How to defeat the demon of materialism. Lecture 2

 

Rudolf Steiner, Zurich, Switzerland

March 18, 1920

Yesterday I took the liberty of explaining how three destructive forces are at work in the decline of our time: the world domination of phrase, the world domination of convention, the world domination of routine. And yesterday I tried to suggest how the phrase should be replaced by thought-filled speech, by thoughts imbued with spiritual substance, which can express themselves through language in the social life of people. And in this connection I tried to suggest how the revival of spiritual life must take the place of convention, which can only arise from the living interaction of mature people living together in the democratic sense. And I tried to suggest how the practice of spiritualized life must take the place of mere routine, of spiritless routine.

If we initially characterize all these things only from the outside, they actually only seem to touch on the surface facts of our present life. But in truth, they push straight to that which, on the one hand, is rooted in the innermost part of human existence, but which, on the other hand, is also lived out in the most significant, most far-reaching and decisive social facts of life.

Yesterday I already hinted at how one of the fundamental causes of our present civilization, which is permeated by so many destructive forces, must be sought in a particular symptom. I pointed out that for three to four centuries it has essentially been scientific knowledge that has provided the basis of our world view, the one that seeks to establish

What is otherwise present in our social life are the traditional impulses for a worldview. What has been bearing fruit in a new way, what has really moved people for three to four centuries, is the question: in what way can a worldview flow from the scientific foundations of human knowledge? It is no wonder that, under the urge to found a world view in this way, precisely those forces of the human soul have been developed that are capable of bringing such a world view into being. A very specific kind of thinking and a very specific kind of will has emerged in these last centuries and has reached a certain peak of activity in our present time. Natural science, after all, emphasizes time and again that its conscientious method depends on investigating the world of facts, so that nothing is introduced into what is determined about the facts themselves, that nothing is introduced from the human being, from the human personality itself. In vain have minds such as Goethe's, who realized the one-sidedness to which mere knowledge of nature, separated from man, must lead, pointed out how real knowledge, useful for a comprehensive world view, must not be separated from man, how even the external physical fact must be considered in connection with the man standing in the world. On the other hand, it can be said that this approach, separated from the human being, has in turn celebrated its great triumphs by bringing the world of technology to what it is today. But all this could only come about under the influence of a certain kind of thinking; that thinking which devotes itself either to what nature presents through itself to observation, or to that which we can present in experiment. To understand the language of facts itself, that is the ideal of this thinking.

In this thinking, little flows in from that — the one who, in addition to spiritual science, has also conscientiously and methodically dealt with natural science knows what human will is, from what impulsates us as we carry out our task in the outer life, as we come into contact and relationship with other people, as we, in other words, place ourselves in the social being. Yes, the great triumphs of science and technology have only been possible because, to a certain extent, man has learned to think in such a way that his will influences his thinking as little as possible. One could say that a kind of thinking habit has developed under the influence of this fact over the last three to four centuries.

Now, with such thinking, one can recognize great things in the mineral world, the plant world, but less so in the animal world, and — as I already hinted at yesterday — nothing at all with regard to the true nature of man. And the reason why no other thinking has been developed alongside this, I might say, unwilled thinking, is to be found in a certain fear of everything that enters our thinking when man, of his own accord, gives this thinking its structure and organization. In this way, fantasy and arbitrariness can enter into thinking through human volition. And again and again it is pointed out how fantastic the worldviews of certain philosophers appear, who have indeed introduced human volition into their thinking, in contrast to the certain results that natural scientists have arrived at, who allowed only what nature itself or the experiment told them.

It was simply not known that it is possible to permeate human thinking with the will in such a way that in this well-trained, will-borne thinking, arbitrariness disappears just as it disappears in relation to that thinking which is only concerned with external facts or with experiments. In order to discover such thinking, which is permeated by the will, it requires, however, spiritual exercises performed with energy, care and patience. To this end, a person who wants to become a spiritual researcher, who really wants to penetrate into the spiritual world, from which alone knowledge of man can flow, must repeatedly and repeatedly over long periods of time and with inner soul methodology, hold thoughts in which he develops nothing but inner volition. He must develop such volition in these thoughts as one otherwise only develops in the outer world. In the outer world one loves, one hates, one takes up this or that activity, rejects this or that activity. In the outer world one has to deal with something about which one can only have opinions. One has to deal with something that contains crises. Whatever one recognizes in the outer world through one's will, or against which one is fought, must be carried into the world of one's thoughts if one wants to become a spiritual researcher, and one will gradually notice that these thoughts really become powers carried by the will, imbued with inner conformity to law. You must accept what I have just said in apparent abstraction in such a way that the work that is characterized by it, the inner soul work, is one that takes a long time and is carried out just as methodically, albeit in the spiritual realm, as everything we do with the most precise instruments for our chemical or physical experiments. Just as the chemist or the physicist carries out his experiments with exactitude, so the spiritual researcher carries out that which is the weighing of one thought against another, the effect of one thought upon another. In this way, abstract thinking, which has developed under the influence of natural scientific research in the course of the last three to four hundred years, rises to become an inwardly living thinking, a thinking that is more an image-gazing of a spiritual nature than ordinary abstract thinking. This is one side of it, which must be developed into real knowledge of the human being, because it is impossible to use that abstract thinking for this knowledge of the human being, which must be a spiritual knowledge, a spiritual vision, that celebrates its great triumphs in natural science. But this thinking, which is fully at home in natural science, has certain, I would say impossible results, especially in social life in the broadest sense. The more abstract our thinking becomes, the more dogmatic it becomes in the individual. Certainly, one becomes very critical, conscientious, and methodical when applying the thinking cultivated in the last three to four centuries. But one does become opinionated with regard to one's social integration into all of humanity or into a part of humanity. Just do some research and you will see when you stick to the thinking that has made science great: you get used to always being right — and the other person is right too! And people, that would be the extreme, basically couldn't communicate with each other at all.

Are we not living in the midst of this state of affairs? Today, anyone who has gone through a life of trials and tribulations and has struggled with problems for decades, who is compelled by today's education of humanity to present these problems in the accessible, conventional forms of spiritual-scientific concepts, he does not find young people everywhere who come and say, with their one-and-a-half decades of experience at most: This is my point of view, this is what I think, this is what I counter with my rich life experiences. And finally, taken in the abstract, one cannot even disagree with these beginners in life, who can think just as logically as the aged with life experience. scientific knowledge is basically not bound to human development. It is something that one achieves, wherever one finds oneself, and which one finally attains when one has reached a certain degree of adulthood. And so we can say: this abstract thinking, this intellectualism, which has today reached a high degree of perfection, gives everyone something that they actually want to communicate to everyone else, but which the other person already knows from within themselves. They want to communicate in social life. They cannot communicate because the other person is not inclined to receive the message, but at most to counter it with their point of view.

What makes science great is inapplicable in social life, because in it man gives, would like to give, something that no one else really wants to receive because he already believes he has it. Whoever really thinks through what the real basic direction of our entire present-day soul life is, will have to see much of what is present in our social life today in terms of destructive forces, which drive people apart instead of bringing them together. He will have to see it partly in what I have now characterized as a peculiarity and social consequence of abstract thinking, which is useful precisely for natural science.

Spiritual science will lead beyond this thinking because it cultivates that which remains unconscious in today's thinking, because it pushes the will – that is precisely what remains unconscious – into this thinking, because it develops deliberate thinking. And from deliberate thinking, real knowledge of human nature can follow. But that is only one element.

The other element is that, under the influence of this way of thinking, as it has emerged in the scientific world view, man has also come to contrast volition-barren thinking with thought-barren willing. Today's human being basically consists of this duality, of that soul element that cannot be described other than as volition-devoid thinking, and of the other soul element that must be described as thought-devoid willing. Spiritual scientific knowledge, in the same way that it attempts to integrate the will into thinking, seeks to bring the person who wants to become a spiritual researcher to face his own actions, the results of his own will, with an objectivity that is otherwise only applied to external facts. When he sets out on the path of spiritual research, man must become a faithful observer of what he himself does and what he himself wills. In a sense, he must first of all lift himself up ideationally and walk beside himself as in a higher self. And this higher self must observe the human being in everything he does, as one would otherwise only observe when observing external natural facts or conducting experiments. For then one learns to develop thoughts from something that, especially in the last three to four centuries, has been dominated and impulsed by the most personal emotions, particularly in certain radical, extreme circles. One learns to recognize that in thoughts which one otherwise does not see at all, whose thoughts otherwise remain completely unconscious.

And because the human being breaks down into these two elements, today we see, on the one hand, abstract scientific knowledge that only deals with the non-human, and social impulses that are only effective as personal instincts. We see how natural science has risen to certain heights, how, for example, in the East — and it will not remain with the East, unfortunately — education, which has been gained from this natural scientific thinking, now wants to gain principles from it for social coexistence , as can be seen in the East, that with scientific social policy one can do nothing but organize the most savage human instincts, organize them in such a way that the organization must drive humanity to its downfall.

These things are connected with what has come to prominence in the last few centuries, and must be considered in this context. Only when one cultivates the will in thinking, as I have indicated, then cultivates thinking in willing - the exact description can be found in my books “How to Know Higher Worlds?” and in the second part of my “Secret Science”, and in similar books – only then, when one has founded a spiritual science in this way, which can penetrate into the real being of man, will such a science not stand powerless in the face of the whole human personality. Yes, our present-day science is powerless in the face of the whole human personality, because thinking that is not pulsating with will is an activity of the human head alone; it is intellectualism that has no communicative power for life. Spiritual knowledge, as it gradually forms into a worldview from such foundations, as I could only hint at here, spiritual science is something that not only takes hold of human thoughts, the human intellect, but the whole human personality. Because it has emerged from the will, from volitional thinking, it places this human thinking in the social community, and because it carries thought into the will, it can also inspire thoughts in people that bring forth true life practice, not just routine, but life practice that can only be based on ideas, on spirit-borne will.

This spiritual-scientific world view is needed today above all in the field of that spiritual life which is most important for the public, we need it in the field of the art of education. And it is precisely in the art of education that one can explore the inner truth of what I have just characterized as the principles of a spiritual science. In the already mentioned “Waldorf School”, which was established in Stuttgart under the aegis of our friend, Mr. Molt, an attempt has been made to found education as an art on a spiritual-scientific basis. This Waldorf School does not want to be a school of world view. Those people who say that it wants to be a school in which, instead of old worldviews, anthroposophically oriented spiritual science is already brought into the child are not telling the truth. That is not the case with this school, but rather the fact that what is meant here as spiritual science can grasp the will of the human being, can permeate his actions, and that what remains only a thought, an idea, in other worldviews can be methodically formulated in the anthroposophically oriented spiritual-scientific worldview. Therefore, the question at the Steiner Waldorf School in Stuttgart is not what content we want to convey to the children, but rather that our spiritual science becomes method in it, becomes that which provides the basis for the teacher's work, for teaching, for educating, for acting, for willing.

However, this does mean that this pedagogy, this art of education, is built on a real knowledge of human nature. A true knowledge of human nature can only be gained through the methods that I have briefly outlined today. Through these methods, one learns to recognize how, above all, certain epochs can be distinguished in the developing human being, based on the inner soul-spiritual. These epochs are often superficially overlooked today, even in science, which thinks it is very exact. Of course, certain processes can be seen in the child when the teeth change around the age of seven. But those who look deeper into human nature also see how, during this time of changing teeth, a complete metamorphosis of the entire soul life takes place in the child. While in the first period, from birth to seven years, everything the child does, everything the child feels inclined and capable of doing, stems from the principle of imitation, from a feeling one's way into everything that those around the child do, the change of teeth marks the beginning of the epoch when, around the age of seven, the child's inner abilities are oriented towards authority. Up to the age of seven, the child will, as a matter of course, imitate the elementary life around him, even in the movements of his hands and the way he forms his speech, doing what the adults around him do. He will completely interweave himself into what emanates even from the imponderables of the directions of thoughts and ideas in his environment. From the seventh year onwards, the child needs to believe in those around him: they know, in a certain sense, what is right; they need authority. No matter how much one may rail against authority today, one should bear in mind that from the seventh year onwards, until around the year when sexual maturity occurs, authority is something that a person must be influenced by if they are to develop healthily. For a second epoch in human childhood is that from the change of teeth to sexual maturity, to about the age of fourteen. About, I say; it is not some kind of number game that is at issue here, but the important stages, the transformations of the life metamorphoses, that are at issue. At about the age of fourteen, the human being becomes sexually mature. A complete transformation of his soul life occurs, and that which inwardly enables him to judge independently occurs, to confront the world with what arises as judgment in his inner being, while from the seventh to the fourteenth year he can thrive if he has the authority to look up to.

Now it is precisely the years from the change of teeth to sexual maturity that the child has to be cared for in teaching and education during his so-called primary school years. But even during this time, certain epochs and sub-epochs can still be distinguished. The imitative impulse, which stems from the innermost being of the human being and prevails until the seventh year, extends, in a weakened but clearly recognizable form, beyond the seventh year into the ninth year. And anyone who, through spiritual science, acquires a living sense of how this interplay of imitative ability and need for authority comes to expression in every single child in all their learning and in relation to all education, will be able to see a unique educational problem in every child, even if they have the largest class in front of them. For such a person, as an educator and teacher, cannot be devoted to some standardised pedagogy, not to a pedagogy that in turn sets up abstract principles out of intellectualism: this is how one must educate, or this is how one must educate. No, the person who has become a teacher through spiritual science sees in the developing child something that the artist sees in each individual work that he creates: always something new and ever new. There are no abstract pedagogical principles here, only a living process of finding one's way into the child, of bringing something out of the child, of solving the riddle of what is hidden in the child, what wants to come out through the body as a spiritual-soul element. For it is the peculiarity of spiritual knowledge, which must above all be applied in the art of education, that it leads the human being back to the direct life of the soul. This is not the case with intellectualism, with abstract knowledge. When I have grasped something in the abstract, I have grasped it, and then I carry it further into life. At most, I remember what I have already learned. This is not the case with spiritual knowledge. Anyone who has taken just a few steps in this spiritual knowledge knows that spiritual knowledge does not give you something that you can merely remember. Nor does spiritual knowledge give you something that you can merely remember, like what I ate and drank today can give me something that I can merely remember tomorrow and the following days; you are not satisfied as a person if you are only supposed to remember what you ate four weeks ago. But one is satisfied as a human being who has absorbed an abstract realization when one remembers what one has learned or acquired four weeks ago. It is not the same with spiritual knowledge. Spiritual knowledge is interwoven with the human being, goes down, is digested and must always be revived, thus going into the phenomena of life.

If someone were a great spiritual researcher in his forties and did not continue to cultivate a living relationship with what can be known, he would starve in relation to the soul-spiritual content, as someone would starve who stopped eating when he turned forty. Abstract knowledge, as magnified by science, can be satisfied with appearances. It is a one-time conclusion. Spiritual knowledge brings people into a living connection with their environment, and must be constantly renewed if it is not to die away. In life, it becomes similar to eating and drinking in a lower realm.

By saying something like this, the world should recognize how radically different this spiritual knowledge is from the one that is believed to be the only possible one today. But imagine that this knowledge of the spirit permeates everything the teacher wants to do, permeating his actions and thoughts when he enters the classroom, just as iron invigorates our blood. Imagine an attitude that comes from a spiritual realization and that knows: you have to approach each individual in a special way, you cannot memorize anything, you have to face each child as a new riddle — only that gives a real pedagogy, a pedagogy full of life. Today there is much talk of educating the individuality. All kinds of fine, abstract principles are also given about it, but nothing will be achieved by this. We will only achieve something in our demanding time by founding a pedagogy as art. This pedagogy as art, which looks into the human being anew each time, forgets the science of knowledge, just as the artist discards all aesthetics and everything when he wants to create positively. What use are all the principles of beauty when we want to shape the clay! Anyone who knows what artistic creation is will agree with me. What use are all pedagogical rules when we begin to unravel and develop what is soul and spiritual in the child? It is a matter of us as educators becoming artists. We can become such artists when spiritual science penetrates our civilization as a living component. Then we will also see how we have to educate the will during the period between the seventh and ninth year, when the sense of imitation balances with the sense of authority. Above all, we must not approach the child in an inartistic way with what is determined by human convention. We must not present to the child as convention that which speaks only to the intellect. This includes the letter forms, and it also includes writing and reading. All of this is based on human convention, as we have it today, because we are no longer in the time of the old pictographic writing. We have to get away from that. That is why we try to develop reading and writing – writing first – from an artistic point of view. We try to draw or paint such forms first, from which the letter forms can then be built; first the artistic, then the intellectual. But in order for what the child's nature actually desires in this age to flourish in the right way, everything must be based on this artistic teaching. And now that we have been teaching at the Waldorf School for only a few months, we can see how it is possible to work from the artistic, how it is possible, above all in music, in song, in eurythmy, in inspired musical art – for that is what eurythmy for the child — how it is possible to give the child something in all of this that his nature demands, that his nature wants, but which at the same time makes the artistic sense pliable, makes the artistic sense inclined to receive the whole world in an artistic way. Then, when the ninth year approaches, when the human being can establish a relationship between the self and the outside world, then one can experimentally steer towards what nature description is, then one can evoke science from the artistic.

However, it must always be taken into account – however strange, however trivial it may sound, it must be said – that the human being is human. The so-called timetable, as we often have it today, does not take into account the fact that the human being is human. There is nothing less educational than teaching the child three quarters of an hour of one subject and then three quarters of an hour of something completely opposite. Three quarters of an hour of religion, three quarters of an hour of arithmetic, three quarters of an hour of writing and so on. In the Waldorf school, we try to get everything out of the laws that express themselves in the soul and spirit of the child. It is certainly necessary to do something, for example, arithmetic, for three, four, five to six weeks, without a timetable, and only when a certain amount of work has been done, you move on to something else. This is the concentration of teaching. At the end of the school year, everything that comes into consideration can be summarized by repetition. But the timetable is actually the enemy of every true art of education.

And in this way, not only can we achieve something in terms of the educational and teaching guidance of the child, but we can also deduce the necessities of the curriculum from the development of the child itself. When I held the pedagogical course for the teachers of the Waldorf School, which prepared them for their task, I was primarily concerned with developing a curriculum that is actually the mere result of what the child demands . from the sixth, seventh to the eighth, ninth year, from the ninth year to the twelfth year, from the twelfth year to sexual maturity. From what is elementary in the development of human nature, from what should be done, one can see, if one has a sense and understanding of the human being through spiritual science, from year to year, and one can see, when one enters the classroom, with a deep pedagogical sense, from what the faces of the children sitting in front of you tell you. In this way, an attempt is made – I can only sketch it out for you, I cannot describe these things in detail – to bring direct life into one of the most important social areas, into the art of education, through spiritual science. |

All abstractions, everything that makes technology great, is not fruitful where it is about bringing people together. The true art of education will have to seek its sources in spiritual science. It will only be able to do so when, in the sense of the threefold social organism, spiritual life is liberated from the state and economic life. It was only because there was still a gap in the Württemberg Education Act that it was possible to bring the Waldorf school into this gap as an independent school in which pedagogical and artistic principles can really be applied. To accept spiritual science, one does not have to become a spiritual scientist. Just as one can accept modern astronomy or modern chemistry and does not have to become an astronomer or a chemist, but only needs common sense, so one also only needs common sense, if one does not allow oneself to be influenced by prejudices, to accept what the spiritual scientific researcher brings from the depths of the soul to the surface. But when one becomes imbued with what is recognized out of will-borne thoughts and out of thought-borne volition, then one also acquires the necessary enthusiasm for life, which today's sleeping humanity lacks and which must come if things are to improve.

Until a sufficiently large number of people energetically demand what is necessary for a new beginning, it will not come of its own accord from some corner. Today's development of humanity is predisposed to demand the great goals in life out of will, out of conscious will. We have pursued that policy long enough, which always looks diplomatically at what is there and according to which one says: it will work out again. Today people see how things get worse every day; every day they believe that what has just happened will not happen again. They have not the slightest sense that in decline the power of the rising must be recognized. And so, as in the art of education, we must also look for the forces that can lead to the new building in the life of the nation. There too, only those forces can arise that come from the spirit, from the knowledge of the spirit, from the contemplation of the spirit. How those two soul elements that I have pointed out stand in relation to each other in our social life and in the life of our nation today! Abstract thinking, which every human being actually has – it is quite irrelevant whether one has outgrown the cobbler's workshop, is the son of the cobbler or [gap], if one has brought it to a level of thinking. This thinking is independent of the personal; from this thinking one has one's standpoint. But these standpoints are actually not necessary at all, for every person actually has the right to his own standpoint, and he could actually go through the world as a loner with this standpoint. There is no need to live together at all if everyone has “their standpoint” and no one has anything to say to the other.

But the peculiar thing about spiritual knowledge is that it frees us completely from these “points of view”, from this standing on points of view, that it actually becomes something that makes people receptive to life, to a true school. For anyone who becomes acquainted with spiritual science in the sense in which it is meant here as anthroposophically oriented, as it is represented by the Dornach building, every single person they meet in life becomes an interesting problem. The child itself, that is important for the art of education; the child becomes an interesting problem. And just as one feels hunger in relation to the outer nature in physical life, and how one must connect with the outer nature, so as a spiritual scientist one feels the need to constantly engage with what other people mean, what other people think, feel and want. In the broadest sense, spiritual science brings us together with people.

Today, the humanities scholar can say, above all, that when he reads other worldviews, he lets them affect him differently than other people. He is less concerned with what is error or truth, because that is usually only one's own point of view that decides this, and I have just expressed my own point of view. But however great the supposed error may be that is produced by this or that person, thinking or acting, what the person presents to us is the complement of our own being if we imbue ourselves with spiritual science. Just as the natural scientist has the need to deal with the experiment, so the spiritual scientist has the need to deal with everything human. If he establishes a world view, it becomes a social impulse because it does not divide people, but brings them together; because it brings individual life into that which is otherwise only an abstract point of view that anyone can have towards anyone else. The spiritual researcher encounters the small child, who perhaps can only babble, perhaps cannot even babble, who can reveal secrets to him through the still completely childlike eye. He receives revelations from all humanity. Through this, what spiritual science has to say, if it is only taken up into human life, becomes an impulse for social togetherness of people. Just as scientific knowledge has extracted the content of thought from human language, just as it has created the phrase, so spiritual science will bring secrets into our language, living spiritual substantiality, and our language will become, through the fact that spiritual science leads man to man, the most important social remedy for the coming time.

And precisely because knowledge has become so abstract on the one hand, the will has become dependent on mere emotions, on mere personal instincts, as I have also explained today. By creating its content out of the will borne by thoughts, spiritual science can give people a basis for more far-reaching interests than mere personal feelings or personal egoism can. What has become the decisive factor in social life in the last three to four centuries? The decisive factor has become selfishness. If we cannot rise through knowledge to the human, if the human cannot penetrate us, then we can only assert selfishness in social life. But in the moment when we have spiritual life in its independence, and thereby found that independence in the art of education, which I have outlined today, and in the moment when we permeate our will with ideas, we can find the way in our economic life from person to person, we can form associations out of the various professions and out of the coming together of consumers and producers, and we can build an economic structure into the social organism that is built precisely on what one person can learn from another, what one person can experience from another. As a result, the routine of life will be transformed into the practice of life. The more inwardly one looks at human life, the more one looks at human life itself, the more the necessity of the threefold social organism emerges from every corner. And just as economic life is fertilized by a will imbued with ideas, on the other hand, spiritual life [gap], so that which takes place between human beings - in today's world it actually only takes place as convention, and so that one also wants convention in the form of the League of Nations between peoples - to become a living element in the legal life of the state, which, as an independent link in the threefold social organism, should stand in relation to the other independent links, the independent spiritual life, the independent economic life. But at the same time, you can see from the example of the art of education how spiritual science reaches into the life of the people, into social life, how it must be this spiritual science, on the foundations of which the structure of the threefold social organism must be built. Oh, to what extremes has man come in recent times under the influence of the two soul elements described! On the one hand, we have abstract thinking, which, I might say, reaches beyond all human individuality and is the same in all people who have developed the ability for this logical, abstract, intellectual thinking. Because it is the same, it is also necessary that what man cannot attain as an abstract man, what he wants to acquire in the social community, is built on the subhuman, on mere instincts, on selfish instincts. And so we see how, in the age of Darwinism, when it was noticed that the struggle for existence, which is only valid to a limited extent in the animal kingdom, had come about, natural scientists wanted to become social politicians, social scientists, and now also wanted to establish the struggle for existence as the natural thing in human life. Yes, it is even true that the struggle for existence would rage in human life if only the instincts of egoism could be active in social life. And Lenin and Trotsky also want to stage this struggle for existence; they will only organize egoism. This is known to everyone who can see through human life today. Everything else will be a mask. We can already see the inner falsity of Leninism, which promises people the moon, shorter working hours, and has already arrived at the point of imposing twelve-hour working hours because this turns out to be a necessity within the mechanism that is to be introduced.

But never in human life will what is present in him as abstract thinking, what is the same in all people, be able to say yes to this struggle for existence; it will always be dissatisfied with this struggle for existence, it will always strive for harmony, for overcoming the struggle for existence. But if we do not succeed in pouring real spirituality into abstract intellectualism, the world of abstraction will be too weak to eliminate egoism from social life. And on the other hand, egoism will remain brutal if it is not infused with that which only spiritual knowledge, spiritual insight, can bring to man. That which appears dualistically in man today, on the one hand abstract intellectualism, on the other hand the mere rule of instincts, can only find its balance through the fact that both can be permeated by the spirit. When thoughts are spiritualized, they are brought to the individual human being and make this individual human being not only someone who wants to be right, who can give only that which others do not want, but someone who must constantly engage with other people, must constantly engage with other people, so to speak, using the language of thoughts instead of the language of phrases. But this can only be done out of a spiritual life that is not merely built on memory, but that, like hunger and thirst, is built on the daily renewal, on the metamorphosis of life, which must constantly renew itself, even if it has already reached the highest level. This can only happen if the instincts are imbued with those thoughts that arise in the way I have described today. Then, within his economic associations, man will be able to want what goes beyond the individual human being. Then economic life can be spiritualized. It is already the case that wherever one looks into real life today, the necessity for what one can demand as the threefold social order arises. This is not a utopia. Only those who have no sense of reality, who are utopians themselves, describe the threefold social order as utopian, and therefore declare everything that does not fit into their utopias to be utopian.

What is offered to the world as the impulse of the threefold social order is taken from the fullness of life. But it also shows that this full life demands today a permeation with what can be grasped in a living vision. This vision is necessary for the human being. And until it is recognized that the human being is not a mere creature of nature, it will not be possible to arrive at a solution to the social problems that are so pressing today. Years ago, when theoretical materialism was at its height, people who could already see through it were indignant against this materialism. But one cannot help saying that after all, the people who became theoretical materialists, like Haeckel and the like, were not clever people. We are confronted with the peculiar phenomenon that truly bright minds have become materialists. Why? They have become materialists because thinking, which over the last three to four centuries has developed as abstract thinking - this is particularly clear to the spiritual researcher - must be explained in materialistic terms. The thinking that makes science great is bound to the tools of the brain, to the tools of the human body. Thought ceases with death. But when we infuse our thought processes with will, when we are not only guided by observation of nature and experiment, when we permeate thought with that which arises out of the will, then something arises that can become free of the body, that is truly soul-spiritual. Materialism was right for the kind of thinking that has become prominent in the last three to four centuries and has reached its peak in the present. This must be explained in materialistic terms. That is why the cleverest people in the second half of the 19th century became materialists, because they were ultimately faced with the great mystery: what about ordinary thinking, which has reached such heights in natural science? This must be explained in materialistic terms. Materialism in its own way is fully justified, and no one can be a spiritualist in the sense of anthroposophically oriented spiritual science who does not know that materialism has a right to exist in its limited field. Anyone who now asks the question: either materialism or spiritualism? — is barking up the wrong tree. For materialism has its domain, and it must be clearly understood that if man wishes to save the soul-spiritual, he must also go beyond the thinking of which he is so proud today. And in the same way, a truly desirable social order will never be able to come about if man wishes to found these social orders only on the basis of ordinary egoistic emotions, for these can only found the struggle for existence, not a social dream à la Lenin. Man can only found a real social order if he incorporates the spiritual and soul aspects, as described today and as it is inspired in him by that world view that comes from spiritual insight, into this social life. Then man will be able to recognize and verify through life what was in Goethe's mind when he turned his gaze to the nature of man and asked himself: What is man's actual relationship to nature? — Goethe said to himself: When we survey everything from the wonderful stars above to all that presents itself in the various realms of nature around us, we must look at man, standing in front of this nature, how he absorbs this nature , how he transforms it, how he gives rise to it as something new within himself, creating a higher nature through the human being in the human being, a higher nature that is spiritual-soul, soul-spiritual. Goethe expresses this so beautifully when he says:

“By being placed at the summit of nature, man beholds himself as a whole nature that must bring forth a summit within itself. To do this, he elevates himself by permeating himself with all perfections and virtues, invoking choice, order, harmony and meaning, and finally rising to the production of the work of art, which takes a prominent place alongside his other deeds and works.” And as a complement to this thought is the other, which is in the book about Winckelmann, where the one just mentioned can also be found, when Goethe says: “When man's healthy nature works as a whole, when he feels in the world as a large, beautiful, dignified and worthy whole, when harmonious pleasure gives him pure free delight; then the universe, if it could feel itself, would exult as if it had reached its goal and would admire the summit of its own becoming and being. For what is the purpose of all the effort of suns and planets and moons, of stars and milky ways, of comets and nebulae, of worlds that have come into being and are coming into being, if not, ultimately, for a happy person to unconsciously enjoy their existence?"

Out of such an attitude, which leads man through nature, beyond nature, to himself, to the soul-spiritual, only that which is to build up our social life can arise. But it will only arise if man, through his will, directs his gaze to that which the study of spiritual life itself can give him.

Therefore, it must be said: It is not in external institutions and their transformation that we should see what can lead us forward. However we may reshape external institutions, it will not lead to a new structure. This can only lead to a new structure if man himself seeks out in his own inner being that which is currently inclined towards destruction within him. For everything external that arises in a person's life is done by the person himself, by the innermost being of the person. Only by relearning, only by rethinking can we make progress. Therefore, it cannot get better sooner than until a sufficiently large number of people muster the courage to rethink, to relearn. And finally, that which may once again come upon humanity as constructive forces must arise out of the courage to elevate the real spirit, so that, as I said yesterday in conclusion, the real spirit may gradually but effectively eliminate the un-spirit.

[There follows a discussion.]

Closing words

Dear attendees! I actually have no particular point of reference from Mr. B.'s remarks to say anything significant in this closing word, because he has provided the example of how to judge from the abstract thinking of the present that which would like to be said from spirit-fertilized thinking. And so I would like to say a few words for those of the honored audience who might have misunderstood, perhaps even with justification, what I said about the curriculum.

What I said about the curriculum is that it should work towards concentration. I did not say that there should be no variety. Apart from the fact that one could argue whether this variety should be created after three to five weeks for arithmetic, or whether this is better or that, this is a purely didactic question that cannot be treated agitatorially, but only factually. But apart from that, one has to work on concentration in class, so that a certain workload is processed in such a way that the timetable is not a hindrance. One really works through a workload for three to six weeks, as long as it is necessary, without being interrupted by anything else. Naturally, the child's nature is fully taken into account. So that you do not misunderstand me, I would like to explain to you how it is in some classes at the Waldorf School. Let's take the fifth grade. I could just as easily mention the first. There, the lessons begin a few minutes after eight o'clock in the morning. In the first two hours, the children are taught to concentrate, which is otherwise decentered and scattered throughout the school day by the usual school subjects and the timetable. So in these first two hours, until a few minutes after ten o'clock, the children work in a concentrated way towards what is otherwise viewed as the content of the school subjects. So that, let's say, in a sufficient number of weeks, arithmetic is taught, then language teaching is taught for a number of weeks, and so on. Then comes what makes concentration possible by doing it in a certain way; we teach foreign languages, French and English, to even the youngest children, so that the first classes receive foreign language teaching. And it makes a great impression when you see the little sponges coming to their lessons and see how they have actually made progress with great joy in the few weeks of foreign language lessons. There they are actually working towards using the language. So for five to six weeks in the first class it is already the case; then French is taught until 11 a.m. and English until 12 noon. Then the children go home. And on some afternoons – the children have enough free time, and it is also part of the change that they now come out again – on some afternoons, when they come back, they have singing, music and eurythmy, soulful gymnastics, soulful movement art. In this soulful movement art, the children not only have physiological gymnastics, which is also practiced, but spiritualized movement. They have, as it were, given a mute language in eurythmy. The children find their way into this extraordinarily well. And when there are eurythmy performances on days when the children are called together for special festivities, the children crowd around it, and you can see how it all comes to life. So there can be no question of there being no variety or no consideration for what suits the child's nature. But if it is said: if the children get too bored, something else has to come along – yes, my dear audience, that is precisely the task: to never let the children get too bored! At most, the children may become unruly because something is bothering them, but they would never want the lesson to end because they were bored. And in this short time, since I have attended school for long periods twice and actually always take the lead in teaching, I have been able to see for myself how, in this way, life is actually brought into the whole teaching.

My dear attendees, if you want to establish equal rights for all, not through talk but through action, then you really don't have to get worked up in a talkative way about the difference between entrepreneurs and workers, which despite all the talk is still there today; it simply exists as a fact, and if you talk today, you really can't wipe away this difference for the time being. The fact is that in the Waldorf school, the child of the proletarian sits next to the child of the entrepreneur. The children are educated in complete unity, and this is where equal rights for all are established in practice! While all the talk and agitating is going on, the “entrepreneurs” and “workers” do not have to be there, nothing will be achieved, but they must have equal rights. In short, the question cannot be solved with talk; the only way to solve it is to create goals and, above all, to envisage the real solution of the social question. By always interfering with inflammatory phrases when action is required, not a single step towards improvement can ever be taken! That is what matters today: to distinguish between action and talk. If we do not make this distinction between the talkers and those who want to do something, we will not get anywhere. The talkers will talk all social order to death. With fine talk, nothing can be achieved in our time, no matter how much this talk is based on equality. Equality must be established; mere talk of equality achieves nothing.

Another question, esteemed attendees: Must not the materially precondition be created for the economically oppressed today, so that the possibility is offered to him to absorb spiritual? I have just written an article in the last or next-to-last issue of the journal for “Dreigliederung des sozialen Organismus” (Threefolding of the Social Organism), which appears in Stuttgart: “Ideas and Bread” - to counter the popular prejudice that, when on the part of the satiated and even today those who can still satiate themselves repeatedly point out: All that is needed to solve the social question is for people to work. That is easy to say! The point is for people to see a goal, a meaning in their work! But on the other hand, it is also not enough to always hear from the other side: First bread must be created for the people, then they will rise spiritually, or then one can ensure that they rise spiritually. It is spiritual work that leads to bread being earned. You have to organize, you have to bring what is being worked on into some kind of structure, into a social one, otherwise the bread cannot be created. If a terrible wave of famine is now spreading across Central Europe, this wave of famine has not come about because bread has suddenly been withdrawn from people, but because people have entered into a social order as a result of the war catastrophe, within which no bread is being earned and within which no ideas are working that earn bread. that bread has suddenly been withdrawn from people, but that people have come into a social order through the catastrophe of war, within which no bread is earned, within which no ideas are at work that make bread earned. The ideas that were worshipped by people until 1914, who were the leaders, have been reduced to absurdity by the last five to six years, they have been dismissed. We need new ideas! And if we do not decide to say to ourselves, “We need new ideas,” then these new ideas will organize the social order, they will create the necessary bread; if we do not decide to do so, then we will not be able to move forward into the future in a healthy way. It is very strange how, I would say, it shows in individual cases that people do not want to admit to themselves how the truth actually lies and works. Until 1914, Prince Krapotkin was certainly one of the most radical. When he went back to Russia, people soon began saying: Yes, if we only get bread from the West, things will get better! — And then they heard that he was writing an 'ethics'. You see, that is what has destroyed us, that people have material life on the one hand, and an abstract spiritual life on the other, and that nothing of the abstract spiritual life spills over into the real material life. The spirit does not show itself by being worshipped; the spirit shows itself by becoming capable of dominating and organizing matter as well. That is precisely the problem: our creeds have come to mean that man has only beautiful things to look forward to when he has finished working, or at most a directive on the first white page of the ledger that says, “With God.” Even if what is processed there in debit and credit does not always justify the statement, “With God!” But therein lie the symptoms of the decline of our time, that we have lost the power to find the transition from what we profess spiritually to material life, that the prevailing attitude is: Oh yes, do not link material life with the spirit! The spirit is something very sublime, it must be kept free from material life! No, the spirit is not there for that, so that it can be kept free from material life, so that when you leave the factory you can only have it as a Sunday afternoon sensation, no matter how noble it may be. The spirit is there for that, so that you can carry it through the factory gate, so that the machines go after the spirit, so that the workers are organized after the spirit. That is what the spirit is for, to permeate material life! And that is what has destroyed us, that this is not the case, that we have an abstract spiritual life alongside a spiritless material life ruled by mere routine. It will not get better until the spirit becomes so powerful that it can rule matter. It is not the spirit that is alien to matter and the world that spiritual science wants to lead to, but the spirit that can rule man, which one finds not only when one is glad to leave the factory, but which one carries gladly and joyfully into the factory, so that every single action is done in the light of this spiritual life.

Those who want the spirit in the sense in which it is meant here, they truly do not want an impractical spirit, they want the spirit that really has something to say in the world, not just something to chat about, something that can give pleasure in free hours, but a spirit that, by dominating matter, organizing life thoroughly, can connect intimately with life. Whether we want to continue to drift deeper and deeper into misfortune by denying this spirit or not depends on this spirit and our acceptance of it. Today we must decide on this either/or. The more people who decide to embrace this active spirit, the better it will be for the future of humanity.

That is what I wanted to add to what I said today.

Source: The Rudolf Steiner Archive