The Case for Anthroposophy
GA 21
II. The Philosophical Bearing of Anthroposophy
[ 1 ] No-one, who aims at achieving a radical relation between his own thought and contemporary philosophical ideas, can avoid the issue, raised in the first paragraph of this book, of the existential status of the psyche. This he will have to justify not only to himself, but also in the light of those ideas. Now many people do not feel this need, since they are acquainted with the authentically psychic through immediate inner experience (Erleben) and know how to distinguish that from the psychic apprehension (Erfahren) effected through the senses. It strikes them as an unnecessary, perhaps an irritating, intellectual hair-splitting. And if they are positively averse, the more philosophically minded are often unwilling for a different reason. They are unwilling to concede to inner soul experiences any other status than that of subjective apprehensions without cognitive significance. They are little disposed therefore to ransack their philosophical concepts for those elements in them that could lead on to anthroposophical ideas. These repugnances, coming from opposite sides, make the exposition extraordinarily difficult. But it is necessary. For in our time the only kind of ideas to which cognitive validity can be assigned are such as will bear the same kind of critical examination as the laws of natural science must satisfy, before they can claim to have been established.
To establish, epistemologically, the validity of anthroposophical ideas, it is first of all necessary to conceive as precisely as possible the manner in which they are experienced. This can be done in several very different ways. Let us attempt to describe two of them. The first way requires that we observe the phenomenon of memory. Rather a weak point incidentally in current philosophical theory; for the concepts we find there concerning memory throw very little light on it. I take my departure from ideas which I have, in point of fact, reached by anthroposophical methods, but which can be fully supported both philosophically and physiologically. Limitations of space will not permit of my making good this assertion in the present work. I hope to do so in a future one.1I have not been able to trace where, if at all, this intention was carried out—- Editor I am convinced, however, that anyone who succeeds in candidly surveying the findings of modern physiological and psychological science will find that they support the following observations.
Representations stimulated by sense-impressions enter the field of unconscious human experience. From there they can be brought up again, remembered. Representations themselves are a purely psychic reality; but awareness of them in normal waking life is somatically conditioned. Moreover the psyche, bound up as it is with the body, cannot by using its own forces raise representations from their unconscious to their conscious condition. For that it requires the forces of the body. To the end of normal memory the body has to function, just as the body has to function in the processes of its sense-organs, in order to bring about representations through the senses. If I am to represent a sensory event, a somatic activity must first come about within the sense organs; and, within the psyche, the representation appears as its result. In the same way, if I am to remember a representation or idea, an inner somatic activity (in refined organs), an activity polarically counter to the activity of the senses, must occur; and, as a result, the remembered representation comes forth. This representation is related to a sensory event which was presented to my soul at some time in the past. I represent that event to myself through an inner experience, to which my somatic organisation enables me.
Keep clearly in mind the character of such a memory-presentation, and with its help you approach the character of anthroposophical ideas. They are certainly not memory-presentations, but they issue in the psyche in a similar way. Many people, anxious to form ideas about the spiritual world in a less subtle way, find this disappointing. But the spiritual world cannot be experienced any more solidly than a happening in the sense world apprehended in the past but no longer present to the sight. In the case of memory we have seen that our ability to remember such a happening comes from the energy of the somatic organisation. To the experience of the existentially psychic, on the other hand, as distinct from that of memory, this energy can make no contribution. Instead, the soul must awaken in itself the ability to accomplish with certain representations what the body accomplishes with the representations of the senses, when it implements their recall. The former—elicited from the depths of the psyche solely through the energy of the psyche, as memory-presentations are elicited from the depths of human nature through its somatic organisation—are representations related to the spiritual world. They are available to every soul. What has to be won, in order to become aware of them, is the energy to elicit them from the depths of the psyche by a purely psychic activity. As the remembered representations of the senses are related to a past sense-impression, so are these others related to a nexus between the psyche and the domain of spirit, a nexus which is not via the sense-world. The human soul stands towards the spiritual world, as the whole human being stands towards a forgotten actuality. It comes to the knowledge of that world, if it brings, to the point where they awake, energies which are similar to those bodily forces that promote memory. Thus, ideas of the authentically psychic depend for their philosophical validation on the kind of inquiry into the life within us that leads us to find there an activity purely psychic, which yet resembles in some ways the activity exerted in remembering.
[ 2 ] A second way of forming a concept of the purely psychic is as follows. The attention may be directed to what anthropological observation has to say about the willing (operant) human being. An impulse of will that is to be carried into effect has as its ground the mental representation of what is to be willed. The dependence of this representation on the bodily organisation (nervous system) can be physiologically discerned. Bound up with the representation there is a nuance of feeling, an affective sympathy with the represented, which is the reason why this representation furnishes the impulse for a willed act. But from that point on psychic experience disappears into the depths; and the first thing that reappears in consciousness is the result. What is next represented, in fact, is the movement we make in order to achieve the represented goal. (Theodor Ziehen puts all this very clearly in his physiological psychology.) We can now perhaps see how, in the case of a willed act, the conscious process of mental representation is suspended in regard to the central moment of willing itself. That which is psychically experienced in the willing of an operation executed through the body, does not penetrate normal consciousness. But we do see plainly enough that that willing is realised through an act of the body. What is much harder to see is, that the psyche, when it is observing the laws of logic and seeking the truth by connecting ideas together, is also unfolding will. A will which is not to be circumscribed within physiological laws. For, if that were so, it would be impossible to distinguish an illogical—or simply an a-logical—chain of ideas from one which follows the laws of logic. (Superficial chatter around the fancy that logical consequence could be a property the mind acquires through adapting itself to the outer world, need not be taken seriously.) In this willing, which takes place entirely within the psyche, and which leads to logically grounded convictions, we can detect the permeation of the soul by an entirely spiritual activity.
Of what goes on in the will, when it is directed outwards, ordinary ideation knows as little as a man knows of himself when he is asleep. Something similar is true of his being regulated by logic in the formation of his convictions; he is less fully conscious of this than he is of the actual content of such convictions. Nevertheless anyone capable of looking inward, albeit only in the anthropological mode, will be able to form a concept of the co-presence of this being-regulated-by logic to normal consciousness. He will come to realise that the human being knows of this being-regulated, in the manner that he knows while dreaming. It is paradoxical but perfectly correct to say: normal consciousness knows the content of its convictions; but it only dreams of the regulation by logic that is extant in the pursuit of these convictions. Thus we see that, in ordinary-level consciousness, the human being sleeps through his willing, when he unfolds and exercises his will in an outward direction; he dreams his willing, when, in his thinking, he is seeking for convictions. Only it is clear that, in the latter instance, what he dreams of cannot be anything corporeal, for otherwise logical and physiological laws would coincide. The concept to be grasped is that of the willing that lives in the mental pursuit of truth. That is also the concept of an existentially psychic.
From both of these epistemological approaches, in the sense of anthroposophy, to the concept of the existentially psychic (and they are not the only possible ones), it becomes evident how sharply this concept is divorced from visions, hallucinations, mediumship or any kind of abnormal psychic activity. For the origin of all these abnormalities must be sought in the physiologically determinable. But the psychic, as anthroposophy understands it, is not only something that is experienced in the mode of normal and healthy consciousness; it is something that is experienced, even while representations are being formed, in total vigilance—and is experienced in the same way that we remember a happening undergone earlier in life, or alternatively in the same way that we experience the logically conditioned formation of our convictions. It will be seen that the cognitive experience of anthroposophy proceeds by way of representations and ideas that maintain the character of that normal consciousness with which, as well as with reality, the external world endows us; while at the same time they add to it endowments leading into the domain of the spirit. By contrast the visionary, hallucinatory, etc. type of experience subsists in a consciousness that adds nothing to the norm, but actually takes away from it by eliminating some faculties already acquired; so that there the level of consciousness falls below the level that obtains in conscious sense-perception.
For those of my readers who are acquainted with what I have written elsewhere2For example, in Occult Science: an Outline, pp. 45-8 and 336. concerning recollection and memory I would add the following. Representations that have entered the unconscious and are subsequently remembered are to be located, so long as they remain unconscious, as representations within that component of the human body which is there identified as a life-body (etheric body). But the activity, through which representations anchored in the life-body are remembered, belongs to the physical body. I emphasise this in case some, who jump hastily to conclusions, should construe as an inconsistency what is in fact a distinction made necessary by this particular context.
IV-1. Die philosophische Rechtfertigung der Anthroposophie
[ 1 ] Wer mit seiner Vorstellungsart in dem philosophischen Denken der Gegenwart wurzeln will, der hat nötig, erkenntnistheoretisch das Wesenhaft-Seelische, von dem der erste Abschnitt dieser Schrift spricht, vor sich selbst und vor diesem Denken zu rechtfertigen. Nach einer solchen Rechtfertigung verlangen viele Menschen nicht, die das wirklich Seelische aus unmittelbaren innerem Erleben kennen und es zu unterscheiden wissen von dem durch die Sinne bewirkten seelischen Erfahren. Diesen erscheint die Rechtfertigung oftmals als unnötige, ja unbequeme Begriffsspalterei. Ihrer so gearteten Abneigung steht der Unwille der philosophisch Denkenden gegenüber. Sie wollen die inneren Erlebnisse des Seelischen nur als subjektive Erfahrungen gelten lassen, denen ein Erkenntniswert nicht zuzuschreiben ist. Sie sind daher wenig geneigt, im Bereiche ihrer philosophischen Begriffe die Elemente aufzusuchen, durch die man an die anthroposophischen Ideen herankommt. Durch diese von beiden Seiten kommenden Abneigungen wird eine Verständigung außerordentlich erschwert. Sie ist aber notwendig. Denn in unserer Zeit kann einer Vorstellungsart nur dann Erkenntniswert zugeschrieben werden, wenn sie ihre Anschauungen vor eben derselben Kritik zur Geltung bringen kann, vor welcher die naturwissenschaftlichen Gesetze ihre Rechtfertigung suchen. - Für eine erkenntnistheoretische Rechtfertigung der anthroposophischen Ideen handelt es sich vor allem darum, die Art, wie sie erlebt werden, möglichst genau in Begriffen zu fassen. Man kann dieses in der verschiedensten Weise tun. Es seien hier zwei von diesen Weisen zu schildern versucht. Für die Schilderung der einen sei ausgegangen von der Betrachtung der Erinnerung. Man wird allerdings dabei sogleich an einen mißlichen Punkt der gegenwärtigen philosophischen Wissenschaft getrieben. Denn über das Wesen der Erinnerung herrschen in derselben wenig geklärte Begriffe. Ich werde hier von Vorstellungen ausgehen, die ich zwar auf den Wegen der Anthroposophie gefunden, die aber durchaus philosophisch und physiologisch zu begründen sind. Der Raum, den ich mir in dieser Schrift zumessen muß, reicht allerdings nicht aus, diese letztere Begründung hier zu geben. Ich hoffe sie in einer zukünftig erscheinenden Schrift zu liefern. Ich meine aber, was ich über die Erinnerung sagen werde, kann jeder begründet finden, der auf die heute vorhandenen Ergebnisse der physiologischen und psychologischen Wissenschaft mit richtigem Blicke zu sehen vermag.
Die durch Sinneseindrücke angeregten Vorstellungen treten in den Bereich des unbewußten menschlichen Erlebens. Sie können aus demselben wieder heraufgeholt, erinnert werden. Vorstellungen sind ein rein seelisch Wesenhaftes; ihr Bewußtsein im gewöhnlichen Wachleben ist leiblich bedingt. Auch kann sie die an den Leib gebundene Seele nicht durch ihre eigenen Kräfte aus dem unbewußten Zustande in den bewußten heraufheben. Sie bedarf dazu der Kräfte des Leibes. Für die gewöhnliche Erinnerung muß der Leib tätig sein, geradeso wie er für die Entstehung der Sinnesvorstellungen in den Vorgängen der Sinnesorgane tätig sein muß. Stelle ich einen Sinnesvorgang vor, so muß sich zuerst eine leibliche Tätigkeit in den Sinnesorganen entwikkeIn; in der Seele tritt als deren Ergebnis die Vorstellung auf. Erinnere ich eine Vorstellung, so muß eine der Sinnestätigkeit polar entgegengesetzte innere Leibestätigkeit (in feinen Organen) stattfinden, und in der Seele tritt als Ergebnis die erinnerte Vorstellung auf. Diese Vorstellung bezieht sich auf einen Sinnesvorgang, der vor Zeiten vor meiner Seele gestanden hat. Ich stelle ihn vor durch ein inneres Erlebnis, zu dem mich die Leibesorganisation befähigt. Man vergegenwärtige sich nun das Wesen einer solchen Erinnerungsvorstellung. Denn man kommt durch diese Vergegenwärtigung auf das Wesen dessen, was die anthroposophischen Ideen sind. Sie sind keine Erinnerungsvorstellungen; aber sie treten in der Seele so auf wie Erinnerungsvorstellungen. Dies ist für viele Menschen, die sich gerne in einer gröberen Art Vorstellungen über die geistige Welt verschaffen möchten, eine Enttäuschung. Aber man kann die geistige Welt auf keine derbere Weise erleben als in der Erinnerung ein in der Sinneswelt vor Zeiten erfahrenes, nicht mehr vor Augen stehendes Ereignis. Nun aber kommt die Fähigkeit, ein solches Ereignis zu erinnern, aus der Kraft der Leibesorganisation. Diese darf beim Erleben des Wesenhaft-Seelischen nicht mitwirken. Die Seele muß vielmehr in sich selbst die Fähigkeit erwecken, das mit Vorstellungen zu vollbringen, was der Leib mit den Sinnesvorstellungen vollbringt, wenn er deren Erinnerung vermittelt. Solche Vorstellungen, die aus den Tiefen der Seele heraufgeholt werden allein durch die Kraft der Seele, wie aus den Tiefen der Menschennatur durch die Leibesorganisation die Erinnerungsvorstellungen: dies sind Vorstellungen, welche sich auf die geistige Welt beziehen. Sie sind in jeder Seele vorhanden. Was erworben werden muß, um dieses Vorhandensein gewahr zu werden, ist die Kraft, durch rein seelische Betätigung, diese Vorstellungen aus den Seelentiefen heraufzuholen. Wie die erinnerten Sinnesvorstellungen sich auf einen vergangenen Sinnes-Eindruck beziehen, so diese Vorstellungen auf einen nicht in der Sinneswelt vorhandenen Zusammenhang der Seele mit der Geisteswelt. Die Menschenseele steht der geistigen Welt so gegenüber wie der Mensch im allgemeinen einem vergessenen Dasein gegenübersteht; und sie kommt zur Erkenntnis dieser Welt, wenn sie in sich Kräfte zum Erwachen bringt, welche jenen Leibeskräften ähnlich sind, die der Erinnerung dienen.—Es kommt also für die philosophische Rechtfertigung der Ideen vom wahrhaft Seelischen darauf an, das Innenleben so zu erforschen, daß man in demselben eine Betätigung findet, welche rein seelisch ist und doch in gewisser Beziehung gleichartig der beim Erinnern geübten Betätigung.
[ 2 ] Eine zweite Weise, vom rein Seelischen einen Begriff zu bilden, kann die folgende sein. Man kann ins Auge fassen, was durch anthropologische Beobachtang über den wollenden (handelnden) Menschen auszumachen ist. Einem auszuführenden Willensimpuls liegt zunächst die Vorstellung von dem zu Wollenden zugrunde. Diese Vorstellung kann physiologisch in ihrer Bedingtheit von der Leibesorganisation (dem Nervensystem) erkannt werden. An die Vorstellung gebunden ist ein Gefühlston, ein fühlendes Sympathisieren mit dem Vorgestellten, das bewirkt, daß diese Vorstellung den Impuls für ein Wollen liefert. Dann aber verliert sich das seelische Erleben in die Tiefen, und bewußt tritt erst wieder der Erfolg auf. Der Mensch stellt vor, wie er sich bewegt, um das Vorgestellte auszuführen (Th. Ziehen hat in seiner physiologischen Psychologie besonders klar dieses alles dargestellt). - Man kann nun ersehen, wie das bewußte Vorstellungsleben, wenn ein Willensakt in Frage kommt, in bezug auf das Zwischenglied des Wollens aussetzt. Was seelisch im Wollen einer durch den Leib ausgeführten Handlung erlebt wird, tritt nicht in das gewöhnliche bewußte Vorstellen ein. Aber es ist auch einleuchtend, daß sich ein solches Wollen durch eine Tätigkeit des Leibes verwirklicht. Unschwer wird man aber auch erkennen, daß die Seele, indem sie, logischen Gesetzen folgend, durch Verknüpfung von Vorstellungen die Wahrheit sucht, ein Wollen entwickelt. Ein Wollen, das nicht in physiologischen Gesetzen zu umfassen ist. Sonst würde sich eine unlogische Vorstellungsverknüpfung - oder auch nur eine alogische - nicht sondern lassen von einer, die in den Bahnen der logischen Gesetzmäßigkeit verläuft. (Auf dilettantenhaftes Gerede, als ob logische Folgerung nur in einer von der Seele durch Anpassung an die Außenwelt erworbenen Eigenschaft bestünde, braucht man wohl nicht im Ernste Rücksicht zu nehmen.) In diesem Wollen, das rein innerhalb der Seele verläuft, und das zu logisch gegründeten Überzeugungen führt, kann man ein Durchdrungensein der Seele mit einer rein geistigen Tätigkeit sehen. Von dem, was im Wollen nach außen vorgeht, weiß das gewöhnliche Vorstellen so wenig, wie der Mensch im Schlafe von sich weiß. Von dem logischen Bestimmtsein beim Bilden von Überzeugungen hat er aber auch nicht ein so volles Bewußtsein wie von dem Inhalte der Überzeugungen selbst. Wer innerlich wenn auch nur anthropologisch zu beobachten versteht, der wird über die Anwesenheit des logischen Bestimmtseins im gewöhnlichen Bewußtsein doch einen Begriff bilden können. Er wird erkennen, daß der Mensch von diesem Bestimmtsein so weiß wie er träumend weiß. Man kann durchaus die Richtigkeit des Paradoxons behaupten: das gewöhnliche Bewußtsein kennt den Inhalt seiner Überzeugungen; aber es träumt nur von der logischen Gesetzmäßigkeit, die in dem Suchen nach diesen Überzeugungen lebt. Man sieht: im gewöhnlichen Bewußtsein verschläft man das Wollen, wenn man durch den Leib ein Wollen nach außen entwickelt; man verträumt das Wollen, wenn man im Denken nach Überzeugungen sucht. Doch erkennt man, daß in letzterem Falle dasjenige, wovon man träumt, kein Leibliches sein kann, denn sonst müßten die logischen Gesetze mit den physiologischen zusammenfallen. Faßt man den Begriff des im denkenden Suchen nach der Wahrheit lebenden Wollens, so ist dieser Begriff der eines seelisch Wesenhaften.
Man kann aus den beiden Weisen (neben denen andere möglich sind), erkenntnistheoretisch sich dem Begriffe des Seelisch-Wesenhaften, im Sinne der Anthroposophie, zu nähern, ersehen, wie scharf dieses Seelisch-Wesenhafte sich absondert von allem, was abnorme Seelentätigkeit ist, wie das visionäre, halluzinatorische, mediale usw. Wesen. Denn von all diesem Abnormen muß der Ursprung im physiologisch Bestimmbaren gesucht werden. Das Seelische der Anthroposophie ist aber nicht nur ein solches, das seelisch nach Art des gewöhnlichen gesunden Bewußtseins erlebt wird, sondern ein solches, an dem in voller wacher Bewußtheit beim Vorstellung-Bilden so erlebt wird, wie man erlebt, wenn man sich an erfahrene Tatsachen des Lebens erinnert, oder wie man erlebt beim logisch bedingten Bilden von Überzeugungen. Man sieht wohl, daß das erkennende Erleben der Anthroposophie in Vorstellungen verläuft, welche den Charakter des gewöhnlichen von der Außenwelt mit der Wirklichkeit begabten Bewußtseins beibehalten, und zu diesem Fähigkeiten hinzufügen, die in das Geistgebiet hineinführen; während alles Visionäre, Halluzinatorische usw. in einem Bewußtsein lebt, das zu dem gewöhnlichen nichts hinzufügt, sondern von ihm Fähigkeiten wegnimmt, so daß der Bewußtseinsstatus unter den Grad heruntersinkt, der in dem bewußten Sinneswahrnehmen vorhanden ist.
Für die Leser meiner Schriften, welche dasjenige kennen, was ich an andern Orten über das Gedächtnis und die Erinnerung ausgeführt habe, bemerke ich das Folgende. Die in das Unbewußte gegangenen Vorstellungen, welche später erinnert werden, hat man, während sie unbewußt bleiben, als Vorstellungen in dem Gliede der menschlichen Wesenheit zu suchen, das in diesen Schriften als Lebensleib (Ätherleib) bezeichnet wird. Die Tätigkeit aber, durch welche die im Lebensleib verankerten Vorstellungen erinnert werden, gehört dem physischen Leib an. Ich mache diese Bemerkung, damit nicht mancher «schnellfertig mit dem Urteil» einen Widerspruch da konstruiert, wo eine durch die Natur der Sache geforderte Unterscheidung notwendig ist.
IV-1 The philosophical justification of anthroposophy
[ 1 ] Those who wish to root their way of thinking in the philosophical thinking of the present day need to justify epistemologically before themselves and before this thinking that which is essentially spiritual, of which the first section of this essay speaks. Many people who know the truly spiritual from direct inner experience and know how to distinguish it from the spiritual experience brought about by the senses do not require such a justification. For them, justification often appears to be an unnecessary, even uncomfortable division of concepts. Their aversion of this kind is countered by the unwillingness of philosophical thinkers. They only want to accept the inner experiences of the soul as subjective experiences to which no cognitive value can be attributed. They are therefore little inclined to seek out the elements in their philosophical concepts through which anthroposophical ideas can be approached. These aversions on both sides make communication extremely difficult. But it is necessary. For in our time a way of thinking can only be ascribed epistemological value if it can bring its views to bear before the same criticism before which the laws of natural science seek their justification. - For an epistemological justification of anthroposophical ideas, it is above all a question of conceptualizing the way in which they are experienced as precisely as possible. This can be done in many different ways. Two of these ways will be described here. For the description of one of them, let us start from the observation of memory. In doing so, however, one is immediately driven to an awkward point in contemporary philosophical science. For the nature of memory is not well understood. I shall start here from ideas which I have found on the paths of anthroposophy, but which can certainly be justified philosophically and physiologically. However, the space I have to give myself in this paper is not sufficient to provide this latter justification here. I hope to provide it in a future publication. However, I believe that what I will say about memory can be substantiated by anyone who is able to look at the results of physiological and psychological science available today with the right eye.
The ideas stimulated by sensory impressions enter the realm of unconscious human experience. They can be retrieved and remembered from this realm. Imaginations are a purely psychic entity; their consciousness in ordinary waking life is bodily conditioned. Nor can the soul, which is bound to the body, raise them from the unconscious state to the conscious state by its own powers. For this it needs the powers of the body. For ordinary memory the body must be active, just as it must be active in the processes of the sense organs for the emergence of sensory concepts. If I imagine a sensory process, a bodily activity must first develop in the sense organs; as a result of this, the imagination arises in the soul. If I remember an idea, then an inner bodily activity (in fine organs) polar opposite to the sensory activity must take place, and the remembered idea arises in the soul as a result. This imagination relates to a sensory process that took place before my soul some time ago. I imagine it through an inner experience that the organization of the body enables me to have. Now visualize the nature of such a memory. For through this visualization one arrives at the essence of what the anthroposophical ideas are. They are not ideas of memory; but they appear in the soul like ideas of memory. This is a disappointment for many people who would like to have a more general idea of the spiritual world. But one cannot experience the spiritual world in a coarser way than in the memory of an event that was experienced in the sensory world a long time ago and no longer stands before one's eyes. Now the ability to remember such an event comes from the power of the body's organization. This must not play a part in the experience of the essential soul. Rather, the soul must awaken in itself the ability to accomplish with ideas what the body accomplishes with the ideas of the senses when it mediates their memory. Such ideas, which are brought up from the depths of the soul solely through the power of the soul, just as the memory ideas are brought up from the depths of the human nature through the organization of the body: these are ideas which relate to the spiritual world. They are present in every soul. What must be acquired in order to become aware of this presence is the power to bring up these ideas from the depths of the soul through purely spiritual activity. Just as the remembered sense-images refer to a past sense-impression, so these ideas refer to a connection of the soul with the spiritual world that does not exist in the sense-world. The human soul faces the spiritual world in the same way as man generally faces a forgotten existence; and it comes to the realization of this world when it awakens forces within itself that are similar to those bodily forces that serve memory.—It is therefore important for the philosophical justification of the ideas of the truly spiritual to investigate the inner life in such a way that one finds in it an activity that is purely spiritual and yet in certain respects similar to the activity practiced in remembering.
[ 2 ] A second way to form a concept of the purely mental is as follows. One can consider what can be discerned through anthropological observation about the willing (acting) human being. A volitional impulse to be carried out is initially based on the idea of what is to be willed. This idea can be recognized physiologically in its conditionality of the body's organization (the nervous system). Attached to the imagination is a feeling tone, a feeling sympathization with the imagined, which causes this imagination to provide the impulse for volition. Then, however, the mental experience loses itself in the depths, and only success consciously reappears. Man imagines how he moves in order to carry out what he has imagined (Th. Ziehen has described all this particularly clearly in his physiological psychology). - We can now see how the conscious imaginative life, when an act of will comes into question, is suspended in relation to the intermediate element of will. What is experienced mentally in the volition of an act performed by the body does not enter into the ordinary conscious imagination. But it is also obvious that such a volition is realized through an activity of the body. But it is also easy to recognize that the soul develops a volition by seeking the truth through the combination of ideas in accordance with logical laws. A will that cannot be encompassed in physiological laws. Otherwise an illogical combination of ideas - or even just an alogical one - would not be distinguishable from one that follows the paths of logical regularity. (There is no serious need to take account of amateurish talk, as if logical inference consisted only in a quality acquired by the soul through adaptation to the external world). In this volition, which proceeds purely within the soul and which leads to logically founded convictions, one can see the soul being permeated with a purely spiritual activity. Ordinary imagination knows as little of what goes on outwardly in the volition as man knows of himself in sleep. Nor does he have as full an awareness of the logical determination involved in forming convictions as he has of the content of the convictions themselves. He who knows how to observe inwardly, even if only anthropologically, will nevertheless be able to form a concept of the presence of logical determination in ordinary consciousness. He will recognize that man knows of this determinacy as he knows dreaming. It is quite possible to maintain the correctness of the paradox: the ordinary consciousness knows the content of its convictions; but it only dreams of the logical regularity that lives in the search for these convictions. One sees that in ordinary consciousness one sleeps through the will when one develops a will outwardly through the body; one dreams through the will when one searches for convictions in thinking. But one recognizes that in the latter case that which one dreams of cannot be corporeal, for otherwise the logical laws would have to coincide with the physiological ones. If one grasps the concept of the will living in the thinking search for truth, then this concept is that of a spiritual being.
One can see from the two ways (besides which others are possible) of approaching the concept of the soul-being in the sense of anthroposophy, how sharply this soul-being separates itself from everything that is abnormal soul activity, such as the visionary, hallucinatory, mediumistic, etc., being. being. For the origin of all this abnormality must be sought in the physiologically determinable. The soul of anthroposophy, however, is not only that which is experienced in the soul in the manner of ordinary healthy consciousness, but that which is experienced in fully awake consciousness when forming ideas, just as one experiences when one remembers experienced facts of life, or as one experiences when forming logically conditioned convictions. It is easy to see that the cognitive experience of anthroposophy proceeds in conceptions which retain the character of the ordinary consciousness endowed with reality by the external world, and add to it faculties which lead into the spiritual realm; while everything visionary, hallucinatory, etc., lives in a consciousness which adds nothing to the ordinary, but takes away faculties from it, so that the state of consciousness sinks below the degree which is present in conscious sense-perception.
For the readers of my writings who are familiar with what I have said elsewhere about memory and recollection, I note the following. The ideas which have passed into the unconscious and which are later remembered, while they remain unconscious, are to be sought as ideas in that part of the human being which in these writings is called the vital body (etheric body). The activity, however, by which the ideas anchored in the vital body are remembered, belongs to the physical body. I make this remark so that some people do not construct a contradiction "hastily with judgment" where a distinction required by the nature of the matter is necessary.