The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Chapter XXXV

[ 1 ] The beginning of my anthroposophical work came at a time when many people were dissatisfied with the directions of knowledge of the immediately preceding period. They wanted to find a way out of the realm of being into which they had closed themselves by accepting as "certain" knowledge only that which could be grasped with mechanistic ideas. These aspirations of some contemporaries for a kind of knowledge of the spirit were very close to my heart. Biologists such as Oskar Hertwig, who began as a student of Haeckel but then abandoned Darwinism because, in his view, the impulses known to the latter could not provide an explanation of organic development, were personalities in whom the desire for knowledge of the time was revealed to me.

[ 2 ] But I felt a pressure weighing on all this longing. The belief that one should only regard as knowledge that which can be researched with measure, number and weight in the realm of the senses has produced this pressure as its result. One did not dare to develop an inwardly active way of thinking in order to experience reality more closely through it than one experiences it with the senses. So it remained the case that one said: with the means that one has used so far to explain even the higher forms of reality, such as the organic, one cannot go any further. But if we were then to arrive at something positive, if we were to say what works in life activity, then we were moving in vague ideas. Those who strove to get out of the mechanistic explanation of the world usually lacked the courage to admit to themselves that if they wanted to overcome this mechanism, they also had to overcome the habits of thought that had led to it. A confession that would have taken time did not want to appear. It is this: with the orientation towards the senses, one penetrates that which is mechanistic. We became accustomed to this orientation in the second half of the nineteenth century. Now that the mechanistic leaves us unsatisfied, we should not want to penetrate into higher realms with the same orientation. - The senses in man give themselves their own development. With what they give themselves in this way, however, one will never see anything other than the mechanical. If we want to recognize more, we must give the deeper powers of cognition a form of their own accord, which gives nature to the powers of the senses. The powers of cognition for the mechanical are awake by themselves; those for the higher forms of reality must be awakened.

[ 3 ] This self-confession of the striving for knowledge seemed to me to be a necessity of the time.

[ 4 ] I felt happy where I perceived the beginnings of it. A visit to Jena lives in my fondest memory. I had to give lectures on anthroposophical topics in Weimar. A lecture was also arranged in a smaller circle in Jena. After the lecture there was a meeting with a very small group. They wanted to discuss what Theosophy had to say. In this circle was Max Scheler, who was a lecturer in philosophy in Jena at the time. The discussion soon turned to what he felt about my remarks. And I immediately sensed the deeper trait in his quest for knowledge. It was inner tolerance that he showed towards my views. The tolerance that is necessary for those who really want to know.

[ 5 ] We discussed the epistemological justification of spirit cognition. We talked about the problem of how the penetration into spiritual reality on the one hand must be epistemologically justified in the same way as the penetration into sensory reality on the other hand.

[ 6 ] Scheler's way of thinking made an ingenious impression on me. And to this day I follow his path of knowledge with the deepest interest. It always gave me deep satisfaction when - unfortunately very rarely - I was able to meet the man who had become so likeable to me back then.

[ 7 ] Such experiences were significant for me. Every time they came, there was an inner necessity to re-examine the certainty of my own path of knowledge. And in this recurring testing, the forces unfold that then open up ever wider areas of spiritual existence.

[ 8 ] There are now two results from my anthroposophical work; firstly, my books published before the whole world, and secondly, a large series of courses that were initially intended as a private publication and were only to be sold to members of the Theosophical (later Anthroposophical) Society. These were transcripts that were more or less well done during the lectures and which - due to lack of time - could not be corrected by me. I would have preferred it if words spoken orally had remained words spoken orally. But the members wanted the courses to be printed privately. And that's how it came about. If I had had time to correct things, there would have been no need for the "members only" restriction from the outset. Now it has been dropped for more than a year.

[ 9 ] Here in my "course of life" it is necessary to say above all how the two: my published books and these private prints fit into what I developed as anthroposophy.

[ 10 ] Whoever wants to follow my own inner struggle and work for the presentation of anthroposophy to the consciousness of the present time must do so by means of the generally published writings. In them I also deal with all the striving for knowledge that is present at the time. There is given what increasingly took shape for me in "spiritual seeing", which became the building of anthroposophy - albeit in many respects in an imperfect way.

[ 11 ] In addition to this demand to build up "anthroposophy" and to serve only that which arose when messages from the spirit world had to be passed on to the general educational world of today, there was now the other demand to fully accommodate that which emerged from membership as a need of the soul, as a longing for the spirit. Above all, there was a strong inclination to hear the Gospels and the scriptural content of the Bible in general presented in the light that had emerged as anthroposophical. People wanted to hear about these revelations given to humanity in courses.

[ 12 ] In addition to the internal lecture courses held in line with this demand, there was another. Only members attended these lectures. They were familiar with the initial messages from Anthroposophy. It was possible to speak to them in the same way as to those advanced in the field of anthroposophy. The attitude of these internal lectures was such as could not be found in writings intended entirely for the public.

[ 13 ] I was allowed to speak in internal circles about things which, if they had been intended for public presentation from the beginning, I would have had to present differently.

[ 14 ] So in the duality, the public and the private writings, there is in fact something that comes from two different backgrounds. The entirely public writings are the result of that which wrestled and worked within me; in the private prints, society wrestles and works with me. I listen to the vibrations in the soul life of the membership, and in my living inner life in what I hear there, the attitude of the lectures emerges.

[ 15 ] Nothing is said anywhere that is not the purest result of the anthroposophy that is being built up. There can be no question of any concession to the prejudices or preconceptions of the membership. Anyone who reads these private prints can take them in the fullest sense as what anthroposophy has to say. That is why, when the accusations in this direction became too pressing, it was possible without hesitation to abandon the institution of distributing these prints only within the circle of the membership. It will just have to be accepted that there are errors in the documents I have not checked.

[ 16 ] A judgment about the content of such a private print can only be granted to those who know what is assumed as a prerequisite for judgment. And for the vast majority of these prints, this is at least the anthroposophical knowledge of man, of the cosmos, insofar as its essence is presented in anthroposophy, and of what is found as "anthroposophical history" in the messages from the spirit world.