Rudolf Steiner

by Colin Wilson

  In fact, what Steiner saw in Nietzsche was largely a reflection of himself. He felt of his own age: ‘What has all this to do with me? There must be a different world, a world where I can live.’ Nietzsche had conceived his own philosophy of Dionysian strength in his student days, after taking shelter from a storm in a hut where a shepherd was killing a goat; the crash of the storm mingled with the bleating of the goat and the smell of blood, and brought an overpowering ecstasy which expressed itself in the words: ‘Lightning and tempest are different worlds, free powers without morality. Pure will, without the troubles and confusions of intellect—how happy, how free!’

  All this is a long way from the romantic, world-rejecting Nietzsche that Steiner ‘saw’ that day in Naumburg, with his ‘golden riches of great spirituality’ (a phrase that would have made Nietzsche wince). In spite of which, the book Steiner wrote on Nietzsche—and published in 1895—is remarkably perceptive. It reveals Steiner's extraordinary power of empathy—at times, the style even sounds like Nietzsche. And the reason is that, in spite of their many differences, there is a certain basic kinship between Nietzsche and Steiner. To grasp this kinship is of central importance in understanding the essence of Steiner's thought. It can be found in a passage in his earlier book On the Theory of Knowledge Implicit in Goethe's World Conception. There* Steiner attacks the view that the world of thought is dim and unreal compared to the world of sensations:

  The truth is entirely overlooked that mere ‘beholding’ is the emptiest thing imaginable, and that it receives content only from thinking…When one who has a rich mental life sees a thousand things which are nothing to the mentally poor, this shows as clearly as sunlight that the content of reality is only the reflection of the content of our minds, and that we receive from outside merely the empty forms. Of course, we must possess the inner power to recognize ourselves as the creator of this content….

  Here we could say that Steiner has already grasped the essence of Nietzsche's Zarathustra, four years before he came across Nietzsche's writings. This is even more clear in the penultimate chapter of the book, which deals with Optimism and Pessimism. Here Steiner states: ‘Man is the central point of the world order…Things really are only as they are illuminated by him. This point of view declares that man possesses within himself the central essence of his own existence. It makes him a self-sufficient being…’. And he goes on to dismiss optimism, which says the world is basically good, and pessimism, which says it is bad. ‘The external world is, in itself, neither good nor bad; it only becomes one or the other through man.’

  This is why, in spite of basic differences of approach, Steiner could write so sympathetically about Nietzsche. Like Nietzsche, his fundamental message is that man is far stronger than he realizes. The mind itself transforms reality, as the sun transforms the world when it rises in the morning. As Blake said: ‘The fool sees not the same tree that the wise man sees.’

  But we should also bear in mind that the book in which Steiner made these assertions is about the ‘theory of knowledge implicit in Goethe's world conception’. He is not speaking in his own person, as Rudolf Steiner, but as a kind of mouthpiece for Goethe. In the book on Nietzsche, he is speaking as mouthpiece for Nietzsche. At this point, in his mid-thirties, he has still not acquired the courage to express his convictions in his own voice. And in fact, his next major work—published two years after the Nietzsche book—was yet another study of Goethe, Goethe's Weltanschauung.

  Oddly enough, this final—and most definitive—work on Goethe was written as a result of Steiner's friendship with a circle of Nietzsche enthusiasts, the von Cromptons, one of Weimar's most prominent families. Steiner's book on Nietzsche made him a welcome visitor. The von Crompton circle was outspokenly critical of Weimar, which they found ‘human, all too human’. They wanted to know how German culture could develop when Weimar, the home of Goethe, made so little effort to fulfil its mission.

  Goethe's Weltanschauung differs from Steiner's earlier books in its sense of intellectual passion; at last, he is daring to raise his voice, and speak with a warmth that must have made his fellow Goethe scholars raise their eyebrows. The reason, he explains in the Autobiography, is that he was strongly under the influence of the von Crompton circle, particularly their discussions about the nature of human personality. But he had already grasped this important matter in the earlier book on Goethe. There, after declaring that the ‘content of reality is only the reflection of the content of our own minds’, he went on: ‘Of course, we must possess the inner power to recognize ourselves as the creator of this content; otherwise we shall forever see only the reflection, and never our own mind which is reflected. Indeed, one who perceives himself in an ordinary mirror must know himself as a personality in order to recognize himself as the reflected image.’ (He might have added that very few animals recognize themselves in mirrors.) All of which is to say that until I dare to recognize myself fully as an individual personality, I shall never understand that unconscious creativity which transforms the world around me. Now Steiner was allowing that realization to overcome his natural modesty—and his caution as a scholar—so that the Goethe book rings with a new depth of personal conviction.

  There is, of course, irony in the fact that he still has to take refuge behind Goethe. But Steiner himself was intelligent enough to grasp that irony. He was slowly becoming aware that, whether he liked it or not, he would soon have to stand before his audience as Rudolf Steiner, and dare to use the word ‘I’.

  It was at this period, when he was writing the final Goethe book, that ‘a profound transformation began to take place in my inner life’. The chrysalis was slowly turning into a butterfly. What happened was that Steiner ceased to feel the need to shrink away from the real world and take refuge in his mental world. It was a kind of rebirth.

  I became able to observe physical things and events more accurately and completely than before. This was the case in regard to scientific investigation, and also to external life in general…There awakened within me a new awareness of sense-perceptible things. Details became important. I felt that the sense world has something to reveal which it alone can reveal. I felt one ought to learn to know the physical world purely through itself without adding any of one's own thoughts.

  These remarks sound oddly commonplace for such a climactic change. We have to bear in mind Steiner's admission that he always had great difficulty coming to terms with the real world, as if his sense organs were somehow too weak to make proper contact. For modern readers, that sentence ‘I felt that the sense world has something to reveal which it alone can reveal’ may bring to mind Aldous Huxley's description of his experience under mescalin: that sense that the world has suddenly become fifty times as real, and that the sheer ‘is-ness’ of things is speaking to us. Our senses filter the real world, and ‘turn it down’ like the volume control on a radio; mescalin removes the filter and turn up the volume. This seems to be what Steiner is trying to describe. And his sentence about learning ‘to know the physical world purely through itself without adding one's own thoughts’ brings to mind Nietzsche's triumphant cry: ‘Pure will, without the troubles and perplexities of intellect! How happy! how free!’

  What was happening was that Steiner was slowly ceasing to be the shy, shrinking, self-conscious young man, of whom Friedrich Eckstein said ‘He didn't know a thing.’ It had taken him a long time to grow up. During the first half of his life he had been a typical ‘outsider’ figure, withdrawn into a world of his own thoughts, looking at the real world as if he was looking through the glass of an aquarium. Now, at last, he was in contact with the real world, and felt no more need to retreat hastily back into the safety of his mental world.

  ‘I was aware that I was experiencing an inner transformation of soul-life which normally occurs at a much earlier age.’ And he came to the interesting conclusion that for most people, it happens too early. They emerge from the shy, inner world of the child and adolescent, and learn to come to terms with th
e real world around them. The result is that the two worlds mix, like hot and cold water, the result being lukewarm water. Because Steiner had taken so much longer to make contact with the external world, he had also acquired the knack of preventing the two from diluting one another.

  It had happened at exactly the right time. Steiner's work in Weimar was drawing to a close; he had completed his edition of Goethe's scientific writings. And while no doubt he could have stayed on at the Goethe Archive indefinitely, he was experiencing the need to move on. The desire to express his convictions was becoming increasingly strong. ‘My special concern at this period of my life was that ideas which I had to reject emphatically had taken such an intense hold upon thinking in general. These ideas were so universally accepted that people were unable to see the possibilities inherent in anything that opposed them.’ And Steiner had to face the fact that his own books were doing nothing to change the opinions of the age. His highly abstract style guaranteed that very few people read them. Sooner or later, he would have to go out into the world and preach. But where would he begin? ‘Thus at every turn I met the problem: How can I find the way to express in terms understandable to my contemporaries what I inwardly perceive directly as truth?’ And it is significant that the following chapter of his Autobiography—Chapter 24—is the only one that bears a title: ‘Must I remain silent?’

  Steiner's thoroughly unpractical solution to the problem was to purchase a moribund magazine called The Review of Literature. It was unpractical, to begin with, because the magazine had only a few subscribers. A Frank Harris or a G. K. Chesterton might have turned it into a success; but Steiner was the last man in the world to improve its circulation. His brief editorship of the German Weekly Review in 1888 had shown that he had no talent in this direction. Worse still, the owner would only sell it if Steiner accepted as co-editor a pleasant but lazy man-about-town called Otto Erich Hartleben, an ‘aesthete’ who spent half his time in Italy and the other half in Berlin cafés. Steiner liked him—he seems to have liked everybody—but found it impossible to work with him.

  Nevertheless, the magazine seemed to offer the only solution to the problem of how to reach a wider audience. So in July 1897, Steiner finally severed his connection with Weimar and became an editor in Berlin.

  The change was not particularly pleasant. Once again, he found himself living in uncomfortable lodgings. The people he now associated with were friends of Hartleben and members of a group called the Independent Literary Society who regarded the magazine as their own platform. Steiner says mildly: ‘Those who were connected with the Review…were not particularly serious-minded people. Only a very few had any deeper interests.’ And it does not take a great deal of reading between the lines to see that they regarded Steiner as what would nowadays be called a ‘nut’. With charming honesty, Steiner admits that Weimar friends had failed to understand his ideas, but had been willing to accept that he had something of value to contribute. This new circle, he says with obvious understatement, did not share that impression. So his first experience of attempting to reach the wider public must have been something of a disillusionment.

  Steiner, fortunately, was not the kind of man to be discouraged by incomprehension. His ‘spiritual insight’ suggested that all this was ‘the working of destiny’, a healthy-minded attitude that protected him from the discouragement he would have certainly experienced as a younger man.

  His permanent lack of money did nothing to ease the situation. The magazine staggered on from crisis to crisis, and caused endless anxiety. Steiner's own reviews and articles, far from increasing its circulation, alienated many subscribers, particularly a group associated with the University of Berlin. Once again, he was spending his time sitting around in cafés with impecunious writers, just as if the last ten years had never happened. Some of the writers—like the dramatist Frank Wedekind—were men of genius; but they still had nothing whatever in common with Steiner. ‘My position became uncomfortable within this circle because I realized why I was there, but the others did not.’ And why was he there? To fulfil his destiny, to speak openly of his knowledge of the spirit. It was a pity that no one seemed interested.

  At least he was able to renew his acquaintance with the theatre. The magazine was also associated with an independent Drama Society’, who hired theatres for matinée performances of uncommercial plays—such as Maeterlinck's symbolist drama The Intruder. Steiner introduced this play with a short lecture, and thoroughly enjoyed himself. Whether his audience did is another matter: ‘it afforded opportunity to convey a mood of true spirituality’. Cultivated Berliners found Steiner's brand of spirituality incomprehensible. In this age of Freud and Ibsen, Strindberg and Wedekind, H. G. Wells and Bernard Shaw, his ‘idealism’ must have struck most of them as a stale leftover from the 1850s.

  Not the least of his personal problems was the ‘utter misery of living alone’. At least this improved when Anna Eunicke moved from Weimar to Berlin in 1898; she took a house in the suburb of Friedenau, and invited Steiner to become a lodger. But the daughters were now grown up, and the presence of this still fairly young man in a house full of women probably gave rise to gossip. For whatever reason, Steiner and Anna Eunicke were married on 31 October 1899.

  For the short period it lasted, Steiner's marriage seems to have been a happy one. An interesting glimpse into his domestic life can be found in the memoir written by a working man named Alwin Rudolph, who called upon Steiner towards the end of 1898 as an emissary of the College of the Workers’ Educational Association. The College was looking around for someone to undertake the thankless task of lecturing on history—the lectures were usually so dry that most of the students dropped out after a week or so, and the lecturers became discouraged. Someone suggested a certain poet, and the poet suggested Steiner. So a delegation led by Herr Rudolph called upon Steiner at the house in Friedenau.

  They were shown into a large room with an enormous desk by a young woman—one of the daughters. There was an older woman in the room, as well as Rudolf Steiner, a small, slim man dressed in black, with an untrimmed moustache and a flowing bow tie. Steiner was friendly and welcoming, and in no time at all, pastries had been produced and a coffee grinder was at work on the table. Of the women, Rudolph says: ‘Actually I ought not to speak of them as “ladies”, because they were two simple women, open-minded and many sided.’ Presumably he means to say that they did not strike him as at all ‘upper class’—if anything, the reverse. They seemed to treat Steiner with reverence, and it never occurred to Rudolph that the older woman might be—or might become—Mrs Steiner.

  Without hesitation, Steiner agreed to give the course of lectures. The working men were so overwhelmed by all the hospitality and friendliness that they even forgot to mention the question of money—the fee for the course was a mere eight marks. Accordingly, Rudolph was ordered to return and find out whether Dr Steiner would be insulted by such a small sum. His reception this time was even friendlier; Steiner greeted him by taking both hands. Once more, coffee was produced, and when Steiner told him it was heated by spirits, there was a certain amount of joking about the word. The daughter produced a rag doll of Dr Steiner, and lifted the black frock coat to reveal a bottle of brandy. The girl explained that ‘his whole body is spirit’. Rudolph, a Marxian materialist, was a little bewildered by these jokes, but deeply impressed by Steiner—so much so that he again omitted to mention fees.

  On 13 January 1899, Steiner arrived for his first lecture at two minutes to eight—it was due to begin at eight—once more accompanied by his two faithful females. The room was small, for the College was accustomed to the audience dwindling steadily during the ten-week course. The little man with the friendly face and Austrian accent lauched himself into the lecture, speaking without notes, and the crowded audience was deeply impressed. Some of them even said afterwards that he ought to be a Member of Parliament.

  The situation was, of course, paradoxical. The Workers’ Educational Association was founded o
n Marxian principles, so its view of history was totally materialistic. Steiner was not in the least bothered by this; in fact, he saw it as his task to convert them to his own views in the gentlest possible manner. We may regard his attitude as either pragmatic or Machiavellian. He says: ‘It must be remembered that there are partial truths in the materialistic ideas on economics…Had I simply ignored them and taught history from an idealistic point of view, the workers would have sensed that what I said was not in agreement with the partial truths they knew…’. In other words, Steiner allowed them to assume that he agreed with Marx's economic theory of history. But he immediately added a reservation. It was nonsense to speak of economic forces dominating history before the sixteenth century, because economic life did not take on a form that could be understood in a Marxian sense until that time. Any good Marxist would have told him indignantly that the sixteenth century was the age of mercantile capitalism, and was just as dominated by class conflict as the nineteenth century. Fortunately, Steiner's audience consisted of respectful workers who were overawed by his enormous erudition. So they raised no objections when Steiner explained that before the sixteenth century, the great human ideals were spiritual, and that only in recent centuries have these become weakened by materialism. Probably no one even guessed that Steiner was not an orthodox Marxist. ‘It would have been useless to enter into a controversy about materialism; I had to let idealism arise out of materialism,’ says Steiner cunningly.