Produced by Jeroen Hellingman and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net/ for Project Gutenberg (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.) THE THREEFOLD COMMONWEALTH Authorized Translation by E. Bowen-Wedgwood BY RUDOLF STEINER Author of "The Philosophy of Freedom," "Die Sociale Zukunft," etc. LONDON The Threefold Commonwealth 46, Gloucester Place, W. 1. NEW YORK The Threefold Commonwealth Publishing Association 701, Carnegie Hall A FOREWORD AS TO THE PURPOSE OF THIS BOOK The social life of the present day presents grave and far-reaching problems. We are confronted by demands for social reconstruction, which shew that the solution of these problems must be sought along paths unthought-of hitherto. Borne out by the actual events of the hour, the time has perhaps come for someone to gain a hearing, who is forced by life's experience to maintain, that the neglect to turn our thoughts into the paths that are now needed has stranded us in confusion and perplexity. It is under that conviction that this book is written. Its purpose is to discuss what needs doing, in order that those demands, which are being urged by a large part of mankind to-day, may be turned in the direction of a determinate social will and purpose. Personal likes and dislikes should enter but little into the formation of a social purpose. The demands, welcome or unwelcome, are there; and they must be reckoned with as facts of social life. This should be borne in mind by those who, from their personal situation in life, may be inclined to be annoyed at the author's way of discussing the demands of the working-class, because in their opinion he lays too one-sided a stress on these demands, as on something that must be reckoned with when determining on a social purpose. But what the author wants, is to present life as it exists to-day in all its full reality, in so far as he is able from his knowledge of it. He has ever before his eyes the fatal consequences that must ensue, if people refuse to see facts, which are actually there, which have arisen out of the life of modern mankind,--and if they accordingly persist in ignoring a social will and purpose in which these facts find their place.