The World of the Senses and the World of the Spirit
GA 134
27 December 1911, Hannover
Lecture I
It will be my task in these lectures to build a bridge from the ordinary experiences of everyday life to the most lofty concerns of man, and in so doing find a new point of contact between our daily life and what Anthroposophy or spiritual science has to give for our soul and spirit. For, as you know, my dear friends, the more thoroughly we absorb what spiritual science can give the more does it flow into our feeling, into our willing, and into those forces which we need in order to meet the manifold events and circumstances of life. And we know, too, that this spiritual science, which we can now learn by reason of the inpourings that are coming at this very time from higher worlds, is to a certain extent a necessity for mankind. Within a comparatively short time man would inevitably lose all confidence in life, all inner calm, all that peace of mind which is so necessary to life, if the message to which we give the name of Anthroposophy or spiritual science were not able to come to mankind precisely in our time.
But now it is also well known to us that this anthroposophical spiritual stream brings into sharp collision two divergent tendencies in man's thought and feeling and perception. One is a direction in thought and feeling which has been in preparation for many centuries and which has by now gained complete hold upon mankind, or will most assuredly do so in the near future. It is what we call the materialistic outlook, using the word in its widest sense, and it makes attack, so to say, upon the other direction of thought which is given with anthroposophy, it attacks the spiritual outlook on the world. And more and more pronounced will the conflict become in the near future between these two directions of thought. It will, moreover, be fought in such a way that it will often be very difficult to know with which direction of thought one is dealing. For the materialistic tendency of thought, for example, may not always come before one in unvarnished truthfulness, it may assume all manner of disguises. There will indeed be plenty of materialistic streams which will wear a spiritual mask, and it will be far from easy at times to know where materialism lurks and where we are to recognise the true spiritual stream. How difficult it is to form correct conclusions in this respect I endeavoured to show from various instances in two lectures which I recently delivered. In the first it was my aim to awaken an understanding for the ease with which one can become a sincere opponent of the anthroposophical world conception if one lets oneself be ruled by the thoughts and ideas that prevail in the world to-day. “How one refutes Spiritual Science”—that was what I tried to demonstrate in the first lecture, and I went on to give another on the subject of how Spiritual Science may be advocated and substantiated.
Not that I imagined for a moment I could bring forward everything that might be brought forward on the one and on the other side; my aim was merely to call forth a feeling for the fact that it is perfectly possible to adduce a surprising number of arguments against the anthroposophical world conception, and to do so with great apparent justification. There are in our day men who simply cannot do other than make opposition with their whole soul to anthroposophy, and they belong by no means to the most insincere of our age, very often they are the most honest and devoted seekers after truth. I have no desire at this point to go over again all the grounds that can be brought forward against anthroposophy. I only want to suggest that from the very habits of thought of our time such grounds do easily result and can be well established. It is perfectly possible in our day to refute anthroposophy root and branch. But the question arises when one refutes anthroposophy in this way, when one adduces all reasons and arguments which can be leveled against anthroposophy: by what path does one come to such a position? Suppose that someone today out of the fundamental inherent tendency of his soul adopts anthroposophy, and then proceeds to make himself acquainted with all that the modern sciences can teach from their materialistic basis. Such a man can most radically refute and disprove anthroposophy or spiritual science. In order to do so, however, he must first of all induce a particular standpoint in his soul, he must assume the purely intellectual standpoint. You will see more clearly what is meant if you will now follow me in a consideration of the very opposite condition of soul. For the moment let us leave it at the simple statement, which I make out of personal experience, that when a man who is conversant with all the results of science in the present day abandons himself entirely to his intellect he can then refute anthroposophy radically. Let us now refrain from discussing this any further and turn in another direction, so as to approach our theme from a new aspect.
Man can look upon the world from two sides. He finds one view of the world when, for example, he considers a wonderfully beautiful sunrise. He sees the sun come to view, as it were, giving birth to itself from out of the gold of the dawn, he watches how the sunshine spreads over the earth, and he contemplates with deep feeling the power and the warmth of the sun's rays as they enchant forth life from the ground of the earth in a yearly returning cycle. Or again, a man may give himself up to contemplation of the setting sun; he beholds the twilight deepen until the darkness of night falls and countless stars shine out in the vault of heaven, and he sinks himself in meditation on the wonder of the starry heaven at night-time. When a man contemplates nature in this way he rises to a conception which must fill him with deepest blessing. For he can rise to a conception similar to a thought expressed once so beautifully by Goethe when he said: “When we look up to the wonder of the starry world, when we contemplate the whole process of the universe with its glories and marvels, then we are led at last to the feeling that all the glory that lies open to our view in the whole universe that surrounds us only has meaning when it is reflected in an admiring human soul.” Yes, man comes to the thought that just as the air that is all around him forms and builds his being—entering into him, so that he can breathe it, so that by the process it undergoes inside him it can build up his being—just as man is thus a product of this air and of its laws and processes of combination, so he is a product in a certain way of the whole wide world that constitutes his sense environment, he is a product of all that flows not only into his sense of sight, but into the sense which opens to the world of sound and the other worlds which stream in through our senses. Man comes to feel that he confronts the external sense world as a being in which this whole sense world is contained; he feels himself as a confluence of the world that is around him. And he can say to himself: When I look more closely into nature that is round about me, when I meditate upon it, perceiving it with all my senses, then I see how the true meaning of all that I behold out there finds its best fulfilment when it is crystallised out into the wonderful form of man himself.
And in very truth, when a man attains to seeing this, the feeling can come over him which has been expressed with such elemental force by the Greek poet:
“Many a wonder lives and moves,
But the wonder of all is man!”
For in man all the revelations of the external world flow together; all the one-sidedness becomes in man a many-sidedness. We contemplate the world of the senses, and we behold man standing in its midst as a being of sense, in whom everything else in the world is contained. For the more accurately we study the world the more closely do we see that in man all the one-sidednesses of the universe flow together and are united into a whole. And then, as we develop this feeling towards the great world, beholding how it all flows together in man, a thought can arise in our soul that can fill us with a deep sense of blessedness—the thought, my dear friends, of the God-willed man. We can feel how it is really as though the deeds and purposes of the Gods had built up a whole universe and had let stream forth from it on every side influences and workings which could at length flow together and unite in their most precious work which they placed into the very centre of the Universe—Man. Wrought by the will of the Gods! So said one who also contemplated the world of the senses in this aspect, namely in its relation to man. What, said he, are all the instruments of music in comparison with the marvellous structure of the human ear? What are they beside the marvellous structure of the human larynx, which is, in truth, like the ear, a musical instrument? Many a thing in the world can awaken our wonder and admiration: and if man, as he stands within the world, does not arouse this feeling, it is only because we have not learned to know him in all the marvel of his structure. When we give ourselves up to such a contemplation then the thought may indeed arise in our heart: What countless deeds of wonder have the divine and spiritual Beings performed that man might come into being!
That, then, is one path, my dear friends, on which man may be led in his consideration of the world. But there is another. And the other path opens up for us when we develop a feeling for the majesty and power, for the overwhelming greatness of what we call our moral ideals; when we look into our own soul and take cognisance for a moment of what moral ideals signify in the world. It belongs to an all-round healthy human nature to be very sensitive to the greatness and sublimity of moral ideals. And we can develop in us with regard to the moral ideals within a feeling that works just as overpoweringly in the soul as the feeling inspired by the glory and beauty of the revelations of the universe without. It can, indeed, be so when we enkindle within us love and enthusiasm for the moral ideals and purposes of man. A great warmth of feeling can then fill the soul. But this is now followed, quite necessarily, by a thought which is different from the thought that follows naturally on the contemplation of the world just described, which rests upon the revelation of the universe through man. There follows now a thought which is experienced most intensely of all by those very people who have the most sublime conception of the power of moral ideals. It may be expressed thus. How far art thou, O man, as thou art to-day, how far art thou removed from the lofty moral ideals which can rise up in thy heart! How tiny and insignificant art thou, with all thou dost and canst ever do, in comparison with the greatness of the age moral ideals thou canst set before thee! And not to feel so, dear friends, not to feel oneself small in comparison with one's ideals can only mean one has a mind that is itself pitiably small! For it is precisely as his mind and soul grow that a man comes to feel more and more his inadequacy in face of his moral ideals. And another thought then begins to dawn in the soul, a thought which can often come over us human beings, namely, the resolve to put forth all our courage and all our strength that we may learn to make moral ideals more living and strong within us than they have been hitherto. Or it may also happen that in certain natures the thought of their inadequacy in moral ideals takes such firm hold in their souls that they feel quite crushed by it, and feel themselves estranged from God, just because they have, on the other hand, so powerful a feeling of man as God-willed in his external aspect, as he is placed into the world of the senses. “There I stand”—perhaps they say to themselves—“as an external being. When I consider myself as external being I am bound to say to myself: You are confluence of the whole God-willed world, you are a God-willed being, you bear a God-like countenance! Then I look within me ... there I find ideals which God has inscribed into my heart, and which it is quite certain ought to be God-willed forces within me...” And then they feel a sense of their own inadequacy welling up out of their soul.
These are the two paths man can tread in his observation of the world and of himself. He can look upon himself from without and experience a wonderful sense of blessedness in his God-willed nature; he can look upon himself from within and experience an overwhelming sense of contrition for his God-estranged soul. A healthy state of mind, however, can do no other than come to the following conclusion: From the same divine source whence come the forces which have placed man in the midst of the universe—as it were, like a strongly concentrated extract of the universe, from the same divine source must also spring the moral ideals that be finds inscribed in his heart. Why is it the one is so far removed from the other? That is actually the great riddle of human existence. And truth to say, there would never have been such a thing in the world as Theosophy, or even Philosophy, if this breach had not arisen in the souls of men, if this discord which I have described had not been more or less consciously felt, whether as a dim and undefined sensation or as a clear and organised perception. For it is from the experience of this discord in the soul that all deeper thought and contemplation and enquiry have sprung. What is there to come between the God-will man and the God-estranged man? That is the fundamental question of all philosophy. Men may have formulated it and defined it in countless different ways, but it lies at the root of all human thinking. Is there a way by which man can see a possibility of building a bridge between the indubitably blissful vision of his external nature and the equally indubitably disturbing vision of his soul?
At this point, my dear friends, we must say a little about the road the human soul can take in order to lift itself up in a worthy manner to a consideration of the great and lofty questions of existence. For in treading this road we shall be able to discover the sources of many errors.
In the world outside, in so far as this world is ruled by external science, when people speak of knowledge, you will always find them say: Yes, of course, we arrive at knowledge when we have formed right judgments and exercised correct thinking. I recently cited a very simple example to illustrate how great an error is involved in this assumption that we are bound to arrive at truth when we make correct and reasonable judgments; and I would like to relate it again now, to show you that accuracy of reasoning need by no means lead to the truth.
There was once a small boy in a village who was sent regularly by his parents to fetch bread. He used always to have ten kreuzer, and bring back in exchange six rolls. If you bought one such roll it cost two kreuzer, but he always brought back six rolls for his ten kreuzer. The boy was not particularly good at arithmetic and never troubled himself as to how it worked out that he always took with him ten kreuzer, that a roll cost two and yet he brought home six rolls in return for his ten. One day a boy was brought into the family from another part and he became for our small boy a kind of foster-brother. They were of about the same age, but the foster-brother was a good arithmetician. And he saw how his companion went to the baker's, taking with him ten kreuzer, and he knew that a roll cost two. So he said to him, “You must bring home five rolls.” He was a very good arithmetician and his reasoning was perfectly accurate. One roll costs two kreuzer (so he reasoned), he takes with him ten, he will obviously bring home five rolls. But behold, he brought back six. Then said our good arithmetician: “But that is quite wrong! One roll costs two kreuzer, and you took ten, and two into ten goes five times; you can't possibly bring back six rolls. You must have made a mistake or else you have pinched one ...” But now, lo and behold, on the next day, too, the boy brought home six rolls. It was, you see, a custom in those parts that when you bought five you received an extra one in addition, so that in fact when you paid for five rolls you received six. It was a custom that was very agreeable for anyone who needed five rolls for his household.
The good arithmetician had reasoned, quite correctly, there was no fault in his thinking; but this correct thinking did not accord with reality. We are obliged to admit the correct thinking did not arrive at the reality, for reality does not order itself in accordance with correct thinking. You may see very clearly in this case how with the most conscientious, the most clever logical thinking that can possibly be spun out, you may arrive at a correct conclusion and yet, measured by reality your conclusion may be utterly and completely false. That can always happen. Consequently a proof that is acquired purely through thought can never be a criterion for reality—never.
One can also go very far wrong in the linking up of cause and effect when, for example, one applies it in respect of the external world. Let me give you an instance. Let us suppose a man is walking along the bank of a stream. He comes to a certain place, and you observe from a distance that at this point he falls over the edge into the water. You hurry up to him, meaning to save him; but he is drawn up out of the water quite dead. Now you see before you the corpse. You can quite well maintain, let us say, that the man has been drowned. You can go to work with your proof in a very able way. Perhaps at the place where he fell into the water there was a stone. Very well then, he stumbled over the stone and fell in and was drowned. The sequence of the thought is quite correct. When a man goes to the bank of a river, stumbles over a stone that is lying there, falls into the water and is pulled out dead—he must have been drowned. It cannot be otherwise. Now precisely in this instance it is not necessarily so. When you stop allowing yourself to be ruled by this particular connection of cause and effect, you may be able to discover that this man, in the moment when he fell into the water, was seized with a heart attack, in consequence of which, since he was walking at the edge of the stream, he fell in. He was already dead when he fell in; though everything happened to him just as it would to a man who fell in alive. You see, when someone comes to the conclusion, in this case from the sequence of the external events, that the man in question slipped, fell into the water and was drowned, the conclusion is quite a false one, it does not correspond with reality. For the man fell into the water because he was dead; he was not pulled out dead because he had fallen in. Twisted conclusions like this are to be found at every turn in the scientific literature of our time; only they are not noticed, any more than this instance would have been noticed if one had not taken trouble to investigate the matter. In more delicate and subtle connections of cause and effect such mistakes are continually being made. I only want to indicate in this way that in point of fact our thinking is quite incompetent to form a decision in respect of reality.
But now, if this is really so, if our thinking can be no sure guide for us, how are we ever to save ourselves from sinking into doubt and ignorance? For it is a fact, whoever has had experience in these matters and concerned himself deeply with thinking, knows that one can prove and disprove everything. No philosophy, however penetrating in its thought, can impose upon him any more. He may admire the acumen and penetration of its thought, but he cannot give himself up to the mere reasoning of the intellect, since he knows that one could just as well reason intellectually in the opposite sense. This is true of everything that can be proved, or disproved. In this connection one can often make intensely interesting observations in everyday life. There is a certain fascination, though of course only a theoretical fascination, in making the acquaintance of people who have come to that particular point in soul evolution where they begin to perceive and experience that everything can be proved and everything disproved, but are not yet sufficiently mature to adopt what we may call a spiritual attitude to the world.
In the last few weeks I have often been forcibly reminded of a man I once met who showed to a remarkable degree such a constitution of soul and yet was not able to come through to a grasp of reality such as spiritual science could give. He had come to the point of seeing quite clearly the possibility of contradicting and establishing every single statement that philosophy could possibly make. I refer to a professor in the University of Vienna, who died a few weeks ago, a man of quite unusual ability and intelligence, Laurenz Mullner. A remarkably gifted man, who could adduce with great clarity proof for all possible philosophical systems and thoughts; he could also contradict them all, and always styled himself a sceptic. I once heard him utter this rather terrible exclamation: All philosophy is really nothing but a very pretty game!—And when one observed, as one often had occasion, the quick flash and play of the man's mind in this game of thought, it was interesting also to see how you could never be sure of Mullner on any point, for he never admitted anything at all. At most, when someone else had spoken against a particular point of view, he would take great delight in bringing forward whatever could be brought forward for the confirmation of that point of view—and this in spite of the fact that perhaps a few days before he had himself picked it to pieces relentlessly. A most interesting mind, in fact from a certain aspect one of the most significant philosophers who have lived in recent times. The manner in which he came to be led into such a mood is also very interesting. For besides being a profound student of the history of the philosophical evolution of mankind, Mullner was a Roman Catholic priest. And it was always his earnest desire to remain a good Catholic priest, notwithstanding that for many years he was a professor in Vienna University. He was steeped in Catholic ways of thought, and this had the effect, on the one hand, of making all the mere game of thought which he found in the world outside seem small in comparison with the methods of thought which were fructified with a certain religious zeal. But his Catholicism had also this effect, that in spite of all, he yet could not get beyond the position of doubt. He was too great a man to stop short at a mere dogmatic Catholicism, but on the other hand his Catholicism was too great in him for him to be able to rise to a theosophical grasp of reality. It is extraordinarily interesting to observe such a soul, who has come to the point where one can actually study what it is the man needs if he is to approach reality. For it goes without saying that this able and most intelligent man saw quite clearly that with his thinking he could not approach reality.
As long ago as in ancient Greece it was known what the healthy human mind must take for its starting point if it hopes one day to reach reality. And the same statement that was uttered in ancient Greece still holds good. It was said: All human enquiry must proceed from wonder! That statement must be received in a perfectly positive way, my dear friends. In actual fact, in the soul that wants to penetrate to truth, this condition must first be present: the soul must stand before the universe in a mood of wonder and marveling. And anyone who is able to comprehend the whole force of this expression of the Greeks comes to perceive that when a man, irrespective of all the other conditions by which he arrives at the study and investigation of truth, takes his start from this mood of wonder, from nothing else than a feeling of wonder in face of the facts of the world, then it is in very truth as when you drop a seed in the ground and a plant grows up out of it. In a sense we may say that all knowledge must have wonder for its seed. It is quite a different thing when a man proceeds not from wonder but perhaps from the fact that in his youth his good teachers have drummed into him principles of some sort or other which have made him into a philosopher; or when perhaps he has become a philosopher because—well, because in the walk of life in which he grew up it is the custom to learn something of the sort, and so he has come to philosophy purely by dint of circumstances. It is also well known that the examination in philosophy is the easiest to pass. In short, there are hundreds and thousands of starting points for the study of philosophy that are not wonder, but something altogether different. All such starting points, however, lead merely to an acquaintance with truth that may be compared with making a plant of papier-mache and not raising it from seed. The comparison is quite apt! For all real knowledge, that hopes to have a chance of coming to grips with the riddles of the world, must grow out of the seed of wonder. A man may be ever so clever a thinker, he may even suffer from a superabundance of intelligence; if he has never passed through the stage of wonder nothing will come of it. He will give you a cleverly thought-out concatenation of ideas, containing nothing that is not correct—but correctness does not necessarily lead to reality. It is absolutely essential that before we begin to think, before we so much as begin to set our thinking in motion, we experience the condition of wonder. A thinking which is set in motion without the condition of wonder remains nothing but a mere play of thought. All true thinking must originate in the mood of wonder.
Nor is that enough. We must go a step further. Even when thinking originates in the mood of wonder, then if a man is predisposed by his karma to grow sharp-witted and clever, and quickly begins to be proud and take pleasure in his cleverness and then perhaps gives all his energy to developing that alone, the wonder he felt in the beginning will no longer help him at all. For if, after wonder has taken hold in the soul, then in the further course of his thinking a man does no more than merely “think,” he cannot penetrate to reality. Please let me emphasise here that I am not saying a man ought to become thoughtless and that thinking is harmful. This opinion is often widespread in our circles. Just because it has been said that one must proceed from wonder, people are apt to regard thinking as wrong and harmful. When a man has made a small beginning in thinking and can reckon up the seven principles of the human being, and so on, there is no reason why he should then cease thinking. Thinking must continue. But after the wonder another condition must show itself, and that is a condition we may best describe as reverence for all that to which thought brings us. After the mood of wonder must follow the mood of veneration, of reverence. And any thinking that is divorced from reverence, that does not behold in a reverent manner what is proffered to its view, will not be able to penetrate to reality. Thinking must never, so to say, go dancing through the world in a careless, light-footed way. It must, when it has passed the moment of wonder, take firm root in the feeling of reverence for the universe.
Here the path of true knowledge comes immediately into open opposition with what is called science in our day. Suppose you were to say to someone who is standing in his laboratory with his retorts, analysing substances and then again building up compound by a process of synthesis—suppose you were to say to him: “You cannot really hope to investigate truth. You will, of course, think it out very beautifully and piece it together in your mind, but what you are doing is no more than mere facts. And you approach these facts of the world without any piety or reverence. You ought really to stand before the processes going on in your retorts with the same pious and reverential feeling as a priest feels before the altar.” What would such a man say to you to-day? Probably he would laugh at you, because from the standpoint of present-day science one simply cannot see that reverence has anything whatever to do with truth and with knowledge. Or, if he does not laugh at you, at best he will say: “I can feel great enthusiasm for what goes on in my retorts, but that my enthusiasm is anything other than my own private affair, that my enthusiasm should have anything to do with the investigation of truth—that you can never persuade a person of intelligence to believe.” You are bound to appear foolish in the eyes of present-day scientists if you venture to say that research into the nature of objects, and even thought about objects, ought never to be divorced from reverence, and that one ought not to take a step forward in thought without being filled with the feeling of reverence for the object of one's enquiry. Reverence is, however, the second requisite on the path of knowledge.
But now a man who had attained to a certain feeling of reverence, and then, having experienced this feeling of reverence, wanted to press forward with mere thought—such a man would again come to a nothingness, he would not be able to get any farther. He would, it is true, make some discoveries that were quite correct, and because he had gone through these first two stages, he would with his correct knowledge have also acquired many clearly and firmly established points of view. But he would inevitably, for all that, soon fall into uncertainty. For a third condition must take hold in the soul after we have experienced wonder and reverence, and this third mood we may describe as feeling oneself in wisdom-filled harmony with the laws of the world. And this feeling can be attained in no other way than by having insight into the worthlessness of mere thinking. One must have felt over and over again that he who builds on correctness of thinking—whether he ends by confirming or contradicting is of no account—is really in the same case as our little boy who reckoned up the number of the rolls so correctly. Had that little boy been able to say to himself: “My reckoning may be quite correct, but I must avoid building upon my correctness of thought, I must follow truth, I must put myself into accord with reality”—then he would have found out something which stands higher than correctness, viz., the custom of the village to give in an extra roll with every five. He would have found that one has to go out of oneself into the external world and that correct thinking stands us in no stead when we want to find out whether something is real.
But this placing oneself into wisdom-filled harmony with reality is something that does not come easily, does not come of itself. If it were so, my dear friends, man would not in this time be experiencing—nor would he ever have experienced—the temptation that comes through Lucifer. For what we call discriminating between good and evil, acquiring knowledge, eating of the tree of knowledge, was most assuredly planned to come for man by the divine leaders of the world—only at a later time. Where man went wrong was in wanting to possess himself too early of the knowledge of the difference of good and evil. What had been intended for him at a later time, the temptation of Lucifer made him want to acquire earlier; that is the point. The only possible outcome was an inadequate knowledge, which has the same relation to the true knowledge man would have won in the way intended for him, as a premature birth has to a normal one. The old Gnostics actually used this expression, and one can see now how right they were. They said: Human knowledge, as it accompanies man through the world in all his incarnations, is in reality a premature birth, an Ectroma; because men could not wait until they had undergone all the experiences which should have led them step by step to know-ledge. A time should have been allowed to pass, during which man should have brought certain moods and conditions of soul to greater and greater maturity, and then knowledge would have been bound to come to him. This original sin of mankind is still being constantly committed. For if men were not guilty of this sin they would care less how quickly they can acquire this or that truth and would be concerned instead as to how they might grow mature for the comprehension of truth.
How strange it would seem to a man of the present day if some-one were to come and say to him: “The Theorem of Pythagoras is quite comprehensible to you, but if you want to have a deeper understanding of the hidden meaning of the statement: ‘The sum of the squares on the two sides of a right-angled triangle is equal to the square on the hypotenuse’”—or to take a still simpler case, if someone were to come and say to him: “Before you are ripe to understand that three multiplied by three is equal to nine you must go through this or that experience in your soul! For you can only grasp that truth when you have brought yourself into harmony with the laws of the world, which have so ordered things that mathematical laws appear to us as they do!” Why, he would only laugh, and even louder than before! Really and truly men are still continually guilty of the original sin, for they think that at each stage they reach they can comprehend everything, without any regard for the fact that man needs first to have a certain experience before he can comprehend this or that. It is really essential to be inwardly sustained and upheld all the time by the consciousness that with all one's strict and precise thinking one can, as a matter of fact, get nowhere at all in the domain of reality. This realisation belongs to the third condition of soul which we are now describing.
Use all the efforts we may to judge correctly of something, error can always creep in. A true judgment can only result when we have attained a certain maturity, when we have waited for the judgment to “jump” to us, not when we put ourselves about to find it, but when we take pains to make ourselves ripe for it to come to us. Then the judgment we form will belong to reality. The man who exerts himself ever so strenuously to hit upon a correct judgment can never expect by such exertion to arrive at a judgment that is in any way conclusive or satisfactory. He alone can hope to come to a true judgment of a matter who applies all his care and thought to making himself riper and riper to receive the right judgments from the revelations which will then stream into him, because he has grown ripe to receive them. It is possible to have quite strange experiences in this connection. A man who is quickly on the spot with his ready-made judgment will naturally think that if someone has fallen into the water and is pulled out dead he has been drowned. But a man who has learnt wisdom, who has grown mature in the experience of life, will know that a general correctness of thought is of no significance at all, but that in each single case one has to give oneself up to the facts as they present themselves and let them form the judgment. You may constantly see the truth of this confirmed in life.
Take an instance. Somebody makes a statement. Well and good. You yourself may have another view of the matter. You may say: What he says is quite false. You have yourself an altogether different opinion. Now it can very well be that what he says and what you say are both false, in a certain respect both judgments can be right and both false. At this third stage of the soul you will not see anything conclusive in the fact that one person has a different view of a matter from another person; that tells nothing at all. It merely says that each of these stands on the pinnacle of his own opinion. Whereas he who has learnt wisdom always reserves his judgment, and in order not to be involved in any way with his judgment he will wait with it even when he is conscious that he may be right. He holds back, putting his opinion to the test, as it were. But suppose someone makes a statement to-day and then two months later says the very opposite. In such a case you can completely exclude yourself, you have nothing whatever to do with the two facts. And when you look at these two facts and let them make their own impression upon you, you do not need to oppose either of them, they contradict each other mutually. The judgment is made by the external world, not by you. Then, and then only, does the wise man begin to form a judgment. It is an interesting fact that one will never understand how Goethe pursued his study of natural science unless one has this conception of wisdom, where one has to let the objects themselves do the judging. Therefore did Goethe make the following interesting observation—you will find it in my Introduction to Goethe's Natural Scientific Works. He said: We ought really never to make judgments or hypotheses concerning external phenomena; for the phenomena are the theories, they themselves express their ideas, if only we have grown mature to receive impressions from them in the right way. It is not a question of sitting down in a corner and puzzling out in one's own mind something that one then considers correct, it is a question rather of making oneself ripe and letting the true judgment spring to meet one out of the facts themselves. Our relation to thinking must not be that we make thinking sit in judgment upon objects but rather that we make it an instrument whereby the objects can express themselves. This is what placing oneself in harmony with objects means.
When this third stage has been experienced, even then the thinking cannot be allowed to stand on its own feet. Then comes what is in a sense the very highest condition of soul to which man has to attain if he would arrive at truth. And that is the condition to which we may give the name devotion or self-surrender. Wonder, reverence, wisdom-filled harmony with the phenomena of the world, surrender to the course of the world—these are the stages through which we have to pass and which must always run parallel with thinking, never deserting it; otherwise thinking arrives at what is merely correct and not at what is true.
We will here make a pause at the point to which we have come, rising from wonder through reverence and wisdom-filled harmony with world phenomena to the stage we have named “surrender” but have not yet explained. To-morrow we will speak further about it. Let us hold all this well in mind, and on the other hand let us also remember the question we threw out at the beginning, namely, why it is one only needs to make oneself intellectual in order to be able to refute spiritual science. Let us consider that we end our lecture to-day on these two questions, which tomorrow we will proceed to answer.
Erster Vortrag
Es soll in diesem Zyklus von Vorträgen meine Aufgabe sein, eine Verbindungsbrücke zu schlagen zwischen verhältnismäßig alltäglichen Dingen, zwischen Erfahrungen, die dem Menschen im gewöhnlichen Leben begegnen können, und den höchsten Angelegenheiten der Menschheit. Und damit soll sich uns wiederum einer der Wege eröffnen vom Leben des Alltags zu dem, was uns für Seele und Geist Anthroposophie oder Geisteswissenschaft sein kann. Wir wissen, daß Anthroposophie, indem wir uns immer mehr und mehr in das vertiefen, was sie uns geben kann, einfließt in unser Empfinden, einfließt in unser Wollen, einfließt in diejenigen Kräfte, die wir brauchen, um uns den mannigfaltigsten Ereignissen des Lebens gewachsen zu zeigen. Und wir wissen ferner, daß so, wie wir jetzt Anthroposophie erfahren können durch die Einflüsse, die aus den höheren Welten gerade in dieser Zeit zu uns kommen, diese Anthroposophie für die gegenwärtige Menschheit gewissermaßen eine Notwendigkeit bedeutet. Wir wissen, daß in verhältnismäßig kurzer Zeit das Menschengeschlecht verlieren müßte alle Sicherheit, alle innere Ruhe, allen zum Leben notwendigen Frieden, wenn die Verkündigung, die wir als Anthroposophie bezeichnen, nicht eben zu dieser Menschheit gerade in unserem Zeitalter kommen würde. Und ferner wissen wir, daß eigentlich durch diese anthroposophische Geistesströmung scharf zwei Denk-, Gefühlsund Empfindungsrichtungen der Menschen gleichsam aufeinanderstürmen.
Die eine ist jene Denk- und Empfindungsrichtung, die sich durch viele Jahrhunderte vorbereitet hat und gegenwärtig eigentlich die Menschheit in den weitesten Kreisen überall schon ergriffen hat oder in der nächsten Zeit mit großer Sicherheit ergreifen wird. Es ist die Denk- und Empfindungsrichtung, die wir als die materialistische bezeichnen, als die materialistische im weitesten Umfange. Und sie stürmt sozusagen an gegen jene andere Denkrichtung, welche mit der Anthroposophie selber gegeben ist, gegen die spirituelle Geistesrichtung. Und immer vernehmlicher gegen die nächste Zukunft zu wird der Kampf dieser beiden Richtungen, der beiden Denk- und Empfindungsrichtungen sein. So wird er sein, daß man gar nicht einmal überall wird unterscheiden können, ob man es mit irgendeiner Gedanken- oder Gefühlsrichtung als mit einer ungeschminkten Wahrheit, sagen wir mit einem ungeschminkten Vertreten des Materialismus, zu tun hat, oder ob man es unter allerlei Masken mit der einen oder anderen Denk- oder Gefühlsrichtung zu tun hat. Denn es wird genug materialistische Strömungen geben, welche sich, wenn wir so sagen dürfen, spirituell maskieren werden, und es wird zuweilen schwer zu unterscheiden sein, wo eigentlich der Materialismus steckt und wo die spirituelle Geistesströmung wirklich zu finden ist. Wie schwierig es ist, in dieser Beziehung zurechtzukommen, das versuchte ich in den letzten Zeiten verschiedentlich zu zeigen durch zwei Vorträge, die ich unmittelbar nacheinander hielt, wo ich in dem einen Vortrag eine Empfindung hervorzurufen suchte davon, wie man aus gewissen Gedanken und Ideen, die einen schon einmal in der Gegenwart beherrschen, zu einem ehrlichen und aufrichtigen Gegner der Geisteswissenschaft werden könne. «Wie man Geisteswissenschaft widerlegt», das suchte ich zu zeigen in dem einen Vortrag, dem ich dann folgen ließ einen anderen «Wie man Geisteswissenschaft verteidigt» oder «Wie man Geisteswissenschaft begründet».
Nicht als ob ich etwa geglaubt hätte, alles nach der einen oder der anderen Richtung in diesen Vorträgen vorbringen zu können, sondern nur ein Gefühl wollte ich hervorrufen dafür, daß man in der Tat vieles, außerordentlich vieles vorbringen kann mit einem großen Schein von Recht gegen die geisteswissenschaftliche Weltanschauung, und daß diejenigen, die gar nicht anders können als sozusagen aus ihrer Seele herauspressen die Gegnerschaften, durchaus nicht zu den unwahrhaftigsten Menschen der Gegenwart gehören, sondern oftmals zu den ehrlichsten Ringern nach Wahrheit. Ich will Ihnen durchaus nicht etwa all die Gründe, die angeführt werden können gegen die Geisteswissenschaft, wiederum aufzählen; es soll nur darauf hingewiesen werden, daß es aus den Denkgewohnheiten, aus den Anschauungen unserer Gegenwart heraus solche Gründe gibt, die auf guten Fundamenten gebaut werden können, und daß man schon recht gründlich Geisteswissenschaft widerlegen kann. Nun fragt es sich aber, wenn man also Geisteswissenschaft widerlegt, wenn man alle Gründe anführt, die gegen Geisteswissenschaft vorgebracht werden können: wodurch erreicht man denn gerade die allergründlichste, die allerbegründetste Widerlegung? Sehen Sie, wenn jemand heute aus den Grundvoraussetzungen seines ganzen Seelenwesens zur Geisteswissenschaft sich bekennt und sich dann bekannt macht mit alledem, was im weiten Umfange die Wissenschaften aus ihrer materialistischen Grundidee heute vorbringen können, dann kann er, wenn er nur überhaupt bekannt ist mit der wissenschaftlichen Welt der Gegenwart, gründlich Geisteswissenschaft widerlegen. Aber er muß bei sich selber in seiner Seele zuerst einen gewissen Zustand herstellen, um eine solche Widerlegung gründlich machen zu können. Er muß einen bestimmten Zustand seiner Seele herstellen. Dieser Zustand ist derjenige, daß sich ein solcher Mensch, um sich anzuschicken, Geisteswissenschaft zu widerlegen, auf den bloßen Verstandesstandpunkt, auf den bloßen intellektualistischen Standpunkt stellen muß. Was damit gemeint ist, wird uns gleich eine Betrachtung von der umgekehrten Seite aus zeigen. Halten wir einmal zunächst das fest, was ich wie eine persönliche Erfahrung hingestellt habe. Wenn man die wissenschaftlichen Ergebnisse der Gegenwart kennt und sozusagen sich bloß auf seinen Verstand verläßt, dann kann man Geisteswissenschaft gründlich widerlegen. Halten wir dabei ein wenig still und versuchen wir jetzt, uns von einer ganz anderen Seite her unserer Aufgabe zu nähern.
Sehen Sie, der Mensch kann die Welt eigentlich von zwei Seiten aus anschauen. Die eine Anschauung der Welt, die ergibt sich, wenn der Mensch, sagen wir, einen wunderschönen Sonnenaufgang betrachtet, wo die Sonne aus dem Gold der Morgenröte heraus wie sich selbst gebärend erscheint, dann glanzvoll über die Erde hinzieht, und der Mensch sich dann versenkt in den Gedanken, wie der Sonnenstrahl, wie die Sonnenwärme hervorzaubert aus dem Erdengrund das Leben im alljährlich wiederkehrenden Zyklus. Oder aber es kann sich der Mensch auch der Betrachtung hingeben, wenn die Sonne hinuntergegangen und die Abendröte verglommen ist, wenn nach und nach Finsternis der Nacht eingetreten ist und zahllose Sterne aufglänzen am Himmelsgewölbe; es kann der Mensch sich versenken in die Wunder des nächtlichen Sternenhimmels. Es wird der Mensch, wenn er also betrachtet dasjenige, was Natur ist um ihn herum, zu einer Vorstellung kommen, die, man möchte sagen, ihn mit tiefster Beseligung erfüllen muß. Denn ähnlich einem Goetheschen Grundgedanken kann diese Vorstellung sein. Goethe hat einmal so wunderbar schön gesagt: Ach, wenn wir den Blick hinaufrichten in die Wunder der Sternenwelt und den Gang des Universums mit all seinen Herrlichkeiten betrachten, dann haben wir zuletzt doch die Empfindung, daß dies alles, alles, was uns so herrlich um uns herum im Umkreise des Universums erscheint, erst einen Sinn erhält, wenn es sich spiegelt in einem bewundernden Menschen, in einer Menschenseele. — Ja, der Mensch erhält nämlich den Gedanken, daß so, wie die Luft um ihn herum sein Wesen bildet, in ihn hereindringt, daß er sie atmen kann, daß sie durch den Prozeß, den sie in ihm durchmacht, seine eigene Wesenheit aufbaut, daß geradeso, wie er ein Ergebnis dieser Luft und ihrer Gesetze und ihrer Zusammensetzung ist, er in einer gewissen Weise ein Ergebnis ist auch der übrigen weiten Welt, die ihn umgibt mit alledem, was in unsere Sinne hereinfließt, nicht nur in den Sinn des Gesichtes, sondern auch in den Sinn, der aufnimmt die Klangeswelt und die anderen Welten, die durch unsere Sinne einströmen. Daß der Mensch dasteht gegenüber dieser äußeren Sinneswelt wie das zusammengeflossene Ergebnis dieser Sinneswelt, so dasteht, daß er sich sagen kann: Wenn ich alles das, was da draußen ist, mir näher ansehe, mir überdenke, wenn ich es wahrnehme mit all meinen Sinnen, dann sehe ich den Sinn von alledem, was ich da überschaue, am besten dadurch erfüllt, daß zuletzt aus alledem sich herauskristallisiert hat das Wundergebilde des Menschen selber.
Und wahr ist es, daß den Menschen dann das Gefühl überkommen kann, das, man möchte sagen, so urelementar der griechische Dichter ausgesprochen hat mit den Worten: «Vieles Gewaltige lebt, doch nichts ist gewaltiger als der Mensch!» Wie einseitig erscheinen einem alle Offenbarungen draußen in der Welt! Im Menschen aber scheinen diese Offenbarungen zur Allseitigkeit zusammengeflossen zu sein, wenn wir die Sinneswelt draußen betrachten und dann den Menschen selbst inmitten dieser als ein Sinneswesen, auf das alles übrige einfließt. Denn je genauer man die Welt betrachtet, desto mehr erscheint der Mensch als der Zusammenfluß aller Einseitigkeiten des übrigen Universums. Wenn man dieses Gefühl in sich entwickelt gegenüber der großen Welt und ihrem Zusammenströmen im Menschen, da erscheint dann ein von einer tief beseligenden Empfindung durchdrungener Gedanke in unserer Seele, der Gedanke von dem gottgewollten Menschen, von dem Menschen, der so erscheint, wie wenn Göttertaten und Götterabsichten ein ganzes Universum auferbaut hätten, aus dem sie die Wirkungen überall ausströmen ließen, so daß zuletzt diese Wirkungen zusammenströmen konnten in dem würdigsten Werke, das Götter von allen Seiten in den Mittelpunkt des Universums hinstellten: in dem Menschen. Göttergewolltes Werk! Das sagte auch einer, der gerade in dieser Beziehung die Sinneswelt draußen im Verhältnis zum Menschen: beobachtete: Was sind alle Instrumente des Musikers gegen den Wunderbau des menschlichen Gehörorgans, dieses musikalischen Instrumentes, oder aber gegen den Wunderbau des menschlichen Kehlkopfes, dieses anderen musikalischen Instrumentes! Man kann vieles bewundern in der Welt; den Menschen nicht bewundern, so wie er mitten in der Welt drinnensteht, das ist nur möglich, wenn man ihn nicht kennt in seinem Wunderbau. Der Gedanke tritt dann in unsere Seele, wenn man sich solchen Betrachtungen hingibt: Was haben doch göttlich-geistige Wesenheiten alles getan, um diesen Menschen zustande zu bringen!
Das ist der eine Weg, den eine Weltbetrachtung dem Menschen geben kann. Aber es gibt noch einen anderen Weg. Dieser andere Weg eröffnet sich uns dann, wenn wir ein Gefühl in uns entwickeln für die Hoheit und Kraft und das Überwältigende dessen, was wir moralische Ideale nennen, wenn wir in unsere eigene Seele blicken und ein wenig in uns anschlagen lassen, was moralische Ideale in der Welt bedeuten. Es gehört eine gesunde Menschennatur dazu, eine aliseitig gesunde Menschennatur, um in voller Größe die Hoheit der moralischen Ideale des Menschen zu empfinden. Und man kann den moralischen Idealen gegenüber etwas in sich entwickeln, was ebenso überwältigend wirken kann innerhalb der Seele, wie der Glanz und die Herrlichkeit der Offenbarungen des Weltalls durch den Menschen von außerhalb wirken. Das ist, wenn man in sich entzündet alle Liebe und allen Enthusiasmus, die sich anlehnen können an moralische Ideale und Ziele des Menschen. Da kann einen durchdringen eine ungeheure Wärme. Dann aber gliedert sich ganz notwendig als Gedanke an diese Empfindung der moralischen Ideale ein anderes an als das, was sich als Gedanke aus der vorhin genannten Weltenbetrachtung ergibt, die sich anlehnt an die Offenbarungen des Universums durch den Menschen. Gerade diejenigen, welche am höchsten, am kräftigsten empfinden die Gewalt der moralischen Ideale, gerade sie empfinden diesen anderen Gedanken auch am allerbedeutsamsten. Das ist, sie empfinden den Gedanken: Wie weit, o Mensch, bist du, so wie du gegenwärtig dastehst, entfernt von den hohen moralischen Idealen, die dir aufgehen können in deinem Herzen! Wie stehst du so winzig klein mit alledem, was du kannst, was du tust und vermagst, gegenüber der Größe der moralischen Ideale, die du dir vorsetzen kannst! Und nicht so empfinden, nicht so sich klein empfinden gegenüber den moralischen Idealen, das kann nur aus einer Seelenverfassung hervorgehen, die selber recht klein ist. Denn gerade mit dem Wachsen einer gewissen Seelengröße empfindet der Mensch seine Unangemessenheit gegenüber den moralischen Idealen. Und ein Gedanke dämmert dann in der Seele auf, der uns als Menschen oftmals so überkommt: daß wir kraftvoll und mutig versuchen, alle Veranstaltungen zu treffen, um uns einigermaßen reif und immer reifer zu machen, um nur wieder und wiederum ein wenig mehr die moralischen Ideale zu Kräften in uns selbst zu machen, als wir das vorher konnten. Oder aber, es kann auch in gewissen Naturen der Gedanke der Unangemessenheit an die moralischen Ideale so Wurzel fassen, daß sie völlig in sich zerschmettert sich fühlen, gottentfremdet sich fühlen gerade deshalb, weil sie auf der einen Seite das Gottgewollte des äußeren Menschen, der hineingestellt ist in die Sinneswelt, kraftvoll empfinden. Da stehst du, sagen sich vielleicht solche Menschen, mit alledem, was du äußerlich bist. Wenn du dich als äußerliches Wesen anschaust, so mußt du sagen: du bist ein Zusammenfluß der ganzen gottgewollten Welt, du bist ein gottgewolltes Wesen, trägst göttergleiches Angesicht! Dann schaust du in dein Inneres. Da gehen dir die Ideale auf, die dir Gott ins Herz geschrieben hat, die zweifellos für dich gottgewollte Kräfte sein sollen. Und du findest deine Unangemessenheit als eine Erfahrung aus deiner Seele quellen.
Diese zwei Wege zu einer Weltenbetrachtung gibt es im Menschen. Der Mensch kann sich von außen anschauen und tief beseligt sein über seine gottgewollte Natur, und der Mensch kann sich von innen betrachten und tief zerknirscht sein über seine gottentfremdete Seele. Ein gesundes Fühlen, ein gesundes Empfinden, das kann sich aber nur sagen: Aus demselben göttlichen Urgrunde, aus dem da kommen die Kräfte, die den Menschen mitten hineingestellt haben wie einen gewaltigen Extrakt des ganzen Universums, aus demselben göttlichen Urgrund müssen auch hervorsprießen die moralischen Ideale, die in unser Herz geschrieben sind. — Warum ist das eine so weit vom anderen entfernt? Das ist eigentlich die große Rätselfrage des menschlichen Daseins. Und wahrhaftig, es hätte niemals Theosophie, niemals auch Philosophie in der Welt gegeben, wenn nicht bewußt oder unbewußt, empfindungsgemäß oder mehr oder weniger verstandesklar dieser Zwiespalt, der eben charakterisiert worden ist, in den menschlichen Seelen entstanden wäre. Denn aus der Erfahrung dieses Zwiespaltes ist alles tiefere menschliche Nachsinnen und Nachforschen eigentlich entsprungen. Was stellt sich hinein zwischen den gottgewollten Menschen und den gottentfremdeten Menschen? Das ist eigentlich die Grundfrage aller Philosophie. Wenn man auch diese Frage in der mannigfaltigsten Weise anders formuliert und charakterisiert hat, so liegt doch diese Frage allem menschlichen Denken und allem menschlichen Sinnen zugrunde. Wie kann der Mensch überhaupt eine Vorstellung davon gewinnen, daß eine Brücke geschlagen werden kann zwischen der zweifellos beseligenden Anschauung des Äußeren und der zweifellos uns in tiefen Zwiespalt bringenden Anschauung unserer Seele?
Nun, sehen Sie, wir müssen schon den Weg, den die Menschenseele gehen kann, um in einer richtigen und würdigen Weise sich hinaufzuleben zu den höchsten Fragen des Daseins, ein wenig charakterisieren, um dann herauszufinden, worin die Ursprünge der Irrtümer liegen können. Denn in der Welt draußen, insofern diese Welt heute von äußerer Wissenschaft beherrscht ist, wird man, wenn man von Wissen, von Erkenntnis spricht, zweifellos immer sagen: Ja, Erkenntnis, Wahrheit muß sich ergeben, wenn man richtige Urteile gefällt, wenn man das Richtige gedacht hat. Ich habe letzthin einmal, um zu charakterisieren, welch gründlicher Irrtum in dieser Voraussetzung liegt, daß sich Erkenntnis, daß sich Wahrheit ergeben muß, wenn man richtige Urteile fällt, einen sehr einfachen Vergleich gebraucht, den ich auch hier wiederum erzählen möchte, aus dem Sie sehen, daß das Richtige keineswegs zu dem Wirklichen führen muß. Es war einmal in einem Dorfe ein kleiner Knabe, der wurde von seinen Eltern immer geschickt, Semmeln zu holen. Der bekam immer — sagen wir, es war das an einem Orte, wo man nach Kreuzerwährung rechnete — zehn Kreuzer mit und er brachte dafür sechs Semmeln. Wenn man eine Semmel kaufte, kostete sie zwei Kreuzer. Also er brachte für zehn Kreuzer immer sechs Semmeln mit nach Hause. Der kleine Knabe war kein besonderer Arithmetikus und hat sich nicht besonders darum gekümmert, wie das stimmt, daß er immer zehn Kreuzer mitbekommt, daß eine Semmel zwei Kreuzer kostet und er doch für seine zehn Kreuzer sechs Semmeln mit nach Hause bringt. Aber da bekam er eine Art Pflegebruder. Von einem anderen Orte her wurde ein Knabe in dasselbe Haus gebracht, ein Knabe, der ungefähr gleichaltrig, aber ein guter Arithmetikus war. Der sah nun, daß sein neuer Genosse zum Bäcker ging, daß er zehn Kreuzer mitbekam, und er wußte, daß eine Semmel zwei Kreuzer koste, und sagte: Also mußt du notwendigerweise fünf Semmeln mit nach Haus bringen. Er war ein sehr guter Arithmetikus und dachte das Richtige: Eine Semmel kostet zwei Kreuzer, zehn Kreuzer bekommt er mit, also wird er ganz sicher fünf Semmeln mit nach Hause bringen. Doch siehe da, er brachte sechs. Da sagte der gute Arithmetikus: Aber das ist doch ganz falsch, du kannst, weil eine Semmel zwei Kreuzer kostet und du zehn Kreuzer mitbekommen hast, da doch zwei in zehn fünfmal enthalten ist, unmöglich sechs Semmeln mitbringen. Da muß man sich geirrt haben oder du hast eine Semmel geschnipft — das heißt nämlich gestohlen. Nun, siehe da, am zweiten Tage brachte der Junge wiederum für zehn Kreuzer sechs Semmeln. Es war nämlich üblich an jenem Orte, daß man auf fünf immer eine drauf bekam, so daß man in der Tat, wenn man fünf Semmeln kaufte für zehn Kreuzer, sechs bekam. Es war eine sehr angenehme Sitte für die Leute, die gerade fünf Semmeln brauchten für ihren Haushalt.
Nun, der gute Arithmetikus hat ganz richtig gedacht, er hat gar keinen Fehler gemacht in seinem Denken, aber mit der Wirklichkeit stimmte dieses richtige Denken nicht überein. Wir müssen zugeben, es erreichte das richtige Denken die Wirklichkeit nicht, denn die Wirklichkeit richtet sich eben nicht nach dem richtigen Denken. Sehen Sie: so wie es hier in diesem Falle ist, so kann man nachweisen, daß in der Tat bei den gewissenhaftesten, kniffligsten Gedanken, die man nur je logisch ausspinnen kann, das Richtigste herauskommen kann, aber an der Wirklichkeit bemessen kann es ganz und gar falsch sein. Das kann immer der Fall sein. Deshalb ist niemals ein aus dem Denken gewonnener Beweis irgendwie maßgebend für die Wirklichkeit, niemals. Man kann sich auch sonst durchaus irren in der eigentümlichen Verkettung von Ursache und Wirkung, wie man sie gegenüber der Außenwelt anbringen kann. Ich will Ihnen ein Beispiel auch davon geben. Nehmen Sie einmal an, ein Mensch geht dem Ufer eines Baches entlang. Er kommt bis zu einem gewissen Punkt, man sieht von der Ferne, wie er über den Rand des Baches stürzt, ins Wasser fällt, und man geht schnell hinzu und will ihn retten, aber er wird tot herausgezogen aus dem Wasser. Nun sieht man da den Leichnam. Man kann nun konstatieren meinetwillen, daß der Betreffende ertrunken sei, und kann dabei ganz scharfsinnig zu Werke gehen. Vielleicht lag dort an der Stelle, an der er ins Wasser gefallen ist, ein Stein; also, sagt man, er stolperte über den Stein, fiel ins Wasser und ertrank. Denn es ist die Gedankenzusammenstellung richtig: wenn ein Mensch so am Ufer gegangen ist, über den Stein, der da lag, gestolpert ist, hineingefallen ist in den Fluß und tot herausgezogen worden ist, so ist er ertrunken. Es kann gar nicht anders sein. Nur just bei diesem Menschen braucht es nicht so zu sein. Denn wenn man nicht von dieser Verkettung von Ursache und Wirkung sich beherrschen läßt, so kann man finden: diesen Menschen hat in dem Momente, in dem er ins Wasser fiel, der Herzschlag getroffen, infolgedessen ist er, weil er am Rande des Flusses war, ins Wasser gefallen. Er war schon tot, als er hineinfiel, er machte nur die Dinge noch durch, welche derjenige auch durchmacht, der lebendig ins Wasser fällt. Sie sehen, wenn jemand hier sich durch die Zusammenstellung der äußeren Ereignisse zu dem Urteile entschließt: der Betreffende ist ausgerutscht, ins Wasser gefallen und ertrunken —, so ist das falsch, so entspricht das nicht der Wirklichkeit, da er ins Wasser gefallen ist, weil er tot war, und nicht tot aus dem Wasser gezogen wurde, weil er hineingefallen war. Urteile, sehen Sie, die so verkehrt gemacht sind wie dieses, bei dem es so handgreiflich ist, die finden sich nun auf Schritt und Tritt in unserer wissenschaftlichen Literatur, nur merkt man es dort nicht, wie man es nie merken würde, wenn man nicht jenen Fall mit dem ins Wasser Gefallenen, den der Herzschlag getroffen hat, untersuchen würde. In feineren Verkettungen von Ursache und Wirkung werden nämlich solche Fehler fortwährend gemacht. Ich will damit nichts anderes andeuten, als daß tatsächlich unser Denken zunächst gegenüber der Wirklichkeit absolut inkompetent, nicht ausschlaggebend ist, kein richtiger Richter ist.
Ja, aber wie kommen wir denn nun überhaupt sozusagen aus dem Versinken in den Zweifel und in das Nichtwissen heraus, wenn wirklich unser Denken gar kein sicherer Führer sein kann? Wer nämlich Erfahrung hat in diesen Dingen, wer sich viel mit dem Denken beschäftigt hat, der weiß, daß man alles beweisen und alles widerlegen kann, und ihm imponiert kein Scharfsinn der Philosophie mehr. Er kann den Scharfsinn bewundern, aber sich dem bloßen Verstandesurteil hingeben kann er nicht, weil er weiß, daß man ebenso gute Verstandesurteile im entgegengesetzten Sinne auffinden kann. Das gilt für alles, was bewiesen oder widerlegt werden kann. In dieser Beziehung kann man oftmals die interessantesten Beobachtungen gerade am Leben machen. Es hat einen gewissen Reiz — allerdings nur einen theoretischen Reiz —, Menschen kennenzulernen, die gerade an einem bestimmten Punkte ihrer Seelenentwickelung angekommen sind: nämlich an dem Punkte, wo sie innerlich erleben, innerlich spüren, daß man eigentlich alles beweisen und alles widerlegen kann, und die noch nicht herangereift sind zu dem, was man spirituelle Weltanschauung nennen kann.
Es mußten mich gerade in den letzten Wochen oftmals solche Gedanken beschäftigen in der Erinnerung an einen Mann, der mir einmal entgegengetreten ist mit der wunderbarsten Ausprägung einer solchen Seelenbeschaffenheit, ohne daß er durchgedrungen wäre zu einem realen Erfassen der Wirklichkeit durch Geisteswissenschaft. Aber dazu war er gekommen, im Grunde genommen die Widerlegbarkeit und auch die Begründbarkeit aller Behauptungen, die philosophisch getan werden können, einzusehen. Das war nämlich ein Wiener Universitätsprofessor, der vor einigen Wochen gestorben ist, ein äußerst geistvoller Mann; Laurenz Müllner heißt er. Ein außerordentlich geistreicher Mann, der mit einer großen Klarheit alle Beweise aufbringen konnte für alle möglichen philosophischen Systeme und Ge danken, aber der auch alles widerlegen konnte und der sich selbst immer als einen Skeptiker bezeichnete; aus dessen Mund ich einmal die in gewissem Sinne ja furchtbare Äußerung hörte: Ach, alle Philosophie ist doch nichts anderes als ein sehr schönes Gedankenspiel ! Und wenn man das Geistsprühende des Gedankenspiels jenes Mannes oftmals beobachtet hat, dann war es auch interessant zu sehen, wie gerade Laurenz Müllner niemals festzuhalten war an irgendeinem Punkt, weil er gar nichts zugegeben hat, als höchstens dann, wenn irgendein anderer etwas gegen eine Weltanschauung vorgebracht hat: da konnte er liebevoll alles vorbringen, was zur Verteidigung jener Weltanschauung vorgebracht werden konnte, die er vielleicht ein paar Tage vorher scharfsinnig in Grund und Boden gebohrt hatte. Es war ein außerordentlich interessanter Kopf, tatsächlich in gewissem Sinne einer der bedeutendsten Philosophen, die in dieser Zeit gelebt haben. Was ihn zu dieser Grundstimmung gebracht hat, das ist auch interessant. Er war nämlich, außer daß er ein gründlicher Kenner der philosophischen Entwickelung der Menschheit war, zugleich katholischer Priester und war eigentlich immer gewillt, ein guter katholischer Priester zu bleiben, trotzdem er zuletzt viele Jahre an der Wiener Fakultät Professor war. Und die Art und Weise, sich in katholische Gedankengänge zu versenken, die bewirkte bei ihm auf der einen Seite, daß ihm in der 'Tat gegenüber den durch eine gewisse religiöse Inbrunst befruchteten Gedankengängen alles das klein erschien, was ihm sonst in der Welt als ein bloßes Gedankenspiel erschienen war; aber daß er trotzdem nicht herauskonnte aus dem bloßen Zweifel, das machte dieser sein Katholizismus. Er war zu groß, um etwa bei dem bloß dogmatischen Katholizismus stehenzubleiben, aber auf der anderen Seite war der Katholizismus zu groß in ihm, als daß er hätte aufsteigen können zu einer geisteswissenschaftlichen Erfassung der Realität. Es ist außerordentlich interessant, eine solche Seele zu beobachten, die gerade bis zu dem Punkt gekommen war, wo man eigentlich studieren kann, was dem Menschen notwendig ist, um an die Wirklichkeit heranzukommen. Denn selbstverständlich war sich auch dieser scharfsinnige Mann darüber klar, daß er mit seinem Denken nicht an die Wirklichkeit herankommen konnte. Schon im alten Griechenland wurde ausgesprochen, wovon zunächst das gesunde menschliche Nachsinnen auszugehen hat, wenn es Aussicht haben will, einmal zur Wirklichkeit zu kommen. Und jener Ausspruch, der im alten Griechenland schon getan worden ist, gilt ganz gewiß noch immer. Man hat nämlich schon im alten Griechenland gesagt: Alles menschliche Nachforschen muß ausgehen von dem Staunen. Fassen wir das aber in positivem Sinne auf, meine lieben Freunde! Fassen wir es in dem positiven Sinne auf, daß tatsächlich in der Seele, die zur Wahrheit dringen will, dieser Zustand einmal vorhanden sein muß, vor dem Universum staunend zu stehen. Wer nämlich die ganze Kraft dieses griechischen Ausspruches zu fassen vermag, der kommt dazu, sich zu sagen: Wenn ein Mensch, gleichgültig, wie sonst die Verhältnisse sind, durch welche er zum menschlichen Forschen und Sinnen kommt, von dem Staunen ausgeht, also nicht von irgend etwas anderem, sondern vom Staunen über die Weltentatsachen, dann ist das so, wie wenn man ein Samenkorn in die Erde steckt und eine Pflanze daraus emporwächst. Denn alles Wissen muß in gewisser Weise zum Samenkorn das Staunen haben. Anders aber ist es, wenn ein Mensch nicht vom Staunen ausgeht, sondern vielleicht davon, daß in gewisser Jugendzeit seine braven Lehrer ihm eingebläut haben irgendwelche Grundsätze, die ihn zum Philosophen gemacht haben; oder wenn er Philosoph geworden ist, nun, weil es in dem Stande, wo er aufwuchs, Sitte ist, daß man etwas derartiges lernen muß, und er durch die gerade vorhandenen Umstände zur Philosophie kam. Bekanntlich ist auch das Examen in der Philosophie am leichtesten zu machen. Kurz, es gibt Hunderte und Tausende von Ausgangspunkten für die Philosophie, die nicht vom Staunen, sondern von etwas anderem herkommen. Alle solche Ausgangspunkte, die führen nur zu einem solchen Zusammenleben mit der Wahrheit, das sich vergleichen läßt damit, daß man aus Papiermache eine Pflanze macht und nicht aus dem Samen sie zieht. Der Vergleich gilt vollständig, denn alles wirkliche Wissen, das Aussicht haben will, überhaupt etwas zu tun zu haben mit den Weltenrätseln, das muß aus dem Samenkorn des Staunens hervorgehen. Und es kann einer ein noch so schatrfsinniger Denker sein, er kann schon, man möchte sagen, an einer gewissen Überschwenglichkeit des Scharfsinns leiden: wenn er niemals durchgegangen ist durch das Stadium des Staunens — es wird nichts daraus; es wird scharfsinnige, kluge Verkettung von Ideen und nichts, was nicht richtig wäre, aber das Richtige braucht nicht auf die Wirklichkeit zu gehen. Es ist eben durchaus notwendig, daß, bevor wir zu denken beginnen, bevor wir überhaupt unser Denken in Bewegung setzen, wir durchgemacht haben den Zustand des Staunens. Und ein Denken, das sich ohne den Zustand des Staunens in Bewegung setzt, das bleibt im Grunde genommen doch ein bloßes Gedankenspiel. Also das Denken muß urständen, wenn man diesen Ausdruck gebrauchen darf, im Staunen.
Und weiter. Das genügt noch nicht. Wenn das Denken nun urständet im Staunen und der Mensch gerade durch sein Karma veranlagt ist, recht scharfsinnig zu werden, und er durch einen gewissen Hochmut sehr bald dazu kommt, sich selber zu erfreuen an seinem Scharfsinn und dann nur noch den Scharfsinn entwickelt, dann hilft ihm auch das anfängliche Staunen nichts. Denn wenn, nachdem das Staunen in der Seele Platz gegriffen hatte, der Mensch nun im weiteren Verlaufe seines Denkens nur denkt, dann kann er nicht zur Wirklichkeit vordringen. Wohlgemerkt, ich betone das auch hier, ich will nicht sagen, daß der Mensch gedankenlos werden soll und daß das Denken schädlich ist. Denn das ist eine weit verbreitete Anschauung auch in theosophischen Kreisen: man hält das Denken geradezu für schlimm und schädlich, weil man sagt, der Mensch muß vom Staunen ausgehen. Aber er braucht nicht, wenn er ein bißchen angefangen hat zu denken und aufzählen kann die sieben Prinzipien des Menschen und so weiter, wiederum mit dem Denken aufzuhören, sondern das Denken muß bleiben. Es muß aber nach dem Staunen ein anderer Seelenzustand kommen, und das ist der, den wir am besten bezeichnen können mit der Verehrung für das, an was das Denken herantritt. Nach dem Zustand des Staunens muß der Zustand der Verehrung, der Ehrfurcht kommen. Und ein jegliches Denken, das sich emanzipiert von der Ehrfurcht, von dem ehrfürchtigen Aufschauen zu dem, was sich dem Denken darbietet, das wird nicht in die Wirklichkeit hineindringen können. Niemals darf das Denken sozusagen auf eigenen leichten Füßen dahintänzeln in der Welt. Es muß wurzeln, wenn es über den Standpunkt des Staunens hinweggekommen ist, in der Empfindung, in dem Gefühl der Verehrung der Weltengründe.
Da kommt allerdings der Erkenntnispfad sogleich in einen ganz gewaltigen Gegensatz zu dem, was man heute Wissenschaft nennt. Denn wenn Sie jemandem, der heute im Laboratorium vor seinen Retorten steht und Stoffe analysiert und durch Synthese wiederum Verbindungen aufbaut, sagen: Du kannst eigentlich doch die Wahrheit nicht erforschen! Du wirst zwar hübsch zerlegen und hübsch zusammensetzen, aber was du tust, sind bloß Tatsachen. Du gehst pietätlos, ohne Verehrung entgegenzubringen den Tatsachen der Welt, an diese heran. Du solltest eigentlich mit derselben Pietät und ehrfurchtsvollen Verehrung dem, was in deinen Retorten vorgeht, gegenüberstehen, wie ein Priester am Altar steht. — Was wird ein solcher Mann Ihnen heute antworten? Wahrscheinlich wird er Sie auslachen, furchtbar auslachen, weil es vom gegenwärtigen wissenschaftlichen Standpunkt aus gar nicht einzusehen ist, daß die Verehrung irgend etwas zu tun haben soll mit Wahrheit, mit Erkenntnis. Der Mann wird Ihnen, wenn er Sie nicht auslacht, höchstens sagen: Ich kann mich wirklich begeistern für das, was in meinen Retorten vorgeht, aber daß diese meine Begeisterung etwas anderes sein soll als meine Privatsache, daß die etwas zu tun haben soll mit der Wahrheitsforschung, das kannst du einem vernünftigen Menschen tatsächlich nicht begreiflich machen. — Man wird mehr oder weniger närrisch erscheinen gegenüber den heutigen Wissenschaftern, wenn man davon spricht, daß das Forschen und namentlich das Denken über die Dinge niemals sich emanzipieren darf von dem, was Verehrung genannt werden muß, daß man keinen Schritt im Denken machen darf, ohne daß man durchdrungen ist von dem Gefühl der Verehrung für das, was man erforscht. Das ist das Zweite.
Aber auch ein Mensch, welcher es schon bis zu einem gewissen Gefühl der Verehrung gebracht hat und dann, nachdem er, weil er dieses Gefühl der Verehrung erlebt hat, nun mit dem bloßen Denken vorwärtsdringen wollte, ja, der würde wiederum ins Wesenlose kommen, würde wieder nicht weiterkommen. Er würde ja ein Richtiges finden und, weil er die zwei ersten Stufen überschritten hat, so würde sein Richtiges durchzogen sein von mancherlei festgegründeten Gesichtspunkten. Aber er würde dennoch bald ins Unsichere kommen müssen. Denn eine dritte Stufe muß sich in unserem Seelenzustand einstellen, wenn wir Staunen und Verehrung genügend durchgemacht haben, und diese dritte Stufe ist diese, die man bezeichnen könnte als: sich in weisheitsvollem Einklange fühlen mit den Weltgesetzen. Ja, sehen Sie, dieses Sich-im-weisheitsvollen-Einklang-Fühlen mit den Weltgesetzen, das kriegt man überhaupt auf keine andere Weise zustande, als wenn man in einer gewissen Beziehung die Wertlosigkeit des bloßen Denkens schon eingesehen hat, wenn man sich immer wieder und wiederum gesagt hat: Derjenige, der nur auf die Richtigkeit des Denkens baut — ob er nun begründet oder widerlegt, darauf kommt es nicht an —, der ist eigentlich in demselben Falle wie unser kleiner Knabe, der die Semmelzahl in richtiger Weise berechnet hat. Wäre der kleine Knabe fähig gewesen, sich zu sagen: Was du ausrechnest, kann richtig sein, aber du mußt gar nicht bauen auf dein richtiges Denken, sondern du mußt einmal der Wahrheit nachgehen, mußt dich in Einklang setzen mit der Wirklichkeit, dann hätte der Knabe gefunden, was höher steht als seine Richtigkeit: der Brauch am Orte, auf fünf Semmeln eine drauf zu geben. Er hätte gefunden, daß man aus sich heraus muß in die Außenwelt und daß das richtige Denken nichts ausmacht dazu, ob etwas wirklich ist.
Aber dieses sich in weisheitsvollen Einklang setzen mit der Wirklichkeit, das ist etwas, was nicht so ohne weiteres geht. Wenn es so ohne weiteres ginge, meine lieben Freunde, dann würden Sie jetzt und dann würde niemals ein Mensch in diesem Punkt die Verführung durch Luzifer erfahren haben. Denn eigentlich war dem Menschen von den göttlichen Führern der Welt durchaus zugedacht das, was man nennt Unterscheidung von Gut und Böse, Erwerbung von Erkenntnis, Essen vom Baum der Erkenntnis — aber für eine spätere Zeit. Dasjenige, was gefehlt worden ist von den Menschen, das ist, daß sie in zu früher Zeit diese Erkenntnis von der Unterscheidung von Gut und Böse sich haben aneignen wollen. Was ihnen für später zugedacht war, haben sie unter der Verführung Luzifers sich früher aneignen wollen; darin liegt es. Dabei konnte nur herauskommen eine unzulängliche Erkenntnis, die sich zur wirklichen Erkennntis, welche sich der Mensch hätte erringen sollen, wie sie ihm zugedacht war, so verhält wie eine Frühgeburt zu einem ausgereiften Kinde. So daß die alten Gnostiker — man spürt, wie recht sie hatten — tatsächlich das Wort gebraucht haben: Die menschliche Erkenntnis, so wie sie den Menschen begleitet durch seine Verkörperungen durch die Welt, ist eigentlich eine Frühgeburt, ein Ektroma, weil die Menschen nicht haben warten können, bis sie alles das durchgemacht hatten, was dann zur Erkenntnis hätte führen sollen. Es hätte also eine Zeit verfließen sollen, in welcher der Mensch nach und nach hätte heranreifen lassen sollen gewisse Seelenzustände, dann hätte ihm die Erkenntnis zufallen müssen. Diese Ursünde der Menschheit, die begeht man heute noch immer; denn wenn man sie nicht begehen würde, so würde man weniger darauf bedacht sein, wie man rasch das oder jenes als Wahrheit sich aneignen kann, sondern man würde darauf bedacht sein, wie man reif werden kann, um gewisse Wahrheiten erst zu begreifen.
Das ist wieder etwas, was dem heutigen Menschen so sonderbar erscheinen könnte, wenn einer käme und sagte: Dir ist der Pythagoräische Lehrsatz ganz begreiflich; aber wenn du ihn tiefer begreifen willst in seiner geheimnisvollen Bedeutung: die Summe der Quadrate auf den beiden Katheten ist gleich dem Quadrat derHypotenuse — oder nehmen wir einen einfacheren Satz: Ehe du reif wirst zu begreifen, daß 3 x 3 = 9 ist -, mußt du noch das und jenes in deiner Seele durchmachen! Und noch heller würde ein Mensch von heute auflachen, wenn ihm einer sagen wollte: Das begreifst du erst dann, wenn du dich in Einklang bringst mit den Weltengesetzen, welche die Dinge so geordnet haben, daß uns die mathematischen Gesetze in gewisser Weise erscheinen. Eigentlich begehen die Menschen immer noch die Erbsünde, indem sie glauben, auf jeder Stufe alles begreifen zu können, und nichts darauf geben, daß man erst etwas durchmachen muß, um dieses oder jenes zu begreifen, daß man ein inneres Getragensein haben muß von dem Bewußtsein, daß man eigentlich mit all seinen strengen Urteilen gar nichts erreichen kann in der Wirklichkeit.
Das gehört zum dritten Zustand, den wir zu schildern haben. Wenn man sich noch so stark anstrengt im Urteilen — Irrtum kann immer unterlaufen im Urteil. Ein richtiges Urteil kann sich nur ergeben, wenn wir einen gewissen Reifezustand erlangt haben, wenn wir gewartet haben, bis das Urteil uns zuspringt. Nicht wenn wir uns Mühe geben, das Urteil zu finden, sondern wenn wir uns Mühe geben, uns reif zu machen, daß das Urteil an uns herankommt, dann hat das Urteil etwas mit der Wirklichkeit zu tun. Derjenige, der sich noch so furchtbar anstrengt, ein richtiges Urteil zu fällen, der kann nie darauf bauen, daß er durch diese innere Anstrengung zu einem irgendwie maßgeblichen Urteil kommt. Der allein kann hoffen, zu einem richtigen Urteil zu kommen, der alle Sorgfalt darauf verwendet, immer reifer und reifer zu werden, sozusagen die richtigen Urteile zu erwarten von den Offenbarungen, die ihm zuströmen, weil er reif geworden ist. Da kann man nämlich die merkwürdigsten Erfahrungen machen. Ein Mensch, der rasch mit seinem Urteil fertig ist, wird natürlich denken: Wenn einer ins Wasser gefallen ist und man ihn tot herauszieht, ist er ertrunken. Aber jemand, der weise geworden ist, der reif geworden ist durch Lebenserfahrung, der wird wissen, daß in jedem einzelnen Falle eine allgemeine Richtigkeit gar nichts bedeutet, sondern daß man in jedem einzelnen Falle allseitig sich hinzugeben hat dem, was sich darbietet, daß man immer urteilen lassen muß die Tatsachen, die sich vor einem abspielen. Man kann das am Leben sehr gut bewahrheitet finden.
Nehmen Sie den Fall: Irgendein Mensch sagt heute irgend etwas. Nun gut, Sie können eine andere Ansicht haben, Sie können sagen: Das ist ganz falsch, was der sagt. Sie können eben ein anderes Urteil haben als der andere. Schön, es kann das falsch sein, was er sagt und was Sie sagen; es können in gewisser Beziehung beide Urteile richtig und beide falsch sein. Daß der eine ein anderes Urteil hat als der andere, das werden Sie jetzt auf dieser dritten Stufe nicht als etwas Maßgebendes betrachten. Das besagt gar nichts; da steht man nur gleichsam auf der Spitze seines eigenen Urteils. Da hält der, der weise geworden ist, immer mit seinem Urteil zurück, und um sich nicht in irgendeiner Weise mit seinem Urteil zu engagieren, hält er sogar dann zurück, wenn er das Bewußtsein hat, daß er recht haben könnte; wie experimentell, wie probeweise hält er zurück. Aber nehmen Sie an, ein Mensch sagt Ihnen heute irgend etwas; nach zwei Monaten sagt er etwas Gegenteiliges: da können Sie sich ganz ausschalten, da haben Sie gar nichts zu tun mit den beiden Tatsachen. Wenn Sie die beiden Tatsachen auf sich wirken lassen, dann brauchen Sie keiner zu widersprechen, sondern sie widersprechen sich gegenseitig. Da wird das Urteil vollzogen durch die Außenwelt, nicht durch Sie. Da beginnt der Weise erst zu urteilen. Es ist interessant, daß man niemals verstehen wird die Art und Weise, wie zum Beispiel Goethe seine Naturwissenschaft getrieben hat, wenn man nicht diesen Begriff von Weisheit hat, daß die Dinge selber urteilen sollen. Daher hat Goethe auch den interessanten Ausspruch getan — Sie finden ihn in meiner Einleitung zu Goethes naturwissenschaftlichen Werken —: Man sollte eigentlich niemals Urteile oder Hypothesen machen über die äußeren Erscheinungen, sondern die Erscheinungen sind die Theorien, sie selber sprechen ihre Ideen aus, wenn man sich reif gemacht hat, sie in der richtigen Weise auf sich wirken zu lassen. Nicht darauf kommt es an, daß man sozusagen sich dahintersetzt und auspreßt aus seiner Seele, was man für richtig hält, sondern darauf, daß man sich reif macht und sich zuspringen läßt das Urteil aus den 'Tatsachen selber. So stehen muß man zum Denken, daß man das Denken nicht zum Richter über die Dinge macht, sondern zum Instrument für das Aussprechen der Dinge. Das heißt sich in Einklang mit den Dingen setzen.
Wenn man diesen dritten Zustand durchgemacht hat, dann darf das Denken sich noch immer nicht auf eigene Füße stellen wollen, dann kommt erst der gewissermaßen höchste Seelenzustand, den man erreichen muß, wenn man zur Wahrheit kommen will. Und das ist der Zustand, den man gut mit dem Worte Ergebenheit bezeichnen kann. Staunen, Verehrung, weisheitsvoller Einklang mit den Welterscheinungen, Ergebung in den Weltenlauf, das sind die Stufen, die wir durchzumachen haben und die immer parallel gehen müssen dem Denken, die niemals das Denken verlassen dürfen — sonst kommt das Denken zum bloß Richtigen, nicht zum Wahrhaftigen. Halten wir einmal still bei dem, wohin wir aufgestiegen sind durch Staunen, Verehrung, weisheitsvollen Einklang mit den Welterscheinungen, bis zu dem, was wir heute Ergebung genannt haben, was wir aber noch nicht erklärt haben, wovon wir morgen weitersprechen werden. Halten wir fest bei dem, daß wir stehengeblieben sind bei der Ergebung, und halten wir fest auf der andern Seite die Frage, die wir aufgeworfen haben: Warum man sich nur intellektuell zu machen braucht, um Geisteswissenschaft widerlegen zu können. Und betrachten wir das als zwei Fragen, zu deren weiterer Beantwortung wir dann morgen weiterschreiten werden.
First Lecture
In this series of lectures, it will be my task to build a bridge between relatively everyday things, between experiences that people encounter in their ordinary lives, and the highest concerns of humanity. And in doing so, one of the paths will open up for us again from everyday life to what anthroposophy or spiritual science can be for our soul and spirit. We know that as we delve deeper and deeper into what anthroposophy can give us, it flows into our feelings, into our will, into the forces we need to meet the manifold events of life. And we also know that, just as we can now experience anthroposophy through the influences coming to us from the higher worlds at this particular time, anthroposophy is, in a sense, a necessity for humanity today. We know that in a relatively short time, the human race would lose all security, all inner peace, all the peace necessary for life, if the proclamation we call anthroposophy did not come to humanity at this particular time. And we also know that this anthroposophical spiritual current is actually causing two ways of thinking, feeling, and sensing to clash with each other.
One is the way of thinking and feeling that has been developing for many centuries and has now taken hold of humanity in the widest circles everywhere, or will most certainly do so in the near future. It is the way of thinking and feeling that we call materialistic, in the broadest sense of the word. And it is rushing, so to speak, against the other way of thinking that is given in anthroposophy itself, against the spiritual direction of the spirit. And the struggle between these two directions, these two ways of thinking and feeling, will become ever more audible in the near future. It will be such that one will not even be able to distinguish everywhere whether one is dealing with a particular line of thought or feeling as with an unvarnished truth, let us say with an unvarnished representation of materialism, or whether one is dealing with one or the other line of thought or feeling under all kinds of masks. For there will be enough materialistic currents which, if we may say so, will mask themselves spiritually, and it will sometimes be difficult to distinguish where materialism actually lies and where the spiritual current of thought can really be found. I have tried to show how difficult it is to find one's way in this regard in two lectures I gave recently, one immediately after the other. In one lecture, I sought to evoke a feeling of how one can become an honest and sincere opponent of spiritual science from certain thoughts and ideas that already dominate one's mind in the present. “How to refute spiritual science” was what I sought to show in one lecture, which I then followed with another entitled ‘How to defend spiritual science’ or ‘How to justify spiritual science.’
It was not that I believed I could present everything in one direction or the other in these lectures, but I only wanted to evoke a feeling that that one can indeed put forward many, many things with a great appearance of right against the spiritual-scientific worldview, and that those who cannot help but express their opposition from the depths of their souls are by no means among the most untruthful people of our time, but are often among the most honest seekers of truth. I do not want to list all the reasons that can be brought up against spiritual science; I only want to point out that, based on the thinking habits and views of our time, there are reasons that can be built on solid foundations and that spiritual science can be thoroughly refuted. But the question arises: if one refutes spiritual science, if one cites all the reasons that can be brought against spiritual science, how does one achieve the most thorough, the most well-founded refutation? You see, if someone today professes spiritual science out of the fundamental presuppositions of their entire soul nature and then familiarizes themselves with everything that the sciences can offer today in their broad scope based on their materialistic fundamental idea, then they can thoroughly refute spiritual science, provided they are at all familiar with the scientific world of the present. But he must first establish a certain state within himself, in his soul, in order to be able to thoroughly refute it. He must establish a certain state of soul. This state is that in order to set out to refute spiritual science, such a person must place himself on the mere standpoint of the intellect, on the mere intellectualistic standpoint. What this means will be shown immediately by considering the matter from the opposite point of view. Let us first hold fast to what I have presented as a personal experience. If one is familiar with the scientific findings of the present day and relies solely on one's intellect, so to speak, then one can thoroughly refute spiritual science. Let us pause for a moment and try to approach our task from a completely different angle.
You see, human beings can actually view the world from two sides. One view of the world arises when a person contemplates, say, a beautiful sunrise, where the sun appears to be born out of the golden dawn, then glows brilliantly over the earth, and the person then becomes absorbed in thoughts about how the sun's rays and warmth conjure life out of the earth in an annually recurring cycle. Or the person can also give themselves over to contemplation when the sun has set and the evening glow has faded, when darkness has gradually fallen and countless stars shine in the vault of heaven; the person can immerse themselves in the wonders of the night sky. When humans contemplate nature around them in this way, they arrive at an idea that, one might say, must fill them with the deepest bliss. For this idea can be similar to one of Goethe's fundamental thoughts. Goethe once said so beautifully: “Ah, when we lift our gaze to the wonders of the starry world and contemplate the course of the universe with all its splendor, we ultimately have the feeling that all this, everything that appears so magnificent around us in the universe, only acquires meaning when it is reflected in an admiring human being, in a human soul.” Yes, man has the idea that just as the air around him forms his being, penetrates him, that he can breathe it, that through the process it undergoes within him, it builds up his own essence, that just as he is a result of this air and its laws and its composition, he is in a certain sense also a result of the rest of the wide world which surrounds him with everything that flows into our senses, not only into the sense of sight, but also into the sense that perceives the world of sound and the other worlds that flow in through our senses. That man stands there facing this external sensory world as the combined result of this sensory world, so that he can say to himself: When I look more closely at everything that is out there, when I think about it, when I perceive it with all my senses, then I see the meaning of everything I see best fulfilled in the fact that, ultimately, the miraculous structure of man himself has crystallized out of all this.
And it is true that people can then be overcome by a feeling that one might say was so primal in the words of the Greek poet: “Many mighty things live, but nothing is mightier than man!” How one-sided all the revelations in the world outside seem to us! In human beings, however, these revelations seem to have flowed together into universality when we look at the sensory world outside and then at human beings themselves in the midst of it as sensory beings into whom everything else flows. For the more closely one looks at the world, the more human beings appear as the confluence of all the one-sidedness of the rest of the universe. When we develop this feeling within ourselves toward the great world and its convergence in human beings, a thought permeated by a deeply blissful sensation arises in our soul, the thought of the human being willed by God, of the human being who appears as if the deeds and intentions of the gods had built up an entire universe from which they allowed their effects to flow everywhere, so that ultimately these effects could flow together in the most worthy work that gods from all sides placed at the center of the universe: in man. A work willed by the gods! This was also said by someone who observed the sensory world outside in relation to man: What are all the instruments of the musician compared to the marvelous construction of the human ear, this musical instrument, or compared to the marvelous construction of the human larynx, this other musical instrument! There is much to admire in the world; but not to admire man as he stands in the midst of the world is only possible if one does not know him in his miraculous construction. The thought then enters our soul when we give ourselves over to such contemplations: What have divine-spiritual beings done to bring this human being into being!
This is one path that a view of the world can give to human beings. But there is another path. This other path opens up to us when we develop a feeling for the majesty, power, and overwhelming nature of what we call moral ideals, when we look into our own souls and allow ourselves to be touched by what moral ideals mean in the world. It takes a healthy human nature, an all-round healthy human nature, to feel the majesty of human moral ideals in their full magnitude. And one can develop something within oneself toward moral ideals that can have just as overwhelming an effect within the soul as the splendor and glory of the revelations of the universe have on humans from outside. This is when one ignites within oneself all the love and enthusiasm that can be based on moral ideals and goals of humanity. An immense warmth can then permeate one's being. But then, quite necessarily, another thought joins this feeling of moral ideals, one that differs from the thought that arises from the aforementioned view of the world, which is based on the revelations of the universe through human beings. It is precisely those who feel the power of moral ideals most strongly and most intensely who also feel this other thought to be the most significant. That is, they feel the thought: How far, O human being, as you stand here now, are you from the high moral ideals that can dawn in your heart! How tiny you are with all that you can do, all that you do and are capable of, compared to the greatness of the moral ideals that you can set before yourself! And not to feel this way, not to feel so small in comparison to moral ideals, can only come from a state of mind that is itself quite small. For it is precisely with the growth of a certain greatness of soul that man feels his inadequacy in relation to moral ideals. And then a thought dawns in the soul that often overwhelms us as human beings: that we should try powerfully and courageously to take all measures to make ourselves reasonably mature and ever more mature, in order to make the moral ideals a little more powerful in ourselves than we were able to do before. Or, in certain natures, the thought of inadequacy in relation to moral ideals can take such root that they feel completely shattered within themselves, alienated from God precisely because, on the one hand, they powerfully feel the divine will of the outer human being who is placed in the sensory world. There you stand, such people may say to themselves, with all that you are outwardly. When you look at yourself as an outward being, you must say: you are a confluence of the whole world willed by God, you are a being willed by God, you have a godlike face! Then you look within yourself. There you discover the ideals that God has written in your heart, which are undoubtedly meant to be God-given powers for you. And you find your inadequacy springing from your soul as an experience.
These two ways of looking at the world exist in human beings. People can look at themselves from the outside and be deeply happy about their God-given nature, and people can look at themselves from the inside and be deeply contrite about their soul that is alienated from God. A healthy feeling, a healthy perception, can only say this: from the same divine source from which the powers that have placed human beings in the midst of the universe like a powerful extract of the entire universe come, from the same divine source must also spring forth the moral ideals that are written in our hearts. Why is one so far removed from the other? That is actually the great mystery of human existence. And truly, there would never have been any theosophy or philosophy in the world if this conflict, which has just been characterized, had not arisen in human souls, whether consciously or unconsciously, intuitively or more or less clearly. For it is from the experience of this conflict that all deeper human reflection and inquiry has actually arisen. What stands between the God-willed human being and the God-alienated human being? That is actually the fundamental question of all philosophy. Even if this question has been formulated and characterized in many different ways, it nevertheless lies at the foundation of all human thinking and all human reasoning. How can human beings even conceive of the possibility of building a bridge between the undoubtedly blissful perception of the external world and the perception of our soul, which undoubtedly causes us deep conflict?
Now, you see, we must first characterize a little the path that the human soul can take in order to rise in a proper and dignified manner to the highest questions of existence, in order to then find out where the origins of errors may lie. For in the world outside, insofar as this world is dominated by external science today, when one speaks of knowledge, of insight, one will undoubtedly always say: Yes, insight, truth must result when one makes correct judgments, when one has thought correctly. Recently, in order to characterize the fundamental error in this assumption that knowledge, that truth must result when one makes correct judgments, I used a very simple comparison, which I would like to repeat here, from which you can see that what is right does not necessarily lead to what is real. Once upon a time, in a village, there was a little boy who was always sent by his parents to fetch bread rolls. He was always given—let's say it was in a place where they used kreuzer coins—ten kreuzer, and he brought back six bread rolls. If you bought a bread roll, it cost two kreuzer. So he always brought home six bread rolls for ten kreuzer. The little boy was not particularly good at arithmetic and did not pay much attention to how it was possible that he always received ten kreuzers, that a roll cost two kreuzers, and yet he brought home six rolls for his ten kreuzers. But then he got a kind of foster brother. A boy from another town was brought to the same house, a boy who was about the same age but was good at arithmetic. He saw that his new friend went to the baker, that he got ten pennies, and he knew that a roll cost two pennies, so he said, “So you must bring home five rolls.” He was a very good arithmetic student and thought correctly: a roll costs two kreuzers, he gets ten kreuzers, so he will definitely bring five rolls home. But lo and behold, he brought back six. Then the good arithmetic expert said, “But that's completely wrong. Since a roll costs two kreuzers and you got ten kreuzers, two is contained five times in ten, so it's impossible to bring back six rolls. You must have made a mistake, or you nicked a roll—that is, you stole it.” Well, lo and behold, on the second day, the boy brought back six rolls for ten pennies. It was customary in that place to get one extra for every five, so that if you bought five rolls for ten pennies, you actually got six. It was a very pleasant custom for people who needed exactly five rolls for their household.
Now, the good arithmetician thought quite correctly, he made no mistake in his thinking, but this correct thinking did not correspond to reality. We must admit that correct thinking did not achieve reality, because reality does not conform to correct thinking. You see, as is the case here, it can be proven that even the most conscientious, most intricate thoughts that can ever be logically spun out can produce the most correct result, but when measured against reality, it can be completely wrong. This can always be the case. That is why proof gained from thinking is never in any way decisive for reality, never. One can also be completely mistaken in the peculiar chain of cause and effect that one can apply to the outside world. Let me give you an example of this. Suppose a person is walking along the bank of a stream. He reaches a certain point, and from a distance you see him fall over the edge of the stream and into the water. You rush over to save him, but he is pulled out of the water dead. Now you see the corpse. You can now state, for my sake, that the person in question drowned, and you can go about it very astutely. Perhaps there was a stone where he fell into the water; so you say he stumbled over the stone, fell into the water, and drowned. For the train of thought is correct: if a person was walking along the bank, stumbled over the stone that was lying there, fell into the river, and was pulled out dead, then he drowned. It cannot be otherwise. Only in this particular case, it need not be so. For if one does not allow oneself to be controlled by this chain of cause and effect, one may find that at the moment this man fell into the water, he suffered a heart attack, and as a result, because he was at the edge of the river, he fell into the water. He was already dead when he fell in; he only went through the things that someone who falls into the water alive goes through. You see, if someone here decides, based on the combination of external events, that the person in question slipped, fell into the water, and drowned, that is wrong, that does not correspond to reality, because he fell into the water because he was dead, and was not pulled out of the water dead because he had fallen in. Judgments that are as wrong as this one, where it is so obvious, are found at every turn in our scientific literature, but one does not notice them there, just as one would never notice them if one did not examine the case of the man who fell into the water and was struck by a heart attack. In more subtle chains of cause and effect, such errors are made all the time. I mean to imply nothing other than that our thinking is, in fact, initially absolutely incompetent when it comes to reality, that it is not decisive, that it is not a true judge.
Yes, but how do we get out of this sinking into doubt and ignorance, so to speak, if our thinking really cannot be a reliable guide? For those who have experience in these matters, who have thought a great deal about thinking, know that everything can be proven and refuted, and they are no longer impressed by philosophical acumen. They can admire the acumen, but they cannot surrender to mere intellectual judgment because they know that equally good intellectual judgments can be found in the opposite sense. This applies to everything that can be proven or disproved. In this respect, the most interesting observations can often be made in life itself. There is a certain appeal—admittedly only a theoretical appeal—in getting to know people who have just reached a certain point in their spiritual development: namely, the point where they experience inwardly, feel inwardly, that everything can actually be proven and disproved, and who have not yet matured to what can be called a spiritual worldview.
In recent weeks, such thoughts have often occupied my mind in memory of a man who once approached me with the most wonderful expression of such a soul constitution, without having penetrated to a real grasp of reality through spiritual science. But he had come to realize that, fundamentally, all philosophical assertions can be refuted and justified. He was a professor at the University of Vienna who died a few weeks ago, an extremely intelligent man named Laurenz Müllner. An extraordinarily intellectual man who could present all the evidence for all possible philosophical systems and concepts with great clarity, but who could also refute everything and always described himself as a skeptic; from whose mouth I once heard the statement, which in a certain sense is terrible: “Ah, all philosophy is nothing more than a very beautiful game of thought!” And when one had often observed the sparkling wit of that man's mind games, it was also interesting to see how Laurenz Müllner in particular could never be pinned down on any point, because he never admitted anything, except perhaps when someone else raised an objection to a worldview: then he could lovingly present everything that could be said in defense of that worldview, which he might have astutely torn to shreds a few days earlier. He was an extraordinarily interesting mind, indeed in a certain sense one of the most important philosophers who lived during that time. What led him to this fundamental attitude is also interesting. For, apart from being a thorough connoisseur of the philosophical development of mankind, he was also a Catholic priest and was actually always willing to remain a good Catholic priest, even though he was a professor at the Vienna faculty for many years. And the way in which he immersed himself in Catholic thought meant that, on the one hand, everything that had previously appeared to him in the world as mere intellectual speculation seemed insignificant in comparison with the ideas fertilized by a certain religious fervor; but his Catholicism meant that he nevertheless could not escape from mere doubt. He was too great to remain a mere dogmatic Catholic, but on the other hand, Catholicism was too great in him for him to rise to a spiritual-scientific understanding of reality. It is extremely interesting to observe such a soul that had just reached the point where one can actually study what is necessary for human beings to approach reality. For even this astute man was well aware that he could not approach reality with his thinking. Even in ancient Greece, it was said what healthy human reflection must start from if it wants to have any chance of ever reaching reality. And that saying from ancient Greece is certainly still valid today. For even in ancient Greece, it was said that all human inquiry must start from wonder. But let us take this in a positive sense, my dear friends! Let us take it in the positive sense that in the soul that wants to penetrate to the truth, this state of standing in wonder before the universe must first exist. For whoever is able to grasp the full power of this Greek saying will come to say to himself: If a person, regardless of the circumstances that lead him to human inquiry and reflection, starts from amazement, that is, not from anything else but from amazement at the facts of the world, then it is like planting a seed in the ground and watching a plant grow out of it. For all knowledge must, in a certain sense, have amazement as its seed. But it is different when a person does not start from amazement, but perhaps from the fact that in his youth his good teachers drummed into him certain principles that made him a philosopher; or when he became a philosopher because it is customary in the class in which he grew up to learn something of the kind, and he came to philosophy through the circumstances that happened to exist. It is well known that the exam in philosophy is the easiest to pass. In short, there are hundreds and thousands of starting points for philosophy that do not come from wonder, but from something else. All such starting points lead only to a kind of coexistence with the truth that can be compared to making a plant out of papier-mâché rather than growing it from seed. The comparison is entirely valid, for all real knowledge that wants to have any prospect of having anything to do with the mysteries of the world must spring from the seed of wonder. And no matter how astute a thinker one may be, one may even suffer, one might say, from a certain excess of astuteness: if one has never passed through the stage of wonder, nothing will come of it; there will be astute, clever chains of ideas, and nothing that is not correct, but what is correct does not have to correspond to reality. It is absolutely necessary that, before we begin to think, before we even set our thinking in motion, we have passed through the state of wonder. And thinking that sets itself in motion without the state of wonder remains, in essence, a mere game of thought. So thinking must originate, if one may use the expression, in wonder.
And further. That is not enough. If thinking originates in wonder and a person is predisposed by their karma to become very astute, and if a certain arrogance very quickly leads them to take pleasure in their own astuteness and then develop only their astuteness, then the initial wonder is of no use to them. For if, after wonder has taken root in the soul, man now thinks only in the further course of his thinking, he cannot penetrate to reality. Mind you, I emphasize this here too; I do not mean to say that man should become thoughtless and that thinking is harmful. For this is a widespread view, even in theosophical circles: thinking is considered downright bad and harmful because it is said that human beings must start from amazement. But once they have begun to think a little and can list the seven principles of the human being and so on, they do not need to stop thinking again. Thinking must remain. However, after amazement, another state of mind must come, and that is best described as reverence for what thinking approaches. After the state of wonder, the state of reverence, of awe, must come. And any thinking that emancipates itself from reverence, from looking up in awe at what presents itself to thinking, will not be able to penetrate reality. Thought must never, so to speak, dance lightly on its own feet in the world. Once it has moved beyond the stage of wonder, it must take root in the feeling of reverence for the foundations of the world.
Here, however, the path of knowledge immediately comes into sharp contrast with what we today call science. For if you say to someone who stands in a laboratory today, analyzing substances and rebuilding compounds through synthesis: “You cannot actually investigate the truth! You may break things down nicely and put them back together again, but what you are doing is merely establishing facts. You approach the facts of the world irreverently, without reverence.” You should actually approach what is happening in your test tubes with the same reverence and awe as a priest standing at the altar. What will such a man answer you today? He will probably laugh at you, laugh terribly, because from the present scientific point of view it is completely incomprehensible that reverence should have anything to do with truth, with knowledge. If he does not laugh at you, he will at most say: I can really get excited about what goes on in my test tubes, but that my enthusiasm should be anything other than my private affair, that it should have anything to do with the search for truth, you cannot make a reasonable person understand. — One will appear more or less foolish to today's scientists if one says that research, and especially thinking about things, must never be emancipated from what must be called reverence, that one must not take a step in thinking without being imbued with a feeling of reverence for what one is researching. That is the second point.
But even a person who has already attained a certain sense of reverence and then, because he has experienced this sense of reverence, wants to advance by mere thinking, would again come to nothing, would again get nowhere. He would find something correct, and because he had passed through the first two stages, his correctness would be permeated by various firmly established points of view. But he would soon have to enter into uncertainty. For a third stage must set in in our soul state when we have sufficiently experienced wonder and reverence, and this third stage is what one might call feeling oneself in wise harmony with the laws of the world. Yes, you see, this feeling of being in wise harmony with the laws of the world cannot be achieved in any other way than by having already recognized, in a certain sense, the worthlessness of mere thinking, by having said to oneself again and again: He who relies solely on the correctness of his thinking — whether he proves or disproves it, that does not matter — is actually in the same predicament as our little boy who calculated the number of rolls correctly. If the little boy had been able to say to himself: What you calculate may be correct, but you must not rely on your correct thinking; instead, you must seek the truth, you must bring yourself into harmony with reality, then the boy would have found what is higher than his correctness: the local custom of adding one roll to five rolls. He would have found that one must go out into the outside world from within oneself and that correct thinking does not matter whether something is real or not.
But this wise harmonization with reality is something that does not come easily. If it were so easy, my dear friends, then you would not now, and no human being would ever have experienced the temptation of Lucifer in this regard. For actually, what is called the ability to distinguish between good and evil, the acquisition of knowledge, eating from the tree of knowledge, was intended for human beings by the divine leaders of the world — but for a later time. What was lacking in human beings was that they wanted to acquire this knowledge of the distinction between good and evil too early. What was intended for them later, they wanted to acquire earlier under the seduction of Lucifer; that is where the problem lies. The only result of this could be an inadequate knowledge, which is to real knowledge, which man should have attained as it was intended for him, as a premature birth is to a mature child. So that the ancient Gnostics—and one senses how right they were—actually used the word: Human knowledge, as it accompanies man through his incarnations in the world, is actually a premature birth, an ectroma, because human beings could not wait until they had gone through everything that should then have led to knowledge. A period of time should therefore have elapsed in which human beings should have allowed certain states of soul to gradually mature, and then knowledge would have come to them. This original sin of humanity is still being committed today; for if it were not committed, people would be less concerned with how quickly they can acquire this or that as truth, but would be concerned with how they can mature in order to first comprehend certain truths.
This is something else that might seem strange to people today if someone came and said: You understand the Pythagorean theorem perfectly well, but if you want to understand it more deeply in its mysterious meaning: the sum of the squares on the two cathetus is equal to the square of the hypotenuse — or let's take a simpler sentence: Before you are mature enough to understand that 3 x 3 = 9, you must first go through this and that in your soul! And a person today would laugh even louder if someone were to say to them: You will only understand this when you bring yourself into harmony with the laws of the universe, which have arranged things in such a way that the laws of mathematics appear to us in a certain way. In fact, people still commit the original sin by believing that they can understand everything at every stage and by not caring that one must first go through something in order to understand this or that, that one must be inwardly carried by the awareness that one cannot actually achieve anything in reality with all one's strict judgments.
This belongs to the third state we have to describe. No matter how hard one tries to judge, error can always creep into the judgment. A correct judgment can only result when we have attained a certain state of maturity, when we have waited until the judgment comes to us. Not when we try hard to find the judgment, but when we try hard to make ourselves mature enough for the judgment to come to us, then the judgment has something to do with reality. Those who try so hard to make a correct judgment can never rely on this inner effort to bring them to a judgment that is in any way authoritative. Only those who take great care to become more and more mature, so to speak, expecting the right judgments from the revelations that come to them because they have become mature, can hope to arrive at a correct judgment. For it is here that one can have the most remarkable experiences. A person who is quick to judge will naturally think: If someone falls into the water and is pulled out dead, he has drowned. But someone who has become wise, who has matured through life experience, will know that in each individual case, a general correctness means nothing at all, but that in each individual case one must devote oneself completely to what presents itself, that one must always let the facts that unfold before one judge. This can be proven very well in life.
Take the case: Someone says something today. Well, you may have a different opinion; you may say, “What he says is completely wrong.” You may simply have a different judgment than the other person. Fine, what he says and what you say may be wrong; in a certain sense, both judgments may be right and both may be wrong. The fact that one person has a different judgment than another is not something you will consider decisive at this third stage. That means nothing; you are simply standing on the tip of your own judgment, as it were. The person who has become wise always holds back with his judgment, and in order not to commit himself in any way with his judgment, he even holds back when he is aware that he might be right; he holds back experimentally, tentatively. But suppose someone says something to you today; two months later, they say something completely different: you can completely switch off, you have nothing to do with either of these facts. If you allow the two facts to sink in, you don't need to contradict anyone, because they contradict each other. The judgment is made by the outside world, not by you. That is when the wise person begins to judge. It is interesting that one will never understand the way Goethe, for example, pursued his natural science if one does not have this concept of wisdom, that things themselves should judge. That is why Goethe made the interesting statement—you will find it in my introduction to Goethe's scientific works—that one should never make judgments or hypotheses about external appearances, but that appearances are the theories; they themselves express their ideas when one has matured enough to allow them to affect one in the right way. It is not important to sit behind things, so to speak, and squeeze out of your soul what you think is right, but to prepare yourself and allow the judgment to come to you from the facts themselves. This is how one must approach thinking: not as a judge of things, but as an instrument for expressing things. This means putting oneself in harmony with things.
Once one has passed through this third state, thinking still must not want to stand on its own feet; only then does the highest state of the soul, so to speak, come about, which one must attain if one wants to arrive at the truth. And that is the state that can best be described by the word devotion. Amazement, reverence, wise harmony with world phenomena, devotion to the course of the world—these are the stages we must go through, and they must always run parallel to thinking, never leaving it—otherwise, thinking arrives at what is merely right, not at what is true. Let us pause for a moment at the point where we have arrived through wonder, reverence, and wise harmony with world phenomena, at what we have called surrender today, but which we have not yet explained and will discuss further tomorrow. Let us hold fast to the fact that we have stopped at resignation, and let us hold fast, on the other hand, to the question we have raised: Why is it necessary to become intellectual in order to refute spiritual science? And let us consider these as two questions, which we will continue to answer tomorrow.