a being by awakening within himself, in the manner I have described, the deeper forces that can bring to birth within him the capacity for conceiving pictorially the other human being. Otherwise, we shall always remain antisocial beings, capable of approaching others only according to our sympathies and antipathies, incapable of approaching them according to the picture that may stream forth from each person if we only develop the picture-forming forces in our intercourse with them. Precisely in the social life of humanity must the principle come into existence, "Thou shalt make for thyself an image of thy fellow man." Then, when we form a picture of our fellow man, we enrich our own soul life; then do we bestow a treasure upon our own inner soul life with each human acquaintanceship. Then we no longer so live that A lives there, B there, C there, but A, B and C live in D; A, B and D live in C; C, D and E live in A; etc. We gain the capacity to have other human beings live in us.

But this must be acquired; it is not born in us. If we should continue simply to cultivate those characteristics that are born in us, we should continue within the limits of a mere blood culture, not the culture to which could be ascribed in the true sense of the word human brotherhood. Only when we carry the other human being within us can we really speak of human brotherhood, which has appeared thus far only in an abstract word. When we form a picture of the other person, which is implanted as a treasure in our souls, then we carry within the realm of our soul life something from him just as in the case of a bodily brother we carry around something through the common blood. This elective affinity as the basis of social life must take the place in this concrete way of the mere blood affinity. This is something that really must evolve. It must depend upon the human will to determine how brotherhood shall be awakened among men.

Human beings have hitherto been separated. They ought to become socialized in brotherhood. In order that the manifoldness shall not be lost, the innermost element in man, thought, must be able to take form individually in every single person. With Jehovah the whole folk stood in a relationship. With Christ each individual person must stand in relationship. But the fact that brotherhood will thus awaken requires that there shall be a compensation in an entirely different field, that is, through freedom of thought.

6
The Innate Capacities of the Nations of the World

8 December 1918, Dornach

In the last two lectures I pointed out that the so-called social question is not so simple as it is usually supposed to be, and that it is necessary to take careful account of the complicated nature of man. We must take account of the fact that both social and antisocial impulses exist in him and must come to expression regardless of what social structure exists and what social ideas are brought to realization. As we have seen, the antisocial impulses, especially in our epoch of the consciousness soul, play a special role. In a certain way they have an educational mission in the evolution of humanity in that they cause men to stand on their own feet. They will be overcome by reason of the fact that, after the epoch of the consciousness soul, there will follow the epoch of the spirit self, already in course of preparation, whose essential mission will be to bring humanity into social unity. This will not happen, however, in such a way as is dreamed at present by people indulging in illusions, but in such a way that one person shall really know and be interested in the other as a human being. In short, he shall center his attention upon the other person so that each individual shall acquire the capacity of comprehending the other with full interest.

What comes to light today as a social demand, constitutes in a certain way a sort of skirmish or outpost action, a sort of preparation, which naturally takes a chaotic form and gives rise to many illusions and errors because it is only the germinal stage for something that will come later. These illusions and errors are due to the fact that social impulses at the present time arise in great measure from the unconscious or the subconscious, and are not clarified by spiritual knowledge of the world or of humanity. This illusory form comes especially to expression in the development of the so-called Russian revolution. It is characterized by the fact that in its present manifestation it has no right relationship to what is in course of preparation as a people in Russia for the coming sixth post-Atlantean epoch. Rather, it is brought in out of abstractions. Thus these more or less illusory ideals of the present Russian revolution are especially significant in connection with a study of this chaotic stirring within humanity in relation to something that is to come later. We may say that the especially characteristic head of this Russian revolution, Trotsky, who is typical of the abstractly thinking man, living entirely in abstraction, appears really to have not the least notion that there is a reality in such a thing as human social life. Something wholly alien to reality is thought out and is to be implanted into reality.

This is not a criticism but a mere description. The simple truth is that one of the characteristics of our times is that the inclination toward abstraction, toward a thinking alien to reality, wills also to implant within reality such principles as are simply assumed without any knowledge of the laws of this reality. These principles are considered absolutely right without regard whatsoever for complicated human life, as we study it with the help of the spiritual lying at the basis of external physical reality. But everything that is to come into existence must arise from this reality. For that reason, since in this case something so preeminently alien to reality is brought forward, including in a chaotic way all manner of impulses and instincts due to the proletariat way of thinking, great significance therefore attaches to the ideas that seek to be realized in this Russian revolution and that live in these Russian revolutionary heads of the present time.

From this point of view they are exceedingly significant. Indeed, we can see that in Russia persons with the most varied conceptions of life have taken part in a brief span of time in giving shape to the revolutionary movement. As things have been brought to a climax in Russia, the real social problem of the present age became actual under the influence of the war catastrophe. From this actuality of the problem of ownership there then developed in March 1917 the so-called February Revolution in Russia, whose essential objective was to overthrow the political powers that stood behind the system of ownership. But this purely political, externally political, form of the revolution was soon set aside in the very first stages of the revolutionary thinking by those men who are conceived, according to Trotsky's terminology, to be men of understanding. They are men who, by all sorts of speculations, clever concepts, ideas, and even clever notions transformed into concepts, wished to bring about a social structure. These revolutionaries comprised primarily those persons who had already at an earlier time taken part more or less in the forming of the social structure, the intelligentsia, the commercial people, the industrial circles, all of whom took human reason as their point of departure in the effort to bring about some sort of social formation.

Trotsky, however, considers, with a certain justification even though relative and one-sided, that these persons who wish to bring about a social structure in such a way through all sorts of speculations, with good intentions and good will, merely delay the revolution. They have no capacity whatever, are incapable of doing anything at all. You know on the basis of the reflections I have presented to you that the proletariat world view tends primarily to the judgment that nothing whatever can be accomplished by such considerations no matter how clever they are, even though they are based so completely upon the foundation laid by those persons whom Trotsky calls chatterers or tongue-waggers because they can speak so cleverly. In other words, these rational considerations are rejected by the proletariat world view out of a certain instinct, which has become gradually a definite theory in marxism. There is simply no belief that any sort of satisfactory social structure can be brought about in the future by any kind of rational considerations whatsoever. The only thing that the proletariat believes is that fruitful ideas are born only in the heads of the proletariat themselves, in the heads of these masses who own nothing, and out of the economic conditions in which the members of the proletariat live. These ideas can never be born in the bourgeoisie nor in any other class, for the reason that they inevitably think differently because of their characteristic ideas. Only within the class of the workers do ideas arise that alone can give the motive force to bring about a future social formation.

When we consider this fact, it is clear that the inevitable conclusion for such a head as that of Trotsky is that the only thing to be done is to deprive the bourgeoisie of their possessions and to lead the propertyless classes to the position of mastery. This is something that has been in a preparatory stage in 'such heads for decades, and they now wish to introduce it into Russia since the great crisis has arisen in that country. This condition was to be brought about through the so-called October Revolution, after the other parties — if we may so call them — were set aside in the seizure of power by the proletariat itself. From this point of view, which is naturally a purely abstract one and concrete only to the extent that it makes everything dependent upon a definite class of men, thus constituting a reality, the leading personalities of the Russian Revolution have guided affairs since October 1917.

Now, such a revolutionary way of thinking gives rise to certain difficulties. These difficulties follow in a particularly intense form in Russia, and it was characterized by certain special prerequisites, as you know on the basis of our spiritual-scientific discussions. These difficulties arise from the existent class formations throughout the world, only they were manifest in a particularly intense way because of Russian conditions. The first great difficulty is that the whole social and political leadership of humanity is to be given over to a class that was previously deprived of everything, and had no connection whatever with so-called culture. The proletarian, who is actually to take the steering wheel, has previously been excluded from all those impelling forces that established the existing power factor. He has hitherto never taken anything to market except his own labor, his physical capacity for handwork.

This condition exists in all countries. Thus it will come about everywhere that, to the extent that a revolution takes rise, the proletariat will at first take over the leadership as a political group. Everything, however, will continue as it was, in a certain sense. Those persons who have hitherto held administrative power will remain in their positions because they are technically trained and know their jobs. In other words, there will be no further change than that a governing board of laymen will interject itself into the whole apparatus brought over from ancient times. But the important point is that this governing board of laymen is a special type, the proletariat type, and it will be composed entirely of proletarians. Since these persons will all belong to the proletariat they will wish to make certain that the principle shall apply that holds that the controlling ideas in the future can come only out of the heads of the proletariat. This leadership cannot be subjected to such a thing as a national or a constituent assembly, because that would be a certain continuation of what existed earlier. Rather, what is to come about must constitute a radical transformation. It is not necessary first to elect; those who are to lead are there simply because they belong to the proletariat. It would not be a national constituent assembly, but the dictatorship of the proletariat.

At first, this led to the difficulty that the proletarians, as I have said, are laymen, who could merely act as overseers over those who continued the previous administration. These individuals, of course, clung to earlier interests. Thus, particularly in Russia, the proletarians ascended to the top. They previously had nothing to do with matters belonging to the state organism and were compelled to take over everyone who conducted things according to ideas corresponding to the earlier state organism. They thus brought over into the state, which was to be subjected wholly to the dictatorship of the proletariat, interests belonging to the old bourgeois state. These behave just like an enemy who, although not carrying on open warfare or a counter-revolution, yet carries over into the enemy's country everything from his country that is to work destructively upon the other. It was in this way that the proletarians who had taken over the leadership in Russia looked upon the activities of the old imperial groups as sabotage. Their first struggle was to overcome this sabotage that consisted in the effort to bring over into the regime they were seeking to establish what would really constitute the support only of the old regime. The process was the same as if a citizen of one country that had not openly begun any sort of hostility should carry poisonous materials into a foreign land to impregnate its fields so that nothing would grow there. Thus the members of the proletariat looked upon what came from these old staffs of officials as sabotage. At first their most intensely applied regulations were directed toward the mastery of this sabotage. Here they showed no restraint whatever. Everything they considered destructive they sought to root out completely, and such a person as Trotsky is really convinced that sabotage at present has already been overcome to a certain extent. Those who did anything whatever to violate the will of the people and proletariat thinking were driven out or otherwise punished.

The difficulty, however, is certainly not overcome, as Trotsky himself sees perfectly well, by merely combatting so-called sabotage. He sees that it is necessary to retain the entire body of former administrators, but that it must be made to serve the purposes fundamental to the leadership of the proletariat.

Trotsky, for instance, sees in this the first great difficulty. This is something he believes can be overcome by his abstract means, but he will be unable to do so. Illusion begins at this point, for the simple reason that Trotsky is a spirit alien to reality. This illusory element is based upon the abstract notion that it is possible to make the whole body of technical officials, of intellectual and commercial people, servants of a governing board consisting entirely of members of a dictating proletariat. It is a disbelief in the configuration of the life of soul and spirit that is manifest in this illusion. The simple truth is that, after a certain length of time, the condition will revert to just what it was previously. If the old ideas are maintained, if there is failure to realize the truth of what I have often emphasized here — that the social transformation must proceed out of new thoughts — if the old technicians, the old officials, the old generals are simply put back in their positions, if the old is simply taken over and people do not advance to meet the new, most of all through education, it must revert to what it was. In other words, such a process will not overcome conditions but will simply continue them. It is possible to overcome sabotage for a certain length of time by means of regulations applied by force, but it will raise its head again and again. If it is true that a person is dependent upon the situation in which he finds himself — and he has been dependent for three or four centuries, which is true with reference to modern history — the result will be that, if he is not freed from these relationships by means of effective thoughts that can come only from the spiritual life, he must inevitably fall back into the old habits of thinking and acting, just as surely as a cat falls on all fours.

This is a point where such thinking is revealed in its illusory character, utterly alien to reality. I might indicate many such points, but I wish to make clear to you only the special configuration of this thinking. I wish to show you by means of individual examples how this thinking betrays its utter unreality. It is not possible simply to think out one thing or another that should occur, but it is necessary to take account of these impelling forces active within reality in accordance with inherent law. If a person does not live with these, he inevitably falls prey to illusions. One of the most important illusions in the case of Trotsky is the following. Trotsky knows that through the particularly intense suppression that has been experienced by the great masses even of the present proletariat in Russia — and this term is justified — conditions had to come to a special climax among these persons. He knows that the form the revolution takes under these special conditions cannot lead to a victory. He is out of touch with reality, but not so completely out of touch as to prevent him from seeing in a rational way that it is possible to bring a new social structure into existence under the present conditions in a region which, however extensive, is limited in comparison with the whole earth. For this reason Trotsky counted upon a revolutionary movement to be brought about by the proletariat throughout the civilized world. He did not indulge in the illusion that the Russian revolution alone could be victorious. He knew that it depended upon the victory of the proletariat revolution throughout the world.

Now, the whole abstract character of Trotsky's way of conceiving things manifested itself in these ideas. Trotsky believed in the proletariat revolution over the whole earth. He believed that the war would gradually take on such a character as to bring about a sort of proletariat revolution throughout the world end that the war would be transformed into the proletariat revolution.

Now this catastrophe of war will certainly be transformed into all sorts of things. But the actuality of things has already shown conclusively that this idea of Trotsky's is out of touch with reality. It would have been true only if this war catastrophe had ended in universal exhaustion, if such a striking so-called victory — it came about in a strange way — had not been achieved by one of the parties to the war. This victory simply eliminates the hope that exhaustion might come about uniformly throughout the civilized world. What has occurred is a decisive hegemony of the Western Powers in connection with a complete subjection on the part of the Central and Eastern Powers. A complete mastery over the Central and Eastern Powers by the Western Powers is what has been established as a dominant force, and the situation could not have been otherwise. This was clear to those who saw into reality in this realm. Trotsky, however, is simply a spirit alien to reality, and he ought now to say to himself, "I have been refuted by events." He uttered something not without basis, something brilliant in a merely abstract way of thinking when he said, "The bourgeois conception of life at the present time has no alternative but to choose between lasting war and revolution." The thing turned out differently. The so-called victory of the Western Powers has taken place — neither lasting war nor revolution. In what is beginning in a preliminary way in the West there is no germ for any sort of proletariat revolution. On the contrary, here there is simply the shaping of the entire West into a politically organized great bourgeoisie, facing the proletariat of Central and Eastern Europe.

This is the outcome in world history. It will certainly be transformed again but at present exists. This is the real state of the case, so that Trotsky ought, therefore, to reflect in an entirely different way if he wishes today to see reality. He would have to say to himself, "Under this shaping of events, how can what I intended through the Russian revolution become victorious, since one of the most important presuppositions, the world revolution of the proletariat, will not occur?" If he is still counting today upon this world revolution, it is simply evidence of his complete isolation from reality.

At still another point the alienation from reality characterizing the thinking of such a revolutionary manifests itself in a peculiar way. Such revolutionists also have naturally always referred to Prussian-German militarism as the greatest of all evils, declaring that it must be overcome and eliminated from the world. Now the course of events has been such that Prussian-German militarism has been eliminated from the world, but the militarism of the Entente will in the near future exercise a considerable domination! Now, I do not wish in the least to speak about this, but Trotsky himself has had occasion t6raise the question, "What, then, is the most important of the immediate tasks of the Russian revolution if it wishes to maintain itself?" His answer is, "The creation of an army!" Just this is designated by Trotsky as the most important immediate task.

These things ought to receive careful attention. They need to be thoroughly seen through. Only when these things are observed and seen through does it occur to people to say, "Now, I must really look a little deeper into the impelling forces within humanity if I desire to form conceptions for myself as to what is to result from the chaos that this war catastrophe has developed." But humanity is decidedly disinclined today to penetrate into such impelling forces, which I have described to you here from the greatest number of viewpoints as the true, the only possible, social forces. Humanity would be able to get under the surface of these things if the determination were reached simply to get a firmer hold upon the real forces dominant in man's evolution.

One extremely characteristic expression appears again and again from the minds of the Russian revolutionaries. In the main, what do these members of the proletarian dictatorship really wish? They want to make the world into a great factory interpenetrated by a kind of bank bookkeeping system extending over all groups. "We shall fit the old technicians, the old officials, even the old generals into our proletariat dictatorship," they say, "but we must have the bookkeeping for the total economy, the factory accounting department in our own hands." This is not surprising, because the whole movement has taken its rise in modern industry. If people would only pause to reflect that this movement has originated with the proletariat of modern industry, no one would be surprised that their way of thinking, developed in connection with what these people have seen in factories, should be applied to everything upon which they can lay their hands. This is the natural result and consequence of the failure of the bourgeoisie to pay attention to the enormous expansion of the proletariat in recent times. Even if it was inevitable that the bourgeoisie closed their eyes and calmly permitted everything to occur, it most certainly is not a matter of necessity that the still more important conditions, the impelling forces existent in the world, should continue to be unobserved. So long as these forces are not observed, it is impossible for people to become acquainted with social tasks.

Here it is necessary to know how differentiated humanity is in various parts of the world — as I said, indeed, yesterday or the day before. It is necessary to know that the people live in the West differently than those in the East and in the Middle Countries. It is not possible by means of abstract ideas, which ignore realities, to bring about any sort of social formation. The Russian revolution is certain to suffer shipwreck because of its great illusion and isolation from realities.

Such illusions can be transformed for a time into reality by people who are free beings through education, that is, free to the extent that a person who possesses the power can make use of it. But reality then eliminates illusions; it cannot use them. Reality accepts only what is in keeping with the course of this reality. We must not forget that the most important thing of all is the fact that we are living in the age of the consciousness soul development, which occurs in sharply differentiated forms throughout the world.

Let us consider the various impelling forces underlying the civilized world in the light of the most important European differentiations that come to expression through language. I have often brought to your attention the fact that the English-speaking peoples possess the real germinal potentiality for the development of the consciousness soul. It is important that we should see this clearly. This is connected with everything that happens to the world, if we may so express the matter, under the influence of the English-speaking peoples. The English people — I am by no means speaking of individual persons, but of the people — are endowed with all the impelling forces that lead to the consciousness soul. The condition is such that the trend toward the consciousness soul appears instinctively in them in a manner entirely different from that characterizing the rest of humanity. This spiritualized instinct to develop the consciousness soul exists nowhere else in the world as it does among the English people. There it is an instinct, and nowhere else is that so, even among the people of Roman descent who are united with the English-speaking peoples. The people of Roman descent constitute really successors to what actually lived in the fourth post-Atlantean epoch. At that time this Roman people had the instinct for what developed in the fourth post-Atlantean epoch in special degree. Their instincts are no longer elemental in the same way. They have been rationalized, intellectualized and they appear in rhetoric, through the intellect, through the psychic life as a decorative form. They have been removed from the instinctive life. What appears among the Latin people as a folk temperament is altogether different from what appears as a folk temperament among the English people. Among the English people this trend toward the consciousness soul, this striving of the individual person to stand upon his own feet, is an instinct.

In other words, what constitutes the mission of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch is rooted in the English as an instinct, as an impelling force arising instinctively from the soul of the people. Now, their position in the world is connected with this fact. This impulse is dominant within the social structure of the English-speaking peoples. It is decisive, and it can suppress other tendencies. The other tendencies, as you can see from the explanations I have offered, look toward the integration I have given of the social question, that is, the economic impulse and the impulse of spiritual production. If, however, you study the folk character of the English-speaking populations psychologically, you will see that these impulses, the economic and the spiritually productive, are wholly overshadowed by what rises from the instinctive impulse that tends toward the development of the consciousness soul.

For this reason the spheres that must shape the social life of the future take on a special coloring among the English-speaking people. The three spheres must in the future show themselves especially effective in special ways, and they must be decisive. First, politics, which must provide security. Second, the organization of work, purely material work, the economic order. Third is the system of spiritual production, to which I attribute also, as I said to you, jurisprudence and the administration of justice. These three spheres of the social structure are, as a matter of course, overshadowed by what constitutes the primary impulse in the case of any differentiated peoples. The fact that a development toward the consciousness soul works instinctively among the English-speaking people brings it to pass that among them — as history teaches in profusion — politics, one branch, take on the most conspicuous form, and the dominant position. Politics are dominated wholly by the instinctive impulse to set men on their own feet, and to develop the consciousness soul fully. The instinctive impulse drives in such a direction — and this is a mere description I am giving, and no criticism. It drives toward the result because it is instinctive and instincts are always rooted in self-seeking. Among the English-speaking peoples self-seeking and political goals simply coincide. It leads to the fact that all politics performed in an utterly naive fashion — and this does not justify attaching any blame to a politician of the English-speaking peoples — can be used by the self-seeking person to fulfill thereby the mission of the English-speaking people. It is only in this way that you will succeed in understanding the real nature of English politics, which are actually the dominant politics of the entire population of the earth. If you observe the matter, you will find that English politics are considered everywhere as ideal — the parliamentary system with its shuffling of majorities and minorities, etc. If you examine the conditions in the various parliaments as these have developed, you will see that British politics have been determinative in the political life. But, as these politics have spread in various places among differently constituted peoples, they could no longer remain the same because they are rooted, and rightly, in the self-seeking and egoism that inevitably clings to everything of an instinctive nature.

It is this that renders understanding so difficult when people try to grasp the nature of English or American politics. The nuance, which it is absolutely necessary to set clearly, is not clear at all. This is the fact that these politics must be self-seeking, and must rest upon impulses of a self-seeking character. Because of their special nature, they must rest upon self-seeking impulses. Thus, they will look upon these self-seeking impulses as something to be taken for granted, as the right and moral thing. No objection can be raised here. This is not to be attacked with criticism, but to be recognized as a necessity in world history, even a cosmic necessity. Neither can this statement be refuted, for the simple reason that anyone who undertakes to oppose it as a member of the English people will always find himself on a false path. On the basis of moral considerations, which have nothing to do with the matter, he will deny that the politics of the English people are self-seeking, but moral considerations have nothing to do with this. English politics will achieve what they bring about precisely by reason of this instinctive character.

So, during our fifth post-Atlantean epoch, the element of power is assigned to this English-speaking population. We call to memory the three figures in Goethe's fairy tale: power; phenomenon or appearance; wisdom, knowledge. Of these three elements, power is assigned to the English-speaking people. What they accomplish politically in the world is possible by reason of the fact that one of their inherent, inborn characteristics is that they should work by way of power. To work by way of power will be accepted during the fifth postAtlantean epoch as something not subject to discussion. English politics are accepted all over the world. Of course, all the injurious effects, which, however, are always to be found in the reality belonging to the physical plane, may be sharply criticized, even by those belonging to the British Empire itself. Yet British politics are accepted. It is inherent in the evolution of our times that they are accepted, and without any reflection, without any effort to find reasons for this. Moreover, the reasons would never suffice, because it is simply a matter of immediate inevitability that the power that comes from this direction is accepted.

This is not true as regards the people of Roman descent who are united with the English-speaking peoples. They manifest in a certain way the shadow, the time shadow, of what they were during the fourth post-Atlantean epoch. Instincts have been transmuted into the intellectual where they are no longer so elemental. Thus, English politics are accepted as something beyond discussion. French politics are accepted only by those whom they are able to please. The French nature is loved in the world to the extent that it pleases. The English nature does not depend at all upon this. It is based upon the incontestability with which the effective politics of the present time fall to the share of the English nature, Because of this situation, however, it is also possible that precisely among the English-speaking populations, the economic life is held within limits and is subordinate to the dominant impulse toward self-seeking and power that is suitable in politics. The spiritual life also, to the extent that it belongs to the fifth post-Atlantean epoch, becomes subservient to politics. Everything enters unitedly in a certain way into the service of politics.

Thus marxism is simply wrong for the English-speaking world because it presupposes politics to be an appendage of the economic order. This is not the case among the English-speaking peoples.

The marxist social order is prevented from succeeding there, not by reason of argumentation or discussion, not because of anything that happens in the world, but through the fact that the British Empire is constructed upon a different foundation of realities from those upon which marxism and the marxist proletariat builds. This is the great contrast between the proletariat, thinking in a marxian way, and the British who work out of the instinctive life, extending the British Empire throughout the world. Success will not be attained by the banking institutions or the bookkeeping system that Trotsky wishes to introduce into Russia. It will be attained by the great banking institution, the great institution of finance, into which the English-speaking population is organized by reason of its special inherent qualities. If we investigate the manner in which an individual people is related in its particular differentiation to the three spheres of society that I have described to you as based upon reality, this can be clearly seen.

Something else must be added to this. It is extremely important. The differentiation regarding which I spoke to you goes so far that the person who does not strive to free himself from his people, but rather strives for closer union — and politics do definitely strive for such union — has entirely different experiences in connection with the Guardian of the Threshold from those of the person who strives to free himself from his people. Here I come to a point that, if you will study it thoroughly, will provide you with the basis for distinguishing between wholesome occultism that appears naturally throughout the world, without differentiation as to peoples, and the kind of occultism that enters into the political service of a people and works outward as in the case of those societies I have mentioned. You may ask, "How, then can I distinguish these?" You can distinguish them if you will give close attention to these great differentiating characteristics that I shall present to you today.

In order for anyone to attain to real occultism, thus serving the whole of humanity, he must outgrow his folk character. He must in a certain sense — here we may be permitted to use the Indian expression — become a "homeless" person; in the innermost nature of his soul he must not consider himself as belonging to any one people. He must not have impulses that serve only a single people if he desires to advance in genuine occultism. But the kind of occultism that desires to serve a single people in a limited way arrives at a special experience when confronting the Guardian of the Threshold. Thus, in the case of all those who seek for an occult development within the societies of the English-speaking peoples, what becomes manifest in the presence of the Guardian of the Threshold is that they discover at the moment when they desire to cross the Threshold those forces living in the depths of human nature. These become manifest when one enters the super-sensible world and are of the same character as the destructive forces in the universe. This is what they behold in the presence of the Guardian of the Threshold. When they are guided in such a society to the point of crossing the Threshold, they then become acquainted with the evil powers of disease and death, of everything that paralyzes and destroys. When the same destructive forces that cause death in nature — and they work within us also — bring about knowledge, it is this knowledge that comes to light in those societies. Most assuredly one does enter the super-sensible world, but one must pass the Guardian of the Threshold. It is necessary to pass by the Guardian of the Threshold in such a way, however, that one has the experience of learning to know death in its true form, as it dwells in us and also in outside nature.

This is due to the fact that ahrimanic powers live in external nature around us, and in it you can perceive no other than ahrimanic powers — that is, to the extent that you remain within external nature. You can come into contact with the manifestation of such powers as enter into external nature in the manner of specters. This explains the inclination of the West to spiritualism, to the seeing of such forms as really belong to the sensory physical world, and are not visible in ordinary life except under special conditions. These are the powers of death, destructive powers, ahrimanic powers. There are absolutely no other spirits within the whole broad realm of spiritualistic gatherings than ahrimanic spirits, even where the spiritualistic gatherings are genuine. They are the spirits that a person takes with him out of the sense world when he crosses the Threshold. They go with him. They pursue him thence. The person crosses the Threshold, and those who accompany him are the ahrimanic demons, which he had not previously seen but which he sees on the other side. These are the servants of death, illness, and destruction. This experience shocks the person into super-sensible knowledge and brings him into the super-sensible world.

All persons who are trained and instructed in this way for occultism have significant experiences. This is a significant experience of which I have spoken to you, but it is an experience growing out of the fact that the person does not devote himself to an occultism related to all human beings, but to a form pertaining to a single people. There is such a differentiation. If the assertion is made to you anywhere in the world that when you cross the Threshold you learn primarily the evil powers of illness and death, you may know from this statement that the occultist in question comes from the corner I have often described to you. You will know this simply on the basis of the experience he relates to you in connection with the Guardian of the Threshold.

The situation is different in connection with the German-speaking peoples. Into the German-speaking population something has also been interjected. The Latin element has been interjected into the English people in the sphere of its world power. The German-speaking people has something that does not come from the past but is like a flash of heat lightning betokening the future. The Slav element, beginning in Russia, is the future, is actually present only in its future germinal potentiality but the Slays, who have been thrust forward, are the vanguard, the heat lightning portending what is in course of preparation. They signify in some way the heat lightning of the future of the Central European German world, as the Latin element signifies the shadows of the past of the Western English-speaking world.

This German element itself, however, does not possess an instinctive basis for the development of the consciousness soul, but only the basis through which it can be educated to the consciousness soul. In other words, whereas in British regions the instinctive basis for the evolution of the consciousness soul is present, the German Middle European must be educated into the consciousness soul if he is to make this active within him in any way. He can achieve this only through education. So, since the epoch of the consciousness soul is at the same time the epoch of intellectuality, the German who is to bring the consciousness soul in any way into activity within himself must become an intellectual person. Thus, the German has sought his relationship to the consciousness soul primarily by way of intellectuality, not by way of the instinctive life. Therefore the tasks of the German people have been attained only by those who have taken in hand in a certain way their own self-education. The persons of mere instinct remain untouched by this inner activating of the consciousness soul and remain behind in a certain sense.

This is likewise the reason why the British people are endowed instinctively from the start for politics, whereas the Germans are a non-political people and not in the least endowed for politics. When they undertake, therefore, to pursue a political course, they run a great risk, which will become especially clear to you if you give particular attention to the fact that the Germans have taken over the task of introducing the second element into the world within the intellectual sphere. The British folk character is power. The German folk character is the appearing, the seeming, if you will, the shaping of thoughts, that which is not in a certain sense of the solid earth. In the British folk character all is of the solid earth, but just trace the intellectuality of the Germans. You may compare it with that of the Greeks, except that the Greeks gave form to the seething in accordance with its picture nature whereas the Germans have given form to the seeming especially in relation to its intellectualizing nature. In the last analysis, there is nothing more beautiful than what has been formed through Goetheanism, through Novalis, through Schelling, through all those spirits who are truly artists in thought. This makes the Germans a non-political people. If they are expected to be political, they are not equal to a person who thinks politically through his instincts.

Of the three things that are included in Goethe's fairy tale — power, seeming, knowledge — what has fallen to the lot of the Germans in the intellectual epoch is the moulding of intellectuality in the sphere of the seeming. If he is determined, nevertheless, to take hold of politics, he runs the risk of bringing into the sphere of reality what is beautiful within the formation of thoughts. This is the phenomenon, for example, of Treitschke. In reality, it will then sometimes happen that what is really beautiful in seeming, since it does not lie within the limits of its own potentialities, will become something not rightfully connected with the human being, something that may remain a mere assertion, or must make the impression of untruthfulness upon the world. The great danger, which can obviously be overcome, consists in the fact that the German not only lies when he is courteous, ^[2] but he may also lie when he introduces even his best talents into a field for which he does not possess inborn potentialities. He must first develop these potentialities within himself, but to do so must make a special effort.

Some years ago I said that the Englishman is something, and that the German can only become something. This constitutes the great difficulty in German culture. This is the reason why in the culture of Germany and of German Austria only single individualities stand out prominently who have taken themselves in hand, whereas the masses do not will to occupy themselves with thoughts, which are inherent in the instincts of the British peoples, but will to be controlled. It is for this reason that the population of Central Europe fell under the domination of such lust for rulership as that of the Hapsburgs and the Hohenzollerns — just because of its non-political nature, and because the German is faced by entirely different necessities if he wishes to achieve his mission. He must be educated to this mission. He must in some way be touched by what Goethe moulded into form in his Faust, that is, by the process of becoming of the human being between birth and death.

This is manifest, likewise, in the presence of the Guardian of the Threshold. If an individual remains within the German folk character, and comes thus to the Guardian of the Threshold, he does not observe, as do those British societies of which I have spoken, the evil servants of illness and death. It is in thi6 way that you can draw a distinction if you give close attention to these things. He observes primarily how ahrimanic and luciferic powers, the former rushing in from the physical world and the latter rushing in from the spiritual world, are engaged in a conflict with each other. He sees how this struggle must be observed, since it is really a continuously fluctuating struggle and it is never possible to say where the victory will fall. Such a person becomes acquainted in the presence of the Guardian of the Threshold with what constitutes the real basis for doubt, what is present in the world as a continuously inflamed and undecided struggle, what brings one into a state of wavering but at the same time educates one into looking at the world from the most varied points of view. This will be the special mission of the German people in spite of everything possible to the contrary. They shall take hold upon world culture from this side, even as the German people. Through its special character as a people, certain things that I shall touch upon today, for example, in the realm of knowledge, can be evolved only through the German people.

Darwinism in its materialistic coloring has arisen from the British people. This is an entirely true principle — you can read this in my book, The Riddles of Philosophy. It is an entirely true principle that organic creatures have gradually evolved from the imperfect to the more perfect, even up to man. The perfect is derived from the imperfect. This principle is absolutely true if a person observes the physical world and in the presence of the Guardian of the Threshold comes upon the powers of death and destruction. But we can express this also differently; in other words, we can say that the imperfect is derived from the perfect. Read the chapter dealing with Preuss in my book, Riddles of Philosophy. We can just as well prove that the perfect existed first and that the imperfect comes into existence through decadence. In other words, that man existed first and that the other kingdoms later descended from him through decadence. This is just as correct. The situation in which a thinking person finds himself the moment he must say one thing is true and the other also true — to recognize this situation in its whole fruitful character was really granted to the German peoples alone by reason of their folk character. This is not understood at all anywhere else in the world. It is not at all understood in the world that people can argue for a long time over this question, one maintaining that the perfect beings are derived from the imperfect, as Darwin does, and the other maintaining, as Schelling does, that the imperfect beings are derived from the perfect. Both are right, but from different points of view. If we look at the spiritual process, the imperfect is derived from the perfect; if we look at the physical, the perfect is derived from the imperfect.

The whole world has been trained to be able to hold firmly to one-sided truths. The German people are tragically condemned to stupefy themselves, thus denying their own potentiality, when they linger in the presence of a one-sided truth. Should they develop their own potentialities, it will become clear to them everywhere, provided they submerge themselves to a certain depth, that no matter what assertion is made in regard to universal relationships, the opposite is also true. Only by seeing the two things together is it possible actually to see reality. We learn to recognize this truly in the presence of the Guardian of the Threshold when we behold the struggle between those spirits who accompany us all the way to the Guardian of the Threshold out of the physical world and those who rush against them from the other world, from the super-sensible world. These are overlooked by those societies of which I have spoken.

Again, the situation is different in the case of the genuine Slavic-speaking population. But I have already said that the Western Slav has been interjected in a certain way into the German-speaking Middle European population. Just as the Latin element is the shadow of the past, so are the interjected Western Slays, with whom the German-speaking population toward the East is brought into contact, heat lightning indicating what is to come from the Slavic peoples in future. For this reason, they manifest in a certain directly opposite way what the Latin population among the English shows in its way. The Western Slays are also organized in the epoch of the consciousness soul for intellectuality, but they transform it into mysticism. The Germans are non-political; the Western Slavs are also non-political, but they tend toward bringing the spiritual world down into the physical world. They do this even in the present life. In this way they have a characteristic precisely opposite that, for example, of the French or the Italian. The Italians and the French, in their politics, are dependent upon the degree to which they please others. The politics of England are accepted as something beyond discussion whether it pleases or does not please. The politics of France depends upon the degree to which the French people please other persons. The effect of what they have done has been dependent upon this. At certain times they have pleased greatly. In the case of the Western Slays it is different. Their politics are dependent upon the manner in which their spiritual nature acts antipathetically upon the German-speaking population. They are dependent upon the degree to which they fail to please. If you study the destiny of the Czechs, the Poles, the Slovenes, the Serbs, the Western Slays, you will find that this is brought about by the degree to which they are antipathetic and fail to please the Middle European population. The relationship of the French or the Italian is dependent upon how they please; the relationship of the Poles, Slovenes, Czechs and Serbs is dependent upon the manner in which they fail to please. If you study history you will find this principle confirmed in a wonderful way because one is connected with the past and the other with the future.

The situation is utterly different in the case of the Slavic people of the East. They hold the germ of the future. There the situation is such that germinating spirituality is the basic characteristic, the most fundamental nature of the Slavic population. Unlike the great mass of the German population that always causes only its individualities to stand prominently among it, the Russian people are dependent upon the individuality who receives outside of the folk character the revelation that ought to be received by the people. The Russian people's culture will continue to be a culture of revelation for a long time, even to the dawning of the sixth post-Atlantean epoch. The Russian in greater measure than any other person is dependent upon the seer, but he is also receptive to what the seer brings to him.

The English-speaking people are simply guided through their politics to that for which it is endowed by nature. The German-speaking people are brought by their politics to something that really does not pertain to them, something whereby they are easily led into a dark channel, into untruthfulness, especially when they surrender themselves to their instincts. This never happens, however, to those persons with the appropriate self-education who are striving toward intellectuality. They actually represent the German people. The others have simply not arrived at what constitutes the real nature of the German people and are living below that level. This is still more true of the Russian people. The Russian people are not only non-political like the Germans but anti-political. It is for this reason that British politics will be self-seeking; German politics will burgeon into a dreamy idealism, which may have nothing whatever to do with reality. I am not speaking in a moral sense here but this dreamy idealism is connected with everything untrue and theoretical, and all that comes from theorizing is untrue. Russian politics must be utterly untrue, since they are an alien element and do not belong to the Russian character. When the Russian wishes to become political on the basis of his character, he is more likely to become ill. Among the Russian people becoming "political" means becoming "ill." It signifies taking destructive forces into oneself. The Russian is anti-political, not merely non-political. He may be overpowered by such politicians as those who were in office at the beginning of this war catastrophe, but these do not work as Russians. They work as something entirely different. The Russian, however, becomes ill when he is expected to become a politician, for he has nothing whatever to do with politics if he stands within his own folk character. He has to do with something different. He has to do with what constitutes the third element in the sense of Goethe's fairy tale, that is, with knowledge and wisdom that is to dawn upon humanity during the sixth postAtlantean epoch.

It is thus that the threefold combination is distributed: power, seeming, knowledge — West, Middle, East. This must be taken into account. Since the Russian nature becomes ill in connection with politics, even such politics as those of bolshevism can first be expected of the Russians in the crassest form, in the most radical form, because it would be possible to inoculate the Russians with something else just as well. The Russian nature is not only non-political, but anti-political.

These things become manifest in the presence of the Guardian of the Threshold. What the Russian primarily perceives in the presence of the Guardian of the Threshold, if he remains within his Russian nature as an occultist, is the spirits rushing toward him from the other side, the spirits rushing inward from the super-sensible. He does not see the spirits who accompany him, nor does he see the struggle between them. He sees primarily the spirits coming across from the other side, which are in a certain way full of light. He does not see death. He does not see decay. He sees what, in its sublimity, overwhelms the human being, so to speak. It puts him in danger most of all of being ever more humble and of throwing himself upon his knees in the presence of the sublime. Being blinded by what comes across is the danger in the presence of the Guardian of the Threshold for the Russian who remains as an occultist among his own people.

Such things must absolutely be taken into account if we are to see actual realities. Things are actually so in the world, things actually work in this way. Abstractions do not suffice. Humanity has never succeeded by means of abstractions. In earlier periods of time humanity possessed instincts, but in the case of the English-speaking population only one instinct exists in its spiritualized form and that is the instinct to develop the consciousness soul. Everything else must be consciously acquired. This is the characteristic thing for the world, that these things must be achieved consciously. Without knowledge of the forces working in humanity regarding which we have spoken today, it is impossible even to think of being able to say anything determinative about the social element. If a person speaks of social reform without knowing the object to which this reform is to be applied, he is speaking like a blind man about colors.

It is this that gives repeated occasion for the warning that the time has actually arrived when the human being must take earnestly the duty of learning through his life and not dealing with it like a game to be played. By means of those things we develop from our inherited potentialities, we get as far in our lives as the twenty-seventh year. In future the number of years will be continually lower. You know this on the basis of earlier discussions. We need something that maintains us throughout life as human beings who are in the process of becoming and not as individuals who are finished and completed. On the basis of these things, men will obtain an insight into much that bears on the social question. They will correct much of what they possess today in the form of illusory ideas and, indeed, much must be corrected. It may well be said that the task that lies before men can be called a difficult one, but it can be mastered. Just consider for a moment the fact that you are actually sitting here, and know these things. But do not consider yourselves on that account as specially chosen. Reflect rather upon the fact that in the world outside there will be many others who will be able to understand the same things. It is by no means impossible that these ideas shall enter into human life. In other words, the hindrance is only something artificially set up. To be sure, this artificially erected hindrance is something terrible, but it must be overcome for the reason that salvation can come in no other way. May everyone in his own place do what is possible toward overcoming the difficulties in this field.

There is much that needs to be done for humanity if only we allow the seriousness of our task to fill us through and through. First, it is necessary to achieve an insight into reality; not to live one's life in dull drowsiness, nor permit humanity to live its life in dull drowsiness. As we become acquainted with individuals today we observe how little people are inclined really to go deeply into such things. We have surely experienced the last four or four and a half years! Truly it was repeatedly possible to have well-meaning, even quite intelligent, persons approach one with all kinds of programs for the future — and what programs for the future there are in the world! People think out every imaginable thing. From the very beginning, however, these things are not calculated to bring healing to humanity, but rather nothing whatever or a curse — nothing whatever if no one takes them up or a curse if people enter into them. It is necessary to resolve only one thing and that is simply to acquaint one's self with reality. One will then not suppose that he can form a union or do this or that. But people will consider themselves in duty bound to think in harmony.with this reality whatever it is they think is real. If only within our own Movement, at least, a goodly number of persons would really endeavor in the right way to permeate their soul lives with those impulses to which we have here called your attention! If they would turn their attention away from abstract fantastic ideals for human happiness, would study instead the actual tasks and impulses of our own time, and would determine their own conduct accordingly, something would really have been attained.

Now, I have wished once more from a special point of view to show you today how the social question also must be studied. A person cannot simply say, "Since I am a human being I know mathematics, and I can, therefore, build a great railway bridge." He knows that he must first gain a knowledge of mathematics, of mechanics, of dynamics. Thus must a person learn the laws of the being of man if he wishes to have true social judgment even in the simplest matters. People are simply not identical in their natures over the whole earth, as Trotsky imagines, but are at most differentiated as groups when they belong to single peoples, or are actually individualities. On the one hand, we must learn to understand the characteristics of groups — for example, according to languages, as we considered the matter today. On the other hand, we must acquire what was brought to your attention yesterday and that is the direct understanding of one human individual by another. This is connected with everything that ought to live within us in the form of social judgment and social feeling. In other words, I have wished to acquaint you once more from a certain point of view with what may give direction to social judgment and a social feeling. I wanted to call your attention to the profound seriousness of what is called the "social question."

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