The Threefold Commonwealth

by Rudolf Steiner

This question brings us to the consideration of the form taken by modern spiritual life. Modern man has evolved a spiritual life, which is to a very great degree dependent on state institutions and on economic forces. The human being is brought whilst still a child under the education and instruction of the state; and he can be educated only in the way permitted by the industrial and economic conditions of the environment from which he springs.

It might easily be supposed, that this would ensure a person’s being well qualified for the conditions of life at the present day, for that the state must possess every opportunity of arranging the whole system of education and instruction (which constitutes the essential part of public spiritual life) in the best interests of the human community. It might well be supposed too, that the way to make a person the best possible member of the human community is to educate him in accordance with the economic opportunities of the environment from which he comes, and then pass him on, thus educated, to fill one of the openings that these opportunities afford him.—It devolves upon this book,—an unpopular task to-day,—to shew, that the chaotic condition of our public life, comes from the spiritual life’s dependence on the State and on industrial economy—and to shew further, that one part of the burning social question is the emancipation of spiritual life from this dependence.

This involves attacking very widespread errors. That the State should take over the whole system of education, has long been regarded as a beneficial step in human progress; and persons of a socialistic turn of mind find it difficult to conceive of anything else, than that society should educate the individual to its service according to its own standards.

People are loathe to recognise, what nevertheless, in this field, it is absolutely necessary should be recognised; namely, that in the process of man’s historic evolution a thing, that at an earlier period was all right, may at a later period become all wrong. In order that a new age might come about in human affairs, it was necessary that the whole system of education, and with it public spiritual life, should be removed from those circles that had exclusive possession of it all through the middle ages, and entrusted to the State. But to continue to maintain this state of things, is a grave social mistake.

This is what the first part of the book is intended to shew. The spiritual life has matured to freedom within the framework of the state; but it cannot rightly enjoy and exercise this freedom unless it is granted complete self-government. The whole character assumed by the spiritual life requires that it should form a completely independent branch of the body social. The educational and teaching system, lying as it does at the root of all spiritual life, must be put under the management of those people who are educating and teaching; and none of the influences at work in state or industry should have any say or interference in this management. No teacher should spend more time on teaching than will allow of his also being a manager in his own sphere of activity. And in the way that he himself conducts the teaching and education, so too he will conduct the management. Nobody will issue instructions, who is not at the same time actively engaged in teaching and educating. No parliament has any voice in it,—nor any individual, who once on a time may have taught, but is no longer personally teaching. The experience learnt at first hand in actual teaching passes direct into the management.—In such a system, practical knowledge and efficiency must, of course, tell in the very highest possible degree.

It may no doubt be objected, that even under such a selfgoverning spiritual life things will not be quite perfect. But then, in real life, that is not to be looked for. All one can aim at, is the best that is possible. With each child of man there are new abilities growing up, and these will really be passed on into the life of the community, when the care of developing them rests entirely with people who can judge and decide on spiritual grounds alone. How far a particular child should be brought on in one direction or another, can only be judged in a spiritual community that is quite free and detached. What steps should be taken to ensure their decision having its “rights,” this too is a matter only to be determined by a free spiritual community. From such a community the State and the economic life can receive the forces they need, and which they cannot get of themselves when they fashion spiritual life from their own points of view.

It follows from the whole tenor of the following pages, that the directors of the free spiritual life will have charge also of the arrangements and course of teaching in those institutes also, which are specially directed to the service of the State or of the economic world.—Law-schools, Trades-schools, Agricultural and Industrial Colleges, would all take their form from the free spiritual life. Many prejudices are bound to be aroused, when the principles stated in this book are pursued to these, their right consequences. But from what do such prejudices proceed? The anti-social spirit in them becomes evident, when one recognises, that at bottom they proceed from an unconscious persuasion, that people connected with education must necessarily be unpractical persons, remote from life,—not the sort of people whom one could for a moment expect to institute arrangements that would be of any real use for the practical departments of life, and that all such arrangements must be instituted by the people actively engaged in practical life, whilst the educators must work on the lines laid down for them.

In thinking like this, people do not see, that the educators need to fix their lines of work themselves, from the smallest things up to the biggest, that it is when they cannot do so that they grow unpractical and remote from life. And then you may give them any principle to work on, laid down by apparently the most practical persons, and yet their education will not turn out people really practically equipped for life. Our anti-social conditions are brought about, because people are turned out into social life not educated to feel socially. People with social feelings can only come from a mode of education that is directed and carried on by persons who themselves feel socially. The social question will never be touched, until the education question and the question of the spiritual life are treated as a vital part of it. An anti-social spirit is created not merely by economic institutions, but through the attitude of the human beings within these institutions being an anti-social one. And it is anti-social, to have the young brought up and taught by persons, who themselves are made strangers to real life by having their lines of work and the substance of their work laid down for them from outside.

The State establishes law-schools. And it requires, that the substance of the jurisprudence taught in these law-schools should be the same as the State has fixed for its own constitution and administration, from its own points of view. When the law-schools proceed wholly from a free spiritual life, this free spiritual life itself will supply the substance of the jurisprudence taught in them. The State will wait to take its mandate from the spiritual life. It will be fertilised by the reception of living ideas, such as can issue only from a spiritual life that is free.

But the human-beings, growing up to life, are within the spiritual domain, and will go forth with views of their own to put into practice. The education given by people who are strangers to life, inside educational institutes planned by mere practicians,—this is not an education that can be realised in practice. The only teaching that can find practical realisation comes from teachers who understand life and its practice from a point of view of their own. In this book an attempt is made to give at least a sketch of the way in which a free spiritual organisation will shape its details of working.