Anthroposophy: A Treasure for Life

 

Rudolf Steiner, Berlin, April 23, 1914:

I would like to finish the course of these winter talks today with a consideration about the significance of the spiritual science for the human life.

I have pointed many a time to the fact that spiritual science does not want to be only a theory of the world that one accepts or refuses like other theories. No, spiritual science hopes to be able to be a real new element of life, something that can penetrate into the whole human being, and that the human being thereby gets a real treasure for life. What I have suggested in this respect already at the suitable places of the single talks I do summarise not only today, but I will also explain it somewhat more in detail.

In the course of these talks, I have pointed repeatedly to the fact that spiritual research is based on something quite different from any other research in our time. I have mentioned that with any other research it matters, above all, that the human being unfolds his faculty of judgement, his willpower, as well as he has them, and that he applies them immediately. If we face life, we are forced to appeal to our judgement immediately to make a decision in this or that sense. On the other hand, we face life in such a way that our will should be used, we can only seek to apply that willpower which we have unfolded with our normal education.

Briefly, we are forced at any moment of the usual life, but also in the usual science, to accept ourselves as we are anyway.

On the other hand, the position of spiritual science is quite different, actually. Just this fact brings it adversaries and opponents in abundance. The spiritual researcher cannot take himself in such a way as he is. With the portrayal of the life between death and a new birth, I have especially emphasised this. What we apply, otherwise, in life directly to the outer world the spiritual researchers uses it first as preparation for the level of knowledge which he should attain only after this preparation. The maturity of judgment and willpower are not applied to the outside, not in such a way that we make decisions directly or put acts of volition in scene. Nevertheless, they are applied in a spiritual process so that the spiritual researcher uses the techniques, the inner handling of the faculty of judgement to further his soul to make it riper and riper. The will is practiced in such a way that a development of the soul from another viewpoint is possible than that he has already.

That is why one could say: what one applies usually directly to the world — one applies in spiritual research for the preparation of that what one should only attain after this preparation. That is the point that the soul transforms itself into another instrument of knowledge and willing than it is at first. Hence, that mood also comes which the spiritual researcher has compared with knowledge that he has, actually, always the feeling: what you have applied usually directly to judge the things — now you must withdraw it from the outer world to further yourself; now you must wait, until your soul has become ripe to let the knowledge of truth approach you. What flows out, otherwise, from our soul is used first to the work on the soul. However, thereby the human being experiences a mood of inner activity, not that mood of simply accepting the world.

Then we have realised that all outer sense perceptions or thoughts and mental pictures, bound to the brain, cannot supply any cognitive force to spiritual research, but that it must appeal to the stimulation of forces that are slumbering, otherwise, in the soul. I draw your attention to the fact that the real clairvoyant knowledge is based on the fact that at every moment the spiritual-scientific researcher must submerge in the processes and things which he wants to recognise, and that that which he wants to perceive and recognise is extinguished at once if he does not submerge with his whole active soul. We abandon ourselves to an outer colour or an outer tone passively; they have an effect on us. We have to be active if we want to recognise anything in the spiritual world. If we faced the things and beings passively in the spiritual world, the recognised would be extinguished or would change into hallucinations or illusions if it is still there. No moment the soul is allowed to rest in the spiritual world.

If we consider that the soul can ascend to the levels of Imaginative, Inspirative, and Intuitive knowledge only, while it is internally active continuously, then we realise that the spiritual-scientific research can deliver knowledge to the human beings only, which also necessitates a particular kind of understanding. I have pointed already repeatedly to the fact that one has not to be a spiritual researcher to understand what the spiritual researcher explores in the spiritual worlds. Since there is in every soul an immediate, secret language by which it can understand, what the spiritual researcher says, even if it cannot be active spiritual-scientifically, as one can understand a picture, even if one is not a painter. However, the human being of the present has also to fight for it; since nothing is more obvious to him to say: truth must get at me; I must behave passively to it, it has to be given to me! One feels insecure if one shall do anything if one shall first develop the soul to recognise truth. Hence, one can object to the spiritual researcher very easily: you put up concepts of truth which are not in such a way, as the concepts of truth of the outer life or the outer science; and these truth concepts say: I believe what is confirmed to me by facts what can be revealed, so to speak, by facts.

Many years ago, I called this attitude concerning knowledge and life facts fanaticism, on one side. On the other side, one dedicates himself to a certain dogmatism of facts. It signifies the same like any other dogmatism for the soul. One feels, so to speak, that one has no inner power to grasp truth if one is no longer kept to the apron strings of the outer facts or the outer science. However, spiritual science necessitates —because it has to speak about matters and processes which do not belong to the field of usual life— that you bring yourself to an understanding that is not kept tied to the apron strings of the outer facts and that also does not submit to any dogmatism of facts, but feels the light of truth shining in an inner, mental experience. The modern human being must get used only to the inner conception of the living truth. One can almost say, the modern soul is not able to bring itself to develop those strong inner forces that are necessary not to let dictate the truth, but to experience it immediately. However, this feeling is necessary if the human beings should check and understand the spiritual-scientific results. If one brings himself to experience truth in such a way, spiritual science is clear for any soul immediately. Since that does not speak against spiritual science what some people argue that anywhere in the field of the natural sciences or history anything would be that could persuade anybody that the so-called spiritual-scientific truths would be errors or pipe dreams.

Not a single scientific or historical truth contradicts the knowledge of spiritual science. I have often emphasised this in these talks. Nevertheless, those who get used to the scientific thinking at first absorb prejudice with it that one only must overcome. The opposition does not arise from the judgements of science, but from the prejudice against spiritual science. Spiritual science creates cognitive forces that have to become active if the soul wants to penetrate into the spiritual world. Therefore, one understands spiritual science only if the human beings get used gradually to bringing up the active forces from their soul depths that must be animated as free inner activities in the soul.

I have almost avoided out of this attitude using illustrations or photos for these talks. The modern human being is inclined very much to look at something passively. However, one has to grasp internally what spiritual science brings to light; one has to think, to feel, and often to want with it. While spiritual science appeals to this what exists, indeed, in any soul, but slumbers in the souls, it calls forces in the soul for the spiritual life which — if they are used for it — represent a high treasure for life which the human beings need more and more.

Only somebody who is short-sighted can deny that this human life becomes more and more complex, that our development runs in such a way that inner forces of orientation will be more and more necessary to cope with life in any direction. Except various other reasons that speak for the emergence of spiritual science in the present culture, it is also valid above all that the human souls must use these stronger forces to orientate themselves in the outer life, the more we settle in the future. Life itself requires these stronger forces from the human souls.

Of course, we cannot bring everything forward in a short talk that spiritual science— I do not say spiritual research now — has to offer as treasures for life by the living understanding of that what spiritual research brings to light. We can only characterise the single categories, overall. There I would like to start from that what is connected directly with the single human being.

I have repeatedly pointed in other contexts to the rhythmical change that happens in the human life in the course of 24 hours, waking and sleeping. I have partly mentioned in the various talks what is one can say about it from the spiritual-scientific point of view. I want only to suggest today that the human being has the sleep as a means of recovery of particular kind beside that what he has for his immediate mood from sleep and can feel immediately subjectively. Today you have only to listen to the outer medical science; it is of the opinion that the healthy sleep is a remedy. Since sleep unfolds such forces in the human being which compensate a certain daily consumption of forces. Whereas the awake life weakens the body in a way, we are mainly concerned with the development of the forces of recovery. In sleep, healthy forces have an effect on the human being. One of the best remedies for some illnesses is that one causes a healthy sleep. I cannot speak, of course, in this talk how one causes a healthy sleep. I explain on a separate occasion whether spiritual science has to say anything particular about that.

Now the human being can recover by that what develops in sleep only what we have consumed. In sleep the soul withdraws from the physical body; the spiritual-mental is in its own world, in the spiritual world. This different relation of the soul to the body when it is awake is connected with the stimulation of recovering forces. Now spiritual research appeals —as we have seen — the spiritual-mental of the human being to become free from the bodily, from the physical — for one cannot investigate the spiritual-mental in another way. Everything that the spiritual researcher investigates he investigates outside of his physical body. If he expresses the investigated in concepts and words, and if the human soul attains an understanding of this what he has to say, then that makes a particular influence on this human being who is no spiritual researcher, but only faces the communications with understanding. This soul takes care to develop understanding forces for the results of spiritual research. These forces are more or less independent of the physical body. While we understand that what the senses and the reason offer, we remain dependent with this understanding on our physical body, we wear out it, let our activity run in the whole sphere from which diseases come. If we put ourselves with our lively understanding in that what spiritual science offers, we live in the sphere of the healthy forces.

One can deny this easily, saying that one knows many people who deal with the results of spiritual science and do not at all make such an impression, as if they live in the field of the recovering forces. This may be completely entitled. However, if one deals with the results of spiritual science in the same way, as one deals with other sciences or the usual life, one does not penetrate into it. What I have called “Homunculism” in the last talk, one can unfold as well as in other sciences in spiritual science.

If one wants to understand spiritual science in the same way as one wants to understand the results of the usual sciences, then one is not correctly related to it. Spiritual science comes from spiritual research, from the spiritual life of the spiritual researcher, from a perpetual activity; and the understanding, which it gets, appeals at least to tiring the physical body, that means to what the common cognitive forces of the usual life appeal.

However, truth itself must thereby become something like a living being for the spiritual researcher as well as for the supporter of spiritual science. It will also become this. While one receives the truth, otherwise, like a sum of judgements, like something that one just thinks only, one receives spiritual science like something that pulsates through the soul like spiritual blood that animates it internally. One receives the truth like a sum of spiritual living beings; one feels penetrated with living existence by spiritual science if one meets it with understanding. Then, however, it has a recovering effect up into the physical body. As sleep, during which the soul is also beyond the physical body, is a remedy against some illnesses in the true sense of the word, spiritual science can also be such a remedy. However, only those can regard it as a remedy who want to understand the following important matter. It is comprehensible that one approaches spiritual science as one approaches the outer medicine or art because one maintains the same habitual ways of thinking. If one wants to penetrate into it, one often asks, which remedy do you have for this illness, which for that? The information of remedies is often demanded from spiritual science. Indeed, spiritual science will also give real concrete remedies; but one has to understand that it wants to give not only this or that remedy, but that it presents itself, above all. Nevertheless, one does not always accept it with understanding. Spiritual science can answer if one asks for a remedial method, take me, and then you feel my curative forces! However, this is uncomfortable for some people who often look for something completely different.

Of course, it is trivial to object that spiritual science could not help somebody who dealt with spiritual science and died early or fell ill by this or that disease. Since one would have to issue a rebuttal first whether somebody who has survived with the help of spiritual science up to his forty-fifth year had become without it maybe thirty-five or forty years old only. The methods of disproof are not often so simple.

Above all, I must draw your attention to the fact that sleep can compensate only what is used in the physical body, can take forces only from the spiritual worlds as far as the borders of the spiritual predisposition reach which the human being brings by birth in his existence. Spiritual science gets its forces from that world with which the human being is connected spiritually. Therefore, one can say that sleep is a remedy in this respect that it can compensate spent forces. Spiritual science supplies forces to the human being, which he has not yet in himself, either by what it is as such, or by what it can give. It opens a higher source of recovery for the human being as the usual life can also supply to him with the best sleep. One can compare what can work recovering from the soul by lively acceptance of spiritual science with that of which usual medical art is capable. Since also the usual medical art is able only to call those healing forces for the recovery of the human being that are already in him that are only suppressed by opposing forces. Spiritual science, however, brings new forces in the human being to effectiveness, which only develop, which are not innate. It appeals not only to the human being as a microcosm but also to the connection of the human being as a microcosm with the big spiritual world.

In order to make this clearer, I would like to point to something that already is on the border of physical and spiritual. Although it is correct that spiritual science gives the human being a treasure for life by which he can prevent illnesses in a certain respect, a much more important treasure for life strikes us for the life of the soul itself; I mean the memory. Who has not to complain of decline in memory when he becomes older? The forces with which we are equipped for our memory become exhausted. One could live ever so healthily, nevertheless, they become exhausted; even if with some outer means something may be improved, the innate forces become exhausted.

However, if one grasps spiritual science internally and if one appropriates habitual ways of thinking and imagining that are quite different from the usual ones, one notes that, indeed, the retentive power decreases that it is substituted, however, with something that is a much better memory. This appears gradually from the spiritual undergrounds of the soul what one can call retrospect of events. As we look, otherwise, at the things in space, we learn gradually to look at the things in time. The forces which memory does not develop, otherwise, because it has a reserve usually in the bodily which remain hidden, until this slumbering retentiveness is brought out of the soul and becomes retrospective forces of the past. With correctly settling in spiritual science, we instil something in the course of life that continues our usual, instilled memory by which a human being, who grasps spiritual science vividly, can survey the past much longer than someone who does not want to get involved with spiritual science. These forces become also forces directing to the future. Someone who goes into such things and their subtler differentiations notes that memory becomes something different, but something that works more reliably than that memory which is innate by the bodily forces.

This shows us with a careful observation of life how refreshing and strengthening the treasures for life are which spiritual science can give beside other things. Of course, spiritual science cannot heal spiritually what is destroyed physically in the body. Spiritual science never turns in a fanatical opposition against the outer scientific medicine as it happens with similar directions in these fields sometimes; it draws attention to the fact that that what one has to cure physically one has to cure physically. What the forces of a reinforced spiritual life can pour into us gives an inexhaustible treasure for life.

How has that become gradually mere dry knowledge with the materialistic attitude what is good for health or furthers life! Not in order to prove something, but only in order to explain something, I would like to show how we can observe the remedial instincts with animals. However, we can find the tendency with the human being to leave the healthy life more and more, and thereby he would want to change everything that is good for him into outer, dry knowledge. Today one already sees people who can no longer develop their instincts completely which say to them while eating: now you have enough. Beside their plate are scales and now they weigh how much the piece of meat weighs they eat. I expressed that only somewhat radically; but he who pursues the things realises that the sensations of life change slowly more and more into abstract knowledge. This also expresses itself in the fact that people cannot act out of their feeling concerning health or illness, but like to hand over the care for it to others.

In this respect spiritual science will be an exceptionally significant treasure for life, while it strives for penetrating a world from which the human being, indeed, only seems to be descended in which he stands, however, still inside. Since in truth his mental and physical being have arisen from the spirit. While someone goes away from the life instincts with that part of his being that is bound to the brain and nervous system, he approaches the active life again by understanding settling in spiritual science. Therefore, he does not return, indeed, to the animal desires. He will penetrate them from the mind in such a way that an abstract knowledge cannot dictate what he has to eat and to drink, how long he has to walk, to do gymnastics and so on. However, it will happen that he spiritualises his desires immediately that he lets the spiritual treasure he got from spiritual science flow into his desires and thereby knows: you should do this so and so in life. One could almost say, the human being has gone away from life by that knowledge which is bound to the brain and nervous system; however, he penetrates life again with new contents by spiritual science, and thereby he knows again immediately what is good for him, what is advantageous to him, what is not good for him. He will go with certainty through life; he will firmly stand in life because he builds a bridge between the deepest grounds of life and his existence. This will apply not only to health and illness, but also to the whole life.

It is necessary if we want to be healthy to appeal to spiritual forces that are active that ascend in lively direction. If we judge, otherwise, in life, it happens in the way that we make our judgement dependent on that what we have seen; we remain quite passive with our own soul. Just the usual science is proud if it should make judgements without taking the forces of judging from the own soul. This is the one treasure for life that spiritual science enlivens the forces of truth, of judgement. The soul has to get used more and more not to accepting judgements but to judging actively, to opening an inner source of judging. Thereby it attains skill of judging, inner freedom to handle the power of judgement, presence of mind that arises directly from the soul if it has to orientate itself in the world or to deal with the world. One could foresee a treasure for life of spiritual science that one can characterise in the following way.

Let us suppose that we have to educate, and we perform the development of the young human being spiritual-scientifically. The human being thereby grows up in such a way that he is inclined more and more to appeal to the power of inner judgement, to develop presence of mind, to experience truth. The human beings who were educated in the sense of spiritual science stand up in life quite different from those who have experienced another education. They feel instinctively because their thinking will not be an abstract one, but goes into the feelings that it is good to begin this or that. How some people stand there today within our materialistic civilisation with their lives, with their thinking and judgments and do not know what they are good for and what they should do. This will happen less and less if the souls known with spiritual science come in situations where they must decide. They will feel in such a way that their spiritualised instincts give pleasure to them. This pleasure will not deceive them; it will be the right one, and they properly familiarise themselves with life.

Somebody who represents spiritual science today relates to it in another way than one relates to another spiritual current. However, thereby one does not have the right attitude to it that one is inspired by the results of spiritual science subjectively, and that one feels the urge to inform these results to his fellow. There many a man would maybe restrain with this or that today, because it does not belong to the conveniences of life to represent spiritual science, if one arrived at the aims of spiritual science in such a way as one arrives at the aims of other sciences. However, one arrives at that what induces one to talk about the knowledge of spiritual science if one recognises that a civilisation which has become materialistic penetrates into the souls and makes them more and more passive and that spiritual science is necessary for the progressive life while the human being learns more and more to orient himself in life. If one recognises that those forces must die down, which put the human beings firmly in life in natural way, then one is urged to proclaim the spiritual-scientific knowledge. Then one would like to have more than the human language — unmanageable in certain respects —offers to show how necessary the treasure for life is in the further human progress which spiritual science can only give in our time.

If one notes less what it means to be completely subject to a dogmatism of facts, to the specialisation in science caused by fact fanaticism, one maybe understands why spiritual science can only induce that human being to become internally free and to get inner mobility who can put himself in life in such a way that he understands the basic source of life, because his soul is connected with the primordial forces of existence. More and more humanity will need to develop inner elasticity of the power of judgement in subtle activity. Spiritual science has to bring this as a treasure for life to humanity. A thinking that bears the force of truth in itself that the human being needs in the more complex future is a treasure for life which spiritual science can give humanity.

One will have to get used to developing understanding for what one can grasp only internally, because one allies with the internally living truth by spiritual science that cannot be forced to judging from the outside. As the organism is invigorated with the living force of blood and breathes in the right relation to the outside world, spiritual science invigorates us with the internally living truth. It is like a spiritual-mental heart that breathes in the surroundings where one has to inhale something spiritual to make the soul healthy so that it can oppose the inner breathing air what it makes a free inner organic force.

One would like to say that one cannot believe in this spiritual breathing today. In the future one will be able to believe in the inner heart of spiritual breathing. The soul thereby develops human freedom. As the human being can develop as a living being only because he can inhale not only the breathing air vividly, but transforms it vividly and develops a separate living physical organism in a subtle way, he will spiritually develop inner mental blood more and more which enlivens him and makes him a really free being, while he is active and transforms the outer knowledge.

If we go from knowledge to will, we have to remember that spiritual science brings the human beings mental pictures,, concepts, ideas, and results of spiritual research which live as it were so freely in the soul that they are independent of the mental, of the externally bodily, also of desires and outer impressions.

How does the human being act under usual circumstances? He acts based on outer impressions or impulses. Spiritual science is not concerned with that what is connected with the outer organism. It fulfils the human being with that what only lives in the organism what comes from the spiritual world and not directly from the organism. More and more the possibility is omitted for the human being to act from outer impulses and sensations; but what comes up to him from spiritual science supplies inner forces to him, so that he comes to action from the inside. This gives a significant impact for the human life.

Which force comes up to action if the outer world does not supply the impulses? Which impulses can work then?

One will realise by a simple consideration that it must be a comprehensive impulse, so that it fulfils the soul with a comprehensively working force. This is the impulse of love which pours out of the soul directly, but only if it is driven by inner impulses. Spiritual science supplies a treasure for life to the human being that is of unlimited value: a freer and freer incline to his action what can invigorate the power of action if the impulses are spiritual and with it to the power of love.

I have pronounced in these talks more often that spiritual science is the big school of love for life. That does not mean that spiritual science wants to talk about love at every opportunity. This talking of love reminds of a saying of Schopenhauer: “preaching morality is easy, founding morality is hard,” but still of something else. If one always hears talking love, love, love, then it is similar as with the good Gothamites who wanted to catch the light in bags and to empty them in their houses. One cannot empty love in the soul that way. It is with the human soul similar as with an oven that one has not to persuade to make the room warm, because this is its task as an oven. It does it by itself if we put wood into it and kindle it. Somebody maybe could say that the wood does not look at all that it delivers warmth. Nevertheless, there is warmth! While we put the quite different looking wood into the oven and kindle it, we bring warmth in our house. While we get used to the spiritual-scientific concepts, we get used to a free judgement, to a free orientation in the world. While we thereby fertilise our memory, we bring the impulses of the human ability of love in our souls and we get used to them. As certain it is that warmth originates in a house if the wood is properly used, it is as certain that active love that can really help is kindled by those impulses, which enter with spiritual science in the souls. Spiritual-scientific concepts are the heating material of the soul for love.

Indeed, one can also object much. Above all, it one could object that some do not find enough love with those who deal with spiritual science. However, the human being has to finally manage to regard something that seems to be unloving there or there is perhaps rather loving. For example, if anybody causes this or that less nice thing from a wrong instinct or from pure egoism, and one bawls him out of a healthy instinct, that can be a better activity of love than some words which could be quite “loving” at such moment, but would aggravate the condition from which the person concerned made this or that mistake. — The right, true experience will show that nobody who penetrates himself with spiritual science remains without its influence concerning the development of love.

Spiritual science will work as a strange treasure for life just in moral fields. It will not work like outer means, which should deter from doing this or that. It will work quietly in the soul of any human being, so that he finds the right ways of the activity of love. Spiritual science works as the inner voice of conscience which does not punish outwardly but is a more certain leader of the soul. Someone who settles in the spiritual-scientific concepts experiences that where he does wrong spiritual science has put a force in him which works like a strengthening of conscience, like correcting, giving life a direction. Thus, spiritual science will not work best by programs and outer associations in moral fields; but it will work, while it incorporates itself in the civilisation, as the moral conscience developing in humanity. With the increase of moral conscientiousness, a treasure for life is given to the modern civilisation if spiritual science finds understanding.

If one considers it in such a way, one can get a concept of that what it can be for the physical and moral healthy stimulation of the human soul. One will no longer deny that it can be an unlimited treasure for life in physical and moral respect. It can be a treasure for life which one needs very much in the future which can invigorate the human being because it wants to be recognised because it does not approach the human being from without but unites internally with his soul. Internally,one realises this: spiritual science arouses hostility much less. Today one can still understand if people come with their materialistically coloured knowledge and say that one attains knowledge which invigorates the human being also if one looks at the outside world; there one attains right knowledge. This is indeed right. However, we look once, now not only in theory, but lively, and we realise that spiritual science just gives lively knowledge everywhere; and we compare that with what a materialistically coloured worldview gives the human being.

Those persons who still build up such materialistic atomistic world edifice who are still, so to speak, at its origin are still active with theirsouls. Haeckel (Ernst H., 1834-1919, German naturalist) himself, Ostwald (Wilhelm O., 1854-1932, chemist, philosopher), his next pupils and others, they are still involved actively; they can still develop inner forces, and one could still compare that what they work with their science internally with that what spiritual science attains appealing to the inner soul forces.

With those, however, who are not in the first row with the realisation of the materialistic worldviews, or where one absorbs such a worldview passively the materialistic worldview corresponds to a food that one does not digest which cannot develop the forces for what the soul really starve. One can expel hunger, without eating really. It is possible. However, what the hunger indicates cannot be expelled for the outer organism without food. Thus, one can also suppress the hunger of the soul for the spiritual treasure for life, while one ruins the appetite for the spiritual life by a materialistic worldview. Nevertheless, the human does not stand that in the long run.

I would not like to speak here about truth and error of spiritualism. Indeed, it contains some grains of truth, not only error or fraud and the like. I would only like to point out that those who stand on the ground of a materialistic worldview do not approve spiritualism apparently. If one thinks about it with a thinking that does not invigorate itself internally, one can only say that the materialistic worldview is the same far away from spiritualism as from spiritual science. However, if one really looks into the becoming of the world, one knows something quite different. Then one knows that the hunger of the soul for a spiritual treasure for life cannot be suppressed, and that the materialists themselves produce spiritualism! One fights from materialistic side against spiritual science. However, one will realise that everywhere where spiritual science does not succeed spiritualistic associations and circles form. The representatives of a materialist worldview are the fathers of spiritualism. With an abstract thinking, one does not figure this connection out. There one makes the same error in reasoning as that who says, I plan to build up a rather good son from the child that has been born now; I prepare everything for it. However, the son does not always turn out as the father has supposed; he may become possibly a rather bad brat. That has nothing to do with lively life which ideas the materialists have of the world connections. Thus, it can happen that they produce the “son,” the brat, which they do not recognise as their son. For spiritualism is the son of materialism. Why that? Because the appetite of the soul cannot satisfy the hunger for spiritual life, and it finally happens as the physicist or chemist does that the outer events of life are demonstrated where the “spirit” is presented without inner cooperation. This is more comfortable than to have to exert oneself internally at every moment when one should climb up to the spirit. Nevertheless, this is also nothing but searching for the same worldview which materialism produces.

I want to bring in this only as an example how an abstract thinking positions itself in life. Such thinking will regard it as natural that materialism cannot produce spiritualism. How should it do it! However, a thinking that has inner power in the sphere of truth will figure the world out in quite different sense, and with such thinking the human being can position himself quite different than with an abstract, dead thinking which is “Homunculism” too.

Thus, we can regard spiritual science as a sum of life goods. Indeed, someone does not regard the said as especially valuable who thinks that life consists of outer goods only. Indeed, someone who knows that even the outer goods are dependent on the inner sense of direction in the world and on the recovering forces of the soul does not regard the idea as bold — with reference to all social conditions and what is today an occasion for so many “cures”— that such conditions can be seen correctly and that one can find the right remedies only if the human beings soar up towards spiritual science. One must really say that something is included in all that what pushes the words onto the lips of someone speaking about spiritual science.

Spiritual science finds much opposition still today. I have repeatedly pointed in the course of this winter to the fact that there must be such opponents. Their reasons are apparently striking because one can find them so easily, and because they are so extremely evident. One can understand any opponent of spiritual science very well, and, besides, he does not say something wrong; he may even say something completely right. Let me mention finally that he may say something right.

Suppose that a quite clever human being says, a spiritual researcher comes here and talks about all kinds of wrong stuff that Kant disproved for a long time, because Kant proved that the faculty of the human being is not sufficient to penetrate into the spiritual world. If this spiritual researcher had studied Kant, he would soon be quiet about that.

It is not quite wrong what the clever man says. It can be quite right. If anybody said in the time when there was not yet a microscope so that one could find macroscopic things only because the human eye cannot look into smaller things, this was quite astute. Nevertheless, what does it benefit the further progress of human thinking and life? Although it is right that the human eye cannot see down into the cells of organisms because the eyesight is limited, the human beings constructed the microscope, and the telescope and see now where the eyesight of the human eye does not reach.

As it can be very astute that somebody proves that the human eye can see no cells and the like, it can be very right what those human beings argue who speak of the limitations of the human cognitive faculties. However, does it matter whether it is right or not? As it is right that the human eye can see no cells, but that civilisation led to sharpening the eye, there are spiritual methods that strengthen the soul life, so that the human being can behold into the spiritual world. One has to understand this and other things that somebody states as an opponent of spiritual.

Actually not to boast but to inform something, I would like to mention that, nevertheless, more and more human beings note the fertile impulse of spiritual science also in the present. One can prove this by the fact that we are able to build a college of spiritual science in Dornach near Basel. One does not intend to concentrate spiritual science upon one place; I would like to stress this. However, we want to prove that we can show how spiritual science can be creative in the fields of architecture, sculpture, and painting. With this building, only a model should be given that spiritual science is able to deal with life directly. The fact that friends of spiritual science were found who donated the relatively big means that were necessary to create this college building is already a proof that this spiritual science is partly rooted in the souls of the present.

Only by the way, I would like to mention that about this building for spiritual science in Dornach all possible fairy tales are put in the world. For example, in the newest fairy tale that was put to me on the table you can read that the college that should be once built, indeed, in Munich, could not be built because we would have been rejected there. In truth, we were not rejected but certain circles in Munich, which must be asked, could not cope with their expert judgement. They let us wait for ten years; however, we could not wait with the building for ten years!

Another fairy tale tells that because of the building among various cities a kind of competition had originated, and that these would have triumphed over Munich. I would not like to say anything against the artistic Munich. Even if the inhabitants of Munich regret that the college of spiritual science is built now somewhere else, nevertheless, not so many cities scrambled to get it! Besides, the concerning newspaper is not informed especially well if it writes that Basel seems to emerge as the most favourable city from this competition.

I want to mention this only because now also more opponents appear due to this building. For it can be an outer sign that spiritual science finds already understanding that the building can be started, that such an artistic landmark can show the significance of spiritual science in the world. The opponents always ask, who are these supporters of spiritual science? They must be people without judgement, people who easily listen in good faith! However, usually those who talk in such a way would prefer that one listens to their authority or to that what they regard as authority. Those people are opponents because the supporters of spiritual science do not do this and have advanced to be unbiased in a way. However, being unbiased of a materialistically coloured or any dogmatic worldview is necessary if one wants to understand spiritual science. With this understanding one calls the life goods in the soul— as I have suggested it today — with those who get involved with spiritual science more intimately.

Someone who notes and understands their lively life, realises more and more, that this spiritual science is connected with that what must give the necessary new spiritual life blood to the future of humanity. Even if that what is connected with spiritual science may cause some childhood diseases, not everything should be justified that appears where one believes that it works correctly. I allow myself to express something just today at the end. Something that could entice us from the outside that could induce us internally in the same way to present spiritual science does not exist. But it is solely the knowledge that with spiritual science the true and fertile life goods for which any soul must be hungry enter in this human soul, and that this soul, even if it does not know it today, craves these life goods if it should not become empty. This sensation forces itself on the representative of spiritual science that lives in him, while he represents it. With this confession, I would like to close these winter talks:

This science faces the representative of spiritual science as if the real of a fertile future culture demands from him that he represents it. What gives him hope and confidence for life and for the salutary of spiritual science in future crowds together in a sensation of something real. He must develop the confidence that comes from true knowledge, which also knows in a certain respect that spiritual science has to work, even if so many opponents arise; it must be victorious. As it appears to the supporter who has a real attitude, it is the real of the future development of humanity.

I finish these winter talks expressing confidence in spiritual science.

Source: April 23, 1914  GA 63