The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Preface to the 1923 Edition

[ 1 ] In this paper, more than twenty years ago, I wanted to answer the question: Why do a particular form of mysticism and the beginnings of contemporary scientific thought collide in the period from the thirteenth to the seventeenth century.

[ 2 ] I did not want to write a "history" of mysticism in this period, but only to answer this question. In my opinion, the publications that have appeared on the subject over the last twenty years give no reason to change this answer. The paper can therefore reappear essentially unchanged.

[ 3 ] The mystics spoken of here are the last offshoots of a way of research and thinking that in its details is alien to contemporary consciousness. Only the mood of soul that lived in this way of research is present in the intimate natures of the present. The way of looking at the things of nature, with which this mood of soul was connected before the age characterized here, has almost disappeared. The present-day study of nature has taken its place.

[ 4 ] The series of personalities characterized here were not able to carry the former type of research into the future. It no longer corresponds to the forces of knowledge that developed in European humanity from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries onwards. What Paracelsus or Jacob Böhme still retain of this way of research only looks like reminiscences of the past. Essentially, what remains for contemplative people is the mood of the soul. And for this they seek an impulse in the inclinations of the soul itself, whereas in the past it shone forth in the soul when it observed nature. Some people who are inclined to mysticism today will not want to kindle mystical experiences on the basis of what contemporary natural science says, but on the basis of what the writings of the time described here contain. This, however, makes him a stranger to what the present is most concerned with.

[ 5 ] It might now seem as if the present knowledge of nature, seen in its truth, did not indicate a path that could so tune the soul that it finds the light of the spirit in mystical vision. Why do mystically attuned souls find satisfaction in Meister Eckhart, Jacob Böhme, etc., but not in the book of nature, insofar as it lies open before man today through knowledge?

[ 6 ] The form in which this book is mostly spoken of today, however, cannot lead into the mystical mood of the soul.

[ 7 ] However, this book does not have to be spoken of in this way. It attempts to do so by also speaking of those spirits who develop a way of thinking from the mood of the old mysticism that can also absorb the newer insights. This is the case with Nicholas of Cusa.

[ 8 ] These personalities show that contemporary natural science is also capable of a mystical deepening. For a Nicholas of Cusa could transfer his thinking into this research. In his time, the old way of research could have been discarded, the mystical atmosphere preserved, and modern natural science adopted, if it had already existed.

[ 9 ] But what the human soul finds compatible with a way of research, it must also be able to gain from it, if it is strong enough to do so.

[ 10 ] I wanted to describe the nature of medieval mysticism in order to point out how it develops as an independent mysticism detached from its mother ground, the old mode of imagination, but cannot sustain itself because it now lacks the spiritual impulsiveness that it had in ancient times through research.

[ 11 ] This leads to the idea that the elements leading to mysticism must be sought in more recent research. From this, the soul's impulsiveness can then be regained, which does not stop at the dark mystical, emotional inner life, but rises from the mystical starting point to knowledge of the spirit. Medieval mysticism withered away because it had lost the ground of research that gives the soul forces the direction up to the spirit. The aim of this booklet is to encourage us to gain the forces that give direction to the spiritual world from more recent, correctly understood research.

Goetheanum in Dornach near Basel
Fall 1923 Rudolf Steiner