The more we show interest in something, the more we learn about it; and the more we learn about something, the more interest we feel toward it. Steiner says that “Wisdom is the fuel for interest.”
That which interests us comes to define us in a way. As our interest in a specific thing grows, we devote our time to pursuing knowledge about it in various ways. We begin to act; we do things in the world connected to this interest. We seek others with a similar interest. This interest becomes an aspect by which the world outside us can know us.
But even more important, we grow to love what interests us. Our interest expands us as it reveals more and more of its nature to us. It elevates us and connects us to ourselves as well as others. We develop and refine our capacities to become an instrument by which we are able to explore this interest more deeply. We begin to know ourselves better. We find a purpose in life.
People who have begun to develop a moral sense for life can probably determine if an interest is worthy of their devotion or not. But from what source does the spark of interest come and why? What lifts the human being out of the pursuit of food, shelter, and procreation into the pursuit of an interest we can call moral?
Let’s see what Dr. Steiner has to say:
What makes it possible for human beings to enter into relationship with the objective [sense] world? It is what may be called interest in the different things, and by this word “interest” something is expressed which in a moral sense is extremely important. It is much more important that we should bear in mind the moral significance of interest than that we should devote ourselves to thousands of beautiful moral axioms which may be only paltry and hypocritical. Let it be clearly understood, that our moral impulses are in fact never better guided than when we take a proper interest in objects and beings… the usual, oft-repeated declamation, “love, love, and again love” cannot replace the moral impulse contained in what may be described by the word ‘interest.’
Let us suppose that we have a child before us. What is the condition primary to our devotion to this child? What is the first condition to our educating the child? It is that we take an interest in it. There is something unhealthy or abnormal in the human soul if we withdraw ourselves from something in which we take an interest. It will more and more be recognized that the impulse of interest is a quite specially golden impulse in the moral sense the further we advance to the actual foundations of morality and do not stop at the mere preaching of morals. Our inner powers are also called forth as regards humankind when we extend our interests, when we are able to transpose ourselves with understanding into beings and objects.
Even sympathy is awakened in the right manner if we take an interest in a being; and if we set ourselves the task of extending our interests more and more and of widening our mental horizon, this will promote the universal brotherhood of humankind. Progress is not gained by the mere preaching of universal love, but by the extension of our interests further and further so that we come to interest ourselves increasingly in souls with widely different characters, racial and national particularities, with widely different temperaments, and holding widely differing religious and philosophical views, and approach them with understanding. Right interest, right understanding, calls forth from the soul the right moral action.
Here we must hold the balance between two extremes. One extreme is apathy which passes everything by and occasions immense moral mischief in the world. An apathetic people only lives in themselves; obstinately insisting on their own principles and saying: This is my standpoint. In a moral sense this insistence upon a standpoint is always bad. The essential thing is for us to have an open mind and be alive to all that surrounds us. Apathy separates us from the world, while interest unites us with it. The world loses us through our apathy: in this direction we become immoral.
We also avoid the other extreme by distinguishing between true and false interests and thus observe the joyful mean. Immediately throwing ourselves, as it were, into the arms of each person we meet is to lose ourselves passionately in the person; that is not true interest. If we do this, we lose ourselves to the world. Through apathy the world loses us; through uncontrolled passion we lose ourselves to the world. But through healthy, devoted interest we stand morally firm in the center, in the state of balance.
Excerpt from: Anthroposophical Ethics, Lecture Three by Rudolf Steiner. Norrköping, Sweden, May 30, 1912.
Steiner is here indicating that our interest is the gift we bestow on other people and things that leads to the kind of love we are invited to develop by the spiritual world. Love of the world around us, love for each other, love for the highest ideals of humankind. None of that is possible without our interest.
The study of spiritual science “is something which makes the mind ever more active, helps us to think with greater readiness of what is spiritual and to take it into ourselves. Just as it is true that warmth comes from the fire when we light a stove, so it is true that interest in humanity and the world comes when we study spiritual science. Wisdom is the fuel for interest…”
The direct guidance from the spiritual world, which has been withheld from us for a long time in order for us to become free human beings, is the source of our morality. We are now responsible for reconnecting with that spiritual world. We now are able to pursue that wisdom again in full consciousness. Surely, we can develop an interest in this.