The Rudolf Steiner Archive

2. Max Dessoir on Anthroposophy

[ 1 ] It is clear from the preceding descriptions how desirable a factual discussion with the anthropologist can be for the proponent of anthroposophy. It is conceivable that a book with such intentions as Max Dessoir's could lead to such a discussion. From the point of view of anthroposophy, this book is written in the spirit of anthropological science. It is based on the results of sense observation and aims to bring to bear that way of thinking and those means of research which are in use in the scientific current of knowledge. In the sense of the explanations given here, the book belongs to anthropological science.

[ 2 ] In the section of his book entitled "Anthroposophy", Max Dessoir aims to provide a critique of the anthroposophical views presented in my writings. ^{14Pages 254-263 of the book "Vom Jenseits der Seele", die Geheimwissenschaften in kritischer Betrachtung von Max Dessoir. Verlag von Ferdinand Enke in Stuttgart, 1917.} He attempts to reproduce various statements from these writings in his own way and to link his critical remarks to them. This could therefore lead us to observe what can be said of the two circles of imagination for this or that point of the striving for knowledge.

[ 3 ] I will then present and discuss Max Dessoir's remarks here. - Dessoir wants to point out that I hold the view that the human soul can, through inner development, make use of its spiritual organs and thereby relate to a spiritual world in a similar way as it does to the sensual world through the bodily senses. You can see from the foregoing explanations of my writing how I think that which must take place in the soul in order for it to come to the perception of spiritual life. Max Dessoir presents in his own way what I have explained in this respect in my writings. He says: "Through such inner work the soul achieves what all philosophy strives for. Of course, the body-free consciousness must be guarded against confusion with dreamlike clairvoyance and hypnotic processes. When our soul powers are heightened, the ego can experience itself above consciousness, as it were in a condensation and independence of the spiritual, indeed, it can already exclude the mediation of the body from the experience in the perception of colors and sounds." Dessoir then adds the following comment to these sentences: "It is not worth refuting these assertions in detail." ^{15Dessoir, p. 255} Dessoir thus brings together my view of mental perception with the fact that I maintain that one can exclude the mediation of the body in the perception of colors and sounds. Let the reader bear in mind what I have said in the foregoing explanations about the experiences which the soul makes through its mental organs, and how it comes to express itself through these experiences in color and sound images. He will then see that from the point of view of anthroposophy I could not assert anything more foolish than that the soul can "exclude the mediation of the body in the perception of colors and sounds". If I were to make such an assertion, however, it would be correct to say that it is "not worth refuting this assertion in detail". One is faced with a really strange fact. Max Dessoir claims that I am saying something which, according to my own presuppositions, must be described by me as foolish. However, it is impossible to argue with such an opposing objection. One can only ascertain what a distorted picture is being put forward and presented for the view of the one one wants to fight.

[ 4 ] Now perhaps Dessoir might object: he would not find the consequences of my views on the point just touched upon expressed so clearly in the preceding chapter of this paper as they are in my earlier writings. I will readily admit that with regard to some points of Anthroposophy a more exact elaboration of what I have previously stated may be found in later expositions given by me, and that the reader of my earlier writings may perhaps here or there arrive at an erroneous view of what I myself consider necessary in a certain point as the correct consequence of my views. I believe that everyone of insight must take this for granted. For anthroposophy is a broad field of work, and publications can only ever cover individual areas. But in this case, can Max Dessoir refer to the fact that in my earlier writings the point touched on above has not been clarified? Dessoir's book was published in 1917. In the fifth edition of my book "Wie erlangt man Erkenntnisse der höheren Welten", which was published in 1914, I made the following comment on the passage that deals with the pictorial representation of spiritual experiences through colors: "In all the following descriptions, one must be careful that, for example, when 'seeing' a color, spiritual seeing (looking) is meant. When clairvoyant insight says: 'I see red', this means: 'I have an experience in the soul-spiritual which is equal to the physical experience of the impression of the red color'. Only because it is quite natural for clairvoyant cognition in such a case to say: 'I see red' is this expression used. Anyone who does not consider this can easily confuse a color vision with a truly clairvoyant experience." ^{16Compare my book "Wie erlangt man Erkenntnisse der höheren Welten?" 19th edition, page 111, note.} I have made this remark, not because I believe that anyone who reads my earlier expositions with true understanding could come to the opinion that I assert that one can see colors without eyes, but because I could imagine that someone here or there, on a cursory reading, might, through misunderstanding, impute such an assertion to me if I did not expressly say that I consider it unjustified. Three years later, after I have expressly repelled this imputation, Max Dessoir comes and tells me that I am asserting what I actually consider to be foolish.

[ 5 ] But that's not all. In the sixth edition of my book "Theosophy", which was also published in 1914, the following can be found about the matter under discussion: "One can come to the conclusion that what is described here as 'colors' stands before the soul in the same way as a physical color stands before the eye. But such a 'soul color' would be nothing but a hallucination. Spiritual science has not the slightest thing to do with impressions that are 'hallucinatory'. And they are certainly not meant in the present description. One arrives at a correct idea if one keeps the following in mind. The soul experiences in a physical color not only the sensory impression, but it has a soul experience in it. This soul experience is a different one when the soul - through the eye - perceives a yellow, a different one when it perceives a blue color. This experience is called the 'life in yellow' or the 'life in blue'. Now the soul that has entered the path of knowledge has an equal 'experience in yellow' towards the active soul-experiences of other beings; an 'experience in blue' towards the devotional moods of the soul. The essential thing is not that the 'seer' sees 'blue' in a vision of another soul as he sees this 'blue' in the physical world, but that he has an experience which entitles him to call the vision 'blue', as the physical man calls a curtain 'blue', for example. And furthermore, it is essential that the 'seer' is conscious of being in a bodiless experience with this experience, so that he receives the possibility of speaking of the value and meaning of the life of the soul in a world whose perception is not mediated by the human body." ^{17Compare my "Theosophy" Introduction to Supersensible Knowledge of the World and the Destiny of Man (28th edition 1955, page 154). In my book "Die Geheimwissenschaft im Umriß", which was published in 1913 in the 5th edition, there is a similar explanation about the seeing of colors on page 421 f. (26th edition 1955, page 418 f.). Now the almost unbelievable thing is that Max Dessoir cites this 5th edition on page 254 of his book as one of the writings he claims to have used. So he claims that I am saying something of which my book, which he himself quotes, says the exact opposite.}

[ 6 ] I refrain from quoting anything else from my writings that may represent my real view on the matter in question. And I leave it to every reader who can still form an objective judgment of facts, even when anthroposophy is mentioned, to judge what to think about Max Dessoir's "reproduction" of my account.

[ 7 ] The degree of understanding that Dessoir brings to my attempted description of the consciousness attained through spiritual organs is cast in a rather disastrous light by what he goes on to say about the relationship of the "imaginative" conception to a corresponding spiritual reality. He has heard that anthroposophy does not explain the development of humanity on earth solely by the means used in anthropology, but that through its means it sees this development as dependent on spiritual forces and entities. In my book "Secret Science in Outline" I have tried to make this process of human development vivid by means of "imaginative" conceptions (incidentally also by means of types of knowledge which lie beyond imaginative perception, but which are less relevant to what is being discussed here). In the above-mentioned book I have indicated how the anthroposophical way of seeing gives a picture of the states that humanity has lived through in forms of development that are already close to the present, and I have also referred to such older forms of development in which the human being appears in a way that is very dissimilar to the present, and which are not described by me through the ideas of anthropology borrowed from sensory perception, but through imaginative ideas.

[ 8 ] Dessoir now informs his readers about what I have said about the development of mankind in the following way. He gives my account of the forms of development which are still close to the present formation of mankind in such a way that I assume an ancient Indian culture of mankind for a certain period of time in the past and then let other cultural periods follow. Dossier states: "Ancient India is not the present India, just as all geographical, astronomical and historical designations are to be understood symbolically. The Indian culture was followed by the ancient Persian culture, led by Zarathustra, who lived much earlier than the personality bearing this name in history. Other periods followed. We are in the sixth period." ^{18Dessoir, p. 258}

[ 9 ] What I say about a much older period of human development, in which it still emerged in forms very dissimilar to the present, Dessoir reports thus: "This human being was formed in a very distant past, which Steiner calls the Lemurian age of the earth - why is that? -, and in a land that at that time lay between Australia and India (which is therefore a correct localization and not a symbol)." - ^{19Dessoir, p. 261} I will now completely refrain from saying that I can only regard these "reproductions" of what I have presented as distorted images, which are completely unsuitable to give any reader a picture of what I mean. I only want to talk about one point of these "reproductions". Dessoir evokes in his reader the belief that I speak of what is seen in the spirit being to be understood symbolically, i.e. that ancient India, where I place an ancient human culture, is a "symbolic land". Later, he finds it reprehensible that I place a much older period of human development in Lemuria - between Australia and India - and thereby cruelly contradict myself, since one can see from my description that I consider Lemuria to be a correct location and not a symbol.

[ 10 ] It must be admitted that a reader of Dessoir's book, who has read nothing of mine and merely accepts Dessoir's report, must come to the conclusion that my account is completely ill-conceived, confused and self-contradictory. - But what does my book really say about the area of the earth that I characterized as ancient India? Read the remarks in question, and you will find that I express with perfect clearness how Old India is not a symbol, but the region of the earth which, if not exactly, yet essentially coincides with that which everyone calls India. ^{20Compare my "Geheimwissenschaft im Umriß", 26th edition, Stuttgart, 1955, page 275 f.} Dessoir thus reports to his reader as my view something that never occurred to me to present. And because he finds that in the description of ancient Lemuria I speak in a way that agrees with my real opinion of ancient India, but not with the nonsense that he makes me say, he accuses me of contradiction. ^{21Compare my "Geheimwissenschaft im Umriß", 26th edition, page 259.}

[ 11 ] One wonders how the unbelievable comes about that Dessoir lets me claim that ancient India is to be understood "allegorically". From the whole context of his account, the following emerges for me. Dessoir has read something about the processes in the life of the soul, which I characterize as the path to spiritual vision, the first stage of which is imaginative cognition. There I describe how the soul, through calm devotion to certain thoughts, develops the ability to form imaginative concepts from its substratum. I say that to this end the soul rests best in symbolic ideas. No one should be misled by my exposition into thinking that symbolic representations are anything other than the means of attaining imaginative cognition. Dessoir now thinks that because one arrives at imaginative conception by means of allegories, the latter also consists only in allegories; indeed, he ascribes to me the view that he who makes use of his mental organs does not look at realities through imaginative conceptions, but only at allegories.

[ 12 ] In view of my exposition, Dessoir's assertion that in such cases as in ancient India I point to symbols, not to realities, can only be compared with the following. Someone finds from the nature of a piece of ground that it must have rained recently in the region where he is. He informs another person of this. Of course, he can only tell the latter his imagination that it has rained. That is why a third person claims that the first person says that the nature of the ground does not come from real rain, but from the imagination of rain. I do not maintain that imaginative conceptions are exhausted in mere symbols, nor that they are themselves a reality, but that they refer to a reality, as is the case with the conceptions of ordinary consciousness. And to insinuate that I only point to symbolic realities is tantamount to claiming that the natural scientist does not see reality in the essence to which he refers through his imagination, but in these realities themselves.

[ 13 ] If you present views that you want to combat in the way that Dessoir does, the battle is quite easy. And Max Dessoir really does make it easy for himself to sit on the critical judgment seat in a noble manner; but he only achieves this by first turning my presentation into a distorted image, indeed often into utter foolishness, and then dismissing his own creation. He says: "It is contradictory that the facts of reality should have developed from 'seen' and only 'symbolically' meant facts." ^{22Dessoir, p. 263} But such a contradictory way of imagining is nowhere to be found in my work. That my account contains it is an imputation of Dessoir. And if the latter even goes so far as to assert: "For it is not a question of whether one regards the spiritual as brain activity or not, but of whether the spiritual is to be conceived in the forms of childish imagination or as a realm of its own lawfulness," ^{23Dessoir, p. 263} then this must be replied to: I quite agree with him that all that he serves up to his readers as my opinion is in the forms of childish imagination; but what he thus describes has nothing to do with my real views, but refers entirely to his own ideas, which he has formed, distorting mine.

[ 14 ] How is it possible for a scholar to proceed in this way? In order to do something to answer this question, I must lead the reader for a short time into an area that may not seem entertaining to him, but which I must enter here in order to show the way in which Max Dessoir reads the books about which he sets himself up as a critic. I must demonstrate a little philology to the reader in relation to Dessoir's remarks.

[ 15 ] As already mentioned, Dessoir describes the development of human cultural periods in a certain time as follows: "Indian culture was followed by the Urperian ... Other periods followed. We are in the sixth period." ^{24Dessoir, p. 258 f.} Now it might seem quite insignificant to accuse someone of making me say: "We are in the sixth period", while I state with all conceivable clarity that we are in the fifth. But in this case the matter is not insignificant. For whoever has penetrated into the whole spirit of my exposition in this respect must admit that anyone who even thinks that I am speaking of the sixth period as the present has misunderstood my whole argument in the grossest possible way. The fact that I refer to the present period as the fifth is entirely internally connected with what I have said in this respect. - How did Dessoir arrive at his gross misunderstanding? One can form an idea of this if one compares my account of the matter with his "rendering" and, in doing so, goes to work somewhat according to philological method. - Where, in my description of the cultural periods, I come to the fourth, which I begin in the eighth century BC and conclude in about the fourteenth or fifteenth century AD, I say the following: "In the fourth, fifth and sixth centuries AD, a cultural age was preparing itself in Europe in which the present still lives. It was to gradually replace the fourth, the Greek-Latin one. It is the fifth post-Atlantean cultural age." ^{25Compare my "Geheimwissenschaft im Umriß", page 294 f.} My opinion is therefore that the processes in the fourth, fifth and sixth centuries prepared effects that needed a few more centuries to mature, in order to then make the transition to the fifth cultural age in the fourteenth century, in which we are still living at present. Reading the above passage, Max Dessoir now seems to have brought it into the sphere of his attention in such a way that he has confused the succession of the fourth, fifth and sixth centuries with the succession of the ages of civilization. If someone reads superficially and also has no understanding of what they have read, this can happen.

[ 16 ] I would not readily express this hypothesis of Max Dessoir's superficiality here if it were not supported by the following discoveries that can be made from his "rendering" of my views. In order to discuss the matters under consideration, I must cite ideas concerning the insights of anthroposophy, the understanding of which is hardly possible if they are not considered in connection with the explanations of my "secret science" that point to them. I myself would never present them to a reader or listener out of context, as Max Dessoir does. But since he bases his criticism on his "reproduction" of the views I have presented in a far-reaching context, I must address this "reproduction" here. I must show what kind of "reproduction" it is. I must remark in advance that the representation of such things makes great difficulties, because the content of the spiritual observation can only be made reasonably clear if one makes an effort to express it as precisely as possible. Therefore, when I describe such things, I always try to spare no time in order to extract as much accuracy as I can from the linguistic form of expression. Anyone who penetrates just a little into the spirit of anthroposophy will understand what I have just said. - On the other hand, I will now show how Max Dessoir proceeds in his "reproduction" of my descriptions. ^{26I may perhaps point out something here that is not taken into consideration in the circles in which anthroposophical experiments are often judged for their philosophical-scientific value. I do not wish to omit this reference for the simple reason that some might easily believe that my arguments against Dessoir are too pedantic an insistence on my wording. In anthroposophy one has to do with representations of the spiritual. One has to make use of the words, indeed the word combinations of ordinary language. In these, however, one cannot always find adequate designations for that which the soul is directed towards when it beholds the spiritual. The relationships prevailing in the spiritual, the particular nature of that which can be called "beings" and processes there, is much more complicated, finer, more multifarious than that which is expressed in ordinary language. One can only reach the goal if one makes use of the possibilities that lie in language with regard to phrases, word changes; if one endeavors to express that which a sentence cannot adequately express by adding a second in connection with the first. To understand anthroposophy, it is absolutely necessary to go into such things. It can happen, for example, that a spiritual fact is seen quite wrongly if the form of expression is not regarded as something essential. Dessoir has not even remotely considered that such a thing should be taken into account. He seems to presuppose everywhere that what is incomprehensible to him is based on childish thinking, on the primitive method of others.}

[ 17 ] With reference to the path which the soul takes to attain the use of the mental organs, he presents my view in the following way: "The training to a higher state of consciousness begins - at least for the man of the present day - by immersing oneself with all one's strength in a conception as a purely mental fact. A symbolic image is best suited, such as that of a black cross (symbol of destroyed lower instincts and passions), the cutting point of which is surrounded by seven red roses (symbol of purified instincts and passions)." ^{27Dessoir, p. 255} Apart from the fact that such an assertion, taken out of context, must make a strange impression on a reader, whereas it will hardly do so at the point in the arguments where it appears in my book, I must say: if I were to read what Max Dessoir says in the above sentence as the opinion of a human being, I would consider the matter to be nonsense, or at least to be expressed nonsensically. For I could find no connection between the meanings of the double symbol, between "destroyed lower instincts and passions" and "purified instincts and passions". I almost had to imagine that man was to destroy his lower instincts and passions, and at the place where the destruction had been wrought, purified instincts and passions appeared as if from nowhere. But why "purified", since there was nothing to "purify", but something new emerged at the place of destruction. There is no way my thinking could cope with such a sentence. But read the sentence in my book. It says: "Imagine a black cross. Let this be the symbol of the annihilated baseness of impulses and passions; and where the beams of the cross intersect, imagine seven red, radiant roses arranged in a circle." - ^{28Compare my "Geheimwissenschaft im Umriß", 26th edition, page 311} You see: I say not that the cross is a symbol for "destroyed lower drives and passions", but for "the destroyed lower drives and passions". In other words, the lower drives and passions are not "destroyed" but "transformed" so that their baseness is stripped away and they themselves appear purified. In this way, Max Dessoir first makes himself what he wants to criticize. Then he can pass it off as a "childish way of thinking". It is certainly pedantic to correct a word in this way - in a school-like manner. But I am not the initiator of this scholastic correction. What makes it necessary are Dessoir's distortions, which can only be grasped through such scholasticism. For they are tantamount to falsifications of my wording, whether unconscious or produced by superficiality. And only against this falsified wording is Dessoir's criticism possible.

[ 18 ] Another case of Dessoir's "reproduction" is the following. I speak - again in a context which makes the matter appear quite different from what it would be if it were torn out of this context in the Dessoirian manner - of certain earlier states of development which the earth passed through before it became the planet as which it is habitable for man in his present form of development. I describe through imaginative conceptions what the first of these states of development was like. I need to illustrate these states by speaking of beings of a spiritual nature who were connected with the original planetary form of the earth at that time. Now apart from the fact that Dessoir has me assert that through these spirit-like beings "food and excretion processes" "developed" on the planetary archetype of the earth, he goes on to say: "The clairvoyant still learns of these states today through a supersensible perception similar to smelling, for the states are actually always there." ^{29Dessoir, p. 258} In my book it can be read that the spirit-like beings in question interact with the "upward and downward weaving forces of taste present within the planetary archetype. In this way their etheric or vital body becomes so active that it can be described as a kind of metabolism." ^{30Compare my "Geheimwissenschaft im Umriß", 26th edition, page 166 f.} Then I say that these beings bring life into the interior of the planetary archetype. "Food and excretion processes take place as a result." ^{31In the same place of my "Secret Science" as the previous one [167].} It is self-evident that the sharpest rejection of such a description is possible on the part of present-day science. But it should be equally self-evident that a critic must not do as Max Dessoir does. He says, by awakening the belief that he is reproducing my account, that food and excretory processes develop through the beings meant. The way the matter is presented by me, between the statement that the beings appear and that food and excretion processes arise, there is the intermediate sentence which says that an interaction develops and that through this an activity occurs in the etheric or life body of these beings, which in turn now again leads to the food and excretion processes of the planetary archetype. What Dessoir accomplishes with my description can be compared with the following. Someone says: A man enters a room in which there is a child and its father. The child behaves towards the man who enters in such a way that the father has to punish him. Another person now distorts this sentence by claiming that the child's punishment develops as a result of the strange man entering the room. Could anyone now recognize from this assertion what the first actually wanted to say? But Dessoir also tells me that the clairvoyant learns of certain conditions that occur in the planetary archetype through "a perception similar to smelling". ^{32Dessoir, p. 258} But I read that in the corresponding states will-like forces reveal themselves, which "manifest themselves to the clairvoyant faculty of perception through effects", which "can be compared to 'smells'". ^{32Compare my "Geheimwissenschaft im Umriß", 26th edition, page 168} So with me there is nothing to be found of the assertion that the spiritual perception in question is one "similar to smelling", but it clearly emerges that this perception is not similar to smelling, but that what is perceived can be compared with "smells". How such a comparison is to be understood in the anthroposophical sense is sufficiently shown elsewhere in this paper. But by distorting my wording, Dessoir gives himself the opportunity to make the following - probably witty - remark: "I am surprised that the 'smell of holiness' and the 'diabolical stench' are not associated with this."

[ 19 ] I could now cite other similar examples of Dessoir's "renditions" of my explanations in more detail, for example how he has me explain the "falling asleep" of a leg "by separating the etheric body from the physical body", while I do not explain the objective fact of the so-called falling asleep by it, but say that the subjective "peculiar feeling that one feels comes from the separation of the etheric body". ^{34Compare my "Geheimwissenschaft im Umriß", 26th edition, page 96.} Only then, if one takes the wording of my presentation as I have given it, can one form an opinion about the scope of my assertion, and how it does not exclude the objective facts to be established by natural science, as little as it needs to be excluded by those who hold the anthropological opinion. Dessoir wants his readers to believe the latter. But I will refrain from tiring the reader further with such corrections. Those that have been put forward should only show the degree to which Max Dessoir reads superficially that over which he sets himself up as judge.

[ 20 ] But I want to show what the state of mind can lead to when it sits in judgment on the basis of such superficiality. In my writing "The spiritual guidance of man and mankind" ^{35"The spiritual guidance of man and mankind." Spiritual scientific results on the development of humanity by Rudolf Steiner (Berlin 1911, Philosophisch-Anthroposophischer Verlag, Berlin-W., Montstraße 17.} I try to explain how the forces of the life of imagination, which do not enter the child's consciousness at birth but only later in life, are already active before this conscious awakening, and how in their unconscious activity, for example in the further development of the nervous system and other things, these forces work wisely in a way against which the later conscious work appears to be of a lesser degree of wisdom. For reasons which it would be too far to go into here, I come to the conclusion that the conscious imaginative life develops the wisdom which is active in certain formations of the organic body in early childhood, but that this conscious imaginative life relates to the unconscious working of wisdom as, for example, the construction of a tool derived from conscious human wisdom relates to the miraculous construction of the human brain. ^{36Compare my writing "Spiritual Guidance", 7th edition, page 20 ff.} The reader of the above-mentioned writing could well see from it that I am not making such an assertion as the result of an "idea", but that it is the conclusion of a path of research that preceded anthroposophy; even if, as is natural, I cannot present the details of this path in every of my writings. In this respect I am already dependent on my writings being taken as parts of a whole that support and sustain each other. But it is not my purpose now to explain the justification of this assertion of mine about unconscious and conscious wisdom, but to do something else, which Dessoir does for himself by tailoring the relevant version of my book to his readers in the following way: "It is said that the connection with higher worlds is closest in the first three years of life, into which no memory reaches back. Especially a man who himself teaches wisdom - as Mr. Rudolf Steiner professes - will say to himself: 'When I was a child I worked on myself through forces that worked in from the spiritual world, and that which I can now give as my best must also work in from higher worlds; I must not regard it as belonging to my ordinary consciousness." ^{37Dessoir, p. 260.} One may well ask: what idea might take root in the mind of a reader of Dessoir's book who comes across these sentences? Hardly any other than that in the writing that gave rise to these sentences, I speak of a relationship between the spiritual world and the cognizing human being, and cite myself as an example of this. Of course, it is not difficult to ridicule a person who can be accused of such insipidity. But what is the real situation? In my writing it says: "Suppose a person has found disciples, some people who confess to him. Such a person will easily realize through genuine self-knowledge that the very fact that he has found confessors gives him the feeling that what he has to say does not come from him. It is rather the case that spiritual forces from higher worlds want to communicate themselves to the confessors, and these find in the teacher the appropriate instrument to reveal themselves. - The thought will occur to such a person: When I was a child, I worked on myself through forces that worked in from the spiritual world, and that which I can now give as my best must also work in from higher worlds; I must not regard it as belonging to my ordinary consciousness. Yes, such a person may say: something demonic, something like a demon - but the word 'demon' taken in the sense of a good spiritual power - works from a spiritual world through me on the confessors. - Something like this was felt by Socrates ... Much has been tried to explain this 'demon' of Socrates. But it can only be explained if one accepts the idea that Socrates could feel something like this, as can be seen from the above observation." ^{38Compare my above-mentioned work "Die geistige Führung...", 7th edition, page 30 f.)} As you can see, I am dealing with a conception of the Socratic Demonion from the point of view of anthroposophy. There are many views on this Socratic "demon". One can object to mine objectively, as one can to others. But what is Max Dessoir doing? Where I speak of Socrates, he turns the matter around as if I were speaking of myself by coining the phrase: "so confesses Mr. Rudolf Steiner" and even puts the last two words in block print. What are we dealing with here? Nothing less than an objective untruth. I leave it to every fair-minded person to form their own opinion of a critic who uses such means.

[ 21 ] But the matter does not end there. For, after Dessoir has turned my conception of the Socratic Demonion in the manner indicated, he writes further: "The fact, then, that the individual is a bearer of supra-individual truths, coarsens here into the idea that a spiritual world conceived in terms of things is connected with the individual, as it were, by tubes or wires: Hegel's objective spirit is transformed into a group of demons, and all the shadowy figures of unpurified religious thought reappear. The direction as a whole is characterized as a materialistic coarsening of mental processes and a personifying flattening of spiritual values."-Such "criticism" really does put an end to any possibility of seriously engaging with the critic. Consider what is actually at issue here. I am talking about Socrates' demonion, which Socrates himself - according to historical tradition - spoke of. Max Dessoir suggests to me that if one speaks of the demonic in this way, then "Hegel's objective spirit is transformed into a group of demons..." ³⁹ Dessoir thus uses his peculiar deviation from the thought actually meant in order to teach his reader the view that someone is entitled to assume that I see in Hegel's objective spirit "a group of demons". ^{40Dessoir, p. 260}- Place alongside this Dessoirian assertion everything I put forward in my book "The Riddles of Philosophy" in order to keep away from Hegel's view of the "objective spirit" everything that could somehow impose the character of the demonic on it. ^{41Compare the account of Hegel's philosophy given on pages 234-255 of the first volume of my book "The Riddles of Philosophy", 7th edition.} Anyone who says, in relation to what I have said about Hegel, that the proponent of anthroposophy has ideas through which Hegel's "objective spirit" is transformed into a group of demons, is simply asserting an objective untruth. For he cannot even hide behind the excuse: yes, Steiner presents it differently, but I can only imagine that Steiner's anthroposophical presuppositions lead to the conclusions I have stated. He would only show that he is not in a position to understand my remarks about Hegel's "objective spirit". After he has made his leap from Socrates to Hegel, Max Dessoir then goes on to judge: "From the incapacity for objectively adequate understanding spring the fantasies that are not inhibited by any scientific reservations ... " ^{42Dessoir, p. 260} Anyone who reads my writings and then considers Dessoir's presentation of my views may perhaps feel that I have some right to turn such a sentence around: in Max Dessoir's case, the most superficial, objectively untrue fantasies about the ideas of anthroposophy arise from the inability to understand what is said in my writings in an objectively appropriate way.

[ 22 ] Max Dessoir informs his readers that, in addition to my "Geheimwissenschaft im Umriß, 5th edition", he has also "used a long series of other writings". Given his way of "expressing himself" as characterized here, one can hardly determine what he means by "using a long series" of my writings.^{43Dessoir, p. 254} I have looked at the "Anthroposophy" section of his book to see which of my writings - apart from the "Secret Science in Outline" - still show traces of use. I can only discover that this "long series" consists of three small writings: the 64-page booklet "Die geistige Führung des Menschen und der Menschheit", the 48-page reprint of my lecture "Blut ist ein ganz besonderer Saft" and the 46-page pamphlet "Reinkarnation und Karma". He also mentions my "Philosophy of Freedom", published in 1894, in a note.^{44Dessoir, p. 254} As much as I am reluctant to say a few purely personal sentences about this note, I must do so because this minor matter also expresses the degree of scientific accuracy that is characteristic of Max Dessoir. He says: "In Steiner's first work, the 'Philosophy of Freedom' (Berlin 1894), we find only the beginnings of the actual teaching..." Max Dessoir calls this "Philosophy of Freedom" my "first work". The truth is that my literary activity began with my introductions to Goethe's scientific writings, the first volume of which was published in 1883, eleven years before Dessoir wrote my "Erstling". This "first work" was preceded by: the detailed introductions to three volumes of Goethe's scientific writings, my "Grundlinien einer Erkenntnistheorie der Goetheschen Weltanschauung" (1886), my writing "Goethe als Vater einer neuen Ästhetik" (1889), my writing "Wahrheit und Wissenschaft" (1892), which was fundamental to my entire world view. I would not have mentioned this case of Dessoir's peculiar perception of what he writes about if it were not for the fact that all the basic views expressed in my "Philosophy of Freedom" have already been expressed in my earlier writings and are only presented in the aforementioned book in a summarizing way that deals with the philosophical and epistemological views of the end of the nineteenth century. In this "Philosophy of Freedom" I wanted to present in a systematic-organic structure what I had laid down in the earlier publications, covering almost a whole decade, in terms of epistemological foundations and ethical-philosophical conclusions for a view aimed at grasping the spiritual world.

[ 23 ] After Max Dessoir has spoken about my "first work" in the manner mentioned, he continues about it: "It is said there that man has taken something from nature into himself and can therefore solve the riddle of nature through the knowledge of his own being; that in thinking a creative activity precedes cognition, while we are uninvolved in the creation of nature and are dependent on subsequent cognition. Intuition is regarded here merely as the form in which a thought content first emerges." See if there is anything in my "Philosophy of Freedom" that can be summarized in these sentences, which represent a monstrosity of triviality. In my book I have made the attempt, after a detailed discussion with other philosophical schools of thought, to show that the full reality is not present to man in sense-observation, that therefore the view of the world given by the senses is an incomplete reality. I have endeavoured to show that human organization makes this incompleteness necessary. It is not nature that conceals from man that which is lacking in the sense picture of its essence, but man is so constituted that through this organization at the stage of merely observing cognition he conceals from himself the spiritual side of the world picture. The development of this spiritual side then begins in active thinking. It is - in the sense of my conception of the world - in active thinking that something real (spiritual) is immediately present that cannot yet be given in mere observation. This is precisely the characteristic of my epistemological foundation of a spiritual science, that I do not see in intuition - insofar as this is expressed in thinking - "merely the form" in which "a thought content first emerges". Max Dessoir thus likes to present his readers with the opposite of what is actually presented in my "Philosophy of Freedom".

[ 24 ] Just look at the following of my thoughts to realize this: "In thinking we have given the element that unites our particular individuality with the cosmos into a whole. By feeling and sensing (also perceiving), we are individuals; by thinking, we are the All-One Being that permeates everything..." "Perception is therefore not something finished, self-contained, but one side of total reality. The other side is the concept. The act of cognition is the synthesis of perception and concept..." ^{45Compare these thoughts with my "Philosophy of Freedom", 11th edition, pages 93 and 94.} "In contrast to the content of perception, which is given to us from outside, the content of thought appears within. The form in which it first appears we shall call intuition. It is to thinking what observation is to perception. Intuition and observation are the sources of our knowledge." ^{46Compare "Philosophy of Freedom", page 98.} So I say here: Intuition I want to use as an expression for the form in which the spiritual reality anchored in the content of thought first appears in the human soul before it has recognized that the side of reality not yet given in perception is contained in this inner experience of thought. That is why I say: intuition is "for thinking what observation is for perception". So even when Max Dessoir apparently quotes someone else's thoughts literally, he is able to turn what this other person means into the opposite. Dessoir lets me say: "Intuition here is merely the form in which a thought content first emerges." ^{47Compare page 254 of Dessoir's book.} He omits the following sentence of mine, by which this "mere" used by him becomes nonsense. For me, intuition is not "mere" as the "form in which a thought content first emerges", but as the revelation of a spiritual-real, like perception as that of the material-real. If I say: the watch first appears as the contents of my vest pocket; it is for me the knife of time; then someone else may not claim that I have said: the watch is "merely" the contents of my vest pocket.

[ 25 ] In the context of my publications, my "Philosophy of Freedom" is the epistemological foundation for the anthroposophically oriented spiritual science that I represent. I have explained this in a special section of my book "The Riddles of Philosophy".^{48Concluding chapter of "The Riddles of Philosophy".} In this section I have shown how, in my opinion, a straight path leads from my writing "Truth and Science" and my book "Philosophy of Freedom" to "Anthroposophy". But Max Dessoir creates the possibility of telling his readers all sorts of easily misunderstood things about the "long series" of my three small writings "Spiritual Guidance...", "Blood is a Very Special Juice" and "Reincarnation and Karma" by not using my two-volume book on the "Riddles of Philosophy". In the first of these, I attempt to recognize concrete spiritual forces in the spiritual development of mankind. I have made it clear to the reader that I am well aware of how easily the content of this writing can be misunderstood. In the preface I expressly say that someone who gets hold of this writing without knowing its premises would have to regard it "as a curious outgrowth of mere fantasy". In this preface, however, I refer only to what is contained in my two writings "Theosophy" and "Secret Science" as these premises. This was done in 1911. In 1914 my book "The Riddles of Philosophy" was published as the second edition of my "Welt- und Lebensanschauungen im neunzehnten Jahrhundert" published in 1900 and 1901. In these "Riddles of Philosophy" I also described how the theory of the atom came about, how researchers such as Galileo fit into the spiritual development of humanity - according to my ideas - without referring to anything other than what is "clear to everyone's eyes" with regard to the emergence of the theory of the atom or Galileo's position in the history of science. clearly visible".^{49Compare my presentation of the theory of the atom in its development with, for example, "Die Rätsel der Philosophie". 1st volume, 7th edition, page 62 f. and my view of Galileo, for example, in the same volume, page 104 f. But I have also spoken of Galileo in my introductions and notes to Goethe's "Naturwissenschaftliche Schriften".} My presentation is indeed in my own style; but in this presentation I refer to nothing other than what is usual for an ordinary presenter of an outline of the history of philosophy. In my writing "Spiritual Guidance ..." an attempt is made to present that which I myself endeavor to portray in another book as it lies "before everyone's eyes", as the result of concrete spiritual essential forces which are active in the course of human development. Torn out of the context in which this description appears in my writing "Spiritual Guidance ...", the relevant thought can - in my opinion - only be expressed in the following way: In the spiritual history of mankind, in addition to the forces that are obvious to "everyone's eyes" according to the usual historical methods, there are other forces at work. clearly visible" to ordinary historical methods, there are other (supersensible) forces at work that are only accessible to spiritual scientific research. And these essential forces work according to certain recognizable laws. In the way in which the forces of cognition work in that period of human development which I call the Egyptian-Chaldean period (from the fourth to the first pre-Christian millennium), such forces of nature are recognizable which appear again, but in a different form of activity, in the age in which the theory of atoms emerges. In the emergence and further development of atomism I see such spiritual essential forces at work that were already active in a different way in the way of thinking of the Egyptian-Chaldean age. (Compare my writing "Die geistige Führung...", 7th edition, page 65 f.) Anyone who considers my explanations even very briefly can find that the assertion of spiritual forces in the pursuit of human development through my anthroposophical points of view is not driven by me to obscure the purely historically observable through all kinds of anthropomorphisms or analogies, or to move it into the twilight darkness of a false mysticism. Max Dessoir finds it possible, with reference to what is in question here, to put the following words to his readers: "No - here the most patient reporter can no longer keep his calm. Before everyone's eyes it is clear how the doctrine of the atom originated and has developed consistently since antiquity, and here comes someone calling for help from the mysterious great unknown!" ^{50Dessoir, p. 259}Whoever reads my "Riddles of Philosophy" will see that what lies before everyone's eyes is also presented by me in the sense in which it lies before everyone's eyes; and that for those people who can understand that what lies before everyone's eyes contains something that is not before their eyes, I point to this something that is accessible to spiritual vision. And my reference is not to a "mysterious unknown", but precisely to something that is recognized through the anthroposophical points of view.^{52Pardon me here for a parable borrowed from mathematics for Dessoir's "critique". Suppose: Someone says within the theory of logarithms: two numbers are multiplied when their logarithms are added and the basic number, as the product, is sought for the sum of these. If someone were to come along and say: No - everyone knows how numbers are multiplied and someone is talking about adding! But this is the nature of Max Dessoir's criticism with reference to the point touched on above.}

[ 26 ] I have shown that what I say in the above example of Socrates is turned by Max Dessoir as if I were speaking of myself. But that the remark which Max Dessoir makes on page 34 of his book is to be applied to no one else but himself is evident from the context. In order to understand this remark, one must bear in mind that Dessoir distinguishes two areas in the moment of consciousness, a center field and the peripheral zone. The contents of consciousness, he explains, are constantly moving from one of these areas to the other. But when these contents enter the peripheral zone, they take on a special appearance. They lack sharpness, have fewer properties than usual, become indeterminate. The peripheral zone leads a secondary existence. But there are two ways in which it achieves more independent effectiveness. The first of these is not relevant to what we are discussing here. Dessoir comments on the second in the following way: "The other way of independence proceeds in such a way that the peripheral zone remains as co-consciousness next to the main consciousness, but rises to a greater definiteness and connection of its contents and thereby enters into a completely new relationship to the simultaneous fully conscious activity of the soul. To use another easily understandable image: a complex slides from the center of the circle to the periphery, but there it does not sink into the nebulous, but partially retains its definiteness and coherence." ^{53Dessoir, p.32 ff} Following this explanation, Dessoir then says: "An example: When reciting very familiar trains of thought, I occasionally lose concepts and words in that region, and my attention is occupied with other things. Nevertheless, I continue to speak, as it were without a share of consciousness. It has happened that I have been surprised by a sudden silence in the room and have first had to realize that it was the result of my own silence! Familiar associations of ideas and judgments can therefore also be carried out 'subconsciously', especially those that move in the non-visual realm; the linguistic movements associated with them also run without difficulty in the practiced paths." ^{54Dessoir, p. 34} However, if I take this passage in its full scope, I would rather not assume that it refers to Dessoir's own experience, but that he is speaking of something he has noticed in other dreamy speakers, and that he only uses "me" and "I" in the sense that one does when one expresses oneself stylistically as if one were putting oneself in the place of another. The context in which the sentences stand makes this explanation difficult, however, and only possible if one assumes that Dessoir has slipped up stylistically, which happens to many writers in our hurried times. - But, be that as it may, the essential point is that a state of mind in which the "subconscious" plays such a role, as in the case Dessoir describes for a speaker, is one of the very first things that must be overcome mentally if one wants to penetrate into the understanding of anthroposophical knowledge. The complete opposite: the complete penetration of the concepts with consciousness, is necessary if these concepts are to have a relationship to the real spiritual world. In the field of anthroposophy it is impossible for a speaker to go on talking when "attention" is "occupied with other things". For he who wants to grasp anthroposophy must have become accustomed to not separating the direction of his attention from the direction of a course of imagination he has evoked. He will not continue to speak of things from which his attention is turned away, because he will not continue to think about such things.

[ 27 ] When I now look at how Max Dessoir reports to his readers about my little writing "Blood is a very special juice", the thought occurs to me that he not only continues to speak when his attention turns to "other things", but that in such a case he even continues to write. In this report one finds the following. My sentence is quoted: "The blood receives the images of the external world internalized by the brain",^{55page 24} and to this Dessoir makes the remark: "Such an outrageous disregard of all facts is combined with the assertion, as unprovable as it is incomprehensible, that prehistoric man also remembered the experiences of his ancestors in the 'images received by his blood'." ^{56Dessoir, p. 261} Just read these sentences that Dessoir quotes in the context in which they appear in my writing, and take my remark on page 24 of the same writing: "I must speak in parables if I want to describe the complicated processes under consideration here", then perhaps you will realize what it means when someone reports in Dessoir's way. - Just imagine what it would mean if I wrote about Max Dessoir's "Beyond the Soul" and told my readers: here comes someone who claims that the blood that runs "in our veins" is "the blood of many millennia". And this is an assertion that is as unprovable as it is incomprehensible, which is equivalent to the other: "But there is no doubt that behind the surface of consciousness there is a dark, richly filled space, through whose changes the curvature of the surface is also altered." Both sentences can be found in Dessoir's book, the last on page 1, the first on page 12 of the "Blood of the Millennia". Both sentences are of course fully justified, because Max Dessoir speaks "in parables". Where I must do the same, and note this explicitly, Dessoir forges himself a critical weapon of wooden iron for refutation. - Dessoir speaks of the fact that my reference to spiritual essence is "on the whole characterized as a materialistic coarsening of mental processes and a personifying flattening of spiritual values".^{57Dessoir, p. 260} This assertion makes just as much sense in the light of my writings as when I said the following: A thinker who is able to say: "One may - in an admittedly very imperfect comparison - call the moment of consciousness a circle whose periphery is black, whose center is white and whose intervening parts are graduated gray", whose view is characterized "on the whole ... as a materialistic coarsening of mental processes". And this thinker who makes such grotesque statements, who compares the moment of consciousness with a circle, who speaks of white, gray and black, is Max Dessoir. Of course it cannot occur to me to say such things, for I know that in this case Max Dessoir is not coarsening mental processes in a materialistic way. But what he does to me is of the kind just described.

[ 28 ] You will find it understandable that it is completely impossible to argue about the meaning of the law of fate from the anthroposophical point of view with a criticism that rests on presuppositions like Dessoir's; I would have to copy entire chapters of my writings here if I wanted to show how hair-raisingly displaced my ideas about human fate are by Dessoir's assertion: "Herewith is supposedly revealed a connection of cause and effect in the spiritual world (causality, accordingly, does not only apply in the world of experience as conceived by the intellect). The human being, who perfects himself through a series of life courses, is subject to the law of karma, according to which every deed inevitably has its consequences, i.e. the present misery, for example, is self-inflicted from pre-existence." ^{58Dessoir, p. 265} In 1887, in my introduction to the second volume of Goethe's Naturwissenschaftliche Schriften, I wrote the following sentences: "The explanation of a process in nature is a going back to the conditions of the same: a search for the producer of the given product. If I perceive an effect and look for the cause, these two perceptions are by no means sufficient for my need of explanation. I must go back to the laws according to which this cause produces this effect. It is different with human action. There the lawfulness that determines an appearance itself comes into action; what constitutes a product itself enters the scene of action. We are dealing with an appearing existence in which we can stop, in which we do not need to ask about the underlying conditions." ^{59Compare my introductions to Goethe's Naturwissenschaftliche Schriften, Dornach 1926, page 149, Freiburg i. Br. 1949, page 183 f. 71} >It is probably clear what I mean: the questioning of the conditions of a human action cannot take place in the same way as towards a process of nature. It must therefore be different. My views on the connection between fate, which are closely related to those on the sources of man's will, cannot therefore point to the relationship between cause and effect that is spoken of in natural science. In my book "Theosophy" I therefore made every effort to make it clear that I am far from thinking of the spill-over of the experiences of one human life into the following ones in terms of the natural causal connection. Max Dessoir grossly distorts my conception of fate by interweaving the following sentence in his statement: "Causality is therefore not only valid in the world of experience as understood by the mind." - He only creates an opportunity to make this remark by lifting a sentence from my short paper "Reincarnation and Karma", which summarizes a longer version in this paper. But it is only through this explanation that the sentence is given its proper meaning. The way in which Dessoir presents it (in isolation), one can criticize it in a rather subtle way. The sentence reads: "Everything that I can and do in my present life does not stand alone as a miracle, but is connected as an effect with the earlier forms of existence of my soul, and as a cause with the later ones." ^{60Compare my book "Reincarnation and Karma" and page 261 f. of Dessoir's book.} Whoever is willing to read the sentence in connection with the remarks which it summarizes will find that I understand the passing over from one form of life into another in such a way that the category of causality usual in the mere observation of nature is not applicable to it. One can only speak of causality in abbreviated terms, if the more precise definition is given or may be assumed to be known by the reader. In my summarizing sentence, however, the foregoing does not allow it to be understood in any other way than the following: Everything that I can and do in my present life is connected as an effect with the earlier forms of existence of my soul in so far as the causes of my ability and action that lie in the present life stand in a relationship with other forms of life that is not one of ordinary causality; and everything that I can and do is connected with later forms of existence of my soul in so far as this skill and action is the cause of effects in the present life, which in turn are in a relationship with the content of later forms of life, which again is not one of ordinary causality. - Whoever follows my writings will see that I have never advocated a concept of karma which is incompatible with the idea of the free human being. Dessoir could have noticed this if he had not "used" anything I had written other than what is written in my "Secret Science": "Whoever thinks that human freedom is connected with the ... predetermination of the future organization of things, he should consider that man's free action in the future depends just as little on how the predetermined things will be as this freedom depends on the fact that he intends to live after a year in a house whose plan he is currently determining." ^{61Compare my "Geheimwissenschaft im Umriß", 26th edition, page 413 f.} For even if these sentences do not refer directly to the connections between human lives on earth, they could not be written by someone who is of the opinion that the fates of these lives on earth are connected in such a way as corresponds to the law of scientific causality.

[ 29 ] Dessoir nowhere indicates that he has taken the trouble to examine the way in which I justify the anthroposophy I advocate in terms of epistemology and general philosophy, as well as in accordance with scientific ideas. To this end, he makes assertions for which there is not even a remote point of reference in my writings. Thus page 296 f. of his book: "If we learn that the medicine of the Middle Ages, still completely under this spell, divided man according to the zodiac and saw in the hand with its fingers subdivisions of the celestial measures, or if we read in Rudolf Steiner, that before fertilization the plant is in such a position as the whole earth was before the separation of the sun, we have examples of the principle of seeing in the small the image of great world processes." ^{62Max Dessoir writes this with reference to the explanations of my "Geheimwissenschaft im Umriß", 26th edition, page 335 ff. He has not even come close to an understanding of what I have said, otherwise he could not have even entertained the idea that this matter could have anything to do with the dilettantish method he cites of seeking "correspondences" between facts that are far apart. An unprejudiced person must see that what I say about the earth and the separation of the sun on the one hand, and about the fertilization of the plant on the other, is found in a quite independent way, without proceeding from the intention of finding a "correspondence". With the same right one could say that the physicist is looking for "correspondences" when he examines the polar facts that come to light at the anode and the cathode. But Dessoir is rather far from understanding that the method I use has nothing to do with what he wants to hit upon, but that it is entirely the scientific way of thinking turned into the spiritual realm.} If what Max Dessoir means by this sentence were as correct as it is incorrect, it would suffice to lump my anthroposophical point of view together with all sorts of dilettantish goings-on that are currently asserting themselves as mysticism, theosophy and the like. In reality, this assertion of Dessoir's is only - in itself alone - full proof that this critic is without any understanding of my anthroposophy, both as regards its philosophical basis and its method, and even as regards the form of expression for its results. Basically, Dessoir's criticism is nothing more than many "rebuttals" to which the anthroposophy I represent is exposed. Arguments with them are unfruitful, because they do not criticize what they claim to judge, but a distorted image they have arbitrarily formed, against which criticism then becomes quite easy for them. It seems quite impossible to me that someone who realizes what is important to me in what I consider anthroposophy to be, should combine it - as Dessoir does - with an involuntary literary burlesque such as the Faust books by J.A. Louvier, with the strange racial mysticism of Guido List, with Christian Science - indeed even with everything that Dessoir calls "New Buddhism". - Whether it is justified that Max Dessoir says of my explanations: "It betrays an unpretentiousness of thought if it is merely demanded that what is put forward be recognized as not contradictory (for in the broader sense many things are possible that remain improbable and fruitless); if nowhere is examined and questioned, doubted and weighed up, but determined from above: 'secret science says this and that'." ^{63Dessoir, p. 263} - I leave it to those who really get to know my writings to judge this. Even a sentence like this: "Harmless readers may be bribed by the interspersed examples and the alleged elucidation of certain experiences ...", ^{64Dessoir, p. 254} can at best lead me to think how "harmless readers" of Dessoir's book may be bribed by the interspersed but pointlessly interpreted quotations from my writings and the pleasing translation of my thoughts into the trivial. - If, despite the unfruitfulness to which an argument with this critic is condemned from the outset, I nevertheless present it here, it is because I have once again had to show by example what kind of judgment what I call anthroposophy encounters; and because there are far too many "harmless readers" who form their judgment of such a spiritual endeavor from books such as Dessoir's without taking note of what is being judged and without even suspecting what it really looks like, of which they are presented with a distorted image.

[ 30 ] Whether it has any meaning when someone who is so far removed from the understanding of what I am striving for, who reads writings judged by him in this way, such as Max Dessoir, - claims "from above" that I am "concerned with certain relationships to science", but have "no inner relationship to the spirit of science",^{65Dessoir, p. 254} I do not judge this myself, but leave it to the readers of my books. -

[ 31 ] It would be almost a miracle if Max Dessoir's whole way of thinking did not add the sentence: "Even now the mass of his followers completely renounce their own thinking." ^{66Dessoir, p. 254} How often must this be said to those who like to be called my "followers" ! Certainly, there are "followers" of dubious qualities in every spiritual endeavor. But it depends on whether these and not perhaps others are characteristic of the endeavor. What does Max Dessoir know about my "followers"? What does he know about how many there are among them who are not only far from renouncing their own intellectual work, but who, having seen through the scientific inadequacy of Dessoir's world views through their intellectual work, do not disdain to take inspiration from the endeavors through which I am seeking, as best I can, a methodical way to penetrate a little way into the spiritual world. Perhaps the time will come when one will judge more fairly those people in the present who are able to do enough mental work to not belong to the "harmless readers" of Max Dessoir. ^{67It is only the fact that Dessoir is not in a position to form really adequate ideas about the anthroposophical experiments that explains why he does not even begin any understanding of these experiments where his own train of thought suggests this to him as closely as possible. Such a case exists in what he points out with two sentences on page 322 f. of his book: "There is no beyond of the soul in the sense of an invisible reality, because spiritual facts are superior to the material as well as the personal existence. The objective beyond of the soul may be regarded as a superconsciousness, but never as something that exists spatially outside the soul." Dessoir does not see that with such a sentence he is not providing a refutation, but precisely the proof of the necessity of anthroposophy. He does not see that everywhere in my writings the attempt is made to treat the questions under consideration as questions of consciousness. Let it only be noted how this attempt is made, for example, in my "Secret Science in Outline". But Dessoir cannot see that the whole process of cognition is thereby turned into an inner activity of consciousness in relation to the spiritual world, that within consciousness itself other forms of consciousness must be experienced, which then, however, do not have to do with something "existing spatially outside the soul", but with an inner being of the soul in such an existing being, which is non-spatial in the same sense as the experiences of ordinary consciousness itself already are. However, anyone who wants to understand this should have come to terms with a sentence like the one written by Friedrich Theodor Vischer in the first part of his "Old and New", page 194: "The soul, as the supreme unity of all processes, cannot be localized in the body, although it is not elsewhere than in the body...". This sentence is one of those that lead to the limits of ordinary cognition in the sense of the first section of this writing and in the sense of the first chapter of the "Sketchy Extensions of the Contents of this Writing" at the end of it.}