Rudolf Steiner, Berlin, December 7, 1911:
It is without question that among the teachings of
spiritual science least acceptable to many of our contemporaries we may count
that of repeated Earth lives, and the echoing-on into a man's later Earth-life
of causes going back to a previous life of his on Earth. This is what we call
the law of spiritual causation, or karma. It is easy to understand that men of
the present day are bound to adopt a suspicious and adverse attitude toward
this knowledge; it follows from all the habits of thought in modern life and
will doubtless last until a more general recognition is reached of the
enlightening nature of these basic truths of spiritual science. But an
unprejudiced observation of life, an unbiased outlook on the enigmas with which
we meet daily, and which are only explicable on a basis of these truths, will
increasingly lead to a change in the habits of thought, and thus to a
recognition of the enlightening nature of these great truths.
To the phenomena we may include in this field quite
certainly belong those usually comprised under such names as human fortune or
misfortune, words with such manifold meanings. It is only necessary to utter
these two words and immediately the sensitive judgment of man's heart will
respond to the call to observe the boundaries set between his knowledge and the
happenings in the outer world. This verdict sounds as clearly as any other in
the soul, and leads to a fervent desire to know more of those inexplicable
relationships which, though rejected again and again at a certain stage of
enlightenment, must nevertheless be acknowledged by a really unprejudiced desire
for knowledge. To realize this, we need only call to mind how enigmatic good
fortune or misfortune — especially the latter — may be in a man's life. This
element of enigma can certainly not be solved by any theoretical answer; it
clearly shows that something more than any theory, more than what may be called
abstract science, is needed to answer it. Who can doubt that in man's soul there
is a definite urge to be in a certain harmony with his environment, with the
world? And what an amount of disharmony may be expressed when sometimes a man
must say of himself, or his fellow-men of him, that throughout his life he is
pursued by ill-luck! With such an admission is linked a “Why?” of deep
significance for all we have to say about the value of human life, about the
value too of the forces forming the foundation of human life. Robert Hamerling,
the important but alas too little appreciated poet of the nineteenth century,
has included in his Essays a short article on “Fortune”, beginning with a
reminiscence that recurred to him again and again in connection with this
problem. He had heard this story related in Venice — whether it was legendary or
not is of no consequence. A daughter was born to a married couple. The mother
died in childbirth. The same day the father heard that all his property had
been lost at sea. The shock brought on a stroke, and he, too, died the day the
child was born. Hence the infant met with the misfortune of becoming an orphan
on the first day of her earthly existence. She was first of all adopted by a
rich relation, who drew up a will bequeathing a large fortune to the child. She
died, however, while the child was still young; and when the will was opened it
was found to contain a technical error. The will was contested and the child
lost the whole of the fortune intended for her. Thus she grew up in want and
misery and later had to become a maid-servant. Then a nice, suitable young man
whom the girl liked very much fell in love with her. However, after the
friendship had lasted some time, and when the poor girl, who had been earning
her living under most difficult conditions, was able to think that at last some
good fortune was coming her way, it transpired that her lover was of the Jewish
persuasion and for this reason the marriage could not take place. She reproached
him most bitterly for having deceived her, but she could not give him up. Her
life continued its extraordinary, alternating course. The youth was equally
unwilling to give up the girl, and he promised that after the death of his
father — who had not long to live — he would be baptized, when the marriage
could be celebrated. He was in fact very soon called to his father's deathbed.
Now, to add to the troubles of this unfortunate girl, she became very ill
indeed. In the meantime, the father of her betrothed had died at a distance, and
his son was baptized. When he came back to her, however, the girl had already
died of the mental suffering she had endured in addition to her physical malady.
He found only a lifeless bride. Now he was overcome by most bitter grief, and he
felt that he could not do otherwise — he must see his beloved again although she
was already buried. Eventually he was successful in having her body exhumed; and
behold, she was lying in a position that clearly showed she had been buried
alive and had turned in the grave when she woke.
Hamerling says he always remembered this story when
talking or thinking of human misfortune, and of how it sometimes actually seemed
as if a human being were pursued by misfortune from his birth, not only to his
grave but as in this case beyond it. Of course, the story may be a legend, but
that is of no consequence, for everyone of us will say: Whether the facts are
true or not, they are possible, and might have happened even if they never
actually did happen. But the story illustrates very clearly the disquieting
question: How can we answer the “why” when considering the value of a life thus
pursued by misfortune? This at any rate shows us that it might be quite
impossible to speak of fortune or misfortune if a single human life only were
taken into account. Ordinary habits of thought may at least be challenged to
look beyond a single human life, when we have before us one that is so caught up
in the intricacies of the world that no concept of the value of human life can
fit in with what this life went through between birth and death. In such a case
we seem compelled to look beyond the limits set by birth and death.
When, however, we look more closely at the words
fortune or misfortune, we see at once that after all they can only be applied in
a particular sphere, that apart from mankind there is much outside in the world
that may indeed remind us of man's individual accordance or discordance with it,
but that we shall hardly venture to speak of fortune or misfortune in connection
with analogous occurrences outside mankind. Suppose that the crystal, which
ought to develop regular forms according to definite laws, should be compelled,
through the vicinity of other crystals, or through other forces of Nature at
work near it, to develop one-sidedly and is prevented from forming its proper
angles. There are actually very few crystals in Nature perfectly formed in
accordance with their inner laws. Or, if we study the plants, we must say that
in them, too, an inner law of development seems to be inborn. We cannot fail to
see, however, that very many plants are unable to bring to perfection the whole
force of the inner impulse of their development in the struggle against wind and
weather and other conditions of their environment. And we can say the same of
the animals. Indeed, we may go still further: we need only keep undeniable facts
before our eyes — how many germs of living beings perish without reaching any
real development, because under existing conditions it is impossible for them to
become that for which they were organized. Think of the vast quantity of spawn
in the sea alone, spawn that might become inhabitants of the sea, populating
this or that ocean, and how few of them actually develop. True, we might say in
a certain sense: We see quite clearly that the beings we come across in the
different kingdoms of Nature have inner forces and laws of development; but
these forces and laws are limited by their environment and the impossibility of
bringing themselves into harmony with it. And indeed, we cannot deny that we
have something similar when we speak of human fortune or misfortune. There we
see that a man's power to live out his life cannot become a reality, because of
the many hindrances continually obstructing him. Or we may see that a man — like
a crystal fortunate enough to develop its angles freely in every direction — may
be so fortunate as to be able to say with the crystal: Nothing hinders me;
external circumstances and the way of the world are so helpful to me that they
set free what is purposed in the inmost core of my being. — And only in this
case does a man usually say that he is fortunate; any other circumstances either
leave him indifferent or impel him to speak directly of misfortune. But unless
we are speaking merely symbolically, we cannot, without falling into a fantastic
vein, speak of the ill-fortune of crystals, of plants, or even of the amount of
spawn that perishes in the sea before it comes to life. We feel that to be
justified in speaking of good or bad fortune, we must rise to the level of human
life. And again, even in speaking of human life, we soon notice a limit beyond
which we can no longer speak of fortune at all, in spite of the external forces
by which man's life may be directly hindered, frustrated, destroyed. We feel
that we cannot speak of “misfortune” when we see a great martyr who has
something of importance to transmit to the world condemned to death by hostile
authorities. Are we justified in speaking of misfortune in the case of Giordano
Bruno, for instance, who perished at the stake? We feel that here there is
something in the man himself which makes it impossible to speak of ill-fortune,
or if he is successful, of good fortune. So we see good or bad fortune
definitely relegated to the human sphere — and within that to a still narrower
one.
Now, when it comes to man himself, to what he feels
with regard to fortune or misfortune in his life, it would seem that when we try
to grasp it conceptually, we very seldom succeed. For just think of the story of
Diogenes (again this may be based upon a legend, but it may also have happened),
when Alexander urged him to ask a favor of him — certainly a piece of good
fortune. Diogenes demanded what very few men would have asked for — that
Alexander should move out of his light. That then was what he regarded as
lacking to his happiness at the moment. How would most men have interpreted
their fortune at such a moment? But let us go further. Take the pleasure-seeking
man, the man who throughout his life considers himself fortunate only when all
the desires arising from his passions and instincts are satisfied — satisfied
often by the most banal of pleasures. Is there anyone who would believe that
what such a man calls good fortune could also be good fortune for the ascetic,
for one who hopes for the perfecting of his being, and considers life worth
living only when he is denying himself in every possible way, and even
subjecting himself to pain and suffering that would not be inflicted upon him by
ordinary fortune or misfortune? How different the conceptions of fortune and
misfortune are in an ascetic and a sensualist! But we can go still further and
show that any universally accepted conception of good fortune eludes us. We have
only to think of how unhappy a man can be who, without reason, without any
foundation of true reality, becomes fiercely jealous. Take a man who has no
grounds for jealousy at all, but believes that he has every possible ground; he
is unhappy in the deepest sense of the word, yet there is no occasion for it at
all. The extent, the intensity, of the unhappiness depends not on any external
reality but simply on the man's attitude to external reality — in this case, to
a complete illusion.
That good luck as well as bad may be in the highest
degree subjective, that at every turn it projects us, so to speak, from the
outer world into the inner world, is shown by a charming story told by Jean Paul
at the beginning of the first volume of his “Flegeljahre”. In this, a man who
lived habitually in central Germany pictures to himself how fortunate it would
be for him to be a parson in Sweden. It is a most delightful passage where he
imagines that he would sit in his parsonage and the day would come when by two
o'clock in the afternoon it would be dark. Then people would go to church each
carrying his own light, after which pictures of his childhood would rise before
him — his brothers and sisters, each carrying a light. It is a charming
description of his delight in the people going to church through the darkness,
each with his own lantern. Or he dreams himself into other situations, called up
simply by the memory of certain natural scenes connected together in his mind;
for instance, if he imagined himself in Italy he could almost see the orange
trees, and so on. This would throw him into a mood of most wonderful happiness;
but there was no reality in any of it; it was all only a dream.
Doubtless Jean Paul, with this dream of being a
parson in Sweden, is pointing to a deep connection in questions of good or bad
fortune by showing that the whole problem can be diverted from the outer world
to man's inner being. Strangely enough, it would seem that since good or bad
fortune may be entirely dependent upon the inner being of man, the idea of good
fortune as a general idea disappears. Yet again, if we look at what a man
generally calls good or bad fortune, we see that in countless cases he refers
it not to his inner being, but to something outside himself. We might even say:
The characteristic quality of man's desire for good fortune is deeply rooted in
his incessant urge not to be alone with his thoughts, his feelings, his whole
inner being, but to be in harmony with all that works and weaves in his
environment. In reality a man speaks of good fortune when he is unwilling that
some result, some effect, should depend on himself alone; on the contrary, he
attaches great importance to its depending, not on himself but on something
else. We need only picture the luck of the gambler — here no doubt the small and
the great have much in common. However paradoxical it may seem, we can quite
well connect a gambler's luck with the satisfaction a man may have in acquiring
an item of knowledge. For acquiring knowledge evokes in us the feeling that in
our thinking, in our soul-life, we are in harmony with the world. We feel that
what is without in picture-form is also within us in our apprehension of it;
that we do not stand alone with the world staring us in the face like a riddle,
but that the inner corresponds to the outer, that there is living contact
between them, the outer mirrored in, and shining forth again from, the inner. The
satisfaction we have in acquiring knowledge is proof of this harmony. If we
analyze the satisfaction of a successful gambler we can only say — even if he
has no thought of whence his satisfaction arises — that it could not exist at
all if he himself could bring about what happens without his cooperation. His
satisfaction is based on the fact that something outside himself is involved,
that the world has “taken him into consideration”, that it has contributed
something for his benefit. This shows that he does not stand outside the
world, that he has definite contact, definite connection, with it. And the
unhappiness a gambler feels when he loses is caused by the sensation of standing
alone — bad luck gives him a feeling of being shut out from the world, as if the
contact with it were broken.
In short, we see that it is by no means true that,
by good or bad fortune, a man means only something that can be locked up within
himself; on the contrary, when he speaks of good or bad fortune he means in the
deepest sense what establishes contact between him and the world. Hence there is
hardly anything about which the man of our enlightened age becomes so easily
superstitious, so grotesquely superstitious, as about what is called luck, what
he calls his expectation from certain forces or elements outside himself which
come to his assistance. When this is in question, a man may become exceedingly
superstitious. I once knew a very enlightened German poet. At the time of which
I speak he was writing a play. This play would not be finished before the end of
a certain month — he knew that beforehand. Yet he had a superstition that the
drama could not be successful unless it were sent in to the manager of the
theatre concerned before the first day of the next month; if it were later,
according to his superstition, it could have no success. One day, toward the end
of the month, I happened to be walking in the street when I saw him bicycling in
hot haste to the post office. Through my friendship with him I knew that his
work was far from finished; so I waited for him to come out. “I have sent my
play in to the theatre”, he said. “Is it finished then?” I asked; and he
replied: “There is still some work to do on the last acts, but I have sent it in
now because I believe it can only be successful if it goes in before the end of
this month. I have written, though, that if the play is accepted, I should like
it returned when I can finish it; but it had to be sent in at this time.” — Here
we see how a man expects help from outside, how he expects that what is to
happen will not be effected by him alone, by his efficiency or his own powers,
but that the outer world will come to his aid, that it has some interest in him
so that he does not stand alone by himself.
This only proves that, when all is said, the idea of
fortune in general eludes us when we try to grasp it. It eludes us, too, when we
look into any literature that has been written about it; for those who write
about such things are usually men whose business it is to write. Now, at the
outset everyone knows that a man can, indeed, speak correctly only of something
with which he has not merely a theoretical but a living relation. The
philosophers or psychologists who write about fortune have a living relation to
good or bad fortune only as they themselves have experienced it. Now, there is
one factor that weighs very heavily in the balance: namely, that cognition as
such, as it meets us in the world of man outside, that knowledge, when it is
taken in a certain higher sense, signifies at the very outset a kind of good
fortune. This will be admitted by everyone who has ever felt the inner delight
that knowledge can give; and this is substantiated by the fact that the most
eminent philosophers, from Aristotle down to
our own times, have constantly characterized the possession of wisdom, of
knowledge, as a piece of particularly good fortune. On the other hand, however,
we must ask ourselves: What does such an answer to the question concerning
fortune mean to one who works the whole week long with few exceptions in the
darkness of the mines, or to one who is buried in a mine and perhaps remains
alive for days together under the most horrible conditions? What has such a
philosophical interpretation of fortune to do with what dwells in the soul of a
man who has to perform some menial, perhaps repulsive, task in life? Life gives
a strange answer to the question of fortune, and we have abundant experience to
show that the philosophers' answers are often grotesquely remote, in this
connection, from our experience in everyday life, provided we consider this life
in its true character. Life, however, teaches us something else with regard to
fortune. For life appears as a noteworthy contradiction to the commonly accepted
conceptions of fortune. One case may serve as an example for many.
Let us suppose that a man with very high ideas,
even with the gift of an exceptional imagination, should have to work in some
humble position. He had perhaps to spend almost all his life as a common
soldier. I am speaking of a case that is indeed no legend, but the life of an
exceedingly remarkable man, Josef Emanuel Hilscher, who was born in Austria in
1804 and died in 1837. It was his fate to serve for the greater part of his life
as a common soldier; in spite of his brilliant gifts he rose to nothing higher
than quartermaster. This man left behind him a great number of poems, not only
perfect in form but permeated by a deep life of soul. He left excellent
translations into German of Byron's poems. He had a rich inner life. We can
picture the complete contrast between what the day brought him in the way of
fortune and his inner experiences. The poems are by no means steeped in
pessimism; they are full of force and exuberance. They show us that this life —
in spite of the many disappointments inherent in it — rose to a certain level of
inner happiness. It is a pity that men so easily forget such phenomena. For when
we set a figure of this kind before our eyes, we can see — because indeed things
are only relatively different from one another — we can see that perhaps it is
possible, even when the external life seems to be entirely forsaken by fortune,
for a man to create happiness out of his inmost being.
Now, anyone can inveigh against fortune, especially
from the point of view of spiritual science — indeed, if he clings to
misunderstood or primitive conceptions he may be fanatical in his protest
against the idea of good fortune, or equally fanatical in explaining life
one-sidedly from the idea of reincarnation and karma. A man would be fanatical
in his protest against fortune were he, through misunderstanding the principles
of spiritual science, to say: All striving after good fortune and contentment is
after all only egoism, and spiritual science makes every effort to lead men away
from egoism. Even Aristotle considered it ridiculous to maintain that the
virtuous man could in any way be content when he was experiencing unaccountable
suffering. Good fortune need not be regarded merely as satisfied egoism, but
even were this so in the first place it could still be of some value for the
whole of mankind. For good fortune can also be regarded as bringing our
soul-forces into a certain harmonious mood, thus allowing them to develop in
every direction; whereas ill-fortune produces discordant moods in our soul-life,
hindering us from making the most of our efficiency and powers. Thus, even if
good luck is sought after in the first place only as a satisfaction of egoism,
yet we can look upon it as the promoter of inward harmony in the soul-forces,
and can hope that those whose soul-forces achieve inner harmony through good
fortune may gradually overcome their egoism; whereas they would probably find it
hard to do so were they constantly pursued by ill-fortune. On the other hand, it
may be said: If a man strives after good fortune and receives it as the
satisfaction of his egoism, he can — because his forces are harmonized — work
for himself and for others in a beneficial way. So what may be called good
fortune must not be assessed one-sidedly. — Again, many a man who thinks he has
fathomed spiritual science when he has only perceived something of it from a
distance falls into error by saying: Here is a fortunate man, and there one who
is unfortunate; when I think of karma, of one life determining another, I can
easily understand that an unfortunate man has prepared this bad fortune for
himself in a former life, and that in a former life the fortunate man has
prepared his own good fortune. Such an assertion has something insidious about
it because to a certain extent it is correct. But karma — that is, the law of
the determining of one Earth-life by another — must not be accepted in the sense
of a merely explanatory law; it must be regarded as something that penetrates
our will, causing us to live in the sense of this law. And this law is only
vindicated in life if it ennobles and enriches this life. As regards fortune, we
have seen that a man's quest for happiness springs from a desire not to stand
alone, but to be in some way related to the outer world so that it may take an
interest in him. On the other hand, we have seen that good fortune may — in
contradiction to external facts — be brought about solely by a man's
conceptions, by what he experiences from external facts.
Where is there a solution of this apparent
contradiction — depending not on abstractions and theories but on reality
itself?
We can find a solution if we turn our minds to what
may be called the inmost core of man's being. In former lectures (see Note 1) we have shown how this works on the outer man, even
shaping his body, and also establishing the man in the place he occupies in the
world. If we follow up this conception of the inner core, and ask ourselves how
it can be related to the man's good or bad fortune, we most easily find the
answer if we consider that some stroke of good fortune may so affect a man that
he is bound to say: I intended this, I willed it, I used my good sense, my
wisdom, in such a way that it should come about, but now I see that the result
far exceeds all that my wisdom planned, all that I determined or was able to see
beforehand. — What man is there, in a responsible position in the world, who
would not in countless cases say something of this kind — that he had indeed
used his powers but that the success that had befallen him far outweighed the
powers exerted? If we comprehend the inner core of man not as what is there just
for once but as something in the throes of a whole evolution — in the sense, that
is, of spiritual science — if we comprehend it not simply as shaping one life but
many, as something therefore that would shape the one life as it is in our
immediate present, so that when this inner core of man's being goes through the
gate of death and passes into a supersensible world, returning when the time
comes to be active in physical life in a fresh existence — what then can such a
man, grasping his central being in this way, understanding himself within a
world-conception of this kind — what attitude can he adopt toward a success
that flows to him in the way we have pictured? Such a man can never say: This
has been my good fortune and I am satisfied; with the powers I set in motion I
expected something quite insignificant, but I am glad that my fortune has
brought me something greater. — Such a man who seriously believes in karma and
repeated Earth-lives will never say that, but rather: The success is there, but I
have shown myself to be weak in face of such a success. I shall not be content
with this success, I shall learn by it to enhance my powers; I shall sow seeds
in the inmost core of my being which will lead it to higher and higher
perfection. My unmerited success, my windfall, shows me where I am lacking; I
must learn from it. — No other answer can be given by one to whom fortune has
brought success, if he looks upon karma in the right way and believes in it. How
will he deal with such a lucky chance? (The word chance is used here in the
sense of something that comes upon one unexpectedly; it is not meant in the
ordinary way). For him it will be considered not as an end but as a beginning —
a beginning from which he will learn and which will cast its beams upon his
future evolution.
Now, what is the opposite of the instance we have
given? Let us place it clearly before us. Because a man who believes in repeated
Earth-lives and karma, or spiritual causation, receives a stroke of good fortune
as a spur to his growing forces, he regards it as a beginning, as a cause of his
further development. And the converse of this would be if, when we were struck
by some misfortune, by some misadventure that might happen to us, we were to
take it not simply as a blow, as the reverse of the success, but looking beyond
the single earthly life, we were to see it as an end, as what comes last, as
something the cause of which has to be sought in the past, just as the
consequence when appearing as success has to seek its effects in the future —
the future of our own evolution. We regard ill-fortune as an effect of our own
evolution. How so?
This we can make clear by a comparison showing that
we are not always good judges of what has occasioned the course of a life. Let
us suppose someone has lived as an idler on his father's money up to his
eighteenth year, enjoying from his own point of view a very happy life. Then
when he is eighteen years old his father loses his property; and the son can no
longer live in idleness but is obliged to train for a proper job. This will at
first cause him all sorts of trouble and suffering. “Alas!” he will say, “a
great misfortune has overtaken me.” It is a question, however, whether in this
case he is the best judge of his destiny. If he learns something useful now,
perhaps when he is fifty he will be able to say: Yes, at that time I looked upon
it as a great misfortune that my father had lost his wealth; now I can only see
it as a misfortune for my father and not for myself; for I might have remained a
ne'er-do-well all my life had I not met with this misfortune. As it happens,
however, I have become a useful member of society. I have grown into what I now
am.
So let us ask ourselves: When was this man a
correct judge of his destiny? In his eighteenth year when he met with
misfortune, or at fifty when he looked back on this misfortune? Now suppose he
thinks still further, and enquires concerning the cause of this misfortune. Then
he might say: There was really no need for me to consider myself unfortunate at
that time. Externally it seemed at first as if misfortune had befallen me
because my father had lost his income. But suppose that from my earliest
childhood I had been zealous in my desire for knowledge, suppose that I had
already done great things without any external compulsion, so that the loss of
my father's money would not have inconvenienced me — then the transition would
have been quite a different matter, the misfortune would not have affected me.
The cause of my misfortune appeared to lie outside myself, but in reality I can
say that the deeper cause lay within me. For it was my nature that brought it
upon me that my life at that time was unfortunate and beset with pain and
suffering. I attracted the ill-fortune to myself.
When such a man says this, he has already begun to
understand that in fact all that approaches us from outside is attracted from
within, and that the attraction is caused through our own evolution. Every
misfortune can be represented as the result of some imperfection in ourselves;
it indicates that something within us is not as well developed as it should be.
Here we have misfortune as opposed to success, misfortune regarded as an end, as
an effect, of something occasioned by ourselves at an earlier stage of our
evolution. Now if, instead of moaning over our ill-luck, and throwing the whole
blame upon the outside world, we look at the core of our inner being and
seriously believe in karma, that is, the causation working through one
Earth-life to another, then ill-luck becomes a challenge to regard life as a
school in which we learn to make ourselves more and more perfect. If we look at
the matter thus, karma and what we call the law of repeated Earth- lives will
become a force for all that makes life richer and increases its significance.
The question, however, may certainly arise: Can
mere knowledge of the law of karma enhance life in a definite way, making it
richer and more significant? Can it perhaps bring good fortune out of bad? —
However strange it may seem to many people nowadays, I should like to make a
remark that may be significant for a full comprehension of good fortune from the
point of view of spiritual science. Let us recall Hamerling's legend of the girl
pursued by ill-fortune up to her death, and even beyond the grave, since she was
buried alive. No doubt anyone not deeply permeated by the forces knowledge can
give will find this strange. But let us suppose that this unfortunate girl had
been placed in an environment where the outlook of spiritual science was
accepted, where this outlook would prompt the individual to say: In me there
dwells a central core of spiritual being transcending birth and death, showing
to the outer world the effects of past lives, and preparing the forces for
subsequent Earth-lives. It is conceivable that this knowledge might become
strength of soul in the girl, intensifying belief in such an inner core. It may
perhaps be said: As the force issuing from spirit and soul may be consciously
felt working into the bodily nature, it might well have worked into the girl's
state of health; and the strength of this belief might have sustained her until
the man returned after his father's death. This may appear odd to many who are
not aware of the power of knowledge based on true reality — knowledge not
abstract and merely theoretical but working as a growing force in the soul.
We see, however, that as regards the question of
good fortune this belief may offer no consolation to those who are definitely
fixed for their whole life in work that can never satisfy them, those whose
claims upon life are permanently rejected. Yet we see that firm faith in the
central core of man's being, and the knowledge that this single human life is
one among many, can certainly give awakening strength. All that in the outer
world at first appeared to me as my ill-fortune, as the evil destiny of my life,
becomes explicable to my spiritual understanding through my relation to the
universal cosmos in which I am placed. No commonplace consolation can help us to
overcome what in our own conception is a real misfortune. We can only be helped
by the possibility of regarding a direct blow as a link in the chain of destiny.
Then we see that to consider the single life by itself is to look upon the
semblance and not the reality. An example of this is the youth who idled away
his time until his eighteenth year and then, when misfortune befell him and he
was obliged to work, regarded it as sheer ill-luck and not as the occasion of
his later happiness. Thus, if we look more deeply into the matter we see clearly
that study of a life from one point of view alone can give only an apparent
result, and that what strikes us as good or bad fortune appears merely in its
semblance if we study it in a circumscribed way. It will only show us its true
nature and meaning if we study it in its proper place in the man's whole life.
Even so, if we look at this whole human life as exhausted within the boundaries
of birth and death, a life that can find no satisfaction in ordinary human
relations and the usual work will never seem comprehensible to us. To become
comprehensible — comprehensible according to the reality we have often expressed
in those terms to which, however, where real human destiny is concerned, only
spiritual science can give life — this can become comprehensible only when we know
that what we find intelligible no longer has power over us. And to him for whose
central being good fortune is only an incentive to higher development,
ill-fortune is also a challenge to further evolution. Thus the apparent
contradiction is solved for us when, in observing life, we see the conception of
good or bad fortune approaching us merely from the outside, converted into the
conception of how we transform the experiences within ourselves and what we make
of them. If we have learnt from the law of karma not only to derive satisfaction
from success but to take it as an incentive to further development, we also
arrive at regarding failure and misfortune in the same way. Everything undergoes
change in the human soul, and what is a semblance of good or bad fortune becomes
reality there. This, however, implies much that is immensely important. For
instance, let us think of a man who rejects outright the idea of repeated
Earth-lives. Suppose, then, that he sees a man suffering from jealousy founded
on an entirely imaginary picture created by himself; or another pursuing a
visionary happiness; or on the other hand he may see someone who develops a
definite inner reality merely out of his imagination, develops something most
real for the inner life — that is, out of mere semblance, not out of the world
of real facts. Thus he might say to himself: Would it not be the most
incredible incongruity as regards the connection of man's inner nature with the
outer world, if the matter ended with this one fact occurring in the one
Earth-life? There is no doubt that, when a man passes through the gate of death,
any illusion of fortune or of jealousy which he has looked on as a reality will
be wiped out. But what he has united with his soul as pleasure and pain, the
effect which has arisen in the stirrings of his feelings, becomes a power living
its own life in his soul and connected with his further evolution in the
universe. Thus we see, by means of the transformation described, that man is
actually called upon to develop a reality out of the semblance.
With this, however, we have also arrived at an
explanation of what was said at the beginning. It becomes clear to us now why it
is impossible for a man to connect his fortune with his ego, with his
individuality. Yet, even if he cannot directly connect it with his ego as
external happenings that approach him and raise his existence, he can,
nevertheless, so transform it within himself that what was originally external
semblance becomes inner reality. Thereby man becomes the transformer of outward
semblance into being, into reality. But when we look around upon the world about
us we see how the crystals, the plants, and animals are hindered by external
circumstances so that they cannot live out fully the inner laws of their growth;
we see how countless seeds must perish without coming into true existence. What
is it that fails to happen? Why can we not speak here of good or bad fortune as
we have stated it? — The reason is that these are not examples of an outer
becoming an inner, so that in fact an outer is mirrored in the inner and a
semblance transformed into real being. It is only because man has this central
core of being within him that he can free himself from the immediate external
reality and experience a new reality. This reality experienced within him lifts
his ordinary existence above external life so that he can say: On the one hand,
I live in the line of heredity, since I bear within me what I have inherited
from my parents, grandparents, and so on; but I also live in what is only a
spiritual line of causation, and yet can give me something besides the fortune
that may come to me from the outside world. — Through this alone it is clear
that man is indeed a member of two worlds, an outer and an inner. You may call
it dualism, but the very way that man transforms semblance into reality shows us
that this dualism is itself merely semblance, since in man outer semblance is
continually being transformed into inner reality. And life shows us, too, that
what we experience in imagination when we call an actual fact false becomes
reality within us.
Thus we see that what may be called good and bad
fortune is closely associated with what is within man. But we see, too, how
closely associated it is with the conception of spiritual science, that man
stands in a succession of repeated Earth-lives. If we look at the matter in this
way we may say: Do we not then base our inner happiness on an outer semblance
and reckon with this happiness as something permanent in our evolution? All
external good fortune that falls to our share is characterized in what,
according to legend, Solon said to Croesus: Call no man happy till you know his
end. — All good fortune that comes to us from outside may change; good fortune
may turn into bad. But what is there in the realm of fortune that can never be
taken from us? What we make of the fortune that falls to us, whether it comes
from success or failure. Fundamentally the following true and excellent
folk-saying can be applied to the whole of a man's relation to his fortune:
Everyone is the smith of his own fortune. — Simple country people have coined
many beautiful and extraordinarily apposite sayings about fortune, and from
these we can see what profound philosophy there is in the simplest man's
outlook. In this respect those who call themselves the most enlightened could
learn very much from them. To be sure these truths are often presented to us in
a very crude form. There is even a proverb that says: Against a certain human
quality the Gods themselves contend in vain. There is, however, also a
noteworthy proverb that connects this particular human quality — against which
the Gods are said to contend in vain — with good fortune, saying: Fools have the
most luck. We need not conclude from this that the Gods seek to reward such men
with good fortune to make up for their stupidity. Nevertheless, this proverb
shows us a distinct consciousness of the inner depths and of the necessity for
deepening what we must call the interdependence in the world of man and fortune.
For as long as our wisdom is applicable to external matters alone, it will help
us very little; it can help us only when it is changed into something within
ourselves, that is, when it again acquires the quality, originally possessed by
primitive man, of building on the strong central core that transcends birth and
death, the central core that is explicable only in the light of repeated
Earth-lives. Thus what a man experiences as the mere semblance of fortune in the
outer world is distinguished from what we may call the true essence of fortune.
This comes into being the moment a man can make something of the external facts
of his life, can transform them and assimilate them with the evolving core of
his being which goes on from life to life. And when a sick man — Herder — in the
most severe physical pain says to his son: “Give me a sublime and beautiful
thought, and I will refresh myself with it”, we see clearly that in an afflicted
life Herder awaits the illumination of a beautiful thought as refreshment — that
is, as a stroke of good fortune.
Hence it is easy to say that man with his inner
being must be the smith of his own fortune. But let us fix our minds on the
powerful influence of that world-conception of spiritual science that we have
been able to touch upon today, where it is not merely theoretical knowledge but
knowledge that stirs the core of our souls, since it is filled with what
transcends good or bad fortune. If we grasp this world-outlook thus, it will
furnish us with more sublime thoughts than almost any other, thoughts that make
it possible for a man — even at the moment when he must succumb to misfortune —
to say: “But this is only a part of the whole of life.”
This question of fortune has been raised today to
show how everyday existence is ennobled and enriched by the real thoughts
concerning life's totality which spiritual science can give us, thoughts that do
not merely touch upon life as theories but that bring with them the forces of
life. And this is the essential. We must not only have external grounds of
consolation for one who is to learn to bear misfortune through the awakening of
those inner forces; rather must we be able to give him the real inner forces
that lead beyond the sphere of misfortune to a sphere to which — although life
seems to contradict this — he actually belongs. This, however, can only be given
by a science which shows that human life extends beyond birth and death, and yet
is linked with the whole beneficent foundation of our world-order. If we can
count upon this in a world-conception, then we may say that this conception
fulfills the hopes of even the best of men; we may say that with such a
conviction a man can look at life as one who though his ship is tossed to and
fro by surging waves yet finds courage to rely on nothing in the outer world,
but on his own inner strength and character. And perhaps the observations of
today may serve to set before men an ideal that Goethe in a certain
way sketched for us, but that we may interpret beyond Goethe's hopes as an ideal
for every man. True, it does not stand as something to be immediately achieved
in the single human life, but as an ideal for man's life as a totality — if a
man, tossed to and fro in his life between good and bad fortune, feels like a
sailor buffeted by stormy waves, who can rely on his own inner power. This must
lead to a point of view which, with a slight adaptation of Goethe's words, we
may describe thus: —
Man stands with courage at the helm.
By wind and waves the ship is driven —
The wind and waves do not affect him.
Controlling them, he looks in the green depths
And trusts, no matter wrecked or safe in port,
The forces of his inner being.
- Note 1:
- The Hidden Depths of Soul Life. Berlin, 23rd November, 1911.
Source: http://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/GoodFt_index.html
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