The Rudolf Steiner Archive

8. Practical Conclusion

[ 1 ] The position of our cognizing personality in relation to the objective being of the world was the subject of our previous considerations. What does the possession of knowledge and science mean to us? That was the question we were looking for an answer to.

[ 2 ] We have seen that the innermost core of the world is expressed in our knowledge. The lawful harmony that governs the universe is manifested in human knowledge.

[ 3 ] It is thus part of man's vocation to transfer the fundamental laws of the world, which otherwise dominate all existence but would never come into existence themselves, into the realm of apparent reality. This is the essence of knowledge, that in it the ground of the world, which can never be found in objective reality, presents itself. Our cognition is - figuratively speaking - a constant living into the ground of the world.

[ 4 ] Such a conviction must also shed light on our practical view of life.

[ 5 ] The whole character of our way of life is determined by our moral ideals. These are the ideas we have of our tasks in life, or in other words, the ideas we have of what we should accomplish through our actions.

[ 6 ] Our actions are part of general world events. It is therefore also subject to the general lawfulness of these events.

[ 7 ] If an event occurs somewhere in the universe, there is a twofold distinction to be made: the external course of it in space and time and the internal lawfulness of it.

[ 8 ] The realization of this lawfulness for human action is only a special case of cognition. The views we have derived about the nature of cognition must therefore also be applicable here. To recognize oneself as an acting personality thus means: to possess the corresponding laws for one's actions, i.e. the moral concepts and ideals as knowledge. If we have recognized this lawfulness, then our actions are also our work. The lawfulness is then not given as something that lies outside the object on which the action appears, but as the content of the object itself that is conceived in living action. In this case, the object is our own ego. If the latter has really penetrated its action in a recognizing way, then it also feels itself to be the master of it. As long as this does not take place, the laws of action stand opposite us as something alien, they dominate us; what we accomplish is under the compulsion that they exert on us. Once they have been transformed from such a foreign entity into the very own actions of our ego, this compulsion ceases. The compulsion has become our own being. Lawfulness no longer rules over us, but in us over the events emanating from our ego. The realization of an event by means of a lawfulness that stands outside the realizer is an act of bondage, the realization by the realizer himself is an act of freedom. Recognizing the laws of one's actions means being aware of one's freedom. The process of cognition is, according to our explanations, the process of development towards freedom.

[ 9 ] Not all human action has this character. In many cases, we do not possess the laws for our actions as knowledge. This part of our actions is the unfree part of our actions. On the other hand, there is the part where we are fully integrated into these laws. This is the free area. Insofar as our life belongs to it, it can only be described as moral. The transformation of the first area into one with the character of the second is the task of every individual development, as well as that of humanity as a whole.

[ 10 ] The most important problem of all human thinking is this: to understand man as a free personality based on himself.