The Story of My Life
GA 28
Chapter V
[ 1 ] I could not at that time bring myself to reflections concerning public life in Austria which might have taken a deeper hold in any way whatever upon my mind. I merely continued to observe the extraordinarily complicated relationships involved. Expressions which won my deeper interest I could find only in connection with Karl Julius Schröer. I had the pleasure of being with him often just at this time. His own fate was closely bound up with that of German Austria-Hungary. He was the son of Tobias Schröer, who conducted a German school in Presburg and wrote dramas as well as books on historical and aesthetic subjects. The last appeared under the name Christian Oeser, and they were favourite text-books. The poetic writings of Tobias Gottfried Schröer, although they are doubtless significant and received marked recognition within restricted circles, did not become widely known. The sentiment that breathes through them was opposed to the dominant political current in Hungary. They had to be published in part without the author's name in German regions outside of Hungary. Had the tendencies of the author's mind been known in Hungary, he would have risked, not only dismissal from his post, but also severe punishment.
[ 2 ] Karl Julius Schröer thus experienced the impulse toward Germanism even as a young man in his own home. Under this impulse he developed his intimate devotion to the German nature and German literature as well as a great devotion to everything belonging to Goethe or concerning him. The history of German poetry by Gervinus had a profound influence upon him. [ 3 ] He went in the fortieth year of the nineteenth century to Germany to pursue his studies in the German language and literature at the universities of Leipzig, Halle, and Berlin. After his return he was occupied in teaching German literature in his father's school, and in conducting a Seminar. He now became acquainted with the Christmas folk-plays which were enacted every year by the German colonists in the region of Presburg. There he was face to face with Germanism in a form profoundly congenial to him. The roving Germans who had come from the west into Hungary hundreds of years before had brought with them these plays of the old home, and continued to perform them as they had done at the Christmas festival in regions which no doubt lay in the neighbourhood of the Rhine. The Paradise story, the birth of Christ, the coming of the three kings were alive in popular form in these plays. Schröer then published them, as he heard them, or as he read them in old manuscripts that he was able to see at peasants' homes, using the title Deutsche Weinachtspiele aus Ungarn.1German Christmas Plays from Hungary.
[ 4 ] The delightful experience of living in the German folk life took an even stronger hold upon Schröer's mind. He made journeys in order to study German dialects in the most widely separated parts of Austria. Wherever the German folk was scattered in the Slavic, Magyar, or Italian geographical regions, he wished to learn their individuality. Thus came into being his glossary and grammar of the Zipser dialect, which was native to the south of the Carpathians; of the Gottschze dialect, which survived with a little fragment of German folk in Krain; the language of the Heanzen, which was spoken in western Hungary.
[ 5 ] For Schröer these studies were never merely a scientific task. He lived with his whole soul in the revelation of the folk-life, and wished by word and writing to bring its nature to the consciousness of those men who have been uprooted from it by life. He was then a professor in Budapest. There he could not feel at home in the presence of the prevailing current of thought; so he removed to Vienna, where at first he was entrusted with the direction of the evangelical schools, and where he later became a professor of the German language and literature. When he already occupied this position, I had the privilege of knowing him and of becoming intimate with him. At the time when this occurred, his whole sentiment and life were directed toward Goethe. He was engaged in editing the second part of Faust, and writing an introduction for this, and had already published the first part.
[ 6 ] When I went to call at Schröer's little library, which was also his work-room, I felt that I was in a spiritual atmosphere in the highest degree beneficial to my mental life. I understood at once why Schröer was maligned by those who accepted the prevailing literary-historical methods on account of his writings, and especially on account of his Geschichte der Deutschen Dichtung im neunzehnten Jahrhundert.2History of German Poetry in the Nineteenth Century. He did not write at all like the members of the Scherer school, who treated literary phenomena after the fashion of investigators in natural science. He had certain sentiments and ideas concerning literary phenomena, and he spoke these out in frank, manly fashion without turning his eyes much at the moment of writing to the “sources.” It had even been said that he had written his exposition “from the wrist out.”
[ 7 ] This interested me very little. I experienced a spiritual warmth when I was with him. I could sit by his side for hours. Out of his inspired heart the Christmas plays lived on his lips, the spirit of the German dialect, the course of the life of literature. The relation between dialect and cultured speech became perceptible to me in a practical way. I experienced a real joy when he spoke to me, as he had already done in his lectures, of the poet of the Lower Austrian dialect, Joseph Misson, who wrote the splendid poem, Da Naaz, a niederösterreichischer Bauernbua, geht ind Fremd.3Ignatius, a peasant boy of Lower Austria, goes abroad. Schröer then constantly gave me books from his library in which I could pursue further what was the content of this conversation. I always had, in truth, when I sat there alone with Schröer, the feeling that still another was present – Goethe's spirit. For Schröer lived so strongly in the spirit and the work of Goethe that in every sentiment or idea which entered his soul he feelingly asked the question, “Would Goethe have felt or thought thus?”
[ 8 ] I listened in a spiritual sense with the greatest possible sympathy to everything that came from Schröer. Yet I could not do otherwise even in his presence than build up independently in my own mind that toward which I was striving in my innermost spirit. Schröer was an idealist, and the world of ideas as such was for him that which worked as a propulsive force in the creation of nature and of man. I then found it indeed difficult to express in words for myself the difference between Schröer's way of thinking and mine. He spoke of ideas as the propelling forces in history. He felt life in the idea itself. For me the life of the spirit was behind the ideas, and these were only the phenomena of that life in the human soul. I could then find no other terms for my way of thinking than “objective idealism.” I wished thereby to denote that for me the reality is not in the idea; that the idea appears in man as the subject, but that just as colour appears on a physical object, so the idea appears on the spiritual object, and that the human mind – the subject – perceives it there as the eye perceives colour on a living being.
[ 9 ] My conception, however, Schröer very largely satisfied in the form of expression he used when we talked about that which reveals itself as “folk-soul.” He spoke of this as of a real spiritual being which lives in the group of individual men who belong to a folk. In this matter his words took on a character which did not pertain merely to the designation of an idea abstractly held. And thus we both observed the texture of ancient Austria and the individualities of the several folk-souls active in Austria. From this side it was possible for me to conceive thoughts concerning the state of public life which penetrated more deeply into my mind.
[ 10 ] Thus my experience at that time was strongly bound up with my relationship to Karl Julius Schröer. What, however, were more remote from him, and in which I strove most of all for an inner explanation, were the natural sciences. I wished to know that my “objective idealism” was in harmony with the knowledge of nature.
[ 11 ] It was during the period of my most earnest intercourse with Schröer that the question of the relation between the spiritual and natural worlds came before my mind in a new form. This happened at first quite independently of Goethe's way of thought concerning the natural sciences. For even Schröer could tell me nothing distinctive concerning this realm of Goethe's creative work. He was happy whenever he found in one or another natural scientist a generous recognition of Goethe's observations concerning the beings of plants and animals. As regards Goethe's theory of colour, however, he was met on all sides by natural scientific conceptions utterly opposed. So in this direction he developed no special opinion.
[ 12 ] My relationship to natural science was not at this time of my life influenced from this side, in spite of the fact that in my intercourse with Schröer I came into close touch with Goethe's spiritual life. It was determined much more by the difficulties I experienced when I had to think out the facts of optics in the sense of the physicist.
[ 13 ] I found that light and sound were thought of in an analogy which is invalid. The expressions “sound in general” and “light in general” were used. The analogy lay in the following: The individual tones and sounds were viewed as specially modified air-vibrations; and objective sound, outside of the human perception, was viewed as a state of vibration of the air. Light was thought of similarly. That which occurs outside of man when he has a perception by means of phenomena caused by light was defined as vibration in ether. The colours, then, are especially formed ether-vibrations. These analogies became at that time an actual torment to my inner life. For I believed myself perfectly clear in the perception that the concept “sound” is merely an abstract union of the individual occurrences in the sphere of sound; whereas “light” signifies a concrete thing over against the phenomena in the sphere of illumination. “Sound” was for me a composite abstract concept; “light” a concrete reality. I said to myself that light is really not perceived by the senses; “colours” are perceived by means of light, which manifests itself everywhere in the perception of colours but is not itself sensibly perceived. “White” light is not light, but that also is a colour. [ 14 ] Thus for me light became a reality in the sense-world, yet in itself not perceptible to the senses. Now there came before my mind the conflict between nominalism and realism as this was developed within scholasticism. The realists maintained that concepts were realities which lived in things and were simply reproduced out of these by human understanding. The nominalists maintained, on the contrary, that concepts were merely names formed by man which include together a complex of what is in the things, but names which have no existence themselves. It now seemed to me that the sound experience must be viewed in the nominalist manner and the experiences which proceed from light in the realist manner.
[ 15 ] I carried this orientation into the optics of the physicist. I had to reject much in this science. Then I arrived at perceptions which gave me a way to Goethe's colour theory.
On this side the door opened before me through which to approach Goethe's writings on natural science. I first took to Schröer brief treatises I had written on the basis of my views in the field of natural science. He could make but little of them; for they were not yet worked out on the basis of Goethe's way of thinking, but I had merely attached at the end this remark: “When men come to the point of thinking about nature as I have here set forth, then only will Goethe's researches in science be confirmed.” Schröer felt an inner pleasure when I made such a statement, but beyond this nothing then came of the matter. The situation in which I then found myself comes out in the following: Schröer related to me one day that he had spoken with a colleague who was a physicist. But, said the man, Goethe opposed himself to Newton, and Newton was “such a genius”; to which Schröer replied: But Goethe “also was a genius.” Thus again I felt that I had a riddle to solve with which I struggled entirely alone.
[ 16 ] In the views at which I had arrived in the physics of optics there seemed to me to be a bridge between what is revealed to insight into the spiritual world and that which comes out of researches in the natural sciences. I felt then a need to prove to sense experience, by means of certain experiments in optics in a form of my own, the thoughts which I had formed concerning the nature of light and that of colour.
It was not easy for me to buy the things needed for such experiments; for the means of living I derived from tutoring was little enough. Whatever was in any way possible for me I did in order to arrive at such plans of experimentation in the theory of light as would lead to an unprejudiced insight into the facts of nature in this field.
[ 17 ] With the physicist's usual arrangements for experiments I was familiar through my work in Reitlinger's physics laboratory. The mathematical treatment of optics was easy to me, for I had already pursued thorough courses in this field. In spite of all objections raised by the physicists against Goethe's theory of colour, I was driven by my own experiments farther and farther away from the customary attitude of the physicist toward Goethe. I became aware that all such experimentation is only the establishing of certain facts “about light” – to use an expression of Goethe's – and not experimentation with light itself. I said to myself: “The colours are not, in Newton's way of thinking, produced out of light; they come to manifestation when obstructions hinder the free unfolding of the light.” It seemed to me that this was the lesson to be learned directly from my experiments. [ 18 ] Through this, however, light was for me removed from the properly physical realities. It took its place as a midway stage between the realities perceptible to the senses and those visible to the spirit.
[ 19 ] I was not inclined forthwith to engage in a merely philosophical course of thinking about these things. But I held strongly to this: to read the facts of nature aright. And then it became constantly clearer to me how light itself does not enter the realm of the sense-perceptible, but remains on the farther side of this, while colours appear when the sense perceptible is brought into the realm of light. [ 20 ] I now felt myself compelled anew to press inward to the understanding of nature from the most diverse directions. I was led again to the study of anatomy and physiology. I observed the members of the human, animal, and plant organisms in their formations. In this study I came in my own way to Goethe's theory of metamorphosis. I became more and more aware how that conception of nature which is attainable through the senses penetrates through to that which was visible to me in spiritual fashion.
[ 21 ] If in this spiritual way I directed my look to the soul-activity of man, thinking, feeling, and willing, then the “spiritual man” took form for me, a clearly visible image. I could not linger in the abstractions in which men generally think when they speak of thinking, feeling, and willing. In these living manifestations I saw creative forces which set “the man as spirit” there before me. If I then turned my glance to the sense-manifestation of man, this became complete to my observation by means of the spirit-form which ruled in the sense-perceptible.
[ 22 ] I came upon the sensible-supersensible form of which Goethe speaks and which thrusts itself, both for the true natural vision and for the spiritual vision, between what the senses grasp and what the spirit perceives.
[ 23 ] Anatomy and physiology struggled through step by step to the sensible-supersensible form. And in this struggling I through my look fell, at first in a very imperfect way, upon the threefold organization of the human being, concerning which – after having pursued my studies regarding this for thirty years in silence – I first began to speak openly in my book Von Seelenrätzeln.4Riddles of the Soul. It then became clear to me that in that portion of the human organization in which the shaping is chiefly directed to the elements of the nerves and the senses, the sensible-supersensible form also stamps itself most strongly in the sense-perceptible. The head organization appeared to me as that in which the sensible-supersensible becomes most strongly visible in the sensible form. On the other hand, I was forced to look upon the organization consisting of the limbs as that in which the sensible-supersensible most completely submerges itself, so that in this organization the forces active in nature external to man pursue their work in the shaping of the human body. Between these poles of the human organization everything seemed to me to exist which expresses itself in a rhythmic manner, the processes of breathing, circulation, and the like. [ 24 ] At that time I found no one to whom I could have spoken of these perceptions. If I referred here or there to something of this, then it was looked upon at once as the result of a philosophic idea, whereas I was certain that I had disclosed these things to myself by means of an understanding drawn from unbiased anatomical and physiological experimentation.
[ 25 ] For the mood which depressed my soul by reason of this isolation in my perceptions I found an inner release only when I read over and over the conversation which Goethe had with Schiller as the two went away from a meeting of the Society for Scientific Research in Jena. They were both agreed in the view that nature should not be observed in such piece-meal fashion as had been done in the paper of the botanist Batsch which they had heard read. And Goethe with a few strokes drew before Schiller's eyes his “archetypal plant.” This through a sensible-supersensible form represents the plant as a whole out of which leaf, blossom, etc., reproducing the whole in detail, shape themselves. Schiller, because he had not yet overcome his Kantian point of view, could see in this “whole” only an “idea” which human understanding formed through observation of the details. Goethe would not allow this to pass. He saw spiritually the whole as he saw with his senses the group of details, and he admitted no difference in principle between the spiritual and the sensible perception, but only a transition from the one to the other. To him it was clear that both had the right to a place in the reality of experience. Schiller, however, did not cease to maintain that the archetypal plant was no experience, but an idea. Then Goethe replied, in his way of thinking, that in this case he perceived his ideas with his eyes. [ 26 ] There was for me a rest after a long struggle in my mind, in that which came to me out of the understanding of these words of Goethe, to which I believed I had penetrated Goethe's perception of nature revealed itself before my mind as a spiritual perception.
[ 27 ] Now, by reason of an inner necessity, I had to strive to work in detail through all of Goethe's scientific writings. At first I did not think of undertaking an interpretation of these writings, such as I soon afterward published in an introduction to them in Kürschner's Deutsche National Literatur. I thought much more of setting forth independently some field or other of natural science in the way in which this science now hovered before me as “spiritual.” [ 28 ] My external life was at that time not so ordered that I could accomplish this. I had to do tutoring in the most diverse subjects. The “pedagogical” situations through which I had to find my way were complex enough. For example, there appeared in Vienna a Prussian officer who for some reason or other had been forced to leave the German military service. He wished to prepare himself to enter the Austrian army as an officer of engineers. Through a peculiar course of fate I became his teacher in mathematics and physical-scientific subjects. I found in this teaching the deepest satisfaction; for my “scholar” was an extraordinarily lovable man who formed a human relationship with me when we had put behind us the mathematical and scientific developments he needed for his preparation. In other cases also, as in those of students who had completed their work and who were preparing for doctoral examinations, I had to give the instruction, especially in mathematics and the physical sciences.
[ 29 ] Because of this necessity of working again and again through the physical sciences of that time, I had ample opportunity of immersing myself in the contemporary views in these fields. In teaching I could give out only these views; what was most important to me in relation to the knowledge of nature I had still to carry locked up within myself.
[ 30 ] My activity as a tutor, which afforded me at that time the sole means of a livelihood, preserved me from one-sidedness. I had to learn many things from the foundation up in order to be able to teach them. Thus I found my way into the “mysteries” of book-keeping, for I found opportunity to give instruction even in this subject.
[ 31 ] Moreover, in the matter of pedagogical thought, there came to me from Schröer the most fruitful stimulus. He had worked for years as director of the Evangelical schools in Vienna, and he had set forth his experiences in the charming little book, Unterrichtsfrage.5Questions on Teaching. What I read in this could then be discussed with him. In regard to education and instruction, he spoke often against the mere imparting of information, and in favour of the evolution of the full and entire human being.
Chapter V
[ 1 ] Zu Gedanken über das öffentliche Leben Österreichs, die in irgend einer Art tiefer in meine Seele eingegriffen hätten, konnte ich damals nicht kommen. Es blieb beim Beobachten der außerordentlich komplizierten Verhältnisse. Aussprachen, die mir tieferes Interesse abgewannen, konnte ich nur mit Karl Julius Schröer haben. Ich durfte ihn gerade in dieser Zeit oft besuchen. Sein eigenes Schicksal hing eng zusammen mit dem der Deutschen Österreich-Ungarns. Er war der Sohn Tobias Gottfried Schröers, der in Preßburg ein deutsches Lyzeum leitete und Dramen, sowie geschichtliche und ästhetische Bücher schrieb. Die letzteren sind mit dem Namen Chr. Geser erschienen und waren beliebte Unterrichtsbücher. Die Dichtungen Tobias Gottfried Schröers sind, trotzdem sie zweifellos bedeutend sind und in engeren Kreisen große Anerkennung fanden, nicht bekannt geworden. Die Gesinnung, die sie atmeten, stand der herrschenden politischen Strömung in Ungarn entgegen. Sie mußten ohne Verfassernamen zum Teil im deutschen Auslande erscheinen. Wäre die geistige Richtung des Verfassers in Ungarn bekannt geworden, so hätte dieser nicht nur der Entlassung aus dem Amte, sondern sogar einer harten Bestrafung gewärtig sein müssen.
[ 2 ] Karl Julius Schröer erlebte so den Druck auf das Deutschtum schon in seiner Jugend im eigenen Hause. Unter diesem Druck entwickelte er seine intime Hingabe an deutsches Wesen und deutsche Literatur, sowie eine große Liebe zu allem, was an und um Goethe war. Die «Geschichte der deutschen Dichtung» von Gervinus war von tiefgehendem Einfluß auf ihn.
[ 3 ] Er ging in den vierziger Jahren des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts nach Deutschland, um an den Universitäten von Leipzig, Halle und Berlin deutsche Sprach- und Literaturstudien zu treiben. Nach seiner Rückkehr war er zunächst am Lyzeum seines Vaters als Lehrer der deutschen Literatur und Leiter eines Seminars tätig. Er lernte nun die volkstümlichen Weihnachtsspiele, die alljährlich von den deutschen Kolonisten in der Umgebung von Preßburg gespielt wurden, kennen. Da war deutsches Volkstum in für ihn tief sympathischer Art vor seiner Seele. Die vor Jahrhunderten aus westlicheren Gegenden in Ungarn eingewanderten Deutschen hatten sich diese Spiele aus der alten Heimat mitgebracht und spielten sie so weiter, wie sie sie um das Weihnachtsfest in alten Zeiten in Gegenden, die wohl in der Nähe des Rheines gelegen waren, aufgeführt hatten. Die Paradieseserzählung, die Geburt Christi, die Erscheinung der drei Könige lebten auf volkstümliche Art in diesen Spielen. Schröer veröffentlichte sie dann nach dem Anhören oder nach der Einsichtnahme in die alten Manuskripte, die er bei den Bauern zu sehen bekam, unter dem Titel «Deutsche Weihnachtsspiele aus Ungarn».
[ 4 ] Das liebevolle Einleben in deutsches Volkstum nahm Schröers Seele immer mehr in Anspruch. Er machte Reisen, um die deutschen Mundarten in den verschiedensten Gebieten Österreichs zu studieren. Überall, wo deutsches Volkstum in den slawischen, magyarischen, italienischen Landesteilen der Donaumonarchie eingestreut war, wollte er dessen Eigenart kennen lernen. So entstanden seine Wörterbücher und Grammatiken der Zipser Mundart, die im Süden der Karpaten heimisch war, der Gortscheer Mundart, die bei einem kleinen deutschen Volksteil in Krain lebte, der Sprache der Heanzen, die im westlichen Ungarn gesprochen wurde.
[ 5 ] Für Schröer waren diese Studien niemals eine bloß wissenschaftliche Aufgabe. Er lebte mit ganzer Seele in den Offenbarungen des Volkstums und wollte dessen Wesen durch Wort und Schrift zum Bewußtsein derjenigen Menschen bringen, die aus ihm durch das Leben herausgerissen sind. Er wurde dann Professor in Budapest. Da konnte er sich der damals herrschenden Strömung gegenüber nicht wohl fühlen. So übersiedelte er denn nach Wien, wo ihm zunächst die Leitung der evangelischen Schulen übertragen und wo er später Professor für deutsche Sprache und Literatur wurde. Als er schon diese Stellung innehatte, durfte ich ihn kennen lernen und ihm näher treten. In der Zeit, da dies geschah, war sein ganzes Sinnen und Leben Goethe zugewendet. Er arbeitete an der Ausgabe und Einleitung des zweiten Teiles des «Faust» und hatte den ersten Teil bereits erscheinen lassen.
[ 6 ] Wenn ich zu Besuchen in die kleine Bibliothek Schröers kam, die zugleich sein Arbeitszimmer war, fühlte ich mich in einer geistigen Atmosphäre, die meinem Seelenleben in starkem Maße wohltat. Ich wußte schon damals, wie Schröer von den Bekennern der herrschend gewordenen literarhistorischen Methoden wegen seiner Schriften, namentlich wegen seiner «Geschichte der deutschen Dichtung im neunzehnten Jahrhundert» angefeindet wurde. Er schrieb nicht so wie etwa die Mitglieder der Scherer-Schule, die wie ein Naturforscher die literarischen Erscheinungen behandelten. Er trug gewisse Empfindungen und Ideen über die literarischen Erscheinungen in sich und sprach diese rein menschlich aus, ohne viel das Auge im Zeitpunkt des Schreibens auf die «Quellen» zu lenken. Man hat sogar gesagt, er habe seine Darstellung «aus dem Handgelenk hingeschrieben».
[ 7 ] Mich interessierte das wenig. Ich erwarmte geistig, wenn ich bei ihm war. Ich durfte stundenlang an seiner Seite sitzen. Aus seinem begeisterten Herzen lebten in seiner mündlichen Darstellung die Weihnachtsspiele, der Geist der deutschen Mundarten, der Verlauf des literarischen Lebens auf. Das Verhältnis der Mundart zu der Bildungssprache wurde mir praktisch anschaulich. Eine wahre Freude hatte ich, als er mir, was er auch schon in Vorlesungen getan hatte, von dem Dichter in niederösterreichischer Mundart, Joseph Misson, sprach, der die herrliche Dichtung « Da Naaz, a niederösterreichischer Baurnbua, geht ind Fremd» geschrieben hat. Schröer gab mir dann immer Bücher aus seiner Bibliothek mit, in denen ich weiterverfolgen konnte, was Inhalt des Gespräches war. Ich hatte wirklich immer, wenn ich so allein mit Schröer saß, das Gefühl, daß noch ein Dritter anwesend war: Goethes Geist. Denn Schröer lebte so stark in Goethes Wesen und Werken, daß er bei jeder Empfindung oder Idee, die in seiner Seele auftraten, sich gefühlsmäßig die Frage vorlegte: Würde Goethe so empfunden oder gedacht haben?
[ 8 ] Ich hörte geistig mit der allergrößten Sympathie alles, was von Schröer kam. Dennoch konnte ich nicht anders, als auch ihm gegenüber, das, wonach ich geistig intim strebte, in der eigenen Seele ganz unabhängig aufbauen. Schröer war Idealist; und die Ideenwelt als solche war für ihn das, was in Natur- und Menschenschöpfung als treibende Kraft wirkte. Mir war die Idee der Schatten einer volllebendigen Geisteswelt. Ich fand es damals sogar schwierig, für mich selbst den Unterschied zwischen Schröers und meiner Denkungsart in Worte zu bringen. Er redete von Ideen als von den treibenden Mächten in der Geschichte. Er fühlte Leben in dem Dasein der Ideen. Für mich war das Leben des Geistes hinter den Ideen, und diese nur dessen Erscheinung in der Menschenseele. Ich konnte damals kein anderes Wort für meine Denkungsart finden als «objektiver Idealismus». Ich wollte damit sagen, daß für mich das Wesentliche an der Idee nicht ist, daß sie im menschlichen Subjekt erscheint, sondern daß sie wie etwa die Farbe am Sinneswesen an dem geistigen Objekte erscheint, und daß die menschliche Seele - das Subjekt - sie da wahrnimmt, wie das Auge die Farbe an einem Lebewesen.
[ 9 ] Meiner Anschauung kam aber Schröer in hohem Grade mit seiner Ausdrucksform entgegen, wenn wir das besprachen, was sich als «Volksseele» offenbart. Er sprach von dieser als von einem wirklichen geistigen Wesen, das sich in der Gesamtheit der einzelnen Menschen, die zu einem Volke gehören, darlebt Da nahmen seine Worte einen Charakter an, der nicht bloß auf die Bezeichnung einer abstrakt gehaltenen Idee ging. Und so betrachteten wir beide das Gefüge des alten Österreich und die in demselben wirksamen Individualitäten der Volksseelen. - Von dieser Seite war es mir möglich, Gedanken über die öffentlichen Zustände zu fassen, die tiefer in mein Seelenleben eingriffen.
[ 10 ] So hing ganz stark in der damaligen Zeit mein Erleben mit meinem Verhältnis zu Karl Julius Schröer zusammen. Was ihm aber ferner lag, und womit ich vor allem nach einer innerlichen Auseinandersetzung strebte, das waren die Naturwissenschaften. Ich wollte auch meinen «objektiven Idealismus» im Einklange mit der Naturerkenntnis wissen.
[ 11 ] Es war in der Zeit meines lebhaftesten Verkehrs mit Schröer, als mir die Frage nach dem Verhältnis von geistiger und natürlicher Welt in erneuerter Art vor die Seele trat. Es geschah dies zunächst noch ganz unabhängig von Goethes naturwissenschaftlicher Denkungsart. Denn auch Schröer konnte mir nichts Entscheidendes über dieses Gebiet Goethe'schen Schaffens sagen. Er hatte seine Freude darüber, wenn er bei diesem oder jenem Naturforscher eine wohlwollende Anerkennung von Goethes Betrachtung des Pflanzen- und Tierwesens fand. Für die Farbenlehre Goethes traf er aber überall bei naturwissenschaftlich Gebildeten entschiedene Ablehnung. So entwickelte er nach dieser Richtung keine besondere Meinung.
[ 12 ] Mein Verhältnis zur Naturwissenschaft wurde in dieser Zeit meines Lebens, trotzdem ich im Umgange mit Schröer an Goethes Geistesleben nahe herankam, von dieser Seite her nicht beeinflußt. Es bildete sich vielmehr an den Schwierigkeiten aus, die ich hatte, wenn ich die Tatsachen der Optik im Sinne der Physiker nachdenken sollte.
[ 13 ] Ich fand, daß man das Licht und den Schall in der naturwissenschaftlichen Betrachtung in einer Analogie dachte, die unstatthaft ist. Man sprach von «Schall im Allgemeinen» und «Licht im Allgemeinen». Die Analogie lag im Folgenden: man sieht die einzelnen Töne und Klänge als besonders modifizierte Luftschwingungen an, und das Objektive des Schalles, außer dem menschlichen Erlebnis der Schallempfindung, als einen Schwingungszustand der Luft. Ähnlich dachte man für das Licht. Man definierte, was außer dem Menschen sich abspielt, wenn er eine durch das Licht bewirkte Erscheinung wahrnimmt, als Schwingung im Äther. Die Farben sind dann besonders gestaltete Ätherschwingungen. Mir wurde damals diese Analogie zu einem wahren Peiniger meines Seelenlebens. Denn ich vermeinte, völlig im klaren darüber zu sein, daß der Begriff «Schall» nur eine abstrakte Zusammenfassung der einzelnen Vorkommnisse in der tönenden Welt ist, während «Licht» für sich ein Konkretes gegenüber den Erscheinungen in der beleuchteten Welt darstellt. - «Schall» war für mich ein zusammengefaßter abstrakter Begriff, «Licht» eine konkrete Wirklichkeit. Ich sagte mir, das Licht wird gar nicht sinnlich wahrgenommen; es werden «Farben» wahrgenommen durch Licht, das sich in der Farbenwahrnehmung überall offenbart, aber nicht selbst sinnlich wahrgenommen wird. «Weisses» Licht ist nicht Licht, sondern schon eine Farbe.
[ 14 ] So wurde mir das Licht eine wirkliche Wesenheit in der Sinneswelt, die aber selbst außersinnlich ist. Es trat nun der Gegensatz des Nominalismus und Realismus vor meiner Seele auf, wie er sich innerhalb der Scholastik ausgebildet hat. Man behauptete bei den Realisten, die Begriffe seien Wesenhaftes, das in den Dingen lebt und nur von der menschlichen Erkenntnis aus ihnen herausgeholt wird. Die Nominalisten faßten dagegen die Begriffe nur als vom Menschen geformte Namen auf, die Mannigfaltiges in den Dingen zusammenfassen, in diesen selbst aber kein Dasein haben. Ich empfand nun, man müsse die Schall-Erlebnisse auf nominalistische und die Erlebnisse, die durch das Licht da sind, auf realistische Art ansehen.
[ 15 ] Ich trat mit dieser Orientierung an die Optik der Physiker heran. Ich mußte in dieser vieles ablehnen. Da gelangte ich zu Anschauungen, die mir den Weg zu Goethes Farbenlehre bahnten. Von dieser Seite her öffnete ich mir das Tor zu Goethes naturwissenschaftlichen Schriften. Ich brachte zunächst kleine Abhandlungen, die ich aus meinen naturwissenschaftlichen Anschauungen heraus schrieb, zu Schröer. Er konnte damit nicht viel machen. Denn sie waren noch nicht aus Goethes Anschauungsart heraus gearbeitet, sondern ich harte am Schlusse nur die kurze Bemerkung angebracht: wenn man dazu kommen werde, über die Natur so zu denken, wie ich es dargestellt habe, dann erst werde Goethes Naturforschung in der Wissenschaft Gerechtigkeit widerfahren. Schröer hatte innige Freude, wenn ich dergleichen aussprach; aber darüber hinaus kam es zunächst nicht. Die Situation, in der ich mich befand, wird wohl durch folgenden Vorfall charakterisiert. Schröer erzählte mir eines Tages, er habe mit einem Kollegen gesprochen, der Physiker sei. Ja, sagte dieser, Goethe habe sich gegen Newton aufgelehnt, und Newton war doch «solch' ein Genie»; darauf habe er, Schröer, erwidert: aber Goethe sei doch «auch ein Genie» gewesen. So fühlte ich mich doch wieder mit einer Rätselfrage, mit der ich rang, ganz allein.
[ 16 ] In den Anschauungen, die ich über die physikalische Optik gewann, schien sich mir die Brücke zu bauen von den Einsichten in die geistige Welt zu denen, die aus der naturwissenschaftlichen Forschung kommen. Ich empfand damals die Notwendigkeit, durch eigenes Gestalten gewisser optischer Experimente die Gedanken, die ich über das Wesen des Lichtes und der Farben ausgebildet hatte, an der sinnlichen Erfahrung zu prüfen. Es war für mich nicht leicht, die Dinge zu kaufen, die für solche Experimente notwendig waren. Denn die durch Privatunterricht erworbenen Mittel waren schmal genug. Was mir nur irgend möglich war, tat ich, um für die Lichtlehre zu Experimentanordnungen zu kommen, die wirklich zu einer vorurteilslosen Einsicht in die Tatsachen der Natur auf diesem Gebiete führen konnten.
[ 17 ] Mit den gebräuchlichen Versuchsanordnungen der Physiker war ich durch die Arbeiten in dem Reitlingerschen physikalischen Laboratorium bekannt. Die mathematische Behandlung der Optik war mir geläufig, denn ich hatte gerade über dieses Gebiet eingehende Studien gemacht. - Trotz aller Einwände, die von seiten der Physiker gegen die Goethe'sche Farbenlehre gemacht werden, wurde ich durch meine eigenen Experimente immer mehr von der gebräuchlichen physikalischen Ansicht zu Goethe hin getrieben. Ich wurde gewahr, wie alles derartige Experimentieren nur ein Herstellen von Tatsachen «am Lichte» - um einen Goethe'schen Ausdruck zu gebrauchen - sei, nicht ein Experimentieren «mit dem Lichte» selbst. Ich sagte mir: die Farbe wird nicht nach Newton'scher Denkungsweise aus dem Lichte hervorgeholt; sie kommt zur Erscheinung, wenn dem Lichte Hindernisse seiner freien Entfaltung entgegengebracht werden. Mir schien, daß dies aus den Experimenten unmittelbar abzulesen sei.
[ 18 ] Damit aber war für mich das Licht aus der Reihe der eigentlichen physikalischen Wesenhaftigkeiten ausgeschieden. Es stellte sich als eine Zwischenstufe dar zwischen den für die Sinne faßbaren Wesenhaftigkeiten und den im Geiste anschaubaren.
[ 19 ] Ich war abgeneigt, über diese Dinge mich bloß in philosophischen Denkvorgängen zu bewegen. Aber ich hielt sehr viel darauf, die Tatsachen der Natur richtig zu lesen. Und da wurde mir immer klarer, wie das Licht selbst in den Bereich des Sinnlich-Anschaubaren nicht eintritt, sondern jenseits desselben bleibt, während die Farben erscheinen, wenn das Sinnlich-Anschaubare in den Bereich des Lichtes gebracht wird.
[ 20 ] Ich fühlte mich nun genötigt, neuerdings von den verschiedensten Seiten her an die naturwissenschaftlichen Erkenntnisse heranzudringen. Ich wurde wieder zum Studium der Anatomie und Physiologie geführt. Ich betrachtete die Glieder des menschlichen, des tierischen und pflanzlichen Organismus in ihren Gestaltungen. Ich kam dadurch in meiner Art auf die Goethe'sche Metamorphosenlehre. Ich wurde immer mehr gewahr, wie das für die Sinne erfaßbare Naturbild zu dem hindrängt, was mir auf geistige Art anschaubar war.
[ 21 ] Blickte ich in dieser geistigen Art auf die seelische Regsamkeit des Menschen, auf Denken, Fühlen und Wollen, so gestaltete sich mir der «geistige Mensch» bis zur bildhaften Anschaulichkeit. Ich konnte nicht stehen bleiben bei den Abstraktionen, an die man gewöhnlich denkt, wenn man von Denken, Fühlen und Wollen spricht. Ich sah in diesen inneren Lebensoffenbarungen schaffende Kräfte, die den «Menschen als Geist» im Geiste vor mich hinstellten. Blickte ich dann auf die sinnliche Erscheinung des Menschen, so ergänzte sich mir diese im betrachtenden Blicke durch die Geistgestalt, die im Sinnlich-Anschaubaren waltet.
[ 22 ] Ich kam auf die sinnlich-übersinnliche Form, von der Goethe spricht, und die sich sowohl für eine wahrhaft naturgemäße wie auch für eine geistgemäße Anschauung zwischen das Sinnlich-Erfaßbare und das GeistigAnschaubare einschiebt.
[ 23 ] Anatomie und Physiologie drängten Schritt für Schritt zu dieser sinnlich-übersinnlichen Form. Und in diesem Drängen fiel mein Blick zuerst in einer noch ganz unvollkommenen Art auf die Dreigliederung der menschlichen Wesenheit, von der ich erst, nachdem ich im stillen dreißig Jahre lang die Studien über sie getrieben hatte, öffentlich in meinem Buche «Von Seelenrätseln» zu sprechen begann. Zunächst wurde mir klar, daß in dem Teile der menschlichen Organisation, in der die Bildung am meisten nach dem Nerven- und Sinneshaften hin orientiert ist, die sinnlich-übersinnliche Form auch am stärksten in dem Sinnlich-Anschaubaren sich ausprägt. Die Kopforganisation erschien mir als diejenige, an der das Sinnlich-Übersinnliche auch am stärksten in der sinnlichen Form zur Anschauung kommt. Die Gliedmaßen-Organisation dagegen mußte ich als diejenige ansehen, in der sich das Sinnlich-Übersinnliche am meisten verbirgt, so daß in ihr die in der außermenschlichen Natur wirksamen Kräfte sich in die menschliche Bildung hinein fortsetzen. Zwischen diesen Polen der menschlichen Organisation schien mir alles das zu stehen, was auf rhythmische Art sich darlebt, die Atmungs- und Zirkulationsorganisation usw.
[ 24 ] Ich fand damals niemanden, zu dem ich von diesen Anschauungen hätte sprechen können. Deutete ich da oder dort etwas von ihnen an, so sah man sie als das Ergebnis einer philosophischen Idee an, während ich doch gewiß war, daß sie sich mir aus einer vorurteilsfreien anatomischen und physiologischen Erfahrungserkenntnis heraus geoffenbart hatten.
[ 25 ] In der Stimmung, die auf meiner Seele aus solcher Vereinsamung mit Anschauungen lastete, fand ich nur innere Erlösung, indem ich immer wieder das Gespräch las, das Goethe mit Schiller geführt hatte, als die beiden aus einer Versammlung der naturforschenden Gesellschaft in Jena zusammen weggingen. Sie waren beide darin einig, daß man die Natur nicht in einer so zerstückelten Art betrachten dürfe, wie das von dem Botaniker Batsch in dem Vortrage, den sie gehört hatten, geschehen war. Und Goethe zeichnete vor Schillers Augen mit ein paar Strichen seine «Urpflanze» hin. Sie stellte durch eine sinnlich-übersinnliche Form die Pflanze als ein Ganzes dar, aus dem Blatt, Blüte usw. sich, das Ganze im einzelnen nachbildend, herausgestalten. Schiller konnte wegen seines damals noch nicht überwundenen Kant'schen Standpunktes in diesem «Ganzen» nur eine «Idee» sehen, die sich die menschliche Vernunft durch die Betrachtung der Einzelheiten bildet. Goethe wollte das nicht gelten lassen. Er «sah» geistig das Ganze, wie er sinnlich die Einzelheit sah. Und er gab keinen prinzipiellen Unterschied zu zwischen der geistigen und sinnlichen Anschauung, sondern nur einen Übergang von der einen zur andern. Ihm war klar, daß beide den Anspruch erheben, in der erfahrungsgemäßen Wirklichkeit zu stehen. Aber Schiller kam nicht los davon, zu behaupten: die Urpflanze sei keine Erfahrung, sondern eine Idee. Da erwiderte denn Goethe aus seiner Denkungsart heraus, dann sehe er eben seine Ideen mit Augen vor sich.
[ 26 ] Es war für mich die Beruhigung eines langen Ringens in der Seele, was mir aus dem Verständnis dieser Goethe-Worte entgegenkam, zu denen ich durchgedrungen zu sein glaubte. Goethes Naturanschauung stellte sich mir als eine geistgemäße vor die Seele.
[ 27 ] Ich mußte nun, durch eine innere Notwendigkeit getrieben, Goethes naturwissenschaftliche Schriften in allen Einzelheiten durcharbeiten. Ich dachte zunächst nicht daran, eine Erklärung dieser Schriften zu versuchen, wie ich sie dann bald in den Einleitungen zu denselben in «Kürschners Deutscher Nationalliteratur» veröffentlicht habe. Ich dachte vielmehr daran, irgendein Gebiet der Naturwissenschaft selbständig so darzustellen, wie mir diese Wissenschaft nun als «geistgemäß» vorschwebte.
[ 28 ] Um an dergleichen wirklich zu kommen, war mein äußeres Leben in der damaligen Zeit nicht gestaltet. Ich mußte Privatunterricht auf den verschiedensten Gebieten geben. Die «pädagogischen» Situationen, in die ich mich hineinzufinden hatte, waren mannigfaltig genug. So tauchte einmal ein preußischer Offizier in Wien auf, der aus irgend einem Grunde den deutschen Heeresdienst hatte verlassen müssen. Er wollte sich zum Eintritt in das österreichische Heer als Genieoffizier vorbereiten. Durch eine besondere Schicksalsfügung wurde ich sein Lehrer in den mathematischen und naturwissenschaftlichen Fächern. Ich hatte an diesem «Unterrichten» die tiefste Befriedigung. Denn mein «Schüler» war ein ganz außerordentlich liebenswürdiger Mann, der nach menschlicher Unterhaltung mit mir drängte, wenn wir die mathematischen und mechanischen Entwickelungen hinter uns hatten, die er für seine Vorbereitung brauchte. - Auch in andern Fällen, so bei absolvierten Studenten, die sich zum Doktorexamen vorbereiteten, mußte ich namentlich die mathematischen und naturwissenschaftlichen Erkenntnisse vermitteln.
[ 29 ] Ich hatte durch diese Nötigung, das Naturwissenschaftliche der damaligen Zeit immer wieder durchzuarbeiten, genug Gelegenheit, mich in die Zeitanschauungen auf diesem Gebiete einzuleben. Ich konnte ja im Unterrichten nur diese Zeitanschauungen vermitteln; woran mir am meisten in bezug auf Natur-Erkenntnis gelegen war, mußte ich still in mir verschlossen tragen.
[ 30 ] Meine Betätigung als Privatlehrer, die mir in jener Zeit die einzige Lebensmöglichkeit eröffnete, bewahrte mich vor Einseitigkeit Ich mußte vieles aus dem Grunde selbst lernen, um es unterrichten zu können. So lebte ich mich in die «Geheimnisse» der Buchhaltung ein, weil ich Gelegenheit fand, gerade auf diesem Gebiete Unterricht zu erteilen.
[ 31 ] Auch auf dem Gebiete des pädagogischen Denkens kam mir von Schröer die fruchtbarste Anregung. Er hatte als Direktor der evangelischen Schulen in Wien jahrelang gewirkt und seine Erfahrungen in dem liebenswürdigen Büchlein «Unterrichtsfragen» ausgesprochen. Was ich darinnen las, konnte dann mit ihm besprochen werden. Er sprach in bezug auf Erziehen und Unterrichten oft gegen das bloße Beibringen von Kenntnissen, und für die Entwickelung der ganzen, vollen Menschenwesenheit.
Chapter V
[ 1 ] I was unable to come up with any thoughts about Austrian public life that would have penetrated my soul in any way. I simply observed the extraordinarily complicated circumstances. I could only have discussions with Karl Julius Schröer that aroused my deeper interest. I was often allowed to visit him during this time. His own fate was closely linked to that of the Germans of Austria-Hungary. He was the son of Tobias Gottfried Schröer, who ran a German lyceum in Bratislava and wrote dramas as well as historical and aesthetic books. The latter were published under the name Chr. Geser and were popular textbooks. Tobias Gottfried Schröer's poems, although undoubtedly important and highly acclaimed in a narrower circle, have not become known. The attitude they exuded was contrary to the prevailing political trend in Hungary. Some of them had to be published in other German countries without the author's name. If the author's spiritual orientation had become known in Hungary, he would not only have been dismissed from office, but would even have faced severe punishment.
[ 2 ] Karl Julius Schröer thus experienced the pressure on Germanism in his own home even in his youth. It was under this pressure that he developed his intimate devotion to German nature and German literature, as well as a great love for everything about Goethe. The "History of German Poetry" by Gervinus had a profound influence on him.
[ 3 ] He went to Germany in the forties of the nineteenth century to study German language and literature at the universities of Leipzig, Halle and Berlin. On his return, he initially worked at his father's lyceum as a teacher of German literature and head of a seminar. He now became acquainted with the popular Christmas plays that were performed every year by the German colonists in the area around Bratislava. German folklore was deeply sympathetic to his soul. The Germans who had immigrated to Hungary from more westerly regions centuries ago had brought these games with them from their old homeland and continued to play them in the same way as they had done around Christmas in the old days in regions that were probably located near the Rhine. The story of paradise, the birth of Christ and the appearance of the three kings came to life in a popular way in these plays. Schröer then published them under the title "German Christmas Plays from Hungary" after listening to them or inspecting the old manuscripts that he had seen among the peasants.
[ 4 ] The loving immersion in German folklore increasingly occupied Schröer's soul. He traveled to study the German dialects in various parts of Austria. Wherever German folklore was scattered in the Slavic, Magyar and Italian parts of the Danube Monarchy, he wanted to get to know its characteristics. This resulted in his dictionaries and grammars of the Spiš dialect, which was native to the south of the Carpathians, the Gortscheer dialect, which was spoken by a small German population in Carniola, and the Heanzen language, which was spoken in western Hungary.
[ 5 ] For Schröer, these studies were never a purely academic task. He lived with his whole soul in the revelations of the folklore and wanted to bring its essence through word and writing to the consciousness of those people who had been torn out of it by life. He then became a professor in Budapest. There he could not feel at ease with the prevailing current of the time. So he moved to Vienna, where he was initially appointed head of the Protestant schools and later became professor of German language and literature. When he already held this position, I had the opportunity to meet him and get to know him better. At the time this happened, his whole life and mind was devoted to Goethe. He was working on the edition and introduction of the second part of "Faust" and had already had the first part published.
[ 6 ] When I visited Schröer's small library, which was also his study, I felt myself in a spiritual atmosphere that did my soul a great deal of good. Even then I was aware of how Schröer's writings, in particular his "Geschichte der deutschen Dichtung im neunzehnten Jahrhundert" (History of German Poetry in the Nineteenth Century), were the subject of hostility from the proponents of the literary-historical methods that had become dominant. He did not write like the members of the Scherer school, for example, who treated literary phenomena like a natural scientist. He carried within him certain feelings and ideas about literary phenomena and expressed them in a purely human way, without focusing much on the "sources" at the time of writing. It has even been said that he wrote his account "off the cuff".
[ 7 ] I didn't care much about that. I warmed up mentally when I was with him. I was allowed to sit by his side for hours. Christmas plays, the spirit of German dialects and the course of literary life came to life from his enthusiastic heart in his oral presentation. The relationship between the dialect and the language of education became practically clear to me. I was truly delighted when he told me, as he had already done in lectures, about the poet in the Lower Austrian dialect, Joseph Misson, who wrote the wonderful poem "Da Naaz, a Niederösterreichischer Baurnbua, geht ind Fremd". Schröer always gave me books from his library so that I could follow the content of the conversation. Whenever I sat alone with Schröer, I always had the feeling that a third person was present: Goethe's spirit. For Schröer lived so strongly in Goethe's nature and works that he asked himself emotionally with every feeling or idea that arose in his soul: Would Goethe have felt or thought like this?
[ 8 ] I listened mentally with the greatest sympathy to everything that came from Schröer. Nevertheless, I could not help but build up in my own soul, quite independently, what I was striving for spiritually and intimately. Schröer was an idealist; and for him, the world of ideas as such was the driving force behind the creation of nature and mankind. For me, the idea was the shadow of a fully alive spiritual world. At the time, I even found it difficult to put into words the difference between Schröer's and my way of thinking. He spoke of ideas as the driving forces in history. He felt life in the existence of ideas. For me, the life of the spirit was behind the ideas, and these were only its manifestation in the human soul. At the time, I could find no other word for my way of thinking than "objective idealism". I meant to say that for me the essential thing about the idea is not that it appears in the human subject, but that it appears in the spiritual object, like color in the sensory being, and that the human soul - the subject - perceives it there as the eye perceives color in a living being.
[ 9 ] However, Schröer's form of expression met my view to a high degree when we discussed what reveals itself as the "people's soul". He spoke of it as a real spiritual being that lives itself out in the totality of the individual people who belong to a nation. His words took on a character that did not merely refer to an abstract idea. And so we both looked at the structure of the old Austria and the individualities of the people's souls at work within it. - From this perspective, it was possible for me to formulate thoughts about public conditions that had a deeper impact on my mental life.
[ 10 ] So my experience at that time was very strongly connected with my relationship to Karl Julius Schröer. But what was further away from him, and what I was primarily striving for an inner confrontation with, was the natural sciences. I also wanted my "objective idealism" to be in harmony with the knowledge of nature.
[ 11 ] It was at the time of my liveliest contact with Schröer that the question of the relationship between the spiritual and natural world came before my mind in a new way. At first this happened quite independently of Goethe's scientific way of thinking. For even Schröer could not tell me anything decisive about this area of Goethe's work. He was pleased when he found a benevolent recognition of Goethe's observation of plant and animal life from this or that natural scientist. However, Goethe's theory of color met with decisive rejection everywhere among those educated in the natural sciences. He therefore did not develop any particular opinion in this direction.
[ 12 ] My relationship to natural science was not influenced by this side during this period of my life, although I came close to Goethe's intellectual life in my dealings with Schröer. Rather, it was formed by the difficulties I had when I had to think about the facts of optics in the sense of the physicists.
[ 13 ] I found that light and sound were thought of in scientific terms in an analogy that was inadmissible. One spoke of "sound in general" and "light in general". The analogy lay in the following: the individual tones and sounds were regarded as specially modified air vibrations, and the objective of sound, apart from the human experience of the sensation of sound, as a state of vibration of the air. Light was thought of in a similar way. What takes place outside the human being when he perceives a phenomenon caused by light was defined as a vibration in the ether. The colors are then specially formed ether vibrations. At the time, this analogy became a real tormentor of my spiritual life. For I thought I was fully aware that the term "sound" was only an abstract summary of the individual occurrences in the sounding world, while "light" in itself represents something concrete in relation to the phenomena in the illuminated world. - For me, "sound" was a summarized abstract concept, "light" a concrete reality. I told myself that light is not perceived sensually at all; "colors" are perceived through light, which reveals itself everywhere in the perception of color, but is not itself perceived sensually. "White" light is not light, but already a color.
[ 14 ] So light became a real entity in the sensory world, but it is itself extrasensory. The contrast between nominalism and realism now appeared before my soul, as it had developed within scholasticism. The realists claimed that the concepts were essentials that lived in things and were only extracted from them by human cognition. The nominalists, on the other hand, saw concepts only as names formed by man, which summarize the manifold in things but have no existence in these things themselves. I now felt that one had to look at sound experiences in a nominalistic way and the experiences that exist through light in a realistic way.
[ 15 ] I approached the optics of the physicists with this orientation. I had to reject many things. Then I arrived at views that paved the way for me to Goethe's theory of colors. From this side I opened the door to Goethe's scientific writings. At first I brought small treatises to Schröer, which I wrote based on my scientific views. He couldn't do much with them. For they had not yet been worked out from Goethe's way of looking at things, but at the end I only made the brief remark that when people would come to think about nature in the way I had presented it, only then would Goethe's research into nature be done justice in science. Schröer was delighted when I said such things, but it did not go beyond that at first. The situation in which I found myself is probably characterized by the following incident. Schröer told me one day that he had spoken to a colleague who was a physicist. Yes, he said, Goethe had rebelled against Newton, and Newton was "such a genius"; to which he, Schröer, replied: but Goethe was "also a genius". So once again I felt completely alone with a puzzling question that I was wrestling with.
[ 16 ] The insights I gained into physical optics seemed to me to build a bridge from the insights into the spiritual world to those that come from scientific research. At the time, I felt the need to test the thoughts I had formed about the nature of light and color against sensory experience by designing certain optical experiments myself. It was not easy for me to buy the things that were necessary for such experiments. For the means acquired through private tuition were meagre enough. I did what I could to arrive at experimental arrangements for the theory of light that could really lead to an unprejudiced insight into the facts of nature in this field.
[ 17 ] I was familiar with the usual experimental arrangements of physicists through my work in Reitlinger's physical laboratory. I was familiar with the mathematical treatment of optics, as I had carried out detailed studies in this field. - Despite all the objections raised by physicists against Goethe's theory of color, I was driven more and more by my own experiments away from the conventional physical view towards Goethe. I became aware of how all such experimentation was only a production of facts "on light" - to use Goethe's expression - and not experimentation "with light" itself. I said to myself: color is not brought out of light in the Newtonian way of thinking; it appears when light is confronted with obstacles to its free unfolding. It seemed to me that this could be read directly from the experiments.
[ 18 ] Thus, however, light was eliminated from the series of actual physical entities. It presented itself as an intermediate stage between the entities that can be grasped by the senses and those that can be seen in the mind.
[ 19 ] I was reluctant to engage in merely philosophical thought processes about these things. But I was very keen to read the facts of nature correctly. And then it became increasingly clear to me how light itself does not enter the realm of the sensible, but remains beyond it, while colors appear when the sensible is brought into the realm of light.
[ 20 ] I now felt compelled to approach scientific knowledge from various angles. I was led back to the study of anatomy and physiology. I looked at the limbs of the human, animal and plant organism in their forms. This led me to Goethe's theory of metamorphosis in my own way. I became more and more aware of how the image of nature that could be grasped by the senses pushed towards that which was visible to me in a spiritual way.
[ 21 ] When I looked in this spiritual way at the mental activity of the human being, at thinking, feeling and willing, the "spiritual human being" took shape for me to the point of pictorial vividness. I could not stop at the abstractions that one usually thinks of when one speaks of thinking, feeling and willing. I saw in these inner revelations of life creative forces that placed the "human being as spirit" before me in my mind. When I then looked at the sensual appearance of the human being, it was complemented by the spiritual form that reigns in the sensually visible.
[ 22 ] I came upon the sensuous-supersensible form of which Goethe speaks, and which interposes itself both for a truly natural and for a spiritual contemplation between the sensually comprehensible and the spiritually comprehensible.
[ 23 ] Anatomy and physiology pushed step by step towards this sensual-supersensible form. And in this urge my gaze first fell in a still quite imperfect way on the threefold structure of the human being, of which I only began to speak publicly in my book "Von Seelenrätsel" after I had quietly studied it for thirty years. At first it became clear to me that in that part of the human organization in which the formation is most oriented towards the nervous and sensory, the sensual-supersensible form is also most strongly expressed in the sensory-visible. The head organization seemed to me to be the one in which the sensual-supersensible is also most strongly manifested in the sensual form. The organization of the limbs, on the other hand, I had to regard as the one in which the sensual-supersensible is most concealed, so that in it the forces active in extra-human nature continue into human formation. Between these poles of human organization seemed to me to stand everything that lives in a rhythmic way, the respiratory and circulatory organization, etc.
[ 24 ] I found no one at that time to whom I could have spoken of these views. If I hinted at them here or there, they were regarded as the result of a philosophical idea, whereas I was certain that they had revealed themselves to me out of an unprejudiced anatomical and physiological knowledge of experience.
[ 25 ] In the mood that weighed on my soul from such isolation with views, I only found inner relief by reading again and again the conversation that Goethe had had with Schiller when the two left a meeting of the natural history society in Jena together. They both agreed that nature should not be viewed in such a fragmented way as had been done by the botanist Batsch in the lecture they had heard. And Goethe drew his "original plant" before Schiller's eyes with a few strokes. It depicted the plant as a whole through a sensual, supersensible form, from which the leaf, flower etc. emerge, reproducing the whole in detail. Because of his Kantian point of view, which had not yet been overcome at the time, Schiller could only see in this "whole" an "idea" that human reason forms by observing the details. Goethe did not want to accept this. He "saw" the whole spiritually, just as he saw the particulars sensually. And he did not admit any difference in principle between spiritual and sensual perception, but only a transition from one to the other. It was clear to him that both claim to stand in experiential reality. But Schiller could not get away from claiming that the primordial plant was not an experience but an idea. Goethe then replied out of his way of thinking that he then saw his ideas with his eyes before him.
[ 26 ] For me, it was the calming of a long struggle in my soul that came to me from understanding these words of Goethe, which I believed I had penetrated. Goethe's view of nature presented itself to my soul as a spiritual one.
[ 27 ] I now had to work through Goethe's scientific writings in every detail, driven by an inner necessity. At first I did not think of attempting an explanation of these writings, as I soon published in the introductions to them in "Kürschners Deutscher Nationalliteratur". Rather, I was thinking of independently presenting some area of natural science in the way that I now envisioned this science as "spiritually appropriate".
[ 28 ] In order to really achieve this, my external life was not organized at that time. I had to give private lessons in a wide variety of areas. The "pedagogical" situations I had to find my way into were varied enough. Once, for example, a Prussian officer turned up in Vienna who had had to leave the German army for some reason. He wanted to prepare himself to join the Austrian army as a genius officer. By a special twist of fate, I became his teacher in mathematics and the natural sciences. This "teaching" gave me the deepest satisfaction. For my "pupil" was an extraordinarily amiable man, who urged human conversation with me when we had completed the mathematical and mechanical developments he needed for his preparation. - In other cases too, such as with graduating students preparing for their doctoral exams, I had to impart the mathematical and scientific knowledge in particular.
[ 29 ] This compulsion to repeatedly work through the natural sciences of the time gave me ample opportunity to familiarize myself with the views of the time in this field. After all, I could only convey these views of the times in my teaching; I had to keep what was most important to me in terms of knowledge of nature quietly locked away inside me.
[ 30 ] My activity as a private teacher, which was my only opportunity in life at that time, saved me from one-sidedness; I had to learn many things myself in order to be able to teach them. So I familiarized myself with the "secrets" of bookkeeping because I had the opportunity to give lessons in this particular field.
[ 31 ] I also received the most fruitful inspiration from Schröer in the field of pedagogical thinking. He had worked as director of the Protestant schools in Vienna for many years and expressed his experiences in the amiable booklet "Unterrichtsfragen". What I read in it could then be discussed with him. With regard to education and teaching, he often spoke against the mere teaching of knowledge and in favor of the development of the whole, full human being.