The Spiritual Background to the First World War E-Book

Rudolf Steiner

• Herausgeber: Rudolf Steiner Press
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Seitenzahl: 800

Beschreibung

With the unprecedented global conflict of the First World War as an overarching theme, Rudolf Steiner addresses timeless issues such as the search for harmony between peoples and nations, the development of the human capacity for love, the contemporary presence of Christ, and the questions of reincarnation and life after death. Speaking in the German city of Stuttgart during and after the war years, Steiner discusses the perpetual tension between East and West – particularly in relation to Europe. The war, he says, arose principally out of the Anglo-Saxon peoples' determination 'to exercise world-domination'. Knowing that Slavic culture is destined to be the precursor of the sixth cultural epoch, Western national interests resolved to make Eastern Europe – specifically Russia – 'the field for socialist experiments'. These events were aggravated by the failure of the Central European peoples in their own world-historical task, to 'rise to a broad sense of vision' as intermediaries between the two groups. Throughout, Steiner refers to the work of individual Folk Souls, but distinguishes them from the scourge of nationalism – especially when it is based on blood – whilst emphasizing the sovereignty of the individual human being. Although more than a century old, the enduring themes of these previously-untranslated lectures will resonate with many readers today. The main text is supplemented with an introduction by Simon Blaxland-de Lange, editorial notes and an index. Sixteen lectures, Stuttgart, Sept. 1914–March 1921, GA 174b

Leseprobe

THE SPIRITUAL BACKGROUND TO

THE FIRST WORLD WAR

Sixteen lectures given in Stuttgart between 30 September 1914 and 26 April 1918 and on 21 March 1921

TRANSLATED AND INTRODUCED BYSIMON BLAXLAND-DE LANGE

RUDOLF STEINER

RUDOLF STEINER PRESS

CW 174b

The publishers gratefully acknowledge the generous funding of the translation of these lectures by the Anthroposophical Society in Great Britain

Rudolf Steiner PressHillside House, The SquareForest Row, RH18 5ES

www.rudolfsteinerpress.com

Published by Rudolf Steiner Press 2024

Originally published in German under the title Die geistigen Hintergründe des Ersten Weltkrieges. Kosmische und Menschliche Geschichte Band VII (volume 174b in the Rudolf Steiner Gesamtausgabe or Collected Works) by Rudolf Steiner Verlag, Dornach. Based on shorthand notes that were not reviewed or revised by the speaker. This authorized translation is based on the second German edition (1994), edited by Helmut von Wartburg und Robert Friedenthal

Published by permission of the Rudolf Steiner Nachlassverwaltung, Dornach

© Rudolf Steiner Nachlassverwaltung, Dornach, Rudolf Steiner Verlag 1994

This translation © Rudolf Steiner Press 2024

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 648 7

Cover by Morgan CreativeTypeset by Symbiosys Technologies, Visakhapatnam, IndiaPrinted and bound by 4Edge Ltd., Essex

CONTENTS

Publisher’s Note

Introduction, by Simon Blaxland-de Lange

LECTURE 1STUTTGART, 30 SEPTEMBER 1914

The present as a time of trial. The connection between Germany and Austria and the unnatural connection of France and England with Russia. Understanding the present destiny of peoples through the cycle about Folk-souls. The struggle of the soul-forces in the Mystery Plays as a picture of the struggle between nations. The meaninglessness of the question of blame for the war. Herman Grimm concerning the Germans. The soul of the murdered archduke. Transformation of the forces of fear into courage and enthusiasm. Help of the fallen for those fighting. Development of the capacity for love through spiritual science. War as a teacher of spirituality. Quotation from a person entering the field of battle. Help through the verse ‘Spirits watching over your souls...’ The Germans’ wish for peace. Jagow’s pronouncement. This war as a conspiracy against German cultural life. The verse ‘Spirit of my earthly habitation!’ helps us to gain objectivity towards the Folk-spirit. Hope for the future.

LECTURE 2STUTTGART, 13 FEBRUARY 1915

Truths concerning hostilities between nations are not universally applicable and are not accessible to human reason. The different mission of the European and Asian races. Great future struggles between them. The distinctive quality of the Germanic peoples. Baldur and Christ. Slavic culture as the precursor of the sixth cultural epoch. The correspondence between Renan and Strauss. The possibility in Central Europe of transcending nationalism. In addition to its outward cultural life, England has theosophy; in Germany, anthroposophy is connected with the rest of cultural life. Words of 1870 about Russia’s tendency to advance towards the West. Significance of present thoughts and feelings for the future.

LECTURE 3STUTTGART, 14 FEBRUARY 1915

A person’s connection with his own Folk-spirit and with other Folk-spirits. The occult background to the outbreak of the war. The appearance of Christ in an etheric form. The connection between France and Russia as outward maya. The task of Central Europe. The influence of Christ in unconscious soul-forces: Constantine, the Maid of Orleans. The difficulty of self-knowledge. Stomach and head clairvoyance. The soul’s acquiring of consciousness after death. Theo Faiß. Influence of his etheric body in the Goetheanum. The etheric bodies of those fallen in the war.

LECTURE 4STUTTGART, 22 NOVEMBER 1915

Significance of the many deaths in the war. Sophie Stinde. Memory-pictures of the dead in our astral body and ego, and the lighting up of these pictures during sleep. Life in the spiritual world after death. The influence of the hierarchies upon the existence of the dead. The significance of our remembrance of the dead for those who have died, comparable to our experience of a great work of art.

LECTURE 5STUTTGART, 23 NOVEMBER 1915

Experiences of the soul after death. The perception of the process of departing from everything earthly. The panorama of life. Survey of the experience of death during the time between death and a new birth. The entry into kamaloka. The experiences of one’s own deeds in their effect upon others and the forming of karma. The nature of dream experience. The relationship of our sleep consciousness to the life in kamaloka. The influence of the etheric bodies of those who have died young.

LECTURE 6STUTTGART, 24 NOVEMBER 1915

An image for the working of cosmic forces in the life of plants. The preserving of the power of the Sun in the seed during winter. The attaining of the right mood for spiritual-scientific research. The riddle of death. The influence of those who have died young in the spiritual world comparable to the influence of idealists in the physical world. Necessity for humility in the face of the greatness of the riddle of the world. A discovery of Moritz Benedikt about the physiological predisposition for criminality. The possibility of the transformation of such inclinations through spiritual-scientific work. The significance of this possibility for the evolution towards Jupiter existence.

LECTURE 7STUTTGART, 12 MARCH 1916

The slandering of anthroposophy by Annie Besant. Characteristics of the Russian people. Using these qualities for power-political purposes. Necessity of the receiving of Central European impulses by the Russian people. The contrast between the German and the English nature. The origin of Central European occultism from the spiritual striving of the German national character. The aims of Anglo-Saxon occultists. The secret background of the development of H.P. Blavatsky. Intrigues of French occultism in connection with the outbreak of the world war.

LECTURE 8STUTTGART, 15 MARCH 1916

The connection of the life of thought with the etheric body. Our thoughts as material for the work of the beings of the Third Hierarchy. The transforming of these thoughts in the fabric of the etheric body after death. The inner becomes outer, the outer becomes inner. The working of the higher hierarchies in preparing our coming incarnation. A picture by Meister Bertram as proof of the spiritual knowledge of former times. The harmfulness of unclear pacifist aspirations. The myopia of Karl Christian Planck as a sign of the pernicious ideology of our time. The materialism of Ernst Haeckel and the intellectual world-conception of his teacher Ernst von Baer. Manoeuvres of the Masonic Orders and Panslavism. The significance of spiritually oriented thoughts for human evolution. A pronouncement of Lamettrie that is characteristic of the materialistic cast of mind.

LECTURE 9STUTTGART, 11 MAY 1917

Anthroposophy as a need of present-day humanity. Education for an independent power of judgement through spiritual science. The misunderstanding of this fact. A thinking that is not in tune with reality as a characteristic of our present time. An argument of the mathematician Leo Königsberger as an example. The lack of any real debate with anthroposophy, and the transferring of this debate to the personal realm. Some examples of the endeavour to combat and exploit anthroposophy for personal motives. Erich Bamler, Max Seiling, Max Heindl. Two measures that have become necessary.

LECTURE 10STUTTGART, 13 MAY 1917

Materialism as a necessary phase of human evolution. The difficulty of arriving at spiritual knowledge in our time. Examples of this in pronouncements of Ernest Renan, Richard Wahle and Maurice Barrès. The law whereby humanity becomes younger. Present-day human beings adhere to the standpoint of a twenty-seven-year-old. Woodrow Wilson as an example of this. The need to overcome this standpoint through spiritual impulses. Affinity with the beings of higher hierarchies as a natural capacity of former epochs. Some words of Plato in this regard. A book by Kjellén as an example of a thinking that is estranged from reality. An anthroposophical impulse for the future: the journal Das Reich by A. Von Bernus. The failure of some members to appreciate it. The two measures.

LECTURE 11STUTTGART, 15 MAY 1917

Numerical correspondence between the rhythms of the macrocosm, human life and breathing. Perception of the world-spirit as a resounding form of light in the Indian cultural epoch, as light and darkness in the Persian epoch, as an inner soul-experience in the Egyptian epoch. In the Greek epoch: a sense for the belonging together of body and soul. A pronouncement of Aristotle about the life of the soul after death communicated by Franz Brentano. The forcing of initiation by the Roman Caesars and the effect of this in history: Caligula, Nero and Commodus. The tendency of our time towards abstract ideals, and the need to arrive at conceptions that accord with reality. An example: the ideas of brotherhood, freedom and equality as abstractions, and their transformation into realities through spiritual science. The abolition of the spirit by the Council of Constantinople and its effect upon modern materialistic science. The enmity of former students against anthroposophy. Annie Besant, Édouard Schuré.

LECTURE 12STUTTGART, 23 FEBRUARY 1918

Mental picturing, feeling and willing as states of wakefulness, dream consciousness and sleep. F.T. Vischer’s treatise about ‘dream fantasy’. The source of our impulses of feeling and will in the realm of the dead. Conditions of engaging with the souls of the dead. The significance of the moments of going to sleep and waking up for this engagement. Our dreams of dead people. The involvement of the dead in historical development. The remoteness from reality of the ordinary approach to studying history. A passage from Friedrich Schiller’s inaugural address as an example. The difference between our relationship to the souls of those who have died young and to people who have died in old age. The necessity for a far-reaching process of rethinking. Gustave Hervé’s rejection of cosmopolitanism as an example of a superficial change of perspective. The view of Orientals about Central Europe, of Americans about the whole of Central European life. Awareness of the task of spiritual science.

LECTURE 13STUTTGART, 24 FEBRUARY 1918

The reference to the social problems of our time in previous lectures. The spirituality of modern natural-scientific concepts and their purely materialistic application. The fall of the ahrimanic spirits in the year 1879. The preparation of this event since 1841 and its influences until 1917. The need to include influential cosmic forces in the study of nature. The faster evolution of the head and the slower evolution of the rest of the organism. The significance of this fact for pedagogy. The social-democratic world-view as an expression of purely mechanistic thinking. The natural-scientifically oriented psychology of Theodor Ziehen and its consistent application to social life by Lenin and Trotsky. Books about Jesus as a psychopath and Alexander Moszkowski’s book about Socrates as an idiot. Previous allusion to the remoteness from reality of the book-learning of Woodrow Wilson. Confirmation of spiritual science through life.

LECTURE 14STUTTGART, 23 APRIL 1918

The significance of semi-conscious and unconscious experiences for dream-life and for the life after death. Life in imaginations, inspirations and intuitions during the existence between death and a new birth. The urge of little children for imitation as an influence of the life before birth. The denial of pre-existence by the Church and by modern philosophy. The condemnation of Origen. Thoughts about spiritual things as nourishment of the soul for the life after death. Oscar Hertwig’s excellent book on refuting Darwin’s theory of chance. Eduard Hartmann’s spiritual battle against Darwinism. The unsatisfactory nature of Oscar Hertwig’s book about social life. Luciferic and ahrimanic impulses in our cultural life: titles and orders and ability-tests. A book-review by Fritz Mauthner as an example of the inadequate sense of reality of our time. Education towards independent judgement through spiritual science.

LECTURE 15STUTTGART, 26 APRIL 1918

The difficulty of understanding visible realities as creations of the spirit. A concrete example of this: the accompanying of bodily development by the soul and spirit into the fifties during the ancient Indian epoch, and the ever earlier ceasing of this accompaniment in the ensuing epochs. The present situation: natural development gives impulses for spiritual life only until the end of the twenties. The need to acquire spiritual knowledge from the declining development of bodily forces through one’s own effort. Education for a ‘life of expectation’. The failure to cultivate a spiritual life in old age, and the atomising of the spirit that results from this. Pictorial instruction as a demand of our time. An example of this: the living grasp of the difference between animal and man. Goethe as a guide towards a living perception of nature. The significance of such a schooling for the further development of souls after death and for the influence of the dead upon earthly life. A question of the theologian Loisy concerning the present world-situation.

LECTURE 16STUTTGART, 21 MARCH 1921

Discussion of the question of blame for the war is necessary (opinion of Foreign Minister Simons). The entente considers this question to be resolved. An observation in this connection of Lloyd George. Two guiding principles of leading figures among Anglo-Saxon politicians: 1: The future must lead to the world-domination of the Anglo-Saxon race. 2: The impossibility of Marxism must be tried out in Russia. England’s Balkan policy according to these viewpoints. The impractical sense of the ‘practical people’. The impossible political and economic circumstances in Austria before the world war. The unnoticed tendency that the problems of the time can be resolved by the idea of threefolding. Conditions in Berlin before the outbreak of the world war. The solitary decision of General von Moltke under the pressure of these conditions. The publication of Moltke’s Memoirs planned for 1919 and its prevention by a German general. Regarding attempts to find a way out of catastrophic circumstances through the idea of threefolding and the difficulty of finding any understanding for it.

Notes

Rudolf Steiner’s Collected Works

Significant Events in the Life of Rudolf Steiner

Index

PUBLISHER’S NOTE

THE present volume of the Collected Works or Gesamtausgabe (GA) comprises lectures which were given mainly during the First World War in Stuttgart. In the bibliographical survey of 1961 these lectures were originally allocated to various different volumes of the Gesamtausgabe, details of which are given in the German edition of GA 174b, which was first published in 1974. The stated intention lying behind the decision to create this new German volume was one of wanting to avoid repetitions. There was also the wish to bring together the lectures given at Stuttgart at this particular time; and the previous volume in the Gesamtausgabe series GA 174a (Between East and West, Central Europe in Cosmic and Human History) includes the lectures given during the First World War in Munich.

INTRODUCTION

Towards the end of Owen Barfield’s long novel English People, there is a scene where a terminally ill old man, who is evidently a leading member of some unspecified secret society, is giving some last advice before he dies to a person whom he intends to take over his responsibilities. One of his most important pieces of advice is to prevent ‘the Three’ from uniting, in that any form of threefoldness (as opposed to duality) would, he says, work ‘like dynamite!’, and, hence, torpedo the carefully laid plans of this society; and it is clear from the whole context of the novel that the society has as its aim the guidance and direction of the affairs of the Western world of ‘England’ and ‘America’ (which, he says, for the purposes of the brotherhood should preferably lose their separate identity to become a ‘united West’). A further aim specified by this elderly occultist is to defeat the movement led by ‘Brockmann’ (or Rudolf Steiner), which ‘remains a grave threat’.

Apart from the last of these sixteen lectures, which is itself – even more than any of the others – all about the war, all these lectures were given during the unprecedented global conflict of the First World War; and one can sense throughout the lectures – and perhaps all the more because they were given in a place and amidst a group of people where he felt able to speak with a particular degree of intimacy – that Rudolf Steiner was standing fervently for the Third Thing (the ‘Tertium Quid’ in Barfield’s novel) which he could see was under serious threat of destruction through the forces that had brought this war about. The purpose of this introduction is on the one hand briefly to characterize Rudolf Steiner’s standpoint in his own terms and from his own perspective and, on the other, to try to assess its significance and validity from the perspective of over a century of determination to assert – pace Barfield’s elderly occultist – the primacy of duality in the intellectual and social (and, of course, the political) affairs of humanity.

Already in the first of these lectures, which was given in September 1914 and thus shortly after the outbreak of the war, the themes which come to resound throughout are briefly encapsulated. It is also one of those lectures where Rudolf Steiner spoke quite explicitly about the national as opposed to the universally human aspect of the tumultuous events happening around him and his audience. Thus, for example, he states quite clearly that ‘the ego of Europe resides in the German spirit’, that ‘this war is a conspiracy against German spiritual and cultural life’ and that ‘we [i.e. the German or Central European people] did not want this war’. Both in this and in several of the other lectures there are copious references to what he had said previously in 1910 (thus, as he emphasizes, long before the outbreak of the war) in the lectures on Folk-souls and their mission given in Christiania (Oslo). He recounts his understanding of the way that different European peoples carry particular tasks on behalf of their Folk-souls or Folk-spirits with respect to the development of different attributes of human nature, while always emphasizing on the one hand that this is not a question of attributing value-judgements but, rather, of characterizing particular tasks on behalf of humanity and the spiritual world and, on the other hand, that the individual human being can – and ultimately should – always rise above such groupings even in our own time.

It is especially important to emphasize here what he says about the conflict and perpetual tension between East and West and constructively to understand their respective tasks in our time. Only in the last lecture, which was given on 21 March 1921 and thus well after the end of the war, do we have a full-scale rebuttal of the assertion that was the prevailing view throughout the war and even well into our present twenty-first century, namely that Germany was responsible for bringing about the war. Instead, he makes it very clear – as he also does to a lesser extent elsewhere in these lectures – that the war arose mainly out of the determination of the ‘Anglo-Saxon race to exercise world-domination’ and to ‘resolve the social question’ by ‘making the Eastern world, and specifically the world of Russia, the field for socialist experiments’, a tendency which, he says, was aggravated by the failure of the Central European peoples to ‘rise to a broad sense of vision’, to ‘grow together with a broad visionary outlook’ as befitted their particular world-historical task. Not that this prevented Rudolf Steiner from being accused (wholly unjustly, as he makes clear) by the precursors of the Nazi movement (including Adolf Hitler himself) of being responsible for the disastrous terms meted out to Germany by the Versailles Peace Treaty.

Thus throughout these lectures given in Stuttgart during the war, Rudolf Steiner was speaking at least in part as a defender of something utterly precious and essential to the present and future development of Europe and the wider world which was under serious assault, even in the earlier lectures hoping for a military victory and later for a victory of a more spiritual nature. This theme is present in the background even where – for example in the three lectures given in November 1915 – the focus is upon other matters relating to his spiritual-scientific research. Thus in these November 1915 lectures the insights that he gives into the life between death and a new birth are prompted by his reflections about the destiny of the etheric bodies and souls of those who had died prematurely on the battlefields, as evidenced by the meditative verse beginning ‘From the courage of the fighters…’, which he spoke at the end of the first eight of the present lectures. In some of the later lectures, Rudolf Steiner is, rather, devoting his attention to assaults of other than a military nature upon this precious Central European treasure of the individual human spirit, whether deriving from such as Annie Besant on behalf of the (Anglo-Saxon-oriented) Theosophical Society, from former, disaffected members of the Anthroposophical Society or from present members whose cultivation of anthroposophy he regards as theoretical and abstract, as insufficiently grounded in reality. The penultimate fifteenth lecture translates this understanding again into the broader canvas of outward events; and there is in this lecture an almost apocalyptic tone emanating out of Steiner’s awareness of, on the one hand, the abstract spiritual dissipation exemplified by the impulses of the world’s ‘schoolmaster’ President Woodrow Wilson (ever his bête noire) and, on the other, by the sinister nationalism of the blood which was to arise as a tragic distortion of his plea for a renewed visionary quality on the part of the Central European spirit.

How different the understanding that a contemporary English novelist, E. M. Forster, presents of the respective qualities of the German and English soul in his novel Howards End (1910), which is at any rate in some ways wholly consistent with that of Rudolf Steiner and has as its motto – in stark contrast to the bellicose hatefulness of wartime – the famous words ‘only connect’, from the impression that one may have of the situation in our present time! This was starkly exemplified for the present writer by the title of a book published this year (2023) chronicling the recent history of much of that European territory to which Rudolf Steiner assigned the designation Central Europe (Mitteleuropa). This book was written by a Polish-American academic Jacob Mikanowski with the title Goodbye Eastern Europe. In the course of the book he explicitly states that what he calls Eastern Europe is equivalent to Mitteleuropa (‘Eastern Europe’ in Rudolf Steiner’s understanding refers to Russia, including Belarus and Ukraine). The point here is not to dissent from the author’s analysis but to draw a very different conclusion, and to understand the significance of the author’s analysis in terms of the picture presented by Rudolf Steiner. For it is not difficult to see that ‘Central Europe’ including of course Germany, Austria and so forth has in our time become largely subsumed within an American-dominated West and that in cultural terms it has more or less lost its identity in a dualistic cultural and political scheme of East and West. Moreover, from this perspective it can be seen that the assumed supremacy of the materialistic Western (Anglo-American) world-view which, according to Rudolf Steiner, was the principal factor in bringing about the First World War, continues to be responsible at least in part for the most divisive conflicts with which our present world is assailed (to say nothing of environmental and ecological issues). There is therefore a need for a dramatic change in the predominant mind-set of modern times. Especially among younger people, there is a growing understanding of this; but here, Rudolf Steiner’s insights into national and group identities and characteristics, into the evolution of human consciousness, are badly needed if the tribalism of identity politics, strongly influenced as it is by the deadening anti-thoughts of the post-modernism advocated by such as Michel Foucault, can be transformed into a true commitment to universalism; to not only a respect for but also a deep understanding of the qualities, characteristics and tasks of the multifarious aspects of our universally human world.

May the publication of these lectures serve to promote such an understanding!

Simon Blaxland-de LangeAdvent 2023

During the war years, the following words commemorating both those in the field of battle and those who had passed through the gate of death were spoken by Rudolf Steiner before every lecture that he gave to members of the Anthroposo-phical Society in the countries affected by the war:

My dear friends, we call to mind the guarding spirits of those who are out on the battlefields at this present time:

Spirits watching over your souls,May thy wings bringOur petitioning loveTo the human beings on Earth entrusted to thy care,That, united with thy power,Our plea may radiate helpTo the soulsWhom we seek lovingly to reach!

And for those who have, because of these events, already passed through the gate of death:

Spirits watching over your souls,May thy wings bringOur petitioning loveTo the human beings in the heavenly spheres entrusted to thy care,That, united with thy power,Our plea may radiate helpTo the soulsWhom we seek lovingly to reach!

And may the Spirit whom we seek through the knowledge to which we have aspired, the Spirit who gives meaning, significance and content to earthly life, the Spirit who has passed through the Mystery of Golgotha from the divine heights of the Sun, be with thee and thine arduous duties.

On other occasions, the words were formulated as follows:

We address ourselves first to the guarding spirits of those who are out on the battlefields under such difficult circumstances:

Ye who watch over earthly souls,Ye who weave within earthly souls,Ye spirits who work lovingly out of cosmic wisdomGranting protection to human souls:Hear our plea, behold our love,Which seek union with thy helping forces’ radiance,In devotion to the spirit, sending love.

And to the guarding spirits of those who have, because of these events, passed through the gate of death:

Ye who watch over souls in heavenly spheres,Ye who weave within souls in heavenly spheres,Ye spirits who work lovingly out of cosmic wisdomGranting protection to souls of human beings:Hear our plea, behold our love,Which seek union with thy helping forces’ streaming,In sensing of the spirit, sending love.

And may the Spirit whom we seek to approach through our spiritual science, the Spirit who wanted to pass through the Mystery of Golgotha for the salvation of the Earth and for the freedom and advancement of mankind, be with thee and thine arduous duties.∗

∗ In the first pair of verses, the word ‘your’ in the first line refers to the human souls concerned, the word ‘thy’ denotes the guarding spirits. For the sake of consistency this deliberate archaism is retained in the second pair of verses, even though here there is less ambiguity in the meaning. The reader may prefer to revert here to the more familiar ‘you’.—Translator

LECTURE 1

STUTTGART, 30 SEPTEMBER 19141

WHAT we have long been able to foresee has rapidly burst upon the world through all manner of events that have occurred recently. We have thereby become witnesses of serious events, the profound significance of which will be appreciated only at a later time; and I would say that there is much even only of the outward appearances of what underlies these grave events that will not be possible to encompass today. However, for us, my dear friends, there is one thing that I need especially to address at this serious time which I should like to express in the following way.

We have been trying for some years to deepen our understanding of spiritual knowledge, we have been trying to make knowledge, feeling and awareness of the spiritual worlds, and also everything associated with this knowledge, feeling and awareness, something that we can call our own. Now, however, we are in a certain sense confronted with a challenge as to whether we are capable, even under the impression of all the grave events that are taking place, of holding on to the great ideals that have been prescribed to us through our knowledge and feeling of the spiritual world. Where friends who are for the most part united in a common feeling are sitting together in our branches, it is certainly easier to stand firmly by what spiritual science may bring to humanity, but we always and in every situation continue to be mindful of what is expressed in our first principle.2 We are, after all, not a Society that is confined to homogenous national groups; rather do we seek to disseminate a spirit of reconciliation over the whole of the Earth. This means that we are subjected to a certain challenge, for in the time in which we are now living it is truly difficult fully to develop a sense of objectivity towards what is highest, that is, towards justice.

Precisely for the reasons that will emerge from what I shall say today, it is at present easier for those inhabiting Central Europe, and above all the German people, than it is for others to be objectively impartial. But also there it is necessary not merely to give ourselves over to immediate sensations but we must as serious anthroposophists try to penetrate with understanding the language that justice must command today.

It is not because I want to make a personal statement but because it is symptomatic of the matter at hand that I shall mention the following. The first volume of my book The Riddles of Philosophy is perhaps already in your possession.3 The second volume was in the second half of July printed as far as page 204 and it concluded in mid-stream. The passage was noteworthy and symptomatic for me. I had had to characterize the two French philosophers Boutroux and Bergson. I tried to do so as objectively as possible. Then I had to make the transition to Preuß, a little-known, powerful thinker. Once I had characterized present-day French philosophy, I had to go on to speak about the thoughts that had been conceived on this side of the Rhine in Germany. But then the sheet of paper was empty, for in the meantime the war had broken out. I often had to look at the empty areas of the thirteenth sheet.

At that time there then came various voices from beyond the Rhine. These voices are sufficiently well-known to you. People spoke of German barbarism and the like and threw the most hateful accusations and slanders at us. It cannot be denied that it was distressing to experience all this. It was especially respected representatives of French cultural life who stirred up passionate hatred amongst the people. And in this case the personal aspect may probably be regarded as symptomatic. Thus when I had to deal with French philosophy in the course of my book on the history of the development of philosophy, when I had really made an effort to do it full justice, I could feel thoroughly embittered—having tried with all my power to enter with the greatest possible objectivity into the philosophy of the West—that despite all this there is all this screaming about ‘the barbarism beyond the Rhine’. It was all the more painful when one of the worst attackers and haters of the German spirit was Maurice Maeterlinck.4

It is strange. The first book that appeared by Maeterlinck, one that already brings his being and particular nature fully to expression, is based wholly upon Novalis, and Maurice Maeterlinck would be lost without Novalis. All his later works have fully arisen from this first one, from the foundation established by Novalis. This also sheds some light upon how our age understands the implementation of justice. It is today utterly inadequate to hear words that are spoken in whatever way out of passion, and it is necessary that we are aware of the facts. If these are allowed to speak, this leads us to objectivity; and such objectivity is not the same thing as an indifference towards matters of this nature.

Things are happening on a large, indeed an immense scale; and a future time will find it necessary to refer in connection with what is going on now to significant events in past ages in the sense of how we speak of repetitions. Not one factor but many come together to form a repetition, a repetition that links together significant historical events.

Just as formerly, in the full flowering of Graeco-Latin culture, the Romans had to fight the Punic wars against Carthage,5 when the memorable battle at Mylae was decisive for the future destiny of the Romans, who had to preserve their blossoming Graeco-Roman culture in the face of an upsurge of declining forces from the outwardly still powerful realm of the Carthaginians, so at the starting-point of the present war do we find something like a repetition of certain events. Something can be said about this at this place where we are gathered today. At that time a remarkable battle took place between the Romans and the Carthaginians. The Carthaginians had a mighty fleet, in comparison to which that of Rome, with its few ships, seemed powerless. Then the Romans had the unusual idea of constructing boarding bridges that led from ship to ship and transformed the sea battle into a land battle, so that the Romans won a great victory on ground that was more familiar to them. Just as something unheard of at that time happened then, so did something that few could have conceived occur in Lüttich6 which shows a certain relationship to the events described and will be depicted by future times as the very first event of its kind. I mention these things because I should like to draw attention to the significant aspect of the events in which we are involved at present.

These are days when important decisions in both East and West are on a knife-edge. It is heartbreaking when one is aware of what we are being confronted with, and in these days when decisions are veiled with uncertainty our attention may profitably be focussed on something else which is of the greatest significance.

I may speak about these things as I shall because I have, as it were, been prepared to do so through my karma. I was born in that empire of which it is said that it contributed so much to the international war; but as I grew up I see that already from childhood I was destined to have a sense of homelessness. I had no opportunity to experience any real feelings of comradeship in the country or in a national context. Moreover, my childhood coincided with a time when as an Austrian I learnt to hate Germany, when German Austria was still under the influence of the victory of Prussia, when even the Germans in Austria hated the imperial Germans. There was no opportunity for me to engender a bias in favour of Germany. This homelessness that was given to me through my karma entitles me to speak objectively, fully aware that in this respect the anthroposophical world-conception can speak through my words.

It is not fitting today to speak prophetic words. Thus someone who says that it is doubtful where the victory will eventually lie may well remain unanswered. But a victory, an important victory, is also associated with a spiritual contemplation that is indelible for all future times and which has already been achieved. What is this victory? It was won before the outbreak of the war. This victory can be characterized in the following way. Was Europe’s central region not long connected with the East? We are not speaking of the people inhabiting Eastern Europe. We have been well informed about this people, and anyone who wants to learn the truth about the relationship of this people to the evolution of nations in general should read the lecture-cycle The Mission of Folk-Souls in Relation to Teutonic Mythology.7There is a difference between this Eastern people and the trifolium that presently stands there at the head against Germany and its culture: tsarism, Russian militarism, which has suffered a setback, and mendacious Panslavism. There are threads that have gone from Europe’s heart towards this trifolium, even though not to its last leaf.

On 31 July this year this thread between the governments of Germany and Austria and tsarism was broken, swept away through the declaration of war. This was a great victory... [The following passage is unclear. The sense seems to be approximately that the event that took place then between Central Europe, the Western powers and Russia has world-historical overtones.]∗

In this there are significant features of world history. One does not need to shut one’s eyes to the unnatural aspect of the alliance between Western and North-western Europe and Eastern Europe if one stands on the anthroposophical ground of justice. We can but try at this difficult time to cultivate further what we have learnt through spiritual science and also through much that has been thrust upon us.

When we were in dispute with Mrs. Besant,8 it was even an Indian scholar who said with respect to the way that Mrs. Besant cried out for tolerance that she was behaving like someone shouting to a person whose hand she was about to cut off and who was defending himself against this: Be tolerant, otherwise you’ll start an argument! It needs little thought to see that it is an absurdity to demand that the other person should let his hand be cut off without defending himself.

I have often heard in recent weeks that it has been said: If Austria had not started the war with Serbia, this would have been an exhibition of ‘tolerance’. Someone intends to cut off your hand, and you are told to be tolerant! We have numerous opportunities to gain objectivity through what is taking place so painfully around us; but for this we must be able to think in the right way. Learning to think is also a task of theosophy. There is that cycle about the Folk-souls. But if now in this grave time we were not to be able to understand it in its most holy seriousness, all our concern with this cycle at that time would be a theoretical game. These things can only become flesh and blood when we know how to acquire a feeling of the way to gain clarity as to what is now necessary. In the penultimate lecture of the cycle I tried to say that the various Folk-souls relate to one another as I attempted to describe in the last scene of The Portal of Initiation with respect to the interplay of the three soul-forces9. The content of the speech, the words that each of the three figures speaks there, must be spoken exactly as they are, since each of them represents one of man’s three soul-members.

In the penultimate lecture of the cycle on the Folk-souls it is indicated that if we regard the peoples of Italy and Spain as constituting a reverberation of the third post-Atlantean era, the character of these peoples manifests itself as the sentient soul. In France it is the intellectual soul, in England the consciousness soul, and in Central Europe it is the ego.

Do we not know that there can be battles in our own soul, that the individual members can engage in battle with one another? Attention is drawn to this in the second play, The Soul’s Probation. We can form a picture of what is being enacted in our time if we let everything that comes to expression there work upon us; and we must try to bring this picture to clarity in our soul in such a way that we know that in Central Europe we have the task of seeking the ego. Thus in the days of peace we have in that cycle placed before our souls in quiet spiritual work the foundations of something that fills the world today as a grave destiny. Indeed, much of what is taking place now will become explainable if we take into consideration everything that is expressed in the cycle referred to above. Only then will we achieve the necessary objectivity.

It has been the case in all wars that the one blames the other. My dear friends, it is not fitting for us to think like this. I shall make this clear by means of a comparison.

Suppose that someone has become old, and that he comes to be beside a child all fresh and full of energy. It would not make much sense if the old man were to harbour resentment against the child and say: You, child, in your youthful energy, are responsible for the fact that I bear the afflictions of old age! It is no more intelligent if now, for example, the Germans are blamed for the war. We must make ourselves clear that whatever happens is grounded in the karma of nations. Likewise in the life of nations there is youth and old age; and just as in human life the exuberant energy of children is not to blame for the fact that freshness is absent in old age, so is it also foolish to make such a reproach in the life of nations.

But everything that is being said should not make us blind; we must focus upon the actual facts, upon what is objective. The deeper foundations of the present events still elude discussion (quite apart from the fact that such a discussion today would create much bad blood); but I can call attention to some essential points in a different way.

As anthroposophists we know that the ego of Europe resides in the German spirit. This is an objective occult fact. I should like to call upon a man who was not a theosophist but who lived within the German spirit in order to characterize the way that people have come to think about the ego. I know that this is not merely the view of one individual human being. The words are those of Herman Grimm, who in a spiritual sense still had Goethe’s blood in his veins.10 ‘The solidarity of the moral convictions of all human beings is the Church that unites everyone today. We seek a visible expression of this community more passionately than ever. All really serious aspirations of the masses know only this one aim. The division between nations already no longer exists here. We feel that no national difference should prevail over an ethical world-conception. We would all sacrifice ourselves for our fatherland; but to long for or bring about the moment where this could happen through war is something wholly alien to us. The assurance that our holiest wish is to keep peace is no lie. May “peace on Earth and good tidings to all men” be ours.’

Take as an answer to this what anthroposophical teaching brings to us. Our spiritual movement wants to bring about the possibility of satisfying such a longing. And then these further words of Herman Grimm: ‘Human beings as a totality recognize themselves as subject to an invisible court of judgement enthroned in the clouds, before which it is not permitted to consider them as a misfortune and to whose legal processes they seek to make their inner disputes conform. With anxious efforts they seek their rights here. Just as Frenchmen in our time endeavour to make the war they intend to wage against Germany out to be a moral obligation, whose recognition they demand from other nations including Germany itself!’

One may regard what anthroposophy says about the realms of the hierarchies as an answer to this picture. It is a moving experience to see how the human mind is in its best representatives full of the deepest longing for what spiritual science wants to bring but passes it by, does not find it, and how people then with anxious efforts seek their rights here.

Then a further remarkable fact. Herman Grimm says: ‘Just as Frenchmen in our time endeavour to make the war that they intend to wage with Germany out to be a moral obligation, whose recognition they demand from other nations including Germany itself!’ This is indeed well to the point. Can one not observe today the effort that comes towards us from the West to represent this war as a moral obligation? I should also like to read you a third quotation from Herman Grimm. Again you will find that it finds fulfilment in what our movement brings: ‘The inhabitants of our planet, taken together as a unity, are filled with a universally understood sensitivity that even the coarsest peoples have an inkling of and are wary of injuring. In our time people acknowledge the right of individual self-determination in every individual where intellectual and spiritual things are concerned. Even primitive human creatures let themselves be guided towards these thoughts.’ Here Herman Grimm is expressing none other than the first principle of our Society.

So you see that our anthroposophy is an answer to the call that the German spirit has allowed to resound in the voices of the best representatives of its cultural life. The heart of Europe cherishes a deep longing for spirituality. This is also elucidated by the fact that the German, wherever he belongs, adapts to the customs of a country by sacrificing his previous habitual traditions, in this sense sacrificing his nationality but not his spiritual culture.

All this, my dear friends, is on the one hand suitable for letting us be just and impartial, while nonetheless not closing our eyes to what must really be attended to.

There have recently been surprises also for occultists; and I may say that during my course in Norrköping11 I had to say some things that had their origin in such a surprise. It is true that these events had to happen, one could foresee this for some years, also that they had in a destiny sense to come in this year. But at the beginning of July there was no more to say than that we would gather for the Munich cycle (as could be expected),12 then we would be facing some significant events. Then came the assassination in Sarajevo.13 If I have often emphasized how different things are here on the physical plane than on the spiritual plane, how often a contrasting picture manifests itself; so it was also to my surprise when I was able to compare the individuality who underwent this assassination before and after death. Something quite distinctive happened then. This personality became a cosmic power. I mention this in order to draw attention to how things on the physical plane are a symbol of a spiritual reality, and how, to be precise, all events of the physical plane can only be explained when one penetrates to the spiritual plane. Some of you know of my earlier remark. I said that something terrible was hovering in the astral world. It could only sink down to the physical plane, because astral forces had gathered on the physical plane, forces of fear that were exerting a hindering influence upon it.

It was on 20 July when I knew that the forces of fear had now become forces of courage, of boldness. An indescribably wonderful fact; the forces of fear became forces of courage. Then it was no longer impossible to explain what took place on the physical plane as a unique phenomenon: that enthusiasm. This is a fact that was a unique experience for me, and so far as I am aware it was also something of which no occultist had previously had knowledge.

You have all been witnesses of how this enthusiasm has over the course of a few days taken hold of people who were previously truly peace-loving individuals, how a wave of courage passed over them.

The times soon came when it was heard with sadness what immense sacrifices this war demands. When I was in Berlin in the first days of September,14 my soul was filled with deep sorrow when I became aware what blossoms of German souls had to be sacrificed on the battlefield. I could not help dwelling on my sorrow, and—through no merit of my own—this engenders occult research. When one grieves, occult knowledge is granted to one’s soul. I was confronted with the anxious question: If especially the flower of the leaders of the various bodies of troops is carried off, what will happen then?

And then one could see how it was those who had fallen who, after their death on the field of battle, helped those who had to fight after them. This was what was yielded from clairvoyant research. When the dead help the living, this is a source of consolation amidst the grief. My dear friends, what spiritual science represents must intervene in life in moments when all consolation seems impossible, when the right mood of soul cannot be found. Also here, spiritual knowledge is able to give the right mood of soul, it can offer consolation. I know that there will be souls from our community who will derive courage from such knowledge amidst these sorrowful events.

We know from spiritual science that the guides and directors of mankind’s development are spiritual beings. In the spiritual world it is prescribed that one thing or another happens at a certain point in time. Let us suppose that by 1950 or 1970 it has been decreed that earthly humanity should have achieved a certain measure of a capacity for love in order to combat egotism. Everything that spiritual science represents wants to engender the capacity for love. It does so in a manner similar to the way that wood generates warmth in a stove. It can be engendered through the word; and within our movement the attempt is made to engender it through the great teachings of anthroposophy. But if human souls were to be insufficiently receptive to the word, if things were to proceed too slowly to the extent that by the time that has been prescribed the capacity for love and sacrifice were to be insufficiently developed, another teacher would need to appear.

In Dornach there is a symbolic demonstration of this. It was actually the intention to have the building ready by the beginning of August. Nothing has become of this; it was not predestined by karma that the whole building should be ready by this time and look down over the region from its eastern and south-eastern elevation as a symbol of the spirit. Nevertheless, the columns together with the cupolas are rising up into the wide landscape as a vantage-point for the spirit. The question of creating a space with good acoustics needs also to be solved within our building. I am convinced that a solution to this has been found. The way that the sound from a certain point has been tested indicates that the acoustics are right for the building. But at first our friends were unable to discern within these acoustics the words of spiritual life; initially they heard the echo of the roar of cannon fire from southern Alsace, and instead of the light from the spiritual world far-off flashes of light radiated from the floodlights of Fort Istein into the building and illuminated it. A strange symbol! A symbol that may perhaps be suggested. Another teacher is sometimes necessary!

Was this not a teacher of immense power? Did it not present a powerful opposition to materialism? What a lot has happened in a week! What an assault has been made upon egotism! So much sacrificiality and human love has been made manifest!

When I recently returned from Vienna,15 karma chanced to place a journal in my hands. In it there was a description by an Austrian soldier entering the field of battle. He first describes how during the journey to the Front the soldiers are shown kindness from every side, and at the end there is a passage—the soldier had most probably never encountered theosophy—where he says: We who are entering the field of battle try with every ounce of courage and with all that we have to stand up for what is right; but those who stay at home are also able to have an influence. Then come the great words: ‘Whom God grants may pray—whoever cannot pray gathers up all his thoughts and will-forces for the ardent wish for victory...’, and thus he contributes his own to this! We have spoken for many years of the power of feeling. Thus what we have been cultivating in many years of work is now living in a simple soldier. Whatever may be the immediate result of this or that, there is one thing that the event will yield: spirituality within the human soul, which otherwise would not have been found for a long time to come.

These events have a greatness about them. They can only be compared with great events of the past which are interwoven with one another. So just as the battle of the Romans against the Carthaginians and the wars associated with the great migrations were important and decisive for the cultural development of peoples, the battle in whose midst we stand is of no less significance; and from the many words that I am speaking, one feeling that will continue to dwell within you is that those who have shed their blood in battle offer this blood as a sacrifice for something that must happen. It must happen for the salvation of mankind. And when we contemplate the great sacrifices and grief, there is one thing that, while not striking a cheerful note, can nevertheless fill us inwardly with great satisfaction: that sacred blood is flowing, sanctified by these events; and those who have shed it will be the most important fellow workers for future times. Much will become understandable to us if we can resolve to see in the flowing blood sanctified, sacrificial blood. If we imbue our souls with this truth, the spirit will bear fruit within us. I may put it thus: what that simple soldier has said is something that can fill the souls of our dear anthroposophical friends.

The thoughts that are cherished as a conviction within the anthroposophical soul will sound forth particularly strongly; and this is necessary if the words that have prefaced our deliberations may have an effect. Among those who are fighting there are already those who serve in the right faith.

Spirits watching over your souls,May thy wings bringOur petitioning loveTo the human beings on Earth entrusted to thy care,That, united with thy power,Our plea may radiate helpTo the soulsWhom we seek lovingly to reach.

My dear friends! It was the purpose of my lecture today that we now apply the significance of the thoughts that we have been considering to the events in order that we can withstand the trial, that we grasp the events and the relations between them with an impartial eye. Spirituality will also come through that great teacher that is now passing through Europe. But man is born for freedom. Much depends on those who are united with us in the spiritual movement. If anthroposophical thoughts will live rightly in your souls in the time of trial, that space that is now filled with interweaving passions will be filled with brightly shining spiritual thoughts, with holy, genuine feelings. Such feelings will live on in a lasting way.

There are many nights when I implore that there may be many anthroposophists who send forth such a light-filled radiant thought; and if we also find the right will we shall have the possibility of lovingly playing our part. We need to be mindful as to where we may also bring love in a practical way into the world. Our karma will bring it about that we are in one or another situation where this or that is demanded of us for which we are required.

It was only with tears in my eyes that I could read the letter written to his mother by a young Austrian who on 26 July heard the words that were spoken in Dornach,16 how the convictions and strength that anthroposophy can give are living in his heart and enable him to fulfil his duty where destiny has placed him. The same feelings and thoughts came to me from the letter of another young friend who had attended that same meeting in Dornach and had then entered the field of battle. These are the thoughts and feelings that must live today in our souls: to seek to fulfil our duty wherever it manifests itself to us, to hold fast to our power of judgement and to be attentive to where our love is needed. One thing that will then come to fulfilment in the future is that when the peoples of Europe are no longer opposed to one another in battle, the thoughts that we are now sending forth will be the ones that remain and be the strongest; they will represent something eternal. What we now feel will be a healing force if it is connected with the feeling that one victory is inevitable: the victory of the spirit.

A statesman in Germany spoke some remarkable words this spring.17 He said regarding our relationship to Russia that Germany had a friendly agreement with St Petersburg, whereby it had been decided not to pay attention to anything in the press. And regarding England it was said in July that the relaxation of tension was making progress, that negotiations had not been concluded but that they would be carried further in this sense. This is how a notable statesman could still speak in July. One may read these words again and try to realize how human judgement evaluated the situation before events began to take their present course. But one point that clearly emerges from these words is that we did not want the war! Please understand me aright if I make the bizarre statement that one would wish that one were a non-German so that these words might find the attention that befits them, in order to be able to give them the impression that they deserve.

But the human soul needs something that has duration, so that it is not a question of speaking today about things that tomorrow prove to be unsustainable; it needs something that is true today and also true tomorrow. It will only find such truth if it connects itself with the spirit. We may have confidence that the spirit will be victorious. Anyone who connects himself with the spirit will find the right path to that truth which can only arise from the connection with the spirit. In the week before the outbreak of the war I had to read statements in a newspaper such as the following:18 In spite of Liebknecht’s reprimand I consider that one does not need to speak the truth in political life, unless it were to become known or bring harm to oneself. Such a statement arises from the materialism of our time, in which we would be suffocated without this war and the overcoming of which is the task of our movement, which—in contrast to the incredulity prompted by such words—has as a fundamental proposition the words: ‘Wisdom lives only in truth’.19

This shows us how greatly we need the spirit of truth if we want to understand things in their reality; for what matters is that we penetrate to that objectivity that can only be arrived at through the spirit of truth. Then one will also be able to know what a later time will recognize: that this war is a conspiracy against German spiritual and cultural life.

The verse that addresses the Folk-spirit can help us to discover such an objectivity:

Spirit of my earthly habitation!Reveal the light of thine ageTo the Christ-endowed soul.That striving I may find theeIn the choirs of the spheres of peace,Singing the glory and the power