The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Pneumatosophy I

[ 1 ] As you are aware, over the past two years, on the occasion of our general meetings, I have delivered two short series of lectures from this podium on anthroposophy and psychosophy. This current short series of three lectures, along with today’s introduction, on pneumatosophy is intended to complement the other two, and what these three lecture series offer is, from a certain perspective, a consideration of the nature of the human being. Two years ago, under the title “Anthroposophy,” we discussed everything that can be said about the physical nature of the human being from the perspective in question—a perspective that will be addressed in greater detail in these lectures. Last year, we spoke about what can be said regarding the soul nature of the human being, and this year we shall speak about the spiritual nature of the human being. To this end, today’s lecture is essentially intended to serve as a kind of preparatory introduction.

[ 2 ] First of all, in contrast to what is otherwise customary in this field today, it may be noticeable that the total nature of the human being is here divided into three parts: the physical nature, the nature of the soul, and the spiritual. Of course, this division need not be striking in comparison to what is customary within our field of spiritual science. Yet it is precisely with these lectures that we aim to build a kind of bridge from spiritual science to the science of these fields as it is practiced today. Therefore, we must also take into account what is customary in today’s science—that which stands outside of spiritual science—with regard to such a view of the human being. And there, for a long time and still in many cases today—even where one does not stand on a more or less overt or covert materialistic foundation—the total nature of the human being is divided only into two parts: the physical, that is, the physical nature, and the soul. Speaking of the spirit is not customary in recognized science today. Indeed, where, based on certain premises, one returns to this threefold division of the human being into body, soul, and spirit—as, for example, with the Catholicizing Viennese philosopher Anton Günther in the 19th century—not only did scientific reservations come into play, but in Günther’s case, this threefold division of human nature into body, soul, and spirit essentially provided the grounds for his books—which are interesting from this perspective—to be placed on the Index of Prohibited Books in Rome, because the Catholic Church, contrary to the Bible—both the Old and New Testaments, from which one can demonstrate that it is entirely biblical: to speak of a threefold human being—body, soul, and spirit—abolished the spirit, so to speak, relatively early on, already in the first centuries; that is, it guided the evolution of dogma in such a way that the structure of the human being was permitted to comprise only body and soul. And it was considered, for example, by medieval philosophers to an extraordinary degree as heretical—and by all who still stand today on the ground of this medieval philosophy, it is still considered absolutely heretical within the Catholic Church—to assume a threefold human nature. Strangely enough, in this case, this development of the Catholic view has, in fact, carried over into our contemporary science. For if one tries to understand why even such figures who today stand on the ground of scientific psychology and scientific psychology of the soul speak, in essence, only of body and soul, and not of body, soul, and spirit, there is actually hardly any other reason from a historical perspective than that, over the course of time, the spirit has been forgotten, so to speak, and that today, in the habits of thought of the influential circles, one no longer has the possibility of arriving at ideas or concepts that would make it possible to speak of a spirit in particular alongside the human soul.

[ 3 ] In this introduction, which may contain some elements that might sound unfamiliar to those in more specialized theosophical circles—since the relevant literature is unknown there—we must nevertheless draw attention to the threads that initially connect us to what is otherwise known as psychology or the study of the soul. For from what I have just said, you can already see that we can hardly find a true doctrine of the spirit, if we disregard the doctrine of the spirit found, for example, within Hegelian philosophy, which is, however, somewhat incorrectly called a doctrine of the spirit there, since even there it essentially refers only to a kind of doctrine of the soul. What we have to address as the study of the soul, we dealt with last year in what we called psychosophy. To what extent it is entirely due to habits of thought—and in a rather curious way—that the concept of the spirit has been lost in our present age, we can see if we first consider, by way of introduction, the achievements of the most significant psychologist or soul researcher of the present day—even from the perspective of spiritual science—among all non-spiritual-scientific psychologists. Precisely in this most significant researcher of the soul—who is not closely associated with spiritual science and whom I mentioned last year in connection with the Psychosophy lectures—we can see, as far as is possible from a non-spiritual-scientific standpoint, how these contemporary habits of thought operate. For in this psychologist—who is the most significant in the non-spiritual-scientific field—we can see exactly how these habits of thought prevent people from coming to understand what spiritual science has to say about the soul from a purely scientific—I mean, non-clairvoyant — spiritual science has to say about the soul; in this psychologist, who is the most significant in the non-spiritual-scientific field, we can see precisely how the current habits of thought operate, preventing people from arriving at an idea, at a concept of the spirit. By this I mean Franz Brentano, who is also the most significant psychologist from the standpoint of spiritual science.

[ 4 ] Franz Brentano wrote a remarkable book; but essentially—as I also hinted at last year—he had set out to write a very remarkable book, had set out to write a work on psychology, a treatise on the soul. The first volume of it was published in 1874. It was promised at the time that the second volume would appear that same fall, and the subsequent volumes would follow quickly thereafter. To this day, it has remained at this first volume, which appeared in 1874; the subsequent volumes have not yet been published. Only in the last few days has an interesting new edition been published—not the entire first volume from 1874, but a part of it, a specific chapter, namely the one on the classification of psychological phenomena. And this specific chapter has been published simultaneously in Italian and German. In addition to what this particular chapter offered in 1874, some material has been added as an “Appendix.” When we consider that the first volume of Brentano’s Psychology or Theory of the Soul held certain promises, we must lament—especially from the perspective of spiritual science—that further volumes of this book have not been published. But I already said last year that there is a certain reason, which is easily understood precisely from the perspective of spiritual science, why the continuation of this book has not appeared. For those who think in terms of spiritual science, it is clear that our current scientific circumstances have made it impossible to continue this book under the conditions under which its first volume was published. In accordance with all the intellectual habits of contemporary science, Brentano wanted to work on a theory of the soul in the 1870s, and he took particular pride in proceeding not from a materialistic standpoint—for he is the very opposite of that—but from a purely methodological standpoint; he took a certain pride in researching the soul entirely in the manner of contemporary scientific explanations. Thus, a theory of the soul was to be presented in the spirit of contemporary scientific methodology. And when we see that among the many other highly interesting topics promised in the first volume by Franz Brentano there is also a discussion of the question of immortality, then it is already clear that, particularly from the standpoint of spiritual science, one must find it deeply regrettable that this book was never continued. Do not be surprised that I, standing on spiritual-scientific ground, speak of such a book. I had to consider this book and its fate. Indeed, I find the author’s entire scholarly trajectory to be of extraordinary significance and relevance for our present time and also for what might be called pneumatosophy in our present age. For it was promised that the immortality of the soul would be addressed. And if, from the various hints Brentano has given, one knows that he stands on the position that, in a certain sense at least—even if not the fact itself—he can prove not the fact of immortality, but that human beings can have well-founded hopes of immortality—I ask that this be clearly distinguished!—then one must say: This is an extraordinarily interesting fact regarding the character of contemporary psychological thought. But it simply did not come to pass that Brentano produced more than the first book, which contains nothing more than discussions with other psychological schools of thought, a sort of justification of the scientific methodology of psychology, and precisely Brentano’s interesting classification of the activities or faculties of the human soul. And nothing else has been published except for yet another reprint of a section of that book.

[ 5 ] In these lectures, we will have to touch upon the reasons—which are of extraordinary significance for our time—why this book could not have a sequel. For within these reasons we will find much with which we must grapple, from the perspective of spiritual science, with contemporary science regarding the soul—since the spirit is not specifically distinguished from the soul. Due to the limited time at our disposal, I cannot again this year go into the characterization of the human soul that I presented last year. But in order to draw the threads that lead over to science as it is practiced according to current habits of thought, I must, precisely today in this introductory lecture, address Brentano’s classification of the human faculties of the soul, which is also presented again in the new edition of the relevant chapter.

[ 6 ] In contrast to the usual classification of human mental faculties into thinking, feeling, and willing, Brentano—who is undoubtedly the most significant contemporary psychologist in this regard, even for the spiritual sciences—proposes a different classification of the human soul. This is—and you will soon see that in a certain way this classification echoes what was said here in the psychosophical lectures last year from entirely different sources—the division of the human soul into three parts: into imagination, into judgment, and into the manifestations of love and hate, or also into the manifestations of emotional stirrings. What “imagination” is in our sense, I need not mention again here, since these matters have been discussed so often in spiritual science; nor do we need to go into the concept of imagination as such in light of what we have to say here by way of introduction regarding Brentano’s psychology, because, for us, the concept of imagination is essentially established as long as we know—regardless of how it is otherwise defined—that by imagination we mean the mental representation of some thought-content taking place in the soul. Any mental content that is present in the mind and that, so to speak, has nothing in itself to do with emotional movements or anything that constitutes a statement regarding something objective would be a representation. Within the psychology under consideration, judgment now differs from representation itself. Judgment is usually said to be a combination of concepts. One speaks, for example, of “rose” as one concept, “red” as another, and “The rose is red” as a judgment. Brentano says—and we will need to consider Brentano’s definition of judgment a little, precisely with regard to the scientific foundation of Pneumatosophy: A judgment is not characterized by the fact that one combines concepts; rather, when one utters the sentence “The rose is red,” one has actually either said nothing specific, or, if one intends to say something specific with it, then the sentence “The rose is red” actually contains another sentence hidden within it, namely: “There is a red rose,” that is, a red rose is found among the things of reality. There is a great deal of truth—as you can already discern from a superficial observation of your own inner life—in such a presentation. For what has one actually accomplished beyond mere imagination when one says “The rose is red”? Whether one imagines “rose” and “red,” or whether one combines the concepts, there is no essential difference between the two. One remains within the realm of imagination. By saying “The rose is red,” I have done no more than I have done when I imagine “rose” and “red.” But something essentially different is accomplished than a mere joining of concepts when I make the assertion “A red rose is.” There I have pointed to something that points beyond the concept, that is not exhausted within the concept, that, in other words, is a statement regarding reality. “The rose is red” means nothing other than that the concepts “red” and “rose” come together in the mind of some person. Here one has said nothing other than something about a thought-content. But the moment one makes a statement, when one says “A red rose is” or “The red rose is,” one has, in Brentano’s sense, formed a judgment. And in his sense, one has no right to speak of going beyond the idea of the representation in any way when one merely combines concepts; rather, one goes beyond representation only when something is expressed in the life of representation that constitutes a statement. It is not possible here to go into the extraordinarily insightful justifications that Brentano gave for these distinctions he made between representation and judgment.

[ 7 ] But then, as a third category distinct from representations and judgments, Brentano distinguishes emotional states or the phenomena of love and hate. These, in turn, are something other than a mere statement of fact. When I say “There is a red rose,” that is something different from when I feel something about the red rose. These are mental phenomena that belong to a special class and can be summarized under the concept of emotions. This does not merely state something about the objects we represent through our representations, but rather says something about the subject’s mental experiences. In contrast, Brentano does not speak specifically of the phenomena of the will, because he fundamentally finds no difference large enough to assume, in the phenomena of love and hate—in the emotions—any separately distinguished phenomena of the will. What one loves, one wills with love, and with the emotional movement of benevolent feeling, the will that relates to the object is already present. And with the phenomenon of hatred, the non-willing, the repulsion, is also present. Thus, in a certain sense, it does not seem justified to say that one separates from the phenomena of love and hate further specific phenomena of the will, just as it is justified to separate from the mere phenomena of representation those that relate to a determination, that is, to a judgment.

[ 8 ] Thus, we have, so to speak, broken down the human soul into perceptions, judgments, and the manifestations of emotional states. It is extremely interesting that a thinker of such great acumen, when setting out to establish a psychology—a theory of the soul—made this classification. For this division stems—as you may further discern from some remarks today and tomorrow—from the circumstance, from the fact, that a man once appeared who took the disregard of the spirit seriously. Otherwise, one has always, in a certain way, mixed what belongs to the phenomena of the spirit into the life of the soul. This had actually created a peculiar hybrid entity: a sort of spiritual soul or a sort of soul-spirit. And one could attribute all manner of things to this soul-spirit or spiritual soul, which, of course, one who now proceeds methodically and carries out the threefold division must attribute not to the soul but to the spirit. But Brentano once set out in earnest to answer the question: What is actually found in the soul when we take the soul as such? — He was astute enough to determine what must be excluded from the concept of the soul when one disregards the spirit. Thus, by taking this tendency seriously, he has, as it were, neatly separated the soul from the spirit. It would have been most interesting to see how Brentano, had he continued his work, would have found that the matter must break off somewhere, because in reality the soul must receive the mind, must enter into connection with the mind—or would have had to admit that one must proceed from the soul to the mind.

[ 9 ] Let us consider the two extreme categories, apart from judgment, in Brentano’s classification: representation and the phenomena of love and hate, that is, the emotions. First of all, for Brentano, representation is simply what takes place in the soul. Nothing is established by the mere fact that we imagine something. For if anything is to be established about any reality, judgment must intervene. Thus, the life of the soul cannot be exhausted in imagination. In other words, this would imply that imagination cannot arrive at any determination on its own, that one could not step outside the soul at all through imagination; for one could step outside the soul only through judgment, not through imagination. On the other hand, it is interesting that Brentano groups together everything that are phenomena of the will with the phenomena of mere emotional movements. Certainly, there is much to be said for the claim: Within the soul, a relationship to the external world is exhausted once the relevant emotional movement has occurred. — You might well say: In the soul, there are, in essence, nothing but emotional movements; when these are strong enough, they will desire one thing or another. No psychologist can find anything more in the soul than sympathy or antipathy or the phenomena of love and hate, even if a person acts entirely of their own volition: they do so—but while they do it, one finds in the soul only the phenomena of love or hate.

[ 10 ] This is true within the soul. But when we move from the soul to reality as a whole, we must say: The soul’s relationship to the external world is not limited to what the soul experiences as emotional stirrings. It is, after all, a step that must be taken—one that is not limited to the soul but must be taken from within the soul—when we move from an emotion to what is first and foremost a will, a will that is not limited to the soul but is only fulfilled when the soul steps outside of itself. For no matter how much we love a thing or a fact, no matter how deeply the emotions take root within us: nothing has happened as a result. And no matter how much may happen in the soul in terms of emotions: as far as we find emotions, this is something that must be set aside if anything is to happen. Thus, in such a psychology, imagination stands before us as something that does not emerge from itself at all, that does not enter into any reality at all, and so the emotions stand there as something that is not rooted in any actual will, but is merely exhausted in the psychological preconditions of the will. This is extraordinarily interesting, and we shall see that in imagination the spirit begins precisely where Brentano ceased to characterize, and that the bridge from the soul to the spirit—in imagination—begins precisely where, if this bridge were not there and no spirit stood opposite the soul, imagination would be confined only to itself. And on the other hand, we shall see that wherever the real transition to the will is made out of the movements of the soul, the spirit begins anew.

[ 11 ] Here, in a significant scientific achievement of recent decades, we see that a halt has been called precisely at the point—and indeed sharply at the point—where spiritual scientific research must begin if one is to proceed at all. And it is interesting to consider how even the most astute researchers must proceed within the framework of contemporary ways of thinking. It could not have turned out any other way.

[ 12 ] And when we move from this point to another, the interesting aspect regarding the connections between modern scientific psychology and the science of the spirit becomes evident once again in the very same man. Those who have familiarized themselves with Brentano’s writings have always known that Brentano engaged intensively—one might almost say throughout his entire long scholarly life—with the Greek philosopher Aristotle. Now it is remarkable for the fate of these lectures that, precisely in these days, a book by Brentano on Aristotle—summarizing his Aristotelian research—has been published, so that we now have—which we could not have had three weeks ago—a presentation by this philosopher of his Aristotelian research, which he conducted over the course of a long life, under the title “Aristotle and His Worldview.” Now, Brentano today, in the 20th century, does not take Aristotle’s standpoint, but he stands in a certain relationship close to Aristotle and has presented Aristotle’s philosophy of the mind in a very generous, in a certain admirable way in this book “Aristotle and His Worldview.” Adding to this is the fact that a third book by Brentano has also been published, after he remained silent for years: “Aristotle’s Theory of the Origin of the Human Mind.” It is now interesting to say a few words about this as well, because in a certain sense Brentano is not only the most interesting psychologist of our time, but also the most interesting—and in a certain sense the most significant—expert on Aristotle, namely as an expert on Aristotle’s theory of the mind. Let us briefly review this theory of the mind of Aristotle.

[ 13 ] In Aristotle’s theory of the mind, we have a theory of the mind which, having been established centuries before the emergence of Christianity, has incorporated nothing from any Christian concept, and which, in a certain sense, nevertheless sums up everything that constituted Western culture in the centuries preceding the emergence of Christianity—a culture that, in a certain sense, also incorporated what had been achieved elsewhere, namely in philosophy, had been accomplished on this subject, so that it was possible for Aristotle in the 4th century B.C. to think scientifically about this matter, to think scientifically about the relationship of the mind to the soul. Anyone who carefully considers Brentano’s position on Aristotle—namely as it is presented in the two books *Aristotle and His Worldview* and *Aristotle’s Doctrine of the Origin of the Human Mind*, where one senses throughout how Brentano thinks of Aristotle in such a way that, in a sense, he does indeed take Aristotle’s standpoint on the main questions— will find it extraordinarily interesting to see to what extent the non-theosophical theory of the mind is justified in going beyond Aristotle, and it is also of the utmost interest to compare the Aristotelian and theosophical theories of the mind, insofar as the latter is scientific. I would now like to outline Aristotelian spiritual science for you, without providing any specific justification.

[ 14 ] Aristotle certainly speaks of the spirit in relation to the human soul and body. And he does not speak of the spirit in the manner of someone who stands even remotely on materialistic ground, but rather speaks of the spirit as something that comes from the spiritual worlds to the human body and soul. This is something that can be traced very clearly in Brentano, showing that in this regard he too stands firmly on Aristotelian ground, for Brentano, too—unless he has something special in mind—must, just like Aristotle, speak of the spirit that comes to the human body and soul. So when a human being enters into existence through birth, enters into existence on the physical plane, we are not, in the Aristotelian sense, dealing merely with something that was exhausted in the ancestral line of inheritance, but we are dealing, first of all, with that which is inherited as characteristics from father and mother, grandfather and grandmother, and so on. Within these inherited characteristics lies, in the Aristotelian sense, precisely what Aristotle understands as the soulful, so that for Aristotle, the soulful initially appears to the human being more or less as a kind of soul-pervading physicality, as a kind of physical cohesion. But what the human being inherits from their ancestors as the physical-soul-like does not, for Aristotle—nor for Brentano—exhaust the essence of the human being; rather, the spirit is added to this. So that we must say, in the sense of Aristotle: When the human being enters into existence on the physical plane, the physical-soul-like derived from the line of inheritance unites with the spirit. Where, then, does the spirit come from in the sense of Aristotle?

[ 15 ] For Aristotle, before a human being comes into existence in the physical world, the spirit of the individual human being—the individual human personality—did not exist at all as such; rather, the spirit comes into being immediately, as a new creation from the spiritual world, when a human being is formed on the physical plane. This is something that can only be described as a “creation of the Deity,” which is added directly from the spiritual world to what arises from the father and mother. Thus, Brentano defines very clearly in his book on Aristotle: When a human being enters physical existence, he or she comes into being through the interaction of father and mother and through God. - That is to say, the soul-body is inherited from the father and mother, and through God—even some time after conception—that which is the human spirit is added to the soul-body.

[ 16 ] It is now interesting to see how Aristotle conceives of immortality under the premise that, through a “Creatio”—that is, through a true act of creation—the human spirit is added by God to the physical and soul-body complex. The human spirit, then, as it exists—as we would say—in the incarnation of the human being, did not exist at all beforehand. God creates it. But for Aristotle and also for Brentano, this does not mean that this spirit would then cease to exist when the soul-body passes through the gate of death; rather, the spirit that has been created remains when the human being passes through the gate of death and, despite having been created specifically for this particular human being, passes over after death into the supersensible world, in the very sense of “super-sensible world” in which we also speak of a super-sensible, spiritual world—into the spiritual world. It is further interesting that Aristotle, in essence—and I can see nothing other than that Brentano still stands on Aristotelian ground in this regard today—follows the human being as he passes through the gate of death and allows him to live on in a purely spiritual world, that is, allows that part of the spirit to live on which was created by God for the individual human being. All Aristotelian scholars now agree that there can be no question of the spiritual, which lives on in the spiritual world, returning to a physical embodiment in the physical world. Thus, there can be no question of reincarnation in Aristotle. It would take us too far afield to delve into Aristotle’s various purely logical arguments, which could demonstrate that reincarnation is not a concept he addresses. However, even without delving into that, one need only consider that the very thing Aristotle must posit as the origin of humanity in an incarnation—namely, the creation of the spirit by God—must take place in every single incarnation into the future. It would not be a new creation if the old spirits were to reincarnate, and all the theories would be undermined if a spirit that had already been present in a human being could incarnate again. One could then no longer speak of new creations. It follows from this that the doctrine of reincarnation in Aristotle would be in contradiction with his “Creatio.”

[ 17 ] Now it is very strange—and this is a point that emerges clearly in Brentano’s examination of Aristotle—that Aristotle, in essence, has no conception of this life of the spirit after death other than that the spirit is, in fact, initially in a rather purely theoretical state of existence. For all activity of which Aristotle can actually speak presupposes the physical world and physical corporeality. The spirit actually — indeed, even the eternal Spirit of God in Aristotle’s sense — only a theoretical, that is, only a contemplative activity, so that on Aristotle’s terms one can scarcely conceive of any other characteristics for the human life of the spirit after death than the contemplation of life from birth to death, the soul’s looking down from the spiritual world upon life from birth to death. Not that this, in Aristotle’s sense, would rule out a further development of the soul. But since this life, in Aristotle’s sense, has significance for the soul, it must constantly look down upon this one life, must find it particularly significant, and must, in a certain way, ground all subsequent progress in this one life. Thus the spirit presents itself after death: looking back on earthly life, observing the events, the shortcomings, and the merits of this earthly life—one perhaps on an excellent life, and basing its further development upon it; the other perhaps on a life of lies and crime, and basing its further development upon it. This is roughly how the spirit would relate to the physical-psychic in the sense of Aristotle.

[ 18 ] Now let us ask ourselves: How does such a doctrine of the soul appear to an unbiased mind? It is clear from Aristotle that this earthly life is not merely a life spent in an earthly vale of tears, devoid of meaning for later human development. There is no mention of this in Aristotle. This earthly life has its positive significance; it has its great importance. Certainly, much remains uncertain regarding how Aristotle conceives of the soul’s further progress after earthly life, but one thing remains certain: that this one earthly life has an essential significance for all subsequent progress of the soul. For even if God has brought this human spirit into being, which then appears embodied without reincarnating, He has nevertheless been able to ensure that this spirit—without entering into new incarnations—continues on. It now becomes clear that Aristotle attaches importance to the fact that he assumes a human embodiment, and that it is a goal of the deity and also serves a purpose for the deity to lead the human being into a human earthly body. Thus, it is part of the deity’s intentions not merely to create the spirit that dwells within us as such, but to create it in such a way that it requires the clothing of a physical earthly body for further progress. Thus, from the moment the Deity creates the human spirit in order to bring it down into a physical earthly body, the goal and purpose underlying the human spirit is to attain an earthly existence. One cannot, therefore, conceive of a human spirit created by the Deity without it desiring to be embodied in a human body.

[ 19 ] Now suppose—as Aristotle correctly posits—that when a person has passed through the gate of death, this human spirit sheds the body, enters the spiritual world (which we may also call the spiritual realm), and looks back upon its physical embodiment. And let us now suppose that, as it looks down upon this physical embodiment, this human spirit finds its physical earthly life to be imperfect. And how could it be otherwise than that, naturally, most human spirits who have passed through death find earthly life to be imperfect! For even if it were to appear perfectly complete, something even more perfect could still have been attained within this earthly life. We must therefore, in the sense of Aristotle, naturally attribute to these disembodied spirits, as they look back upon the earthly life they have lived, the desire for a further physical incarnation. For since the spirit needs a physical incarnation for its perfection, it must naturally have the desire to go through it once more if the incarnation given to it was not perfect; otherwise, it would have completely failed in its purpose with that single incarnation. Therefore, it is impossible, in the sense of Aristotle, to speak of a purposeful embodiment in a single incarnation if this single incarnation were not, for every human being, a perfect stage of development for the progress of that spirit. The very moment one admits that human life on earth is not a perfect one, one must also admit that the God-begotten spirit must, after death, once again have the desire for an earthly body.

[ 20 ] And now consider this peculiar creation of God according to Aristotle: the generation of the human spirit, which belongs within a physical body, which departs from this physical body at death, but can only depart—if one thinks truly consistently in the sense of Aristotle—with the desire for a physical body, which, however, could not return to a physical body. For Aristotle does not assume reincarnation, so that human spirits must live in their spiritual world after death with a constant longing for a new incarnation, which, however, cannot be fulfilled. Aristotle’s doctrine requires the doctrine of reincarnation, but it does not admit it. And we shall see that, from another point of view, this doctrine of reincarnation cannot be admitted in Aristotle.

[ 21 ] We are faced here with a doctrine of the spirit that is by no means materialistic; indeed, it remains to this day the most incisive doctrine of the spirit in the Western world—apart from that of spiritual science—and one that extends right into our own time. For read Brentano and feel how firmly he stands on Aristotelian ground: that God, in union with the Father and Mother, begets the spirit into the physical-soul, and that the spirit begotten by God in turn enters a spiritual world when the human being has passed through the gate of death; but that God, who creates spirits under this premise, allows them to pass through an earthly incarnation only once and, through this passage through an earthly incarnation, endows them with the constant desire to shape this incarnation in such a way that it truly fulfills its purpose.

[ 22 ] Here we see how, across the millennia, that which is still capable of exerting a great influence today on truly scientific ground continues to shine through. And rightly so! For we shall see that Aristotle is great and significant precisely because of the acuity of his conclusions regarding his doctrine of the spirit, and that it is only possible to go beyond Aristotle once a scientific foundation for reincarnation has been established. This scientific foundation for reincarnation, however, has never been established before our time, so that we now stand at a turning point in the doctrine of the spirit: in essence, it is only through spiritual science that we can truly and genuinely transcend Aristotle. And it is again interesting how a man as astute as Brentano had to remain on Aristotelian ground with regard to these matters, just as, on the other hand, his acumen compelled him to remain within a mere doctrine of the soul because he took the omission of the spirit seriously. From the errors that have been made—namely, that by omitting the spirit, a doctrine of the spirit or soul that is contradictory in itself has been created—we shall see that even from the standpoint of contemporary science, it is impossible to arrive at a consistent worldview at all if one wishes to reject spiritual science.