The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Immortality of the Soul, Forces of Destiny, and the Human Life Course. Findings of Spiritual Science and their Consideration in Relation to our Fateful Times

[ 1 ] Dear attendees! Anyone who speaks about Spiritual Science from the perspective that I have been privileged to speak from here every winter after autumn for many years now, and which will also form the basis of today's reflection, must be aware that in the present time, they will still have to face many and varied prejudices against Spiritual Science. And this must be the case in particular when the discussion, as today, is to deal with the deepest, most significant human mysteries, mysteries which, which, on the other hand, are connected with what every human heart, every human being has as the questions of their deepest longing, [what every human being] feels as the questions of their deepest life need. Contemporary scientific psychology, especially today, presents a view which, I would say, is as unfavorable as possible to a consideration such as the one we are going to engage in here today, in that scientific psychology has taken a direction, a course, which actually — by following its path, of course — cannot possibly lead to any scientific considerations of this great and significant question of the immortality of the soul, of human destiny.

[ 2 ] Let me begin by pointing out, dear attendees, that conventional scientific psychology is entirely absorbed in asking itself: How do mental images arise from sensory perceptions, how do mental images link together, then connect and separate in the human soul, how do feelings such as pleasure and pain connect with mental images within human consciousness, how do impulses of will join with mental images, and so on? How does the [psychic] and the like develop?

[ 3 ] Now, one of the most significant and astute German psychologists, the recently deceased, extraordinary, and outstanding Franz Brentano, made a very interesting statement in his [Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint]. He said something like: What good is this consideration of the socialization of mental images, of the opposites of the [psychic], of the opposites such as pleasure and pain, and so on, if we cannot find the forces in today's consideration of the soul to even somewhat satisfy the hope that Plato and Aristotle once attached to the study of the soul, [namely] to recognize the extent to which the human soul enters into another form of life after shedding its mortal part, in other words, to what extent one can speak of the immortality of the human soul and related questions?

[ 4 ] In 1874 — and this is a characteristic phenomenon — this outstanding researcher of the soul wrote the first volume of his study of the soul, which was to comprise four or five volumes. The first volume appeared in the spring of 1874. The second was promised for the fall, with the next ones to follow in quick succession, [but] nothing more appeared, not the second in the fall, not the following year, and not the subsequent volumes to this day. One [gets the impression], when one delves a little deeper into this first volume of Brentano's human psychology, that despite the strictly scientific standpoint which the author endeavors to adopt, Brentano's primary concern is to culminate his observations in the view of the immortality of the human soul and the connection of the human soul with the entire spiritual world.

[ 5 ] Anyone who approaches Brentano's observations from the perspective that Spiritual Science can take with regard to psychology will realize, if they study the only published volume and what Brentano later published as a result, that Brentano really could not publish the following volumes out of an inner necessity, for he, too, was unable to find the strength to take human research to those paths where the spiritual and its connection with the human soul can be grasped. Brentano was unable to do this for the simple reason that, in accordance with the habits of thought and the scientific habits of the present, he refused to ascend to what we are going to talk about here today, because he refused to pursue true Spiritual Science in the sense meant here. He thus provided practical proof that human psychology cannot take a position on the human mysteries characterized here if it does not want to ascend to something from Spiritual Science.

[ 6 ] All of you, dear listeners, who have been listening to these lectures here for years, will know that I avoid straying from objective observation and becoming personal, but allow me today, as a kind of exception, to mention something personal in the introduction to our discussion, which at the same time has a thoroughly objective significance.

[ 7 ] It is now 36 years since I began to lay the first building blocks for what I have now developed in my lectures on Spiritual Science and in my writings. Back then, when I was gathering the first building blocks more than three decades ago, while researching the mysteries of the human soul, [it occurred to me] in an essay by the very important German-Austrian Vischer — who is called “V-Vischer” and who was also a fundamentally profound philosopher — in an essay he wrote about the beautiful book on “Die Traum-Phantasie” (The Dream Fantasy), something that I would like to say: It struck me like a bolt of lightning at that time. It was the sentence in which Vischer, the contemplative philosopher with his sharp, energetic mind, briefly touches on the essence of the human soul. And the sentence reads: “The innermost supersensible essence of the human soul,” he said, “cannot be located in the human body, but it certainly cannot be outside the human body either.”

[ 8 ] Well, ladies and gentlemen, here you see a scientific man, a scientifically thorough man, an honest thinker wrestling with a supreme mystery. And [researchers] come to no other conclusion — you must admit, when I quote Vischer's sentence to you — than a complete contradiction. One struggles and comes to a complete contradiction by saying that the human soul cannot be in the human body, [but also cannot be anywhere else but in the body]. Where [could] it be then, one might ask trivially. I said to myself at the time: This is one of those questions — and we could cite hundreds and hundreds of such questions — at which very, very many serious researchers pause and say: Here are the limits of human knowledge; human knowledge cannot go beyond this; we must pause here.

[ 9 ] I would like to continue with the usual remark, if you will excuse me. At that time, I wrote a first, one might say scientific, essay that starts from just such a question, and I sent it to Vischer, who was kind enough to respond to the matter and really found that one of the main points [that needed to be addressed] was indicated in my little essay. But Vischer died very soon after—and I had the feeling that that he was one of those who, born out of the great traditions of nineteenth-century worldviews, could still have found the points of connection to the newer Spiritual Science, for human thinking, which had otherwise achieved such great and powerful things in other fields up to the present, was increasingly distancing itself from those currents that are necessary in order to take a stand on the mysteries indicated.

[ 10 ] Vischer, who approaches such questions in a scientific sense and does not regard them as theoretical questions, but takes them into his consciousness and wrestles with them, finds precisely at this point, where ordinary human thinking initially comes to what seems like an insurmountable barrier, finds precisely there the starting points for exploring spiritual life and the life of human beings . To substantiate these statements will actually be the task of this evening's consideration.

[ 11 ] I would just like to follow up on the question: What must Spiritual Science actually strive for in relation to the human soul if it wants to be kept entirely in line with the strictest scientific considerations of the present day? I have emphasized this before: The Spiritual Science I am referring to here is not opposed to the natural sciences of our time. On the contrary, it is a spiritual direction that fully recognizes the great advances made by the natural sciences in recent centuries, and especially in modern times, that recognizes the profound significance of the natural sciences in life, and that therefore must see in the scientific approach the model for all scientific observation. For this reason, this spiritual science ist science does not in any way contradict natural science, but it must reserve for itself the right to explore the spiritual realm in a manner that is as rigorous as natural science in its own realm, which means that it must take different paths and methods than natural science.

[ 12 ] Now, natural science has brought to light great and significant things, even in a field that is fundamentally related to the one we are discussing here today. Natural science has succeeded in researching, in a way that is already very significant today, the relationship between the fluctuating human soul life from waking to falling asleep and the physical processes and organs of the human being.

[ 13 ] How, then, can we control our soul life? We can do so by developing it in thinking, feeling, and willing. Mental images arise, enlightening us about the world and ourselves, [approaching us as impulses], feelings surge up and down within us, impulses of the will permeate this soul life; this is how we experience it from waking up to falling asleep. The natural scientist asks himself the question: What is the relationship between this ebbing and flowing soul life and what one finds in the human organism, in the human body — and the natural scientist still proceeds one-sidedly today — what one finds, he says, in the human nervous system, in the human nervous system and sensory system?

[ 14 ] And one can certainly admit that perhaps the most important work in this field still remains to be done in the natural sciences, but the attempt made by natural science to show what conditions exist in the human physical organism, what happens in the human organism while our soul life is going on, this attempt that natural science has made already represents something magnificent today. This [should] pointed out. [And] this attempt promises that in the not too distant future, something tremendously significant will happen in this very field of scientific research.

[ 15 ] What is actually coming to light in this field of research? What is coming to light is the relationship between our soul life, as we experience it between birth or conception and death, [and] our physical, bodily functions; what is coming to light is the relationship between our soul life and the transitory in us, our bodily life, that life which falls away from us when we pass through the gate [of death].

[ 16 ] If Spiritual Science is to be a true science, it must, in a sense, take the other path; just as natural science takes the life of the soul on the one hand and builds a bridge to the transitory life of the body, so Spiritual Science must attempt to build a bridge from the life of the soul, as we have it before us in this experience, to the spiritual.

[ 17 ] But then we are immediately confronted with reservations, perfectly understandable reservations, which arise from the intellectual and scientific habits of our time. Even eminent researchers of the soul in the nineteenth century — and up to the present day — have expressed the most profound reservations, so to speak, against any real observation of human soul life, against the possibility of discovering what is actually contained spiritually in human soul life.

[ 18 ] I could cite a large number of examples. I would like to cite one because it is particularly characteristic. [I would like to] cite the reservations expressed by Eduard von Hartmann, the philosopher of the unconscious, who attempted to understand the manifold relationships of human life and the mysteries of the world through Spiritual Science, I will cite what he argued shortly before his death at the beginning of our century in his Grundriss der Seelenkunde (Outline of Psychology) against the possibility of truly observing human soul life. He despairs, as it were, of the possibility of observing human soul life. And how does he justify this?

[ 19 ] He says that by wanting to observe the life of the soul, we cannot [even] begin to [observe the life of the soul], because [as soon as] we begin [to want] to observe it, we immediately disturb the life of the soul, so that we cannot observe it. We cannot, therefore, come to an observation of the life of the soul. He says, suppose a person wants to observe tender feelings, he begins to observe, but by striving to observe them, they are gone.

[ 20 ] So it is precisely observation that drives away what one wants to observe.

[ 21 ] He goes on to say: We remember how physical pain becomes stronger when we want to observe it — hysterical people in particular [demonstrate this at every] opportunity, [knowing all about such things] — the intensity of their pain lies precisely in the fact that they cannot get their minds off the pain; but it is the observation that distorts what one wants to observe. He gives another example: suppose someone has memorized something and wants to recite it, and now wants to observe himself doing so, he will most certainly falter and be unable to continue. So, if one wants to observe how the soul recites what it has memorized, one drives away the poem itself.

[ 22 ] And so, Hartmann believes, one cannot observe the self, because through observation one drives away what one wants to observe.

[ 23 ] This is one of those objections that belongs to the human mind, which is extremely plausible, and it is one of the reasons why Spiritual Science can so easily be viewed with hostility, because the objections are actually among the most plausible that can be raised in the human soul. One could then demonstrate more clearly everything that Hartmann argues.

[ 24 ]But just take the idea out of the research corner for a moment. Imagine that scientific research had made this objection: We cannot observe the life of the soul, so we must refrain from searching for how feelings have meaning in the human body. — They have not allowed themselves to be disturbed [at all], even though it is [of course] also true for them that — when one approaches what one wants to observe — one drives it away. This means that in the field of psychology, we have not yet found the courage [and the strength] to really proceed in the same way as natural science does in its field.

[ 25 ] Now, however, when approaching the human soul from a Spiritual Science perspective, particularly in relation to the question to be raised today, it is necessary above all to be clear about how the question should be posed, [how to approach it], to gain any knowledge of the fact that there is something in human beings that remains after they have passed through the gate of death, that cannot perish with death, that will continue in some form. [...] For suppose one knew such a thing, then one could say so. But one knows nothing about the inner nature of that which lives on, nothing [about] the inner nature [...] [gap]. What does [the human being] actually want to know when he approaches the question? He wants to know whether consciousness is possible beyond death, whether it is preserved, whether the human soul is capable of developing a consciousness that can become independent of the human body, which must therefore continue when the human body is surrendered to the elements of the earth. That must be the real question.

[ 26 ] First, one must be clear about the question itself. For this reason, ladies and gentlemen, I have attempted to pose this question to human beings in my many writings — most recently and particularly clearly in my latest publication “The Riddle of Man” — to pose the question of this consciousness before human beings. All the research I have been conducting for more than three decades is basically linked to Goethe's worldview. But I must of course say — when I speak of Goethe's worldview — that when the philosopher Herbart wrote his philosophy in 1827, he called himself a Kantian, but a Kantian of 1827, and so perhaps today, too, if one represents a Spiritual Science in Goethe's sense, one may call oneself not a Goethean of the years in which Goethe lived, but a Goethean of the twentieth century. Goethe's worldview must be further developed through the inner power of spiritual life, then the more far-reaching questions that we must raise in our time will grow out of it, out of the deepest need of destiny of humanity, which has also progressed since Goethe's time.

[ 27 ] Now, through a comparison — always with the necessary restrictions — I have tried to clarify in my book “The Mystery of Man” how the question of consciousness should be approached. As I said, it is only meant to be a comparison for now, I will talk about this in more detail later. I said that when a person is dreaming, they have images of a chaotic dream experience before them. We know that these experiences arise from the human inner being, the organic physical, human inner being, but they are caused by what makes an external impression but cannot reach the level of sensory perception.

[ 28 ] The images arise. [The person] lives [in the dream] in a world of images that they consider to be reality; mental images flood in and out, which the person considers to be reality in the dream, just as they consider the external world to be reality in waking life. However, when the person wakes up, the same images flood in and out as in the dream, but the difference is that the person, , having awakened, wants to be connected, [that] his entire soul life wants to be connected with that which surrounds him as external reality. As a result, when he awakens, there are not only images in his soul, as in a dream, that rise from the organic nature of his own inner being, but mental images flood in as ideas that are entirely in harmony — through the connection that the human will has with external physical-sensory reality — with this reality; the human being steps out of himself, he enters into harmony [with physical-sensory reality], with external reality.

[ 29 ] Heraclitus said these wonderful words to characterize how the waking world differs from the dream world. [Heraclitus said: In dream sleep, every human being has their own world], we can be with as many people as we like; what surges through the dream world need not have anything to do with the world of others. As soon as [they] wake up, [they] have a common world, expressing that human beings [from] their willpower establish the connection with the connecting world.

[ 30 ] Just as I show how people can wake up from the dream world into the world of ordinary waking consciousness, so, by exercising complete prudence, a waking up can take place from ordinary everyday consciousness to what I have called in my book “The Riddle of Man” — scientifically following Goethe's expression “perceptive judgment,” I have called “perceptive consciousness.” Just as a person, awakening from a dream, remains connected to physical reality through the power of their soul, so too does a person — awakening from the consciousness that reflects the external physical-sensory reality — remain connected in perceptive consciousness [with] a higher world [connected], which is now a higher reality; so that it is a matter of presenting the scientific possibility of a special seeing consciousness. This seeing consciousness depends on our becoming independent not only of our mere inner organic life, as in waking consciousness, but also of all those conditions of the body to which we are still subject when we face the ordinary physical-sensory world in waking consciousness. To develop this contemplative consciousness and apply it in scientific research is the task of Spiritual Science.

[ 31 ] This contemplative consciousness is not something fantastical, not something dreamed up, but is truly awakened, just as ordinary waking consciousness is awakened from sleeping consciousness; and this awakening is an experience.

[ 32 ] How is it awakened? Today, it is already possible to give a fully valid answer to this question. And here I must refer back to what I mentioned earlier as the limit [of human knowledge].

[ 33 ] If one approaches a question such as “What is the unity of human soul life?” [gap] [with] the kind of thinking that is borrowed [from] waking consciousness, then such questions arise — and such questions really are to be seen — as a complete contradiction. Then [it is a matter] of not remaining stuck with this soul, by saying to oneself theoretically that this is ignorabilism, but of beginning right now to try, when — instead of continuing a theory about the limits of human knowledge — one expresses all kinds of things about these limits, instead of expressing all kinds of theoretical things, one must try to wrestle with such questions in a real inner, living struggle. One must become capable of thinking — for Spiritual Science proceeds from thinking, from fully conscious, thoughtful thinking, not from some kind of fantasy — one must apply thinking to such questions. Just as, when one cannot lift a certain weight at first, one tries to continue striving to overcome what one does not believe one can overcome — that is a matter of inner [effort], whether one can go beyond the level of thinking, beyond the kind of thinking at which one then stops when one simply [pays homage] to such [problems] — such as the limits of human knowledge.

[ 34 ] The struggle, the work with precisely such questions, which are like boundaries, like stakes that constrain human consciousness, precisely such a struggle leads [further] into the spiritual realm. I have described in detail in my writings — especially in “How to Attain Knowledge of Higher Worlds,” “Occult Science,” and also in the book “The Riddle of Man” in the last chapter — what actually needs to be done with thinking, how thinking needs to be treated in order to enter a whole new realm of experience and perception in the living struggle with such questions. Of course, human thinking must overcome some of what what it is accustomed to assume in ordinary consciousness and even in ordinary science. Above all, human thinking must become completely clear about itself, about the life of imagination. I cannot go into details today, but I would like to discuss the fundamental results and show you why it is possible to make progress.

[ 35 ] What the human process of cognition is, that is what the spiritual researcher must present to himself. Now the spiritual researcher finds that the thinking that one develops in ordinary waking consciousness is thoroughly influenced by the fact that it originates from the external sensory world. The external sensory world acts upon our eyes and ears; these form mental images through what the external world presents, but these mental images one learns about them in Spiritual Science.

[ 36 ] For Spiritual Science, the question “What actually is this human imagination? What are mental images?” becomes one of the most painful questions, because one first learns about the kind of imagination that is connected to the external world. By really following the process of mental imaging, one notices that what wants to enter our consciousness from the outside world is no longer present in the mental image as it is present in the outside world. Our mental images, as they appear to the spiritual researcher, could initially be described as shadows of what they actually originate from. But one could say more, [one] could say: As the external sensory world allows what it is to affect us through our eyes and ears — and as mental images work through this — what lives in the external sensory world is squeezed out, and what passes through our brain and [through our] nerves and comes to our consciousness as a mental image is actually only a shadow of what it represents.

[ 37 ] It is like the corpse of the living, what lives out there in reality. It seems strange, paradoxical, or curious when someone says that. But it is good that it is so, because that which, because it is so, cannot take in external reality, makes it possible for us to attain human consciousness. [Otherwise] we would perceive [the external world] the sensory world as it is, we would merge with it and not be able to perceive ourselves as I, as self; we would not be human. So there is a good reason in the nature of the universe for what is weakened in the external world — this attenuation is part of it —, that we can be human with alert senses; but what follows from this is that we have only a corpse-like imitation [a corpse-like shadow of the outer world] in our mental images from the outer sensory world.

[ 38 ] Since it is the case that waking consciousness can only be grasped in a shadowy way, what does one do with such a borderline question? One does not work with living reality, with true liveliness, but with a shadow of liveliness, with that from which life has actually been driven out, [has been detached]. And with these dead concepts, which are quite suitable for the external world and life in natural science, cannot approach the spirituality of the world. Therefore, one initially feels that one cannot do anything at all, that one encounters complete contradictions. One must now use big words, which are so unusual today, when speaking of these things. But you see, we are working in relation to the present day in the same way that Copernicus worked, when humanity was accustomed to viewing the universe as if the Earth stood still and the Sun moved.

[ 39 ] When talking about these things, one must therefore start from unfamiliar mental images, since it is a matter of continuing to think a making of thinking more flexible, that this thinking lives in a completely different way and proceeds more independently of our physicality than it otherwise does; all thinking that is subject to the conditions of our physicality, that flows through our nerves, all this thinking is overshadowed as just described.

[ 40 ] We must arrive at a way of thinking that is alive in itself. But we must do this in such a way that we do not brood within ourselves in the sense of a nebulous mysticism, believing that we can make something out of thinking only through inner brooding, through inner speculation, as some mystics believe. One can do many things in this way, but that has nothing to do with Spiritual Science. It is something completely different: it is about forming thinking from the scientific external world in such a way that one understands how to enter into a more inner relationship with the phenomena of the external world than usual, so that when one honestly observes a phenomenon of the external world, one not only forms a concept, but establishes a whole series of concepts, just as one can photograph trees from many sides, it is the same tree, but [always] different in the photograph. One can carry this into life in such a way that one only forms one mental image; but [one can also carry it into life] in such a way that one consciously works toward the versatility and flexibility of thinking, striving with every phenomenon to obtain many concepts that say “yes” to the phenomenon, that [to it] say “no.”

[ 41 ] This conscious work toward versatility is the beginning. [If] one continues to ascend and, beyond that, trains one's thinking in this way, [then] one has a peculiar inner experience. This experience consists of something that has an enormously significant effect on the human soul, for it is the burgeoning conscious awareness. When natural scientists describe the human senses to us today, they show that the senses arose through the differentiation of the sense of touch. Goethe says very beautifully: From this relationship, from subordinate organs, eyes and ears have formed. Lower animals have only organs of touch, some of which are perfected, others not. The higher senses are only perfections of the one sense. One arrives at the inner experience by other paths: the thinking from which one usually starts, which detaches itself only sparsely from the human body, is — when we begin with it in waking consciousness — like a spiritual groping. Then this thinking must be further developed, although one always remains in the realm of fully conscious thinking. Nowhere does one descend into the physical; it becomes more independent than it is in ordinary daily consciousness. But one ascends in this thinking by becoming something completely different; by truly developing from it [that] groping thinking becomes seeing thinking, in the sense that one can speak — to use Goethe's expressions — of "spiritual eyes, spiritual ears ' that truly see into the spiritual world. Goethe still understands these as symbols; we may speak of them from a scientific point of view. Above all, it is important that all one-sidedness, all possibility of viewing things stubbornly in only one direction, [pursuing any] conceptual formation.

[ 42 ] Those who have become true spiritual researchers develops a true longing, when he presents anything, not only to present the matter as he sees it, but also to say what can be objected to. And those who have heard my lectures — who have read the books at night and listened to the lectures again during the day — know that I proceed from the principle of not only saying what speaks for a matter, but simply presenting the objections themselves to the reader, the possible objections, so that everyone can find the objections listed everywhere in my writings. In contrast, among the many attacks on Spiritual Science in recent times, there is also the possibility that people can copy the objections from my books and interpret them differently. Then they can use this to knock Spiritual Science out of the field. The spiritual researcher must do this, but it gives those who want to become opponents an opportunity. They don't need to make any effort, just copy the objections, those [gap].

[ 43 ] You see what is important: the flexibility of thinking, the detachment of thinking from physicality. If the expression is not misunderstood, one can say that through such a development of thinking, the human being really comes to develop certain powers, powers of cognition, through which he actually finds himself outside his body, no longer in the body. But one must not misunderstand this; if one misunderstands it, one has already misunderstood it. The expression is meant entirely in the scientific sense.

[ 44 ] I will perhaps give you [another] comparison when I try to characterize the kind of thinking that must be taken as the starting point in spiritual research. This thinking is the opposite of the kind of thinking that has become sufficiently well known: [the phenomena of] hypnotism and suggestion. [gap] But they are also the complete opposite of what illusion, hallucination, and so on are. One can say that the thinking referred to here, the development of the soul forces that arise from the [gap], develops in the opposite direction. Above all, the dream-like formation of consciousness in suggestion experiments can develop precisely in the opposite direction. Therefore, only malice can [see] what is the opposite of all these pathological states as connected with these states themselves. It is certainly what is meant here, the best means of [precisely] overcoming hallucinations [from developing, in order to overcome everything suggestive].

[ 45 ] What, then, is the receptivity to suggestion? It consists in the fact that people shy away from seeing certain mental images that contradict the suggestion. [...] If they are led to believe that a potato is a pear, they cannot perceive the opposite because their critical faculties and prudence are excluded. [Gap] All these things also contribute [contribute] to narrowing the scope of consciousness and reducing critical faculties. The methods of Spiritual Science not only have nothing to do with anything that reduces critical faculties, but are in fact the complete opposite: they develop consciousness and make use of critical faculties. [.. .] [It is important] not to do this theoretically, but to do it in one's full inner life, then what may be called seeing consciousness will gradually develop.

[ 46 ] This cannot be achieved on the basis of some dreamy or unhealthy everyday consciousness. Certainly, there are many people who [feel] that they are adherents of Spiritual Science — all those people who do not know what to do with themselves in ordinary life, who only ever believe because they believe themselves to be called to higher things, to see themselves called to what lies beyond the more trivial physical world. Spiritual Science cannot really use such people. Just as ordinary waking consciousness depends on having a healthy sleep — you all know that if you don't sleep well, you can't get much done during the day — if someone isn't the kind of person who knows that they have duties to fulfill in ordinary life, they can't wake up to seeing consciousness. That's what's absolutely necessary, because it's becoming more and more common for all the good-for-nothings in ordinary life, the playful people who strive for dreamy work, the reality that is much more than the dreamy spiritual world, therefore /gap], all the people who don't know what to do with themselves in ordinary life, who always believe that ordinary science is no good, that it is based on axioms — they are also no good for Spiritual Science. Only when one [firmly established in ordinary science], is one ready to ascend to [Spiritual Science]. Anyone who is open to criticism without prejudice can understand Spiritual Science, but in order to research, it is necessary to have what [we] have just discussed; for when a person has come to use what Goethe called “spiritual ears and eyes,” then he or she attains the ability and reality to have new experiences in the environment. He or she attains, I would say, an experience similar to that of the farmer who said to himself: There is the pond, there is a tree, [and] there is air. He used to think this was nothing, but it is an experience; at a higher level, however, it is the experience of seeing that where one saw nothing before, there is a spiritual world. The first organ is a spiritual world — as it is already called by exact science — the first consciousness [which] is experienced there, is the so-called etheric world. Physics has spoken of ether since ancient times. Here is one of the points where one must say: true Spiritual Science and natural science are in harmony with each other, just as workers who drill from opposite sides in a tunnel and meet in the middle are in harmony with each other. Spiritual Science and natural science work from different directions, [they] already meet in the middle.

[ 47 ] There are so many views on ether that I would have to talk for hours if I were to tell you and describe all these hypotheses exist about the ether. But one thing is much more important for the present than all these views. That is what Planck recently said about this very ether. This is therefore an important point where natural science and Spiritual Science already meet today. Consider what Planck says at one point: Many views have already been held about the ether; but if one wants to characterize it properly , we will first of all have to say: We must form a mental image of the ether that excludes [only] all material properties from the ether — and whatever else such a mental image might include — in any case, it excludes the idea that it has no material properties. [Physicists] are [capable and] have progressed so far [that] they [can] form a mental image of the ether [as non-spatial], as not having any material properties , that is, as something spiritual. This supersensible spiritual is now really perceived by human visual consciousness, just as colors are perceived by the eyes and sounds by the ears; it is really observed, and inside the ether there are etheric beings and etheric events, just as in the physical world.

[ 48 ] And we ourselves are not only this physical body, which consists of muscles and bones taken from the substances of the outer physical world, but we also carry within us an etheric or life body. And everything that lives within the innermost world is connected with the level of consciousness that I have been calling imaginative consciousness for years now, and with good reason. Not because we take in any mental images, but because we take in mental images that are all pictorial, while mere thoughts are shadow thoughts, imaginative consciousness must have imaginative mental images.

[ 49 ] This does not lead us to what hallucinators or even spiritualists believe, but to something quite different. We come to realize that, as human beings, we may no longer carry the same physical substances within us after many years — after a certain number of years, we have completely different physical substances within us — but between birth and death we have the earthly ether, our life body, the formative body, so that the expression “etheric body” is not misunderstood. We have the formative body within us, which carries us through our life between birth and death, year after year.

[ 50 ] Here we point to what actually underlies the spiritual supersensible, not through [speculation] or conjecture, but by gaining an awareness of it, a vision.

[ 51 ] And we really must not believe that Spiritual Science is something that wants to solve the mysteries of the world in the blink of an eye. If one wants to gain insight through spiritual scientific work, the paths of research are [no more and] no less uncertain than those of external natural science or any other science. One must then arrive at something like this, for example, and ask oneself the question in a new way: What is forgetting? What is memory? Natural science also starts with the simple and moves on to the difficult. By now knowing the image-forming body, [seeing] its weaving and life, one then gets an answer. Whenever we remember something or have a mental image of it [gap], this is based on a process of the soul overcoming the physical. The soul overcomes the physical, and so on and so forth [...].

[ 52 ] But if [the physical] becomes so strong that it overcomes the forces of the soul, then we forget. [Then] the mental image stands above memory and forgetting. And we then ascend to the mental images that teach us that there are certain laws, to something that natural science has rightly been researching in recent times, that which carries the inherited characteristics within us. But we also carry within us those forces that then live in the etheric body, which in the course of our soul life overcome the [physical] forces of heredity. And one sees a constant overcoming of the permanent forces [by] educational forces, [through] self-discipline.

[ 53 ] But then one rises even further, only one must develop the process even further. One must ascend from imaginative consciousness to an even higher level of consciousness — [I ask you not to] take offense at the expression, [it is] not meant in a superstitious sense —, [to what] I have called inspired consciousness. I was able to show you that the expression is very well chosen, because [inspired consciousness, qualitatively speaking,] is the counterpart of what breathing is in the human body, [an] expression taken from the subject. But it must ascend to what is called inspired consciousness. There we must go even further.

[ 54 ] Now you will find those inner soul activities that are to be accomplished described in the books mentioned. In order to achieve this, we must find a way to connect our thinking and our feeling completely with spiritual reality. This means that we must not think as we do in ordinary consciousness, because thinking is done, but in such a way that I can compare this thinking, for which one must develop a habit, with what happens in moral life in the outer world. I would like to call what I mean here the moralization of thinking. When one thinks in ordinary life, one considers whether the thought is logically justified. [Gap] If you don't forbid yourself to think illogically, [gap], the story becomes quite different. In outer life, when you don't just think your thoughts, [you don't think much about whether a thought corresponds to reality] . Reality [however] places different demands on us than mere thinking. An incorrect thought in everyday life is toll-free, as they say.

[ 55 ] But the spiritual researcher must not stop there: thinking must become similar to external moral life. In moral life, we must not theorize — this is good, that is evil — but we must do good deeds, fulfill our duty, refrain from bad actions, not merely confess them as wrong, but suppress them, bring ourselves to not allow them, to [not do them], unless it is our habit to do what we want to do. The spiritual researcher must [learn] to transfer to thinking what external reality demands of us more and more strongly. He must come to allow himself certain trains of thought and not allow others, because [otherwise] he remains on the wrong track; he must feel the thought in such a way that he must develop out of this current.

[ 56 ] Example: You see, I really must not believe that the misunderstanding is being caused too strongly, that I underestimate natural science, but with reference to what I have now meant by [thinking], this [modern] natural science is quite peculiar. You see, some time ago a certain Professor Dewar gave a lecture in which he talks about what the Earth will look like, roughly, with the inhabitants who will live on it in twenty million years. Everything he says about it is tremendously witty. He explains: By then, the temperature will have dropped to minus 200 degrees Celsius. Then what is now air will have turned into water, and water will be frozen. Then there will be something instead of air, the element helium, and so on, which is composed, then — and this is all presented seriously [by Dewar] and is actually witty from the point of view of scientific thinking — then milk will be solid and glow in a bluish light. And [it will be possible] to coat the wall with egg white, and [the wall] will glow so brightly that [it will be possible to read newspapers].

[ 57 ] Very wittily presented by [Dewar]. That is permissible in ordinary thinking. But those who remain realistic in their thinking ask: Can I develop such thoughts? Where is the milk supposed to come from, [which is solid, and so on and so forth], where will the newspapers come from that are read when protein is painted on the walls? You realize that there is a possibility of getting so far inwardly that one does not merely form correct mental images — these mental images are not related to reality — [but] comes to acquire, at a certain point, thinking that is related to reality; which then provides the opportunity for inspired insight. Another comparison. One would also have to examine the individual human body, entirely according to Professor Dewar's method, [one] could say: Man has a stomach inside him, I examine this stomach every eight days and calculate, in a year, [how it changes].

[ 58 ] This is what colleagues everywhere do; they calculate what the earth [looked like] twenty million years ago and what it [will look like] in twenty million years; [similarly], I can examine the stomach and then ask the question [gap], and say: What will [then] humans look like when their stomachs change? [What will they look like] in 150 years, or what did they look like 150 years ago, or, if I have examined them, [further] back in time? The objection is valid: 150 years ago, humans did not yet exist; and in 150 years, they will no longer be alive. The idea may be very ingenious, but it does not need to be realistic. Therefore, everything that geology says about the Earth twenty million years ago and twenty million years from now may be very ingeniously conceived. But if the Earth was previously scattered in space and did not exist five million years ago, then the calculation is of no help, however ingenious it may be.

[ 59 ] You see, there is a big difference between thinking that is steeped in reality and thinking that is merely logical. One must ascend to this thinking steeped in reality, then one not only comes to [discover] the image-forming body that carries human beings from birth to death, but also to discover in human beings what this body takes on from heredity, but which comes from the spiritual world when human beings begin their earthly existence, and which in turn passes through the gate [of death] when human beings die.

[ 60 ] There we begin to discover that which in truth is immortal in human beings. The seeing consciousness can detach itself from the physical body. Therefore, it can already connect with that which is truly consciousness when the body is not the outer expression of the human being. Here we have the point where we really learn to recognize that which in human beings what passes through birth and death, what truly represents the immortal in human beings. And from here we then arrive at a completely different view of the question of immortality. We have first shown that human beings can attain a different consciousness, and that this consciousness can contain within itself the immortal part of the human soul. Therefore, this immortal part of the human soul is that which can be conscious without the body. [... ] And ascending from there, one can connect the question of immortality with the question of destiny.

[ 61 ] The question of immortality has already puzzled many. Simply because Spiritual Science was rejected, it was not possible to arrive at a solution. But Spiritual Science will shed light on these things. The question of fate has been even less the subject of scientific inquiry [...]. Schopenhauer, [gap] was unable to make any headway on the question of fate. But he chose an interesting comparison. However imperfect the comparison may be, one thing must be said: he chose a specific, [strange] comparison. This testifies to the fact that he at least had an inkling [gap]. When we look at a dream, it seems [at first] confused, but when we wake up, we evaluate the dream and may even find what can be formed in the dream.

[ 62 ] A dramatic dream plot can develop from any fire department, from any one. From his waking consciousness, he knows: A [fire engine] has passed by, and that has triggered his dream plot.

[ 63 ] If you take the comparison that the observing consciousness represents an awakening from ordinary consciousness, then you may suspect that the question may be raised: Is it perhaps possible that [what] appears to us as fate — which appears to us to be descending upon us, externally upon us — is it not possible that what we seem to experience haphazardly, when we survey it from the dream with waking consciousness, with observing consciousness, then appears in a different light, [what we experience in ordinary consciousness], we then see the cause [gap]?

[ 64 ] Then, at the moment when consciousness rises to the inspired, it becomes apparent that the question that natural science has begun to address in a purely materialistic vein — which is justified on the one hand — then something actually becomes apparent with regard to destiny. Let us first take inner destiny, our inner destiny. It is illustrated by the fact that we are born with these or those abilities; depending on this, we can do this or that, we are capable or incapable. Our destiny depends first and foremost on our inner [ability to think].

[ 65 ] Now, natural science has taken to attributing our inner abilities to the [inherited] characteristics of our ancestors. One might come along and say: Hey, spiritual researcher, you are a real dilettante. Look at how science has shown how characteristics are inherited, such as, for example, the confluence of those abilities you have [illegible character] in the individual branch of your ancestors. — The spiritual researcher must reply: He is already looking at all this, he also acknowledges the validity of what natural science says, but he must add something else, and he adds this from observation, just as the natural scientist adds his observations . Natural science develops correct observational results with regard to the question of heredity, [for example, Mendel's [laws]]. Spiritual research also fully recognizes this [—.]. But logic is a strange thing.

[ 66 ] A book has been published about Goethe's genius, in which one finds a description of the characteristics of his ancestors [father, mother, and so on and so forth] [gap], all very nice, in order to then show how a summation of these characteristics points to Goethe. That is why one says that this shows us that the characteristic is at the end of a line of heredity [...]. However], this is not [correct], for the simple reason that if one were to think about it, one would point out one thing in particular and not go back to the father and mother: that this shows the characteristics is no more remarkable than [that] someone who has been pulled through water is wet. But if one wanted to know something, one would have to point it out precisely: the son, the grandson, the genius traits are passed on — one will leave that alone, one will not come to the [gap]. [unclear passage] [...].

[ 67 ] It is quite realistic to look at the physical peculiarity, but the spiritual researcher sees something else. Well, you can read the details in the books mentioned, but I will give the basic result here [gap].

[ 68 ] Human beings live in the spiritual world before they connect with what they have inherited from their father. But just as we do not only have a physical body here, but also a spiritual-soul body within it, and just as every time we move a hand, it is the spiritual-soul body that does so – the physical body is only an expression of this – so too the truly spiritual is not in some vague, distant, cloud cuckoo land beyond, but is where the physical is; it permeates the physical [with the spiritual-soul]. The physical arises out of the spiritual. [Therefore, what what happens physically in the distant generations of our ancestors comes from the spiritual world.] But we are in it as spiritual individuals, we have also been in it — and we work into the physical with the forces of the spiritual world. To the ten or twelve generations before us, from which we develop, we have passed on further characteristics to our descendants. We ourselves are within it, in the whole process that transmits the characteristics from ancestors to descendants. We determine this ourselves by being in the spiritual world for centuries before birth, [by] directing the characteristics of our ancestors from the spiritual world. We determine the hereditary characteristics from which the physical body is built; we work from the spiritual world [from] the spiritual world what forms our inner destiny. That is the inner destiny.

[ 69 ] How does the outer destiny that comes to us [through] the outer events of life come about? Here I must show that [to do this] we can ascend to a higher level of knowledge, to what I have called, [as I] believe, the most appropriate term, intuitive consciousness. I can only explain this in relation to the question of destiny.

[ 70 ] Human beings achieve this by developing insights that belong to the contemplative consciousness, by developing such insights in their souls. One day [they come to] experience something very specific, the real recognition of the spiritual world. [It is] not a matter of indulging in fantasies, but of entering the spiritual world with one's own soul, of entering it in living experience. [One then finds] rising up from the soul that which, out of the seeing consciousness, brings enlightenment about the spiritual world, about that which, as the immortal soul, passes through births and deaths. Then the day comes, and it is an important day in human life, a fateful day, when one says to oneself: You have experienced many things, you have perhaps experienced that has carried your life up to the highest [experiences], what has brought you pleasure in the most diverse stages, you have experienced that [which has saddened you most deeply], the passing of loved ones, that which can befall human beings, that which can plunge them into the deepest sorrow, into the harshest distress. But something that cuts so deeply into human experience as when you have realized the truth and reality of the spiritual world through contemplative consciousness, you have not yet experienced. One need not become numb to the vicissitudes of ordinary life; [on the contrary], one can become even more sensitive than in outer life, for example, to what can happen to people, what can lead them to happiness or plunge them into distress, and yet there comes a moment when even that which [as] the greatest stroke of fate / gap] may seem quite great, but greater than all that can appear in human consciousness is the experience of the spiritual world. And when this moment has come, then what has come is the immediate experience of an inner fate. Then one has fate where it can be experienced inwardly in such a way that one experiences it inwardly through the insight one has brought about oneself. Where one has brought it about oneself, one has understood it in such a way that one knows, you were there. Now one can judge it because one was there. And only now does light flow from this experience onto the question of destiny. Now it is as if one were awakening from a dream. Now it begins to become what Knebel so beautifully [said]: Those who look back on their destiny, [gap] we could not be otherwise [than we are] if [we had] a different destiny.

[ 71 ] It is as if we are awakening from a lifelong dream, and what we previously only absorbed — some with pleasure, some with suffering, [which] caused us distress — all of that now becomes, as when we awaken from a dream, reality. We awaken to our fate and to a new world. We remember what one does not see in ordinary life, what one, I would say, sees while asleep. A whole new light spreads over the experiences of fate.

[ 72 ] Just imagine you are [seventeen], eighteen years old, you feel something germinating within you, you live life in a one-sided way, [one] event followed by another [leads] you forward, you move forward, rejecting some [events], accepting others, being led to strange places by accepting events. There is something indefinite in all this. But in it, the spiritual researcher discovers something—you might almost want to accuse him of materialism, but today that is meant in a spiritual sense—that can be compared to the physical hunger that exists in the soul, which is then countered in life by experience with reference to /gap?], and which abolishes hunger; so something [gap] .

[ 73 ] This leads us from event to event; we believe we are driven forward by our spiritual hunger, then the experience of fate occurs, [unclear passage] that we learn that [illegible characters, gap].

[ 74 ] I can only explain to you in principle what has been discovered about fate. And then comes what is full science: we learn to recognize through contemplative consciousness that, just as just as our inner destiny flows from inner strength [from life] between death and birth, so what sits within us as a hunger for existence flows from past earthly lives. Past earthly lives become truly concrete within us, and what we are now experiencing becomes the starting point for subsequent earthly lives.

[ 75 ] I can only hint at it; in full scientific terms it appears different than in sensitive mysticism, but it will work out if one applies [gap] to spiritual science as well.

[ 76 ] What is objected to today on the part of natural science against Spiritual Science is also reinforced in many ways by the religious side, in that [it was certain]: Spiritual Science knows something that a religious worldview can rebel against.

[ 77 ] Precisely because some things have come from this side: Just as Copernicanism, the doctrine of the rotation of the earth, did not impair religion [is], but on the contrary [gap], true Spiritual Science, because it is true Spiritual Science, has never undermined religious consciousness, but on the contrary: those who [live] in true Spiritual Science will attain impulses in this region that will lead them precisely to religious life. And a new movement, a religious movement, will arise, without [gap]. Those who believe that what stands on a secure foundation will be undermined by Spiritual Science are faint-hearted toward Christianity. Just as little as it could be undermined by Copernicanism, it cannot [gap].

[ 78 ] And only those who are true Christians and recognize the foundations foundations of his Christianity, not one who says, “I must protect it against scientific progress,” but one who says, "I know that it is so strong that no scientific progress can in any way [shake] it. True natural science will support Christianity, true Spiritual Science will not only support it, but will be able to revive it in the right way when it supports others [who] have become shaken [gap].

[ 79 ] From another point of view, it is quite understandable that Spiritual Science is challenged: you claim that Spiritual Science is based on experience, but these are only your observations. — But anyone can test these observations, and it is expressly pointed out that these are not hallucinations, but rather things that are not hallucinatory imaginings. [It is also often said that the results of Spiritual Science cannot be verified by thinking. But that is precisely what is required, that thinking will clarify that this is not mere observation, but that such sharp thinking is required that this observation can be justified before reason. [Gap]

[ 80 ] It is reason that can distinguish a hallucination [from a vision] and recognize it as a hallucination. Spiritual Science requires even higher thinking.

[81] One may admire natural science, but it is precisely in the field of natural science that one finds today that sharp thinking, that scientific thinking, that conscientious, constantly self-examining thinking that is necessary for the spiritual researcher. I could give you many vivid examples of this. Just one to conclude:

[ 82 ] I would like to emphasize that, unless I am attacked myself, I do not attack anyone whom I do not respect; I raise objections against those whom I respect, and those whom I choose [gap] [is] a sign that I respect the person in question in their field all the more. It is a cheap way to try to refute those whom one cannot respect. What needs to be shown must be shown precisely to those whom one can respect.

[ 83 ] Here we have a great and important contemporary scientist, whom I truly recognize as one of the foremost in his field. But he shows that one can be a great scientist without having that self-controlling thinking that must be present at every turn. [He has] written a book in which he gives a picture of the connection between world phenomena from his point of view. In the preface to this book, the author says:

Whether we live in the “best of all worlds” is something the mind cannot create a mental image of, but we can already claim that we live in the “best of all times,” , because it is indeed true that all previous eras were insignificant in terms of natural science. We have made such progress in natural science that the present era must be regarded as the “best of times.” Therefore, we may,

[ 84 ] he says,

with Goethe, when we refer to this “best of times,” we can say with Goethe:

It is a great delight
To put oneself in the spirit of the times,
To see how a wise man thought before us,
And how we have finally come so far.

[ 85 ] One needs to think conscientiously, to concentrate on oneself, for Goethe has Wagner say this in his “Faust” [... ].

[ 86 ] You see, one can ask oneself a second question and answer it in such a way as to control one's thinking, that one associates oneself with Wagner, the theorist, [Wagner], that one connects oneself with Wagner [connects oneself], while believing that one is quoting a profound statement by citing an expression, [longer gap].

[ 87 ] This is not just a single example, but a typical example, of how materialists [gap] cannot have the thinking that is so necessary. Therefore, one should not be surprised when [the] Spiritual Science is met with resistance. From this perspective, the first thing that becomes apparent is that the views in speculative philosophical consciousness, using a vivid example already mentioned here, reveal something quite remarkable. When [materialism] [reached] this point in the scientific worldview, [which] was in the first decade of the second half of the nineteenth century, everyone believed that Darwinism had solved all the mysteries of the world.

[ 88 ] Hartmann, who did not yet have a Spiritual Science, but who knew the one-sidedness of science from a speculative-philosophical point of view, wrote a number of things against the materialistic coloring of Darwinism, showing that spirit must live in everything. Then counter-writings appear, in which it is said everywhere: Well, here comes this dilettante philosopher, babbling in a dilettante manner about the spiritual; science has long since overcome the spirit. Then [however] a writing by an anonymous author appears. It was very witty. Haeckel, Oscar Schmidt, and many others said something like: Someone who fundamentally understands natural science has refuted this philosopher Hartmann. Why isn't the author named? We consider him one of our own; he is at the height of natural science. It contributes everything [gap]. A second edition soon became necessary; then the man revealed himself, it was Hartmann himself. The third edition did not sell so quickly.

[ 89 ] We have experienced the strange example—I heard it primarily from Haeckel himself—of how he called Oscar Hertwig my brother [and] most loyal student. Oscar Hertwig, however, brought forth a refutation of the theory of chance. We see Haeckel's student already establishing a completely new worldview striving toward the spiritual; here we see Haeckel being quoted by Oscar Hertwig, Haeckel's student. A remarkable phenomenon: we are on a path where natural science must flow into Spiritual Science from its own forces, from its own currents, from its own striving. Spiritual Science is not established arbitrarily, but from the deepest insight of the time. [Gap]

[ 90 ] Is it not what the present [needs], precisely because the necessary and admirable progress of recent times has caused the direct connection with the spiritual worlds that existed in ancient times to be lost? Is it not [right] then for the human soul in these modern times, in the present, when so much comes upon it that it can say nothing else but: Just as I must relate to science, so must it also have something to say to me about what is dearest to my heart [...].

[ 91 ] In the present, there may be great, sometimes decisive questions of fate — just as fate poses profound questions to us — which, if approached scientifically, will then be a science.

[ 92 ] Spiritual Science is one that not only satisfies the intellect, not only satisfies from a theoretical point of view, but is a science that satisfies the human heart, that calms the human heart, that strengthens it in the most difficult questions of existence, as they arise in particular in our time before our immediate present. And I am, my dear friends, not only out of an awareness of the times, not only out of what we are now directly experiencing, but ever since I was able to strive in the direction that led to Spiritual Science, I have always been convinced that in order to arrive at true spiritual research in modern humanity, it is necessary to draw on sources of human spiritual power that — after ancient Greece has passed over the waves of human development — which are now opening up as human, scientific forces in what I would like to call German spiritual life. I could not develop this from a feeling, but from a realization that has become established over decades.

[ 93 ] When I wrote in a German journal three decades ago in my very first essay [on Central European spiritual life], I expressed in that one thought the seeds I had for Spiritual Science, that we needed a deepening of our spiritual life from sources that are only German sources, I wrote that at the time. This has now become a fact, 36 years ago, that we must above all overcome what we, as in the nineteenth century [in a way] that may be justified in this place, but which does not allow our spiritual life to develop in this purity, that we must distinguish what unjustly influences Central European spiritual life from English spiritual life from the true sources of spirituality. This is not meant in a chauvinistic way, but rather in the sense that the forces that exist in the world must also be recognized if they are to be recognized in consciousness; so it is not merely a feeling, but — so to speak — it is science that I must seek this in the deepest sources of German spiritual life, which are called upon to do so.

[ 94 ] After the Greeks had achieved the highest possible level of anthropology, it was necessary to bridge the gap between anthropology and anthroposophy: to the first orienting Spiritual Science.

[ 95 ] That is why I was particularly moved when I later found the following remarkable remark by Hartmann, a man who was also deeply involved in German spiritual life, which today has almost disappeared from [Lücke].

[ 96 ] People believe that physics is something objective. Hartmann, who is able to view such things more objectively, [Hartmann] said years ago:

It is to be hoped [that in modern physics, too, the idealistic and agnostic aberrations will soon be recognized as such] as soon as religion and philosophy [turn away from them and] where a spirit that has gone [illegible] turns its back on us.

[ 97 ] That really sounds like the best sources of this German intellectual life. One need only remember [the] beautiful saying of Novalis — that wonderful German spirit — beautiful saying about physicists. Novalis, who in his youthful life created from all the splendor of the German spirit, said the following:

We will only become physicists [when we make imaginative substances and forces the measure of natural substances and forces].

[ 98 ] Is this not [Novalis's] motto for what Spiritual Science aims to achieve?

[ 99 ] Initially, I took the liberty of calling this Spiritual Science; I see, my esteemed audience, spiritual greats wherever I look, deeply rooted in German spiritual life, in the German spirit. Above all, I look back on the wonderful Troxler, on that remarkable spirit who, in the first half of the nineteenth century, did not yet have Spiritual Science, but who, from the depths of German thinking and vision, strove for such a spiritual scientific understanding of the world and of the connection of human beings with this world as it has really developed, a recognition of the true reasons for human existence, and in 1827 Troxler said:

While it is most gratifying that the latest philosophy, which [...] must reveal itself in every anthroposophy [...] must reveal itself, is on the rise, it cannot be overlooked that this idea cannot be a fruit of speculation, and that the true individuality of the human being must not be confused either with what it posits as subjective spirit or finite ego, or with what it contrasts with this as absolute spirit or absolute personality.

[ 100 ] A conscious ascent from the soul to the spirit, as can only be grasped in our Spiritual Science, was already before the eyes of the excellent, unfortunately forgotten Troxler in 1827.

[ 101 ] Now let us turn to Hermann Fichte, the son of the great Fichte — whom I characterized here years ago as an influencer of German intellectual life —, to that son who so lovingly enjoyed his father's teaching. Let us listen to him as he speaks about the path that man must take from mere anthropology to the understanding of the true nature of man. Let us listen to what Hermann Fichte says. He says:

Sensory consciousness, on the other hand, and the world of phenomena arising from its starting point, with the entire sensory life, including that of human beings, have no other meaning than to be the place where that supersensible life of the spirit takes place, in that it introduces the otherworldly spiritual content of ideas into the sensory world through its own freely conscious actions] (...] [This thorough understanding of the human being now elevates “anthropology” to its final result, “anthroposophy.”

[ 102 ] Ladies and gentlemen, anthroposophy was not born out of arbitrariness. It arose from the deepest spiritual need of the German people themselves. If one continues the deepest German spiritual life, one arrives at anthroposophy.

[ 103 ] But then one also comes to understand those Germans who, out of the depths of German spiritual life, must protest against all materialization of science, for this can never come from the deepest sources of German spiritual life. Materialization can therefore be rejected by a man like Grimm, if not out of Spiritual Science, then out of a feeling of standing firmly on the ground of Goethe's worldview [ He rejects what that external, materialistic Laplace-Kant theory [says], which depicts the world as having emerged from a nebula, excluding spiritual life. This is made understandable to children by saying: Look, the world was a nebula, and then the rings formed, the planets [unclear passage]. Do you see how the sun shines in the middle? [gap] A wonderful view — and the children go home: The teacher explained to us how the planetary system was formed. It is always good, as it is moral, to forget oneself. [I] will not forget what is essential [in] a scientific experiment; if the teacher had not stirred [gap]. Therefore, when one takes the whole, takes it generally, one must [recognize] that it was only the great teacher with a drawing pin who set the whole thing in motion. That has probably been neglected. In Spiritual Science, we do not speak of the giant teacher, but of the spiritual powers and forces to which the contemplative consciousness ascends. It was his — [Grimm's] — emotional involvement in this protest against all materialism [that] spoke.

[ 104 ] That which is already [illegible word], which will one day become everything — and Spiritual Science will already pave the way for understanding how such a world comes into being:

Long ago, in his youth, [already, the great Laplace-Kantian fantasy of the origin and eventual demise of the globe had taken hold. From the rotating nebula — children already learn this at school — the central gastropause forms, from which the Earth subsequently develops, and, as a solidifying sphere, goes through all phases, including the episode of habitation by the human race, in inconceivable periods of time, finally falling back into the Sun as burnt-out slag: a long process, but one that is completely comprehensible to today's audience], for the realization of which no external intervention is now required other than the effort of some outside force to maintain the sun at the same heating temperature.

No more fruitless perspective for the future can be imagined than the one that is being imposed on us today as scientifically necessary. A carcass bone, a carcass bone that a hungry dog makes a detour around, would be a refreshing, appetizing morsel in comparison to this final excrement of creation, as which our Earth would ultimately fall back to the Sun, and it is the thirst for knowledge with which our generation accepts such things and believes them to be true, a sign of a sick imagination, which, as a historical phenomenon, the scholars of future epochs will one day devote much acumen to explaining.

.

[ 105 ] So Grimm.

[ 106 ] And we may say this not only from a consciousness inclined toward the spiritual, but from genuine German consciousness. Perhaps much will have to happen before the prejudices that still stand in the way of Spiritual Science today disappear. But the time will come, just as it came for the Copernican and Keplerian worldviews.

[ 107 ] I know very well that I can only stammer out some things today. And some of what I have said today was imperfectly expressed, but I have little sympathy for Tycho Brahe, who proved at the time that the Copernican worldview could not be correct. Tycho Brahe was very astute in all this, but I think it is better to agree with Kepler, who also did not accept the Copernican [worldview], but who perfected it. So I know it is imperfectly said, but there will be those who will perfect it in the future, not [through] one-sided, unhealthy criticism, but by those who want to continue working in a positive sense. I have said this to the best of my knowledge.

[ 108 ] If the Spiritual Science is to be developed, the powers of insight of the German spirit will be needed. And in this sense, Spiritual Science may be brought together with that cultural wave which we might call the German cultural wave.

[ 109 ] And once, in a significant time, the great Fichte gave speeches that he did not give out of chauvinistic consciousness, but in difficult times, in order to show the German soul that system of education through which it could become a real victor in the world through the spirit — Fichte found himself compelled turn to the grand vision in the first of these speeches, saying: It is not only the German people and the German spirit that count, but the world counts on this deepest source of spiritual being.

[ 110 ] Therefore, my dear audience, in this time of severe trial, in this most difficult time, Germans may look to the deepest sources of their being. They may look to the connection between these deepest sources of their essence and the essence of the world spirit, and then they need not believe that they — not in immodest arrogance toward others — may say in humility to the tasks they have toward the world spirit: If enemies all around desire to extinguish this German spiritual life, to inflict irreparable damage on this German spiritual life, they are not only seeking to damage German spiritual life, but they are seeking to damage the entire development of humanity, with which the German spirit knows itself to be connected through its deepest power, so that what it has to do cannot be done by anyone else. They are seeking to damage the entire development of humanity. For it is not because we are merely attached to the German spirit, but because we want to look with all our hearts into the ways of the world spirit that we say: [large gap).

[ 111 ] If someone were to destroy what is the task of the German people in the world, [then] with its task, the world spirit itself would have to suffer enormous damage for the whole of humanity.

[ 112 ] Therefore, the German may say: The light that he has to kindle among the lights of world development, this light must not be extinguished. That is why it is not blind faith, but confidence in the light of the German spirit, that allows us to look to the future even in the most difficult times. The German spirit has not wasted its opportunity. It is waiting for its task — no matter what its enemies may think of this task, no matter what they may think of the German spirit, no matter how they may strive to harm it.