thinking, full of light
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
‘My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!’
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”
—Percy Bysshe Shelley, “Ozymandias”
Greetings and Good Morning on this last day of April!
This week we feature just one book, a brand new volume in The Collected Works of Rudolf Steiner—previously published but long out-of-print and here newly revised—of lectures given 100 years ago in the late winter and early spring of 1923.
I daresay the contents have in no way lost their relevance over the last century, but await recognition, engagement, use of their usefulness.
May the light and abundance of Spring be your breath,
—John-Scott
New in The Collected Works of Rudolf Steiner
The Driving Force of Spiritual Powers in World History
Translated by Dorothy S. Osmond and Johanna Collis
7 lectures in Dornach, Switzerland, March 11–23, 1923 (CW 222)
What is the qualitative difference between the utterance of true and untrue words? Is there one? How about between living and dead thoughts? What is the origin of war and strife among peoples on Earth? How can humanity find a right relationship to the beings of the spiritual world? These are among the compelling questions addressed by Rudolf Steiner in this concise yet powerful series of lectures.
In Berlin, in the year 1889, I was once visiting the philosopher Eduard von Hartmann, now long since dead. We spoke about questions connected with theories of knowledge. In the course of conversation, he said that one should not allow questions connected with theories of knowledge to be printed; they should at most be duplicated by some machine or in some other way, for in the whole of Germany there were at most sixty individuals capable of occupying themselves usefully with such questions.
Just think of it—one in every million! Naturally, among a million human beings, there is more than one scientist or, at least, more than one highly educated individual. But as regards real insight into questions connected with theories of knowledge, Eduard von Hartmann was probably right; for apart from the textbooks that university students have to skim through for certain examinations, not many readers will be found for works on the theory of knowledge, if written in the modern style and based on the modern way of thinking.
And so things jog along in the same old grooves. People study anatomy, physiology, biology, history, and the rest, unconcerned as to whether these sciences bring them knowledge of reality; they go on at the same jog-trot. But a time will come when people will have to be clear about the fundamental fact that because their thinking is abstract, it is full of light and therefore embraces something in the highest sense super-earthly, whereas in their life on Earth, they have around them only what is earthly. The two sets of facts simply do not harmonize.
You may ask: Did the thought-pictures that people used to have accord more fully with the human being’s inner nature when his thinking was full of life? The answer is: Yes—and I will tell you why. . .
—Rudolf Steiner, lecture of March 22, 1923, in The Driving Force of Spiritual Powers in World History (CW 222)