The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Introduction

[ 1 ] There are magic formulas that have worked in ever-changing ways throughout the centuries of intellectual history. In Greece, one such formula was regarded as Apollo's maxim. It is: "Know thyself." Such sentences seem to harbor an infinite life within them. You come across them when you walk the various paths of spiritual life. The further one progresses, the more one penetrates into the knowledge of things, the deeper the meaning of these formulas appears. In some moments of our senses and thinking they light up like a flash, illuminating our whole inner life. At such moments something like the feeling arises in us that we are hearing the heartbeat of human development. How close we feel to personalities of the past when we are overcome by the feeling that they reveal to us that they have had such moments! We then feel ourselves brought into an intimate relationship with these personalities. We get to know Hegel intimately, for example, when we come across the words in the third volume of his "Lectures on the History of Philosophy": "Such things, they say, the abstractions we contemplate when we let the philosophers quarrel and argue in our cabinet, and make it out one way or the other, are word abstractions. - No! No! They are acts of the spirit of the world, and therefore of fate. The philosophers are closer to the Lord than those who feed on the crumbs of the spirit; they read or write the cabinet ordinances in the original: they are obliged to write them down. The philosophers are the mystics who were with and present at the jolt in the innermost sanctuary." When Hegel said this, he was experiencing one of the moments described above. He said the sentences when he had reached the end of Greek philosophy in his reflections. And through them he showed that the meaning of the Neoplatonic wisdom of which he speaks at this point had suddenly flashed into his mind. At the moment of this illumination he had become intimate with spirits such as Plotinus and Proclus. And we become intimate with him by reading his words.

[ 2 ] And we become intimate with the solitary, contemplative parish priest in Zschopau, M. Valentinus Wigelius (Valentin Weigel), when we read the introductory words of his booklet "Erkenne dich selbst" (Know thyself), written in 1578. "We read in the old sages this useful proverb 'Know thyself', which, whether it is already rightly used of worldly customs, as: Look at yourself, what you are, search in your bosom, judge yourself, and leave others blameless, whether it has already, I say, been applied to human life, as of morals, yet we like such a saying , Know thyself' may also be rightly and well applied to the natural and supernatural knowledge of the whole man, so that man may not only look at himself, and hereby remember how he should conduct himself in morals before men, but that he may also know his nature, inwardly and outwardly, in spirit and in nature; from whence he comes, and of what he is made, for what he is ordained. " From his own point of view, Valentin Weigel arrived at insights that were summarized for him in Apollo's truth.

[ 3 ] A series of profound spirits, which begins with Master Eckhart (1250-1327) and ends with Angelus Silesius (1624-1677), and to which Valentin Weigel belongs, can be attributed a similar path of knowledge and a similar position on "Know thyself".

[ 4 ] Common to these spirits is a strong sense that in man's self-knowledge a sun rises that illuminates something quite different from the random individual personality of the observer. What Spinoza became aware of in the etheric height of pure thought, that "the human soul has a sufficient knowledge of the eternal and infinite essence of God", lived in them as an immediate sensation; and self-knowledge was for them the path to penetrate to this eternal and infinite essence. It was clear to them that self-knowledge in its true form enriches man with a new sense, which opens up a world to him that relates to that which is accessible without this sense, like the world of the physically sighted to that of the blind. It will not be easy to find a better description of the significance of this new sense than that given by J. G. Fichte in his Berlin lectures of 1813. "Imagine a world of people born blind, to whom therefore only the things and their relations are known, which exist through the sense of touch. Go among them and talk to them about colors and the other relationships that exist only through light for sight. Either you speak to them of nothing, and this is the happier thing if they say it; for in this way you will soon realize the error, and if you are not able to open their eyes, cease the vain speaking. - Or, if for some reason they do want to give your doctrine an understanding, they can only understand it from what is known to them by touch: they will want to feel light and color and the other relations of visibility, they will think they feel them, and within the feeling they will make up and lie about something they call color. Then they misunderstand, distort, misinterpret." Something similar can be said of what the spirits in question were striving for. They saw a new meaning opened up in self-knowledge. And this sense, according to their perception, provides views that are not available to those who do not see in self-knowledge what distinguishes it from all other kinds of cognition. Those to whom this sense has not been opened believe that self-knowledge comes about in a similar way to knowledge through the external senses or through some other external means. He thinks: "Knowledge is knowledge." One time only its object is something that lies outside in the world, the other time this object is one's own soul. He hears only words, in the best case abstract thoughts, in what for those who look deeper is the basis of their inner life; namely, in the proposition that in all other kinds of cognition we have the object outside us, in self-knowledge we stand within this object, that we see every other object approaching us as finished, completed, but that in our self we ourselves, as doers, creators, weave that which we observe in ourselves. This can appear as a mere explanation of words, perhaps as triviality; but it can also, properly understood, appear as a higher light that illuminates every other insight anew. To whom it appears in the first way, he is in a position like a blind man who is told: there is a shining object. He hears the words, but the shine is not there for him. One can unite the sum of the knowledge of a time in oneself; if one does not feel the scope of self-knowledge, then all knowledge in the higher sense is a blind one.

[ 5 ] The world independent of us lives for us by communicating itself to our spirit. What is communicated to us there must be written in the language peculiar to us. A book whose contents were presented in a language foreign to us would be meaningless to us. In the same way, the world would be meaningless to us if it did not speak to us in our language. The same language that comes to us from things, we hear from ourselves. But then it is also we who speak. It is merely a question of our correctly listening to the transformation that occurs when we close our perception to external things and listen only to what then still sounds from ourselves. This includes the new sense. If it is not awakened, we believe that in the messages about ourselves we only hear messages about something external to us; we think that something is hidden somewhere that speaks to us in the same way as the external things speak. If we have the new sense, then we know that its perceptions are essentially different from those relating to external things. Then we know that this sense does not leave outside itself what it perceives, as the eye leaves outside itself the object it sees; but that it is able to take its object completely into itself. If I see a thing, the thing remains outside me; if I perceive myself, I draw myself into my perception. He who seeks something of himself apart from what he perceives shows that the actual content of his perception does not light up for him. Johannes Tauler (1300 - 1361) expressed this truth with the apt words: If I were a king and did not know it, I would not be a king. If I do not illuminate myself in my self-perception, then I do not exist. But if I light up for myself, then I also have myself in my perception in my very essence. There is nothing left of me apart from my perception. J. G. Fichte energetically points to the difference between self-perception and any other kind of perception with the following words: "Most people would find it easier to think of themselves as a piece of lava in the moon than as an I. Whoever is not yet in agreement with himself about this does not understand a thorough philosophy, and he does not need one. Nature, whose machine he is, will already guide him in all the business he has to carry out without any action on his part. Philosophizing requires independence: and this can only be given to oneself. - We should not want to see without the eye; but neither should we claim that the eye sees."

[ 6 ] The perception of oneself is thus at the same time the awakening of oneself. In our cognition, we connect the essence of things with our own essence. The messages that things make to us in our language become elements of our own self. A thing that stands opposite me is no longer separate from me when I have recognized it. What I can absorb from it is incorporated into my own being. If I now awaken my own self, if I perceive the content of my inner being, then I also awaken to a higher existence what I have incorporated into my being from the outside. The light that falls on myself during my awakening also falls on what I have appropriated from the things of the world. A light flashes within me and illuminates me, and with me everything that I recognize from the world. Whatever I recognize, it would remain blind knowledge if this light did not fall on it. I could penetrate the whole world with knowledge: it would not be what it must become in me if knowledge were not awakened in me to a higher existence.

[ 7 ] What I bring to things through this awakening is not a new idea, is not an enrichment of the content of my knowledge; it is an elevation of knowledge, of cognition, to a higher level on which all things are given a new splendor. As long as I do not raise knowledge to this level, all knowledge in the higher sense remains worthless to me. Things are there even without me. They have their being in themselves. What significance should it have that I should associate with their being, which they have outside without me, a spiritual being that repeats the things in me? If it were a mere repetition of things, it would be pointless to carry it out. - But it is only a mere repetition as long as I do not awaken with my own self the spiritual content of the things absorbed into me to a higher existence. If this happens, then I have not repeated the essence of things in me, but I have reborn it on a higher level. With the awakening of my self, a spiritual rebirth of the things of the world takes place. What the things show in this rebirth is not peculiar to them before. There is the tree outside. I grasp it in my mind I cast my inner light on what I have grasped. The tree becomes more in me than it is outside. What enters from it through the gate of the senses is absorbed into a spiritual content. An ideal counterpart to the tree is within me. This says an infinite amount about the tree that the tree outside cannot tell me. It is only out of me that the tree shines forth what it is. The tree is no longer the individual being that it is outside in space. It becomes a part of the whole spiritual world that lives within me. It connects its content with other ideas that are within me. It becomes a member of the whole world of ideas that comprises the plant kingdom; it integrates itself further into the sequence of stages of all living things. - Another example: I throw a stone away from me in a horizontal direction. It moves in a crooked line and falls to the ground after a while. I see it in successive moments at different places. Through my observation I gain the following: The stone is under different influences during its movement. If it were only under the effect of the push I have given it, it would fly on forever in a straight line without changing its speed. But now the earth exerts an influence on it. It pulls it towards itself. If I had simply let it go without pushing it, it would have fallen vertically to the earth. Its speed would have continued to increase. The interaction of these two influences creates what I really see. - Suppose I could not mentally separate the two influences and mentally reassemble what I see from their lawful connection: then what I see would remain what I see. It would be a mentally blind looking; a perception of the successive positions that the stone occupies. In fact, however, it does not stay that way. The whole process takes place twice. Once outside; and there my eye sees it; then my mind lets the whole process arise again, in a spiritual way. My inner sense must be directed to the spiritual process, which my eye does not see, then it realizes that I, out of my power, awaken the process as spiritual. - Again we may cite a sentence by J. G. Fichte which clearly illustrates this fact. "The new sense is therefore the sense for the spirit; the one for whom only is spirit and absolutely nothing else, and for whom the other, the given being, also assumes the form of spirit, and is transformed into it, for whom therefore being in its own form has in fact disappeared. ... It has been seen with this sense ever since men have existed, and all that is great and excellent in the world, and which alone makes mankind exist, comes from the visions of this sense. But that this sense should have seen itself in its difference and contrast with the other ordinary sense was not the case. The impressions of the two senses merged, life disintegrated into these two halves without a unifying bond." The unifying bond is created by the fact that the inner sense grasps in its spirituality that which it awakens in its intercourse with the outer world. As a result, what we absorb from things into our mind ceases to appear as a meaningless repetition. It appears as something new compared to what only external perception can give. The simple process of throwing stones and my perception of it appear in a higher light when I realize what my inner sense has to do with the whole thing. In order to mentally combine the two influences and their modes of action, a sum of mental content is necessary, which I must have already acquired when I perceive the flying stone. I therefore apply a spiritual content already stored up in me to something that confronts me in the outside world. And this process of the external world integrates itself into the already existing spiritual content. It proves to be an expression of this content in its own way. The understanding of my inner sense thus reveals to me what kind of relationship the content of this sense has to the things of the external world. Fichte could say that without an understanding of this sense, the world falls apart for me into two halves: into things outside of me, and into images of these things within me. The two halves are united when the inner sense understands itself, and it is thus also clear to it what light it itself gives to things in the process of cognition. And Fichte was also allowed to say that this inner sense sees only spirit. For it sifts how the spirit enlightens the world of the senses by incorporating it into the world of the spiritual. The inner sense allows the outer sense existence to arise in itself as a spiritual entity on a higher level. An external thing is completely recognized when there is no part of it that has not experienced a spiritual rebirth in this way. Every external thing thus incorporates itself into a spiritual content which, when grasped by the inner sense, shares the fate of self-knowledge. The spiritual content that belongs to a thing has completely flowed into the world of ideas through illumination from within, just like one's own self. - These statements contain nothing that is capable of or in need of logical proof. They are nothing more than the results of inner experience. Anyone who denies their content only shows that he lacks this inner experience. One cannot argue with him, just as one cannot argue with a blind man about color. - But it must not be claimed that this inner experience is only made possible by the talents of a select few. It is a general human characteristic. Anyone who does not close himself off from it can find his way to it. However, this closure is frequent enough. And when objections are made in this direction, one always has the feeling that it is not those who are unable to attain inner experience, but those who bar their access to it through a network of all kinds of logical webs. It is almost as if someone looking through a telescope sees a new planet, but denies its existence because his calculation has shown him that there must not be a planet in this place.

[ 8 ] However, most people have a distinct feeling that what the external senses and the dissecting mind recognize cannot yet be everything that lies in the essence of things. They then believe that the rest must be in the external world just as much as the things of external perception themselves. They think there must be something that remains unknown to cognition. What they should attain by perceiving the thing perceived and grasped by the intellect once more with the inner sense at a higher level, they transfer to the outer world as something inaccessible and unknown. They then speak of limits of cognition that prevent us from reaching the "thing in itself". They speak of the unknown "essence" of things. They do not want to acknowledge that this "essence" of things lights up when the inner sense lets its light fall on things. The famous "Ignorabimus" speech by the naturalist Du Bois-Reymond in 1876 is a particularly loud example of the error that lies hidden here. We should only go so far as to see expressions of "matter" in natural processes. We should not be able to know what "matter" itself is. Du Bois-Reymond claims that we will never be able to penetrate to where matter haunts space. The reason why we cannot penetrate there, however, lies in the fact that nothing at all can be sought there. Whoever speaks like Du Bois-Reymond has a feeling that the knowledge of nature delivers results that point to something else that it cannot give itself. But he does not want to enter the path that leads to this other, the path of inner experience. That is why he is perplexed by the question of "matter", like a dark riddle. Whoever enters the path of inner experience, things attain a rebirth in him; and that which remains unknown to outer experience then lights up.

[ 9 ] In this way, the inner being of man not only clarifies itself, but it also clarifies external things. From this point, an infinite perspective opens up for human knowledge. A light shines within that does not limit its luminosity to this interior. It is a sun that simultaneously illuminates all reality. Something arises in us that connects us with the whole world. We are no longer just a single random person, no longer this or that individual. The whole world reveals itself in us. It reveals to us its own connection; and it reveals to us how we ourselves as individuals are connected to it. From self-knowledge, knowledge of the world is born. And our own limited individual places itself spiritually in the great world context, because something comes to life in it that is overarching beyond this individual, that encompasses everything of which this individual is a part.

[ 10 ] Thinking that does not obstruct the path to inner experience through logical prejudices ultimately always leads to the recognition of the being within us that links us to the whole world, because through it we overcome the contrast between inside and outside in relation to the human being. Paul Asmus, the astute philosopher who died at an early age, speaks about this fact in the following way (cf. his writing: "Das Ich und das Ding an sich", p. 14 f): "Let us make it clearer to ourselves by an example; let us imagine a piece of sugar; it is round, sweet, impenetrable, etc.; these are all qualities that we comprehend; only one thing in it floats before us as something absolutely other, which we do not comprehend, which is so different from us that we cannot bring into it without losing ourselves, from whose mere surface the thought recoils timidly. This one is the bearer of all those qualities unknown to us; the view that constitutes the innermost self of this object. Thus Hegel rightly says that the whole content of our conception relates only as an accidental to that dark subject, and that we, without penetrating into its depths, attach only determinations to this self, - which are ultimately subjective, because we ourselves have no truly objective value. Understanding thought, on the other hand, has no such unrecognizable subject to which its determinations would only be accidents, but the objective subject falls within the concept. If I grasp something, it is present to my concept in all its fullness; I am at home in the innermost sanctuary of its essence, not because it has no self of its own, but because it forces me to reflect on its concept through the necessity of the concept hovering above us both, which appears subjectively in me and objectively in it. Through this reflection, as Hegel says, - just as this is our subjective activity - at the same time the true nature of the object is revealed to us" - Only those who are able to illuminate the experiences of thought with the light of inner experience can speak in this way.

[ 11 ] In my "Philosophy of Freedom" I have, starting from other points of view, also referred to the primordial fact of inner life (p. 50): "It is therefore beyond doubt: in thinking we hold world events at a corner where we must be present if anything is to come about. And that is precisely what matters. That is precisely the reason why things are so puzzling to me: that I am so uninvolved in their creation. I simply find them; in thinking, however, I know how they are made. Therefore, there is no more original starting point for observing all world events than thinking."

[ 12 ] Those who look at the inner experience of man in this way will also realize the meaning of human cognition within the entire world process. It is not an insubstantial addition to the rest of world events. It would be such if it represented a mere ideal repetition of what is externally present. In recognition, however, something takes place that does not take place anywhere in the outside world: The world event confronts itself with its spiritual essence. Eternally, this world event would only be half a thing if it did not come to this confrontation. The inner experience of man thus integrates itself into the objective world process, which would be incomplete without it.

[ 13 ] It is obvious that only the life that is dominated by the inner sense raises man above himself in this way, his highest spiritual life in the most intrinsic sense. For only in this life does the essence of things reveal itself to itself. The matter is different with the lower faculty of perception. The eye, for example, which mediates the seeing of an object, is the scene of a process that is completely equal to any other external process in relation to the inner life. My organs are members of the spatial world like other things, and their perceptions are temporal processes like others. Their essence also only appears when they are immersed in inner experience. I thus live a double life: the life of a thing among other things, which lives within its corporeality and perceives through its organs what lies outside this corporeality; and above this life a higher one, which knows no such inside and outside, which spans over the outer world and over itself. So I will have to say: on the one hand I am an individual, a limited ego; on the other hand I am a general, universal ego. This, too, Paul Asmus has put into excellent words (cf. his book: "Die indogermanische Religion in den Hauptpunkten ihrer Entwickelung", p. 29, in vol. 1). ): "We call the activity of immersing ourselves in another 'thinking'; in thinking the ego has fulfilled its concept, it has given itself up as an individual; therefore we find ourselves thinking in a sphere that is the same for all, for the principle of particularity, which lies in the relationship of our ego to the other, has disappeared in the activity of self-abolition of the individual ego, there is only the ego common to all."

[ 14 ] Spinoza has exactly the same thing in mind when he describes the highest cognitive activity as that which advances "from the sufficient conception of the real essence of some attributes of God to the sufficient knowledge of the essence of things". This progress is nothing other than the illumination of things with the light of inner experience. Spinoza describes life in this inner experience in glorious colors: "The highest virtue of the soul is to know God, or to see things in the third - highest - way of knowing. This virtue becomes all the greater the more the soul recognizes things in this mode of cognition; consequently, he who grasps things in this mode of cognition attains the highest human perfection and is consequently filled with the highest joy, accompanied by the ideas of himself and of virtue. Consequently, the highest peace of mind possible arises from this kind of knowledge." He who recognizes things in this way is transformed into himself; for his individual ego is absorbed by the All-I at such moments; all beings do not appear in subordinate significance to a single limited individual; they appear to themselves. At this stage there is no longer any difference between Plato and me; for what separates us belongs to a lower level of cognition. We are separated only as individuals; the general that acts in us is one and the same. Even this fact cannot be argued with someone who has no experience of it. He will always emphasize it: Plato and you are two. That this duality, that all multiplicity is reborn as unity in the resurrection of the highest level of knowledge: this cannot be proven, it must be experienced. As paradoxical as it sounds, it is a truth: the idea that Plato presented and the same idea that I present are not two ideas. They are one and the same idea. And there are not two ideas, one in Plato's head, the other in mine; but in a higher sense Plato's head and mine interpenetrate; all heads that grasp the same, one idea interpenetrate; and this idea exists only once. It is there; and the minds all move to one and the same place in order to have this idea within them.

[ 15 ] The transformation that is effected in the whole being of man when he thus looks at things is indicated in beautiful words by the Indian poem "Bhagavad Gita", of which Wilhelm von Humboldt therefore said that he was grateful to his fate for having allowed him to live so long until he was able to become acquainted with this work. The inner light speaks in this poem: "An eternal ray of mine, which has attained a special existence in the world of personal life, draws to itself the five senses and the individual soul, which belong to nature. - When the radiant spirit embodies itself in space and time, or when it disembodies, it seizes things and takes them with it, just as the breeze seizes the fragrance of flowers and carries them away. The inner light controls the ear, the feeling, the taste and the smell, as well as the mind; it creates the bond between itself and the sensory things. Fools do not know when the inner light lights up and goes out, nor when it unites with things; only those who are partakers of the inner light can know about it." The "Bhagavad Gita" points so strongly to the transformation of man that it says of the "wise man" that he can no longer err, no longer sin. If he errs or apparently sins, he must illuminate his thoughts or his actions with a light before which no longer appears as error and no longer as sin what appears as such before ordinary consciousness. "He who has exalted himself and whose knowledge is of the purest kind does not kill or defile himself, even if he were to slay another." This only refers to the same basic mood of the soul flowing from the highest knowledge, of which Spinoza, after describing it in his "Ethics", breaks out into the captivating words: "This concludes what I wanted to explain with regard to the power of the soul over the emotions and the freedom of the soul. This shows how much the wise man is superior to the ignorant man and more powerful than the latter, who is driven only by lusts. For the ignorant man is not only driven by external causes in many ways and never attains true peace of mind, but he also lives in ignorance of himself, of God and of things, and as his suffering ceases, so does his existence; whereas the wise man, as such, hardly feels any excitement in his spirit, but in a certain necessary knowledge of himself, of God and of things, never ceases to be, and always enjoys true peace of mind. Even if the path which I have described as leading to this seems very difficult, it can still be found. And yet it may be difficult because it is so rarely found. For how is it possible that, if salvation were at hand and could be found without great difficulty, it would be almost neglected by everyone? Yet everything sublime is as difficult as it is rare."

[ 16 ] In a monumental way, Goethe indicated the point of view of the highest knowledge in the words: "If I know my relationship to myself and to the outside world, then I call it truth. And so everyone can have his own truth, and yet it is always the same." Everyone has their own truth: because everyone is an individual, special being alongside and with others. These other beings affect him through his organs. From the individual standpoint on which he is placed, and according to the nature of his perceptive faculty, he forms his own truth in his dealings with things. He acquires his relationship to things. If he then enters into self-knowledge, learns to know his relationship to himself, then his particular truth dissolves into the general truth; this general truth is the same in all of them.

[ 17 ] The understanding of the dissolution of the individual, of the individual I into the All-I in the personality, is regarded by deeper natures as the mystery that reveals itself within the human being, as the primordial mystery of life. Goethe also found an apt saying for this: "And as long as you do not have this, this: Die and become! You are only a gloomy guest on the dark earth."

[ 18 ] Not a mental repetition, but a real part of the world process is what takes place in human inner life. The world would not be what it is if the link belonging to it did not take place in the human soul. And if one calls the highest that is attainable to man the divine, then one must say that this divine is not present as an exterior to be represented in the human spirit, but that this divine is awakened in man. Angelus Silesius has found the right words for this: "I know that without me God cannot live for a moment; if I do not become one, he must give up the ghost from need." "God may not make a single little worm without me: if I do not keep it with him, it must burst apart." Such an assertion can only be made by someone who assumes that something appears in man without which an external being cannot exist. If everything that belongs to the "little worm" were also there without the human being, then it would be impossible to say that it would have to "crash" if the human being did not receive it.

[ 19 ] The innermost core of the world comes to life as spiritual content in self-knowledge. For the human being, experiencing self-knowledge means weaving and working within the core of the world. Those who are imbued with self-knowledge naturally also carry out their own actions in the light of self-knowledge. Human action is - in general - determined by motives. Robert Hamerling, the poet-philosopher, rightly said ("Atomistik des Willens", p. 213 f.): "Man can, however, do what he wants - but he cannot want what he wants, because his will is determined by motives! - He cannot want what he wants? Take a closer look at these words. Is there any sense in them? Freedom of will should therefore consist in the fact that one could will something without reason, without motive? But what does willing mean other than having a reason to do or strive for this rather than that? Wanting something without a reason, without a motive, would mean wanting something without wanting it. The concept of will is inseparably linked to that of motive. Without a determining motive, the will is an empty capacity: only through the motive does it become active and real. It is therefore quite true that the human will is not 'free' insofar as its direction is always determined by the strongest of motives." For all action that is not carried out in the light of self-knowledge, the motive, the reason for the action, must be perceived as a compulsion. The situation is different when the reason is included in self-knowledge. Then this reason has become a part of the self. The will is no longer determined; it determines itself. The lawfulness, the motives of volition now no longer rule over the volitional agent, but are one and the same with this volition. To illuminate the laws of one's actions with the light of self-observation means to overcome all compulsion of motives. This places the will in the realm of freedom.

[ 20 ] Not all human action has the character of freedom. Only action that is imbued with introspection in each of its parts is free. And because self-observation raises the individual ego to the general ego, free action is that which flows from the all-ego. The old controversial question as to whether the will of man is free or subject to a general lawfulness, an unalterable necessity, is an incorrectly posed question. Unfree is the action that man performs as an individual; free is that which he performs after his spiritual rebirth. Man is therefore not, in general, either free, or unfree. He is both the one and the other. He is unfree before his rebirth; and he can become free through this rebirth. The individual upward development of man consists in the transformation of the unfree will into one with the character of freedom. Man, who has penetrated the lawfulness of his actions as his own, has overcome the compulsion of this lawfulness and thus the lack of freedom. Freedom is not from the outset a fact of human existence, but a goal.

[ 21 ] With free action, man resolves a contradiction between the world and himself. His own deeds become deeds of the general being. He feels himself to be in full harmony with this general being. He feels every discord between himself and another as the result of a not yet fully awakened self. But this is the fate of the self, that it can only find the connection to this All in its separation from the All. Man would not be man if he were not self-contained as ego from everything else; but neither would he be man in the highest sense if he did not, as such a self-contained ego, expand out of himself into the All-I again. It is absolutely part of the human being that it overcomes a contradiction originally inherent in it.

[ 22 ] Whoever wants to accept the spirit merely as a logical mind may feel his blood freeze at the thought that things should experience their rebirth in the spirit. He will compare the fresh, living flower, outside in its fullness of color, with the cold, pale, schematic thought of the flower. He will feel particularly uncomfortable with the idea that the person who draws his motives for action from the solitude of his self-consciousness should be freer than the original, naive personality who acts out of his immediate impulses, out of the fullness of his nature. To such a person who sees the one-sidedly logical, the one who immerses himself in his inner being will appear like a changing conceptual scheme, like a ghost compared to the one who persists in his natural individuality. - Such objections to the rebirth of things in the spirit can be heard especially from those who are equipped with healthy organs for sensory perception and with lively drives and passions, but whose powers of observation fail in the face of objects with purely spiritual content. As soon as they are supposed to perceive purely spiritual things, they lack perception; they are dealing with mere conceptual shells, if not with empty words. Therefore, when it comes to spiritual content, they remain "dry", "abstract intellectuals". But for those who have a gift for observation in the purely spiritual as in the sensual, life naturally becomes no poorer if they enrich it with spiritual content. If I look out at a flower, why should its juicy colors lose any of their freshness if not only my eye sees the colors, but also my inner sense still sees the spiritual essence of the flower. Why should the life of my personality become poorer if I do not follow my passions and impulses spiritually blind, but if I illuminate them with the light of higher knowledge? Not poorer, but fuller, richer is the life reproduced in the spirit.^{1The fear of an impoverishment of the life of the soul through an ascent to the spirit is only felt by those personalities who know the spirit only in a sum of abstract concepts which are deducted from the views of the senses. He who rises in spiritual contemplation to a life that surpasses the sensual in content and concreteness cannot have this fear. For only in abstractions does sensual existence fade; in "spiritual contemplation" it only appears in its true light, without losing anything of its sensual richness.}