Today
we will have to reach some kind of conclusion in our
deliberations. Clearly that will have to include drawing the
consequences which arise for the future action of the
Anthroposophical Society. In order to gain a better understanding
of what this action might be, let us take another look at the way
anthroposophy emerged in modern civilization.
From
the reflections of the last eight days, you will have realized
how an interest in anthroposophy was at first to be found in
those circles where the impulse for a deeper spiritual
understanding was already present. This impulse came from all
kinds of directions. In our context, however, it was only
necessary to look at the way homeless souls were motivated by the
material which Blavatsky presented to the present age in the form
of what might be called a riddle.
But
if the Anthroposophical Society can be traced back to this
impulse, it should, on the other hand, also have become clear
that this material was not central to anthroposophy itself. For
anthroposophy as such relies on quite different sources. If you
go back to my early writings, Christianity
As Mystical Fact
and Eleven
European Mystics,
you will see that they are not based in any way on material which
came from Blavatsky or from that direction in general, save for
the forms of expression which were chosen to ensure that they
were understood.
Anthroposophy
goes back directly to the subject matter which is dealt with in
philosophical terms in my The
Philosophy of Freedom,
as well as in my writings on Goethe of the 1880s. [ Note
1 ]
If you examine that material, you will see that its essential
point is that human beings are connected with a spiritual world
in the most profound part of their psyche. If they therefore
penetrate deeply enough, they will encounter something to which
the natural sciences in their present form have no access,
something which can only be seen as belonging directly to a
spiritual world order.
Indeed,
it should be recognized that it is almost inevitable that turns
of phrase sometimes have to be used which might sound
paradoxical, given the immense spiritual confusion of language
which our modern civilization has produced. Thus it can be seen
from my writings on Goethe [ Note
2 ]
that it is necessary to modify our concept of love, if we are to
progress from observation of the world to observation of the
divine-spiritual. I indicated that the Godhead has to be thought
of as having permeated all existence with eternal love and thus
has to be sought in every single being, something quite different
from any sort of vague pantheism. But there was no philosophical
tradition in that period on which I could build. That is why it
was necessary to seek this connection through someone who
possessed a richer, more intense life, an inner life which was
saturated with spiritual substance.
That
was precisely the case with Goethe. When it came to putting my
ideas in book form, I was therefore unable to build a theory of
knowledge on what existed in contemporary culture, but had to
link it with a Goethean world conception, [ Note
3 ]
and on that basis the first steps into the spiritual world were
possible.
Goethe
provides two openings which give a certain degree of access into
the spiritual world. The first one is through his scientific
writings. For the scientific view he developed overcomes an
obstacle in relation to the plant world which is still unresolved
in modern science. In his observation of the vegetable realm, he
was able to substitute living, flexible ideas for dead concepts.
Although he failed to translate his theory of metamorphosis into
the animal world, it was nevertheless possible to draw the
conclusion that similar ideas on a higher level could be applied.
I tried to show in my Theory
of Knowledge Implicit in Goethes World Conception
[ Note
3 ]
how Goethe's revitalizing ideas made it possible to advance to
the level of history, historical existence. That was the one
point of entry.
There
is, however, no direct continuation into the spiritual world, as
such, from this particular starting-point in Goethe. But in
working with these ideas it becomes evident that they take hold
of the physical world in a spiritual way. By making use of
Goethe's methodology, we are moving in a spiritual environment
which enables us to understand the spiritual element active in
the plant or the animal.
But
Goethe also approached the spiritual world from another angle,
from a perspective which he was able to indicate only through
images, one might almost say symbolically. In his Fairy
Tale of the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily,
[ Note
4 ]
he wished to show how a spiritual element is active in the
development of the world, how the individual spheres of truth,
beauty and goodness act together, and how real spiritual beings,
not mere abstract concepts, have to be grasped if we want to
observe the real life of the spirit.
It
was thus possible to build on this element of Goethe's world
view. But that made something else all the more necessary. For
the first thing we have to think about when we talk about a
conception of the world which will satisfy homeless souls is
morality and ethics. In those ancient times in which human beings
had access to the divine through their natural clairvoyance, it
was taken for granted that moral impulses also came from this
divine spiritual principle. Natural phenomena, the action of the
wind and the weather, of the earth and of mechanical processes,
represented to these ancient human beings an extension of what
they perceived as the divine spiritual principle. But at the same
time they also received the impulses for their own actions from
that source. That is the distinguishing feature of this ancient
view of the world. In ancient Egyptian times, for example, people
looked up to the stars in order to learn what would happen on
earth, even to the extent of gaining insight into the conditions
which governed the flooding of the Nile to support their needs.
But by the same means they calculated, if I may use that term,
what came to expression as moral impulses. Those, too, were
derived from their observation of the stars.
If
we look now to the modern situation, observation of the stars has
become purely a business in which physical mathematics is simply
transferred into the starry sky. And on earth so-called laws of
nature are discovered and investigated. These laws of nature,
which Goethe transformed into living ideas, are remarkable in
that the human being as such is excluded from the world.
rot
= red; gelb = yellow; hell = light colouring
If
we think in diagrammatic form of the content of the old
metaphysical conceptions, we have the divine spiritual principle
here on the one hand (red). The divine spirit penetrated natural
phenomena. Laws were found for these natural phenomena, but they
were recognized as something akin to a reflection of divine
action in nature (yellow). Then there was the human being (light
colouring). The same divine spirit penetrated human beings, who
received their substance, as it were, from the same divine spirit
which also gave nature its substance.
What
happened next, however, had serious consequences. Through natural
science the link between nature and the divine was severed. The
divine was removed from nature, and the reflection of the divine
in nature began to be interpreted as the laws of nature.
For
the ancients these laws of nature were divine thoughts. For
modern people they are still thoughts, because they have to be
grasped by the intellect, but they are explained on the basis of
the natural phenomena which are governed by these laws of nature.
We talk about the law of gravity, the law of the refraction of
light, and lots of other fine things. But they have no real
foundation, or rather they are not elevating, for the only way to
give real meaning to these laws is to refer to them as a
reflection of divine action in nature.
That
is what the more profound part of the human being, the homeless
soul, feels when we talk about nature today. It feels that those
who talk about nature in such a superficial way deserve the
Goethean — or, actually, the Mephistophelean —
epithet: and mock themselves unwittingly. [ Note
5 ]
People talk about the laws of nature, but the latter are remnants
from ancient knowledge, a knowledge which still contained that
additional element which underlies the natural laws.
Imagine
a rose bush. It will flower repeatedly. When the old roses wither
away, new ones grow. But if you pick the roses and allow the bush
to die the process stops. That is what has happened to the
natural sciences. There was a rose bush with its roots in the
divine. The laws which were discovered in nature were the
individual roses. These laws, the roses, were picked. The rose
bush was left to wither. Thus our laws of nature are rather like
roses without the rose bush: not a great deal of use to human
beings. People simply fail to understand this in those clever
heads of theirs, by which so much store is set in our modern
times. But homeless souls do have an inkling of this in their
hearts, because the laws of nature wither away when they want to
relate to them as human beings.
Modern
mankind therefore unconsciously experiences the feeling, in so
far as it still has the capacity to feel, that it is being told
something about nature which withers the human being. A terrible
belief in authority forces people to accept this as pure truth.
While they feel in their hearts that the roses are withering
away, they are forced into a belief that these roses represent
eternal truths. They are referred to as the eternal laws which
underlie the world. Phenomena may pass, but the laws are
immutable. In the sense that anthroposophy represents what human
beings want to develop from within themselves as their
self-awareness, natural science represents anti-anthroposophy.
We
need still to consider the other side, the ethical and moral.
Ethical and moral impulses came from the same divine source. But
just as the laws of nature were turned into withering roses, so
moral impulses met the same fate. Their roots disappeared and
they were left free-floating in civilization as moral imperatives
of unknown origin. People could not help but feel that the divine
origin of moral commandments had been lost. And that raised the
essential question of what would happen if they were no longer
obeyed? Chaos and anarchy would reign in human society.
This
was juxtaposed with another question: How do these commandments
work? Where do we find their roots? Yet again, the sense of
something withering away was inescapable. Goethe raised these
questions, but was unable to answer them. He presented two
starting-points which, although they moved in a convergent
direction, never actually came together. The
Philosophy of Freedom
was required for that.
It
had to be shown where the divine is located in human beings, the
divine which enables them to discover the spiritual basis of
nature as well as of moral laws. That led to the concept of
Intuition presented in The
Philosophy of Freedom,
to what was called ethical individualism. Ethical individualism,
because the source of the moral impulses in each individual had
to be shown to reside in that divine element with which human
beings are connected in their innermost being.
The
time had arrived in which a living understanding of the laws of
nature on the one hand and the moral commandments on the other
had been lost; because the divine could no longer be perceived in
the external world it could not be otherwise in the age of
freedom. But that being so, it was necessary to find this divine
spiritual principle within human beings in their capacity as
individuals. That produced a conception of the world which you
will see, if you only consider it clearly, leads directly to
anthroposophy.
Human
beings are connected with the divine spirit in their innermost
selves. This divine spiritual principle develops into a divine
spiritual world order. By observing the inner selves of all human
beings in combination, we are able to penetrate the divine
spiritual sphere in the same way as the latter was achieved in
ancient times by looking outward and seeing the divine spirit in
physical phenomena, through primitive clairvoyance.
Our
purpose must be to gain access to the spirit, not in a
materialistic way, but through the real recognition of the
essential human self.
In
fact The
Philosophy of Freedom
also represents the point when anthroposophy came into being, if
our observations are guided by life rather than by theoretical
considerations. Anyone who argues that this book is not yet
anthroposophical in nature is being rather too clever. It is as
if we were to say that there was a person called Goethe who wrote
a variety of works, and this were then to be challenged by
someone claiming that it was hardly a consistent view, on the
grounds that a child was born in Frankfurt am Main in 1749 who
was blue at birth and not expected to live, and that Goethe's
works had no logical connection with that child. That is not a
particularly clever standpoint, is it? It is just as silly to say
that it is inconsistent to argue that anthroposophy developed
from The
Philosophy of Freedom.
The
Philosophy of Freedom
continued to live, like the blue baby in Frankfurt did, and
anthroposophy developed from it.
Those
who are involved in the contemporary development of so-called
logic and philosophy have lost the capacity to include real life
in their considerations, to incorporate what is springing up and
sprouting all around them, what goes beyond the pedantic practice
of logic.
The
task, then, was to make a critical assessment of those
representatives of contemporary life who were endeavouring to
bring progress to human civilization.
As
you are aware, I concentrated on two important phenomena. The
first was Nietzsche, who, in contrast to everyone else, was
honest in his response to the direction in which modern thinking
was developing.
What
was the general verdict in the 1890s? It was that natural science
was, of course, right. We stand on the terra firma of science and
look up at the stars. There was the instance of the conversation
between Napoleon and the great astronomer Laplace. [ Note
6 ]
Napoleon could not understand how God was to be found by looking
at the stars through a telescope. The astronomer responded that
this conjecture was irrelevant. And it was, of course, irrelevant
when Laplace observed the stars with a telescope. But it was not
irrelevant from the moment that he wanted to be a human being.
Microscopes allowed the investigation of micro-organisms and the
smallest components of living things. You could look through a
microscope for as long as you wished, but there was not the
slightest trace of soul or spirit. The soul or the spirit could
be found neither in the stars nor under the microscope. And so it
went on. This is what Nietzsche came up against.
Others
responded by accepting that we look through a telescope at the
stars and see physical worlds but nothing else. At the same time
they said we also have a religious life, a religion which tells
us that the spirit exists. We cannot find the spirit anywhere,
but we have faith in its existence all the same. The science
which we are committed to believe in is unable to find the spirit
anywhere. Science is the way it is because it seeks reality; if
it were to take any other form it would be divorced from reality.
In other words, anybody who undertakes a different type of
research will not find reality! Therefore we know about reality,
and at the same time believe in something which cannot be
established as a reality. Nevertheless, our forefathers tell us
it should be reality.
Such
an attitude led to tremendous dilemmas for a soul like
Nietzsche's, which had maintained its integrity. One day he
realized he would have to draw the line somewhere. How did he do
that? He did it by arguing that reality is what is investigated
by natural science. Everything else is invalid. Christianity
teaches that Christ should not be sought in the reality which is
investigated with the telescope and the microscope. But there is
no other reality. As a consequence there is no justification for
Christianity. Therefore, Nietzsche said, I will write The
Anti-Christ.
People
accept the ethical commandments which are floating around or
which authority tells us must be obeyed, but they cannot be
discovered through scientific research. Under his Revaluation
of Values Nietzsche therefore wished to write a second book,
in which he showed that all ideals should be abandoned because
they cannot be found in reality.
Furthermore,
he argued that moral principles certainly cannot be deduced from
the telescope or the microscope, and on that basis he decided to
develop a philosophy of amorality. Thus the first three books of
Revaluation of Values should have been called: first book,
Anti-Christ; second book, Nihilism or the Abolition of
Ideals; third book, Amorality or the Abolition of the
Universal Moral Order.
It
was a terrible stance to adopt, of course, but his standpoint
took to its final and honest conclusion what had been started by
others. We will not understand the nerve centres of modern
civilization if we do not observe these things. It was something
which had to be confronted. The enormous error of Nietzsche's
thinking had to be demonstrated and corrected by returning to his
premises, and then showing that they had to be understood as
leading not into the void but into the spirit. The confrontation
with Nietzsche [ Note
7 ]
was thus a necessity.
Haeckel,
too, had to be confronted in the same way. [ Note
8 ]
Haeckel's thinking had pursued the approach of natural science to
the evolution of physical beings with a certain consistency. That
had to be utilized in my first anthroposophical lectures with the
help of Topinard's book. [ Note
9 ]
This kind of procedure made it possible to enter the real
spiritual world. The details could then be worked on through
further research, through continuing to live with the spiritual
world.
I
have said all this in order to make the following point. If we
want to trace anthroposophy back to its roots, it has to be done
against a background of illustrations from modern civilization.
When we look at the development of the Anthroposophical Society
we need to keep in mind the question: Where were the people who
were open enough to understand matters of the spirit? They were
the people who, because of the special nature of their homeless
souls, were prompted by Blavatsky and theosophy to search for the
spirit.
The
Theosophical Society and anthroposophy went alongside one another
at the beginning of the twentieth century simply because of
existing circumstances. That development had been fully outgrown
in the third stage, which began approximately in 1914. No traces
were left, even in the forms of expression. Right from the
beginning the thrust of anthroposophical spiritual work included
the aim of penetrating the Mystery of Golgotha and Christianity.
The other direction of its work, however, had to be to understand
natural science by spiritual means. The acquisition of those
spiritual means which would once again enable the presentation of
true Christianity in our age began in the first phase and was
worked on particularly in the second one.
The
work which was to be done in a scientific direction really only
emerged in the third stage, when people working in the scientific
field found their way into the anthroposophical movement. They
should take particular care, if we are to avoid the repeated
introduction of new misunderstandings into the anthroposophical
movement, to take full cognizance of the fact that we have to
work from the central sources of anthroposophy. It is absolutely
necessary to be clear about this.
I
believe it was in 1908 that I made the following remarks [ Note
10 ]
in Nuremberg, in order to describe a very specific state of
affairs. Modern scientific experimentation has led to substantial
scientific progress. That can only be a good thing, for spiritual
beings are at work in such experimentation. The scientist goes to
the laboratory and pursues his work according to the routines and
methods he has learnt. But a whole group of spiritual beings are
working alongside him, and it is they who actually bring about
results; for the person standing at the laboratory bench only
creates the conditions which allow such results to emerge
gradually. If that were not the case, things would not have
developed as they have in modern times.
Whenever
discoveries are made they are clothed in exceedingly abstract
formulae which others find incomprehensible. There is a yawning
gap today between what people understand and what is produced by
research, because people do not have access to the underlying
spiritual impulses.
That
is how things are. Let us return once more to that excellent
person, Julius Robert Mayer. [ Note
11 ]
Today he is acknowledged as an eminent scientist, but as a
student at Tubingen University he came close to being advised to
leave before graduating. He scraped through his medical exams,
was recruited as a ship's doctor and took part in a voyage to
India. It was a rough passage; many people on board became ill
and he had to bleed them on arrival.
Now
doctors know, of course, that arterial blood is more red than
venous blood which has a bluer tinge. If one bleeds someone from
the vein, bluish blood should therefore spurt out. Julius Robert
Mayer had to bleed many people, but something peculiar happened
when he made his incisions. He must have cursed inwardly, because
he thought he had hit the wrong place, an artery, since red blood
appeared to be spurting out of the vein. The same thing happened
in every case and he became quite confused. Finally he reached
the conclusion that he had made his incisions in the right place
after all but, as people had become sick at sea, something had
happened to make the venous blood more red than blue, nearer the
colour of arterial blood.
Thus
a modern person made a tremendous discovery without in any way
seeking the spiritual connections. The modern scientist says:
Energy is transformed into heat and heat into energy, as in the
steam engine. The same thing happens in the human body. Since the
ship had sailed into a warmer, tropical climate, the body needed
to burn less oxygen to produce heat, resulting in less of a
transformation into blue blood. The blood remained redder in the
veins. The law governing the transformation of matter and energy,
which we recognize today, is deduced from this observation.
Let
us imagine that something similar was experienced by a doctor not
in the nineteenth, but in the eleventh or twelfth century. It
would never have occurred to him to deduce the mechanical concept
of heat equivalence from such observations. Paracelsus, [ Note
12 ]
for instance, would never have thought of it, not even in his
sleep, although Paracelsus was a much more clever, even in sleep,
than some others when they are awake. So what would a
hypothetical doctor in the tenth, eleventh or twelfth centuries
have said? Or someone like Paracelsus in the sixteenth century?
Van
Helmont [ Note
13 ]
speaks about the archeus,
what today we would call the joint function of the etheric and
astral bodies. We have to rediscover these things through
anthroposophy, since such terms have been forgotten. In a hotter
climate the difference between the venous and the arterial blood
is no longer so pronounced and the blue blood of the veins
becomes redder and the red blood of the arteries bluer. The
eleventh or twelfth century doctor would have explained this by
saying — and he would have used the term archeus,
or something similar, for what we describe as astral body today —
that the archeus
enters less deeply into the body in hot climates than in
temperate zones. In temperate climates human beings are permeated
more thoroughly by their astral bodies. The differentiation in
the blood which is caused by the astral body occurs more strongly
in human beings in temperate zones. People in hotter climates
have freer astral bodies, which we can see in the lesser
thickening of the blood. They live more instinctively in their
astral bodies because they are freer. In consequence they do not
become mechanistically thinking Europeans, but spiritually
thinking Indians, who at the height of their civilization created
a spiritual civilization, a Vedic civilization, while Europeans
created the civilization of Comte, John Stuart Mill and Darwin.
[ Note
14 ]
Such
is the view of the anthropos which the eleventh or
twelfth-century doctor would have concluded from bleeding his
patient. He would have had no problem with anthroposophy. He
would have found access to the spirit, the living spirit. Julius
Robert Mayer, the Paracelsus of the nineteenth century if you
like, was left to discover laws: nothing can arise from nothing,
so energy must be transformed; an abstract formula.
The
spiritual element of the human being, which can be rediscovered
through anthroposophy, also leads to morality. We return full
circle to the investigation of moral principles in The
Philosophy of Freedom.
Human beings are given entry to a spiritual world in which they
are no longer faced with a division between nature and spirit,
between nature and morality, but where the two form a union.
As
you can see, the leading authorities in modern science arrive at
abstract formulae as a result of their work. Such formulae
inhabit the brains of those who have had a modern scientific
training. Those who teach them regard as pure madness the claim
that it is possible to investigate the qualities of red and blue
blood and progress from there to the spiritual element in human
beings.
You
can see what it takes for real scientists who want to make their
way into anthroposophy. Something more than mere good intentions
is needed. They must have a real commitment to deepening their
knowledge to a degree to which we are not accustomed nowadays,
least of all if we have had a scientific training. That makes a
great deal of courage essential. The latter is the quality we
need above all when we take into account the conditions governing
the existence of the Anthroposophical Society. In certain
respects the Society stands diametrically opposed to what is
popularly acceptable. It therefore has no future if it wants to
make itself popular. Thus it would be wrong to court popularity,
particularly in relation to our endeavours to introduce
anthroposophical working methods into all areas of society, as we
have attempted to do since 1919. [ Note
15 ]
Instead, we have to pursue the path which is based on the spirit
itself, as I discussed this morning in relation to the
Goetheanum. [ Note
16 ]
We
must learn to adopt such an attitude in all circumstances,
otherwise we begin to stray in a way which justifiably makes
people confuse us with other movements and judge us by external
criteria. If we are determined to provide our own framework we
are on the right path to fulfilling the conditions which govern
the existence of the anthroposophical movement. But we have to
acquire the commitment which will then provide us with the
necessary courage.
And
we must not ignore those circumstances which arise from the fact
that, as anthroposophists, we are a small group. As such we hope
that what is spreading among us today will begin to spread among
a growing number of people. Then knowledge and ethics, artistic
and religious development will move in a new direction.
But
all these things which will be present one day through the
impulse of anthroposophy, and which will then be regarded as
quite ordinary, must be cultivated to a much higher degree by
those who make up the small group today. They must feel that they
bear the greatest possible responsibility towards the spiritual
world. It has to be understood that such an attitude will
automatically be reflected in the verdict of the world at large.
As
far as those who are not involved with anthroposophy are
concerned, nothing can do more profound harm to the
Anthroposophical Society than the failure of its members to adopt
a form which sets out in the strictest terms what they are trying
to achieve, so that they can be distinguished from all sectarian
and other movements.
As
long as this does not happen, it is not surprising that people
around us judge us as they do. It is hard to know what the
Anthroposophical Society stands for, and when they meet
anthroposophists they see nothing of anthroposophy. For instance,
if anthroposophists were recognizable by their pronounced
sensitivity to truth and reality, by the display of a sensitive
understanding to go no further in their claims than accords with
reality, that would make an impression! But I do not want to
criticize today but to emphasize the positive side. Will it be
achieved? That is the question we have to bear in mind.
Or
one might recognize anthroposophists by their avoidance of any
display of bad taste and, to the contrary, a certain artistic
sense — a sign that the Goetheanum in Dornach must have had
some effect. Once again people would know that anthroposophy
provides its members with a certain modicum of taste which
distinguishes them from others.
Such
attitudes, above and beyond what can be laid down in sharply
defined concepts, must be among the things which are developed in
the Anthroposophical Society if it is to fulfil the conditions
governing its existence.
Such
matters have been discussed a great deal! But the question which
must always be in the forefront is how the Anthroposophical
Society can be given that special character which will make
people aware that here they have something which distinguishes it
from others in a way which rules out any possibility of
confusion. That is something anthroposophists should discuss at
great length.
These
things are a matter of conveying a certain attitude. Life cannot
be constrained by programmes. But ask yourselves whether we have
fully overcome the attitude within the Anthroposophical Society
which dictates that something must be done in a specific way,
which lays down rules, and whether there is a strong enough
impulse to seek guidance from anthroposophy itself whatever the
situation. That does not mean having to read everything in
lectures, but that the content of the lectures enters the heart,
and that has certain consequences.
Until
anthroposophy is taken as a living being who moves invisibly
among us, my dear friends, towards whom we feel a certain
responsibility, this small group of anthroposophists I must say
this too will not serve as a model. And that is what they should
be doing.
If
you had gone into any of the Theosophical Societies, and there
were many of them, you would have encountered the three famous
objects. The first was to build universal fraternity among
mankind without reference to race, nationality and so on. I
pointed out yesterday that we should be reflecting on the
appropriateness of setting this down as dogma.
It
is, of course, important that such a object should exist, but it
has to be lived. It must gradually become a reality. That will
happen if anthroposophy itself is seen as a living, supersensory,
invisible being who moves among anthroposophists. Then there
might be less talk about fraternity and universal human love, but
these objects might be more active in human hearts. And then it
will be evident in the tone in which people talk about their
relation to anthroposophy, in how they talk to one another, that
it is important to them that they too are followers of the
invisible being of Anthroposophia.
After
all, we could just as well choose another way. We could form lots
of cliques and exclusive groups and behave like the rest of the
world, meeting for tea parties or whatever, to make conversation
and possibly assemble for the occasional lecture. But an
anthroposophical movement could not exist in such a society. An
anthroposophical movement can only live in an Anthroposophical
Society which has become reality. But that requires a truly
serious approach. It requires a sense of alliance in every living
moment with the invisible being of Anthroposophia.
If
that became a reality in people's attitude, not necessarily
overnight but over a longer time-span, the required impulse would
certainly develop over a period of perhaps twenty-one years.
Whenever anthroposophists encountered the kind of material from
our opponents which I read out yesterday, for example, the
appropriate response would come alive in their hearts. I am not
saying that this would have to be transformed immediately into
concrete action, but the required impulse would live in the
heart. Then the action, too, would follow.
If
such action does not develop, if it is only our opponents who are
active and organized, then the right impulse is clearly absent.
People clearly prefer to continue their lives in a leisurely
fashion and listen to the occasional lecture on anthroposophy.
But that is not enough if the Anthroposophical Society is to
thrive. If it is to thrive, anthroposophy has to be alive in the
Anthroposophical Society. And if that happens then something
significant can develop over twenty-one years. By my
calculations, the Society has already existed for twenty-one
years.
However,
since I do not want to criticize, I will only call on you to
reflect on this issue to the extent of asking whether each
individual, whatever their situation, has acted in a spirit which
is derived from the nucleus of anthroposophy?
If
one or another among you should feel that this has not been the
case so far, then I appeal to you: start tomorrow, start tonight
for it would not be a good thing if the Anthroposophical Society
were to collapse. And it will most certainly collapse, now that
the Goetheanum is being rebuilt in addition to all the other
institutions which the Society has established, if that awareness
of which I have spoken in these lectures does not develop, if
such self-reflection is absent. And once the process of collapse
has started, it will proceed very quickly. Whether or not it
happens is completely dependent on the will of those who are
members of the Anthroposophical Society.
Anthroposophy
will certainly not disappear from the world. But it might very
well sink back into what I might call a latent state for decades
or even longer before it is taken up again. That, however, would
imply an immense loss for the development of mankind. It is
something which has to be taken into account if we are serious
about engaging in the kind of self-reflection which I have
essentially been talking about in these lectures. What I
certainly do not mean is that we should once again make ringing
declarations, set up programmes, and generally state our
willingness to be absolutely available when something needs to be
done. We have always done that. What is at stake here is that we
should find the nucleus of our being within ourselves. If we
engage in that search in the spirit of wisdom transmitted by
anthroposophy then we will also find the anthroposophical impulse
which the Anthroposophical Society needs for its existence.
My
intention has been to stimulate some thought about the right way
to act by means of a reflection on anthroposophical matters and a
historical survey of one or two questions; were I to deal with
everything I would run out of time. And I believe these lectures
in particular are a good basis on which to engage in such
reflection. There is always time for that, because it can be done
between the lines of the life which we lead in the everyday
world.
That
is what I wanted you to carry away in your hearts, rather like a
kind of self-reflection for the Anthroposophical Society. We
certainly need such self-reflection today. We should not forget
that we can achieve a great deal by making use of the sources of
anthroposophy. If we fail to do so then we abandon the path by
which we can achieve effective action.
We
are faced with major tasks, such as the reconstruction of the
Goetheanum. In that context our inner thoughts should truly be
based on really great impulses.
Thanks to the Rudolf Steiner Archive
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