The Rudolf Steiner Archive

A Brief Outline of an Anthroposophic Outlook

[ 1 ] If you look at the shaping of philosophical worldviews up to the present day, you can see undercurrents in the searches and aspirations of thinkers which, to a certain extent, do not consciously break out in them but live instinctively. In these currents, forces are at work which give direction and often form to the thinkers' ideas, but to which their inquiring mental gaze does not want to be directed directly. The ideas of these thinkers often appear to be driven by hidden forces which they do not want to engage with, indeed which they shy away from. Such forces live in Dilthey's, Eucken's and Cohen's worlds of thought. What is asserted in these worlds of thought is the expression of forces of knowledge by which the philosophers are unconsciously dominated, but which find no conscious development in their buildings of ideas.

[ 2 ] Certainty, certainty of knowledge is sought in many buildings of ideas. The direction that is followed is more or less based on Kant's ideas. Consciously or unconsciously, the scientific way of thinking has a determining influence on the form of thought. However, many people suspect that the "self-conscious soul" is the source from which knowledge must be drawn in order to gain insight into the non-soul world. And almost all of them are dominated by the question: How does the self-conscious soul come to regard what it experiences within itself as a revelation of a true reality? The everyday sensual world has become an "illusion" because in the course of philosophical development the self-conscious ego with its inner experiences has found itself more and more isolated within itself. It has come to see even in the perceptions of the senses only inner experiences that betray in themselves no power by which their existence and existence in reality could be guaranteed. One feels how much depends on finding a point of support for knowledge in the self-conscious ego. But in the research that is stimulated by this feeling, one arrives at views that do not provide the means to immerse oneself with the ego in a world that can sustain existence in a satisfying way.

[ 3 ] Whoever seeks an explanation of this fact can find it in the way in which the soul being, detached from the external world reality through the development of philosophy, has placed itself in relation to this reality. - It feels surrounded by a world that reveals itself to it initially through the senses. But the soul has also become aware of its self-activity, of its inner creative upliftment. It feels it as an incontrovertible truth that no light, no color can be revealed without the eye that perceives light and color. Thus she senses the creativity in the activity of the eye. But if the eye brings forth color in a self-creative way - one must think in terms of this philosophy - where do I find something that exists in itself, that does not have its existence merely through my own creative power? Now if the revelations of the senses are only expressions of the soul's own power, must it not be to a greater extent thinking that wants to gain ideas about a true reality? Is this thinking not condemned to produce conceptual images that are rooted in the character of the life of the soul, but which can never contain anything that would grant any certainty for a penetration into the sources of existence? Such questions emerge everywhere from the more recent development of philosophy.

[ 4 ] As long as one cherishes the belief that in the world, which reveals itself through the senses, there is something self-contained, something based on itself, which one must examine in order to recognize its inner essence, one will not be able to escape from the confusion that results from the questions indicated. The human soul can only generate its knowledge self-creatively within itself. This is a conviction that has rightly emerged from the premises described in the chapter of this book entitled "The World as Illusion" and in the presentation of Hamerling's thoughts. But then, if one professes this conviction, one cannot get over a certain cliff of knowledge as long as one imagines: the world of the senses contains the true foundations of its existence in itself; and one must somehow depict something that lies outside the soul with what one produces in the soul itself.

[ 5 ] Only a realization will be able to lead over this cliff which grasps in the mind's eye that everything perceived by the senses does not present itself through its own essence as a finished, self-contained reality, but as something unfinished, as a half reality, so to speak. As soon as one assumes that one has a full reality before one in the perceptions of the sense world, one will never come to find an answer to the question: What do the self-creative products of the soul have to add to this reality in terms of cognition? We will have to remain with Kant's opinion: man must regard his cognitions as the products of his own mental organization, not as something that reveals itself to him as a true reality. If reality lies outside the soul in its own nature, then the soul cannot produce what corresponds to this reality, but only something that flows from its own organization.

[ 6 ] Everything becomes different as soon as it is recognized that the organization of the human soul does not distance itself from reality with that which it self-creates in cognition, but that in the life which it unfolds before all cognition, it conjures up a world for itself which is not the real one. The human soul is placed in the world in such a way that, because of its own nature, it makes things different from what they really are. In a certain sense, Hamerling is justified when he says: "Certain stimuli produce the smell in our olfactory organ. So the rose does not smell if nobody smells it ... If this does not make sense to you, dear reader, and if your mind rears up before this fact like a shy horse, do not read another line; leave this and all other books that deal with philosophical matters unread; for you lack the necessary ability to grasp a fact impartially and to hold it in your thoughts." (Cf. p. 525) How the sensual world appears when man confronts it directly undoubtedly depends on the nature of his soul. But does it not follow from this that he causes this appearance of the world precisely through his soul? Now an impartial observation shows how the unreal character of the sensuous external world derives from the fact that man, by directly confronting things, suppresses in himself that which in truth belongs to them. If he then unfolds his inner life in a self-creative way, if he lets rise from the depths of his soul what lies dormant in these depths, then he adds to what he has seen with the senses another thing that shapes the half-real as the fully real in cognition. It is in the nature of the soul to erase something that belongs to its reality at the first sight of things. Therefore, they are for the senses as they are not in reality, but as the soul shapes them. But their appearance (or their mere appearance) is based on the fact that the soul has first taken away what belongs to them. By not remaining with the first sight of things, man adds to them in cognition that which first reveals their full reality. It is not through cognition that the soul adds something to things that would be an unreal element in relation to them, but before cognition it has taken from things what belongs to their true reality. It will be the task of philosophy to recognize that the world revealed to man is an "illusion" before he cognizes it, but that the path of cognition points the way to full reality. What the human being self-creates through cognition only appears as an inner revelation of the soul because the human being, before he has the experience of cognition, must close himself off to what comes from the essence of things. He cannot yet see it in the things if he initially only confronts them. In recognizing, he automatically opens up what is initially hidden. If man now considers that which he first perceived to be a reality, then that which is created through cognition will appear to him as if he had added it to this reality. If he realizes that he has to look for that which he has only apparently produced himself in things, and that he has only kept it away from his view of things for the time being, then he will feel how cognition is a process of reality through which the soul progressively grows together with the being of the world, through which it expands its inner isolated experience into the experience of the world.

[ 7 ] In a small essay entitled "Truth and Science", which appeared in 1892, the author of this book made a feeble attempt to philosophically substantiate what has just been outlined. There he speaks of prospects which contemporary philosophy must open up if it is to get over the cliff which its recent development has naturally thrown up. In this work a philosophical point of view is presented with the words: "It is not the first form in which reality approaches the ego that is its true form, but the last form that the ego makes of it. That first form is of no significance at all for the objective world and has such a form only as a basis for the process of cognition. Thus it is not the form of the world that gives the theory of it that is the subjective, but rather the one that is first given to the ego." The author's later philosophical attempt "Philosophy of Freedom" (published in 1894, 44th-48th thousand, Stuttgart 1955) is a further elaboration on this point of view. There he endeavours to provide the philosophical foundations for a view that is hinted at in the aforementioned book: "It is not because of the objects that they are initially given to us without the corresponding concepts, but because of our mental organization. Our total being functions in such a way that for each thing of reality the elements that come into consideration for the thing flow to it from two sides: from the side of perceiving and thinking ... It has nothing to do with the nature of things how I am organized to grasp them. The intersection between perceiving and thinking is only present at the moment when I, the observer, confront things ..." And on p. 255 f.: "Perception is that part of reality that is given objectively, the concept that is given subjectively (through intuition). Our mental organization tears reality apart into these two factors. One factor appears to perception, the other to intuition. Only the connection between the two, the perception that integrates lawfully into the universe, is full reality. If we consider mere perception on its own, we have no reality, but an incoherent chaos; if we consider the lawfulness of perceptions on their own, then we are merely dealing with abstract concepts. Reality is not contained in the abstract concept, but in thinking observation, which considers neither the concept nor the perception in isolation, but the connection between the two."

[ 8 ] Whoever can make the points of view indicated here his own, gains the possibility of thinking the fruitful reality connected with his soul life in the self-conscious ego. This is the view towards which philosophical development has been striving since the Greek age and which showed its first clearly recognizable traces in Goethe's world view. - It is recognized that this self-conscious ego is not isolated in itself and experiences itself outside the objective world, but rather that its detachment from this world is only an appearance of consciousness that can be overcome, overcome by realizing that as a human being in a certain state of development one has to show a temporary form of the ego by forcing the forces that connect the soul with the world out of consciousness. If these forces were constantly at work in the consciousness, one would not arrive at a powerful self-consciousness at rest within oneself. One could not experience oneself as a self-conscious ego. The development of self-consciousness therefore depends on the soul being given the possibility of perceiving the world without that part of reality which the self-conscious ego erases at a certain stage, at that stage which lies before its cognition.—The world forces of this element of reality thus work on the soul being in such a way that they withdraw into concealment in order to allow the self-conscious ego to shine forth powerfully. The latter must therefore realize that it owes its self-knowledge to a fact which spreads a veil over the knowledge of the world. This necessarily means that everything that brings the soul to the powerful, energetic experience of the ego makes the deeper foundations in which this ego is rooted unrevealed. But all knowledge of ordinary consciousness is that which brings about the powerful self-conscious ego. Man perceives himself as a self-conscious ego by the fact that he perceives an external world with his senses, that he experiences himself outside this external world, and that he stands in such a relationship to this external world that at a certain stage of scientific research the "world appears as an illusion". If all this were not so, the self-conscious ego would not appear. So if one strives to reproduce in cognition only what is already observed before cognition, one does not attain a true experience in the full, but an image of "half reality."

[ 9 ] If one admits that things are like this, one cannot seek the answer to the riddles of philosophy in the experiences of the soul that present themselves to ordinary consciousness. This consciousness is called upon to strengthen the self-conscious ego; striving towards this goal, it must obscure the view into the connection of the ego with the objective world, and thus cannot show how the soul is connected with the true world. - This indicates the reason why a striving for knowledge that wants to make philosophical progress by means of the scientific mode of conception or something similar must always arrive at a point where what it strives for falls apart in the process of cognition. For many thinkers of recent times this disintegration must have been indicated by this book. For basically all scientific striving of the modern age works with the scientific means of thought, which serve to detach the self-conscious ego from true reality. And the strength and greatness of modern science, especially natural science, are based on the unreserved application of these means of thought.

[ 10 ] Individual philosophers such as Dilthey, Eucken and others direct philosophical contemplation towards the introspection of the soul. What they consider, however, are those experiences of the soul which form the basis of the self-conscious ego. Thus they do not penetrate to those sources of the world in which the experiences of the soul gush forth from true reality. These sources cannot lie where the soul, with its ordinary consciousness, first of all faces itself as an observer. If the soul wants to reach these sources, it must jump out of this ordinary consciousness. It must experience something within itself that this consciousness cannot give it. Such an experience initially appears to ordinary cognition as utter nonsense. The soul should experience itself knowing in an element without bringing its consciousness into this element. One should skip consciousness and yet still be conscious at the same time! - And yet: one will either continue to arrive at the impossible in philosophical striving, or one will have to open up the prospect that the "complete nonsense" indicated is only apparent and that it is precisely this that points the way on which help must be sought for the puzzling questions of philosophy.

[ 11 ] One will have to admit that the path "into the interior of the soul" must be quite different from the one chosen by some world views of recent times.

[ 12 ] As long as one takes the experiences of the soul as they present themselves to the ordinary consciousness, one does not reach the depths of the soul. One stops at what these depths bring forth. Eucken's world view is in this position. - One must strive down below the surface of the soul. But one cannot do this with the ordinary means of experiencing the soul. These have their strength precisely in the fact that they maintain the soul in this ordinary consciousness.

[ 13 ] Means of penetrating deeper into the soul present themselves when one directs one's gaze to that which indeed cooperates in the ordinary consciousness, but in its work does not enter this consciousness at all. When man thinks, his consciousness is directed towards thoughts. He wants to imagine something through his thoughts; he wants to think correctly in the ordinary sense. But one can also direct one's attention to something else. One can grasp the activity of thinking as such in the mind's eye. One can, for example, bring a thought into the center of consciousness that does not refer to anything external, that is thought like a symbol, in which one completely disregards the fact that it represents something external. One can now persist in holding such a thought. One can only become completely immersed in the inner activity of the soul while remaining in this way. The important thing here is not to live in thoughts, but to experience the activity of thinking. In this way the soul tears itself away from what it accomplishes in its ordinary thinking. If it continues this inner exercise long enough, after a while it will realize how it has become involved in experiences that separate it from the thinking and imagining that is bound to the bodily organs. The same can be done with the feeling and volition of the soul, yes, also with the sensation, the perception of external things. One will only achieve something in this way if one does not shrink from admitting to oneself that the soul's self-knowledge cannot simply be approached by looking at the inner being, which is always present, but rather at that which must first be uncovered through inner soul work. Through a work of the soul which, through practice, reaches such a persistence in the inner activity of thinking, feeling and willing that these experiences "condense" spiritually within themselves, so to speak. In this "condensation" they then reveal their inner essence, which cannot be perceived in ordinary consciousness. Through such soul work one discovers that for ordinary consciousness to come into being, the soul forces must "dilute" themselves in such a way that they become imperceptible in this dilution. The soul work meant here consists in the unlimited increase of soul abilities, which the ordinary consciousness also knows, but which it does not use in such an increase. These are the faculties of attention and loving devotion to what the soul experiences. In order to achieve what is indicated, these faculties must be increased to such an extent that they act as completely new soul powers.

[ 14 ] By proceeding in this way, one grasps a real experience in the soul, whose own essence reveals itself as such, which is independent of the conditions of the bodily organs. This is a spiritual life that must not be confused conceptually with what Dilthey and Eucken call the spiritual world. For this spiritual world is only experienced by man by being connected with his bodily organs. The spiritual life meant here does not exist for the soul, which is bound to the body.

[ 15 ] And as a first experience of this attained new spiritual life, the true realization of the ordinary life of the soul presents itself. In truth, this too is not produced by the body, but takes place outside the body. When I see a color, when I hear a sound, I do not experience the color, the sound as a result of the body, but as a self-conscious I am connected with the color, with the sound outside the body. The body has the task of working in such a way that it can be compared to a mirror. If I am connected with a color in ordinary consciousness only mentally, I cannot perceive anything of the color because of the arrangement of this consciousness. Just as I cannot see my face when I look in front of me. But if there is a mirror in front of me, I perceive this face as a body. Without standing in front of the mirror, I am the body, I experience myself as such. Standing in front of the mirror, I perceive the body as a reflection. It is the same - the obvious inadequacy of a comparison must be taken into account - with sensory perception. I live with the color outside my body, through the activity of the body (the eye, the nervous system) the color is made conscious perception for me. The human body is not a producer of perceptions, of the soul in general, but a mirroring apparatus of what takes place outside the body in a soul-spiritual way.

[ 16 ] This view places the theory of knowledge on a promising foundation. "One becomes ... to a ... conception of the 'I' in terms of epistemology if it (the I) is not imagined to be located within the organization of the body and the impressions are given to it 'from outside', but if this 'I' is transferred into the lawfulness of things themselves and the organization of the body is only seen as something like a mirror that reflects back to it the weaving of the I in the true world being outside the body through the organic activity of the body." With such words, the author of this book attempted to characterize the prospect of a theory of knowledge he had in mind in the lecture he prepared for the philosophical congress held in Bologna in 1911: "The Psychological Foundations and the Epistemological Position of Spiritual Science." (See "Die Drei", Stuttgart 1948, 18th year, issue 2/3.)

[ 17 ] During human sleep, the reflective interaction between the body and the soul is interrupted; the "I" lives only in the weaving of the soul-spiritual. For ordinary consciousness, however, there is no experience of the soul if the body does not reflect the experiences. Therefore sleep is unconscious. Through the soul exercises mentioned above and similar ones, the soul develops a consciousness other than the ordinary one. It thereby attains the ability not only to experience purely soul-spiritually, but also to strengthen the experience in itself in such a way that it is reflected in itself, so to speak, without the help of the body and thus comes to spiritual perception. And only in what is experienced in this way can the soul truly recognize itself, can it consciously experience itself in its essence. - Just as memory conjures up past facts of physical experience from the depths of the soul, so do essential experiences emerge from the inner depths of a soul that has prepared itself for them through the characterized activities, experiences that do not belong to the world of sense being, but nevertheless to a world in which the soul has its basic being. - It is only too natural that the believer in some present-day conceptions should relegate this world, which comes to light here, to the realm of misconceptions, illusions, hallucinations, autosuggestions and the like. To this one can only reply that a serious striving of the soul, working in the way indicated, finds in the inner state of mind which it acquires, as sure means of distinguishing illusion from spiritual reality as one can in ordinary life, with a healthy state of mind, distinguish a phantasy from a perception. Theoretical proofs that the characterized spiritual world is real will be sought in vain; but there are no such proofs for the reality of the perceptual world either. How this is to be judged is decided by the experience itself in the one and the other case.

[ 18 ] What holds many back from taking the step which, according to this description, is only promising for the philosophical riddle questions, is that they believe they are falling into a realm of nebulous mysticism. Whoever does not from the outset have the soul's inclination towards such nebulous mysticism will, by the path described, open up access to a world of spiritual experience which is in itself as crystal clear as the mathematical structure of ideas. However, if one has a tendency to seek the spiritual in the "dark unknown", in "that which cannot be explained", then neither a connoisseur nor an opponent of the path described will be able to find their way along it.

[ 19 ] It is also easy to understand that those personalities who want to recognize the only true scientific path in the mode of conception that natural science uses to gain knowledge of the sensory world, strongly resist what is indicated here. However, anyone who can cast aside such one-sidedness will be able to recognize that the basis for accepting what is described here lies precisely in the genuine scientific mindset. The ideas that have been described in this book as those of the newer scientific way of thinking are the best training thoughts to which the soul can devote itself and on which it can dwell in order to free itself in its inner experience from being bound to the body. Whoever uses these scientific ideas in order to proceed with them in the way described in these explanations will find that thoughts which originally only seem intended to depict the processes of nature really detach the soul from the body in the inner spiritual exercise, and that therefore the spiritual science meant here must form a continuation of the scientific way of thinking experienced correctly by the soul.

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[ 20 ] One knowingly experiences the true nature of the human soul if one seeks it in the characterized way. The development of philosophical world views in the Greek age led to the birth of thought in the field of these world views. The progress of this development was later to lead philosophical contemplation to the self-conscious ego through the experience of thought. Goethe strove in the self-conscious ego for such experiences which, by being worked out by the human soul, at the same time place this soul in the realm of that reality which is inaccessible to the senses. If he strives for such an idea of the plant, which cannot be seen with the senses, but which contains the supersensible essence of all plants in such a way that, starting from it, one can conceive of plants that are possible to live, then Goethe is on the ground indicated here with such a way of thinking. - Hegel then saw in the thought experience of the human soul itself the "standing in the true world being"; for him the world of true thoughts became the inner being of the world. - An unbiased pursuit of philosophical development shows that the experience of thought was indeed the element through which the self-conscious ego was to be placed upon itself, but that progress must be made via life in thought to such a soul experience that leads beyond ordinary consciousness. For even Hegel's experience of thought still runs in the realm of this ordinary consciousness.

[ 21 ] In the soul, a view of a reality opens up that is inaccessible to the senses. What is experienced in the soul through the penetration into this reality presents itself as the deeper soul entity. But what is the relationship of this deeper soul entity to the external world experienced through the mediation of the body? - The soul, which experiences itself freely from the body in the marked way, feels itself in a soul-spiritual weaving. It is with the spiritual outside the body. And it knows that in ordinary life it is also outside this body, which only brings its soul-spiritual experiences to its perception like a mirroring apparatus. This raises her spiritual elevation to such an extent that a new element in reality reveals itself to her. Observations on the spiritual world in the manner of Dilthey or Eucken find the sum of mankind's cultural experiences as the spiritual world. With this world as the only comprehensible spiritual world, one does not stand on the ground that is revealed by the scientific way of thinking. The totality of world beings is ordered for the natural scientific view in such a way that the physical human being in his individual existence appears like a summary, a unity, to which all other natural processes and natural beings point. The world of culture is that which is created by this human being. But it is not an individual unity of a higher kind in relation to the individuality of man. The spiritual science referred to here points to an experience that the soul can have independently of the body. And this experience reveals itself as an individual. It appears as a higher human being who stands in relation to the physical human being as to his tools. What is felt through the spiritual experience of the soul free from the physical body is a spiritual-soul unified human being that belongs to a spiritual world just as the body belongs to the physical world. If the soul raises its spiritual being, then it also recognizes that this stands in a certain relationship to the body. On the one hand the body appears like a detachment from the soul-spiritual being, in such a way that one can venture the comparison with the snail shell, which, enveloping the snail, emerges from it like an image. On the other hand, the spiritual-mental in the body appears like the sum of forces in the plant, which, after the plant has unfolded, after it has completed its development through leaves and blossom, crowd together in the germ to form the plant for a new plant. One cannot experience the spiritual-soul man without at the same time knowing through experience that something is contained in this man which wants to form itself into a new physical man. A person who, through his experience in the physical body, has gathered forces that cannot be lived out in this present physical body. This present physical body has certainly given the soul the possibility to have experiences in connection with the outside world, which make the spiritual-soul man different than he was, since he started life in this physical body; but this body is in a way too definitely formed for the spiritual-soul man to be able to reshape it according to the experiences made in it. Thus there is a spiritual-soul being in the human being that contains the disposition for a new human being.

[ 22 ] Such thoughts can only be hinted at here. What they contain opens up the prospect of a spiritual science that is built in its inner essence according to the pattern of natural science. The practitioner of such a spiritual science will proceed as a botanist does. He follows the plant as it takes root, unfolds stem and leaves, develops into blossom and fruit. In the fruit he becomes aware of the germ of new plant life. And when he sees a plant develop, he looks for its origin in the germ that comes from another plant. The spiritual scientist will observe how a human life, apart from its outer side, also unfolds an inner being; he will find the outer experiences like the plant leaves and blossoms dying away; but inside he will observe the spiritual-soul core that harbors the disposition for a new human life. In the human being coming into life through birth, he will see that which has gone out of the senses through death coming back into them. He will learn to observe how that which is passed on to the human being by the ancestors in the physical stream of heredity is only the material which the soul-spiritual human being shapes in order to bring to physical existence that which was formed in germ form in a previous life.

[ 23 ] From the point of view of this world view, one will see many things in the science of the soul in a new light. Much could be mentioned here. But only one thing should be pointed out. Observe how the human soul is transformed by experiences which in a certain sense represent a return of earlier experiences. If you read a meaningful book in your twentieth year and read it again in your fortieth, you experience it as a different person. And if one asks impartially about the reason for this fact, it turns out that what one has absorbed through the book in one's twentieth year lives on in one and has become a part of one's own being. One has in one's own spiritual-soul the power that lies in the book; and in the fortieth year of man this power that has entered into him lies in this book. It is the same with life experiences. These become man himself. They live in his "I". But one also sees that during one life this inner strengthening of the higher man must remain spiritual-soul. But one also realizes the other, that this human being strives to become strong enough to live himself out in physicality. In order to achieve this, the physical determination in the one life is an obstacle. Within the human being, however, lives the germ that wants to form a new human life with the acquired, just as the germ for a new plant grows within the plant.

[ 24 ] In addition to this, the soul's living into the spiritual world independent of the body allows it to become aware of the truly spiritual-soul in a similar way to how the past emerges in memory. However, this spiritual-soul realm reveals itself as reaching beyond the individual life. Just as what I now carry in my consciousness contains within it the results of my earlier physical experience, so the whole physical experience, with the particular formation of the body, reveals itself to the soul that has gone through the exercises indicated, as formed by the spiritual-soul being that preceded the formation of the body. And this life that preceded the formation of the body announces itself as such in a purely spiritual world, in which the soul lived before it could develop the germinal plants of a previous physical life in a new physical life. One must close oneself off from the yet so plausible possibility that the powers of the human soul are capable of development if one is reluctant to acknowledge that a soul speaks truth which expresses its experience to the effect that through inner work it has really come to know of a spiritual world within a consciousness which differs from the ordinary one. And this knowledge leads to the spiritual grasping of a world from which it becomes clear that the true nature of the soul lies behind ordinary experience; that this true nature is preserved spiritually in death, just as the plant seed is preserved physically after the plant has died. It leads to the realization that the human soul lives in repeated earthly lives, and that between these earthly lives lies purely spiritual existence.

[ 25 ] From such a point of view, reality comes into the assumption of a spiritual world. It is the human souls themselves that carry over what has been achieved in one cultural epoch to the next. The soul appears in physical life with a certain inner constitution, the unfolding of which one perceives, if only one is not so biased as to see in this unfolding only the result of physical inheritance. What presents itself as the spiritual world in the cultural life meant by Eucken and Dilthey is shaped in such a way that what follows always follows on from what immediately precedes. However, human souls steal into this progress, bringing with them the result of their previous lives in the form of the inner mood of the soul, but which must appropriate through external learning what has developed in the physical cultural world while they were in a purely spiritual existence.

[ 26 ] The full discussion of what has been outlined here cannot be given in a historical account. If you are looking for such a discussion, I would refer you to my writings on the spiritual science referred to here. Even if these strive to present the world view whose points of view and aims are outlined here in a way that is as generally accessible as possible, I believe that it is also possible to recognize in the guise of this way of presentation how this world view rests on a seriously aspired philosophical foundation, and from this strives into the world that the human soul can behold when it acquires bodiless observation through inner work.

[ 27 ] One of the masters of this world view is the history of philosophy itself. An examination of it shows that the course of philosophical work pushes towards a view that cannot be attained in ordinary consciousness. In the portrayals of representative thinkers, we see in manifold forms how the exploration of the self-conscious ego has been attempted in all directions with the means of ordinary consciousness. A theoretical discussion of why these means must arrive at unsatisfactory points does not belong in the historical account. But the historical facts themselves clearly express how ordinary consciousness, searched on all sides, cannot arrive at the solution of questions which it must ask. And why the ordinary, even the usual scientific consciousness must lack the means to deal with these questions, that is what this final chapter should show on the one hand. On the other hand, it should show what the characterized world views unconsciously strive for. - If from a certain point of view this last chapter no longer belongs to the actual history of philosophy, it will nevertheless appear justified from another, from one to whom the results of this book are plausible. For these results consist in the fact that the world view of the humanities appears to be demanded by the newer current of philosophy, as an answer to the questions it raises. One must look at this philosophical current at individual characteristic points in order to become aware of this. In his "Psychology", Franz Brentano speaks of how this current has been distracted from dealing with the deeper riddles of the soul (cf. p. 521). One can read in his book: "However, as apparent as the necessity of limiting the field of research to this side is, it is perhaps no more than apparent. David Hume at the time declared himself resolutely against the metaphysicians who claim to find in themselves a substance as the bearer of mental states. 'For my part,' he says, 'when I enter deeply into what I call myself, I always meet with one or other perception of heat or cold, light or shade, love or hate, pain or pleasure. No matter how often I try, I can never become aware of myself without an idea, and I can never discover anything except the idea. If my ideas are suspended for any time, as in sound sleep, I can feel nothing of myself for just as long, and one could in truth say that I do not exist at all." (Brentano, Psychology, p. 20.) - Hume knows only of an observation of the soul which is directed towards the soul without any inner work of the soul. Such an observation cannot penetrate to the essence of the soul. Brentano now takes up Hume's propositions and says: "Nevertheless, the same Hume remarks that all the proofs of immortality have quite the same force in a view like his as in the opposite and traditional assumption." It must be said, however, that not knowledge, but only faith, could adhere to Hume's words, if his opinion were correct, that nothing is to be found in the soul but what he states. For what could vouch for the continuance of what Hume finds to be the content of the soul? Brentano continues: "For although he who denies the substance of the soul cannot, of course, speak of immortality in the proper sense, it is not at all true that the question of immortality loses all meaning through the denial of a substantial carrier of psychical phenomena. This becomes immediately obvious when one considers that, with or without soul substance, a certain continuation of our psychic life here on earth cannot be denied. If one rejects the soul-substance, then all that remains for him is the assumption that a substantial carrier is not necessary for a continued existence such as this. And the question of whether our psychic life will continue to exist after the destruction of our bodily appearance will therefore be just as pointless for him as for others. It is actually a bare inconsistency when thinkers of this school reject the question of immortality even in its essential meaning, in which, however, it is better to call it immortality of life than immortality of the soul, for the reasons given." (Brentano, Psychology, p.21 f.) - Brentano's opinion cannot be supported if one does not want to go into the world view outlined here. For where are the reasons to assume that the mental phenomena continue to exist after the dissolution of the body if one wants to remain with ordinary consciousness? This consciousness can only last as long as its mirroring apparatus, the physical body, exists. What can continue to exist without it cannot be called substance; it must be a different consciousness. But this other consciousness can only be discovered through the inner work of the soul, which makes itself free of the body. It learns to recognize that the soul can also have consciousness without bodily mediation. Through this work the soul finds in supersensible perception the state in which it finds itself when it has laid aside the body. And it finds that, while it carries the body, it is the body itself that obscures that other consciousness. With the incorporation into the physical body, the latter has such a strong effect on the soul that it cannot bring the characterized other consciousness to unfold in ordinary life. This becomes apparent when the soul exercises indicated in this chapter are successfully carried out. The soul must then consciously suppress the forces which, emanating from the body, extinguish the body-free consciousness. This extinguishing can no longer take place after the dissolution of the body. The other consciousness described is therefore the one that survives through the successive lives of the soul and through the purely spiritual lives between death and birth. And from this point of view we do not speak of a nebulous soul substance, but show with a conception similar to the ideas of natural science how the soul continues to exist because in one life the next is prepared in a germ-like manner, like the plant germ in the plant. The ground of the future life is found in the present life. The true is shown, which continues when death dissolves the body.

[ 28 ] The spiritual science meant here is nowhere in contradiction with the newer scientific way of thinking. One will only have to admit that no insights into the realm of spiritual life can be gained with this way of thinking itself. If one recognizes the fact of a consciousness other than the ordinary one, one will find that through this consciousness one is led to ideas about the spiritual world, which result in a law connection for this world, quite similar to that which results from scientific research for the physical world.

[ 29 ] It will be important to keep away from this spiritual science the belief that its findings are borrowed from some older form of religion. One is easily seduced into this belief because, for example, the view of repeated earthly lives is a component of certain creeds. For the modern spiritual researcher there can be no borrowing from such creeds. He finds that the attainment of a consciousness reaching into the spiritual world can become a fact for a soul that devotes itself to certain - the described - activities. And as a result of this consciousness he learns to recognize that the soul in the characterized way has its existence in the spiritual world. For his contemplation, the history of philosophy has shown the way, since the illumination of thought in Greek thought, to arrive philosophically at the conviction that one finds the true soul being when one regards the ordinary experiences of the soul as a surface beneath which one must descend. Thought has proved to be the educator of the soul. It has brought it to the point of being completely alone in the self-conscious ego. But by leading it to this solitude, it has steeled its powers, enabling it to become so absorbed in itself that, standing in its substratum, it stands at the same time in the deeper reality of the world. For from the point of view of the spiritual-scientific world-view characterized here, no attempt is made to get behind the sense world by means of ordinary consciousness through mere reflection (hypothetizing). It is recognized that for this ordinary consciousness the supersensible world must be veiled, and that the soul must place itself in the supersensible world through its own inner transformation if it wants to attain an awareness of it.

[ 30 ] In this way it is also recognized that the origin of moral impulses lies in that world which the soul beholds without a body. From this world the impulses protrude into the life of the soul, which do not originate from the bodily nature of man, but are intended to determine man's actions independently of it.

[ 31 ] If one becomes familiar with the fact that the "I" lives with its soul-spiritual world outside the body, that it therefore brings the experiences of the outside world itself to this body, then one will also find the way to a truly spiritual understanding of the riddle of destiny. In his spiritual experience man is definitely connected with what he experiences as fate. Just look at the soul of a thirty-year-old man. The real content of his inner being would be quite different if he had experienced something different in the preceding years than is the case. His "I" is inconceivable without these experiences. And even if they have hit him as painful blows of fate, he has become what he is through them. They belong to the forces that are effective in his "I", not affecting it from the outside. Just as man lives spiritually and emotionally with color, and this is only brought to his attention through the reflection of the body, so he lives as one with his destiny. One is spiritually connected with the color; but one can only perceive it when the body reflects it; man is essentially one with the causes of a stroke of fate from previous lives, but he experiences it through the fact that his soul has led itself into a new earthly existence, in which it unconsciously plunged into experiences that correspond to these causes. In ordinary consciousness he knows that his will is not connected with this fate; in the attained body-free consciousness he can find that he could not will himself if he did not want all the details of his fate with that part of his soul which is essentially in the spiritual world. Even the riddle of destiny is not solved by thinking up hypotheses about it, but by learning to understand how one grows together with one's destiny in an experience of the soul that goes beyond ordinary consciousness. Then one recognizes that in the germinal plants of the earth lives preceding the present one also lie the causes why one experiences this or that fate. Fate does not appear in its true form in the way it presents itself to the ordinary consciousness. It proceeds as a consequence of previous lives on earth, the sight of which is not given to the ordinary consciousness. To realize that one is connected to one's blows of fate through previous lives is to be reconciled with fate at the same time.

[ 32 ] For such philosophical puzzles as this, too, reference must be made to the author's works on spiritual science for a detailed account. Only the more important results of this science can be discussed here, but not in detail the paths that lead to being convinced of it.

[ 33 ] Philosophy leads through its own paths to the realization that it must proceed from contemplation to an experience of the world it seeks. In contemplating the world, the soul experiences something that it cannot stop at if it does not want to be an incessant riddle to itself. In fact, this contemplation is like the seed that develops in the plant. The same seed can find its way in two ways when it has matured. It can be used as human food. If one examines it with regard to its usability in this way, other points of view come into consideration than those which result from the progressive path the grain takes when it is sunk into the ground and becomes the germ of a new plant. What man experiences in his soul has a similar twofold path. On the one hand, it enters into the service of the observation of an external world. If one examines the experience of the soul from this point of view, one will develop world views that ask above all: How does knowledge penetrate into the essence of things; what can the contemplation of things achieve? Such an investigation can be compared to that of the nutritional value of the seed. But one can also look at the experience of the soul, in so far as this is not diverted outwards, but continues to work in the soul, leading it from one stage of existence to the next. Then one grasps this soul experience in the driving force implanted in it. One recognizes it as a higher man in man, who in one life prepares the other. One will come to the realization that this is the basic impulse of the spiritual experience. And that knowledge relates to this basic impulse as the use of the seed as food relates to the progressive path of this seed, which makes it the germ of a new plant. If one does not take this into account, one lives in the delusion that one can seek the essence of cognition in the essence of mental experience. One must thereby fall into an error similar to that which would arise if one only chemically examined the seed for its nutritional value and wanted to find the inner essence of the seed in the result of this examination. The spiritual science characterized here seeks to avoid this deception by wanting to reveal the self-emergent inner essence of mental experience, which can also enter into the service of knowledge on its way without having its very own nature in this observing knowledge.

[ 34 ] The "bodiless soul consciousness" described here must not be confused with those soul states which are not attained through the characterized inner work of the soul itself, but which result from a down-tuned spiritual life (in dreamlike clairvoyance, hypnosis, etc.). In these states of the soul we are not dealing with a real experience of the soul in a body-free consciousness, but with a connection between the body and the soul that differs from that of ordinary life. Real spiritual science can only be attained when the soul, in its own self-performed inner work, finds the transition from the ordinary consciousness to one with which it experiences itself clearly standing inside in the spiritual world, in an inner work that is an increase, not a decrease, of the usual life of the soul.

[ 35 ] Through such inner work, the human soul can achieve what philosophy strives for. The importance of the latter is truly not insignificant because it cannot achieve what it wants to achieve in the way that its practitioners usually do. For more important than the philosophical results themselves are the powers of the soul that can be attained in philosophical work. And these powers must ultimately lead to the point where philosophy is able to recognize the "bodiless life of the soul". There it will recognize that the world riddles are not merely scientifically considered, but want to be experienced by the human soul, after it has first brought itself into the state in which such an experience is possible.

[ 36 ] The question is obvious: Should ordinary, even fully scientific cognition deny itself and only accept for a world view what is handed to it from a field that lies outside its own? But the matter is such that the experiences of the characterized consciousness, which is different from the ordinary consciousness, are immediately also plausible to this ordinary consciousness, insofar as it does not cause obstacles for itself by wanting to enclose itself in its own realm. The supersensible truths can only be found by the soul that places itself in the supersensible. Once they have been found, they can be fully comprehended by the ordinary consciousness. For they necessarily follow on from the insights that can be gained for the sensory world.

[ 37 ] It cannot be denied that in the course of the development of the world-view, points of view repeatedly appear which are similar to those which in this concluding chapter are linked to the consideration of the progress of philosophical endeavors. But in previous ages they appear as side paths of philosophical searching. The latter first had to struggle through everything that can be regarded as a continuation of the illumination of thought-experiences in the Greek turn, in order to point to the path of supersensible consciousness out of its own impulses, out of the feeling of what it can and cannot achieve itself. In past times, the path of such consciousness was to a certain extent without philosophical justification; it was not demanded by philosophy itself. The philosophy of the present, however, demands it through what it has gone through as a continuation of the preceding philosophical development without it. It has brought it without him to think intellectual research in directions which, naturally pursued, lead to the recognition of supersensible consciousness. Therefore, in the beginning of this final chapter, it was not shown how the soul speaks about the supersensible when it places itself on its ground without any further presupposition, but an attempt was made to pursue the directions philosophically that result from the newer world views. And it was indicated how the pursuit of these directions through the soul living in them leads them to the recognition of the supersensible essence of the soul.