Problems of Society E-Book

Rudolf Steiner

• Herausgeber: Rudolf Steiner Press
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Beschreibung

'Whatever turbulent outward events occur in the world, whatever form is taken by things seeking to work their way out of the depths of human evolution, we only really hearken to the true, underlying nature of these events ... if we observe the world from a spiritual perspective.' – Rudolf Steiner. In seeking to heal the many social crises of our time, Rudolf Steiner urges us to turn away from 'fixed principles, theories or social dogmas' and to rediscover the real nature of the human being. This inner reality – that cannot be understood in materialistic or deterministic ways – is the only basis on which society can truly be founded. But it is not sufficient to speak of well-meaning ideas, he says, unless we are also active in working for change; change that begins with each of us. In 1919, a year marked by strong social and political upheavals, Steiner was deeply concerned with questions relating to society. Having published a book on the subject (Towards Social Renewal), he embarked on a major campaign to publicize his 'threefold' social ideas. In addition to public lectures, however, Steiner sought to deepen the subject in a series of talks to members of the Anthroposophical Society. These lectures, gathered in this volume, reveal the 'inner' or 'esoteric' aspects of the social question. They complement Steiner's very practical efforts to realize threefolding in the historical context of his time. Whilst Steiner's suggestions for social change may not seem self-evident to pragmatic thinking, they will strike a resonant chord in many who seek deeper answers to the social problems of our times – problems that politicians seem unable to remedy. Amidst the many themes tackled here, Steiner addresses the issue of nationalism as a retrograde tendency; the tasks of Central Europe and Britain in relation to the East; the incarnation of Ahriman in the West, and the historical incarnation of Lucifer in the third millennium BC.

Leseprobe

PROBLEMS OF SOCIETY

AN ESOTERIC VIEW

From Luciferic Past to Ahrimanic Future

PROBLEMS OF SOCIETY

AN ESOTERIC VIEW

From Luciferic Past to Ahrimanic Future

Ten lectures held in Zurich, Bern, Heidenheim and Berlin between 4 February and 4 November 1919

TRANSLATED BY MATTHEW BARTON

INTRODUCTION BY MATTHEW BARTON

RUDOLF STEINER

RUDOLF STEINER PRESS CW 193

The publishers gratefully acknowledge the generous funding of this publication by the estate of Dr Eva Frommer MD (1927-2004) and the Anthroposophical Society in Great Britain

Rudolf Steiner Press Hillside House, The Square Forest Row, RH18 5ES

www.rudolfsteinerpress.com

Published by Rudolf Steiner Press 2015

Originally published in German under the title Der innere Aspekt des sozialen Rätsels (volume 193 in the Rudolf Steiner Gesamtausgabe or Collected Works) by Rudolf Steiner Verlag, Dornach. Based on shorthand transcripts and notes, not reviewed by the speaker. This authorized translation is based on the latest available (fifth) edition of 2007 edited by Hendrik Knobel and Urs Dietler

Published by permission of the Rudolf Steiner Nachlassverwaltung, Dornach

© Rudolf Steiner Nachlassverwaltung, Dornach, Rudolf Steiner Verlag 2007

This translation © Rudolf Steiner Press 2015

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978 1 85584 483 4

Cover by Mary Giddens Typeset by DP Photosetting, Neath, West Glamorgan

CONTENTS

Editor's Preface

Introduction, by Matthew Barton

LECTURE 1ZURICH, 4 FEBRUARY 1919

The human being as the centre of the universe. Cultural life as ideological shadow, and devotion to the spirit. The relation of the human soul to spiritual beings and to other human beings in the past and now. Becoming mature by learning throughout life. Spiritual insights into the child in later life, and their social importance.

LECTURE 2BERN, 8 FEBRUARY 1919

The social question as a problem for all humanity. Disparity between the proletarian, materialistic outlook and that of spiritual science. The structure of earthly culture. The external state. Economic life. Totemism. Social powers shaping the medieval Church. The paralysis of spiritual culture as sin of modern times.

LECTURE 3ZURICH, 11 FEBRUARY 1919

Earthly culture and pre-birth existence. The political state as an expression of purely earthly impulses. Economic impulses point us towards after-death existence. Nationalism as retrograde tendency and the meaning of the Christ impulse. Yahweh and Christ in modern theology. The path of thinking and the path of the will towards Christ. Supersensible responsibility towards all things.

LECTURE 4ZURICH, 9 MARCH 1919

Kurt Eisner and his speech to students in Basel. The diversity of reality. The action of the forces of antipathy and sympathy. Modern thinking applied to social dynamics. The Bolshevism of Lenin and Trotsky. Fichte's Closed Commercial State. Private ownership and spiritual property. The misuse of spiritual capacities as a cause of sickness in society.

LECTURE 5HEIDENHEIM, 12 JUNE 1919

The melancholic expression on children's countenances today. The causes of the First World War. Intellectual incapacity and a refusal to be open to the world of spirit. Taking flight into art. Impulses of moral imagination in The Philosophy of Freedom. Characterization of Central Europe, England and the East. The need for spirit in economic goals relating to England. What we should learn from the First World War.

LECTURE 6BERLIN, 12 SEPTEMBER 1919

The emergence of the empty phrase. Fading interest of the three next higher hierarchies in the human being, and rekindling this interest. Prophetic education. Humanity's unconscious crossing of the threshold. Threefolding. Appealing to the will to overcome the mechanization of the spirit, the vegetating of the soul and the animalization of the body.

LECTURE 7BERLIN, 13 SEPTEMBER 1919

Earthly life as a continuation of pre-birth life. The human being's relationship to his angel in sleep. The deeper causes of the First World War. Views in East and West about ideology and maya. The brain's decadence in Roman times and amongst the modern population. Language development and the mission of the Anglo-American peoples. Freeing modern commercial life from Greek cultural life and the Roman state. The spiritual battles between East and West.

LECTURE 8BERLIN, 14 SEPTEMBER 1919

The human being's complete immersion in the body. The need to develop scientific ideas. The new ideals of education. Differences in understanding of the Christ event. Woodrow Wilson and the League of Nations. The new understanding of Christ. The human being's importance for the life of the earth and the world of spirit. Temptations in West and East. Rabindranath Tagore. Pie-in-the-sky thinking amongst leading individuals during the First World War. Ludendorff, Michaelis. The will for truth.

LECTURE 9ZURICH, 27 OCTOBER 1919

The ancient wisdom of heathen peoples and the world-view of the Jewish people. The incarnation of Lucifer at the beginning of the third millennium BC. The primal wisdom of the third post-Atlantean era, ancient Greece, and the Gnosis. Theology becomes materialistic. The incarnation of Ahriman. Deceptions of which Ahriman makes use as he prepares to incarnate. Cardinal Newman. The Lux Mundi movement. The meaning of the divergence between the four Gospels.

LECTURE 10BERN, 4 NOVEMBER 1919

Heathen and Jewish culture. The incarnation of Lucifer at the beginning of the third millennium BC. More detailed account of Lucifer's incarnation. Luciferic wisdom as the foundation of Greek culture and the Gnosis. The incarnation of Ahriman in the West. The means employed by Ahriman to prepare his incarnation. Cardinal Newman. Robert Willbrandt. Intellect and spiritual experience. The spirit sustaining us as the physical body decays.

Notes

Rudolf Steiner’s Collected Works

Significant Events in the Life of Rudolf Steiner

EDITOR'S PREFACE

In 1919, a year marked by strong social and political upheavals, Rudolf Steiner was deeply concerned with questions about society. Four lectures given in Zurich in February of that year formed the basis for his book Towards Social Renewal (GA 23), which was published (in German) in April in an edition of 40,000 copies. The idea of the threefold social organism, and thoughts about realizing it in practice, were publicized in a big campaign.

Besides the public lectures on threefolding, Rudolf Steiner also gave more in-depth lectures on this subject for members of the Anthroposophical Society, in efforts to kindle their urgently needed enthusiasm for this concern. The lectures compiled in this volume should be read and understood very much as Marie Steiner stressed in the title ‘The Inner Aspect of the Social Question’ which she gave to the first edition of the members’ lectures in Zurich that form part of this compilation: as a complement to very practical efforts to realize threefolding in the historical context of that time.

INTRODUCTION

What is society? Margaret Thatcher famously said ‘there is no such thing’, though in fact she went on to qualify (or perhaps exacerbate) this much-derided statement by saying: ‘It's our duty to look after ourselves, and then also to look after our neighbour.’* In that order, clearly, and probably a little grudgingly. This seemingly rational idea—that we put ourselves first before considering others—is a persuasive notion, a dangerous half-truth far more toxic therefore than an outright lie. ‘Charity begins at home’ is a formulaic and vacuous phrase which pays only secondary lip-service to the needs of others. As becomes very clear in these lectures, everything and everyone in the world is, or could be, precious to us if we enlarge our imaginative scope to find ourselves in the other. In a sense we are the other, our small, separate self enlarged by this encompassing gesture. It is not a matter of caring for ourselves first, and then seeing what others need, but of recognizing how we are all simultaneously connected, and that the boundaries between I and thou are, literally, self-created.

Steiner urges us to realize that the lack that another suffers diminishes us. This thought, expressed in numerous ways and with diverse but recurring emphasis, is the ground-tone of this series of lectures. We connect with our own highest being—the Christ—not by encircling ourselves with self-interested defences, whether in small cliques, or on a larger scale, for example in ‘Fortress Europe’, but by slowly developing beyond arid ideologies to create social community that is also a spiritual reality. Anything else is to live and perpetuate a kind of lie. Such community in the broadest sense widens beyond our affiliations of race and nation to include not only the rest of humanity but the other kingdoms of nature and the invisible spiritual realms which inform physical reality. Economics, as Steiner makes plain, is or could be the practice of fraternity, whereas mostly, because it exceeds its proper scope, it is employed instead to cement unjust divisions.

But in a telling image Steiner also reminds us that it is not enough to spout these well-meaning ideas unless, at the same time, we are active in working for change that does, certainly, begin with each one of us separately, our own narrow perceptions, outlooks and self-interest. Commanding a stove to get hot will achieve nothing, he says. What is needed of course is to fill it with kindling and strike a match. While the ways Steiner suggests this can be done will not seem self-evident to a ‘pragmatist’, they will nevertheless strike a resonant chord in many who seek deeper answers to the social misery of our times, which pragmatism of any political persuasion has so far failed to remedy. The current refugee crisis in Europe has perhaps begun to show us that where politicians fail to cope with reality through abstract measures, some citizens are ahead of the game, opening their hearts and homes to the ‘others’ streaming into their country and acknowledging their own full, human responsibility.

Time and again in these lectures, Steiner urges us to turn away from ‘fixed principles, theories or social dogmas’, appealing instead to the intrinsic nature of the human being as the only reality on which society can be founded. But this reality cannot be understood in materialistic or deterministic ways. ‘Whatever turbulent outward events occur in the world’, says Steiner in lecture 5 in this volume, ‘whatever form is taken by things seeking to work their way out of the underdepths of human evolution, we only really hearken to the true, underlying nature of these events—which escapes the notice of ordinary human perception—if we observe the world from a spiritual perspective.’ Almost a hundred years after those words were spoken, the world still faces tumultuous events that will not be solved by desperate measures of ‘practical’ containment such as the closing of European borders and their encirclement in razor wire. Whatever the immediate causes of such huge and desperate upheavals, the underdepths of evolution are asking a great deal more of us, surely, than stop-gap or quick-fix solutions.

Matthew Barton, September 2015

* In an interview published in Women's Own Magazine on 31 October 1987.

LECTURE 1

ZURICH, 4 FEBRUARY 1919

SINCE I am giving public lectures here on the social question,1 it may be a good idea for us in these branch evenings2 to consider more inward aspects of the riddle of society, which is of such importance and concern today.

Whenever we meet another person, perceive him with our body-bound faculties of perception and feeling, we must of course acknowledge his intrinsic, deeper-lying inner nature. We can only perceive this more inward reality of a person when we realize that basically it is connected with everything that streams and weaves through the world as we experience it, informing our whole life. Our anthroposophic world-view is really very different from ordinary views of the world. If you take a look at my Occult Science, where I attempted to summarize this anthroposophic view of the world, you will find that not only is our nature connected with evolution on earth, but this earth itself has emerged from former planetary embodiments: from Moon evolution, which in turn proceeded from Sun evolution, and this, again, from Saturn evolution. But if we study these larger contexts and trace these great spans of evolution right up to our current developmental stage, we also find that the human being is intrinsic to them, is everywhere present. We regard the whole cosmos with all its forces and with everything that occurs in it as intrinsically related to the human being. The human being, in this view, stands at the centre of the cosmos.

In one of my Mystery Plays,3 in a conversation between Capesius and the initiate, I gave special emphasis to this foundation of our whole anthroposophic world-view and its relationship to human sensibility—the impression it inevitably makes on us when we see that all generations of the gods, all forces in the cosmos have ultimately been invoked to create us, to place us at the centre of Creation.

At the same time I have stressed the great need for humility, specifically in relation to this absolutely true idea. We have to keep reminding ourselves that if we were actually able to manifest our whole being, living in and around us as we lead our lives on earth, if we were able to experience and realize this being, we would embody a microcosm of the whole of the rest of the world. But how much of it can we experience, how much can we manifest of what we are as human beings in the loftiest sense? When we realize what we human beings actually are, we can find ourselves fluctuating between feelings of humility and arrogance. Certainly we should not puff ourselves up in pride, but nor should we let ourselves dwindle into abject insignificance. We would do so if we did not set our sights as high as possible, our human task, remembering our true nature as an all-encompassing world-view discloses it. Basically, we can never have lofty enough ambitions about what we should be. We can never sufficiently prize the deeper, cosmic feeling of human responsibility that comes over us when we consider that the whole universe is centred upon our human nature.

But rather than remaining a more theoretical idea, in an anthroposophically oriented science of the spirit this should become a feeling, a sense of holy awe towards what we should be as human beings and yet can scarcely ever be. And when we meet another person, we should often have a sense that they bring something to expression in this present incarnation. There they stand, and, passing from one incarnation to another, a quality of the infinite informs the succession of their lives. There are other ways too in which we can broaden and deepen such feelings. Founded on a science of the spirit, this feeling gives rise to a proper sense of the value of humankind, a sense of the dignity of the human being. This feeling can fill our whole soul, expanding fully within us, and this alone will imbue us with the right mood in our individual dealings with other people. The mood I have here described is one we can regard as a first, essential achievement of a modern anthroposophically oriented spiritual science: a proper estimation of humanity in the world. That is the first thing.

A second thing will emerge from a preoccupation with anthroposophic spiritual science in so far as this develops real qualities of soul rather than remaining abstract and intellectual. And it is this. As we encompass all phenomena in the world, the elements of earth, water and air, everything shining down to us from the stars, the breezes that blow, everything conveyed to us by the different realms of nature, an anthroposophic outlook shows these to be related to us in some way. And everything becomes valuable to us, precious, as we relate it to ourselves in a certain way. A feeling relationship forms as we develop a supersensible perception of all things. The poet Christian Morgenstern4 has expressed this feeling in some beautiful verses, as I have often mentioned when discussing a particular section of the Gospel of St John5—a feeling that comes over us when we allow the ascending realms of nature to work upon our sensibility. We see that the plant must inevitably feel itself to be higher in the hierarchy of life than merely lifeless minerals that give it the soil in which it roots. But it will say this: ‘Though I am a higher entity than you, I grow forth from you and owe you my existence. In gratitude I bow before what is lower than I am.’ The same quality again is one we must feel to exist in the relationship between animal and plant, and likewise in the human kingdom, the human being having ascended to a higher level in the sequence of his evolution. With reverence and respect he must look back to what in some senses is lower than he is, doing so not in a merely abstract, conceptual way, but really embodying and experiencing in his soul, as a cosmic feeling, all that pulses, lives and creates in all things. This is where the real essence of anthroposophic spiritual science leads us: it gives us the capacity to form a living human relationship with all other things.

And then there is a third thing. What spiritual science tells us of the spirit is not vague, pantheistic talk of spirit and yet more spirit underlying all things. No, this spiritual science does not merely speak of the real spirit but seeks to speak out of reality, from the spirit itself. Someone who lives in spiritual science knows that as thoughts of the spirit form in him it is the spirit itself that lives actively in these thoughts. Someone touched, if you like, by the breath of spiritual science, does not wish to express mere thoughts about the spirit but to let the spirit utter itself through his thoughts. The unmediated presence of the spirit, the active power of the spirit are what spiritual science seeks.

But now let us compare what is implanted in our inmost being of soul through a living involvement in spiritual science with what I spoke about yesterday:6 the social demands emerging over time and living in a particular way in ‘proletarian’ consciousness as modern requirements in society. Consider what lives in this proletarian consciousness today and in a sense provides the basis of its perceptions: an ideology, a mere fabric of abstract ideas. Nowadays in fact it is thought that all soul-spiritual experiences are, in essence, founded on merely commercial and economic factors, which alone are seen as real. The human being is considered to stand in a context of economic factors in which his struggle for survival unfolds. From these factors arises and emerges, like smoke and mist, all that he thinks and perceives; all that manifests in his art, all that he regards as ethics and morality, as law and justice and so on—all these things are seen as ideological shadows. Comparing this shadowy life of spirit, as it is thought to be, with the life of spirit that seeks to enter our souls from an anthroposophically oriented science of the spirit, we find that the latter, via the human soul, tries to place the spirit itself into the world as a living reality. The modern world-view, rooted in middle-class perceptions and then, disastrously, adopted by the proletariat, has banished the spirit, has no place for it. And so the spirit that should live in people as awareness of living, creative reality now leads only a shadowy existence as mere ideology.

How much of the deeper reality of human life, whose whole context we see only by looking back before earth evolution to Moon, Sun and Saturn stages, is contained in this narrow view of earthly life perceived only through the senses, through our ordinary bodily perceptions? The realities of human existence fade from this modern consciousness. Only anthroposophic spiritual science gives us a true sense and feeling of human dignity, enabling us to find a proper relationship with others whom we encounter, as one individual meeting another. Is it actually conceivable in the present chaos of human society that people can find a proper relationship with each other, one which in turn offers the only real foundation for solving the conundrums of society? Can a mutual recognition of one another's rights actually emerge unless founded on a cosmic sense of human dignity that springs only from sources of spiritual perception and spiritual feeling?

In our relationship to the external world we ought not to seek abstract thoughts as economics and sociology do, but develop direct, personal connections with the diverse realities of the world. As far as outer human circumstances are concerned, we have to establish a real relationship to this world. Through anthroposophic spiritual science, we have to develop the inner feeling and sensibility I referred to above towards all non-human creatures and entities, towards everything that stands both below and above us in the hierarchies of nature and the divine order.

Now let us consider two things here: on the one hand the proletarian consciousness I spoke of, whose intellectual apprehensions are alienated to a very great degree from a sense of the living spirit at work in human beings and instead turn all spiritual life into ideology. If you picture how the modern proletarian thinks and in particular feels about his fellow men, and how this outlook informs his views, you will realize how very far removed this is from an estimation of the human being that fully comprehends the spirit. Consider also how far removed, ultimately, is the purely economic value of things—which has become more or less the only thing of importance for people nowadays—from the values we learn to invest in non-human creatures and entities through our deeper relationship to them, as I expressed this in terms of anthroposophically oriented spiritual science.

Here we have two different things: on the one hand the condition which the unspiritual nature of recent centuries has bred in humanity, affecting human souls to a very marked degree; and on the other, the hopes that can awaken at the prospect that a true science of the spirit can today enter humanity. If we put these two things side by side, it becomes apparent, surely, that in a human soul really imbued with what spiritual science can give it the right light will be shed on the riddle of society. If you bring the right sensibility to bear on these two perspectives—one hopeless, the other hopeful—then your work on behalf of anthroposophically oriented spiritual science will become what it needs to be for humanity today: an existential necessity which should pervade all other work and creativity.

No doubt you will say that nothing appears more comprehensible in the whole context of humanity's recent development than the emergence of the social problems that beset us, and that at the same time there is nothing more comprehensible than people's sense of helplessness before these problems. You see, at the very time that these social ills are knocking so audibly at the doorway of our understanding, of our views of the world, humanity is also passing through one of its severest trials: the need to turn towards the spirit through each person's inmost strength. Nowadays no revelations will be vouchsafed to us if we do not ourselves seek them in freedom, for since the middle of the fifteenth century we have been living in the era of the consciousness soul in which everything must be drawn into the light of awareness. There is no point lamenting the ‘terrible catastrophe’ that has broken over humanity or asking why the gods have allowed this to happen. There is no point in asking why the gods do not lead us safely out of this situation in which humanity finds itself so pitifully ensnared. Instead we must remember that we live in an age when inner human freedom must unfold and manifest, in an age when the gods may not reveal their most intrinsic intentions to us except in so far as we approach them by our own free resolve, willingly accepting them into our inmost soul.

We stand at a turning point today in relation to the most vital aspects of human evolution, in relation also to Christianity. There are individuals working in the social field today who gladly accept Christianity yet draw from it only as much as they can relate to their own social ideals. But this is not the way to integrate this impulse of core importance, this impulse which gives all earthly reality its true meaning and purpose. We have to realize that Christianity has so far only just begun to be embodied and expressed in humanity. Little more of Christianity has so far come to expression than human feelings in respect of the Mystery of Golgotha, apprehensions that Christ once lived on earth in the human being Jesus, and passed through the Mystery of Golgotha. In a sense these first two thousand years of Christianity on the earth have achieved little more—since human understanding has not yet ripened sufficiently—than to make it apparent for human awareness that Christ connected himself with the earth, that he descended to the earth. Only now, in the fifth post-Atlantean epoch, that of consciousness soul development, will humanity become mature enough not only to understand that Christ passed through the Mystery of Golgotha but also what actually lives in this Mystery. Humanity will only come to understand the content of this Mystery of Golgotha through the spiritual foundations that can develop during this fifth post-Atlantean era.

Here in these branch meetings I have frequently said how trivial it is for people to say that we ‘live in a time of transition’. All times are transitional! We need to identify what each particular transition consists of. What is changing or transforming? I have characterized the major changes now occurring in human consciousness and human soul development from many different perspectives. Today, again from one specific angle, I would like to describe changes occurring in human evolution on earth in our particular time.

As I said a few moments ago, we try not only to formulate thoughts about the spirit in our anthroposophic spiritual science but seek, rather, for the reality of the spirit, seek thoughts in which the spirit itself lives and in which the spirit manifests. We can put it like this, too: Christ Jesus spoke these words, ‘I am with you always, even unto the end of the world.’7 While the Gospels are not the sole, exhaustive source of Christianity's content, we can acknowledge the truths of anthroposophic spiritual science by realizing that Christ really is here, and will remain with us always to the end of earthly times: not just as a finite power we are obliged to believe in, but as a living power that continually reveals more of itself. And what is this power revealing in our times? It reveals the content of modern anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, which seeks not only to speak of Christ but to express what Christ is at present trying to tell us through human thoughts.

In ancient times, when humankind still lived a more instinctual existence, and the human soul possessed something of an atavistic clairvoyance, this soul gave expression to spirit: spirit lived in human thoughts and in the human will. The gods then lived in human beings. Today they do so still, albeit in a rather different way from ancient times when the gods were pursuing a particular divine task in the form of earthly evolution. They attained this goal by inspiring human beings with their powers, endowing the human soul with imaginations. However strange it may sound to you, the divine worlds achieved and fulfilled their most intrinsic aims for earthly evolution, doing so, basically, by the end of the fourth post-Atlantean epoch. For this reason the spiritual beings of the higher hierarchies, whom we call the gods, now have a different relationship to the human soul than they did formerly. In ancient times the gods sought out human beings to realize their goals on earth with their aid. Today, by contrast, we must seek the gods, must raise ourselves to them out of our inmost impulse. Today we must seek to realize our aims, our conscious aims, with the help of divine powers. This is the fitting stance for people from the age of the consciousness soul onwards. In former times human aims were unconscious, instinctive, because divine aims lived within them. Human aims must now become ever more conscious, thus possessing powers that raise these aims to the gods and enable us to seek fulfilment of human aims with the aid of divine powers.

Think these words through carefully, for they are of great importance. These words express a need for us to embark upon an original, elementary striving out of ourselves, which we can seek in diverse realms of the soul, above all at a deeper social level. Here we must consider interpersonal relations from a more spiritual-scientific perspective. In ancient times human beings rightly stood in far closer relation to each other by virtue of the fact that gods were realizing their aims in human evolution. Today people are in a sense driven asunder, and have to seek and reconnect with each other in a quite different way. People still need to learn how to do this. Even superficial observation can show this to be the case everywhere. Nowadays people know little about each other. In its cosmic apprehension of human dignity and human nature, spiritual science is as yet only in its infancy. People do not generally penetrate to the depths of each other's soul, but this is what must be found in a deeper social organism: new insight into human nature must enter human evolution.

But since the prevailing outlook today, devoid of spirit as it is, sees the human being only in terms of flesh and blood, we need to start perceiving the activity of gods in other human beings if we are to forge a really spirit-filled social organism. And this will only happen if we ourselves do something about it. One thing we can do here is to seek a certain deepening of our own life of soul. There are many ways to do this. I will only outline one meditative path here. We can look back on our life for all sorts of reasons, asking ourselves how we have developed as an individual from childhood onwards. But rather than focusing primarily on our own experiences, joys and sorrows, we can consider the people who affected us in some way as parents, siblings, friends, teachers and so on. Instead of placing ourselves at the centre of our thoughts, we can place there those who intervened in our life in some way. Then we will find, for a while at least, that our self has developed far less, really, from what we ourselves possessed and much more from what flowed into us from others. If we honestly and vividly picture this in a review of our life, our relationship to the world will actually become quite different. This review will leave us with feelings that act as germinal seeds in us, seeds of real insight into human nature. Someone who repeatedly examines himself and his life with a view to perceiving the part played in it by others, who may have died long ago or are now no longer close to him, will approach other people and form individual relationships with them in a way that allows an imagination to rise up in him of the true being of this other person. This is necessary, now and in the future, as an inner social requirement for human development. In this way anthroposophic spiritual science must become eminently practical in a way that engenders life and makes it fruitful.

I would like to offer one further perspective. In former times all self-knowledge, all self-reflection and observation of one's own soul was relatively easier, a good deal easier than it now is. And this is because a profoundly inward social impulse is now emerging—not just in relation to people's awareness of relative poverty or wealth— which comes to expression in the following way for instance. Nowadays we take little account of continuing maturation throughout a human life. Inwardly authentic people such as Goethe still felt this ever-developing maturity. Even in advanced old age, Goethe wished to go on learning, knowing that he was still not all that he could become. He looked back to his youth and young adulthood and saw that all that had occurred then was a preparation for what he could now experience in old age. People today scarcely think like this, especially when they consider people as social beings. Today everyone thinks he is ready to be a public servant at the age of 20 and make ‘democratic’ decisions. There is little awareness that we develop as life progresses and we mature towards old age. People do not think of this. That is one thing we have to relearn—that the whole compass of life brings us something, and not just the first two to three decades.

And then there is something else we need to learn. Besides considering ourselves we look around us at people of differing ages, above all the child who enters life at birth. In the same way as human evolution on earth was once instinctive, a ‘given’, but is now no longer so, things that formerly arose by themselves and became manifest in the human soul are now only available through our extreme exertions and efforts to gain supersensible knowledge, or at least real knowledge of life. As for humankind in general, much that belongs intrinsically to the child's nature remains hidden from him. Yet it is not only what the child will come to perceive as he matures towards old age that initially remains hidden from him, but a great deal else that was revealed in the past to humanity in ancient, instinctive times when people still possessed an atavistic clairvoyance. This too remains hidden from us if we reflect only upon ourselves. Between the cradle and the grave there is something that cannot reveal itself if we only seek knowledge within ourselves, and this is one of the peculiarities of the consciousness soul age. We can seek clarity of consciousness, but much in the field of vision that this clarity should illumine in fact remains concealed. This is a peculiarity of our times. In childhood we enter the world and there is something in us that is important for this world, for humanity's social relationships, for historical insights. But we fail to discern this if we seek no further than ourselves, whether as child, man, woman or in advanced age. But it can be perceived in another way if our mature human soul, as man, woman or old person, is more finely tuned through real spiritual sensibility and then considers the child. Then it can become apparent that something is revealed in the child that the child himself cannot discern, and will never be able to by his own devices however long he lives, but which can be discerned in another's soul when the latter, in old age, looks back to this child. Then there is something that can be revealed through the child: not in the child himself, and not in the man or woman into whom this child develops, but in another who looks back lovingly from advanced age to the earliest life of this child.

I indicate this especially, because in such a characteristic of our times you can discern the social impulse, in the broadest sense, that flows through our age. Surely a profoundly social trait is implicit in this necessity for something fruitful to enter life solely by virtue of the fact that an old person learns from an infant to co-exist for the highest good: not just any person with any other, but specifically an old person with an infant.

This social coexistence is something that shows us the inmost spirit and meaning of our age. Anthroposophic spiritual science can disclose such things to people whose familiarity with other aspects of spiritual science has prepared them to study deeper aspects of the social problem. All of you face a social task of great dimensions if you are to draw on the social sensibility we can kindle here to benefit modern humanity. You are especially fitted to do so through anthroposophically oriented spiritual science. In the context of current debate on issues of social co-existence and socialism you can try to kindle a deeper social sense, a deeper understanding of human relations. If you succeed in doing this you will be drawing on anthroposophy to fulfil a vital social task.

Next week we will speak further of these matters in the branch lecture between the two public lectures.