The Rudolf Steiner Archive

3. Franz Brentano (An Obituary)

[ 1 ] It is not possible to speak in sufficient detail about the relationship between anthropology and anthroposophy in connection with Max Dessoir's book "Vom Jenseits der Seele" for the reasons given in the previous section of this essay. I believe, however, that this relationship can become clear if I place here the remarks that I have written down with a different intention, namely as an obituary for the philosopher Franz Brentano, who died in Zurich in March 1917. The passing of the man I admired most highly has had the effect that his significant life's work has once again come before my soul; it has determined me to say the following.

[ 2 ] It seems to me that I may attempt to arrive at a view of Franz Brentano's philosophical life's work from an anthroposophical point of view at this moment, since the death of the revered personality has interrupted the continuation of this work. I believe that the anthroposophical point of view cannot allow me to fall into a one-sided assessment of Brentano's world view. I assume this for two reasons. Firstly, no one can accuse Brentano's way of thinking of having even the slightest inclination towards an anthroposophical direction. Its bearer, if he himself had had cause to pass judgment on it, would probably have rejected it with the utmost determination. Secondly, from my anthroposophical point of view, I am in a position to show unreserved admiration for Franz Brentano's philosophy.

[ 3 ] As far as the first is concerned, I believe I am not mistaken when I say that Brentano, if he had come to a judgment about the anthroposophy I am referring to, would have formed it in the same way as the one he formed about Plotinus' philosophy. Like Plotinus, he would probably have said of anthroposophy: "Mystical darkness and a free wandering of the imagination in unknown regions." ^{68Compare Brentano's writing: "Was für ein Philosoph manchrnal Epoche macht" (Vienna, Pest, Leipzig, Hartlebens Verlag, 1876), page 14} As with Neoplatonism, he would also have urged caution with regard to anthroposophy, "lest one, enticed by vain appearances, lose oneself in the labyrinthine corridors of a pseudo-philosophy". ^{69Compare Brentano's writing: "Was für ein Philosoph manchmal Epoche macht" (Vienna, Pest, Leipzig, Hartlebens Verlag, 1876), page 23} Yes, he might have found the way of thinking of anthroposophy too dilettantish to even consider it worthy of being counted among the philosophies he judged in the same way as the Fichte-Schelling-Hegelian one. In his inaugural address in Vienna, he said of the latter: "Perhaps the recent past has also been an... epoch of decay, in which all concepts swam turbidly into one another, and not a trace of Brentano's aforementioned writing was to be found." ^{70Compare the reprint of the inaugural address given in 1874 when he took up his professorship in Vienna: "Über die Gründe der Entmutigung auf philosophischem Gebiet" (Vienna 1874), page 18.} I believe that Brentano would have judged in this way, even if I naturally consider not only this judgment to be completely unfounded, but also any combination of anthroposophy with the philosophies with which this philosopher would probably have combined it to be unjustified.

[ 4 ] With regard to the second of the reasons given above for engaging with Brentano's philosophy, I may confess that for me it is one of the most attractive achievements of soul research in the present day. I was only able to hear a few of Brentano's Vienna lectures some thirty-six years ago, but from that time onwards I have followed his literary activity with the warmest interest. Unfortunately, his publications appeared at far too great intervals for my liking. And they were mostly written in such a way that one could only look through them, as through small openings into a room full of treasures, through occasional publications into a vast realm of unpublished thoughts that this outstanding man carried within him. In such a way that it strove towards high goals of knowledge in continuous development. When, after a long break, Brentano's book on "Aristotle", his brilliant work "Aristotle's Doctrine of the Origin of the Human Mind" and his reprint of the most important part of his Psychology with the so astute "Supplements" appeared in 1911, reading these writings was a series of festive pleasures for me. ^{71Compare Brentano: "Aristoteles und seine Weltanschauung " (1911, published by Quelle und Meyer in Leipzig); Brentano: "Aristoteles' Lehre vom Ursprung des menschlichen Geistes" (Leipzig, published by Veit und Comp., 1911); Brentano: "Von der Klassifiltation der psychischen Phänomene" (Leipzig, Verlag von Duneker und Humbolt, 1911).}

[ 5 ] I feel imbued with such an attitude towards Franz Brentano that I believe I can say that one acquires it when the scientific conviction gained from the anthroposophical point of view - precisely the attitude - takes hold. I endeavor to see through his views in their value, even if I am under no illusion that he could, indeed must, have thought about anthroposophy in the sense indicated above. I certainly do not bring this up here in order to fall into a vain self-criticism of my attitude towards opposing or dissenting views, but because I know how much misunderstanding of my judgments about other schools of thought it has brought me that I have often expressed myself in my publications in such a way as is a consequence of this attitude.

[ 6 ] The basic ideas that led him to formulate his guiding principle in 1868 seem to me to methodically permeate all of Brentano's research into the soul. When he took up his philosophical professorship in Würzburg at that time, he placed his way of thinking in the light of the thesis that the true philosophical way of research could be no other than that justified by scientific knowledge. "Vera philosophiae methodus nulla alia nisi scientiae naturalis est." ^{72He later spoke out about this thesis in a lecture he gave at the Vienna Philosophical Society in 1892, which is reprinted as "Über die Zukunft der Philosophie" (Vienna, Alfred Hölder, 1893). On page 3 you will find Brentano's later reference to his thesis, which is meant here.} When he then published the first volume of his "Psychology from an Empirical Point of View" in 1874 - at the time when he took up his professorship in Vienna - he sought to explain the phenomena of the soul scientifically in accordance with the above-mentioned guiding principle. ^{73Compare Brentano: "Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkte", 1st volume (Leipzig, Verlag von Duneker und Humblot, 1874)} For me, what Brentano wanted with this book, and what of this intention came to light during his lifetime through his publications, constitutes a significant scientific problem. Brentano had - as can be seen from his book - calculated his psychology on a series of books. He had promised to publish the second shortly after the first. There was no sequel to the first part, which only contained the initial ideas of his psychology. When he had his lecture "Vom Ursprung sittlicher Erkenntnis" (On the Origin of Moral Knowledge) given at the Vienna Law Society printed in 1889, he wrote in the preface:

"One would be mistaken if one were to regard the lecture as a fleeting work of opportunity just for the sake of an accidental impulse. It offers the fruits of years of reflection. Of everything I have published so far, his discussions are probably the most mature product. - They belong to the circle of ideas of a 'Descriptive Psychology', which, I now dare to hope, I will be able to open up to the public in its entirety in the not too distant future. One will then be able to recognize sufficiently from the wide distances from everything traditional, and in particular also from the essential further development of my own views represented in 'Psychology from the Empirical Standpoint', that I have not exactly been idle in my long literary seclusion." ^{74Compare Brentano's essay "Vom Ursprung sittlicher Erkenntnis" (Leipzig, Verlag Daneker und Humblot, 1889), page Vf.}

This "Descriptive Psychology" was not published either. Admirers of Brentano's philosophy can gauge what benefit it would have brought them if they had studied the "Untersuchungen zur Sinnespsychologie" (Studies in Sensory Psychology), which covered a narrow field and was published in 1907.^{75Brentano: "Untersuchungen zur Sinnespsychologie" (Leipzig, Verlag Duncker und Humblot, 1907).}

[ 7 ] The question must be asked: what caused Brentano to pause again and again in the continuation of his publications, indeed, not to publish what he thought would be finished in a short time? I confess that I was deeply shocked to read the words in the obituary for Franz Brentano that Alois Höfler had published in May 1917: "How he continued to work so confidently on his main problem, the proof of God, that only a few years ago an excellent Viennese doctor who was a close friend of Brentano's told me that Brentano had recently assured him that he would now have the proof of God ready within a few weeks ... " ^{76Süddeutsche Monatshefte, May 1917, in the essay : "Franz Brentano in Wien", page 319 ff.} I felt the same way when I read from another obituary (by Utitz),^{77Published in the Vossische Zeitung.} heard: "The work he loved most, on which he worked all his life, has remained unpublished."

[ 8 ] I think that Brentano's fate with his planned publications poses a serious problem for the humanities. This can only be approached if one wants to look at what he was able to communicate to the world in its peculiarity.

[ 9 ] I think it is important to realize that Brentano's psychological research is based on an astutely pure conception of the truly spiritual. He asks himself: what is characteristic in all occurrences that must be addressed as psychological? And he found what he expressed in the 1911 Supplements to Psychology as follows: "The characteristic of every psychic activity consists, as I believe I have shown, in its relation to something as an object." ^{78Compare Brentano : "Von der Klassifikation der psychischen Phänomene", page 122.} Imagining is a psychic activity. The characteristic is that I not only imagine, but that I imagine something, that my imagination refers to something. Using an expression borrowed from medieval philosophy, Brentano calls this peculiarity of mental phenomena an "intentional relationship". "The common trait"-so he explains in another place:

"Everything psychical consists in what has often been called consciousness, unfortunately with a very misleading expression, that is, in a subjective behavior, in what has been called an intentional relation to something that is perhaps not really, but nevertheless inwardly objectively given. No hearing without hearing, no believing without believing, no hoping without hoping, no striving without striving, no joy without something to rejoice in, and so on." ^{79Compare Brentano : "Vom Ursprung sittlicher Erkenntnis", page 14. And on the fundamental trait of the intentional "Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkte", page 115 ff.}

This intentional inner being is indeed something that leads like a leitmotif in such a way that everything to which one can attach it can be recognized in its mental character precisely through it.

[ 10 ] Brentano contrasts the psychic phenomena with the physical ones: Colors, sound, space and many others. He finds that these differ from them precisely because they do not have an intentional relationship. And he confines himself to attributing this relationship to the psychical phenomena and denying it to the physical. But it is precisely when one becomes acquainted with Brentano's view of the intentional relation that the imagination is led to the question: does not such a point of view make it necessary to view the physical from it as well? Whoever, like Brentano, examines the psychical in this way, and the physical in terms of a common factor, will find that every phenomenon in this area is through something else. If a body dissolves in a liquid, this phenomenon appears on the dissolved body through the relation of the dissolving liquid to it. If phosphorus changes its color through the action of the sun, this points in the same direction. All properties in the physical world are due to the relations of things to each other. It is correct for physical being when Moleschott says: "All being is being through properties. But there is no property that does not exist through a relation." ^{80This was presented particularly succinctly by Richard Wallascheck in an important essay in the Viennese weekly magazine "Die Zeit", No.96 and 97 of the 1896 issue (from August 1 and 8).} Just as everything psychic contains something within itself whereby it points to something outside it, so conversely a physical is such that what it is, it is through the relation of an outside to it. Must not someone who emphasizes the intentional relationship of everything mental in such an astute way as Brentano do, also direct attention to the characteristic of physical phenomena that results from the same thought process? It seems at least certain that such a consideration of the mental can only find its relationship to the physical world if it takes this characteristic into consideration.^{81Compare with this the conclusion of the 7th chapter of the "Sketchy Extensions of the Content..." given at the end of this writing. "7. The Separation of the Mental from the Extra-Mental by Franz Brentano."}

[ 11 ] Brentano now identifies three types of intentional relationships in mental life. The first is the imagining of something; the second is recognition or rejection, which is expressed in judging; the third is that of loving or hating, which is experienced in feeling. When I say: God is just, I am imagining something; but I do not yet recognize or reject the imagined; but when I say: there is a God, I recognize the imagined through a judgment. When I say: joy is dear to me, I am not merely judging, but experiencing a feeling. Brentano distinguishes three basic classes of psychic experiences on the basis of such premises: Imagining, judging, feeling (or the phenomena of loving and hating). He replaces the division of psychic phenomena recognized by others into these three basic classes: Imagining, feeling and willing.^{82Compare Brentano : "Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkte" page 233 ff., and his writing : "Von der Klassifikation der psychischen Phänomene."} For while imagining and judging are grouped into one class by many, Brentano separates the two. He does not agree with this grouping because, unlike others, he does not see judgment as merely a combination of ideas, but rather an acceptance or rejection of what is imagined, which is not the case with mere imagination. Feeling and will, on the other hand, which others separate, coincide for Brentano, according to their mental content, into one. What is experienced emotionally when one feels attracted to or repelled by the performance of an action is the same as what is experienced when one feels attracted to pleasure or repelled by pain.

[ 12 ] It is evident from Brentano's writings that he attaches great importance to having replaced the division of mental experience into thinking, feeling and willing that he had found with the other, into imagining, judging and loving and hating. From this division, he seeks to pave the way to understanding what truth is on the one hand and what moral goodness is on the other. For him, truth is based on right judgment; moral goodness on right love. He finds: "We call something true if the recognition relating to it is correct. We call something good if the love relating to it is right." ^{83Compare Brentano: "Vom Ursprung sittlicher Erkenntnis". Page 17.}

[ 13 ] In Brentano's explanations, one can find that with the correct recognition of truth in judgment, with the correct experience of love in moral goodness, he sharply focuses on and describes a fact of the soul. But one cannot find anything within the realm of his imagination that would suffice to make the transition from the spiritual experience of imagination to that of judgment. Wherever one looks in this realm of imagination, one searches in vain for the answer to the question: what is present when the soul is aware that it is not merely imagining, but that it finds itself prompted to recognize the object of imagination through a judgment? - Nor is it possible to avoid a question about the right love for moral goodness. Within the realm that Brentano describes as "spiritual", there is no other fact for moral behavior than right loving. But does not a moral action also have a relationship to the external world? Can that which characterizes such an action for the world be exhausted by saying that it is an action that is properly loved? ^{84Compare with this the 5th chapter in the "Sketchy Extensions of the Content..." given at the end of this paper: "5. On the Real Foundation of the Intentional Relation."}

[ 14 ] When following Brentano's trains of thought, one usually has the feeling that they are always fruitful because they tackle a problem in one direction astutely and with scientific prudence; but one also feels that Brentano's trains of thought do not lead to the goal that his starting points promise. Such a feeling can also impose itself when one compares his tripartite division of the life of the soul into imagining, judging, loving and hating with the other into imagining, feeling and willing. One follows with a certain assent what he is able to adduce in favor of his opinion; and yet one can hardly be convinced that he sufficiently appreciates all the reasons that speak for the other. One need only take as a special example the conclusion which Brentano draws from his classification for the characterization of the true, the beautiful and the good. Whoever classifies the life of the soul according to cognitive imagination, feeling and volition can hardly do otherwise than bring the striving for truth into closer connection with imagination, the experience of beauty with feeling, the accomplishment of the good with volition. In the light of Brentano's thoughts, the matter appears differently. There the ideas as such have no relation to each other through which the truth could reveal itself as such. If the soul strives for perfection in the relationship of ideas, then its ideal cannot be truth; it is rather beauty. Truth does not lie in the way of mere imagination, but of judgment. And the morally good is not found as something essential to the will, but is the content of a feeling; for to love rightly is an experience of feeling.^{85Compare Brentano: "Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkte", page 340 ff, and his paper "On the Classification of Psychical Phenomena", page 110 ff., as well as what he says in his paper "On the Origin of Moral Cognition", page 17 ff.} But truth for the ordinary consciousness can only be sought in imaginative cognition. For even if the judgment that leads to truth is not exhausted in a mere connection of ideas, but is based on the recognition or rejection of ideas, this recognition or rejection can only be experienced by this consciousness in ideas. - And even if the ideas through which a beautiful thing presents itself to consciousness reveal themselves in certain relationships within the life of ideas: beauty is nevertheless experienced through feeling. - And although a morally good thing should evoke a right love in the soul, its essence is the realization of the rightly loved through the will.

[ 15 ] One only recognizes what is present in Brentano's thoughts on the threefold division of the life of the soul when one sees through the fact that he is speaking of something quite different from those who carry out this division according to imagination, feeling and volition. They simply want to describe the experience of ordinary consciousness. And this experiences itself in the differentiated activities of imagining, feeling and willing. What is actually experienced there? I tried to answer this question in my book "The Enigma of Man".

I summarized the results presented there in the following way. "First of all, the spiritual experience of man, as it manifests itself in thinking, feeling and willing, is bound to the bodily tools. And it takes shape in the way it is conditioned by these tools. But he who thinks that he sees the real life of the soul when he observes the expressions of the soul through the body is caught in the same error as one who believes that his form is produced by the mirror before which he stands, because the mirror contains the necessary conditions through which his image appears. This image is even, within certain limits, dependent as an image on the form of the mirror etc.: what it represents, however, has nothing to do with the mirror. In order to fully fulfill its essence within the sense world, the human soul life must have an image of its essence. It must have this image in consciousness; otherwise it would have an existence, but no idea, no knowledge of this existence. This image, which lives in the ordinary consciousness of the soul, is now completely conditioned by the bodily instruments. Without these it would not exist, just as the reflection would not exist without the mirror. But what appears through this image, the soul itself, is by its nature no more dependent on the tools of the body than the observer standing before the mirror is dependent on the mirror. It is not the soul that is dependent on the tools of the body, but only the ordinary consciousness of the soul." ^{86Compare this with my book "Vom Menschenrätsel", 4th edition, page 156. I would like to add here the remark, which for many is certainly superfluous, that in my comparison of consciousness with a mirror image I do not have in mind, as is usually done, to call the imaginary world a mirror image of the external world, but that I describe what the soul experiences in ordinary consciousness as a mirror image of the truly soulful.}

If one describes this area of consciousness, which is dependent on the organization of the body, then one correctly divides it into imagination, feeling and volition.^{87Compare with this the 6th chapter of the "Sketchy Extensions of the Contents..." given at the end of this writing. "6. The physical and spiritual dependencies of the human being."} But Brentano describes something else. First of all, let us note that he understands "judgment" to mean the recognition or rejection of a conceptual content. Judgment operates within the life of the imagination; but it does not simply accept the ideas that arise in the soul, rather it relates them to a reality by recognizing or rejecting them. If one looks more closely, this relationship of the ideas to a reality can only be found in an activity of the soul, which takes place in the soul itself. However, what the soul accomplishes when it relates a conception to a sensory perception in a redistributive way never corresponds completely to this. For there it is the compulsion of the external impression, which is not experienced purely inwardly, but only re-experienced, and thus leads to recognition or rejection as an imagined after-experience. On the other hand, what Brentano describes corresponds perfectly in this respect to the kind of cognition that is called imaginative in the first section of this essay. In this, the imagination of the ordinary consciousness is not simply accepted, but is further developed in the inner experience of the soul, so that the power is released from it to relate what is experienced in the soul to a spiritual reality in such a way that it is recognized or rejected. Brentano's concept of judgement is therefore not fully realized in ordinary consciousness, but in the soul, which is active in imaginative cognition. - Furthermore, it is clear that through Brentano's complete detachment of the concept of imagination from the concept of judgment, imagination is conceived by him as a mere image. Thus, however, ordinary representation lives in imaginative cognition. This second quality, which anthroposophy ascribes to imaginative cognition, is also found in Brentano's characterization of psychic phenomena. Furthermore, Brentano refers to the experiences of feeling as phenomena of love and hate. He who ascends to imaginative cognition must indeed transform that kind of psychic experience which reveals itself to ordinary consciousness as love and hate - in Brentano's sense - for supersensible vision in such a way that he can confront certain peculiarities of spiritual reality, which are described in my "Theosophy", for example, in the following way: "It is one of the first things that one must acquire for orientation in the spiritual world that one distinguishes the different kinds of its entities in a similar way as one distinguishes solid, liquid and air or gaseous bodies in the physical world. In order to do this, one must know the two fundamental forces that are most important here. They can be called sympathy and antipathy. How these basic forces work in a soul structure determines its nature."^{88Compare my "Theosophy", 28th edition, page 96.} While love and hate remain something subjective for the life of the soul in the sensory world, imaginative cognition experiences the objective behavior in the soul world through inner experiences that are equivalent to love and hate. Here, too, Brentano describes a peculiarity of imaginative cognition (through which, however, it already enters the realm of an even higher kind of cognition ^{89The first form of "seeing cognition", the imaginative, merges into the second, which in my writings is called the inspired. How the imagination, which has passed over into inspiration, actually lives in Brentano's definition of loving and hating, is shown in the concluding remarks of the 6th chapter of the "Sketchy Extensions of the Contents" given at the end of this writing: "6. The Physical and Spiritual Dependencies of the Human Being."}). And that he has an idea of the objective way of loving and hating in contrast to the subjective way of feeling of ordinary consciousness can be seen from the fact that he presents moral goodness as a real loving. Finally, it must be especially taken into consideration that for Brentano volition falls outside the circle of soul phenomena. Now the volition flowing out of ordinary consciousness belongs entirely to the physical world. It realizes itself in the form in which it can be conceived by this consciousness, completely in the physical world, although it is a purely spiritual-substantiality in itself revealing itself in the physical world. If one describes the ordinary consciousness existing in the physical world, then volition cannot be missing in this description. If one describes the seeing consciousness, then nothing of the ideas about ordinary volition can pass over into this description. For in the spiritual world, to which the imaginative consciousness refers, events take place in response to a spiritual impulse other than through acts of volition, such as are peculiar to the physical world. Thus, as Brentano considers the mental phenomena in that realm in which imaginative cognition is active, the concept of volition must evaporate for him.

[ 16 ] It really seems obvious that Brentano, in describing the nature of psychic phenomena, was actually driven to describe the nature of visual cognition. This is clear even from the details of his description. Take one example of many that could be cited. He says: "The common characteristic of everything psychical consists in what has often been called consciousness with an unfortunately very misleading expression ... ". ^{90Compare Brentano: "Vom Ursprung sittlicher Erkenntnis", page 14.} But if one describes only those phenomena of the soul which, as belonging to ordinary consciousness, are conditioned by the organization of the body, then the expression is not at all misleading. Brentano has a feeling that the real soul, however, does not live in this ordinary consciousness, and he feels compelled to speak of the nature of this real soul in ideas that must, however, be misunderstood if one wants to apply the ordinary concept of consciousness to them.

[ 17 ] Brentano proceeds in his research in such a way that he follows the phenomena of the anthropological field to the point where they force the unbiased to form ideas about the soul which coincide with what anthroposophy finds on its paths about the soul. And the results of the two paths are shown to be in complete harmony precisely by Brentano's psychology. Brentano himself, however, did not want to leave the anthropological path. He was prevented from doing so by his interpretation of his guiding principle: "The true mode of research in philosophy can be no other than that recognized in the natural sciences." ^{91Cf. above p. 83f. of this paper.} A different understanding of this guiding principle could have led him to recognize that one sees the scientific mode of conception in the right light precisely when one is aware that it must change for the spiritual realm according to its own nature. Brentano never wanted to make the true phenomena of the soul, which he characterizes as such, the object of a pronounced consciousness. Had he done so, he would have progressed from anthropology to anthroposophy. He feared this path because he could only regard it as an aberration into "mystical darkness and a free wandering of the imagination into unknown regions".^{92Cf. above p. 81 of this paper.} He did not even enter into an examination of what his own psychological conception made necessary. Every time he was faced with the necessity of continuing on his own path into the anthroposophical field, he stopped. He wanted to find an anthropological solution to the questions that could only be answered anthroposophically. This solution was bound to fail. Because it was bound to fail, he could not continue the expositions he had begun in a way that would have been satisfactory to him. If he had continued "Psychology from the Empirical Standpoint", it would have had to become anthroposophy after the results of the first volume. Had he really delivered his "Descriptive Psychology": Anthroposophy would have had to shine out of it everywhere. If he had continued the ethics of his work "On the Origin of Moral Knowledge" in accordance with his starting point, he would have come across anthroposophy.

[ 18 ] Before Brentano's soul stood the possibility of a psychology that cannot be shaped like a purely anthropological one. The latter cannot even think of the questions that must be raised as the most significant about the life of the soul. The newer psychology only wants to be anthropological because it considers anything beyond that to be unscientific. Brentano, however, says: "For the hopes of Plato and Aristotle to gain certainty about the survival of our better part after the dissolution of the body, the laws of the association of ideas, the development of convictions and opinions and the germination and driving of desire and love would be anything but a true compensation... And if the difference between the two views really meant the inclusion or exclusion of the question of immortality, it would be an extremely important one for psychology, and an entry into the metaphysical investigation of substance as the bearer of states would be unavoidable. "^{93Compare Brentano: "Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkte", page 20.} Anthroposophy shows how it is not through metaphysical speculation that we can enter the realm described by Brentano, but solely through the activity of those soul forces which cannot fall into ordinary consciousness. By describing the essence of the soul in his philosophy in such a way that the essence of cognitive insight is clearly expressed in his description, Brentano's philosophy is a perfect justification of anthroposophy. And one may see in Brentano the philosophical researcher who reaches the gate of anthroposophy on his way, but does not want to open this gate because the image of scientific thinking that he creates for himself leads him to believe that by opening it he will reach the abyss of unscience. The difficulties that Brentano often finds himself confronted with when he wants to continue his ideas stem from the fact that he relates these ideas about the nature of the soul to what is present in ordinary consciousness. He is prompted to do this because he wants to remain within the conception which appears to him to be justified by natural science. But this conception can only arrive through its means of cognition at that which is present in the soul as the content of ordinary consciousness. This content, however, is not the reality of the soul, but its mirror image. Brentano sees through this only from the one side of understanding, but not from the other, observation. In his concepts he creates a picture of mental phenomena that take place in the reality of the soul; when he observes, he believes he has a reality in the mirror image of the mental.^{94Compare with this the 7th chapter of the "Sketchy Extensions of the Content..." at the end of this writing. "7. Franz Brentano's separation of the spiritual from the non-sensual."} Another philosophical school of thought that Brentano disliked intensely, that of Eduard von Hartmann, was also based on a scientific way of thinking. Eduard von Hartmann saw through the mirror-image character of ordinary consciousness. He therefore sees no reality in this consciousness. But he also resolutely rejects bringing the corresponding reality into human consciousness at all. He relegates this reality to the realm of the unconscious. He only allows the hypothetical application of the concepts formed by ordinary consciousness beyond this realm to speak about it.^{95The views of Eduard von Hartmann aimed at the above are presented in a clear manner in his two books: "Die moderne Psychologie" (Leipzig 1901, Hermann Haackes Verlag) and "Grundriß der Psychologie" (Volume 3 of E. v. Hartmanns System der Philosophie im Grundriß, Bad Sachsa im Harz 1908, Hermann Haacke, Verlagsbuchhandlung).} Anthroposophy claims that spiritual observation is possible beyond this field. And that concepts are also accessible to this spiritual observation, which must be as little merely hypothetical as those gained in the sensory field. - Eduard von Hartmann's supersensible is not meant to be something directly recognized, but something inferred from what is directly recognized. Hartmann is one of those philosophers of recent times who do not want to form concepts if they do not have the statements of sensory observation and experience in ordinary consciousness as the starting point for this conceptualization. Brentano forms such concepts. But he is mistaken about the reality in which they can be formed through observation. His mind proves to be strangely ambivalent. He would like to be a natural scientist in the sense in which the scientific way of thinking has developed in recent times. And yet he has to form concepts that can only be justified in the light of this mode of conception if one does not accept it as the only valid one. This dichotomy in Brentano's spirit of research can be explained to anyone who delves into Brentano's first writings, his book "On the manifold meaning of existence according to Aristotle" (1862), his "Psychology of Aristotle" (1867) and his "Creatinism of Aristotle" (1882). ^{96Franz Brentano: "Von der mannigfachen Bedeutung des Seienden nach Aristoteles" (Freiburg im Breisgau, Herdersche Verlagshandlung); his "Die Psychologie des Aristoteles" (Mainz, Verlag von Franz Kirchheim); his "Über den Creatinismus des Aristoteles " (Vienna, Tempsky).} In these writings, Brentano follows Aristotle's train of thought with exemplary erudition. And in this pursuit, he appropriates a way of thinking that cannot be exhausted in the concepts that are valid in anthropology. In these writings, he focuses on a concept of the soul that derives the soul from the spirit. This soul originating from the spirit makes use of the organism formed from physical processes in order to form ideas within sensory existence. What forms ideas in the soul is of a spiritual nature, is Aristotle's "nus". But this "Nus" is of a twofold nature, as "Nus pathetikos" it is purely suffering; it allows itself to be stimulated to form its ideas by the impressions given to it by the organism. But in order for these ideas to appear as they are in the active soul, this activity must work as "Nus poietikos". What the "Nus pathetikos" delivers would be mere appearances in a dark soul-being; they are illuminated by the "Nus poietikos". Brentano says about this: The nus poietikos is the light that illuminates the phantasms and makes the spiritual in the sensual visible to our mind's eye.^{97Compare Brentano: "Die Psychologie des Aristoteles", page 172 ff.}

If one wants to understand Brentano, it is not only a question of the extent to which he incorporated Aristotelian ideas into his own convictions, but above all of the fact that he moved devotedly within these ideas with his own thinking. In this way, however, this thinking was active in an area in which the starting point of sensory perception, and thus the anthropological basis for the formation of concepts, is not present. And this basic trait of thought has remained in Brentano's research. He only wants to accept what can be recognized according to the pattern of the current scientific mode of conception; but he must form thoughts that do not belong to this realm. Now, according to the purely scientific method, something can only be said about the phenomena of the soul in so far as these are the mirror image of the truly essential nature of the soul caused by the organization of the body, that is, in so far as they arise and pass away in their mirror-image character with the organization of the body. What Brentano must think about the reality of the soul, however, is something spiritual, independent of bodily organization, which even through the "Nus poietikos" makes the spiritual in the sensual visible to our mind's eye. - The fact that Brentano's thinking can move in such areas forbids him to think of the soul's existence as arising through the organization of the body and passing away with the organization of the body. But because he rejects supersensible observation, no content can be observable to him in this soul-being that reaches beyond physical being. As soon as he is supposed to ascribe a content to the soul that it could develop without the help of the body's organization, Brentano feels himself to be in a world for which he can find no concepts. In such a state of mind, he turns to Aristotle and also finds in him concepts of the soul that yield no other content for an extra-bodily existence than that acquired in bodily existence. Characteristic in its one-sidedness is what Brentano says in this respect in his "Psychologle des Aristoteles": "Just as a person is no longer a complete substance when a foot or another limb is torn from him, so of course he is even less a complete substance when the whole bodily part has fallen victim to death. The spiritual part still exists, but those are greatly mistaken who, like Plato, believe that the separation from the body is a furtherance for it and, as it were, a liberation from oppressive imprisonment; for the soul must now renounce all the numerous services which the powers of the body have rendered it." ^{98Compare Brentano: "Psychologie des Aristoteles", page 196.}

Brentano had an extraordinarily interesting dispute with the philosopher Eduard Zeller about Aristotle's view of the nature of the soul. The latter claimed that Aristotle's opinion was to assume a pre-existence of the soul before its connection with the bodily organization, while Brentano denied Aristotle such a view and only let him think that the soul was first created into the bodily organization; it therefore had no pre-existence, but a postexistence after the dissolution of the body. ^{99For the content of the scientific dispute between Brentano and Zeller, see Brentano: "Offener Brief an Herrn Professor Dr. Eduard Zeller aus Anlaß meiner Schrift über die Lehre des Aristoteles von der Ewigkeit des Geistes" (Leipzig 1883, Duneker and Humhlot) and his: "Aristoteles' Lehre vom Ursprung des menschlichen Geistes" (Leipzig 1911, Veit and Comp.).}

[ 19 ] Brentano thought that only Plato, but not Aristotle, assumed a pre-existence. It cannot be denied that the reasons Brentano puts forward for his opinion and against Zeller's carry a lot of weight. Apart from Brentano's ingenious interpretation of corresponding Aristotelian assertions, there is a difficulty in attributing the view of the pre-existence of the soul to Aristotle, because such a view seems to contradict a principle of Aristotelian metaphysics. Aristotle says that a "form" can never exist before the "substance" that bears the form. The spherical form never exists without the material that fills it. But since Aristotle conceives of the soul as the "form" of the body's organization, it seems that one should not attribute to him that he thought the soul could exist before the emergence of the body's organization.

Brentano's concept of the soul is so caught up in the Aristotelian idea of the impossibility of pre-existence that he is unable to notice how this Aristotelian idea itself fails on an important point. Can one really think of "form" and "matter" in such a way that one only assumes that the form cannot exist before the matter that fills it? Surely the spherical form does not exist before the mass of matter that fills it? As it appears in the mass of matter, the spherical form is certainly not present before the agglomeration of matter. But before it shoots together, the forces are present which approach this substance, and the result of which is revealed to it in its spherical form. And in these forces, before the appearance of the spherical form, it certainly already lives in another way. ^{100The deception about a justification for the above-mentioned assertion of form and matter can only be felt with regard to the formation of the scientific mode of conception for the content of the concept of soul bound by the views on bodily organization, so he might have noticed that the Aristotelian concept of soul itself is afflicted with an inner contradiction. Thus, by observing Aristotle's worldview, he only gained the possibility of conceiving ideas about the soul that lift it out of the realm of bodily organization, but do not assign it a content that would allow it to be conceived independently of bodily organization in unbiased thinking.}

[ 20 ] In addition to Aristotle, Brentano also regards Leibniz as a philosopher to whom he pays particular tribute. He seems to have been particularly attracted by Leibniz's way of looking at the soul. One can now say that Leibniz has a way of looking at this area which appears to be a substantial extension of Aristotle's opinion. Whereas Aristotle makes the essential content of human thought dependent on sensory observation, Leibniz detaches this content from its sensory basis. Following Aristotle, one will recognize the proposition: there is nothing in thinking that was not previously in the senses (nihil est in intellectu, quod non fuerit in sensu); Leibniz, however, is of the opinion that nothing can arise from crystals, for example, because the form seems to emerge directly from the forces inherent in matter. But an unbiased mind cannot help but presuppose the forces of form within the material before the formed matter actually arises. But the Aristotelian conception is already completely untenable in the case of the plant, whose formative forces must certainly be sought not only in the conditions in the germ, but in effects from the external world, which are present indefinitely long before the formation of the sensuous plant. In thinking, what was not previously in the senses is external to thinking itself (nihil est in intellectu, quod non fuerit in sensu, nisi ipse intellectus). It would be incorrect to ascribe to Aristotle the view that the beingness that is active in thinking is a result of the bodily powers of action. But by making the nus pathetikos the suffering recipient of sensory impressions and the nus poietikos the illuminator of these impressions, nothing remained within his philosophy that could become the content of a soul life independent of sense being. In this respect, Leibniz's theorem proves more fruitful. Through it, attention is particularly drawn to the soul being independent of the organization of the body. However, this attention is restricted to the merely intellectual part of this being. And in this respect Leibnizen's theorem is one-sided. Nevertheless, it is a guideline that can lead to something in the present scientific age that Leibniz was not yet able to achieve. In his era, the ideas about the purely natural origin of the properties of bodily organization were still too imperfect for this. Today, things are different. Today we can to a certain extent recognize scientifically how the organic forces of the body are inherited from the ancestors, and how the soul works within these inherited forces of the organism. What is not admitted by many who believe themselves to be on the right "natural scientific standpoint", however, proves to be a necessary view when natural scientific knowledge is correctly grasped: that everything through which the soul works in physical life is conditioned by the bodily forces that pass from ancestors to descendants in the physical line of inheritance, except the content of the soul itself. This is roughly how one can currently extend Leibniz's theorem. But then it is the anthropological justification of the anthroposophical way of looking at things. It then refers the soul to seek its essential content in a spiritual world, and to do so through a different kind of cognition than that customary in anthopology. For this is only accessible to what is experienced in ordinary consciousness through the organization of the body.^{101There are thinkers who find the view that the core of man's soul is not inherited from his ancestors, but comes from the spiritual world, repulsive, because they see the process of procreation degraded by it. These thinkers include the philosopher J. Frobschammer (see his book "On the origin of human souls", page 98 ff.). He believes that it must be assumed that the souls of children also originate from their parents, since "these living human beings do not beget mere bodies or even animals" (see Frohschammer's essay on "The Philosophy of Thomas Aquinas", Leipzig, Brockhaus 1889, page VIII). An objection arising from this opinion cannot affect the view presented in this paper. For one need not think of the soul-core, which, coming from the spiritual world, unites itself with that inherited from the ancestors, before conception without a relation to the souls of the parents, even if one does not think of it as arising through the act of procreation.}

[ 21 ] One can be of the opinion that Brentano had all the preconditions, based on Leibniz, to open up a view of the essence of the soul anchored in the spirit, and to reinforce this view with the scientific findings of more recent times. Anyone who follows his explanations will see the path that lay before him. The path to a purely spiritually recognizable soul being could have been revealed before him if he had developed what was within the scope of his attention when he wrote down sentences such as this: "But how is" the "intervention of the deity" in the appearance of a human soul in a body "to be conceived? Did it, having creatively produced the spiritual part of man from eternity, now unite it with an embryo in such a way that it, which hitherto existed as a special spiritual substance in its own right, now ceased to be a real being in its own right and became part of a human nature, or did it only now creatively produce it? - If Aristotle assumed the former, he must have believed that the same spirit would be joined again and again with other and other embryos; for, according to him, the human race continues to be generated into infinity, but the number of spirits existing from eternity can only be finite. All commentators agree that Aristotle rejected palingenesis in the mature period of his philosophizing. So this possibility is excluded."^{102Compare Brentano: "Aristoteles und seine Weltanschauung" (1911), page 134.} What does not lie in Aristotle's line of thought, the justification of the spiritual view of the repeated lives of the human soul through palingenesis: for Brentano it could have resulted from the combination of the concepts of the soul refined in Aristotle with the findings of the newer natural sciences. - He could have followed this path all the more because he was receptive to the epistemology of medieval philosophy. He who really grasps this doctrine of knowledge acquires a sum of ideas which are suitable for relating the newer scientific results to the spiritual world in a way that cannot be understood by the ideas of purely scientific-anthropological research. What a way of thinking such as that of Thomas Aquinas can achieve for the deepening of natural science on the spiritual side is currently completely misjudged in many circles. It is believed in such circles that the more recent scientific findings require a turning away from this way of thinking. The truth is that the scientifically recognized essence of the world is initially to be encompassed by thoughts which, on closer inspection, remain unfinished in themselves. Their completion would be to think of them themselves as such an essence in the soul, as they are thought of in the way Thomas Aquinas conceived them. Brentano was also on the way to gaining a proper relationship to this mode of conception. He writes: "When I wrote my treatise 'On the manifold meaning of existence according to Aristotle' and later my 'Psychology of Aristotle', I wanted to promote the understanding of his doctrine in two ways; first and foremost directly by elucidating some of the most important doctrinal points, then indirectly, but in a more general way, by opening up new sources of support for the explanation. I drew attention to the astute commentaries of Thomas Aquinas and showed how some doctrines are presented more correctly in them than by later expositors." ^{103Compare Brentano: "Aristoteles' Lehre vom Ursprung des menachlichen Geistes" (1911), page 1.}

Brentano obstructed the path that could have presented itself to him through such studies due to his inclination towards the way of thinking of Bacon, Locke and everything that is philosophically related to such a way of thinking. Above all, he considered this mode of conception to be the appropriate one for scientific research.^{104Compare, among others, Brentano: "Die vier Phasen der Philosophie" (1895), page 22, and the whole attitude of his Vienna inaugural address "Über die Gründe der Entmutigung auf philosophischem Gebiet" (Vienna 1874, W. Braumüller).} Compare, among others, Brentano: "Die vier Phasen der Philosophie" (1895), page 22, and the whole attitude of his Vienna inaugural address "Über die Gründe der Entmutigung auf philosophischem Gebiet" (Vienna 1874, W. Braumüller). Braumüller). But it is precisely this way of thinking that leads to conceiving the content of the life of the soul as completely dependent on the world of the senses. And because this way of thinking only wants to proceed anthropologically, only that which is in truth not a psychological reality, but only a reflection of this reality, namely the content of ordinary consciousness, comes into its realm as a psychological result. - If Brentano had seen through the mirror-image nature of ordinary consciousness, he would not have been able to stop at the gate that leads to anthroposophy in the pursuit of anthropological research. - It will certainly be possible to argue against this view of mine that Brentano lacked the gift of spiritual vision; that is why he did not seek the transition from anthropology to anthroposophy, even if he was driven by his particular spiritual idiosyncrasy to characterize the phenomena of the soul in such an interesting way that this form can be justified by anthroposophy. But I do not have this opinion. I am not of the opinion that spiritual vision is only attainable as a special gift for exceptional personalities. I must regard this vision as a faculty of the human soul which everyone can acquire if he awakens within himself the spiritual experiences that lead to it. And Brentano's nature seems to me to be particularly suited to such awakening.^{105Compare the 8th chapter of the "Sketchy Extensions of the Contents..." given at the end of this work. "8 An objection often raised against anthroposophy."} However, I believe that such awakening can be prevented by theories that contradict it. That one does not allow vision to arise if one becomes entangled in ideas that call its justification into question from the outset. And Brentano did not allow vision to arise in his soul because the ideas that justified it so beautifully were always subject to those that rejected it and made him fear that through it he would "lose himself in the labyrinthine corridors of a pseudo-philosophy".^{106Cf. above p. 81f.}

[ 22 ] In 1895, Brentano published a reprint of a lecture he had given at the "Literarische Gesellschaft in Wien" with reference to H. Lorm's book "Der grundlose Optimismus". ^{107Brentano: "Die vier Phasen der Philosophie und ihr augenblicklicher Stand" (Stuttgart 1895, J. G. Cottasche Buchhandlung Nachfolger).} This contains his view on "die vier Phasen der Philosophie und ihren augenblicklichen Stand". In these remarks, Brentano argues that the development of philosophical research can be compared to a certain extent with the history of the fine arts. "While other sciences, as long as they are practiced at all, show a steady progress, which is interrupted only once by a period of stagnation, philosophy, like the fine arts, shows periods of decadence alongside the periods of ascending development, which are often no less rich, indeed richer in epoch-making phenomena than the periods of healthy fertility." ^{108Cf. "Four Phases", p. 9.} Brentano distinguishes three such periods, which run from healthy fertility to decadence, in the course of the development of philosophy. Each begins with the fact that pure philosophical wonder at the mysteries of the world gives rise to truly scientific interest, and this interest seeks knowledge out of a genuine, pure instinct for knowledge. This healthy epoch is followed by another, in which the first stage of decay appears. Here pure scientific interest recedes, and thoughts are sought through which one can regulate social and personal life and find one's way in it. Philosophy no longer wants to serve the pure pursuit of knowledge, but the interests of life. A further decline occurs in the third epoch. Due to the uncertainty of thoughts that have arisen from an interest that is not purely scientific, people become confused about the possibility of true knowledge and fall into skepticism. The fourth epoch is then that of complete decline. The doubt of the third epoch has undermined all scientific foundations of philosophy. One seeks to arrive at the truth from unscientific foundations in fantastic, blurred concepts, through mystical experience. Brentano thinks of the first circle of development as beginning with Greek natural philosophy; and with Aristotle, he believes, the healthy phase ends. He holds Anaxagoras in particularly high esteem within this phase. He is of the opinion that, although at this time the Greeks were at the very beginning with regard to many scientific questions, the nature of their research had such a character that it was justified by a strict scientific way of thinking. This first phase was followed by the Stoics and the Epicureans. They already bring a decline. They wanted ideas that were at the service of life. In the Newer Academy, but especially through Aenesidemus, Agrippa and Sextus Empiricus, we see skepticism eradicating all belief in certain scientific truths. And in Neoplatonism, with Ammonius Sakkas, Plotinus, Porphyrius, Jamblichus and Proclus, scientific research is replaced by mystical experience in the labyrinthine corridors of a pseudo-philosophy.

In the Middle Ages, these four phases were repeated, although perhaps not with such clarity. With Thomas Aquinas, a philosophically sound way of thinking emerged that revived Aristotelianism in a new form. In the following period, represented by Duns Scotus, a kind of analogy to the first Greek period of decay reigns through an art of disputation driven to the monstrous. This is followed by nominalism, which has a skeptical character. William of Occam rejects the view that general ideas refer to something real, and thus gives the content of human truth only the value of a conceptual summary standing outside reality, while reality is supposed to lie only in individual things. This analogy of skepticism is replaced by the mysticism of Eckhardt, Tauler, Heinrich Suso, the author of German Theology and others, which does not follow scientific paths. These are the four phases of philosophical development in the Middle Ages.

In modern times, a healthy development based on scientific thinking begins again with Bacon of Verulam, in which Descartes, Locke and Leibniz continue to have a fruitful effect. They were followed by the French and English philosophies of the Enlightenment, in which principles that were found congenial to life dominated the philosophical thought process. Then came skepticism with David Hume, followed by the phase of decline that began in England with Thomas Reid and in Germany with Kant. Brentano sees a side to Kant's philosophy that allows him to link it with Plotinus' period of decline in Greek philosophy. He criticizes Kant for not seeking the truth, like a scientific researcher, in the correspondence of ideas with real objects, but rather in the fact that objects should be determined by human imagination. Brentano thus believes that Kant's philosophy must be ascribed a kind of mystical basic trait, which then manifests itself in complete unscientificness in the philosophy of decay of Fichte, Schelling and Hegel.

Brentano hoped for a new upswing in philosophy through scientific work within its field along the lines of the scientific way of thinking that had become dominant in recent times. To introduce such a philosophy, he put forward his thesis: the true philosophical mode of research is none other than that recognized in the scientific mode of cognition.^{109Cf. above p. 83f. of this work.} He wanted to dedicate his life's work to it.

[ 23 ] Brentano says in the preface to the reprint of the lecture in which he gave this view of the "four phases of philosophy": this "his view of the history of philosophy may seem new to some; to me it has been established for years and has been the basis of academic lectures on the history of philosophy for more than two decades, as it has been to me and to some of my students. That they will encounter prejudices, and that these will perhaps be too powerful to give way at the first impact, I am under no illusion. Nevertheless, I hope from the facts and considerations presented that they will not fail to make an impression on those who follow them thoughtfully." ^{110Compare Brentano: "The four phases of philosophy...", page 5 f. 115}

[ 24 ] I am of the opinion that one can receive a significant impression from Brentano's remarks. Insofar as they offer a classification of the phenomena occurring in the course of philosophical development from a certain point of view, they are based on well-founded insights into this course of development. The four phases of philosophy offer differences that are grounded in reality. - But as soon as one enters into a consideration of the forces driving the individual phases, one cannot find that Brentano characterizes these forces accurately. This is immediately apparent in his view of the first phase of ancient philosophy. The basic features of Greek philosophy from its Jonian beginnings to Aristotle certainly exhibit many traits that give Brentano the right to see in them a scientific way of thinking in his sense. But does this way of thinking really come about through what Brentano calls the scientific method? Are the thoughts of these Greek philosophers not rather a result of what they experienced in their own souls as the nature of man and his position in relation to the universe? ^{111In the first volume of my book "The Riddles of Philosophy", I attempted to answer this question in the affirmative. There I endeavor to show how the first Greek philosophers did not arrive at their ideas from the observation of nature, but because they judged external nature from the experience of their inner soul. Thales said that everything came from water, because he experienced this water-creation process as the essence of his own human inner being. And so did the philosophers related to him. (Compare my "Riddles of Philosophy", page 52 ff.)} Whoever answers this question properly will find that the inner impulses for the thought content of this philosophy found direct expression precisely in Stoicism, in Epicureanism, in the entire practical philosophy of life of the later Greek period. One can see how the forces of the soul which Brentano finds active in the second phase are the starting point for the first phase of the philosophy of antiquity. These forces were turned towards the sensual and social manifestation of the universe and could therefore only appear imperfectly in the phase of skepticism, which is driven to doubt the immediate reality of this manifestation, and in the following phase of seeing knowledge, which must go beyond this form. For this reason, these phases within the philosophy of antiquity show themselves as those of decay.

And what forces of the soul are at work in the philosophical development of the Middle Ages? No one who really knows the facts in question will be able to doubt that Thomism represents the height of this development in relation to the conditions Brentano has in mind. But one cannot fail to recognize that, through the Christian standpoint of Thomas Aquinas, the soul forces at work in the Greek philosophy of life no longer act merely out of philosophical impulses, but have taken on a supra-philosophical character. But what impulses are at work in Thomas Aquinas, insofar as he is a philosopher? One need have no inclination for the weaknesses of the nominalist philosophers of the Middle Ages; but one will nevertheless be able to find that the soul impulses at work in nominalism also form the subjective basis for Thomistic realism. If Thomas recognizes the general concepts which summarize the phenomena of sense perception as that which refers to a spiritually real thing, then he gains the strength for this realistic way of conceiving from the feeling of what these concepts, apart from the fact that they refer to sense phenomena, mean in the existence of the soul itself. Precisely because Thomas did not relate the general concepts directly to the occurrences of sense existence, he felt how another reality shines into them, and how they are actually only signs for the phenomena of sense life. When this undertone of Thomism emerged in Nominalism as an independent philosophy, it naturally had to reveal its one-sidedness. The feeling that the concepts experienced in the soul establish a realism turned to the spiritual had to disappear, and the other had to prevail, that the general concepts are mere summarizing names. If one understands the nature of nominalism in this way, one also understands the second phase of medieval philosophy that preceded it, Scotism, as a transition to nominalism. However, one cannot help but understand the entire power of medieval thought, insofar as it is philosophy, from the basic conception that manifested itself in a one-sided way in nominalism. But then one will come to the view that the real driving forces of this philosophy lie in the impulses of the soul, which, in the sense of Brentano's classification, must be described as belonging to the third phase. And in the epoch which Brentano characterizes as the mystical phase of the Middle Ages, it also becomes clear how the mystics belonging to it, moved by the nominalistic nature of understanding knowledge, turn not to this but to other soul forces in order to penetrate to the core of world phenomena.

If we now trace the effectiveness of the driving forces of the soul in the philosophy of more recent times along the lines of Brentano's classification, we find that the inner characteristics of this epoch are quite different from those recorded by Brentano. The phase of scientific thought, which Brentano finds realized by Bacon of Verulam, Descartes, Locke, Leibniz, does not allow itself to be thought of as purely scientific in the Brentanoan sense because of certain traits of its own. How is one to approach Descartes' basic idea "I think, therefore I am" in purely scientific terms; how is one to bring Leibniz's monadology, or his "predetermined harmony", into Brentano's scientific mode of conception? Brentano's conception of the second phase, to which he assigns French and English Enlightenment philosophy, also causes difficulties if one wants to remain with his ideas. One will certainly not want to deny that this epoch had the character of a period of decline in philosophy; but one can understand it from the fact that in its bearers the extra-philosophical soul impulses, which were energetically effective in the Christian view of life, were paralyzed, so that a relationship to the supersensible world forces could not be found philosophically. At the same time, the nominalistic skepticism of the Middle Ages was still at work, preventing the search for a relationship between the content of knowledge experienced by the soul and a spiritual reality.

And if we then proceed to modern skepticism and the way of thinking that Brentano ascribes to a mystical phase, then we lose the possibility of agreeing with his classification. Certainly, the skeptical phase must begin with David Hume. But to characterize Kant, the critic, as a mystic proves to be a very one-sided characterization. And the philosophies of Fichte, Schelling, Hegel and other thinkers of the period following Kant cannot be characterized as mystical, especially if one takes Brentano's concept of mysticism as a basis. Rather, one will find a common basic trait in the sense of Brentano's classification from David Hume to Kant and Hegel. This consists in the rejection of drawing the philosophical world view of a true reality on the basis of those ideas that are derived from the sensory world. As paradoxical as it may seem to call Hegel a skeptic, he is a skeptic in the sense that he does not attribute any direct value of reality to ideas taken from nature. One does not depart from Brentano's concept of skepticism if one understands the development of philosophy from Hume to Hegel as the phase of modern skepticism. The fourth modern phase can only begin after Hegel. However, Brentano would certainly not want to bring what appears in it as a scientific mode of conception into the vicinity of mysticism. But consider the way in which Brentano himself wanted to place himself in this epoch with his philosophizing. With an energy that can hardly be surpassed, he demands a scientific method for philosophy. In his psychological research, he strives to maintain this method. And what he brings to light is a justification of anthroposophy. What would have to appear as a continuation of his anthropological striving, if he were to proceed in the sense of what he presented, would be anthroposophy. However, an anthroposophy that is in full harmony with the scientific way of thinking.

Is not Brentano's life's work itself the most valid proof that the fourth phase of modern philosophy must draw its impulses from those powers of the soul which Neoplatonism as well as the mysticism of the Middle Ages wanted to exert but could not because they were not able to reach such an experience of spiritual reality with the inner workings of the soul that takes place in complete conscious clarity of thought (or of concepts)? Just as Greek philosophy drew its strength from the impulses of the soul, which Brentano sees being realized in the second philosophical phase, from the practical philosophy of life; just as medieval philosophy owes its strength to the impulses of the third phase, to scepticism; so modern philosophy must draw its impulses from the basic forces of the fourth phase, from cognitive seeing. If Brentano can therefore assume in Neoplatonism and in medieval mysticism philosophies of decay in accordance with his way of thinking, then one could recognize in anthroposophy, which supplements anthropology, the fruitful phase of modern philosophy, if one leads this philosopher's own ideas about the development of philosophy to the consequences which he did not draw himself, but which arise quite naturally from them.

[ 25 ] In Brentano's marked relationship to the cognitive demands of the present, it is well situated that one receives impressions when reading his writings that are not exhausted in what the immediate content of the concepts he puts forward contains. There are undertones everywhere in this reading. These come from a life of the soul that lies far behind the ideas expressed. What Brentano stimulates in the reader's mind often has a stronger effect on him than what the author says in sharply defined ideas. One also often feels compelled to return to reading Brentano's writings. One may have thought through much of what is currently being said about the relationship of philosophy to other concepts of knowledge; Brentano's writing "On the Future of Philosophy" will almost always come to mind in such thinking. This essay reproduces a lecture he gave at the "Philosophical Society" in Vienna in 1892 in order to counter the views on the future of philosophy that the legal scholar Adolf Exner had put forward in an inauguration speech on "political education" (1891).^{112Brentano: "On the Future of Philosophy". With apologetic-critical consideration of Adolf Exner's inauguration speech "On Political Education" as Rector of Vienna University (Vienna, Alfred Hölder, 1893).} The reprint of the lecture is accompanied by "Notes", which provide far-reaching historical perspectives on the intellectual development of mankind. - In this writing, everything that can arise for the observer of the current scientific way of thinking about the necessity of progressing from this way of thinking to an anthroposophical one is echoed.

[ 26 ] The bearers of this scientific way of thinking usually live in the belief that it is imposed on them by the real being of things itself. They are of the opinion that they arrange their knowledge in such a way as reality reveals itself. But this belief is a delusion. The truth is that in recent times the human soul, out of its own development over the course of thousands of years, has developed a need for the ideas that constitute the scientific world view. Helmholtz, Weisman, Huxley and others arrived at their ideas not because reality gave them these as the absolute truth, but because they had to form these ideas within themselves in order to throw a certain light through them on the reality that confronted them. One does not form a mathematical or mechanical view of the world because an extra-soul reality compels one to do so, but because one has formed mathematical and mechanical ideas in one's soul and thereby opened up an inner source of illumination for what is revealed in the outside world in a mathematical and mechanical way.

Although in general what has just been said applies to every stage of the development of the human soul, it appears in a special way in the newer scientific ideas. These ideas, if they are thought through logically from one side, destroy the concepts of the soul. This can be seen in the not insignificant but highly questionable concept of a "doctrine of the soul without a soul", which was not formed by philosophical dilettantes alone, but by very serious thinkers. ^{113This idea of a "doctrine of the soul without a soul" also belongs to the realm of the riddles at the "frontiers of cognition" identified in this paper; and if it is not lived through in such a way that it is taken as a starting point for the seeing consciousness, then it blocks access to the true cognition of the soul instead of showing a path to it.} Such ideas lead us to see more and more through the phenomena of ordinary consciousness in their dependence on the organization of the body. If it is not recognized at the same time that in what appears in this way as the soul, not the soul itself, but only its mirror image is revealed, then the real idea of the soul escapes contemplation, and the illusory idea appears, which sees in the soul only what is the result of the bodily organization. On the other hand, however, the latter view cannot be held by unbiased thinking. The ideas which natural science forms about nature prove to this unbiased thinking their spiritual connection with a reality lying behind nature, which is not revealed in these ideas themselves. No anthropological way of looking at things can arrive at exhaustive ideas about this connection on its own. For it does not enter the ordinary consciousness. - This fact is more evident in the present scientific conceptions than in past historical stages of knowledge. The latter, in observing the external world, still formed concepts which took into their content something of the spiritual basis of this external world. And the soul, in its own spirituality, felt itself to be one with the spirit of the external world. Modern natural science must, by its very nature, think of nature in purely natural terms. In this way it gains the possibility of justifying the content of its ideas through the observation of nature, but not the existence of these ideas themselves as inner soul-essence.

For this very reason, the genuinely scientific mode of conception is without foundation if it cannot justify its own existence through an anthroposophical observation. With anthroposophy one can profess the scientific way of thinking in an unrestricted way; without anthroposophy one will always want to make the futile attempt to discover the spirit itself from the results of scientific observation. The scientific ideas of recent times are precisely products of the coexistence of the soul with a spiritual world; but the soul can only know about this coexistence in living spiritual observation. ^{114Where a genuine scientific way of looking at things is heading is shown in an illuminating way by Oskar Hertwig's book "Das Werden der Organismen, Widerlegung von Darwins Zufallstheotie" (1916), which is outstanding in many respects. It is precisely when a work such as the one on which this book is based is so exemplarily scientific and methodical that it leads to countless experiences of the soul at the "borderlands of cognition".}

[ 27 ] One could easily come up with the question: Why does the soul seek to form scientific ideas if it thereby virtually creates a content that cuts it off from its spiritual foundation? From the point of view of such an opinion, which believes that scientific ideas are formed because the world reveals itself according to them, no answer can be found to this question. However, such an answer can be found if we look at the needs of spiritual life itself. With ideas such as those developed by a pre-scientific age alone, spiritual experience could never attain full consciousness of itself. It would indeed sense an indeterminate connection with the spirit in the ideas of nature, which contain spiritual elements, but it would not be able to experience the full, independent nature of the spirit. Therefore, in the development of mankind, the soul strives for the establishment of such ideas which do not contain this soul itself, in order to know itself independently of the existence of nature. The connection with the spirit, however, must not be sought through these ideas of nature, but through spiritual perception. The formation of the newer natural science is a necessary stage in the development of the human soul. One recognizes its basis when one understands how the soul needs it in order to find itself. On the other hand, one recognizes its epistemological implications when one sees through how it makes spiritual observation a necessity.^{115The above is presented in detail in my book: "The Riddles of Philosophy." To show how scientific knowledge proves its power in the progress of the soul of mankind is one of the basic ideas of this book.}

[ 28 ] Adolf Exner, against whose opinion Brentano's writing "The Future of Philosophy" is directed, was opposed to a natural science that wanted to develop the ideas of nature purely, but was not prepared to progress to anthroposophy when it came to grasping the reality of the soul. He found "scientific education" unfruitful for shaping the ideas that must be effective in the social coexistence of human beings. He therefore called for a way of thinking for the solution of the questions of social life facing the coming age that was not based on the natural sciences. He finds that the great legal questions which confronted the Romans were solved so fruitfully precisely because the Romans had little aptitude for a scientific way of thinking. And he attempts to show that the eighteenth century, despite its inclination towards a scientific way of thinking, proved to be little suited to conquering social issues. Exner focuses his attention on a scientific way of thinking that is not scientifically concerned with its own foundations. It is understandable that he came to his views in the face of such an approach. For it must shape its ideas in such a way that they present the natural in its purity to the soul. From them no impulse can be gained for thoughts that are fruitful in social life. For within this life souls are opposed to souls as such. Such an impulse can only arise when the soul is experienced in its spiritual nature through cognitive observation, when the scientific-anthropological view is complemented by the anthroposophical view.

Brentano carried ideas in his soul that certainly flowed into the anthroposophical field, even though he only wanted to remain in the anthropological field. His comments against Exner are therefore of resounding force, even if Brentano does not want to make the transition to anthroposophy himself. They show how Exner does not speak at all of what a self-understanding scientific way of thinking is really capable of, but how he is fighting a windmill battle against a way of thinking that misunderstands itself. One can read Brentano's writing and feel everywhere how justified everything is that points in this or that direction through his ideas, without finding that he completely expresses what he is referring to.

[ 29 ] With Franz Brentano, a personality has passed away whose work is an immeasurable gain to experience. This gain is completely independent of the degree of intellectual agreement one can have with this work. For it springs from the revelations of a human soul, which have their origin much deeper in the reality of the world than the sphere in which intellectual correspondences are found in ordinary life. And Brentano is a personality destined to continue to work in the spiritual development of humanity through impulses that are not limited to the continuation of the ideas he developed. I can well imagine how someone might disagree with what I have said here about Brentano's relationship to anthroposophy; but it seems impossible to me that, whatever one's scientific standpoint, one can arrive at less reverential feelings towards the value of Brentano's personality than those which underlie the intentions of my remarks, if one allows the philosophical spirit which wafts through the writings of this man to take effect on oneself.