The internal structure of a healthy social organism makes its
international relations also threefold. Each of its three branches
will have its own independent relation to the corresponding branch of
other threefold organisms. All manner of interconnections will spring
up between the economic network of one district and that of another,
without being directly influenced by the connections between their
"rights-States." [7] And, conversely, the relations between their
"rights-States" will, within certain limits, develope in complete
independence of their economic connections. This independence of origin
will enable these two sets of relations to act as a check upon each
other in cases of dispute. Such a close interweaving of interests
will grow up, as will make territorial frontiers seem negligible in
the life of mankind.
The spiritual organisations of the different districts will become
linked in a way that only the common spiritual life of mankind can
make possible. Detached from the State and placed on its own footing,
the spiritual life will develope all manner of connections, that
are impossible when the recognition of spiritual services does not
rest with a spiritual corporation, but with the "rights-State." So
far as this is concerned, there is no real difference between the
services rendered by science,--which are frankly international,--and
those rendered in any other spiritual field. The common language
of a nation, and all that goes along with language, constitutes one
such field of spiritual life,--including the national consciousness
itself. The people of one language-area do not come into unnatural
conflict with those of another language-area, except when they try
to make their national form of civilisation predominant through
the use of their State-organisation or their economic power. If one
national civilisation spreads more readily, and has greater spiritual
fertility than another, then it is quite right that it should spread;
and the process of spreading will be a peaceful one, provided it
comes about solely through the agency of the spiritual communities
of the different social organisms.
At the present time, the keenest opposition to the threefold order
will come precisely from those groups of mankind which have clustered
round a common origin of speech and national culture. Such opposition
however must break down before the common goal of all mankind,--a goal
towards which men will set their faces with increasing consciousness
from the very necessities of life in the modern age. Mankind will
come to feel, that each of its many parts can only lead a life worthy
of their common humanity, when bound in living links to all the
rest. National affinities, together with other impulses of a natural
order, are amongst the causes which historically led to the formation
of communities in "rights" and communities of industrial economy. But
the forces to which nationalities owe their growth require for their
development free mutual interaction, untrammelled by any ties that
grow up between the respective bodies of State and the economic
Associations. And the way of achieving this, is for the various
national communities to develope the threefold order within their own
social structures; and then their three branches can each expand its
own relation with the corresponding branches of the other communities.
In this way, peoples, States, economic bodies, become grouped together
in formations that are very various in shape and character, and every
part of mankind becomes so linked with the other parts, that each
is conscious of the life of the other pulsing through its own daily
interests. A league of nations is the outcome,--arising out of root
impulses that correspond to actual realities. There will be no need to
"institute" one, built up solely on legal theories of right. [8]
To anyone, who is thinking of these things in terms of real life,
it must seem of especial importance, that the aims here set before
the body social, whilst having a meaning for the whole of mankind
collectively, are such as can be put in practice by any single
corporate community, no matter what may be the attitude adopted by
other countries for the time being.--If one corporate community has
organised itself into its three natural divisions, the administratures
of the three divisions can act together as a single body, and thus
perfectly well form relations even with outside communities that are
not yet prepared to adopt the threefold order themselves. Whoever leads
the way with the threefold order, will be furthering the common aim
of all mankind. What actually has to be done, will be carried through
by that strength which an aim brings with it in practical life, when
it is rooted in the actual guiding forces of humanity,--rather than
by diplomatic agreements, or drafting schemes at conferences. It is
on a basis of reality that this aim is conceived in thought. It is
one to be pursued in the real action of life at any and every point
amongst the communities of men.
Anyone, watching what was going on in the life of peoples and of
States during the last 30 or 40 years from a point of view such as
given in these pages, could see how the State-structures that had been
built up in the course of history, with their blending of spiritual
life, "rights" and industrial economy, were becoming involved in
international relations that were heading for catastrophe. At the same
time, it was equally plain, that the opposite forces at work within
mankind's unconscious impulses were tending towards the threefold
order. Here lies the remedy for those convulsions that have been
brought about by the mania for unification. The way of life among the
"leaders of mankind" was not however of the kind to enable them to
see what had been for years past slowly working up. In the spring
and summer of 1914, one still found "statesmen" saying, that, thanks
to the governments' exertions, the peace of Europe was, so far as
could be humanly foreseen, assured. These "statesmen" simply had
not the faintest notion, that all that they were doing and saying
had absolutely lost touch with the course of real events. Yet these
were the people who were looked up to as "practical"; and people were
regarded as little better than "cranks" at that time, who had been
forming other views during all those years, which differed from those
of the "statesmen";--such views, for instance, as those expressed by
the present writer months before the war-catastrophe, when addressing
a small audience in Vienna,--(a large audience would certainly have
laughed him down.) He then spoke of the danger menacing, in more or
less these words:--"The tendencies prevalent in the life of the present
day will continue to gather strength, until they end by annihilating
themselves. And if one reads social life with the eyes of the spirit,
one can perceive everywhere the ghastly signs of social tumours
forming. Here is the great menace to our civilisation, manifest to
anyone able to read below the surface of existence. It is this that
is so appalling, so overpowering, that--even if one could otherwise
repress all zeal on behalf of a science in which spiritual knowledge
is made instrumental to the knowledge of life's events,--these things
alone would impell one to speak, to proclaim the remedy, to hurl
one's words as it were in the face of the world. If the body social
follows the same line of evolution as hitherto, it will become full of
sores--sores of civilisation that will be for it what cancers are for
man's natural body."--Such were the foundations upon which life rested,
and which the ruling circles neither could nor would see. But their
special view of life led them to find in such conditions a pretext
for measures that would have been better left undone, but for none
that were of a sort to establish confidence between the different
communities of mankind.--Whoever is under the belief that the social
necessities of the time played no part amongst the immediate causes of
the present world-catastrophe, should ask himself this question:--What
direction would political impulses have taken in the States that
were rushing into mutual war, if the "statesmen" had recognised the
social needs of the times, and embodied these in their aims? And
how much that was done would have been left undone, if their efforts
had thus been directed to something more substantial than piling up
inflammable material, that was bound sooner or later to lead to an
explosion? As one watched the relations between the States during
recent years, and the cancer creeping on in them, owing to the form
that social life had taken amongst the leading sections of mankind,
one could understand how a man of broadly human spiritual interests,
such as Hermann Grimm, was led to speak as he did, so early in 1888,
when discussing the form that social aims had taken amongst the leading
circles:--"The end they set before them, is the ultimate formation of
mankind into a commonwealth of brothers, who ever afterwards shall go
forward hand-in-hand, actuated only by the noblest impulses. Merely to
follow history on the map of Europe, one would imagine that a general
internecine massacre were the next step imminent." Only the thought,
that a "road must be found" to the true riches of human life, this
thought alone can keep alive a sense of human worth. It is a thought
"which hardly seems compatible with the gigantic preparations for
war that we and our neighbours too are making. And yet, I believe in
it. And in the light of this thought we must live; unless indeed
it were better to put an end to human existence altogether by
common consent, and appoint an official day of universal suicide"
(Herman Grimm: "The Last Five Years,"--Pub. 1888.)--What were these
"preparations for war," save steps taken by men who were bent upon
preserving their old State constructions in one and undivided form,
despite the fact that the evolution of the new age had made this
onefold form incompatible with the very essence of healthy relations
between the peoples. Health can, nevertheless, be brought into the
common life of the peoples, by that form of social order that takes
its shape from the requirements of the times.
The State-structure of Austria-Hungary had, for more than half a
century, been struggling towards a new formation. Its spiritual life,
which had its roots in a multiplicity of racial communities, called
for a form of development to which the old onefold State, created by
outworn impulses, offered a continual obstacle. The incident with
which the great catastrophe opened--the quarrel between Austria
and Serbia--is a conclusive sign, that the political frontiers of
the onefold State ought not, after a certain point of time, to have
formed the cultural frontiers for the spiritual life of its various
nationalities. Could the spiritual life have been on its own footing,
independent of the political State and political boundaries, it would
have had a chance to develope regardless of frontiers, in a manner
befitting the true purpose of the several nationalities; and the
struggle, which was deeply rooted in the spiritual life, need never
have found vent in a political catastrophe. Deliberate development
in this direction seemed an utter impossibility, sheer lunacy indeed,
to all "statesman-like" thinkers in Austria-Hungary. Their habits of
thought admitted of no other conception than that the boundaries of
State must also be the boundaries of national community. They could not
understand, how spiritual organisations could be formed, cutting across
state frontiers, and comprising the school system and other branches
of spiritual life. It was against all their habitual conceptions. And
yet this "inconceivable" thing is what international life demands in
the new age. A really practical thinker ought not to be held up by
apparent impossibilities, and assume that the obstacles in the way of
doing what is requisite are insurmountable. He must simply concentrate
on surmounting them. But instead of turning their statesman-like
thought along lines that would have been in unison with modern-age
requirements, they devoted their whole energies to bolstering up the
onefold form of State against the demands of the age by all manner
of institutions. The State grew more and more unwieldy and impossible
in its structure. And in the second decade of the twentieth century,
it had reached a point when it could no longer keep itself together
in its old form, and must either passively await dissolution, or else
attempt to accomplish externally by force the internally impossible,
and maintain itself by the power which a war-footing would give to
it. In 1914 there remained for the Austro-Hungarian "statesmen" but
one alternative:--Either they must direct their policy along the lines
of life in a healthy social order, and make known their intention to
the world,--a course which might have revived new confidence,--or else
they were absolutely obliged to start a war, in order to keep the old
structure from tumbling about their ears.--What happened in 1914 must
be judged from these underlying causes; otherwise it is impossible to
think correctly and justly about the question of "blame." The fact
that many nationalities went to compose the fabric of her State,
might well seem to have made it Austria-Hungary's mission in the
world's history to lead the way in evolving a healthy form of social
order. The mission was not recognised. And this sin against the spirit
of the world's historic life drove Austria-Hungary into war.
And what about the German Empire?--The German Empire was founded at
a moment, when the call of the new age for the healthy form of social
life was endeavouring to find practical realisation. To have realised
it, might have given the empire a justification for its existence
in the world's history. All the social impulses met together in this
realm of Central Europe, as if it were the ground allotted to them from
of old in the world's history for them to work themselves out. The
social tendency in thought was to be found in any number of places,
but within the German Empire it assumed a form that plainly shewed
whither it was tending. Here lay the work which should have given the
empire its substance and purport. Here was the field of labour for
those who were at the head of its affairs. This empire would have
required no justification in the community of modern nations, had
it received at its foundation a task and purport such as the forces
of history themselves seemed to suggest. But instead of dealing with
the task on a scale corresponding to its magnitude, those at the head
of affairs contented themselves with "social reforms" arising out of
the exigencies of the hour, and were delighted when such reforms as
these were held up as models by other countries. And all the time,
they were more and more seeking to establish the external prestige of
the empire upon a pattern taken from the antiquated conceptions of
the power and glory of States. They went on building up an empire,
which was as contrary as the Austro-Hungarian fabric to everything
that history shewed to be an active force in the modern life of the
peoples. But of these forces the empire's governors saw nothing. The
particular form of State-structure, that they had in their mind's eye,
could only rest on military force. Whereas the form of State, that
modern history demanded, must have rested on a practical realisation
of the impulses that were making for a healthy social organism. In
giving these impulses practical realisation, they would have made
themselves a different place in the community of peoples from the
position they actually occupied in 1914. Through failure to understand
what was demanded by the life of the peoples in this new age, German
policy had, in 1914, reached a dead-point as regards any possibility
of further action. For years past, German policy had been blind to
everything that ought to have been accomplished; it had busied itself
with every conceivable thing that lay outside the forces of modern
evolution, and that was bound inevitably from sheer hollowness to
"tumble down like a house of cards."
The whole tragedy, thus brought about in the course of history
and summed up in the fate of the German Empire, is to be found very
faithfully reflected, for anyone who would take the trouble to examine
and give the world a true and exact picture of what occurred in the
leading quarters of Berlin in the last days of July and 1st August,
1914. Of these occurrences very little still is known, either at
home or abroad. Whoever is acquainted with them knows, that German
policy at that time was a card-house policy, that it had reached a
dead-point in action; so that the whole question, as to whether there
should be a war, or how it should begin, was inevitably made over to
the decision of the military authorities. And the responsible people
amongst the military authorities could not, from a military point
of view, act otherwise than they did act, because from that point
of view, the situation could only be regarded as they regarded it;
for outside the military department things had got to a pass where
no further action was possible. This would be a notorious fact in the
world's history, if there were any who would make it their business to
bring to light what went on in Berlin at the end of July and on the
first of August,--in particular on July 31 and August 1. People are
still under the delusion, that nothing is to be gained by a minute
knowledge of these occurrences, if one knows the previous events
that led up to them. But it is knowledge that must not be shirked,
if there is to be any discussion of the question of "blame," as it
is called to-day. Of course, there are other ways of arriving at the
causes, which were already of long standing; but a detailed knowledge
of these few days reveals the way in which these causes acted.
The notions, which at the time drove Germany's leaders into war,
continued their baneful work. They became the mood of a nation. And
these same notions prevented the people in power from acquiring by
the bitter experiences of the final terrible years that insight, for
want of which the tragedy had come about. These experiences might
well have opened men's eyes; and, in this hope, the present writer
took what seemed to him an opportune moment in the war calamity,
and did his best to bring before various personages the ideas
underlying a healthy social organism, and the political attitude
that these entail towards the world abroad. He addressed himself to
prominent individuals, whose influence at that time might still have
been exerted to carry these social impulses into effect; and various
persons, who had the destiny of the German people honestly at heart,
took pains to gain admission for these ideas. All that was said was
in vain. Every old habit of thought was up in arms against social
impulses of this kind, which to a purely military cast of thought
appeared quite impracticable,--something for which they had no use
at all. The farthest they could get was: "Separation of Church and
School,"--yes,--there was something in that. The thoughts of the
"statesman-like thinkers" had been running on lines of that sort
for years, and would not be turned into any direction involving
drastic change. Well-meaning people suggested my "publishing" these
proposals,--most futile advise at that particular moment. What would
have been the good of another treatise on these social impulses, in
addition to all the other current literature of the hour,--and coming
from a private person too! From the very nature of such impulses,
they could, at that time, only have carried weight through the quarter
from which they were pronounced. Had a pronouncement in favour of these
impulses been made from the right place, the peoples of Central Europe
would have recognised the possibility of realising something that
was in sympathy with their own more or less conscious tendencies. And
the peoples of the Russian districts, East, would at that time most
undoubtedly have recognised in these social impulses a practical
solution to Czarism. That they could and would have recognised the
significance of these impulses, is beyond dispute for anyone able to
perceive the as yet unexhausted intellectual vigour of the peoples of
Eastern Europe, and how receptive their minds are to healthy social
ideas. However, there was no pronouncement in favour of these ideas;
and, instead, came Brest-Litovsk.
That military thinking could do nothing to avert the disaster from
Central and Eastern Europe, could have been concealed from none
but militarist minds. The cause of the German people's disaster
was, that people would not recognise that the disaster could not be
averted. They would not face the fact, that in those quarters, which
had the deciding of affairs, there was no sense of the big, historic
necessities. Anyone, who knew anything of these historic necessities,
also knew, that the English-speaking races had persons amongst them,
who were able to read the forces at work amongst the peoples of
Central and Eastern Europe, and that these persons were convinced,
that there was something working up in Central and Eastern Europe which
must find vent in tremendous social convulsions,--convulsions of a
sort for which they believed there to be no necessity nor occasion
in the English-speaking regions. They framed their own policy on
these conclusions. In Central and Eastern Europe nothing was seen
of all this, and the people there shaped their policy on lines
which brought the whole thing "like a house of cards" about their
ears. The only policy, which could have had a solid foundation, would
have been one which recognised, that people in the English-speaking
countries were handling the forces of world-history on large lines,
and of course, naturally, from the English point of view. But to
agitate in favour of such a policy would have been regarded as highly
superfluous,--especially by the "diplomatists."
So, instead of adopting a policy, which might have also have ensured
the prosperity of Central and Eastern Europe,--despite the large lines
of English policy,--before the war-catastrophe swept over everything,
the leaders still continued to run along the familiar diplomatic
rails. And, even amidst the horrors of war, bitter experience
still failed to teach them, when the manifesto came from America
announcing the world's mission in political terms, that it must be
met by another and a different one from Europe, born of the forces
of Europe herself. Wilson had announced the world's mission from the
American standpoint. Europe's sense of her mission would have been
heard as a spiritual impulse above the roar of the guns. Between the
two it would have been possible to effect an understanding. All other
talk of mutual understanding rang hollow in face of the historic
necessities. But those, whom circumstances brought to the head of
affairs in the German Empire, lacked the perception which could
make them lay hold on the seeds of new growth in modern human life
and embody them in a comprehensive aim. And, therefore, the autumn of
1918 could bring nothing but what it brought. The collapse of military
power was accompanied by spiritual surrender. In this supreme hour,
at least they might have roused themselves, have sought strength in
the will and purpose of Europe, and made good the spiritual forces
of the German people. Instead, they abdicated to Wilson's Fourteen
Points. Wilson was confronted by a Germany that had nothing to say on
her own account. Whatever Wilson may think about his own 14 points,
he is nevertheless powerless to help Germany except as Germany is
willing. He was bound to await a pronouncement of her will. The
beginning of the war had already demonstrated the nullity of German
policy. It was again demonstrated in October, 1918. So came that
awful spiritual capitulation, at the hands of a man on whom numbers
in German lands had staked as it were their last hope.
Want of faith in insight based on the forces at work through
history;--unwillingness to seek strength in impulses that proceed
from a perception of spiritual facts:--The state of Central Europe
was due to these two things.
And now, to-day, the circumstances consequent on the war-catastrophe
have created a new situation. The idea that gives its stamp to the new
situation can be that of the social impulses of mankind, as conceived
in this book. These social impulses speak a language, towards which
the whole civilised world has a responsibility. Has thought spent
itself, and come to its dead-point before the social question as
Central-European policy did before the problems of 1914? Some countries
were able to stand aloof from the points that were then at issue. From
the social movement they cannot stand aloof. This is a question that
admits of no political adversaries and of no neutrals. Here, there
must be but one human race working at one common task, willing to
read the signs of the times and to act in accordance with them.