The Rudolf Steiner Archive

3. Cardinal Nicolas of Cusa

[ 1 ] A glorious shining star in the sky of medieval intellectual life is Nicolaus Chrypffs from Kues (near Trier 1401-1464). He was at the height of knowledge of his time. He achieved outstanding results in mathematics. In natural science, he can be described as a forerunner of Copernicus, because he took the view that the earth is a moving celestial body like others. He had already broken with a view that the great astronomer Tycho de Brahe still relied on a hundred years later when he hurled the following sentence against Copernicus' doctrine: "The earth is a coarse, heavy mass that is awkward to move; how can Copernicus make a star out of it and guide it around in the skies?" Nicolaus of Cusa, who not only embraced the knowledge of his time but also advanced it, also had the great ability to awaken this knowledge to inner life, so that it not only enlightens man about the outer world but also imparts to him that spiritual life for which he must long from the deepest reasons of his soul. If we compare Nicolaus with spirits such as Eckhart or Tauler, we arrive at a significant result. Nicolaus is the scientific thinker who wants to raise himself from research into the things of the world to the level of a higher view; Eckhart and Tauler are the devout confessors who seek the higher life out of the content of faith. Finally, Nicolaus arrives at the same inner life as the master Eckhart; but that of the former has a rich knowledge as its content. The full significance of this difference becomes clear when one considers that for those who study the various sciences there is a danger of misjudging the scope of the kind of knowledge that enlightens the individual fields of knowledge. Such a person can easily be deceived into believing that there is only one kind of knowledge. He will then either underestimate or overestimate this knowledge, which leads to the goal in matters of the individual sciences. In the one case he will also approach the objects of the highest spiritual life as he would a physical task, and treat them with concepts with which he treats gravity or electricity. The world becomes to him, depending on whether he believes himself more or less enlightened, a blindly working machine, or an organism, or the purposeful construction of a personal God; perhaps also an entity that is governed and permeated by some more or less clearly imagined "world soul". In the other case he realizes that the knowledge of which alone he has an experience is only suitable for the things of the sense world; then he becomes a doubter who says to himself: We can know nothing about the things that lie beyond the sense world. Our knowledge has a limit. For the needs of the higher life, we can only throw ourselves into the arms of a faith untouched by knowledge. For a learned theologian like Nicolaus von Kues, who was also a natural scientist, the second danger was particularly obvious. According to his scholarly upbringing, he emerged from scholasticism, the mode of thought which was the dominant mode of scientific life in the Church of the Middle Ages and which had been brought to its highest flowering by Thomas Aquinas (1225 to 1274), the "prince of the scholastics". This way of thinking must be taken as the background if one wants to paint the personality of Nicolaus of Cusa.

[ 2 ] Scholasticism is to the highest degree a result of human ingenuity. The logical faculty celebrated its greatest triumphs. Anyone who strives to work out concepts in the sharpest, purest contours should be apprenticed to the scholastics. They offer the high school for the technique of thought. They have an incomparable skill in moving in the field of pure thought. What they were able to achieve in this field is easily underestimated. For in most areas of knowledge it is difficult for people to access. Most people only reach it clearly in the field of counting and arithmetic, and when thinking about the relationship between geometric shapes. We can count by adding a unit to a number in our thoughts without resorting to sensory concepts. We also calculate without such ideas, only in the pure elements of thought. In the case of geometrical formations we know that they do not correspond perfectly with any sensory conception. There is no (ideal) circle in the reality of the senses. Nevertheless, our thinking is concerned with it. For things and processes that are more complicated than numerical and spatial formations, it is more difficult to find their ideal counterparts. This has led to some people claiming that there is only as much real science in the individual fields of knowledge as can be measured and counted in them. This is as incorrect as a one-sided statement is incorrect; but it bribes many, as often only one-sidedness succeeds. The truth of the matter is that most people are unable to grasp the purely intellectual even where it is no longer a question of what can be measured or counted. But he who is not able to do so in the higher spheres of life and knowledge is in this respect like a child who has not yet learned to count other than by adding pea to pea. The thinker who has said that there is as much real science in a field of knowledge as there is mathematics in it has not grasped the full truth of the matter. One must demand that everything else that cannot be measured and counted should be treated just as idealistically as the numerical and spatial formations. And the scholastics met this demand in the most perfect way. They sought everywhere the thought content of things, as the mathematician seeks it in the field of the measurable and countable.

[ 3 ] Despite this consummate logical art, the scholastics only arrived at a one-sided and subordinate concept of cognition. This is that in cognizing, man creates an image in himself of what he is supposed to recognize. It is readily apparent that with such a concept of cognition all reality must be set aside from cognition. For in cognition one cannot then grasp a thing itself, but only an image of this thing. Nor can man grasp himself in his self-knowledge, but what he recognizes of himself is also only an image of himself. Entirely in the spirit of scholasticism, a precise connoisseur of the same (K. Werner in his book "Franz Suarez und die Scholastik der letzten Jahrhunderte", 2nd vol., p.122) says: "Man has in time no view of his ego, the hidden ground of his spiritual being and life; ... he will ... ... he will never come to look at himself; for either, alienated from God forever, he will find in himself only a bottomless dark abyss, an endless emptiness, or, blessed in God, turning his gaze inwards, he will find only God, whose sun of grace shines in him, whose image is formed in the spiritual features of his being." Anyone who thinks this way about all cognition only has a concept of the cognition that is applicable to external things. The sensual aspect of a thing always remains external to us. That is why we can only include images of what is sensual in the world in our cognition. When we perceive a color or a stone, we cannot become the color or the stone itself in order to recognize the essence of the color or the stone. Nor can the color or the stone transform into a part of our own being! The question is, however, whether the concept of such a cognition directed towards the exterior of things is an exhaustive one? - For scholasticism, however, essentially all human cognition coincides with this cognition. Another excellent expert on scholasticism (Otto Willmann, in his "Geschichte des Idealismus", 2nd vol. 2nd ed, S. 396) characterizes the concept of knowledge relevant to this school of thought in the following way: "Our spirit, associated with the body in earthly life, is primarily attuned to the surrounding physical world, but directed towards the spiritual in it: the essences, natures, forms of things, which elements of existence are related to it and offer it the rungs to ascend to the super-sensible; the field of our cognition is therefore the field of experience, but we are to learn to understand what it offers, to penetrate to its sense and thought, and thus open up the world of thought to ourselves. " The scholastics could not arrive at any other concept of knowledge. The dogmatic doctrinal content of his theology prevented him from doing so. If he had fixed the gaze of his spiritual eye on what he regarded as a mere image, then he would have seen that in this supposed image the spiritual content of things themselves is revealed; then he would have found that within himself God is not merely image, but that he lives in it, is essentially present. Looking into his inner being, he would not have seen a dark abyss, an endless emptiness, but also not merely an image of God; rather he would have felt that a life pulsates within him, which is the divine life itself; and that his own life is precisely God's life. The scholastic was not allowed to admit this. In his opinion, God was not allowed to enter into him and speak out of him; he was only allowed to be in him as an image. In reality, the deity had to be presupposed apart from the self. It could therefore not reveal itself internally through spiritual life, but had to reveal itself externally through supernatural communications. What is being striven for here is achieved in the least. The aim is to achieve the highest possible concept of the deity. In reality the Deity is degraded to a thing among other things; only that these other things reveal themselves to man naturally, through experience; while the Deity is to reveal itself to him supernaturally. But there is a difference between the knowledge of the divine and the creaturely in that with the creaturely the external thing is given in experience, that one has a knowledge of it. With the divine, the object is not given in experience; it can only be attained in faith. The highest things are therefore not objects of knowledge for the scholastics, but only of faith. However, according to the scholastic view, the relationship of knowledge to faith cannot be imagined in such a way that in a certain area only knowledge prevails, in another only faith. For the "knowledge of the existing is possible for us because it itself comes from a creative cognition; things are for the spirit because they are from the spirit; they have something to say to us because they have a meaning which a higher intelligence has placed in them". (O. Willmann, "Geschichte des Idealismus", 2nd vol., p. 383.) Because God created the world according to thoughts, if we grasp the thoughts of the world, we can also grasp the traces of the divine in the world through scientific reflection. But we can only grasp what God is according to his nature through the revelation he has given us in a supernatural way, and in which we must believe. What we are to think of the highest things is not decided by human science, but by faith; and "faith includes everything contained in the writings of the new and old covenants and in the divine traditions". (Joseph Kleutgen, "Die Theologie der Vorzeit", 1st vol., p. 39) - It cannot be a task here to describe and justify in detail the relationship of the content of faith to the content of knowledge. In truth, all content of faith originates from an inner human experience made at some point. It is then preserved according to its external content, without the awareness of how it was acquired. It is claimed to have come into the world through supernatural revelation. The content of the Christian faith was simply accepted by the scholastics as tradition. Science, inner experience, was not allowed to assume any rights over it. Just as science could not create a tree, so scholasticism was not allowed to create a concept of God; it had to accept the revealed as finished, just as natural science accepts the tree as finished. The scholastic could never admit that the spiritual itself lights up and lives within. He therefore limited the legal force of science where the field of external experience ends. Human knowledge was not allowed to generate a concept of the higher beings out of itself. It wanted to accept a revealed one. The scholastics could not admit that they were only accepting a concept that had in truth been generated at an earlier stage of human spiritual life and declaring it to be revealed. - Therefore, in the course of its development, all ideas that still pointed to the way in which man naturally generated the concepts of the divine had disappeared from scholasticism. In the first centuries of the development of Christianity, at the time of the Church Fathers, we see the doctrinal content of theology emerging bit by bit through the absorption of inner experiences. In Johannes Scotus Erigena, who stood at the height of Christian theological education in the ninth century, we still find this doctrinal content treated entirely as an inner experience. With the scholastics of the following centuries, this character of an inner experience is completely lost; the old doctrinal content is reinterpreted as the content of an external, supernatural revelation. - The activity of the mystical theologians Eckhart, Tauler, Suso and their comrades can therefore also be understood in such a way that one can say: they were inspired by the doctrinal content of the Church, which was contained in theology but reinterpreted, to give birth to a similar content as an inner experience from within themselves anew.

[ 4 ] Nicolaus of Cusa sets out on the path of ascending from the knowledge acquired in the individual sciences to inner experiences themselves. There is no doubt that the excellent logical technique which the Scholastics had developed, and for which Nicolaus was educated, offers an excellent means of arriving at inner experiences, even if the Scholastics themselves were held back from this path by positive faith. Nicolaus can only be fully understood, however, if one considers that his profession as a priest, which elevated him to the dignity of cardinal, did not allow him to make a complete break with the faith of the Church, which found its contemporary expression in scholastic theology. We find him on a path so far that every step further would have led him out of the Church. We therefore understand the cardinal best if we also take the step he no longer took; and then, looking backwards, illuminate what he wanted.

[ 5 ] The most significant concept of Nicolaus' intellectual life is that of "learned ignorance". He understands this to mean a cognition that represents a higher level than ordinary knowledge. Knowledge in the subordinate sense is grasping an object through the mind. The most important characteristic of knowledge is that it provides enlightenment about something outside the mind, i.e. that it looks at something that it is not itself. In knowledge, the spirit is thus concerned with things outside of its own conceptualization. But what the spirit forms in itself about things is the being of things. Things are spirit. Man initially sees the spirit only through the sensual shell. What remains outside the spirit is only this sensual shell; the essence of things enters into the spirit. If the spirit then looks at this being, which is the substance of its substance, then it can no longer speak of knowledge, for it does not look at a thing that is outside itself; it looks at a thing that is a part of itself; it looks at itself. He does not know more; he only looks at himself. He is not dealing with a "knowledge", but with a "not-knowing". He no longer comprehends something through the spirit; he "looks at his own life without understanding". This highest level of cognition is "not-knowing" in relation to the lower levels. - However, it is obvious that the being of things can only be conveyed through this level of cognition. Nicolaus of Cusa's "learned not-knowing" therefore refers to nothing other than knowledge reborn as an inner experience. He himself explains how he arrived at this inner experience. "I made many attempts to unite my thoughts about God and the world, Christ and the Church in one basic idea, but none of them satisfied me, until finally, on my return from Greece to the sea, the view of my mind rose as if by an enlightenment from above to the vision in which God appeared to me as the highest unity of all opposites." To a greater or lesser extent, this enlightenment was influenced by the studies of his predecessors. One recognizes in his way of thinking a peculiar renewal of the views that we encounter in the writings of a certain Dionysius. The aforementioned Scotus Erigena translated these writings into Latin. He calls the author "the great and divine revelator". The writings in question are first mentioned in the first half of the sixth century. They were attributed to the Areopagite Dionysius mentioned in the Acts of the Apostles, who was converted to Christianity by Paul. It remains to be seen when these writings were actually written. Their content had a strong effect on Nicolaus, as it had already had on Johannes Scotus Erigena, and as it must also have been stimulating in many ways for the way of thinking of Eckhart and his comrades. The "learned ignorance" is prefigured in a certain way in these writings. Only the basic feature of the conception of these writings is recorded here. Man first recognizes the things of the sensory world. He thinks about their being and working. The origin of all things must lie higher than these things themselves. Therefore, man cannot want to grasp this primordial ground with the same concepts and ideas as the things themselves. If, therefore, he says that the primordial cause (God) has qualities which he has come to know in the lower things, then such qualities can be mere auxiliary ideas of the weak spirit, which looks down on the primordial cause in order to be able to imagine it. In truth, therefore, no attribute which lower things possess may be claimed of God. It cannot even be said that God is. For "being" is also an idea that man has formed from the lower things. God, however, is exalted above "being" and "non-being". The God to whom we ascribe attributes is therefore not the true one. We arrive at the true God when we think of a God with such attributes as an "overgod". We cannot know anything about this "overgod" in the ordinary sense. In order to reach him, "knowledge" must lead to "non-knowledge". - One can see that such a view is based on the awareness that man can develop a higher cognition from what his sciences have provided him with - in a purely natural way - which is no longer mere knowledge. The scholastic view declared knowledge powerless to such a development and, at the point where knowledge should cease, allowed faith, which is based on external revelation, to come to the aid of knowledge. - Nicolaus of Cusa was thus on the way to developing that out of knowledge again, of which the scholastics had declared that it was unattainable for knowledge.

[ 6 ] From Nicolaus of Cusa's point of view, we cannot therefore say that there is only one way of knowing. Rather, cognition is clearly divided into that which conveys knowledge of external things and that which is the object itself from which one acquires knowledge. The former kind of cognition prevails in the sciences that we acquire about the things and processes of the sensory world; the latter is within us when we live in what we have acquired. The second kind of cognition develops from the first. Now, however, it is the same world to which both kinds of cognition refer; and it is the same human being who is active in both. The question must arise, whence is it that one and the same man develops two kinds of knowledge of one and the same world? - The direction in which the answer to this question is to be sought has already been indicated by Tauler (cf. p. 25). Here in Nicolaus of Cusa this answer can be formed even more decisively. Man first lives as a single (individual) being among other single beings. In addition to the effects that the other beings exert on each other, he also has (lower) cognition. He receives impressions of the other beings through his senses and processes these impressions with his spiritual powers. He diverts his spiritual gaze from external things and looks at himself, at his own activity. Self-knowledge emerges from this. As long as he remains at this stage of self-knowledge, he does not yet look at himself in the true sense of the word. He can still believe that some hidden entity is active in him, whose manifestations and effects are only what appear to him as his activity. Now, however, the point can come when man realizes through an irrefutable inner experience that what he perceives and experiences in his inner being is not the manifestation, the effect of a hidden power or entity, but this entity itself in its very own form. He may then say to himself, I find all other things finished in a certain way; and I, who stand apart from them, add to them what the spirit has to say about them. But what I myself thus add to the things within me, I myself live in, that is me; that is my own being. But what is it that speaks at the bottom of my spirit? It is the knowledge that I have acquired about the things of the world. But in this knowledge no longer speaks some effect, an expression; it speaks something that retains nothing of what it has in itself. In this knowledge, the world speaks in all its immediacy. But I have acquired this knowledge from things and from myself, as a thing among things. I myself speak from my own being, and things speak. So, in truth, I no longer merely express my essence; I express the essence of things. My "I" is the form, the organ in which things speak about themselves. I have gained the experience that I experience my own essence in myself; and this experience expands for me into the other experience that in me and through me the All-Being expresses itself, or, in other words, recognizes itself. I can no longer feel myself as a thing among things; I can only feel myself as a form in which the All-Being lives itself out. - It is therefore only natural that one and the same person should have two kinds of cognition. He is, according to sensory facts, a thing among things, and, in so far as he is such, he acquires a knowledge of these things; but he can at any moment have the higher experience that he is the form in which the All-Being beholds itself. Then he transforms himself, from a thing among things, into a form of the All-Being - and with him the knowledge of things is transformed into the expression of the essence of things. However, this transformation can actually only be accomplished by man himself. That which is conveyed in the higher knowledge is not yet there as long as this higher knowledge itself is not yet there. Only in the creation of this higher knowledge does man become essential; and only through man's higher knowledge do things also bring their essence to actual existence. If, therefore, it were demanded that man should add nothing to the sense things through his higher knowledge, but only express what already lies outside in these things, this would mean nothing other than renouncing all higher knowledge. - From the fact that man, according to his sensuous life, is a thing among things, and that he only attains to higher knowledge when he himself, as a sensuous being, accomplishes the transformation into a higher being, it follows that he can never replace the one knowledge with the other. Rather, his spiritual life consists in a continual moving back and forth between the two poles of knowledge, between knowing and seeing. If he closes himself off from seeing, he renounces the essence of things; if he wanted to close himself off from sensory cognition, he would deprive himself of the things whose essence he wants to recognize. - It is the same things that reveal themselves to the lower cognition and the higher vision; only one time according to their outer appearance; the other time according to their inner essence. - So it is not because of the things that they appear at a certain level, only as external things; but it is because man must first transform himself to the level at which the things cease to be external.

[ 7 ] On the basis of these considerations, certain views which natural science developed in the nineteenth century first appear in the right light. The bearers of these views say: We hear, see and feel the things of the physical world through the senses. The eye, for example, conveys to us an appearance of light, a color. We say that a body emits red light when we have the sensation of "red" with the help of our eyes. But the eye also gives us such a sensation in other cases. When it is pushed or pressed, when an electric spark flows through the head, the eye has a sensation of light. Thus, even in cases where we perceive a body as glowing in a certain color, something can be going on in the body that bears no resemblance to the color. Whatever is going on outside in space: if this process is only capable of making an impression on the eye, then a sensation of light arises in me. So what we feel arises within us because we have organs of one kind or another. What happens outside in space remains outside us; we only know the effects that the external processes produce in us. Hermann Helmholtz (1821-1894) gave this idea a clear expression. "Our sensations are precisely effects which are produced in our organs by external causes, and how such an effect manifests itself naturally depends quite essentially on the nature of the apparatus which is acted upon. In so far as the quality of our sensation informs us of the peculiarity of the external influence by which it is excited, it can be regarded as a sign of it, but not as an image. For from a picture we require some kind of likeness to the object represented, from a statue likeness of form, from a drawing likeness of perspective projection in the field of vision, from a painting also likeness of color. A sign, however, does not need to have any kind of similarity with the sign of which it is a sign. The relation between the two is limited to the fact that the same object, coming into action under the same circumstances, produces the same sign, and that therefore dissimilar signs always correspond to dissimilar action ... If berries of a certain kind form red pigment and sugar at the same time when ripening, then red color and sweet taste will always come together in our perception of berries of this form." Cf. Helmholtz, "Die Tatsachen in der Wahrnehmung", p.12 f.) I have characterized this type of conception in detail in my "Philosophy of Freedom" and in my "Riddles of Philosophy". - Just follow the train of thought that this view makes its own, step by step. Outside in space a process is presupposed. It exerts an effect on my sense organ; my nervous system conducts the impression to my brain. There again a process is brought about. I now perceive "red". Now it is said: therefore the sensation of "red" is not outside; it is inside me. All our sensations are only signs of external processes whose real quality we know nothing about. We live and weave in our sensations and know nothing of their origin. In the sense of this way of thinking, one could also say: If we had no eye, there would be no color; nothing would then convert the external process unknown to us into the sensation of "red". This train of thought is somewhat beguiling for many people. However, it is only based on a complete misunderstanding of the facts that are being considered. (If many contemporary natural scientists and philosophers were not blinded to the point of monstrosity by this train of thought, there would be less need to talk about it. But this blindness has indeed corrupted contemporary thinking in many respects). Since man is a thing among things, things must naturally make an impression on him if he is to learn anything from them. A process outside man must excite a process in man if the appearance "red" is to appear in the field of vision. The only question is, what is outside and what is inside? Outside is a process taking place in space and time. Inside, however, is undoubtedly a similar process. Such a process is in the eye and continues into the brain when I perceive "red". I cannot perceive the process that is "inside" without further ado; just as little as I can directly perceive the wave movement "outside", which physicists think corresponds to the color "red". But only in this sense can I speak of an "outside" and an "inside". Only at the level of sensory cognition is the contrast between "outside" and "inside" valid. This cognition leads me to assume that "outside" is a spatio-temporal process, even if I do not perceive it immediately. And furthermore, the same cognition leads me to assume such a process within me, even if I cannot perceive it directly. But I also assume spatio-temporal processes in ordinary life that I do not perceive directly. For example, I hear a piano playing in the room next door. I therefore assume that a spatial human being is sitting at the piano and playing. And my imagination is no different when I speak of processes inside me and outside me. I presuppose that these processes have analogous properties to the processes that fall within the realm of my senses, except that, because of certain causes, they elude my direct perception. If I wanted to deny these processes all the properties that my senses show me in the realm of the spatial and temporal, I would in truth be thinking something like the famous knife without a handle, which lacks a blade. So I can only say that "outside" spatial-temporal processes take place; "inside" they cause spatial-temporal processes. Both are necessary if "red" is to appear in my field of vision. I will search in vain for this red, insofar as it is not spatio-temporal, regardless of whether I search "outside" or "inside". The natural scientists and philosophers who cannot find it "outside" should not want to look for it "inside" either. It is not "inside" in the same sense that it is not "outside". To declare the entire content of what the sense world presents to us to be an inner world of sensations and to seek something "external" to it is an impossible idea. We must therefore not speak of "red", "sweet", "hot", etc. signs which as such are only aroused in us and to which "outside" something quite: different corresponds. For what is really aroused in us as the effect of an external process is something quite different from what occurs in our sensory field. If we want to call what is within us signs, we can say: these signs occur within our organism in order to convey to us the perceptions which as such, in their immediacy, are neither within nor outside us, but rather belong to the common world of which my "outer world" and my "inner world" are only parts. In order to be able to grasp this common world, however, I must rise to the higher level of cognition, for which there is no longer an "inside" and "outside". (I know quite well that people who insist on the gospel that "our whole world of experience" is built up from sensations of unknown origin will look down on these explanations with arrogance, as Dr. Erich Adikes, for example, says from on high in his essay "Kant contra Haeckel": "For the time being, people like Haeckel and thousands of his ilk are still blithely philosophizing away without bothering about epistemology and critical self-reflection." Such gentlemen have no idea how cheap their epistemologies are. They only suspect the lack of critical introspection - in others. Let them have their "wisdom".)

[ 8 ] Nicolaus von Kues has some apt thoughts on the point under consideration here. His clear distinction between lower and higher cognition allows him on the one hand to fully realize that man as a sensory being can only have processes within himself which as effects must be dissimilar to the corresponding external processes; on the other hand, it prevents him from confusing the inner processes with the facts that appear in our field of perception and which, in their immediacy, are neither outside nor inside, but which are above this contrast. - Nicolaus was "hindered by his priestly garb" in his unrestrained pursuit of the path that this insight showed him. So we see that he makes a good start by advancing from "knowing" to "not knowing". At the same time, however, we must also note that in the field of "not-knowing" he shows nothing other than the theological doctrinal content that the scholastics also present to us. However, he knows how to develop this theological content in a spiritual form. On providence, Christ, the creation of the world, the redemption of man and the moral life, he presents teachings that are entirely in the spirit of dogmatic Christianity. It would have been in keeping with his spiritual outlook to say: I have confidence in human nature that, after it has immersed itself in the sciences of things in all directions, it is capable of transforming this "knowledge" into "ignorance" of its own accord, that is, that the highest knowledge brings satisfaction. He would then not have accepted the traditional ideas of the soul, immortality, salvation, God, creation, the Trinity, etc., as he did, but would have advocated those he had found himself. - Nicolaus, however, was so personally imbued with the ideas of Christianity that he could well believe that he was awakening his own "ignorance" within himself, while in fact he was only bringing to light the traditional views in which he had been educated. - But he also stood at a fatal abyss in human spiritual life. He was a scientific man. Science initially distances man from the innocent harmony in which he stands with the world as long as he devotes himself to a purely naïve attitude to life. With such an attitude to life, man dully feels his connection with the world as a whole. He is a being like the others, integrated into the stream of natural effects. With knowledge, he separates himself from this whole. He creates a spiritual world within himself. With this he stands alone in the face of nature. He has become richer; but this wealth is a burden that he carries heavily. For at first it weighs on him alone. He must, by his own efforts, find his way back to nature. He must recognize that he himself must now integrate his wealth into the stream of the world's effects, just as nature itself previously integrated his poverty. This is where all the bad demons lurk for man. His strength can easily flag. Instead of carrying out the integration himself, he will take refuge in a revelation coming from outside, which redeems him from his loneliness, which leads the knowledge, which he feels as a burden, back into the primordial womb of existence, into the Godhead. Like Nicolaus of Cusa, he will believe that he is going his own way; and yet, in reality, he will only find the way that his spiritual development has shown him. There are now three paths - essentially - that one can take when one arrives where Nicolaus arrived: one is positive faith, which penetrates us from outside; the second is despair; one stands alone with one's burden and feels the whole of existence tottering with it; the third path is the development of man's deepest, own powers. Confidence in the world must be the one guide on this third path. Courage to follow this trust, no matter where it leads, must be the other. ^{1Here is indicated in a few words the path to the knowledge of the spirit, which I have characterized in my later writings, especially in "How does one attain knowledge of the higher worlds?", "The Secret Science in Outline", "Of Soul Puzzles".}