The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Roman Boos: Dear attendees! The aim of these lectures was to attempt to show, from the perspective of specialized science, how anthroposophically oriented spiritual science could lead to the fertilization and further development of the individual specialized scientific fields. The visitors will have had the thoroughly consistent impression throughout the whole event that something is not being hatched in a narrow circle, but that from a central point a real spiritual fertilization into the individual subject areas can take place. Even if not everyone was able to recognize this at the very beginning of their efforts, surely everyone who looked, as it were, at the driving forces present here, who looked at the fertilizing forces that radiate out and not on the value of the first formulated formulations, could be convinced that here is something in relation to our spiritual life, which deserves attention and, as far as possible, also cooperation and goodwill from wide circles – especially here in Switzerland. This is so because it is precisely here that a spiritual force is struggling to the light that can actually claim to have a spiritually fertilizing effect on the social community.

There will be an opportunity for discussion following Dr. Steiner's lecture on “Hygiene as a Social Question.

Rudolf Steiner: Dearly beloved! That the social question is one of the most pressing issues of our time is not doubted in the broadest circles. And wherever there is even a modicum of concern for the issues arising from the development of human history in the present day, wherever there are threatening or unresolved impulses for the future, all of this can be summarized under the heading of the social question. But we must admit that the consideration and treatment of this social question in the present suffers from the fundamental defect that afflicts so much of our intellectual and moral life, and indeed of our whole civilized life, namely, the intellectualism of our time. It suffers from the fact that its problems are so often viewed only from the standpoint of an intellectualistic consideration. The social question is discussed more from the point of view of the right or the left. The intellectualism of these discussions is shown by the fact that they start from certain theories, from the assumption that this or that must be so or so, that this or that must be abolished. In doing so, little consideration is given to the human being himself. One treats people as if there were something general like “the human being”, as if there were not something that is individually developed in a particular way in each person. One does not turn one's attention to the uniqueness and peculiarity of the individual human being. Therefore, our whole consideration of the social question also takes on something abstract, something that today so rarely translates into social feelings, into the attitudes that play between person and person. The defect in our social thinking is most clearly seen when we focus on a specific area, one that is perhaps more suitable than many others for social reflection, for example, the area of hygiene, insofar as hygiene is a public matter that concerns not the individual but the human community.

Of course, we are not lacking in hygienic instructions, treatises and writings on health care as a public matter. But one must ask: how do these instructions, these considerations of hygiene, fit into social life? And here one must say: they are so introduced that individual discussions about proper health care are published as the result of medical, physiological, and scientific knowledge, whereby the trust that one has in a field whose inner essence one is not able to test is supposed to form the basis for the acceptance of such rules. On the basis of authority alone, the broadest sections of the population can accept the rules on hygiene that emerge from the study chambers and examination rooms, the medical laboratories, and are then made public.

If one is convinced, however, that in the course of modern history, in the course of the last four centuries, a yearning for a democratic order in all matters has arisen in humanity, then, even if it seems grotesque to many today, one is confronted with the undemocratic nature of the pure belief in authority that is demanded in the field of hygiene. The undemocratic nature of this blind faith in authority is juxtaposed with the yearning for democracy, as it has often - albeit, one might say, in a very paradoxical way - culminated in the present day.

I know very well that the sentence I have just uttered is perceived by many as paradoxical, because one simply does not combine the way someone receives health care-related information with the democratic demand that the community of emancipated people should judge public affairs that concern every emancipated person, whether directly or through their representatives. Of course it must be said that something like a hygienic view, a hygienic cultivation of public life, cannot be fully realized in a democratic way, because it depends on the judgment of the person seeking knowledge in a particular field. But on the other hand, the question must arise: should we not be striving for a greater democratization in such a field as this, which concerns every single person and thus the human community as closely, as infinitely closely as public health care does? Today, we are certainly told a great deal about the way in which man should live in terms of air and light, in terms of nutrition, in terms of the disposal of waste products produced either by man himself or by his environment, and so on and so forth. But the rules governing these things that are thrown upon humanity are mostly unworkable for the people to whom they are supposed to apply.

Now I do not wish to be misunderstood; I do not wish to be misunderstood as taking a particular stand on anything in this lecture, which is supposed to be dedicated to the topic “Hygiene as a social issue”. I do not wish to deal one-sidedly with what today tends to be treated one-sidedly from the point of view of a party or of a certain scientific conviction. I would like – perhaps you will permit this small apparent departure from the role in the introduction – I would like neither to take any party for the old superstition that devils and demons go around and move in and out of people as diseases, nor would I like to take sides for the modern superstition that the bacilli and bacteria move in and out of people and cause the diseases. Whether one is dealing with a spiritualist, spiritual superstition of old or with a materialistic superstition, that may concern us less today. But I would like to touch on something that permeates our entire education, especially insofar as this education depends on the fundamental scientific beliefs of our time.

Even if it is asserted from many sides today that scientifically materialism, as it asserted itself in the middle and still in the last third of the 19th century, has been overcome, this assertion cannot apply to the one who really sees through the essence of materialism and its opposite , because this materialism has been overcome at most for some people who see that today's scientific facts no longer allow us to declare in a sweeping way that everything that exists is just some mechanical, physical or chemical process taking place in the material world. It is not enough that, forced by the power of facts, some people have come to this conviction. For in the face of this conviction stands the other fact that now, despite this conviction, those who have it - and the others even more so - when it comes to explaining something specifically, to forming an opinion about something specific, then they do include the materialistic direction in their way of thinking. It is also said that atoms and molecules are harmless accounting coins, of which one does not want to claim anything other than that they are thought-things. But the consideration has therefore remained an atomistic, a molecularistic one. We explain the phenomena of the world in terms of the behavior and the mutual relationship of atoms or molecular processes, and it does not matter whether we now imagine that any thought, feeling or other process is only related to the material processes of atoms and molecules, but rather it depends on the direction of our entire state of mind, the direction of our spirit, when it takes as a basis for its explanations only what is thought in terms of atoms, what emerges from the smallest, the contrived smallest. What matters is not whether one has the conviction, literally or mentally, that there is something other than atomistic effects, than material atomic effects, but what matters is whether one has the possibility of making other explanations of the world the guiding principle of one's mind than deriving phenomena from the atomic. It is not what we believe, but how we explain, how we behave in our souls, that matters. And here, at this point, it must be stated with conviction that only genuine spiritual science, anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, can help us to overcome the evil that can be characterized in this way, as I have just done.

I would like to prove that this can now be the case in concrete terms. There is hardly anything that confronts us with more confusion than the differences that are often asserted today between the human body and the human soul or the human spirit, between what are physical illnesses and what are so-called mental or spiritual illnesses. It is precisely the appropriate distinction and the appropriate interrelationship of such facts of human life as those of the sick body or the seemingly sick soul that suffer in terms of understanding under the materialistic-atomistic way of thinking. For what, then, is actually the essence of the materialism that has gradually emerged as the newer world view of many people and that has by no means been overcome, but is in fact in its heyday today? What is its essence? The essence of materialism is not that one looks at material processes, that one looks at the material processes that take place in the human body and that one devotedly studies the miracle-working and miracle-working of the human nervous system and the other human organs or the nervous system of animals or the organs of other living beings; it is not that studying these things makes one a materialist, but it is abandoning the spirit in the study of material processes that makes one a materialist, that one looks into the world of matter and sees only matter and material processes.

But this is what spiritual science must assert - today I can only speak about this point in summary - that wherever material processes appear to us externally for the senses, those processes which today's science alone wants to accept as observable and exact, that wherever these material processes are only the external appearance, the external manifestation of spiritual forces and powers at work behind and within them. It is not the hallmark of spiritual science to look at a person and say: Oh, there is the body; this body is a sum of material processes, but within it the person cannot exist alone, he has his immortal soul independently of it ; and the fact that one is now beginning to develop all kinds of abstract theories and views about this immortal soul, which is independent of the body, in a rather mystical way, does not characterize a spiritual worldview at all. One can certainly say: Man has, in addition to his body, which consists of material processes, an immortal soul that is taken to some spiritual realm after death. One is therefore not yet a spiritual scientist in the sense of anthroposophically oriented spiritual science.

One is only a spiritual scientist when one realizes that this material body with its material processes is a creature of the soul, when one understands in detail how the soul, which was there before birth or, let us say, before conception of the human being, works, how this soul forms, how it sculpts the structure, indeed the substantiation of the human body. If we can truly see the direct unity of this body and the soul everywhere, and if we can see how the soul's activity in the body wears out this body as such, how this body partially dies every minute, and how then, in the moment of death, I would say, the radical realization of what what happens to the body every moment through the influence of the soul and spirit, if one sees through this living interplay, this constant working of the soul in the body, in the individual concrete case, if one strives to say: the soul breaks down into very concrete processes, then it passes over into the processes of liver activity, then it passes over into the processes of breathing, then into the processes of heart activity, then into the processes of brain activity – in short, if one is able to present the physical body as the result of a spiritual one when describing the material in the human being, then one is a spiritual scientist. Spiritual science comes to a true appreciation of the material precisely because it does not see only what today's science sees in the individual concrete material process, what the eye ascertains or what is then recorded as the result of external observation in abstract terms. Rather, spiritual science is spiritual science solely because it shows everywhere how the spirit works in the material, how it looks devotedly at the material effects of the spirit.

That is the one thing that matters. On the other hand, it is important that one is thereby saved from all the abstract, chatty talk about a soul independent of the [physical] human being, about which, as far as life between birth and death is concerned, one can only fantasize. For between birth and death, with the exception of sleep, the soul and spirit are so devoted to the bodily effects that they live in them, through them, and present themselves in them. One must come to the point of being able to study the soul and spirit outside of the human life cycle and to accept the human life cycle between birth and death as a result of the soul and spirit. Then one looks at the real, concrete unity of the spiritual-soul with the physical-bodily. Then one does anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, because then one has the prospect that this human being, with all his individual structures, stands before one as a result of the spiritual-soul, also for knowledge. The mystical theosophical view, which puts forward beautiful theories about all kinds of body-free spiritualities, cannot serve the concrete sciences of life, it cannot serve life at all, it can only serve intellectualistic or soul-based lust, which wants to get rid of life, of the outer life, as quickly as possible and then, in order to have an inner satisfaction, to be able to indulge in an inner lust, weaves all kinds of fantasies about the spiritual and soul.

Here in this anthroposophically oriented spiritual movement, it is a matter of working very seriously, of cultivating a spiritual science that is able to enliven physics, mathematics, chemistry, physiology, biology and anthropology, so that it is not a matter of stating religiously or philosophically on the one hand that the human being an immortal soul, and then to pursue anthropology, biology, physics and chemistry as if one were only dealing with material processes, but rather it is a matter here of applying what can be gained in knowledge about the soul and spirit to the details of life, of looking into the miracle of the body itself. It may well be said, even if it sounds paradoxical to some: there are those who want to be good mystics or good theosophists and want to talk about everything under the sun, how the human being consists of a physical body, etheric body, astral body, I and so on, but they don't even have a clue about what expression of the soul it is when you sneeze, for example. It depends on seeing matter, not as matter, but as the manifestation of the spirit. Then one also receives sound, content-filled views about the spirit, but then one also receives a spiritual science that can be fruitful for the science of life.

But something else is also achieved with this. It achieves the ability to overcome what, in recent times, precisely because of the materialization of scientific knowledge, has driven us into specialization. I certainly do not want to deliver a diatribe against specialization, because I am well aware of its justification. I know that certain things today must be practiced by specialists simply because a specialized technique is needed for them. But the point is that if someone clings to the material, he can never become a specialist and gain a world view that can be applied in life, because material processes are an infinite field. They are an infinite field out in nature, and they are an infinite field within the human being. If you just study the human nervous system based on what is currently known, you can spend a long time on it, at least as much time as specialists are usually willing to spend on their studies. But if one has only what the material processes are in what happens in the nervous system, only what is expressed in the abstract terms that are the subject of science today, then nothing leads one to anything universal that can become the basis of a worldview. The moment you begin to observe spiritually, let us say, the human nervous system, you cannot observe this nervous system without what you find active in it as spirit leading you immediately to what underlies the muscular system, the bone system, the sense of the nervous system as something spiritual, because the spiritual is not something that can be broken down into individual parts like the material. Rather, the spiritual is something that – and this is only the most basic way of characterizing it – spreads out like a limb or an organism. And just as I cannot look at a person by merely looking at his five fingers and otherwise covering him, so too in spiritual science I cannot look at a single detail without what I perceive in this detail as spiritual-soul leading me to a totality. If we are led to such a totality — even if it is perhaps only a specialist in brain or nerve research — then we will be able to get an overall picture of the human being from the observation of this individual link in the human organism; then we will be led into the position to arrive at something truly universal for a world view, and then the peculiar thing is that we can begin to speak of something that can be understood by all people who have common sense and sound understanding.

That is the great difference between how spiritual science can speak about man and how specialized, materialistic science must speak about man. You see, let us take the simple case of how specialized, materialistic science is presented to you in any of the textbooks in use today. If you, as an ordinary person who has not learned much about the nervous system, take a manual about the nervous system in your hand – well, you will probably soon stop reading or, in any case, you will not gain very much that can give you a basis for looking at the human being as a real human being in his value, in his dignity. But if we listen to what spiritual science has to say about the human nervous system, then what leads to the whole human being follows everywhere. It provides such enlightenment about the whole human being that the idea that arises in one's mind presents something of the value, essence and dignity of the human being with whom one is dealing. And this applies even more when we look at the human being not just in terms of one of his or her many parts, but it applies especially when we look at the sick person, this sick person with his or her many deviations from the so-called normal, especially when we are able to look at the whole person, when he or she is under the influence of this or that disease. What nature presents to our soul in the sick person is apt to lead us deep into the world's interconnections, to show us how this person is organized and how, because of his organization, the atmospheric and even extraterrestrial influences can affect this person, how this human organization is connected to these or those substances of nature, which then turn out to be healing agents, and so on.

We are led into broad contexts, and it may be said that if we supplement what can be recognized in this way about the healthy human being with what can be recognized through the sick human being, then a deep insight into the whole context and the deeper meaning of life will open up. But everything that comes to light in this way is the basis for a knowledge of human nature, and can be expressed in such a way that it can be spoken to all people. Of course, we have not yet reached this point, because spiritual science, in the sense in which it is meant here, has only been working for a short time. Therefore, as Dr. Boos said in his introductory words just now, the lectures given here can often only be seen as a beginning. But the tendency of this spiritual science is to work out what is present in the individual sciences in such a way that what every human being should know about the human being can actually be brought to every human being.

And now imagine if spiritual science first has such a transforming effect on science and if spiritual science then succeeds in developing forms of knowledge for the healthy and sick human being that can be made accessible to general human consciousness If this succeeds, how different human beings will be in social life, how differently understanding one person will be confronted with another than today, when everyone passes by the other and has no understanding for the special individuality of this other person. The social question will only be taken out of its intellectualism when it will emerge from the most diverse areas of life based on factual knowledge, when it is based on the concrete experiences of life. This is particularly evident in the field of health care. Just imagine the social impact of fostering an understanding of what is healthy and what is sick in other people; just imagine what it means when health care is taken into the hands of all of humanity with understanding. Of course, the aim is not to cultivate scientific or medical dilettantism – that must be avoided – but imagine, it simply awakens sympathy, not just feeling, but understanding for the healthy and the sick in our fellow human beings, understanding based on an insight into the human being. Imagine the social effect of such a thing, and you will have to say to yourself: There you can see that social reform, the social reconstruction, must arise out of specialized knowledge in the individual fields, not out of general theories, whether they be Marxist, be they Oppenheim theories, be they theories of any kind that look beyond the human being and want to shape the world out of abstract concepts. Salvation cannot come from this, but from the dedicated study of the individual fields. And health care, hygiene, is such a very special field, because it leads us, I would say, closest to everything that our fellow human being experiences in terms of joy through his healthy, normal way of life or in terms of pain and suffering, of restrictions due to what lies within him as more or less sick.

This is something that immediately points us to the special social way in which spiritual science can achieve results in the field of hygiene. For if in such a way the cultivator of the knowledge of humanity, the cultivator of the knowledge of the healthy and the sick human being, is also the one who specializes as a doctor, with such knowledge in human society, then he will be able to create enlightenment within this human society, because he will be understood. And not only will the doctor develop a relationship with the community in which, if they are not a friend or relative, they will send for the doctor when they have a pain or have broken a leg, but the relationship with the doctor will develop in such a way that the doctor is the constant teacher and instructor of prophylactic health care, that in fact a constant intervention of the doctor is available not only to heal the person when the illness goes so far that he notices it, but also to keep people healthy as far as possible. A lively social activity will take place between the physician and all the rest of humanity. But then health itself will radiate from such knowledge, for it is precisely because materialism has extended to the medical view of life that we have truly come up against strange conceptions.

On the one hand, we have physical illnesses. They are studied by finding degenerations of the organs or whatever else is supposed to be physically perceptible or physically imagined within the human body's skin, and attention is drawn to the fact that any damage found can be repaired. In this direction, thoughts now turn quite materialistically to the physical body of the human being in its normal and abnormal states. Alongside this, the so-called soul or spiritual illnesses arise. These soul or spiritual illnesses have now been reduced, on the one hand, to mere brain illnesses or to illnesses of the nervous system because of materialistic thinking, and the foundations for this have also been sought in the other organ systems of the human being. But because they did not develop any kind of conception about the way in which spirit and soul work in the human body, they could not gain any conception of the relationship between mental illnesses, the so-called mental illnesses, and what the human being otherwise is. And so, I would like to say, mental illnesses stand on one side, even today they are grasped by a strange hybrid science, psychoanalysis, which thinks in a materialistic way but does not understand the materialistic at all; they stand there, these mental and soul illnesses, without being able to be brought together in any reasonable way with what actually happens in the human organism.

Spiritual science can now show – and I have drawn attention to this – that what I am saying here is not just a program, but that it is being pursued in detail – precisely on the occasion of the course for physicians that has been taking place here during these weeks. Spiritual science can indeed show in detail how all so-called mental and soul diseases are based on organ disorders, on organ degeneration, organ enlargement, organ reduction in the human organism. Somewhere in the heart, in the liver, in the lungs, something is not right if at the same time or later something occurs that is a so-called mental illness. A spiritual science that penetrates to recognize the spirit in the normal heart in its effectiveness is also capable of - and need not be ashamed of - seeking a cause for the so-called sick mind or soul in the degeneration of the heart, in the failings of the heart.

The main mistake of materialism is not that it denies the spirit - in which case religion could still ensure that the spirit is recognized - the main mistake of materialism is that it does not recognize matter, because it only observes its exterior. This is precisely the defect of materialism, that it gains no insight into matter, for example in the purely psychoanalytic treatment, in the mere observation of something that has taken place in the soul, which psychoanalysis calls islands of the soul, and thus an abstraction. Rather, one must follow how certain impressions of the soul, which a person receives at this or that time in his life and which are normally bound to the normal organism, impinge on defective organs - instead of, for example, on a healthy liver, on a diseased one; such an impingement may perhaps show itself at a completely different time than when the defect has become organically noticeable.

Spiritual science need not shy away from showing how so-called mental or psychological illnesses are always connected with something in the human body. Spiritual science must strictly point out that if one merely studies the soul, the psychological complex, the deviations of the soul from the so-called normal psychological life, one has at most a one-sided diagnosis. Therefore, psychoanalysis can never be anything more than diagnostic; it can never lead to real therapy in this field. For this reason, because therapy for mental illnesses must begin with the physical examination, we must know the ramifications of the spiritual in matter down to the individual parts if we want to know where to start in the material body – which is, however, spiritualized – to cure that which only shows symptoms in abnormal mental conditions. Spiritual science must most decidedly emphasize that the so-called mental and soul diseases must be traced back to the organology of the human being. However, one can only see into the abnormal organology of the human being if one can follow the spirit into the smallest parts of matter.

And the other way around: what appear to be merely soul phenomena or phenomena that act in the soul, let us say what emerges in the temperaments and in the activity of the human temperaments , in the whole way in which a person plays as a small child, how he walks, what he does, all this, which today is only understood in a mental-spiritual sense, also has its physical side. And a failure in relation to some aspects of a child's education can appear later in a very ordinary physical illness. Indeed, in certain cases, when one is dealing with mental illnesses, one is led to look at the physical aspects in order to explore what is important, and in the case of physical illnesses, to look at the spiritual aspects and explore what is important. For that is the essential thing in spiritual science, that it does not speak in abstractions of a nebulous spiritual, as mystics and one-sided theosophists do, but that it follows the spirit into its material effects, that it nowhere grasps the material as as it is grasped by today's external science, but everywhere, in the contemplation of the material, it penetrates to the spirit and can thus also observe where an abnormal soul life must express itself in that an abnormal bodily life is present, even if it is perhaps hidden externally.

In the broadest circles today, people have completely false ideas about seriously anthroposophically oriented spiritual science – perhaps sometimes rightly so, when one hears those who do not truly want to go into what it is actually about, and only talk about abstract theories, that man consists of this and that, and that there are repeated earth lives and so on. These things are, of course, extremely important and very nice. But when it comes to working very seriously in this spiritual-scientific movement, then the individual chapters, the individual areas of this life, must be dealt with. And in the broadest sense, this in turn leads to a socially minded gathering of people. For when one sees how the soul, appearing sick, radiates its impulses into the organism, when one can feel this connection between the organism and the soul that appears to be sick - feel with understanding - and when, on the other hand, one knows how the institutions of life also affect the physical human being's physical health, how the spiritual, which apparently only exists externally in social institutions, has an effect on the physical health of the human being, if one has an overview of all this, then one is involved in human society in a completely different way. You begin to gain a real understanding of people, and you treat others quite differently; you pursue their character quite differently. You know that certain qualities are connected to this or that, you know how to behave towards these qualities, you know how to place people's temperaments in human society in the right way, and especially how to develop them in the right way, especially when you have associated tasks with them.

One social area in particular will need to be intensively influenced in terms of hygiene by a knowledge of human nature gained in this way: the area of education. Without really knowing people very well, it is impossible to appreciate what it means when children sit in school with stooped backs, causing their breathing to become irregular, or when they are not encouraged to speak loudly and distinctly, clearly vocalizing and clearly consonanting. The whole of later life depends essentially on whether the child breathes correctly at school and whether he is encouraged to speak loudly and distinctly and with articulation.

In such matters – I am only giving examples here, as the same could be said for other areas – the specialization of overall hygiene in the school system is evident, and this in particular shows the full social significance of hygiene. It also shows, however, how life demands that we do not further specialize, but that we bring together the specialized into an overall view. We need not only the knowledge that enables a teacher to educate a child in a particular way according to certain pedagogical norms, but we also need the knowledge that enables a teacher to judge what it means when he or that sentence of the child's clearly articulated utterances or when he lets the child, after saying half a sentence, lets out another breath and so on and does not ensure that the air is used up while the sentence is being spoken. Of course, there are many clues and rules about this too, but the right way of mutual recognition and the right application of these things only enter our hearts when we grasp the full significance for human life and for social health, for only then does the matter become a social impulse.

These considerations were the basis for the pedagogical-didactic course I gave to the teachers at the Stuttgart Waldorf School, which was the starting point for the founding of the school. Teachers are needed who can work from the full depth of a humanistic worldview for the education and teaching of children. Everything that has been incorporated into the sentences that have been expressed as a pedagogical-didactic art strives to turn the children who are being educated and taught into people who, later on, by being encouraged to perform the functions of life in the right way as a child, will have lungs and liver and heart and stomach in order because the soul has been worked on in the right way.

This world view will never interpret the old saying, “A healthy soul lives in a healthy body,” in a materialistic way.

A materialistic interpretation would say that if you have a healthy body, if you have made it healthy with all possible physical means, then it will automatically become the bearer of a healthy soul. That is nonsense. It makes sense if you proceed in the following way, that is, if you say to yourself: “There is a healthy body in front of me, which shows me that the power of a healthy soul has built it up, shaped it, and made it healthy.” I recognize from this body that an autonomous healthy soul has worked in it. That is the meaning of the saying. But only in this way can this saying also be the basis for healthy hygiene. In other words, we do not need a school doctor who visits the school once a fortnight, if that, and doesn't know what to do with himself, in addition to teachers who only work from an abstract pedagogical science. No, we need a living connection between medical science and the art of teaching. We need a pedagogical art that educates and teaches children in a hygienically correct way in all its measures. That is what makes hygiene a social issue, because the social issue is essentially an educational issue, and the educational issue is essentially a medical issue, but only a question of that medicine that is spiritually fruitful, of a hygiene that is spiritually fruitful.

These things then point to something else that is extraordinarily significant, especially with regard to the topic of “hygiene as a social question”. Because, my dear attendees, when spiritual science is cultivated and when spiritual science is something concrete for the human being, then he knows that in what he receives in spiritual science there is something that differs from what he receives in mere intellectualism and in the natural science of the present, too, is mere intellectualism. He knows that what he has in mere intellectualism or in the merely intellectualistically developed natural science or in the merely intellectualistically developed history or jurisprudence of today is different from what he has in mere intellectualism. All of today's sciences are intellectualistic; if they claim to be empirical sciences, it is only because they interpret the empirically observed results of experience in an intellectualistic way. What is given in the humanities differs quite essentially from these natural science or other results interpreted in an intellectualistic way. It would even be quite sad if that which lives in our intellectualistic culture were not merely an image, but a real power that has a deeper effect on people. Anything intellectualistic remains only on the surface of the human being. This sentence is meant to be very comprehensive.

Those who pursue spiritual science only intellectually, that is, who only make notes: there is a physical body, an etheric body, an astral body, an ego, repeated earthly lives, karma, and so on and who notes these down in the same way as in natural science or in today's social science, is not seriously engaged in spiritual science, for he merely transfers the way of thinking he otherwise has to what confronts him in spiritual science. But the essential thing about spiritual science is that it must be thought in a different way, felt in a different way, and experienced in a very different way than the intellectualistic way. Therefore spiritual science is something that, through its very nature, maintains a living relationship to the healthy and the sick person, albeit in a somewhat different way than one might often dream of. People will surely have become sufficiently convinced of how powerless one is with what one, whether as admonishment or as encouragement, begins in the purely intellectualistic culture in relation to the so-called mentally ill. The mentally ill person claims that voices are speaking to him; you tell him all kinds of things that you find based on your intellectual reason – in vain, because he has all kinds of objections for you. This alone could indicate that we are not dealing with an illness of the conscious or even the subconscious soul life, but with an illness of the organism. Spiritual science teaches us to recognize that one cannot, however, use such methods, which are supposed to be so-called spiritual ones, in which, for example, one resorts to hypnosis and suggestion, to treat so-called mental or soul diseases, but that one must treat them in so-called physical ways, that is, by healing the organs, for which, however, one really needs spiritual knowledge of the human being. Spiritual knowledge knows that it should not actually intervene at all in the field of so-called mental illnesses with mere spiritual or psychological procedures, because the mental illness consists precisely in the fact that the spiritual element of the human being is suppressed, as it is otherwise only in sleep, and is weak in this suppression, but that one must cure the organ so that it in turn takes back the soul and the spirit in a healthy way. On the other hand, that which does not arise from the intellect, from the head, but from the whole human being as a spiritual-scientific result, when it appears as imagination, inspiration, intuition, and when it is taken up by the human being, engages the whole organism. It really engages the physical organization of the human being in a healing way, which is what spiritual science really is.

On the other hand, there is no proof that some spiritual scientists feel ill within spiritual science or show the opposite of what I have just said. There are so many who are not spiritual scientists, but who are intellectualistic collectors of notes on spiritual-scientific results. But to spread spiritual science in its true substance is itself a social hygiene, for it affects the whole human being, it normalizes his organology when it threatens to develop this or that tendency towards deviation into the abnormal after dreams or after another side. This is the tremendous difference between what is given in spiritual science and what occurs in mere intellectual science: that the concepts emerging in the field of intellectualism are much too weak because they are merely pictorial to intervene in the human being, to be able to have a healing effect on him. The concepts of spiritual science, on the other hand, are such that they are drawn from the whole human being. In the formation of spiritual-scientific concepts, it is truly not only the brain that has been involved, but also the lungs and liver and heart and the whole human being. And if one imbues oneself with these spiritual-scientific concepts, if one assimilates them through healthy human understanding, they in turn have a hygienic effect on the whole human being. This is what, starting from spiritual science, can intervene in a directive way in hygiene as a social matter.

But in many other ways too — I can only give a few examples — spiritual science will intervene in a guiding way in the whole of humanity's health life, when this spiritual science really takes root among humanity in its full seriousness. I will point out just one example. The relationship between the awake human being and the sleeping human being is one of the chapters that must be studied again and again through spiritual science. The same applies to the enormous difference that exists between the human organization in waking and in sleeping. How spirit and soul behave when we are awake, when the physical and spiritual and soul aspects of the human being interpenetrate each other, and how they behave when they are temporarily separated from each other, as in sleep – this is carefully studied through spiritual science.

Now I can only give a certain sentence, but it is a very certain result of spiritual science. We see so-called epidemic diseases occur in life, diseases that affect whole crowds of people, which are therefore also a social matter at the same time. Ordinary materialistic science studies them in terms of the human physical organism. It knows nothing of the tremendous significance for epidemics and for the predispositions for epidemic diseases that lies in the abnormal behavior of humans in terms of waking and sleeping. What happens in the human organism during sleep is something that, when it happens in abundance, for example, predisposes to a high degree for so-called epidemic diseases. People who, by sleeping too long, set processes in motion in the human organism that should not be there because sleep should not interrupt waking life for so long are predisposed to epidemic diseases in a completely different way and they also engage with epidemics in a completely different way.

Now you can see for yourself what it means to educate people about the correct distribution of sleep and wakefulness. You cannot do that by means of regulations. At best you can order people not to send their children to school when they have scarlet fever; you cannot give lectures when there is an outbreak of influenza: people do not respond to that - because today man tends towards freedom, I mean, because the sense of authority is not as great as in former times - people do not respond to that. I am not saying that they are not right to do so, I am not saying anything against what happens in this way, but you cannot possibly tell people in the same way: you must sleep seven hours. Nevertheless, it is more important than the other rules that people who need it sleep seven hours, the others who do not need it may sleep much shorter and so on. But such things, which are so intimately connected with the most personal aspects of a person's life, have a social effect in a magnificent way. It actually depends on the most intimate aspects of a person how the social effects occur, whether, for example, a larger or smaller number of people are withdrawn from this or that occupation or not, which may have an effect in a completely different place under certain circumstances. Hygiene really does have a tremendous impact on social life. Quite apart from what one thinks about contagion or non-contagion, this element intervenes in social life during epidemics. You cannot work through external regulations, you can only work if you bring a lay audience into human society, but one that has an understanding of people that stands in contrast to the physician's educational prophylaxis, wherever a lively interaction between the expert physician and the layman can occur to maintain health.

If we take all these things into consideration, we can say: Here we have described one side of hygiene as a social question, which in the most eminent sense depends on our having a free spiritual life, on our actually having a spiritual life in which, within the spiritual realm, those who are engaged in the cultivation of the spiritual life, including its practical aspects such as hygiene, are completely independent of everything else that does not give pure knowledge, that does not cultivate the spiritual life itself. What each individual can do for the good of his fellow human beings must arise entirely from his abilities. There must be no state standards for this, nor must there be any dependence on economic powers. This must be placed in the personal sphere of dependence of the individual human being and must continue to be placed in the understanding trust that others who need the application of his abilities can place in the capable person.

What is needed is a spiritual life that is completely independent of all authority, of the state and of the economy, and that works purely from within its own spiritual forces in an expert manner.

If you think about what hygiene can really achieve, which is closely connected with insightful human knowledge and insightful social behavior, and if you look at the individual branch of hygiene with expert insight , then you will come to the conclusion - and this is precisely what the individual, concrete subject area demands, and it could be demonstrated for other areas as well as for hygiene - that the spirit must be taken into administration by those who are involved in its cultivation. No matter what abstract theories may say against the independent position of intellectual life, the individual concrete subject demands that the administrators of intellectual life are not merely experts who work for the ministries, but that those who are active in intellectual life must also be the administrators of that intellectual life, and indeed the sole administrators of that intellectual life. Then, when social insight arising out of a free spiritual life has created a hygiene that really exists as a social institution, it will be possible to work economically for this hygiene in a completely different way, precisely in an independent economic life, in an economic life that is structured as I have described in my “Key Points of the Social Question”, as it has been repeatedly described in the journals that serve this idea of the threefold social organism, for example in the Swiss “Social Future”, which is published by Dr. Boos.

If the forces for the cultivation of hygiene that lie dormant in the bosom of human society are received by society with understanding, if this is accepted with human understanding by society, if this becomes general order, then everything that can be carried out of this independent economic life, without regard to any dependence on impulses of gain or state impulses, everything that can be worked out of this independent economic life purely, can be carried into economic life, into independent economic life, everything that can work purely out of this independent economic life, without any consideration of any dependence on profit impulses or on state impulses, can be carried into economic life, and that which must be cultivated in the service of genuine, true hygiene. But then, and only then, will it be possible for that high spirit to enter into economic life, which is necessary in order for hygiene to be cultivated in human life. If the mere acquisitiveness of our economic life is dominant, which has an ever-increasing tendency to be incorporated into the unified state, and if the general opinion is that one must produce that which earns the most, then the self-contained impulses of a free spiritual life cultivated in this field of hygiene cannot assert themselves; then this spiritual life becomes dependent on the extra-spiritual, on the state or economic, then the economic becomes master over the spiritual. The economic must not become master over the spiritual. This is best seen when one is to produce what is required by the spirit in economic life, when one is to serve a genuine, true hygiene.

The forces of economic life, of free economic life, will be added in the threefold social organism to the insight that becomes a public matter and to the understanding of the human being that becomes a public matter. And when, on the one hand, people are immersed in a free spiritual life in which a hygiene truly based on objective ground can be cultivated, and when, on the other hand, people develop that high spirit through which everyone in economic life will in turn approach production with understanding – but with such understanding does not arise merely from the sense of acquisition, but from the insights that arise in free spiritual activity - then, once this insightful social understanding of people will be there, then people will be able to come together democratically in parliaments or otherwise, because then the insight into the necessity of hygiene as a social phenomenon will be shaped from the free spiritual life. And what is necessary for the maintenance of hygiene will be shaped by the economic life, which is based on practical and professional considerations, through the high spirit that will be developed in it. Then people, having come of age, will be able to negotiate on the basis of the legal system, on the one hand from their insight and understanding of human nature, and on the other hand from their relations with the economic system that serves hygiene. Then people will be able to negotiate as equals on the basis of state or legal life about the measures that can be taken with regard to hygiene and public health care. Then, of course, it will not be laymen, dilettantes, who will be healing, but the person who has come of age will face the expert as an equal with understanding when the expert tells him this or that. But the layman's understanding of human nature makes it possible for him, in the context of what is cultivated together with the physician in social life, to approach specialized knowledge with understanding in such a way that he can say “yes” in a democratically conceived parliament not merely on the basis of authority but on the basis of a certain understanding. If we take a close look at such a specialized field and see how the three members of the social organism interact, then, my dear audience, we find the full justification of this idea of the threefold social organism. One can only fight this idea of the threefold social organism if one has first grasped it only in the abstract.

Today, I could not give you more than a sketchy indication of what follows from the threefold social order in a specific area, the area of hygiene, if one thinks correctly about it. But if the paths I have only been able to hint at today are pursued further, it will be seen that although those who approach the impulse of the threefold social organism with a few abstract concepts may, to a certain extent, oppose it – as a rule, they present reasons that one has long since accepted as objections oneself. But anyone who approaches the individual areas of life with full inner understanding and the living out of these individual areas with all that they bring into human life - that is what social life is about - anyone who really understands something in a specific area of life, who makes an effort to understand something of true life practice in any field, will be led more and more into the direction indicated by the idea of the threefold social organism.

This idea did not arise out of a reverie, out of abstract idealism; it arose as a social demand of the present and the near future precisely from the concrete, appropriate consideration of the individual areas of life. And again, when one penetrates these individual areas of life with what emerges from the impulse of the threefold social organism, then one finds for all these areas that which, it seems to me, is needed for them today. And I just wanted to give you a few brief indications this evening of how the field in which blind submission to authority is still accepted today, can be enriched by the spiritual science that follows from the threefold social organism. For this reason it may be said here: Through this enrichment, which the field of hygiene can receive from a spiritually expanded medicine, hygiene can become a social, a truly social matter, and it can also be cultivated in the most genuine sense in a highly democratic way as a general matter of the people.

Following his lecture, Rudolf Steiner answers a series of questions submitted in writing.

Dear attendees! With regard to the matters discussed today, it is important to first address the whole spirit of what has been said. It is sometimes difficult to answer questions that are formulated from the present way of thinking and feeling without reformulating them or at least without explaining them properly. This first question, which probably seems terribly simple to you or many of you, so that it could be answered in a few sentences or with one sentence, is:

How do you get rid of sleeping too long?

Well, to answer this question, I would have to give an even longer lecture than the one I have already given, because I would first have to gather the various elements in order to answer this question properly. But perhaps the following can be said: Today, there is an intellectualistic state of mind in almost all people. Those who believe that they judge or live from their feelings, or who believe that they are not intellectualistic because of some other reason, are intellectualistic all the more. Now the basic character of intellectualistic soul life is that our instincts are ruined by it. Man's right instincts are ruined. It is actually the case that if you want to point to instincts that have not been completely ruined, you either have to point to primitive man or even to the animal kingdom.

For you see, on another occasion these days I was able to point to an example that says a great deal. There are birds that, out of their greed, eat insects, for example, cross spiders. But they fall into convulsions, into spasms, from eating these cross spiders, which are poisonous to them; they must die miserably very soon after swallowing the cross spider. But if henbane is nearby, the bird flies to it, sucks out the healing juice and saves its life with it. Now think about how something has developed that in us humans has shrunk to the few reflex instincts we have. For example, when a fly lands on our nose, we make a movement to get rid of it without first pondering the situation. A defensive instinct takes effect on the insult stimulus. In the bird that eats the cross spider, the effect that the cross spider has on its organism is followed by such an instinctive defense that it drives it to do something quite reasonable. We can still find such instincts in people who lived in the dim and distant past, if we understand their history correctly. But in our time, we have different experiences. I have always found it extremely painful when I came to someone who sat down at the lunch table and had a scale next to their plate. A scale, you really do experience something like that – I was otherwise accustomed to knife and fork and similar implements lying next to the plate – a scale, and with that he weighed the piece of meat, because only then did he know how much meat he should eat according to his organism, when he had weighed it. Just imagine how far removed from all real, original instincts a humanity has now become, to which something like this has to be prescribed.

It is therefore important not to stop at intellectualism, but to ascend to spiritual-scientific knowledge. You will now believe that I speak pro domo, even if it is pro domo of this great house, but I do not speak pro domo, but I actually express what I believe to have recognized as truth, quite apart from the fact that I myself represent this truth. One can see that if one penetrates not only into the merely intellectual, but into that which is to be grasped spiritually, and which therefore comes before humanity more in a pictorial sense, one you realize that by grasping such knowledge, which is not accessible to the mere intellect, you are led back to healthy instincts, not in individual cases, but more in the things that lie in the depths of life. He who spends at least some time, even if it be ever so little, on developing the quite different frame of mind that is needed to really understand spiritual science, will be led back to sound instincts in such matters as, for instance, the need for sleep. The animal does not sleep too much in normal living conditions. Primitive man did not sleep too much either. One need only educate oneself to healthy instincts, which are being unlearned in today's so intellectualized culture, so that one can say: A really effective way to get rid of sleeping too long is to be able to absorb spiritual truths without falling asleep in the process. If you fall asleep at once when you hear spiritual truths, then you will indeed not be able to get rid of sleeping too long. But if you succeed in really taking an inner human interest in the spiritual truths you are learning, then this inner human interest is activated in such a way that you can actually find out what bedtime is for your organism.

On the other hand, it is extremely difficult to give intellectualized rules, for example, to say that a person who has this or that about his liver or kidneys, which does not exactly make him ill in the usual sense, but which is there nonetheless, must sleep for such and such a length of time. As a rule, this does not lead to anything special. And artificially inducing sleep is not the same as when the body, out of its need for sleep, only denies the mind entry for as long as it needs to. So one can say: Proper hygiene, which follows directly from spiritual science, will also lead people to measure their sleep in the right way. Therefore, the other question that has been asked here cannot be answered so easily:

How can you know how much sleep you need?

I would like to say that you don't need to know this through discursive thought, it's not necessary at all, but you do need to acquire such instincts, which you acquire not by collecting notes from the humanities, but by the way you understand humanities when you take it in with full participation. Once you have developed this instinct, you can then measure the right amount of sleep for you individually. That is what is usually said about it. As I said, I can only give you a guide to answering this question, not what is perhaps expected. But what is expected is not always the right thing.

Is sleeping with the window open healthy?

It is not always possible to give a general answer to such questions. It is quite possible that for one person sleeping with the window open is very healthy, depending on the particular structure of their respiratory organs, but that for another person, for example, a room that is well ventilated before sleeping but then has the windows closed while they sleep is better. It is actually a matter of gaining an understanding of the relationship between the human being and the extra-human environment, in order to be able to judge in individual cases on the basis of this understanding.

How do you explain the occurrence of mental disorders caused by crimes committed from a spiritual point of view, that is, how can the physical illness that underlies the mental disorders be recognized here?

Well, here it would be necessary to go into the whole criminal and, basically, psychiatric anthropology if the question is to be dealt with exhaustively. I would just like to say the following: Firstly, when considering such things, it is important to assume that there are abnormalities among the organ dispositions of a person who becomes a criminal. You only have to follow the studies of Moriz Benedikt, the first important criminal anthropologist, who was really quite objective in his research in this direction, and you will see how, through pathological examination, the forms of individual human organs can indeed be linked to a disposition to commit crimes. So there is an abnormality inherent in it, although, of course, materialistic thinkers like Moriz Benedikt draw false conclusions from it, because someone who shows such signs in this direction is by no means a born criminal from the outset. The point is that one can work on the existing defects in the organism - these are organ defects, not the already existing mental illness - precisely through education and later through appropriate spiritual means, that is, in a spiritual-mental way, if only the facts are examined in a spiritual-scientific way. So the conclusions that Benedikt draws from the pathological investigations are not correct. One can indeed point to such organ defects, but then one must be clear about the fact that in ordinary human life, those things that are not intellectual but are emotional or affective do have an effect. These have an effect, to be sure, first on the glandular activity or the like, on the secretory activity, but in turn also on the organs. In this regard, I advise you to read, for example, an interesting booklet written by a Danish physician about the mechanics of emotional movements. There are many useful things in it in this regard. And now imagine the bodily disposition that can be traced in every person who comes into question as a criminal, and add to this everything that follows for the caught criminal in terms of emotional upheaval and what as a continuation of these mental shocks now in turn affects the organs, then you have the way to look for the defective organs for what produced a mental illness as a consequence, which can occur when a crime is committed. In this way, one must gain an understanding of such connections.

How does Theosophy relate to Anthroposophy? Is the former Theosophy no longer fully recognized here?

In answer to this I would simply say: Nothing but anthroposophically oriented spiritual science has ever been advocated here, and what is advocated here today has always been advocated here, and if this has been identified with what is advocated on many sides as so-called Theosophy, then that is simply due to a misunderstanding. This misunderstanding will also remain a misunderstanding because anthroposophically oriented spiritual science has, within certain limits, been within the framework of the Theosophical Society for some time; but even within the framework of this Theosophical Society, the representatives of anthroposophically oriented spiritual science at that time advocated nothing other than what I advocate here today. They just watched for a long time, as long as it didn't look too heretical. But when they realized that anthroposophy is something quite different from the abstract mysticism that often claims to be theosophy, they threw out the anthroposophists. This procedure has been adopted from the other side, while what is represented here has never had any other form than the one it has today.

Of course, those who deal with things only superficially or who have gained their knowledge only from those members of the Society who themselves have only dealt with it superficially – for one does not always have to stand outside in order to have a superficial understanding of anthroposophy or to confuse anthroposophy with theosophy, one can also stand inside with it in society - those who only acquire knowledge in the way of such superficially grasped activity come to such confusions. But here that is represented, which I have today characterized for a particular area, and never has anything else been represented here, even if, of course, work is constantly being done and certain things today can be characterized more precisely, more fully, more intensely than they could have been fifteen, ten or five years ago. That is precisely the nature of the work: that one progresses, that one progresses in particular in the formulation of making oneself understood in something as difficult as spiritual science. One really need not concern oneself with those people who, out of ill will, have twisted the fact that what was previously expressed in an imperfect way is later expressed more perfectly, and who derive all kinds of transformations of world views from it. For spiritual science, as it is meant here, is something living and not something dead, and the one who believes that it cannot progress, who wants to nail it down to where it once stood, in a way that often happens, does not believe in the living, but wants to make it into something dead.

Would you please explain how an epidemic like the flu or scarlet fever comes about if not through the transmission of germs. For many diseases, the pathogen has been scientifically identified. What is your position on this?

Well, if I were to discuss this question, which I have indicated that I do not want to take sides on, then I would have to give a whole lecture. However, I would like to draw attention to the following. The person who, through his knowledge, is compelled to point out that for illnesses accompanied by the appearance of bacilli or bacteria, there are deeper causes as primary causes than just the appearance of the bacilli, does not yet claim that the bacilli are not there. It is quite another thing to claim that the bacilli are there and that they appear in the wake of the illness than to look for the primary cause in the bacilli. What needs to be said in this regard has just been developed in detail in this course for physicians, which is now being held. But it takes time. This also applies to certain elements that need to be dealt with first. This cannot be quickly settled in a question and answer session. Nevertheless, I would like to point out the following. The human constitution is not as simple as one often imagines. Man is a many-sided being. In my book 'Riddles of the Soul' I show at the beginning that man is a threefold being, a being that can be called, firstly, the nerve-sense human being, secondly, the rhythmic human being, and thirdly, the metabolic human being. That is what man is. And these three aspects of human nature interact with each other; and if the human being is to be healthy, they must not interact in any other way than that there is a certain degree of separation between the areas. For example, the nerve-sense human being, who is more than what today's physiology imagines, cannot simply transfer his effects on the metabolic human being in a different way than that these effects are mediated by the rhythmic movements of the circulation and breathing processes, which extend to the outermost periphery of the organism. But this interaction can be interrupted in a certain way.

Now, this interaction brings about something very specific. For example, when such questions are asked, you will forgive me for having to answer them appropriately. I will be as discreet as possible, but it is necessary to say some words that have to be heard appropriately. For example, it is quite true that processes take place in the human abdomen that are integrated into the whole organism. If they are integrated into the whole organism, then they work in the right way. If they are either directly increased in the abdomen, so that they become more active there, or if the corresponding processes in the human head or in the human lungs become less intense, then something very peculiar occurs. Then it becomes apparent that the human organism, in order to live normally, must develop processes within itself that are only allowed to develop to a certain extent so that they take up the whole person. If the process is increased, then it localizes itself, and then, for example, a process occurs in the human abdomen whereby what takes place in the human head or in the lungs and what corresponds to certain processes in the abdomen is not properly separated. The processes always correspond in such a way that they run parallel to each other. But as a result, what may only be present in man to a certain extent in order to maintain his vitality, the vitality carried by spirit and soul, is, so to speak, raised above a certain level. Then, I would say, it becomes the atmosphere for all kinds of lower organisms, for all kinds of small organisms, and these small organisms can then develop there. That which is the creative element of the small organisms is always present in the human being, it is only extended throughout the whole organism. When it is concentrated, it provides a breeding ground for small organisms, microbes; they find a home in it. But the reason why they can thrive there is to be found in extremely fine processes in the organism, which then turn out to be the primary ones.

I am not speaking out of antipathy to the germ theory; I fully understand the reasons that people have for believing in germs. Believe me, if I did not have to speak as I am speaking now for factual reasons, I would recognize these reasons, but here it is the realization that necessarily leads to the recognition of something else and that then forces one to say it. [For example, I can say:] I see a certain landscape, there are many extraordinarily beautiful cattle, well cared for. I now ask: Why are these living conditions in the area? They come from the beautiful cattle. I explain the living conditions of this area by explaining that beautiful cattle have moved in from somewhere; they have spread there. I will not do that, but I will examine the primary causes, the diligence and understanding of the people, and that will explain to me why these beautiful cattle are developing on this land. But I would be making a superficial explanation if I just said: It's beautiful here, life is good here because beautiful cattle have moved in.

The same logic basically applies if I find the typhoid bacillus and then declare that one has typhoid fever because the typhoid bacillus has moved in. Much more is needed to explain typhoid fever than simply to refer to the typhoid bacillus. But one is misled in a completely different way if one succumbs to such false logic. Certainly, the primary processes, which provide the typhoid bacillus with the basis for its existence, are in turn the basis for all kinds of other things that are not primary. And it is very easy to either completely confuse or conflate what is secondary with the actual original clinical picture. These are the things that lead to the right point here, or show how what is justified in a certain sense can be shown to have its limits.

Perhaps you can see from the way I have given this answer – although I can only sketch it out and am therefore easily misunderstood – that this is really not about the all-too-popular ranting against the germ theory, but that it is really about examining things very seriously.

Could you give us some examples of how physical organic disorders can cause mental and spiritual suffering?

Well, if it were to be answered in detail, that too would, of course, be taking us much too far today. But I would like to point out just one thing. You see, the development of medical thought in the history of medicine is not as it is presented today, with Hippocrates as the beginning of medicine and Hippocraticism as its further development. As far as we can trace it, we know that Hippocrates was much more the last outpost of an old instinct-based medicine than merely the beginning of today's intellectual medicine. But we find something else as well. You see, in this old instinctive medicine, as long as it was still in force, people did not speak, for example, of a certain kind of mental depression, which is a very abstract way of expressing it, but rather of hypochondria - abdominal cartilaginousness. So they knew that hypochondria is a disorder of the abdomen, a hardening of the abdomen. We cannot say that the ancients were more mystical than we are.

Likewise, it is easy to show how certain chronic lung defects are definitely connected with what could be called a false mystical sense in people. And so we could point out all sorts of things, quite apart from the fact that – again, in line with a correct instinct – the ancients definitely pointed to something organic when it came to the temperaments. They derived the choleric temperament from bile, from white bile, the melancholic from black bile and all that black bile causes in the abdomen. They then derived the sanguine temperament from blood and the phlegmatic temperament from what they called mucus. But then, when they saw degenerations of the temperaments, they were absolutely things that indicated the degenerations of the organic matter concerned. How this was done in instinctive medicine and in instinctive hygiene can certainly be taken up in a strictly scientific way into the state of mind and, from the point of view of our present knowledge, cultivated.

Here is a question that could lead to further misunderstanding: Do you recognize eye diagnosis? Do you accept it as a science?

Now, it is generally true that in the case of an organism, and especially in the case of the complicated human organism, if you look at it in the right way, you can draw conclusions about the whole from all the possible individual parts. And again, the way these individual parts are arranged in the human organism has a great significance. In a sense, what the eye diagnostician examines in the iris is, on the one hand, so very isolated from the rest of the human organism, and on the other hand, it is so peculiarly integrated into the rest of the organism that it is indeed an expressive organ. But precisely with such things, one must not schematize; and the mistake with such things is that one does just that. For example, it is quite true that people of a different mental and physical constitution show different characteristics in their irises than other people. If one wants to apply something like this, one needs such intimate knowledge of what happens in the human organism that, if one has this intimate knowledge, one actually no longer needs to search from a single organ. And if you are instructed to adhere to some intellectualized rules and to do such things schematically, then not much of value will come of it.

What relation do diseases have to the progress of world history, especially the newly emerging diseases?

A chapter of an entire cultural history! Well, I will just note the following. When studying history, one must have a sense for practicing symptomatology, that is, to understand much of what is taken as history today only as a symptom for much that lies much deeper behind it, which is really the spiritual current that only carries these symptoms. And so that which is in the depths of human development does indeed appear symptomatically in these or those diseases of the time. It is interesting to study the relationships between what prevails in the depths of human development and what takes place in the symptoms of this or that disease. One can also conclude from the presence of certain diseases that impulses are at work in historical development that cannot escape a symptomatology of this kind. But the question could then also point to something else that is not insignificant when pursuing the historical development of humanity. This is this: Diseases, whether they occur in individual human beings or take the form of an epidemic in human society, are often also reactions to other degenerations, which may be regarded as less serious from a health point of view, but which must nevertheless be regarded as very serious from a moral or spiritual point of view. What is said here must not be applied to medicine or hygiene – that would be quite wrong. Diseases must be cured. In hygiene, one must work to benefit people. One cannot say, “First I will check whether it is perhaps your karma to have this illness; then I will let you have it, if not, I can cure you.” These views do not apply when it comes to healing. But what does not apply to us humans in our intervention in nature does, therefore, objectively apply in the outside world. And there one must say that, for example, many things that exist as a predisposition to moral excesses are so deeply ingrained in the human organization that reactions occur which then appear in certain illnesses, and that the illness is the suppression of a moral excess.

In the case of the individual, it is not even of such great importance to follow these things, because they should be left to one's individual destiny and one should not interfere in them any more than one interferes with the secrecy of other people's letters - unless one is guided by the view that is so prevalent at the moment: “opened by the authorities under the laws of war”. Just as little as one should interfere with a person's letter secrets, so little should one interfere with his individual karma. But in world history, that is again something else. There it is important because in world history, the individual human being plays only a, I would say statistical role in its laws. It must always be pointed out that statistics provide a good basis for life insurance companies to assess mortality rates, on which their premiums are based. The matter is quite accurate and the calculation is quite correct, it is all quite scientific. But now – one does not have to die at the very moment that has been calculated by the life insurance statistics, nor does one have to live as long as has been calculated. When the individual comes into consideration, other things occur. But when groups of people or even the whole development of humanity comes into consideration, then it may very well be that one is not a superstitious person, but very much a scientific person, when one examines the extent to which symptoms of illness, illnesses that occur are corrective of other excesses, so that one can indeed see a certain reaction of the disease or at least a disease caused by something that, if the disease had not come, would have developed in a completely different form. These are just a few points on how what is touched upon by this question can be considered.

But now our time is so far advanced that we too will now follow the others who have already left in such large numbers.

Dear attendees! In these four lectures I would like to talk about the enrichment that individual academic subjects can experience through spiritual scientific methods. Today, I would like to give only a kind of introduction to the actual considerations, which I will begin tomorrow. In these lectures, I will not so much attempt a systematic presentation of the spiritual-scientific findings themselves as an attempt to build a bridge between this spiritual science and the other scientific life of the present day.

But I would like to say a few words by way of introduction about the special character of the spiritual scientific method. This method differs from everything that is usually regarded as scientific today. Firstly, based on today's habits of thought and views, the very possibility of penetrating into the realm of reality that this spiritual science wants to deal with is doubted. Secondly, however, it is also said time and again, again out of the same habits of thought and feelings, that this anthroposophically oriented spiritual science lacks what is called “proof” for its insights.

Now, after some examples of the relationships between spiritual science and the specialized sciences have been given in the course of the lectures, I will briefly return to these two objections. Today I would like to limit myself to saying, by way of introduction, that this spiritual science certainly differs in its entire research method from what is otherwise asserted in scientific life today, but that nevertheless this spiritual science wants to be nothing other than a real continuation of precisely the strictest scientific mode of knowledge of the present. It fully intends to take into account the progress that humanity has made in the last few centuries, particularly in the 19th century, in terms of the exactness and conscientiousness of scientific methods. It does not want to speak about the spiritual worlds in some lay or amateurish way, but rather from the same attitude and disposition of knowledge from which contemporary science generally wants to speak. But at the same time it is clear to it that the cognitive abilities must be expanded if one wants to arrive at an answer, even if only relative, to those questions that remain unanswered in all areas of today's scientific life. But this spiritual science would like to emphasize even more, especially in relation to the present time, the unsatisfactory nature of our current scientific life; it would like to show that, on the one hand, this scientific life has been able to intervene in technical practice in an extraordinarily significant way, but that, on the other hand, these great advances in technical fields, which have transformed our entire modern life, are by no means matched by similar advances in social practice. This is important to emphasize today for the very reason that the anthroposophically oriented spiritual science referred to here believes, on the one hand, that it can gain a deepening and broadening of knowledge of nature from its point of view, but on the other hand, it believes that it does not have to stop at this, I would like to say, contemplative kind of knowledge, because it believes that it can move on to such knowledge that not only grasps not only the theoretical view of the human being, but the whole human being, above all the life of will, and this not in general abstractions, but in all the concreteness, in all the differentiation, as it is to work in the social sphere - if we want to come to behaving in the social technique in an equally fruitful and skillful way as we can in the mechanistic.

I would like to point out these connections in the introduction precisely because it can be felt in the present that humanity is striving more and more for awareness of all its actions. Our entire scientific development over the past three to four centuries has been a striving out of certain more or less vague, unclear, though perhaps therefore secure in other respects, conceptual worlds, towards fully conscious, clear conceptual worlds. However much may still be lacking in the direction of the ideal of scientific knowledge, there is no doubt that science is on the way to developing this ideal in a certain way; and it has also proved itself externally through its applications in technology.

Not in the same way, we can say, has this proved true in social practice. Nevertheless, it is precisely socially minded people in recent times who have asserted that social life must also be examined from a scientific point of view. And the broad sections of the proletariat – I do not want to criticize now, I just want to characterize – are convinced that what they preach as social theories is based entirely on scientific foundations. The scientific foundations are most proudly displayed in all that has emerged from the social doctrine of Marxism. But this is something that should, on the other hand, give rise to serious concern, because the social conditions within civilized life today already show how little this social practice can lead to any fruitful result. It can only lead to further social destruction. This raises the question: What exactly is it that is so extraordinarily flawed about the transfer of the scientific approach to social practice?

If we take a look at what has become the scientific attitude in recent times, we have to say: the empirical method is accepted. This empirical method, which, in order to become rational, progresses from empiricism to experiment, adheres to external experience. It applies to this external experience only what is regarded as the only real, experience-free science: the mathematical approach, mathematics in the broadest sense. One must also strictly compare the way in which man comes to the empirical facts of the external world, which are given to him through the senses, and through the “armed” senses, as he then registers these empirical facts of the external world, combines them, as he tries to to derive laws from them, which go from the lowest level of statistical ordering to the almost mathematical, summarizing laws of nature. Compare this strictly with the way in which mathematical truths themselves are arrived at. These are based entirely on an inner vision, on an inner construction within the life of the soul itself. And it is through this inner construction that mathematical knowledge has its certainty. This certainty is not arrived at by any kind of inductive method, but is regarded as something that is subject to deductive consideration, so that one can say: mathematics and everything that belongs to it in mechanics, in the theory of the movement of the stars, and so on, is something that the human being constructs out of his own soul life.

Now it is interesting that already in the dawn of the newer development of science this way of relating to empiricism on the one hand and mathematics on the other was characterized in a very definite direction, namely, as it is most clearly expressed in the well-known Kantian formula that in every real knowledge there is only as much science as there is mathematics in it. And today we still hear that, basically, scientific endeavor must consist of unifying natural phenomena into an image that can somehow be mathematically penetrated and mathematically dominated; for example, we try to gain a physical image of the world through this, which we can make mathematically transparent in a certain way. So we proceed in this field by permeating what we receive from the external world through observation or experiment with what can be built up from within the soul itself as a self-contained, self-illuminating, clear science.

This way of treating the world in terms of knowledge has gradually become so ingrained in modern consciousness that many regard it as the only possible one. And because of the great progress that has been made recently in the direction of such knowledge, people have gradually come to believe that one should say: This is how one must proceed, this is how one must man must behave on the one hand in relation to what he gives from his inner being to external observation, and on the other hand to what comes to him from the outer world. In a certain way, people have been educated scientifically in this research, in this method.

Now, the necessity for the newer humanity has arisen to introduce a scientific way of thinking into the social sciences and thus into the way one wants to cognitively control social life. One only needs to recall a single fact to point out the one-sidedness that has arisen from it. Karl Marx and his school have most one-sidedly applied the scientific attitude of modern times to social practice. And what has been the result? It is not necessary here, as I only want to give an introduction, to go into the particular way of deriving the pseudo-scientific method of Marxism, but it must be pointed out what kind of results it has produced. It has become a creed precisely from these foundations that, when one looks at human life in a social context, one must actually admit that everything that has happened in the course of human history must be explained by the various forms of production processes. So the external, material processes were taken as the basis; and what had developed in human life, what emerged from the soul of man, what was formed through thinking and the like, that was accepted as an “ideology”, as it were. Thus arose the belief that one could not form social practice out of some ideas, out of some impulses of human life, but that one could actually only understand it by getting involved in the institutions, in the production process itself, by thus working recognitively, directly on the transformation of the production processes; then what is the content of the ideology will already emerge.

It can be said, my dear audience, that what has been asserted as a strictly exact method in natural science has been transferred by scientific education to the social sphere and that as a result, in this sphere, has come to exclude the human being, with his will, his powers, his entire being, from the historical, social process, and to regard only the mode of production, the material processes, as the real thing in this social process. And today we stand at a very critical turning point in time. Today it is a matter of working creatively in many areas of our civilized life, starting from the human being in the social life. And this cannot be achieved with the view described – namely, with a view that sees in that which basically arises from the human inner being only an ideology, that is, only a kind of dream. With such a view, one cannot find the strength to intervene in social life.

But what arises today from the particular nature of modern science has a kind of world significance. And it behooves us to reflect on why we are being abandoned by what man can achieve from within with regard to social practice. We must begin to reflect on this: can the scientific method, which is entirely justified in the field of natural science, also be applied directly to a field such as social practice? This is a question that is before us today not only as a scientific question, but as a great question of humanity, which, however, must first be solved scientifically in a certain way. For everything depends on whether the methods we use in science today are self-contained or whether they are in some way so developable that we then also gain the possibility, in a unified way, of on the other hand, to have a social knowledge that encompasses the human being, not just the production process, and that can then be extended to a social technique, to a social practice, just as knowledge of nature has been extended to a mechanistic practice and technique.

Thus, the scientific questions, as anthroposophical spiritual science sees it, are connected with the whole of life in our time. And this spiritual science believes that it can speak to the most immediate needs of our time. But it also believes that it is impossible to find a way out of the confusions of the time other than by penetrating into the essence of scientific life itself.

And this raises the big question: are there other ways of confronting reality, other than shaping one's inner life according to the pattern of mathematical development and then applying it to empirical reality? This is precisely where anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, with its methodology, comes into play. It asks: Is it only possible to gain from within the human being that which is expressed in recognized mathematical formulas? Or is it possible to gain something else entirely from the depths of the human soul, something other than the content of today's mathematics? That is precisely the first methodological result of anthroposophical spiritual science: that not only mathematics can be formed out of the human soul, but also other soul experiences. And of these other soul experiences, anthroposophical spiritual science distinguishes three levels. That which is mathematical in nature is, in essence, in particular in terms of its quality, actually already spiritual science; it is just that it is not recognized as such. What follows is what I have called in my book 'How to Know Higher Worlds' imagination. This does not mean a fantastic content, but the shaping out of a soul content that is derived from the human soul in exactly the same way, purely inwardly, as the mathematical content is derived. However, this soul content is not merely formal like the mathematical content, but is itself full of content and relates to reality in a different way than the mathematical content.

I call that which is won from the depths of the soul as it were a higher stage, a more substantial mathematics, imagination, because when one delves into mathematical content, one has no content in the mathematical; the content must be given to the mathematical formulas from empiricism, from the outside. In that which is present in our consciousness with the mathematical formulas, one has no being-content. This has its deep justification for ordinary life and for ordinary science. If, in the mathematical-empirical approach, we were to bring the being-content from the inside towards this outside world, which is present to us in sensory observation, then we would not be able to experience this outside world. We would not find it transparent. This being that we ascribe to the external world is given to us only by the fact that we have no being in what we methodically bring to this external world, but that we are aware that we only bring an image content to it. Anyone who is clear about this pictorial character of the mathematical will find in it the particularly characteristic feature of the scientific method of the present.

At the moment when one approaches spiritual science, one does not stop at the particular state of soul that one has acquired through heredity and education and that one then also applies in ordinary science. One progresses further in the development of the soul. One draws out of the soul the forces latent in it. Subjectively, the whole process is no different from that which occurs when one passes from the point at which one has not yet received any mathematical insight from the soul to the point where the soul is filled with mathematical insights, with relationships between figures and so on. Taken purely inwardly, qualitatively, this development of the soul, which is sought through the anthroposophically oriented spiritual science referred to here, is nothing other than a continuation of the process that takes place when one passes from a consciousness not filled with mathematics into a consciousness filled with mathematics. This process is further developed.

But if you develop this process further, something very significant occurs. You realize that it is only in these peculiar structures, which we can summarize as mathematics in the broadest sense, that it is possible to experience purely formally. There is no other area within the reach of our ordinary consciousness where we can experience purely formally than in mathematics. Therefore, when this process is developed further, beyond mathematics, to what I call the first higher level of knowledge, then we no longer experience merely formally, no longer merely pictorially, but we have being-content in the experience itself, just as we have being-content when we feel hunger or thirst or when we develop a volitional impulse in us, which is also linked to some organic process. We cannot, therefore, extend the process in the creation of mathematical structures beyond this creation of mathematical structures without entering into being. But then, in a polar way, we enter into being to the same extent that we enter into the inner life, and in consciousness we have only images of this being. That is why I call this consciousness the imaginative consciousness.

When we relate to our environment mathematically, I would like to say that there is complete equilibrium between what confronts us from the outside as being and what appears inwardly as a mere image. And there is even something of a spiritual process in the particular behavior of going back and forth between the external view and the internal construction, in this going back and forth between the sensation of the external world and its spiritualization with the constructed mathematical structures, something of systole and diastole. What comes to us from outside brings us existence. What comes to us from the outside world from within brings us the light-filled permeation of existence. And we would get the feeling in this area - this results from a simple consideration of the cognitive process - that we do not comprehend existence if we were to bring a being into the world from within with the mathematically generated structures themselves. In a sense, being from within would collide with being from without, and that would give rise to something that would remain obscure to consciousness. The full content of the external world could not be mathematically penetrated in a light-filled way.

In the same moment that we ascend to a higher level of knowledge, we do experience being within. For this, the character of an image is impressed upon that which becomes present in consciousness. But we experience the being within. We know that the images we experience are absolutely objective, because we do not experience the being directly as the external content of the images and therefore know that our images are not dreams, not fantasies, but that they are the adequate expression of a reality that we can only experience in soul. That is to say, by undergoing such a continuation of our inner soul process, we rise from the contemplation of the sensual world to the contemplation of the supersensible world. We do indeed enter in this way into a world that we cannot bring before our consciousness in any other way.

The first step of imaginative knowledge gives us the possibility of placing a new world before our consciousness, which we - in contrast to the world that we usually have before us, which we also have before us in ordinary science - only experience inwardly, but of which we know that through the image that we find objectively placed before our consciousness, we have a revelation of being.

Thus I was able to show, at least in a few strokes, on what the method of knowledge is based, by which spiritual science wants to penetrate into the worlds that are not given to ordinary science. They are not given to it because, in a certain sense, it is true that there is only as much science in it as there is mathematics in it. But this means that it contains only that which we can have as pictorial in our soul life, which is not reality itself. In the moment when we seek knowledge, despite obliterating our own reality, what becomes present in our consciousness becomes pictorial as an object, whereas before the subjective was pictorial. In our intercourse with the image, reality is experienced. And the question now is only how we can introduce into this process of knowledge the possibility of moving freely in it, just as we have it in the ordinary external, empirical process of knowledge, where we make our observations in such a way that they correspond to our intentions, where we design our experimental setups in such a way that we find them expedient for fathoming this or that result, and so on. If the spiritual researcher were to stop at the development of the imagination, then the only thing that would be in him would be the experience of a reality that presents itself to him in an image. He would not be able to control this imaginative world to which he has risen. This world, which presents itself in the imaginations, is conquered by advancing in the most intimate way within the soul through methods that are truly more difficult than the methods of laboratory or astronomical research.

[up to here the text was corrected by Rudolf Steiner]

Today I would like to hint at the elementary part of it. You can find more details in my book “How to Know Higher Worlds”, in my “Occult Science” and in other books.

We try to get into human arbitrariness that which naturally takes place in us during ordinary cognition. By following the facts of nature, by devoting ourselves to the things of nature, we form ideas about them. These ideas acquire duration, but a duration that is modified in a certain way. We can remember our experiences. We can form ideas about what our experiences were. I would ask you, dear readers, to note how I have formulated this sentence. In the field of anthroposophical spiritual science, one must speak very precisely and formulate one's sentences very precisely.

Modern psychology speaks as if an idea that one has grasped from an experience would somehow descend into some psychic depths and then ascend again when one remembers it. Before a more exact observation of the soul, this is by no means tenable, but something quite different is present. When one observes the process by which one gains an idea from an external sense perception, and when one observes what takes place within the soul, then the same thing occurs, only in polar opposite. This can be observed when we follow the inner process that takes place before a memory is formed, an inner process that is indeed indeterminate but that we gradually learn to grasp as spiritual researchers. The memory image is formed from an inner process in exactly the same way as the image of external sensory perception is formed from the external sensory process. The ideas as such are not there in the meantime; they do not wander down into our soul and up again into our consciousness, but are actually remembered in the same way as in external perception, only on the way up from the inside, whereas in external perception they are presented on the way from the outside in. But in a certain way we arrive at making that which was a passing experience permanent. This process is carefully and methodically transformed through a certain concentration and meditation, which must be applied only long enough and intensely enough to the intimate life of the soul. Then this life of the soul is shaped in such a way that imagination, imaginative cognition, can enter into it. The transformation takes place by the conscious will bringing easily comprehensible images into the center of consciousness, images that are so comprehensible that no reminiscences can arise that could give such effects from the unconscious or subconscious. And by giving the ideas duration and concentrating on the lasting idea, that which otherwise only lives in the power of remembering is further developed; it is transformed into a higher power, which becomes imaginative power. And one must master this power in order to have something at this level of knowledge to which one can relate as a human being, just as one otherwise relates to the world as a human being in ordinary life and in ordinary science. Then it is necessary to be able to control something else: to suppress the idea again, to send it out of consciousness again.

By coming to an absolute mastery of the inner soul process, making the idea permanent, then breaking off the idea, leaving the consciousness empty, and practicing this transition - fulfilled consciousness, empty consciousness, fulfilled consciousness, empty consciousness - thereby, my dear audience, one ascends to what can then be called inspired imagination. Don't let the words put you off; we need this terminology, I am not trying to conjure anything up, I am not trying to conjure up any kind of superstition. This inspired perception yields a very significant result for the human insight, while in the imagination one only has the result that one can trace back the stream of human life that one has gone through from the time when one can remember back, as something present. One has a tableau of one's entire previous experience before one. What is otherwise a stream, from which memories only emerge like waves, is now a unified whole: that is the first result of imagination.

The result of the second, higher level of knowledge, which develops in the way I have just described, is the knowledge of the eternal in our soul, the truly eternal in our soul, which passes through birth and death. In order to orient oneself in the supersensible world as freely as one orients oneself in sensory empiricism, one must ascend to this conception. And now one is in a position to also have the imagination through which one recognizes a higher world, to suppress it in turn and thereby really observe processes in this higher world. Just as no one can make external observations who cannot move his eyes around and only fix his gaze on something, so too would no one be able to observe in the supersensible world if they can only imagine and cannot extinguish the imaginations through arbitrariness. Here it is a moving of the sense organs, which, as it were, glide over the outer world, in outer empiricism; in the higher worlds it is the calmness of the soul, but the mobility of the external, of the imaginations themselves, which convey the orientation in this supersensible world to us.

The third stage of supersensible knowledge is what I call intuition in the true sense of the word – not in the usual, confused sense. This intuition is attained when the human being then also acquires a complete consciousness of what fills him when he has extinguished the imaginations, when he has thus created an empty consciousness. Of course you cannot have content at the same time when you have done this, but what happens is that when you return to imagination, you take with you the content that you have experienced in the empty consciousness. Do you realize, my dear audience, how the content of the supersensible worlds now turns from the subjective to the objective? First you have imagination, you experience a being, and this being adequately enters your consciousness in the form of an image. You know that this is the adequate image, but the being itself does not become present in consciousness. In inspiration you learn to orient yourself, but the being still does not become present in consciousness. Now, in intuition, what one has experienced — even if consciousness has not directly experienced a being, but the soul has experienced a being in reality — now what was there during empty consciousness also occurs when one has imagination again. That is to say: the supersensible being in which one was objective enters into the subjective. In intuition, one actually has a subjective presence of the objective, supersensible world of being.

That, ladies and gentlemen, is one way of entering this supersensible world. From this description – which, of course, can only be sketchy and, for those who are not yet familiar with the subject through the literature, can certainly only serve as a stimulus rather than as a convincing argument – you can at least see that it is really not a matter of random fantasies of a few eccentrics or some kind of suggestion spread by a sect, but that these are clearly defined processes that take place in the soul, processes that can be experienced in order to enter into a different reality than the one we are familiar with in our ordinary lives. But through this anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, my dear audience, one sees a relationship developing in human life between the subjective and the objective, and indeed to the objectively supersensible, which is defined in just as sharp a way as in the mathematical science the relationship between what is only formally developed internally in mathematics and what is given in empiricism as being and is illuminated by mathematics. So you see: the same process by which, for example, the natural science theorists, who consider natural science to be so certain that they say: There is only as much science in the knowledge of nature as mathematics is in it —, this same process of science is taken as a basis by anthroposophical spiritual science and only further developed accordingly.

And this shows us, my dear attendees, that we can come to the position of not only penetrating reality, which encompasses the external realm of nature, but also other realities. And since the human being arises from a different reality than the reality of nature, he cannot be understood, nor can any practice be developed that relates to the life of the human being himself, if one has only a science that relates to nature.

But if you have a science that relates to the spiritual content of the world - and that is anthroposophically oriented spiritual science - then you have a basis for understanding what is soul and what is spiritual in a person. With this, one has a science that can move from itself to social practice, to a - if I may use the expression - social technique, just as ordinary natural science moves from science to external mechanics or technology, to practice. Therefore, this anthroposophically oriented spiritual science believes that impulses for a sociology, for a social science, for social work, can only be found if, at the same time, the path out of the ordinary scientific method into the spiritual scientific method is sought. One might say, dear ladies and gentlemen, that a true sociology, a true social science, will only be created when we seek this anthroposophically oriented spiritual science. There we see the world significance of this anthroposophically oriented spiritual science.

But we must be clear about one thing: once this method of spiritual science has been learned, a certain continuation of science itself is given. Therefore, not only the humanities, which all suffer from the one-sided modern scientific methodology, will experience a fertilization, but the natural sciences themselves will also be able to experience a fertilization. For let us be clear about this: at the dawn of modern times, we can almost grasp how this particular way of approaching the world mathematically came about.

Anyone who is truly familiar with the scientific development of earlier centuries knows that mathematics has actually developed more and more as an inner consciousness of man; it is not possible to state the exact point in time, but at least an approximation can be given. If we go back to Galileo, we find approximately the point in time when the separate mathematical image detached itself in the consciousness of European scientific humanity from the content with which it was previously still connected in a synthetic way, so to speak. In the observed object, one had the mathematical content and the empirical content of being. Mathematical thinking only gradually detached itself, slowly and gradually; it was already present in the elements, but it became particularly detached with the discovery of the laws of falling in the Galilei period and through what Galilei himself found to be the laws of the pendulum.

If we consider the whole relationship between mathematics and empiricism as it arose at that time, then we say to ourselves: It is only in recent times of human development, just as today man has an awareness of the inner connection, that man has actually come to this ability to visualize mathematical content. In the past, we were more connected to the sensual content. If you look at Aristotle and the Greek thinkers, you will still find the sensual-physical content separate from the mathematical content. In my book “The Riddles of Philosophy” you will find this presented for the conceptual system of man in general.

Since the time of Galileo, we have undergone a definite development, and today this development manifests itself in two ways: First, humanity strives beyond the mathematical as if by an indefinite instinct, and it arrives at all kinds of non-Euclidean geometries and the like. It wants to further develop the purely inner mathematical, torn away from the empirical content. Today we can even see exactly where the mathematical encounters reality. This is the case, for example, in synthetic and projective geometry. But at the same time we see how man, as it were, loses his direction, in that he has the urge to further develop the mathematical, but does not know that if one tears it away from its strict interrelationship with sensory empiricism, one can easily lose one's footing - if one does not transform it into imagination and inspiration. And today we see this process of hypermathematics, of mathematical hypertrophy, I would say, in the scientific development, especially in the theory of relativity of Einstein and his followers. There mathematics is detached out of instinct from what really is systole and diastole or at least can be compared with it. And that is how you end up with a lack of direction; you end up building theories that show that you have stopped working in a realistic way, but that you go too far in this development of the soul towards the mathematical, that you exaggerate, that you still want to let it be mathematical in those points that should actually merge into imagination, inspiration and intuition.

It is precisely in such one-sidedness that we see, my dear attendees, how in our time there is already the maturity to go beyond purely mathematical science, but how, as it were, in a kind of spiritual inertia, man continues the direction that has led to such triumphs in the mathematical treatment of nature, beyond the limit where mathematics is possible. He surrenders to the law of spiritual inertia, he does not metamorphose that which is experienced in the mathematical into the imaginative, whereby he no longer grasps the ordinary empirical reality through that which is inwardly formed, but a supersensible, spiritual reality. We have now reached the point where we need to reflect on how to apply mathematics in the field of natural science, but also how to penetrate nature with imagination, inspiration and intuition. And we are at the point where world development necessarily demands a scientific method that can also penetrate into social practice, into the social life of human beings.

Therefore, dear attendees, the anthroposophical direction, which I have been representing here in Stuttgart for many years now, has focused its attention not only on establishing relationships with one side of life, on deepening the purely spiritual, but has also made it its business to work its way into the individual scientific fields. And I would like to give you some examples of this.

In tomorrow's lecture, I would like to give examples of how this spiritual science can have a fruitful effect in the fields of inorganic and organic natural science. Anthroposophically oriented spiritual science not only seeks to engage with natural science, but also to absorb scientific facts in order to fertilize them through new methods and thereby create something for humanity that can go beyond the merely mechanistic technology that we have achieved in recent times. In this second lecture, I would like to show how, in the psychological-historical, in all that concerns the human being itself, spiritual science must first create a real science of the soul, a real ethnology, and also a real jurisprudence.

In the third lecture, I would then like to show how this spiritual science is called upon to actually carry out what is outlined in my book 'The Key Points of the Social Question'. I would like to show what should have a fertilizing effect on social activity, on the social will itself, what creates social impulses by filling us not only with ideas that are contemplatively devoted to nature, but with ideas that become life forces themselves, so that they permeate people as with soul blood when they engage in social life. And finally, I will show how religious and ethical life is fertilized, and how ethical life, as the highest expression and flowering of social life, can appear when man is not merely filled with abstract ideas or with vague impulses, but with ideas that gain life in him, that permeate him inwardly with light so that he can then also intervene with strong forces in the social life.

At least sketchily, I would like to show you the path that can be taken from the natural sciences up to the humanities, namely in sociology and ethics. These lectures in particular can show that, through this anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, the life of contemporary civilization can be served by a fertilization of all the individual specialized sciences, and that truly with scientific seriousness, with a method that is just as conscientious, just as filled with a sense of responsibility for the world and humanity as the other sciences.

Distinguished Participants! The spiritual-scientific considerations from which we have to start today can be brought to the fore because they can shed light on what follows. At first it will seem as if today's topic has little to do with the intention of establishing a relationship between spiritual-scientific knowledge and practical life. However, if we do not move on to those things that can lead us to the center of scientific considerations, things would remain unresolved. And this central point of scientific observation stands before us today in such a way that it is actually excluded from conventional science. For one must admit: when man looks at nature, he tries to recognize nature from his own point of view, and in so doing he is involved in all these points of view; the process of knowledge flows under his direct participation, he cannot, as it were, exclude himself. And only when we have become familiar with his involvement will we be able to look at what, in today's approach, we would like to separate from the human being, namely those phenomena from which, as they say, we want to build an 'objective picture of the world'. Today, in order to arrive at a physical world view, one wants to disregard the human being altogether; one wants to achieve the ideal that the human being does not bring anything of himself into the physical world view. But in order to fulfill such an ideal, the question must first be decided to what extent the human being is able to observe phenomena completely separately from himself. And on the other hand, the fact that, precisely when man is observed in the spirit of today's scientific view, one cannot avoid applying to man what has now been gained from this view of nature and what is supposed to be quite independent of man. Today, it has almost become the norm to introduce psychological observations, observations about the human soul life, by sending purely scientifically researched results ahead. Indeed, what can be said about the physiological results of psychology is even considered to be the most important. But in doing so, what was intended to be studied independently of the human being in its own right is itself brought back into the studies on humans. And it is no wonder that psychological studies also reach limits that are highly unsatisfactory. This has become customary in scientific observation. But it can also be said that, as a result of these habits of thought, the human being has basically been completely excluded from the observation of the world. We can say, for example, that the ideal of the astronomical approach is to stick as closely as possible to what can be expressed through measuring, counting and the like. The physical ideal has also been transferred to astronomy, and attempts are being made to arrive at ideas about the relationships between the world bodies, in which the Earth is also included, and in doing so, man is completely excluded. This is quite obvious to anyone who today considers the scientific approach in this field. He is not considered at all in any connection with that which is otherwise examined as a law.

In physics, it is quite common and perhaps even taken for granted – we will see in later lectures to what extent – that the human being is excluded. One then comes to the more organic sciences via chemistry, which should then culminate in biology and in special anthropology. But it is precisely here that the 19th-century approach has increasingly endeavored to investigate, using all sorts of methods that are very commendable in this field, how one animal form develops from another evolves from another animal form, how the simplest animal forms perfect themselves – if the term is used in a relative sense, it may well be used – how then, at the top of the animal forms, man can be observed.

But the aim of all this, which has emerged as the history of development, as the theory of descent, is to understand man by first learning to understand the laws of animal life very well, then applying those laws found in animal life to the life of man, and thinking of these laws in a modified way in order to understand man. In a particular field, this has led to a situation in which the findings from animal experiments are considered to be absolutely decisive for human beings as well. No matter how clear it may be that all kinds of theoretical objections have to be raised, what is gained in terms of biological truths from animal experiments is considered to be absolutely binding for human beings as well. In the fundamentals of therapy, what is gained from animal experiments is regarded as decisive, in a certain sense, for what is then to be recognized in man. Especially in this field, it is quite clear how, by believing that one is getting close to the animal organization, one supposes that one can also get close to the human organization, only by a certain modification of the results.

Exactly the same thing, only appropriately modified for a different field, has occurred in the field of political economy. Since the time of Adam Smith, we have theories that do not actually consider the human being as such as a social object. The fact that the human being in his totality stands within the social order is completely ignored, and it is actually not the human being who is considered, but the human being in so far as he is a “possessor”, as a “private owner” and so on. Man is not considered as a free being, in so far as freedom flows from the center of his nature, but only that which is called “economic freedom” is considered. So here, too, we see that man as such is excluded from the point of view. And one can see nothing else in this exclusion of man than a fundamental feature of all modern science.

The question now is whether, if one tends towards such an exclusion of the human being, one can thereby arrive at a somehow significant, somehow satisfying or reality-capturing characteristic of the extra-human world view that presents itself in inorganic natural science, for example. In order to throw light on this in the right way, it is necessary that we do not come to the subject of inorganic natural science directly but indirectly, and that today we familiarize ourselves with the path that can lead to such an unprejudiced discussion.

I will start from an area that is particularly characteristic because it shows anyone grounded in spiritual science the great discrepancy between a realistic view and a view that is constructed from all kinds of theoretical assumptions and yet believes it is a true reflection of reality. As I said, this area is especially characteristic because, on the one hand, it shows this discrepancy and, on the other hand, it shows how far removed today's ordinary view of science is from what spiritual science, as it is meant here, wants to be and how spiritual science wants to fertilize the individual specialized sciences. I am referring to the field of optics, in particular the field of color theory. Today, of course, anyone who points out the question of whether Goethe's theory of colors is justified or the theory of colors that is recognized by physics today is immediately dismissed as a scientific dilettante. Now, the essential thing about this matter is that Goethe never wanted to do any scientific research without placing the human being in the whole structure of the world. He does not want to do a scientific investigation separate from the human being; he therefore also brings all experimentation with colors to the human being itself.

Our present world view, as it is expressed in the sciences - and it is, as we shall see, entirely a world view that expresses itself in the sciences, although this is often denied - the world view that is expressed in the sciences today has strayed far from the paths that Goethe laid out, even though he is considered a dilettante in this field by so-called experts. In my introductions to Goethe's scientific writings in Kürschner's National Literature, I have tried to express the very thing that matters in a scientific appreciation of Goethe: this particular current of scientific work as it was undertaken by Goethe. This particular current has actually dried up at the present time. On the other hand, the scientific approach of the present day – which is particularly strong in the field of inorganic natural science and in all those fields where the inorganic can be transferred into the organic – looks down on the Goethean approach. On the other hand, it is based entirely on what natural science has become through such views as Newton's. Even if Newton's views themselves are outdated in many respects, it must be said that the way of research is entirely dependent on Newton's views. And so, Goethe's theory of colors has not been continued in our accepted science, only in Newton's.

Today, I would like to provide a kind of aphoristic introduction to this topic from various points of view, which may help us to move forward.

In Goethe's view, the theory of colors is all about considering colors in connection with what is happening in the human organism itself. You only need to open Goethe's Theory of Colors to see that Goethe starts out from the physiological colors, from the behavior of the eye, which he, however, basically considers differently, one might say, than it is considered today. Today, we actually look at the eye in such a way that we think of it as being separate from the whole human organism, that we sort of isolate it from this organism, that we look at it as an optical apparatus and then try to get to know how – when this eye is taken out of the organism, when it is looked at as an optical apparatus – how the impressions on the eye, the stimuli on the eye and so on are presented. Just try to visualize how this approach actually works. If you want to clarify something in relation to the eye, if you want to answer the question: How does the eye relate to any visible object? , with this mode of observation one can hardly do otherwise than to draw the eye itself in some average on the board, to lead lines from the object to the eye and so on; then one can still ask: How do the different parts of the eye relate to that which exerts a stimulus there?

It is perhaps difficult for someone who is completely schooled in today's scientific observation to grasp what the difference is between this way of looking at things, which I have just characterized in a somewhat radical way, and the Goethean way of looking at things, and how this way of looking at things relates to the physiological-subjective way in which Goethe does his experiments. He conducts his experiments in such a way that he allows the eye to be part of the living process of the organism; he allows the eye to be, so to speak, a degree of conscious organ in the human organism during his experimentation. Thus, the eye experienced in man, the eye felt to be alive in connection with man, Goethe regarded as the starting point for his physiological-subjective color investigations.

The eye that Goethe exposed to the phenomena during his experiments cannot be drawn on a blackboard. And what Goethe then describes as phenomena in the realm of light and color cannot be drawn on a blackboard either. Goethe is therefore averse to those abstractions which today's physicist draws on the board immediately when he means anything at all in the field of colors or optics. Goethe is reluctant to draw this whole abstract system of lines. He describes what, so to speak, lives in the consciousness of any optical process.

It is only when Goethe passes over from subjective colors to objective colors, when he investigates the external physical color formations, that he actually begins to draw in the sense that today's physicist loves. The whole process of seeing in today's physicist is - at least in thought - separated from human nature, translated into the inorganic, represented in mathematical lines. In Goethe's work, life is not eradicated from the process of seeing; rather, what arises in the modified process of seeing is merely described; at most, it is given form by fixing the phenomena, I would say, with an inner, meaningful symbolism.

It is important to point this out, because it is in this approach, in this overall attitude to appearances, that distinguishes Goethean observation of nature from the way we observe nature today. This Goethean observation of nature is perhaps much less convenient than the present-day approach. For it is generally easier to draw things on the board with mathematical lines than to grasp with the mind's eye what makes strong demands on our imagination and what cannot really be drawn with sharply defined lines.

But at the same time, my dear audience, something else becomes apparent. Goethe starts from the physiological colors; I have already explained this to you when I characterized his way of coming to insights through different methods of investigation than today's methods of investigation. But then his whole approach culminates in the chapter he called 'The Sensual and Moral Effects of Color'. There Goethe goes, as it were, directly from the physical into the soul, and he then characterizes the whole spectrum of colors with extraordinary accuracy. He characterizes the impression that is experienced; it is, after all, something that is experienced quite objectively. Even if it is experienced subjectively, it is something that is experienced objectively in the subject, the impression that, let us say, the colors towards the warm side of the spectrum, red, yellow, make. He describes them in their activity, how they have an exciting or stimulating effect on people. And he describes how the colors on the cold side have a relaxing effect, encouraging devotion; and he describes how the green in the middle has a balancing effect.

He thus describes, so to speak, a spectrum of feelings. And it is interesting to visualize how a psychologically differentiated view immediately emerges from the orderly physical perspective. Anyone who understands such a course of investigation comes to the following conclusions. He says to himself: The individual colors of the spectrum are standing before us, they are experienced as entities that appear quite distinct from man. In our ordinary perception of life, we naturally and justifiably attach the greatest importance to directly observing this objective element, let us say in red, in yellow. But there is an undertone everywhere. If you look at the direct experience, it can only be separated in the abstract from what is, so to speak, an externally isolated experience of the red shade and the blue shade in the objective sense; it is an abstract separation of what is also directly experienced in the act of seeing act, but which is only hinted at, which is, so to speak, experienced in a quiet undertone, but which can never be absent, so that, in this area, one can only observe purely physically if one first abstracts what is experienced in the soul from the physical.

So, first we have the outer spectrum, and on this outer spectrum we have the undertone of the soul experiences. We are thus confronted with the outer world through our senses, through our eyes, and we cannot adjust the eye differently, except that, even if often unconsciously or subconsciously, soul experience is involved. We call what is experienced through the eye a sensation. We are now accustomed, ladies and gentlemen, to calling the sensation experienced something that is experienced by the soul – that is, an impulse that comes from what is objectively spread out and presents itself as a sensation – something subjective. But you can see from the way I have just presented this in reference to Goethe that we can, so to speak, set up a counter-spectrum, a soul counter-spectrum, that can be precisely paralleled with the outer optical spectrum.

We can set up a spectrum of differentiated feelings: exciting, stimulating, balancing, giving and so on. When we look outwards, we see the yellow; we feel the stimulating undertone of it, the active influence from the outside world. What about the experience of the soul? This experience of the soul comes from within us to meet the outer world. But let us assume that we are able to record exactly what we have experienced in relation to the red, the yellow, the green, the blue, the violet. Let us assume that we could record the feelings in such a differentiated way that we have a spectrum of feelings within us, just as we have the ordinary optical spectrum from the outside. If we now imagine that from the outside, the red, yellow, green, blue, violet, i.e. the objective, ignites the undertones of excitement, stimulation, balance, devotion , we could thus see it as something that accompanies external phenomena, so that this external phenomenon is there without us, but the accompanying spectrum of feelings is there through us. Would it be so absurd to assume that the same could happen from within, which otherwise underlies this spectrum of feelings without our intervention from the outside? Would it be so absurd that the spectrum of feelings would now be present within and that the spectrum of colors would jump out of it in the experience of the human being, which is now captured in inner images? Just as the color spectrum is there and the inner emotional experiences are added through our presence, it could also be that the emotional experiences, which can be represented in the differentiated spectrum, would be seen as the objective, the objective that is inwardly situated, and now what can be compared with the objective color spectrum jumps out as an undertone.

Now, spiritual science does not claim anything other than that a method is possible in which what I have presented to you now as a postulate is really experienced [inwardly] in the same way as it is in the outer experience where the objective spectrum is present and, as it were, extends as a veil over the objective spectrum, the subjective spectrum of feeling. In the same way, the spectrum of feeling can now be experienced inwardly, to which the color experience now connects. This can be truly experienced and it underlies what I characterized in more abstract terms yesterday as the imagination. What is an external phenomenon spread out in space can certainly be brought forth from the human being as an inner phenomenon. And just as the external phenomenon becomes more and more diluted in our knowledge, so the inner experience becomes more and more concentrated as it is absorbed by the unconsciously developed consciousness within us, as I indicated yesterday.

You just have to be clear about it, my dear attendees, that what occurs in the spiritual science meant here is by no means nebulous fantasies, as it is mostly the result of some kind of “mystical worldviews” known as reveries. What is meant here as anthroposophical spiritual science is based on experiences that one does not have otherwise, that must first be developed, but that can be grasped and followed in absolutely clear concepts.

Thus we may say that Goethe has described the objective outer world just as a human being would who is half-consciously aware of the fact that there is an inner counterpart to what he is describing outwardly, and that there is an inner vision corresponding to the outer vision. Once we have familiarized ourselves with this train of thought, and if we have made an effort to experience something along the lines I have just suggested, namely to allow our differentiated emotional life to brighten to imaginations, which may then be addressed with the same words with which one designates the external phenomena - when one has risen to these things, then one is offered the prospect of an understanding of the human being, which is precisely what is missing in modern scientific views. How could one possibly arrive at an understanding of the human being if one artificially separates everything that arises in a person's interaction with the world, if one only wants to look outward and not at all inward? That, and nothing else, is ultimately what is raised as an accusation against spiritual science, especially from the scientific side, namely that it does not proceed scientifically. This is a prejudice that has arisen from the fact that from the outset only that which is separate from the human being is accepted as scientific observation, and the undertones that characterize the human element are not considered at all. As a result, one cannot find the transition to what the human being actually experiences within himself. The colors I am thinking of now, which arise from the spectrum of feelings just as the spectrum of feelings arises from the objective external spectrum, these colors are experienced in imaginative contemplation, and they form the mediation for recognizing the spiritual in the same way that the outer spectral colors form the mediation for recognizing the external sensual-physical. One could say that the surfaces of external bodies reveal themselves in the ordinary spectral colors. If I now express myself in a somewhat strange, seemingly paradoxical way, I would have to say: the surfaces of the spiritual - of course every reasonable person will know what I mean, that I do not mean some kind of sphere when I speak of a spiritual -, the surfaces of the spiritual express themselves in those colors that are evoked in the imagination from the spectrum of feelings. Instead of pursuing this thought further and saying to oneself, if outer nature is as it is, then another way of seeing must be possible, then one must try to arrive at this way of seeing – instead of saying this to oneself, and , the opponents devote themselves much more to pouring scorn and ridicule on what is called the human aura, which is nothing more than what has been brought to inner perception in another field, as here in the field of the spectrum of feelings.

But when one has become imbued with this view, my dear audience, then it has all sorts of consequences. For example, it has the consequence that one now also continues the same kind of train of thought, through which one tries to get a picture of the way in which external sensory impressions arise, to the inside of the human being, so that one can say: something is going on that one can indeed then recognize by the human being surrendering to the sensory impressions and making them his own experiences right up to the point of imagining them. But something must also take place in man when he perceives what is within him, when he therefore devotes himself to his inner being. Then something takes place that is directed inwards, just as something takes place when he directs his attention, his perception, outwards. And if you then adjust your method of investigation to this, then from there a light is also thrown on certain physiological facts, which otherwise, when they come to us as in today's science, are quite unsatisfactory for those who seek a real understanding and not just one that has been acquired.

As I said, I will illuminate things aphoristically from different angles; we will come to connections. You know that in today's science, a distinction is made between nerves that spread outwards within the human being and are supposed to mediate perceptions. These nerves are contrasted with another type of nerve, those nerves that are supposed to go from the central organs to the human limbs and so on; these nerves are supposed to have the task of conveying the will, just as the other nerves are supposed to have the task of conveying sensory perceptions. Some very nice constructions have been devised, involving the conduction of sensations to the central organ, their transformation there into volitional impulses, and the innervation of the motor nerves, which are then supposed to mediate what leads from the will to movement and the like. Certainly, the things that are cited to justify the distinction between these two types of nerves are very seductive. I need only recall what one believes, for example, can be studied in a well-known, very painful disease, tabes. One believes that, of course, all the sensitive nerves are intact, that only the motor nerves have suffered damage.

Everything that is said in this direction based on a preconceived notion about things is quite seductive. On the other hand, however, one should be suspicious, firstly, of the anatomical findings, which in no way provide any clues to distinguish these types of nerves, and secondly, of the fact that one type of nerve can be transformed into the other. If you cut one and connect a sensitive nerve and a motor nerve at the point of intersection, then these nerves can certainly be formed into a unified one. One should be perplexed by such things, which are well known, but once you have set the explanation in a certain direction, then you continue to think in that direction, and you can no longer be persuaded to really examine the matter from the beginning.

If one actually pursues what can be observed impartially as sensory and motor processes, one will in fact find no basis for making such a distinction of nerves. But if one starts not from one-sided but from total presuppositions, one will be compelled to assume inward mediation of sensation just as much as one recognizes outward mediation of sensation. Just as one recognizes the transmission of sensation through the nerve from the outside, whereby one becomes inwardly aware of some entity of the external world, so it is necessary that a consciousness be transmitted from what is inwardly located in the human organism; it is necessary that a real sensation occur of that which is inwardly located in the human organism. And if we continue the investigation in this way, we will find in the so-called motor nerves nothing other than those nerves that convey perceptions of the inside of the body in the same way that the so-called sensitive nerves convey perceptions of external entities. On the one hand, we have nerves that connect us to the outside world; on the other hand, we have nerves that connect us to our own inner world. It is quite natural that if our optic nerves are not working and we are blind, we cannot reach for an object; and if the motor - but in truth the sensitive - nerve that is supposed to convey that a limb is to perform a movement is not in us, we simply do not perceive the relevant limb, the relevant processes in the limb, and we cannot perform the movements. A truly consistent train of thought shows us that what are called motor nerves are to be imagined as sensory nerves - only as those that convey inner sensations, the sensations of one's own body, the processes within one's own body. You will see that if you really apply the idea that I have just presented to what are now quite empirically established facts, you will be able to see through everything that these empirical facts represent, without contradiction, and that anyone who really thinks consistently cannot really do anything with the theories, such as those that exist about the difference between the sensitive and motor nerves, because in reality they continually lead to contradictions.

I have hinted at something here, where anthroposophically oriented spiritual science aims at the perception of the human organism. It does not do this out of some kind of prejudice, but rather out of an objective consideration of the facts – only that it transforms the organ that considers these facts in such a way that imaginative perception, in the sense of what we discussed yesterday, is added to ordinary objective perception.

And if we look around again in another field of today's research, we have to say: today we have a strange thing as psychology, for example. Just look at what Theodor Ziehen calls his “physiological psychology”, but look at it with sound judgment. There you are first of all made aware of the fact that we have ideas. Then these ideas are examined in relation to their qualities, as far as the powers of observation of such a researcher go. The chains and associations of ideas are examined and so on. In a sense, then, the faculty of imagination as it exists in empirical reality is grasped. Then this psychological field of imagination, with its various processes, is contrasted with what is given by brain-nerve physiology; and it cannot be denied that to a high degree there are parallels between the structure of the brain and what emerges as the facts of the life of imagination. Now, however, the soul life does not only include representations, it also includes impulses of feeling and of the will. And now let us take a look at what this “physiological psychology” makes of feeling. It is simply stated: feelings as such - which are really a very real experience after all - are not considered at all, only the “emotional emphasis” of the life of representation is considered. It is observed how the emotional emphasis connects with the ideas, which thus connect according to the laws of association - the connection corresponds to a certain structure of the nerves and the brain structure. So these emotional emphases are an appendage of the life of ideas. In a sense, the life of ideas points to something that loses itself in the indefinite. The emotional emphasis of the life of ideas loses itself in the indefinite.

One cannot make any progress if one attempts to parallel the life of the imagination with the structure of the brain and nerves. One is forced not to move from the life of the imagination to the emotional life at all, but to regard the emotional life only as a special emphasis of the life of the imagination. So now we have lost the emotional life in the psychological view. The focus has been placed on the fact that the ideas have emotional emphasis – and then the emotional life disappears into an indeterminate X. We may be living quite intensely in these feelings, but for the modern psychologist they disappear into nothingness. Something that we identify so strongly with our human self as the emotional life is no longer to be grasped by cognition at all.

And the impulses of the will, which actually represent our real starting point for the outside world, the impulses of the will, there is no possibility at all in such a physiological psychology to even begin to consider them. For feelings, one at least begins with the life of ideas and considers them in so far as they are emotional accents of the life of ideas; but the will impulses are considered in such a way that one really only looks at what follows them from the outside. One sees one's arm move when some will impulse is present; one sees the effect of the will impulse. Thus one observes the volitional impulse from the outside. It does not occur to one to seek in any way to really arrive at the way of observing the volitional impulse.

In a certain sense, the life of ideas and the nervous life are still seen as belonging together by the modern psychologist. In a certain sense, more or less materialistically or, as a certain theory would have it, according to the principle of psychophysical parallelism, he still finds a relationship, even if it is as external as in the case of psychophysical parallelism, between the structure of the life of the imagination and the structure of something physical, but then the matter stops, then one absolutely does not go further.

Hence the hopeless theory, which is repeatedly warmed up and always refuted, of the interaction of the soul-spiritual with the physical-bodily. One does not know the real, empirical connection between the soul-spiritual and the physical-bodily. One does not examine this connection in detail, as one examines the connection between oxygen and hydrogen in detail, but one puts forward all kinds of abstract theories about it, which then, of course, can always be refuted. For it is a basic law that what is only theoretically constructed out of concepts always has as much for itself as against itself, that it can be proved as easily as refuted. The secret of much of the scientific discussion of the present time lies in the fact that theories constructed in this way can be affirmed or denied equally well. This is the case with the theory that presents itself as a thoroughly inadequate understanding of the human being. Man has simply been eliminated in the modern scientific spirit.

I have contrasted this with what has emerged for me through the organic threefoldness of the human being. It is the result of more than thirty years of research; and I was able to convince myself that what I will outline to you today - I will come back to it from different angles in the next few days - I can assure you that I have followed up the results of today's scientific research everywhere in order to verify what has emerged from pure spiritual science over the course of decades. And I would not have dared to express what I communicated about these results in my book 'Von Seelenrätseln' (Puzzles of the Soul) a few years ago, until it now appeared to me to be fully verified. One always believes that the spiritual scientist speaks only at random. In truth, spiritual scientific research demands years of work just as much as other scientific research.

What became clear to me is that only human imagination, the human field of imagination, has a structure that is connected to what we can call the nerve-sense life. Because we started from the assumption that the whole life of the soul must be connected with the nerve-sense life, we lost two links in the life of the soul. One can associate nothing with the nerve-sense life except the life of thinking. One cannot bring the life of feeling or the life of the will into direct connection with the nerve-sense life – into an indirect one, however, because feelings and will impulses are also presented; this is how an indirect connection comes about. But one cannot find a direct connection between the life of feeling and the nerve-sense life.

On the other hand, there is a direct connection between the emotional life and the course of all those processes in the human organism that are rhythmic, such as breathing, blood circulation and so on, so that we have to say: just as the life of thinking is connected with the nerve-sense life, so the life of feeling is connected with the rhythmic system.

It is interesting – I have already pointed this out in the book 'Von Seelenrätseln' – to examine the musical experience under these conditions. Anyone who has ever studied the analysis of the musical experience will know how much of this musical experience is thoroughly emotional, but how this emotionality must be related to the life of the imagination. Otherwise we could not bring differentiated melody into the musical experience; we could not even have the individual tone in its objective grasp if the imaginative experience did not come together in some way with the emotional experience in the overall musical experience. But it is emphasized again and again, and rightly so, that the main thing in the musical experience is the emotional experience. And people like Eduard Hanslik, in his book 'On Musical Beauty', go too far when they want to eliminate the emotional experience altogether and see the musical more or less only in the experience of tonal arabesques. But this musical experience must be analyzed further. Then we come to relate this musical experience, which in objectivity corresponds to something rhythmic and related to rhythm, to that which, so to speak, runs musically within us: to the processes of our rhythmic system. One can now follow in a complete way how, through the inhalation process, the cerebral fluid is pushed through the spinal canal towards the brain, how it, as it were, bumps into the brain and how it in turn swings down during the exhalation process. One can follow how the rhythm is now also modified by the modification of the breathing process in this ascending and descending cerebral fluid. And if we approach this view with the same objectivity as we do other objective views of the external world, we will come to examine how, for example, the breathing experience is modified in song. We will find something that is expressed in song as a musical experience in the breathing experience; we will find the breathing experience in the oscillating brain water. We shall then recognize the union of this rhythmic process in the human organism with the nerve-sense process in the brain, and thus recognize the interaction of the rhythmic system and the nerve-sense system. And then we shall be able to separate what corresponds to the emotional experience, which in the human organism is entirely the rhythmic system.

It is necessary to approach these things with careful analysis, then they offer the possibility of finding in the human being itself what now gives a true picture of the human organization.

Thirdly, it turns out that the impulses of the will are connected with the metabolic processes of the human organism. Just as the processes of imagination are connected with the nerve-sense processes and the processes of feeling with the rhythmic processes, so the impulses of will are connected with the metabolic processes. And one can definitely find in detail how the impulse of will, which originates in a muscle, arises from this muscle, is based on a metabolic process that takes place in this muscle.

If we consider these three systems, which represent the entire process of the human organism, in their interaction, we will have the physical-bodily counterpart, but the complete physical-bodily counterpart of the soul. We will find the soul mirrored in the human organism in thinking, feeling and willing. And then people will no longer be inclined to speak merely of an emotional emphasis of the life of the imagination, and to consider the impulses of the will only in terms of their external correspondences in the imagination, and to consider the metabolism only in terms of its material side. It is absolutely necessary to also consider the metabolism in its spiritual aspect. There it is that which corresponds entirely to the will.

You will be able to completely resolve any contradictions that may arise from these statements if you approach them in the right empirical way, because these three systems are not separate, but interpenetrate each other. The nerve is built up organically through metabolism, but is something different in terms of its nervous process than the metabolism. However, the metabolic process also works in the nerve, because the nerve must be built up and broken down organically. When metabolism takes place in the nerve, our life of imagination is permeated with the impulse of the will. And one must be as materialistically sick as John Stuart Mill or those who profess him when one speaks of mere associations of ideas - which do not exist in this abstractness - when one completely separates the element of will from the life of ideas.

From this you can see, honored attendees, how necessary it is to seek the relationship between the soul and the physical in a completely different way than is usually done today. I will give you further evidence of this in the course of the lectures. You can see what it is actually about. This is what it is about: to seek in a truly concrete empirical way the relationships of the spiritual-soul to the physical-bodily in the human being, and not just to talk abstractly about the relationships of soul and spirit, which does not give us much more in the content of the words than the relationships of an abstract soul-spirit to the physical-bodily.

But if we apply a way of looking at things that really does see the soul at work in the physical, that recognizes the soul permeating the body through and through in its configuration, and conversely sees everything that takes place in the physical realm as playing into the soul, then we can have a science that can be the basis for a rational medicine and in turn the basis for rational therapy. Here begins one of the chapters in which spiritual science has immediate practical consequences, where it appears to be called upon to find solutions for what is most unsatisfactory when one wants to have human knowledge as a basis for pathology and therapy based on today's conditions.

I have organized these first two lectures in this way mainly so that you can see that anthroposophical spiritual science is not just about fantastically constructing things, but is about providing a serious world view that includes the human being and can therefore do justice to that which, in practical terms, should proceed from the human being in one way or another, according to the two sides described here yesterday. Ultimately, it is a matter of really recognizing the human being, not just talking about him, but really recognizing him, if we want to gain a basis for what should come from the human being in ethical and social terms. In today's world, we are called upon to use our knowledge of the human being to also gain goals for practical life. That is why the subject of these lectures, which are intended to deal with the fertilization of the specialized sciences by spiritual science, had to be set in this way. And we will also see how fruitful results can be gained from such a consideration of the human being, both in technical and in social-practical respects, not only for science but also for life, because basically, if one only understands it in the right sense, true science must always serve true life.

Distinguished Audience! It has often been emphasized, and with good reason, how the division of labor, which is an external phenomenon, has had a damaging effect on the more recent development of humanity. And anyone who takes an unbiased look at the development of social life in modern times cannot help but realize the profound effect this has had on the individual human being, who in earlier times performed tasks to which he was, so to speak, also bound spiritually. Just think of the inner satisfaction that lay in the old crafts, where what one made was transparent in terms of its place in the whole context of the human environment. The door lock that was once made by the craftsman could give him joy because he could see the path it took from his hand to its destination. How different things are today, when the individual person day after day, hour after hour, produces some individual part of a larger whole, without being able to have any interest in what emerges from his hand or from the machine by means of his hand, because he is not directly connected with the path that the thing in question takes from its maker to its final destination. This division of labor, which must, as it were, tie man to something that can never be of interest to him, and which must therefore make man extremely one-sided in his entire life, this division of labor, we will still have to deal with it in particular when we study the social process tomorrow.

But, my dear attendees, there is another division of labor in more recent times. And this other division of labor – even if it is less often emphasized, yes, even if it happens that its advantages are even praised when it is mentioned – this other division of labor, it basically intervenes much more deeply in the individual human being and thus in the whole of human life. And this division of labor, which is of course justified to a certain extent – that is not to be doubted – which above all had to arise necessarily in the historical development of mankind, but this division of labor, because it has not been sufficiently counterbalanced, has in the long run an even more damaging effect on human life as a whole than the one mentioned before. The division of labor has occurred in the field of knowledge and in everything connected with knowledge: it is the division of labor in the field of science. Today, if you go through the usual training as a scientist, you can become absorbed in a specialized science. You then absorb precisely the way of thinking, of imagining certain things, that has come about through the division into individual scientific disciplines and sub-disciplines and sub-sub-disciplines and so on. You don't just externalize, you externalize the soul. You condemn yourself, for example, to take in certain forms of ideas, to immerse yourself in the context of such ideas, and then you say that what fits into this context can be proven with strict exactness; but what is born out of a different context, you say you are not competent to judge.

But everything that man can know ultimately comes from the totality of human nature; and that in turn, which is present at the center of man as a deep soul need, strives for wholeness. Basically, when the one-sidedness becomes so strong without a counterweight, as it has become over time, it is ultimately a mutilation of the soul, from which man must suffer greatly. Such a mutilation of the soul will ultimately lead to a situation in which the bearers of spiritual culture can no longer communicate with each other. It leads to the fact that the bearer of spiritual culture in any field of expertise lives in ideas that are absolutely not applicable to another field of expertise, that he lives in ideas that immediately appear rigid and inapplicable when he wants to grasp something that lies in another field of expertise.

When we consider that all human activity and endeavor should ultimately depend on those who are trained as spiritual guides, then we must admit that under this professional mutilation of the soul life, for which a counterweight is created today to a highly insufficient extent, these personalities become unsuitable to be real spiritual guides. Today it is obvious that humanity lacks spiritual direction, that humanity lacks appropriate guidance. More than anything else, this is to blame for the catastrophic events of our time. And it is precisely out of a real, not superficial, but thorough knowledge of this state of affairs that what is being attempted in Dornach, where the Goetheanum is the School of Spiritual Science, has emerged. On the one hand, it should fully recognize the necessity of dividing and structuring all knowledge into specialized subjects, but on the other hand, it should build the necessary bridges between these subjects. In other words, it should develop one-sided personalities, as they must become through the specialized subjects, into whole personalities, into total personalities. In this way, spiritual science seeks to fulfill one of the most important tasks of our time. This School of Spiritual Science cannot take the view that the demands of the time can be met today simply by transmitting what is taught in our specialized academic subjects through all kinds of channels to the broad masses of the people.

Of course, these popular universities, popular education methods, and so on, come from the very best intentions. But can we really hope that what is done in this way under the cover of our educational institutions can have a truly fruitful effect when it is carried into the broad masses of the people, when it is realized how the one-sidedness of knowledge and of insight into the individual specialized sciences has contributed to our getting into these catastrophic times, which a certain author has characterized by saying that modern civilization must inevitably sail into its own downfall? Can we still have hope when we realize how much this one-sidedness has contributed to our catastrophes? If we see through this, we must say to ourselves: That which has worked in such a way in a small layer of humanity that it has led into catastrophe must surely lead into catastrophe if it is carried out into the broad masses of humanity. In founding the School of Spiritual Science at Dornach, this insight was the basis for the conviction that it is not only necessary to popularize today's education, to spread it out into the broad masses of humanity, but that the opposite process is also necessary: to bring a new kind of knowledge into our universities, so that something different can come from them than what one cannot really hope to popularize in a way that is particularly fruitful for the broad masses. of bringing a new kind of knowledge into our universities, so that something different can come from these universities than what one cannot really hope will have a particularly fruitful effect on the broad masses if it becomes more popular.

This may sound radical, but anyone who takes a broad view of the development process of humanity in our age will inevitably come to this conclusion through a faithful observation of the facts. I would like to discuss something specific in order to show you how anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, as it is meant here, works everywhere to avoid pigeonholing people with their concepts and ideas in any one subject area, but to educate them in this subject area in such a way that they can find their way from it to an understanding of other branches of science. Of course, one does not need to be decisive in some way in every field – under today's conditions one cannot be – but human coexistence is only possible if personalities work together in such a way that the ideas gained from the individual fields can be used to at least understand the other fields. For mutual understanding among people is what we must strive for if we want to make progress in the process of human development, which today shows so many signs of decline.

When you see a physical process, let us say how, under the influence of the warming of a body, that which the physicist says is released as heat, heat that was previously latent, that was, so to speak, hidden inside the body, when you see that and then look at the ideas that the physicist has of such a release of heat, which under certain conditions had not previously appeared externally but was bound internally to the body, then you will say: it would not occur to the physicist, when he sees heat heat, which was previously latent and now becomes free heat, to speak only of a straight-line development and to say that the appearance of the free heat is based on the fact that what was there before developed to include the free heat. One gets used to not speaking in abstract terms here, but trying to gain concrete insights into the process. Much in such processes may still be unexplained, many a hypothesis may still be needed, but one tries, at least in the field of physics, not to simply put forward such abstract ideas as “development”, but one tries to penetrate into what has actually happened when free heat from latent heat, from bound heat arises.

But if we now turn to another field, you will see how, I would say, the spirit of abstraction takes hold of people because they have not yet been able to develop what they have developed in the field of physics another field, because it has not yet been possible to bridge the gap between a subject that has already undergone a certain training and a subject that has remained mutilated precisely because of the division of labor in the field of knowledge. The fact that individual people have become so immersed in their subjects that they no longer understand each other has taken hold of the scientific community itself, and has also had a one-sided effect on science itself, because the field of inorganic science has become powerful. Let us take the developing human being. We see how a person gradually develops from early childhood, from year to year, until they are an adult. We simply follow this development in a linear way. We really speak of it as if what a person achieves in the tenth year has simply resulted from a straight line of development from what he was in earlier years. We see the appearance of soul qualities at a certain time in the development of life; in some way the human being acquires the quality of thinking; he acquires other qualities that, as it were, emerge from the depths of his inner being to the surface of life. We do not observe the connection between physical and mental phenomena as intimately as we try to do so, for example, in the physical field that I have just mentioned. But it is necessary to transfer the same spirit of concrete observation, which we apply, for example, in the physical field, to a field where the phenomena are admittedly more complicated.

But if one makes an effort to enter into the complexity of the phenomena, then one can transfer the spirit from one area to another. But then one must proceed by saying to oneself: There are epochs in human life that, in a certain way, come to a close and give way to new epochs through significant turning points. Two such epochs in human development – of course there are also epochs in animal development, but I am only talking about human development now – two such epochs are, for example, the change of teeth towards the seventh year and then again sexual maturity towards the fourteenth year. The change of teeth and sexual maturation are such turning points. Now it is a matter of really grasping, through concrete observation, what happens in the development of human life up to these turning points.

Whoever observes this faithfully will find that, initially, something happens in physical development up to the change of teeth that must certainly be intimately related to this change of teeth. It is not enough to simply observe the human being from the outside, so to speak. It must be clear that what comes to a conclusion with the change of teeth, so that something similar no longer takes place in the organism in the following phase of life, permeates the whole organism. If we follow such a fact correctly in a concrete process of knowledge, we will say: something happens from birth or conception to the change of teeth, which is connected with such formative forces that then discharge in what occurs during the change of teeth. And if we then turn to the more spiritual life of man, we will find that something equally far-reaching is taking place in the soul and spirit, just as something deeply invasive is taking place in the body with the change of teeth; we will find that, roughly at the same time in life that the change of teeth brings something to a conclusion in the body, something arises that is on the ascendant. We must learn to observe these phenomena just as we observe external physical phenomena. And if we observe them in the same spirit, we shall see that the whole configuration of the child's soul is such as to enable the child to form memories and recollections in a more conscious way; we shall see that the child is able to grasp the indeterminate, indistinct nature of his earlier ideas and perceptions and to give them sharper contours; we shall see that there is a mighty change in the whole way of thinking. to grasp in sharper contours the indeterminacy of earlier concepts, the lack of sharp contours of these concepts; one will see that a powerful change occurs in the whole way of the spiritual-soul life through the formation of concepts.

And anyone who now looks at things with a certain understanding of such processes will seek the connection between what has worked physically on the one hand, what has been discharged and has found a certain conclusion, and what arises as a new formation, as something that unfolds anew, the conditions for the emergence of which must become clear. And if he follows such concepts in reality as thoroughly and in as much detail as possible, he will come to say to himself: That which has been working in the organism until the change of teeth, that which has been working organically, that which was bound to the organism, has been released when the organism has reached a certain, a preliminary point of closure with the change of teeth. It is released, it is transformed into the power of forming images, of outlining these images, into the power of forming conscious memory images, while the earlier memory images were more unconscious. So you can see how something that used to work in the body is released and now works in the soul and spirit. And you gain an insight into how what now occurs consciously as the formation of concepts, as a process of remembering, how it previously worked organically in the organism.

In this way, one comes to understand the whole of human education and organization. One moves away from merely fantasizing and speculating about the spiritual and soul life; one comes to grasp its connection with the physical. Then one gets out of the habit of speculating and forming hypotheses in the scientific field at all. One no longer asks: What can be speculated in order to grasp the spiritual-soul? Instead, one looks, for example, at the concrete development in the organism, at how it finally, so to speak, pushes out its teeth, and one must then acknowledge how the same thing that was bound to the organism, working hidden in the organism, later becomes free. We can follow this in its soul-spiritual form by looking at the soul-spiritual itself, as it has developed in the child; and so we find the connection between the soul-spiritual and the physical-organic by following the things in a concrete way. One no longer constructs an abstract psychology, as is often the case today, which has little more than some word content, but one studies concretely the behavior of one to the other, and one sees how that which is present in a later stage was actually observable in an earlier stage. One arrives at a complete empiricism. In the same way, we can study the other turning point in life, that of sexual maturity. On the one hand, we observe the organic process that culminates in sexual maturity. On the other hand, we ask ourselves: What develops in the soul and spirit? What happens to the forces that are no longer needed for the formation of something organic after sexual maturity, because they have brought the organic to a certain conclusion? What happens to these forces that have been, so to speak, embedded in the organic up to that point? — That which works in the particular nature of the will impulses is present in a completely different way after sexual maturity than before. Before sexual maturity, they are absorbed in a very specific way into the organic processes. But when they are no longer absorbed in the organic processes, they do not become free. Instead, they connect to the organism in a certain more intimate way. Thus, at this turning point in his life, man becomes more master of his organism than he was before. The will integrates itself more intimately and more intensely with the organism than was previously the case.

If we understand how the soul and spirit are connected to the physical and organic, then we can – by using such concepts, which first become mobile in themselves and are thus also suitable for becoming ever richer internally, so that reality can be seen through more and more can be seen through more and more. One can then also study certain processes in the human organism, which are nothing other than the external expression of what one sees through inwardly. For example, the process of voice change, which in the male individual is connected with sexual maturity. A similar process takes place in the female individual, only it is more widespread throughout the whole organism. One only comes to a complete understanding of these processes when one sees in such a way how, through what takes place in the change of voice or in other processes in the female organism, the will energy connects more inwardly, more penetratingly with the organism. And at the same time one comes to understand how what develops up to the change of teeth culminates particularly intensely in the formation of the human head, in which the teeth are formed, while what then emerges at the time of sexual maturity takes hold of the whole rest of the organism, with the exception of the head. All this becomes immediately clear in the contemplation. And through this one attains an inner knowledge, an inner contemplation of the human being. But such an approach can, in turn, have an enormously fruitful effect on the sciences, which, after all, lead quite particularly to certain limits of knowledge, which at the same time are limits, regrettable limits, of human practical reality.

Let us consider, for example, what happens when we try to examine the medical sciences as they present themselves to us today from the point of view of what is unsatisfactory about them. I cannot go into the particularly significant details here, but I would like to point out something that is already a key question. How can we actually unite what is now our natural world view with what is called a disease process in the physical organism? Anyone who studies the disease process will have to say - and this is quite natural - that this disease process takes place according to natural laws. So in the disease process we have something that we have to understand according to natural laws. On the other hand, however, we also have something in the so-called healthy human organism that must be understood according to natural laws; at least we have a certain current of natural laws in the healthy human organism. We express what we recognize in this area of the natural organization of the human being in physiology. And we express what we can recognize in the disease process as a lawfulness, which must also be a natural lawfulness, in pathology. There must now be a bridge between physiology and pathology. It must be possible to gain some kind of insight into how one natural law behaves in relation to the other. And a natural science, or rather a natural scientific way of thinking, as we have it today, cannot lead to any understanding in this field, at least not to an understanding that can be put into practice. That is why we see how, today, the healing arts basically stand unsatisfactorily alongside pathology. I still look back to the time when, within the then Viennese school of medical science, what was then called 'medical nihilism' had taken hold. Celebrities in the field of medicine at that time actually lived in complete scepticism with regard to therapy. To a large extent, they claimed that one could only follow the processes of the diseases, that one could only speak of a more or less rational pathology, but that one could not actually speak of any connection between the intervention of the remedy and the processes of the organism. Therefore, such physicians limited themselves to observing the disease process for wide areas of disease, paying attention when it went into excess in one direction or the other, but basically they did not believe in a rational healing method. They spoke about this quite openly.

Now, of course, there is no longer such skepticism about these things, but in practice it is basically still the case. And that is why it is so difficult for a real medical science to penetrate through all the possible amateurism and quackery that can flourish precisely because it is so difficult to raise awareness of what real science actually is in this field. But this is connected with our scientific view in general. It is connected with something that one believes – rightly, but in a one-sided way – to be a part of the great scientific insights of the 19th century, something that is called the doctrine of descent. In an extraordinarily astute way, in a way that has led individual researchers to the most scrupulous methods of observation, the developmental series of organisms from the imperfect to the more perfect has been sought and placed at the top of the human being, this whole human being as he stands before us today in his organization. To a certain extent, his organism in its entirety has been regarded as a transformation of the animal organism. This has only been possible because certain inner relationships of the human organism have been the subject of completely false concepts. Naturally, I can only hint at these things. They will arise out of a truly comparative genetic-morphological approach to embryology, out of a morphological consideration of the organs, out of a truly comparative genetic-morphological approach to embryology, out of the facts of embryology, in connection with the facts of life. Today, more or less everyone has the idea that, for example, we have something in the brain that can be seen as a complicated formation of what is present in the spinal cord as a nervous organism. In a sense, what is organized in the spinal cord is seen as the original, and what is present in the brain is seen as having emerged from this spinal cord in a complicated way. You cannot interpret the phenomena in this way. If you follow the facts of embryology in an unbiased way, you will get a completely different view. One will come to the view that what is present in the brain can be traced back to such a simpler organization as is present in the spinal cord, but that the spinal cord, as the further development of which the brain is to be regarded, must be thought of as lying more or less horizontally in the brain itself — if I may put it this way. In our present brain, what is spinal cord-like as a basis for our brain - going backwards from the forehead to the back of the head - is only ideally predisposed, so that one has to imagine the brain as a transformation of this formation, which today is only present in the brain in an idealized form, while what we have today in man as the spinal cord can be seen as emerging from the same formative laws as the human brain, but remaining at an earlier stage. So when we look at the spinal cord and the brain in context, we have to say that both are based on the same formative laws, but the brain has been brought to a further stage through this formation. It is only at a later point in phylogeny that the laws of formation intervene in the spinal cord, and it does not reach the same level as the brain. Therefore, the spinal cord is to be seen as the later formation, the initial stage of which lies in an earlier period in the genesis of humanity. The brain is to be placed at an even earlier stage, and it is to be seen as more advanced, so that one must say: the spinal cord is phylogenetically the later formation, which has only remained at an earlier stage, while the brain has been brought to a further stage by this formation.

This is how one has to imagine it with much of the human organism, and this is how one has to think of the entire limb organism, so to speak, if one wants to understand its morphological riddles. The appendage organism must be seen as a later formation that has been left behind at an earlier stage. What emerges in the main formation must be placed at an earlier beginning and thought of as having arrived at a later stage of development. In a sense, one has to see in the human head what has emerged through metamorphosis, through transformation from very early ancestors, and what is present in the appendages of the human being - even if they are larger than the head - has to be seen as added limbs that have remained at an earlier stage.

When one has a clear understanding of human morphology, the first thing one does is to place it in the right relationship to the animal world. Then one says to oneself: if one goes back in the series of time, one sees that what has become of the human head is the most important transformation of its earlier organization. This can be traced back to earlier animal forms – I cannot go into the details now, so the whole thing will seem paradoxical – whereas the human form as a whole must be seen in such a way that the rest of the formation, which is attached to the head, has arisen under conditions that affect the overall form of man quite differently than the modern environment affects the overall form of the animal. Once we understand these relationships, we will relate the human form to the animal world in a completely different way than is the case today. Then, something else comes into play: when one looks at the human head and sees the particular relationships between the soft and bony parts, and compares this, especially in their position, with the relationships between the soft and bony parts in the attached limbs, then one comes to form ideas about the inner workings of the laws of formation in the human organism. And one comes to realize that the human head is not only in a continuous development, but that it carries something in itself, which one initially has to see not as an evolution, but as a devolution, as a retrogressive development, which is only maintained by the fact that this head organism is connected to the rest of the human organism and is maintained by it.

In the human head organization, we are dealing with a continuous process of degeneration, which is, however, nourished by the appendages of the head. While the head itself is organized for degeneration through its organization, we are dealing with a continuous dying in the human head. The processes that are ascending and vitalizing are one thing; the other processes are those that are held back, spread out in the line of time, which, when compressed into an instant, appear as the death of the whole organism. One could also say: what comes over the whole organism in an instant with death could be regarded, mathematically expressed, as an integral for which one seeks the relevant differential. And then one would come to find, distributed over the time line, in the differential series into which one has resolved the integral, that which takes place as a retrogressive development, a devolution in the human main organism. This devolution, however, is found to be the actual basis for the process of imagining and of sensing. We can therefore say that it is impossible to regard what underlies human growth, what underlies ascending development, as the organizing forces, and also as the basis for the processes of soul and spirit. On the contrary! Where the organism is being broken down, the soul and spirit arise precisely above the breakdown, precisely above the destruction of the organic. One cannot gain insight into the connection between the physical body and the soul in man if one does not know that what one regards as the basis of the organization must not be regarded as the basis of the spiritual-soul process. The physical body must first break down, make way, give way, so that the spiritual-soul in man can take hold.

With these few words I have only hinted at how spiritual science does indeed open up a completely organic path, one that is not built on some kind of fantasy but on a true observation of human nature, and one that penetrates to the innermost core. It is truly not the result of arbitrary assertions or vague beliefs when the spiritual researcher says: That which is spiritual-soul in man is not bound to the physical organization, but to the physical disorganization, thus to that which must give way so that the spiritual-soul can arise. It is therefore no wonder that one can follow the spiritual-mental processes in the nervous organs, for to the same extent that any spiritual-mental process occurs, it must displace the corresponding physical organization, which even manifests itself as a physical breakdown. And we will only then arrive at a real connection between the spiritual-soul and physical-bodily processes when we no longer seek the physical-bodily processes as corresponding to the soul processes, but understand them as processes of disorganization, of dissolution, of secretion. If we follow these traces of the physical-bodily excretory processes, we have the true correlate of the mental-spiritual processes; and it is precisely this that guarantees their special individuality and independence in a truly scientific way.

But if you look at this process from the inside, precisely as the process of a human being, then you will no longer be able to place physiology and pathology side by side as it is done today – you just need to pick up any well-known textbook where the individual facts are simply listed one after the other, recorded without being able to evaluate them according to their connection in the whole human organization, so that the person who is guided by the principles of such a so-called science has nothing but individual facts juxtaposed. Things are quite different. In the human organism, on the one hand, we have the anabolic processes, and on the other hand, in terms of the threefold nature of the human organism, which I mentioned in earlier lectures, we also have the catabolic processes, since every anabolic process is simultaneously permeated by the catabolic process. Thus, in the human organism, we do not have a process that runs in a straight line, but rather a process that runs in one direction and is met by another process - an ascending process, a descending process. In so-called normal, healthy life, these two processes are in a certain relationship to each other. If one asserts itself at the expense of the other, then we have to look for the occurrence of the pathological in such a fact. And if we can differentiate the view that I have explained here – and it can be differentiated for the human organization down to the smallest detail – we will be able to penetrate the diseased organism in a rational way. No longer do we face these two currents in physiology and pathology with a sense of mystery. We know that this confrontation is necessary for the human being in a certain way, but that through processes, the description of which would take us too far afield at this point, one or the other can predominate. You will find this described if you engage with the spiritual scientific literature.

I will show you this by means of a specific example of how these things, which I have now presented to you more in the abstract, assert themselves in the concrete grasp of the human organization. You can study how, for example, the epidermal cells of the human being are transformed epithelial cells into sensory cells, just as the glandular cells are also transformed epithelial cells. In this process, which indirectly reveals the connection between the sensory cells and the glandular cells, you will be able to see how what I mentioned yesterday, with regard to the sensory perception of the outside world and the sensory perception of the human interior, can be followed anatomically and physiologically in this metamorphosis of the cells themselves. And then, if you pursue this further by studying the facts that are already available today in an entirely empirical way, you will find that there is a certain process that leads from epithelial cells to sensory cells; that is one current in the organization. We can also follow this current in the opposite direction: epithelial cells – glandular cells. This enables us to gradually ascend in our consideration of the human organization to the way in which the senses are formed from the main organization and from the related organization through a certain development of forces, as if from the inside out. We have localized what can be seen in this process. But since things are not schematically localized in the human being, we have to say that they are mainly localized in the head; but they are also present in the rest of the organism, just as certain senses are spread over the whole organism, while the head preferably contains the senses. Thus we can see how human nature pushes us to develop the sense organs out of itself; other areas are more organized in the direction of developing the epithelium into a glandular state. When we see these polar opposites, we will say: when looked at inwardly – and one must look at human nature inwardly, otherwise one cannot see through it – it all rests on the fact that the current in the organization runs from the inside out one time, the other time, so to speak, in the opposite direction, from the outside in. Here we have something again that develops in the human organism in one direction or the other. And now, my dear audience, it can happen that, due to very specific conditions in areas of the human organism that are otherwise predisposed to processes that run from the outside in, these areas are crossed in an incorrect way by processes that run from the inside out. However paradoxical it may sound, it must be said that in an area of the human organism that in its normal organization is only predisposed to develop glandular tissue, the tendency can arise to lead to a predisposition for a sensory organ formation process. In a certain way, the tendency is incorporated into the epithelial formation, which is otherwise only justified in the human organism where the senses develop. Of course this can occur because, to a lesser extent, everything in the human organism is embedded in everything else; one only has to distinguish it; it can also express itself in the head, which is a counter-process to the sense-forming process. One need only bear in mind that secretory organs are asserting themselves everywhere alongside the sense organs.

But what do we actually have here? You see, we have something here that, if expressed today, seems almost fantastical, because one has to resort to concepts that today's science does not want to accept at all, because, although they are fully rooted in reality, they are quite remote. But we shall never be able to penetrate what we observe in the world if we do not take metamorphosis seriously in this way, even where what has been metamorphosed is no longer at all similar to the original, if we do not regard even there, so to speak, a developed Goetheanism as an ideal for genuine scientific work. It must be said that in a certain area of the human organism, where normally only the tendency to form glands should be present, the tendency to form a sensory organ can be deposited, which then undergoes a sensory organ formation process. And here we have looked at the disease process that can be observed in carcinogenesis, in carcinoma. I will give a concrete example, I will not be embarrassed to cite something that is still laughed at today.

But I do not want to beat about the bush in the abstract, but I want to show that in spiritual science there is something that really penetrates into what is given in the individual fields of expertise, but in a way that can only be understood in relation to today's approach if one wants to proceed courageously in recognizing, really up to the consequences of what is in the beginnings today, in empirical reality. I have not hesitated to present such details to you, of which hundreds and hundreds could be presented to you from the field of spiritual science, so that you may see that this spiritual science does not ramble and prattle in vagueness, but that it sticks to the facts, penetrates everywhere into the facts, and does not talk about soul and spirit in abstract terms, throwing foggy theories over people's heads, which are basically only interpretations of traditional word meanings. Only through the spirit can one penetrate into the individual; one really penetrates spiritually every single thing that exists in the specialized sciences.

And a pathology such as this, which finds the opposite process in the physiological process, that is, in the process of glandular formation – here as a pathological process – such a science can build a bridge to a natural law of physiology and pathology. These are the perspectives that should be provided by the truly exact science of an anthroposophically oriented world view, in addition to the conscientious observation and external precision of methods in the individual modern scientific disciplines, which should be fully recognized. But if, on the one hand, we look at the human being in terms of his ascending and descending processes, then, on the other hand, we will find not only ascending and descending processes in nature, but also ascending and descending organizations. For example, we can follow the process of plant formation. In what Goethe gave in 1790 in his attempt to explain the metamorphosis of plants, only the first beginnings, the basics, are given. But if one continues to develop this method, one comes to see how this plant organization is to be viewed in its subtle subdivisions: how the flowering process takes place, what significance the polar contrast between the root, which grows downwards, and the flower and fruit, which grow upwards, has in the overall context of natural facts.

One then comes to examine, for example, how some process, say the movement of juices in the animal organism, is related to the movement of juices in the human organism. One comes to ascend from the plant to the animal organism and to see in what one encounters in the animal organization the corresponding processes in human nature. And then we also come to consider something like the contrast that exists in the process of plant formation outside of the human being and in the process in the human being. The plant builds its body on the basis of carbon. It deposits carbon in itself and separates oxygen. Man undergoes a similar process in his breathing in connection with the circulation of the blood, in the whole task of the blood circulation – but what happens there? There the carbon is bound to the oxygen, thus producing carbonic acid. We have here what is consolidated in the plant formation process, what is in a certain way external, present in the beginning in man, but which he then expels. We get a certain relationship between the plant formation process outside and that which underlies breathing in humans, which dilutes and breaks the process. And in turn, what is otherwise in the human organism is linked to breathing, and one can then compare that which is linked to the breakdown of these processes in the human organization and that which is linked to the build-up in the human organization. Let us assume that we find something in the human organism that represents a disease process in such a way as the beginning, the malformed beginning of a sense-formation process in cancer. Then, looking for what is in external nature, we can seek the opposite process. It will be possible to introduce it into the human organism by means of a remedy, and thereby have the same healing effect as the carbon has in the human organism, if I may put it this way, by supplying oxygen. It is identical. In this way one gains an inner insight into the connection between what is organized in man and external nature. One gains such insight that in what arises in external nature, one can rationally find the remedy that can serve for any corresponding process in the human organism.

All of this – you will gather this from the way I say it – is not based on phantasms; it is carried out as precisely as is possible in science. But we must work with concepts that can be flexibly applied to the various areas of reality. Our concepts must not be developed one-sidedly in certain specialized fields and then remain what is legitimately presented in the individual specialized fields; our concepts must become flexible so that we can immerse ourselves in the entire wide range of reality. Otherwise, we acquire such concepts with which we believe, in a strange way, to embrace the factual fields, but with which we in reality only remain distant from the factual fields. We have a remarkable example of this in our own time. Those who are familiar with such things will know how many theories about the ether there have been in the course of modern times; they know how attempts have been repeatedly made to characterize the ether as being sometimes rigid and sometimes fluid, depending on the phenomena that were thought to as arising from the interaction of ponderable matter with the ether, characterized the ether as sometimes rigid, sometimes fluid, until finally experiments in modern times are said to have shown that one cannot get ahead with all these old ether theories. The simple experiment that was conducted regarding certain conditions in the propagation of light – or, as it was said, in the transmission of light – this experiment is said to have shown that a special correction, a radical correction of the concept of ether, is needed. The experiment is as follows: If a light is made to flicker at a point A and this light is followed from point A to point B, then, if point B is in motion, that is, moving on, the light should arrive later than it would arrive at B according to the speed of light in physics if this point B were stationary. But what is calculated in theory does not arise in practice. And - I omit all transition links - that is where, with some intermediate links, the theory of relativity has found its roots, this theory of relativity, which now has as a result that the ether is completely abolished. But then one calculates with strange things, for example, that bodies can simply shorten themselves through the movement itself and the like. Now, you only need to study the relevant literature to see how certain concepts have become so rigid and fixed that they are then applied to reality in such a way that one believes one has grasped reality, but in fact remains extremely distant from it.

Spiritual science cannot follow such a path, which is actually formed only out of the rigidity of the concepts. Spiritual science pursues the corresponding phenomena — I mention this so that you can see how spiritual science can shine into such areas — and comes to recognize that the concept of ether is needed.

But because it does not create unjustified hypotheses, but assumes realities, the ether is revealed to it in the phenomena that are usually derived from the ether itself. On the other hand, you know that where we are dealing with an ether region, in the corresponding mathematical formula, where, in the case of ponderable matter, we insert the quantity with a plus sign for heat – but only for certain heat phenomena, those of radiant heat, of flowing heat – and that for light phenomena, for certain which then appear as chemical processes, and also in the phenomena of life, since negative signs have to be inserted into the corresponding mathematical formulas for certain quantities, which are to be modified by not only inserting negative quantities, but even by assuming the radiation from a point instead of the radiation from a periphery.

In short, spiritual science leads to an organization of the formulas in this exact scientific field, which expresses exactly what takes place between ponderable matter and the ether. One comes to an understanding of the real relationship between the so-called ether and ponderable matter. One comes to realize that if one simply uses the, shall we say, confused concept of mass in such a way that one says that one has to insert the effect of this mass or matter outwards with a positive sign, then one has to insert that which corresponds to the same in the ether with a negative sign. What is a compressive force in the one is a suction force in the other. And if we regard the ponderability of ponderable matter as a pushing force, then we must regard the imponderability of the ether as a suction force in relation to this pushing force. Then we can make do with the phenomena; then we do not need to abolish the ether and set a zero for it, but we can, as we do in another area, pass from plus to minus. I have given this example to show you that anthroposophically oriented spiritual science does not shrink from the fields that are strictly speaking exact science.

You see that this anthroposophically oriented spiritual science is called upon to restore order and to bring back to the natural order that which has been led away from its natural order in thinking, especially perhaps in those areas that are most confused today because people work with unhealthy concepts and even make seemingly epoch-making discoveries. Tomorrow, this will lead to a presentation of the views of social life. It will lead to concepts and impulses that enter into social life, into history, into cultural history, and also into linguistics - into concepts that are transformed from the rigidity in which they often remain today into liveliness. And this liveliness of concepts guarantees that anthroposophically oriented spiritual science can indeed build a bridge between the individual specialized sciences. And so what is to happen between anthroposophically oriented spiritual science and specialized sciences will have a very important significance for the development of humanity. The one-sidedness of the soul will be overcome, which in many cases has a paralyzing effect on the development of the personality. And when spiritual science can penetrate into the individual specialized sciences, we will again be able to have personalities on our educational paths who develop the whole human being in themselves. And that must be the case. This must be the case in particular when those who undergo a certain course of education legitimately want to place themselves as leaders in social life. And it is the spiritual that must be the guiding principle in social life. But only that spiritual can be the guiding principle in social life, can truly permeate humanity with that which leads to ascent and not to descent. Only that which, as scientifically sound, develops the whole human totality, only that can lead to such a healthy development of humanity.

Dear attendees, When one speaks, as I have done in these lectures, of the relationship between anthroposophical spiritual science and the individual specialized sciences, one is perhaps least inclined to emphasize the necessity of also mentioning the technical sciences as such, which, like the other sciences, are to be fertilized by this spiritual science – of which I have already characterized examples in the last lectures. Even if I can only sketch out these outlines, I would still like to point out how there is an important inner relationship between the spiritual science I am referring to here and what can be called the technical sciences with their practical consequences for modern life. I may refer to this – it is not meant personally, it is entirely relevant – and I already tried to do so in the early 1890s with my Philosophy of Freedom.

This “Philosophy of Freedom” is intended, first of all, as a foundation for ethical and social life. It is intended as such a foundation that is to be thoroughly modern. And if I were to characterize the meaning of this “Philosophy of Freedom,” I would have to point out the way in which it has grown out of contemporary life. It is not built on traditional philosophical presuppositions. It did not come into being in the way that much of this kind of work does, namely by presupposing some philosophical current, by becoming a follower of this or that school of philosophy and then trying to form some kind of direction that is supposed to have a certain validity but what I was trying to develop as the Philosophy of Freedom, as the ethical and social foundation of life, arose out of a very special way of thinking, which was formed first through the contemplation of modern social life. And here I must interject a few personal remarks, because they may more easily characterize what I want to say than a discussion would, and because the time allotted for these four lectures is too short for a discussion, which would otherwise be possible.

My school, my most important school, was the study of modern commercial life, which I faced every day from early childhood as the son of a minor railway official who had been introduced to everything related to railways from a technical point of view, and also to everything that was directly related to such a situation in commercial terms, even if it was perhaps from a narrow perspective at the time. Then again, I was able to continue my studies more than through any school, since for years I had to deal with the sons of people who were essentially involved in important industrial and transport sectors of the present day or the last decades of the 19th century. What I saw there in terms of thinking and feeling, I would say, what was flowing out of the forces that were incorporated into the most modern human endeavor, that demanded a certain grounding in ethical and social views of life.

When you look at life from the points of view that I have just described, you see it in those functions in which it becomes more and more detached from human subjectivity, so to speak, and in which it becomes more and more external, so to speak, technical. I would like to say that in life you are constantly confronted with what is repeatedly and repeatedly demanded as a principle in modern science. In modern science, it is postulated that phenomena should be treated entirely separately from the human being. And if we allow life to take its course, especially when technical achievements are involved, then we are primarily dealing with what takes place through the machine, through traffic and so on, with something that is very distinct from human subjectivity, that is very much only in the objective – so very much only in the objective that we can say: Here man loses his subjectivity, here much of his personality is lost, here man is placed in the objective driving wheels of life.

On the one hand, this emerged in modern scientific life in that one wanted to completely ignore in such sciences as optics or thermodynamics or similar what arises from the interrelation of the human being with the outside world, and wanted to found a science that then leaned in the last third of the 19th century towards atomistic theories, the dominance of which has by no means been overcome today. That is on the one hand. On the other hand, however, we also see that something is underlying the whole development of modern life, something that is separate from life and from the human being, from subjectivity, from the personality of the human being. In such a context, one can either thoughtlessly integrate oneself into the wheels of life, or one can believe that the old traditional beliefs and views could still provide certain ethical forces for this modern life, separated from man, and one can then demand such an objective science from certain subconscious depths, as has just been demanded in atomism, in physics, chemistry and even in biology.

But one can also come to something else. One can look at this life of modern times, which is separate from the human being, from the full, complete human sense of personality. One can feel it and sense it with all the effects it has on the human personality, and one can feel it best when one oneself acquires a technical education, when one goes through precisely those spiritual currents that are effective in technology. If I may add a personal comment: my university education was a purely technical one, not a philosophical one in some way, but a technical-scientific one. When one grows into this life, so to speak, completely separated from the human being, then, in the center of the personality, that which I believed I had to present as the other force of modern social life in the “Philosophy of Freedom” will stir. For the more, on the one hand, this technical life of modern times develops as an historical necessity (and one can certainly have an affirmative attitude towards this), the more man must, as it were, lose himself in external events, and the more must the inner reaction assert itself: to build up ethics, to build up religious feeling, too, on the innermost core of the human personality, on that which can be extracted from the conceivably deepest recess of the inner human being. And one can perhaps imagine how, on the one hand, one can be fully engaged in modern technical life and precisely for this reason say to oneself: Yes, man loses more and more of his personality there; all the more he must resort to the innermost source of his soul life, all the more he must shape out of it that which then brings light into what the personality otherwise completely discards. And from this innermost core of human life there emerged an ethical individualism — an ethical individualism, to be sure, that appeals first to a very significant social force.

Today it is very easy to criticize such ethical individualism, as it is founded in my “Philosophy of Freedom,” to the ground. Of course, one can do so if one clings to old traditions, if one does not want to counter external progress in humanity with inner progress. But on the other hand, one can also say to oneself: the stronger external progress is, the greater and stronger must be the power of inner striving in the human soul. And so one comes to say to oneself: That way of summarizing groups of people, as it was present in the old ethics, is no longer possible within modern human development, because within such summaries, man relies too much on what flows into his soul from the environment and from elsewhere to provide the ethical impulses. In our time, it is necessary for the human being to reach much deeper into his soul life in order to extract ethical impulses. But then it is indeed necessary to appeal to the power that, in the social life of man, we may call trust. This trust must become an ethical power. For only when people are called upon to appeal to the innermost core of their being, when they are called upon to draw their ethical motives from there, only then can they work together socially in freedom, yes, they will work together socially in freedom precisely when one can have confidence in this kind of sincerity, in this kind of uprightness and fertility of the human personality, then one finds, solely and exclusively, the forces that are necessary to make the social life of the present time progress in the right way.

One might say that we would have to wait a long time for people to mature to such ethical individualism. Those who say such a thing usually suffer greatly from personal arrogance, because they consider themselves mature and the others immature. But besides, theoretical consideration stops when these questions begin, because there is only an either-or. Either we go down the path of decline of our ethical and social and thus also of our technical life in the manner of Spengler, or we decide to draw those ethical impulses from the depths of the human soul that are necessary for the further progress of humanity. All the declaiming and theorizing about whether this is possible is of no value; only the will to such ethical individualism has value, because it appeals to the will that is permeated by pure thinking. And so I think that in fact the contemplation of the most modern way of life should evoke this particular kind of ethics. Therefore, I also have the idea that this ethical individualism, this freedom, should basically assert itself precisely there as a science that addresses the human being, the whole human being, who is to engage in social life, just where, on the other hand, it is seen that people are introduced to technical, commercial, modern economic life and to the other branches of life, which, by the way, are all mechanized in a modern way. Such a conception is needed alongside what has emerged from the scientific way of thinking and attitude that has developed to the point of technology. What is needed is the greatest deepening and strengthening of human life, where, on the other hand, what has been separated from the human being has been strengthened.

Therefore, it was necessary to found a philosophy that could not be like the other philosophies. These other philosophies traditionally came more or less from the old science. This old scientific approach had still retained something, one could say, of the perception of inner concepts and ideas and so on. We need only think back a few centuries to see that people did not look at nature the way we do. Whatever you want to call it, for example an “animistic worldview,” it lasted well into the 15th century and was quite common, perhaps much later — but that people always thought of something spiritual when they thought of natural entities; then, from what they thought, they were able to draw fresh principles from the details of inorganic nature and, in turn, ethical impulses from these principles. Until well into the 19th century, and even into the second half of the century, people were not yet dependent on drawing ethical and philosophical impulses entirely from within, because they still associated something spiritual with the observation of the external world and the technical manipulation of the external world, something that was also connected with the human being. The last third of the 19th century has produced a technology that demands ways of thinking that are completely detached from the human being. There is nothing more to be gained from impulses that could become ethical impulses. Therefore, these ethical impulses must be drawn entirely from the human being himself; the whole of individual ethical intuition must be placed at the center of the ethical view of the world. The age of natural science, which has been spoken of so often, demands such a purely scientific basis for ethics.

That, ladies and gentlemen, to shed some light on how there is a very real connection between what modern life is – insofar as this modern life has been shaped by science – and what this modern life makes necessary as an ethic that is strictly based on science. Now, such an ethic is only possible if one develops within oneself what I tried to characterize just yesterday: flexible concepts, concepts that are so flexible that one really does not get stuck in contexts that are completely separate from the human being, but which are capable, I might say, of turning around to embrace that which pulses from the depths of the human being as something real. But in order to make sufficient progress in such a scientific world view, many other obstacles must be overcome. Above all, it is necessary that we also find ideas, scientific laws, which have grown out of a scientific world view on the one hand and an historical, a historical world view on the other.

History, as we understand it today, is a young science. Even in the 18th century, it was something quite different. It is therefore no wonder that what we call the science of history is still poorly developed and has no inner driving force of its own. For example, people talk about the guiding ideas in history. Now, only pure intellectualism can talk about the guiding ideas in history, which believes that thoughts, as people think them, then also materialize as forces of history, that thoughts could somehow be driving forces in history. Thoughts are purely contemplative; thoughts cannot achieve anything. On the one hand, people talk about the driving powers of thought, and when they say “powers of thought”, they are already saying something that is actually a contradiction in terms. And on the other hand, they fall into the other extreme: they actually only represent what happens historically by presenting the external, material transformations of cultural life. One then goes as far as the materialistic conception of history has taken it, or one makes compromises by trying to build history out of the mere pursuit of external cultural phenomena; one then imbues this with some symbolic ideas, as many a historian of the 19th and early 20th centuries has done. But one could not yet arrive at such knowledge about how one should even attempt to arrive at ideas in this science about what actually underlies the historical development of humanity. And if one draws attention to this today – I will be drawing attention to it in a leitmotif – if one draws attention to this, then, yes, today one is still decried as a fantasist, because what is regarded as reality today is far different from what real reality is.

Today, anyone who has done a little research in this field will readily agree when it is said that the human being as a physical being must be understood in his formation by going back to embryology. And in a certain way one will then try – even though much that is unjustified has been introduced into the corresponding sciences – one will nevertheless try with a certain right to compare those forms that arise as the developmental forms of the human embryo with the forms found in the extra-human organic world; and one will then try to find a connection between the animal series and the human form. There is no doubt that much of what was called the “biogenetic law” was unjustified. But there is something in the methodological consideration based on this that is extraordinarily promising for a realistic consideration of human development. It is pointed out that One must consider the beginning of life if one wants to understand the physical form of the human being; one must consider the beginning of human life in order to understand its further development.

At best, one can only use a kind of analogy for the historical approach. This analogy has indeed been used very often. The fanciful interpreters of the biogenetic law, in particular, have also wanted to apply this law to a certain materialistic way of thinking with regard to the historical development of humanity. And so we have seen those strange views that trace back what is the content of our civilization today to the earlier developmental phases of humanity — in a way similar to the approach taken in the formulation of the biogenetic law. They said to themselves: What the child goes through leads back to very early stages of development, to very early cultures; and what is then later experienced in later childhood leads back to the later stages of development, and so on, until man has achieved what he has in the present as his civilization. This is an external analogy; and much more than is usually believed, such external analogies are present in the scientific view when we come up in the historical, because today what is not really close to man is what I would call a faithful observation of reality, an engagement with the conditions of reality. That is why the spiritual science referred to here endeavors to develop pure phenomenalism within inorganic and organic natural science and to present the processes themselves purely, without speculation, without underlying atomic or other hypotheses, as they present themselves.

Phenomenology is the ideal of scientific endeavor that is present in anthroposophy. The aim is not to move from what are basically only modifying sensations to all sorts of wave vibrations and the like, which are hypothetically assumed and speculated upon. The aim is to remain within the pure phenomena, because they mean a great deal. And all the talk about the “thing in itself” is basically unfathomable. For example, people say: Yes, but you can't see the underlying reality from the phenomena; after all, a phenomenon always points to what underlies it, and so you have to go beyond the phenomenon, that is, assume something that the phenomenon causes in interaction with human subjectivity. Those who speak in this way do not realize that they are applying a completely wrong way of thinking. I would like to characterize this wrong way of thinking by means of an analogy: the one who sees individual letters, for example S, I, F, will say that this S or I or F means nothing, they must point to something else. Those who have an overview of a written context, which also consists only of individual letters, will not relate this written context to something that lies behind it – along the lines of the atomic world supposedly lying behind sensual phenomena. will not relate this context of letters to something contrived or to something standing behind it, but he will read the context and know that, when he has the whole context, it points him to the corresponding reality.

It is also a matter of leaving these natural phenomena in their purity within the world of natural phenomena, because by learning to read natural phenomena purely, in a way that corresponds to the inner nature of the phenomena themselves, one learns to look into that which underlies reality – not by speculating about a “thing in itself” or the presupposition of some “thing in itself”, as it always underlies the atomistic theories and hypotheses. By developing the habit of pure observation of phenomena, by breaking the habit of mere speculation, of living in some hypothetical assumptions, by remaining in the inorganic and organic fields with pure observation, one develops the ability to observe in the field of human spiritual development. One then learns to see that one cannot transfer the biogenetic law to historical development by means of an analogy, but one learns to recognize that one must consider the whole human being, the whole human life – just as in natural science, if one wants to recognize something, one should not pick out one thing, but consider the totality of related phenomena. Then one is urged, for the understanding of historical life, not to go to the beginning of individual existence, as one would for the understanding of the natural life of man, but to the end. One must also consider the end. Even if it is a kind of self-contemplation, this self-contemplation is a thoroughly objective one: when one has become accustomed to observing the life of the soul as concretely as one otherwise observes the external natural life, one finds that, when one is past the middle of life has passed the age of thirty-five or forty, this life of soul, quite apart from all external manifestations, shows certain phenomena within itself – phenomena which run their course in such a way that one can truly say one is surprised by them.

The life of the soul itself takes on a certain configuration. That this is so little noticed today is due to the fact that the power of observation is little developed in youth. Therefore, such things are seen by very few people in old age. Very few people are still endowed with such a fresh power of observation in old age that they take these things into account. If you do not disregard them, you will notice how something rises up from the depths of the soul, which can be said to be like a repetition, like an inner repetition of what old cultural epochs of humanity show in terms of mental attitude and mental structure. In doing so, I am pointing to a phenomenon that is eminently important for the historian to observe. It is not necessary to do much outwardly, for it is not necessary that old people should make their signs of aging the basis of life. But it is necessary that life be observed in its entirety, and it shows itself in that we ascend in life, becoming ever older and older, that something wants to enter into consciousness that is initially similar to the way of thinking of immediately preceding cultural epochs. One becomes similar to the Greeks. And if one lives through this entire middle age, as did Goethe, for example, then under certain circumstances one can also have such a longing to live through the Greek age, as Goethe did, in whom this longing became irresistible. And if one then goes further back and observes what arises within the human being, then one comes to even earlier cultural epochs. At that age one notices that one understands all the better the special nature of the views of the even older times. And one is transported back into a prehistory of human development that is no longer recorded in documents when one considers this biogenetic law, which is now polaric. This is not carried over from natural science into human life by analogy, but is borrowed from direct observation.

If we continue to develop this path of research – I can only give guidelines – then we will come to understand an extraordinarily important guiding principle for the historical development of humanity. We come to see that there have been older cultures in which people, by simply developing their physicality, developed their spiritual and soul life right up to an advanced age, so that their spiritual and soul development was, as it were, born out of their physical development. We, in our advanced human civilization, still find ourselves dependent on our physical development in early childhood, even in later adolescence, but not anymore. In the twenties, this dependency ceases. How the child is still dependent on its physical development in its entire soul configuration! How can we observe how intimately the two are connected, and what a profoundly significant effect sexual maturity, the age of sexual maturity, has on a person's mental and spiritual development! And if we go further, we hardly even notice that something is clearly changing again, that, for example, at the beginning of the 1920s, there is a more inward dependence of the mental and spiritual on the physical. But then this connection becomes so unclear that we can say: Today it is the case that until the twenties, and in some people until the thirties, the soul and spirit remain dependent on the development of the body, but then the soul and spirit emancipate themselves, rely more on themselves, and undergo a development that is more or less independent of the physical. This was not the case in earlier ages of human life. We come back to the early ages of human development, when people, after the age of fifty, still felt into the sixties what was taking shape inwardly and spiritually in dependence on external physical development. These were the ages in which people could, as it were, still wrest from their own nature the inner experiences that one has in the declining years of life. What they gained in soul and spirit through their disintegrating bodies, these people still went through.

If I now want to express myself through a law that has yet to be formulated – even if every formulation can be challenged – I would like to say: These people of the oldest cultural ages remained young well into their fifties and sixties. If we follow this thread, we find that in Egyptian and Indian civilization there was an age when people only remained young in this respect until their forties. And the Greek-Latin age, from which we have inherited such remarkable artistic and scientific ways of looking at things, can be understood when we know how these Greeks were still so youthful between the ages of thirty and forty, because in their case the soul and spirit were dependent on their physical development until that age. Then came our age, when this only goes into the twenties. And one must realize that we can only draw on our physical development until the twenties, that at most, contemplatively - as an inverted biogenetic law - the subtle observer of life inwardly perceives what is a repetition of things humanity has gone through before. The way in which the biogenetic law was formulated – even if it is completely disputable – there is a healthy core to it. As formulated, that man in his development from birth briefly passes through what is tribal development, so it must be said that in historical life, man inwardly, spiritually and mentally, repeats the way of thinking that was the actual impulse of history at earlier ages.

Here we have the connection between the observation of spiritual life and the observation of the physical life of humanity. Here we have a science that does not develop one-sided concepts of natural phenomena on the one hand and, on the other, forms concepts about spiritual phenomena that cannot be related to natural phenomena and vice versa. There you have a unified way of thinking that, by not becoming one-sidedly materialistic or one-sidedly spiritualistic, but by encompassing the whole of reality, regards external physicality as the one current of this reality and the spiritual-soul as the other current, but considers both purely phenomenologically.

This also opens up extraordinarily promising perspectives for the individual spiritual scientific research, but one must have the courage to go to real laws in history as well. What is still often discussed today as a historical method is a way of talking around the issue, something that is not based on real ground. One finds a real foundation only when one has grown out of a phenomenalistic, a phenomenological, observation of nature, which then creates such flexible concepts that these concepts are also suitable for penetrating into the phenomena of spiritual life.

What is meant here by anthroposophical spiritual science – I must emphasize this again and again – is not amateurish dabbling. It is a form of research that carries pure observation of phenomena over from the field of natural science into the spiritual, and in this way will find precisely that reconciliation for which the best souls today are longing: the reconciliation of outer life with inner life, the reconciliation of science and art, the reconciliation of science and religious feeling. But if one simply occupies oneself with the continuation of the old, traditional religions, one cannot create what modern man demands for his religious life. Today, we need a science that is capable of penetrating into the realm of the spirit as we otherwise penetrate into the realm of nature. We need people who have the scientific courage to search, even if it is often seen as fantasy, because it is not considered to apply the same strict scientific method that is demanded for the realm of external nature to the realm of spiritual events.

That is one side of it, which follows from a human view of life for the view of historical life. The other side is that the person who gains such a view also develops this view within himself into social impulses. It is only out of such a view that the liveliness of soul life actually arises, which finds ethical impulses, but ethical impulses that are so devoted to human nature that they can also be transformed into social impulses. We cannot make our ideas so vivid with the concepts we draw from science alone that they also work as ideas if they are to underpin social action.

In a very learned contemporary book, there is a remarkable quote, which admittedly comes from a man who was not particularly learned, namely Georg Brandes, but the quote is accepted by a very learned personality. In his work, attention is drawn to why it is so difficult to teach people ethics, to teach them something, for example, about essential necessities, and this difficulty is emphasized to have a spiritual effect on social life. Attention is drawn to the fact – and this is said quite as if one fully agreed with what Brandes says – that the masses of people do not act according to reason, but according to vague instincts. Well, it is very easy to make such a statement. It is very easy to criticize what is living out, not in the life of the individual, but in the field of human interaction. It is very easy to condemn it as mere instinctive living out of some impulses, if one is not able to look at the essence of social life in a truly scientific spirit. If one is able to do the latter, then one knows: however much rationality there may be within the intellectual sphere of man, however clever people may be in the pattern of that cleverness that can be gained in the one-sided natural sciences, social life would still always contain many, many unconscious moments, so that it could still be criticized in the way Brandes does and as is found even in books on the principles of political economy.

But what is the real basis for this? The fact is that reason, which people like to talk about so much, is something that develops within the human personality, something that is suitable for looking at the world, something that is also suitable for evoking certain impulses for action from within the human being, but something that is not at all suitable on its own for bringing about social coexistence. If you believe that this inner rationality is suitable for this, then you end up with those social theories that are so common today and that do not promote life, do not sustain life, but destroy life. And such life-destroying theories, which can only shine as long as they remain criticism, but which immediately show their absurdity when they are to be introduced into real life, they often flow from that attitude that has emerged with the facts of modern scientific life, which are quite rightly perceived as a triumph. The point at issue is this: in human cooperation, even in language, there is something that permeates and warms human action and feeling, but also hates it, and that cannot be reduced to intellectualistic concepts of reason.

And on the other hand, something is asserting itself in economic life itself that appears much more complicated than what must be taken as a basis in the natural sciences. I am merely drawing your attention to everything that has occurred within economic life, everything that has occurred within political economy in the way of definitions of commodity value and commodity price, everything that has occurred in the way of definitions of the functions of value and price in economic life, and so on. In particular, I would like to draw attention to how vague and indeterminate such definitions, such characteristics of the value and price of goods, of other functions in economic life are.

What is the underlying reason for this? The reason is that it is impossible to understand the social being at all with the concepts based on mere intellectuality. What is needed is an inner education of the soul towards those modes of conception which I have described in the course of these lectures as imaginative knowledge, and then in Higher Fields as inspired knowledge. An education in such ways of thinking is necessary in order to grasp that which should now arise not from the individual, but that which should arise in the social interaction of people. And the way in which people interact socially – even if one wants to call it instinct – cannot be seen or influenced with intellectual concepts. One can only influence it with living, meaningful views of social life itself. These substantial views of social life, however, can only be opened up to the life of imagination through the imaginations that I have also described in these lectures about the other reality. Therefore, there will only be a real social science that can be the basis for social work when it is developed from the method of anthroposophical spiritual science.

You must not think that I, who am able to present what I myself can advocate today as anthroposophical spiritual science, somehow regard it as something already perfect that can remain as it is. Rather, I am talking about what is to become of this anthroposophical spiritual science, quite independently of the form it now has. It will certainly be shaped much better than it is now by those who practise it. But it must be pointed out again and again that only it can be that, with its methods, it finds such flexible concepts that these flexible concepts themselves can go, can flow on the waves of social life, can invigorate these waves of social life. And only when one can see through the social structure in this way, in direct contemplation, can it be divided into a spiritual life that needs independence, a legal life, a practical state life that must in turn be self-contained and need independence, and an economic life which must be based on associations, because an economic life can only develop when people think together, while the spiritual life can only develop when the individual is able to contribute to the social organism that which flows from his spiritual impulses.

These three areas, which today are lumped together in the unified, abstract social organism, are clearly distinguishable for a living imagination, a living view. They are lumped together only because today one does not think practically, but theorizes, because one relates to reality more or less hypothetically and, if one wants to shape that reality, one constructs hypotheses instead of pouring real impulses into that reality. Those who are inclined to hypothesize in the theoretical sciences do not come to bring fully real concepts into social life. Therefore, especially those who have ceased to think practically often regard as utopian what is found in my “Key Points of the Social Question”, which has now been republished, and in other books , in everything that is published in our newspaper, the weekly journal “Dreigliederung des sozialen Organismus” (Threefold Order of the Social Organism), and in everything that emanates from the Federation for Threefold Order of the Social Organism. It is regarded as utopian because those people who see it that way do not themselves know how utopian they are, how they regard as utopian precisely that which is completely saturated with reality. Today, in the intellectualization of the sciences, one has come so far that one no longer senses or feels when true reality is pulsating somewhere. If we really open ourselves to what comes out of true reality, we will find that we do not need to say that decades are necessary for its realization, but we will see that it can be transferred directly into social life as soon as it is in people's heads.

This is what I wanted to say about how the ideas and impulses that arise from spiritual science can be carried into ethical, historical and social thinking and feeling, and then also into ethical and social volition. And when a person truly recognizes historical laws, when he surveys human life as it is surveyed when the phenomena of spiritual life are considered, not just the external cultural phenomena, then one learns with the character of inner necessity to recognize what has been lived in a particular age. And from this awareness of a connection with one's age, one's task for this age arises. One is imbued with one's inner life task. And today we need people who can be imbued with a real, meaningful life task.

I have been able to share only a little of what is being striven for in the field of spiritual science, and only in outline, in the sense that the individual specialized sciences are to be fertilized. You will hear again and again how individual groups are working to enrich the individual sciences, from astronomy to social insights, and how they are striving to develop this spiritual science for the individual fields in a very specialized way. Such endeavors are still only met with very limited understanding today. And especially when giving lectures like these, when one considers that here in Stuttgart, through the efforts of our Waldorf school teachers and other personalities, an attempt is being made to show how the individual scientific disciplines can be enriched by anthroposophical spiritual science and how absolutely necessary this fertilization is absolutely necessary if we do not want to go into decline but strive for an ascent, then one must also consider how such efforts are met with hostility and rejected, especially by older people who are involved in scientific life today.

And now, in conclusion, I would like to address that part of you to whom I would like to make an initial appeal, particularly in the present situation, for very specific reasons. Especially now, when anthroposophically oriented spiritual science is facing so much hostility, one hears it emphasized again and again: Why does this spiritual science not turn to science itself in a strictly scientific way? Well, a lot could be said about that. Above all, it could be said that those who express such views care little about how this spiritual science actually works in the individual scientific fields. But perhaps something else may be said. What I myself represent today in this anthroposophically oriented spiritual science began in the early 1880s. At the time, I tried to introduce what needed to be said into the scientific currents in an elementary way, using viable scientific methods. I took up Goethe in an interpretation that was taken very seriously and conscientiously. Now, I have not always been met with such hostility as I am now – what I have written in reference to Goethe has often been described as something very good. But how was it received? It was received in such a way that I could not be satisfied with this acceptance. People said: Yes, some of what Goethe meant is being addressed, Goethe is being interpreted in the right way. But they did not notice, or did not want to notice, that something else was meant by it. It was not meant that one merely wanted to interpret the man who died as Johann Wolfgang Goethe in 1832, but rather that one should seek in Goethe, in his world view, what can experience a continuation, what flows out when one regards Goethe as still alive today, when one develops him further. A position was to be taken on the problems of scientific, philosophical and social life.

What is often called “pure science” today was not at all inclined to do so, today when one can read in scientific works statements such as that science does not have the task of forming ethical, political or social life, for example, but only to consider all these branches of life objectively. In an age when people just want to sit down at some seat to observe the world and only accept as science what has arisen from the observation of the world, but not what passes into our soul life to become will, action, and social deed, it may seem understandable that science initially did not take a stand on what was actually meant. Therefore it was necessary that appeals be made to the larger circles of humanity, that thought be given to the larger circles of humanity, because the truth must in some way present itself to humanity. And when, out of certain intuitive perceptions, the larger circles of humanity had found their way to what is here called anthroposophical spiritual science, then people again deigned to say that what was being said was not scientific. They did it, for example, like the Jena professor Rein, who in 1918 characterized the 'Philosophy of Freedom' as a work that could only have been born out of the war period. This man only just got hold of “The Philosophy of Freedom” and found the date 1918, the year of the new edition. In his usual conscientious manner, he characterized this work, which was published in 1893, as a product of wartime thinking.

You can find many examples of such scientific conscientiousness in the present day. I could point out many similar facts to show you why I feel particularly satisfied today to see that there is now some interest coming from the younger generation in the present, even if there is not much interest from those who shine in science because of their venerable age or because they have not yet reached a venerable age. From this side, there is still little engagement with anthroposophical spiritual science, but all the more misunderstanding.

Therefore, from among those gathered here today, I would like to address those who, coming out of their student life, want to turn to this anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, which is certainly not to be presented to you authoritatively or dogmatically, which only wants to be taken so that it is examined. Because it is convinced that the more it is examined, the more it will be found to be well-founded. It does not shrink from exact testing; it has only to defend itself against what is truly very far removed from exact testing. If one were fainthearted, one could become discouraged in the field of anthroposophical spiritual science in the face of the inexact tests that are so prevalent in the present day. Those who represent spiritual science, as it is meant here, are not afraid of truly exact testing. It will prove itself all the more the more precisely it is tested, because it knows that it has emerged from the spirit of science.

This is what I wish to say to you today, especially to you, my dear fellow students, who are gathered here today; especially to you I wish to say that the anthroposophically oriented spiritual science that comes from me has arisen from a faithful contemplation of what I myself have gone through. I look back on a student life that took place at the time of the heyday of atomism, the heyday of that world view in which all optics, all thermodynamics, and so on, were based on hypotheses in which one indulged — but hypotheses that led away from the grasp of reality because they based something on mere thought, on something that was merely thought up. In many cases, people have moved away from this; today, we are realistic, especially in the field of natural science. But the fruits of thinking that have been developed there can still be seen in the historical and social sciences, and they are often partly responsible for the misery of our present catastrophic life. During my time as a student, the concepts, ideas and soul impulses were not developed by science that could then swim powerfully on the waves of social life. That is what we lack today: impulses. People get very annoyed when you talk about impulses. But the word 'impulse' should mean nothing other than what lives powerfully in the soul - in contrast to the abstract life of thoughts or ideas. It should be thoughts and ideas that arise from such an anthroposophical spiritual science, but thoughts that are imbued with full life, so that they can become ethical, religious, but especially social reality.

Anyone who has been through what has happened in our scientific development over the decades, who knows the connection between the scientific theories of the 1870s and 1880s and the helplessness of today's ethical and social thinking, truly speaks from the heart to those who are young today, my dear fellow students. He then remembers the reasons why the youth of that time was spoken to in vain. They had not yet been confronted with what has since emerged as a dazzling abundance of life, as it were, that which resounds from all sides with the words “how we have come so gloriously far” in terms of external culture. Today, however, young people see something different around them; today they see material need all around them, and in this material need they also see spiritual need. On the whole, the situation today is quite different from what it was in my youth. In those days, one was quite alone with these thoughts. Today, my dear fellow students, if you really find the way to impulses full of life, today you will perhaps be able to find understanding in quite a number of people who are shaken by the present life. Today life speaks: I need living ideas born out of science that can become ethical and social impulses. Today the world needs such leaders who can work out of the spiritual, because only this spiritual can be meaningful.

My esteemed audience, dear fellow students, those who are touched by what anthroposophical spiritual science actually wants will understand me, each in their own way. This is what fills me with a certain satisfaction when I am allowed to speak today to those to whom I actually feel very close, despite the fact that the age of life that is yours today is long behind me, dear fellow students. But anyone who has lived through these last decades with full consciousness also knows how strongly one must build on those who are still young today and who want to have a powerful effect in their youth today. One can always contribute only very little to that to which one would like to contribute a lot.

I have been able to say little in these few lectures; may this little be further developed by our local colleagues in the university courses. And may this little be valued more for its intention than for what it could become in these four lectures. But I would like to have touched the hearts of today's fellow students, I would like to have spoken to their hearts. Not only – even if in the fullest sense – from the spirit of science would I speak, but to warm hearts would I speak, for when these two things are joined together, the will for true science with the strength of brave hearts, then, my dear fellow students, then we shall make progress. If one is allowed to speak to people from such a background, then one can still have hope for a fruitful development in the near future, especially for our German people, who have been so sorely tried and are therefore perhaps particularly called upon to develop spiritually.

Answering questions

Question: Does Dr. Steiner understand “reminiscences” in the same way as “associations of ideas” when it comes to imagination?

Rudolf Steiner: If you follow what I have discussed in my book “How to Know Higher Worlds”, you will find that the greatest efforts are required of those who want to progress to imaginative life , especially in the direction of combating everything that is reminiscence, that is mere association of ideas, in fact, to combat everything that is drawn from the ordinary unconscious or subconscious life of the soul. In this respect, it may be said that much is well recorded in today's scientific literature. I myself have emphasized some of my own observations in the book mentioned. I will only highlight one example from a well-known publication that appeared in the Wiesbaden collection to show how such reminiscences actually work, how difficult it is to pay attention to them, and how necessary it is to pay attention to them.

A scholar - who describes the matter himself - walks past a bookshop, certainly the delight of many a scholar. And he finds - he is a zoologist - a book about lower animals, something that is certainly closely related to his immediate present life. He is surprised himself that he suddenly has to start laughing at the most serious title. He laughs – just think, a zoologist, a learned man, laughing at a learned title. He feels quite funny himself. And he tries to find out why he has to laugh like that. He closes his eyes; that helps, because now he hears a hurdy-gurdy in the distance, playing a melody to which he danced in his youth. At that time, however, he was thinking of other things, which he has long forgotten, which have long since been drawn down into the deepest depths of his soul, but now they have risen up and made him laugh at the sight of the solemn title. So something that has been in the soul for decades comes to the surface again as reminiscence.

We have to think about such things when we emphasize that the development of the imaginative life must be based on comprehensible ideas, and specifically on comprehensible ideas that can be made directly present in consciousness in all their parts. For only when one has developed the ability to bring such comprehensible ideas into consciousness with the kind of thinking that one otherwise only trains in comprehensible mathematical, geometric concepts, and when one has the will to deal with these ideas inwardly, only then does one gradually succeed in really having a practice in rejecting all reminiscences, all associations of ideas and all life in some subconscious soul content. This overcoming of reminiscences and the like must indeed first be acquired. And only then, when one has conscientiously overcome what reminiscences and the like are, is one actually able to develop that which imaginative life is, and this imaginative life proves itself by its own quality to be related to reality in just such a way as I characterized in the first lecture.

Here too, the objection is often raised – and the objections are sometimes almost typical – that something like this can only be an autosuggestion or something, the origins of which one does not suspect. Yes, you see, in the outer life too one can indulge in illusions, deceptions, and only the context of life, the whole of life as such, makes one gain a judgment about reality. So one must also educate oneself to a sure judgment in what appears to one as imaginative life. And if it is objected that it could not be the same with the imaginations as it is with some people, for whom their mouths water when they just think of or hear about lemonade, it is said that it is still not reality, even though the subjective experience of the taste of lemonade is there. Of course they have this subjective experience. If objectivity is judged only by this subjective content, one is naturally not yet ready to take from the content of the imagination that which represents it objectively, objectively spiritually. But one must still say: If one introduces something like autosuggestion into full, real life, not remaining with a cut-out piece, then the relationship to reality arises. For one can assume that people get an intense taste of lemonade when they think of lemonade, but I don't think that anyone has actually quenched their thirst with the imagined lemonade. When one progresses from a piece of reality to total reality – and this must be done in the realm of outer reality as well as in the realm of inner spiritual reality – then it ceases to be the case that one can be beguiled by mere illusions, mere autosuggestions. Recently, it has been said time and again that what is asserted as spiritual content is based on repressed imaginative life, and that what is repressed in repressed ideas would be brought to life, driven up into consciousness, and that this would lead to personifications and so on. This is how it is described, and to someone who sees through it, it sounds amateurish.

Yes, something like personifications and the like can arise in some nebulous mystics. For there are indeed some mystics who talk about all kinds of soul content and yet mean nothing other than reminiscences. It is true that some claim to have mystically experienced the unio mystica, the union with some divine within. But such experiences, which one had decades ago, can arise as reminiscences in consciousness, not only in the old form, but also in a transformed form; one can experience that what was experienced decades ago, and which has sunk into the depths of the unconscious, emerges after decades in a sublime form. What some mystics describe as the content of their experiences in mystical union need be nothing more than a barrel organ seen decades ago.

These things are carefully avoided in the truly subtle process of spiritual research, and the methods are clearly developed so that such errors can be avoided. People could also be convinced by the fact that the anthroposophical spiritual science referred to here does not just tell of what is in the spiritual worlds, but also talks about the things of ordinary science just like other people. If one can talk about the subjects of ordinary science in the same way as others, then the scientists have no right to claim that the additional findings of spiritual research are mere fantasy or stem from repressed mental images.

Furthermore, with regard to the so-called inner vision, what actually comes out of true spiritual vision is not at all what the nebulous mystics believe. The nebulous mystics speak of all kinds of inner experiences. In true spiritual insight, when one penetrates down through the ordinary life of the soul, one's own material, bodily inner life is more and more filled. One really learns anatomy and physiology through inner vision and does not prattle on about some mystical secrets. One comes to know the real spiritual life by looking at the world and living with the world, not through false, introverted asceticism or through lazy withdrawal into an unworldly life, but precisely by immersing oneself in real life and thus also through a kind of self-inspection that experiences in the inner being of the human being precisely that which the nebulous mystic does not seek.

The imaginative life that is meant here does not culminate in unworldly mysticism, not in a cloud cuckoo land, not in a spirit that is sought by saying: outer reality is so bad that one must withdraw from it, true reality is in the beyond.

A true spirituality is seen in such a way that it is connected with the will to immerse oneself in life. It is therefore not alien to life, but life-friendly. It is from this overall context of life that I ask you to judge what is meant here as anthroposophical spiritual science.

Question: What is the difference between monocotyledons and dicotyledons?

Rudolf Steiner: The question regarding the difference between monocotyledons and dicotyledons cannot be answered briefly. I would just like to say the following: I generally avoid answering isolated questions just like that, because this gives the impression that spiritual science is making judgments out of the blue, when in fact everything is structured in an appropriate way and is pursued from its elements. I would just like to say about this: for the spiritual scientific investigation, it is also necessary to set up a different plant system as real than the one that we find set up in many cases today. You have already seen that When I spoke of the human being yesterday, I had to point out that the human being cannot be viewed in such a way that one simply takes the whole human being and then does some kind of phylogenetic research, as is done today. Rather, one must start from the main organization of the head and trace it back, and there one must consider a complete transformation of animal forms, whereas one must consider later developments in the organization of the limbs. And yesterday I also first dealt with the morphological contrast between the spinal cord and the brain in order to show that one cannot proceed in the history of development as is usually done.

So it is also the case in botany that one starts from plant stages that are now more in the middle of the system. And on the one hand, one will look at these plant stages, which are where monocotyledons and dicotyledons split, and one will go down through the monocotyledons to the lowest plants, the fungi, algae and so and on the other side go up to the fully developed plants and so on; this will provide a system of plants that really includes in the morphological consideration the understanding of why the plants develop one organ downwards and the other upwards. In general, it will be found how two polar forces act on the plants, but in a different way on the plants of the different levels. And there we shall see that a certain force, which we must regard as running parallel to the terrestrial radius, is combined with another force, which has often been sensed in earlier times. We have only to recall the older speculations on the spiral tendency, such as those of Sprengel and others at the beginning of the nineteenth century. But these explanations are incomplete; they are multiple speculations, and what has been developed as morphology will have to be developed differently. If we proceed in this way, we will recognize why one organ is directed in one way and another in another. Efforts are definitely being made within our spiritual community to identify a plant system that will contain the information needed to explain the individual morphological phenomena. Then it will be easier to answer such questions in context from a natural arrangement than if one has to refer to them in an aphoristic way as one does today.

Question: What is the connection between the climbing plants and the heavenly bodies acting on them?

Rudolf Steiner: It is impossible to answer such questions, which necessarily require an explanation of the special nature of the influence of the heavenly bodies on plants, in an aphoristic way now. For one exposes oneself to the accusation of dilettantism if one speaks somehow about the influence of the heavenly bodies without having said in what sense this is taken. It is absolutely necessary that anthroposophical spiritual science be taken as a real method. Just as one cannot explain anything in a scientific way without going into the whole subject — as one would not, for example, expect someone who starts explaining chemistry to start with the most complicated things —, nor can it be done in the way that such attempts at explanation have been made here, and nor can such questions be answered. And one could almost believe that such questions are asked in reference to these lectures out of certain mystical inclinations, which basically should not be accommodated. You will understand me: it is absolutely essential to protect the spiritual science meant here from the accusation of dilettantism. And if such questions are answered without being put into context - they can of course be answered - then the accusation of dilettantism arises.

These questions are not even formulated in such a way that the same words can be used in answering them; they are formulated in an amateurish way. Therefore it is not possible for me to speak to them in this way. I suspect that these questions are based on something that has been heard elsewhere, because they are not in the least connected with what has been presented here about the individual tests of the relations of spiritual science to the individual specialized sciences. You must understand that it is not possible to answer these questions without having discussed the basic elements of them. It is like this: if people want to have such questions answered, then it is – I cannot put it any other way – amateurish. You must not hold this against me, but it is my job to put the scientific nature of this spiritual science in its proper perspective, and that includes its attitude. Therefore, I will not allow myself to be tempted in the future either, by those who would like to be followers but do not want to get into the subject, to expose this spiritual science to the accusation of dilettantism by talking about all sorts of things. That is the character of charlatan movements, that they talk about all sorts of things. Spiritual science also wants to be thoroughly scientific in its attitude.

Question: How does the movement of the muscle come about, since the motor nerve does not transmit the will impulse to the muscle? Is there a connection to be seen with the metabolic system?

Rudolf Steiner: I would have liked to have given the fifth lecture on this question, if possible, because it is a question that is directly related to what I have dealt with in these four lectures, only this question must be treated in the following way:

The difference between the sensitive and the motor nerves has been mentioned, more or less merely to provide direction. It has been emphasized that the so-called motor nerves are also sensitive nerves, only their task – and this can even be seen from their anatomical structure – is to sense inwardly, that is, to sense what underlies a movement process, for example, not to impulse this movement process itself, but to sense what underlies it, what happens in the metabolism – which is always part of a movement process. If you follow all this research on the nervous system and want to use the image of wireless telegraphy for it, then that is not in the sense of spiritual science, you leave that to others. Not true, in the time when telegraphy came up, all kinds of comparisons were also made from the telegraphy to compare the centripetal and centrifugal nerves with telegraphic feeders and pathways and so on. Such comparisons are not applied by spiritual science. It wants to go into the matter itself and not play with analogies.

The point is this: whenever there is a nerve pathway that appears empirically to be a supply line, say to the spinal cord or brain, and its continuation is found in the so-called motor nerve, it is always a matter of sensing inwards and outwards – let us assume, for example, a reflex movement –; what the nerve conveys is merely sensation, only either from the outside or from one's own physical interior. And the transition, which is usually regarded as the end of the transmission and the beginning of the impulsation, is merely what I would like to call a switchover, and not by taking an example from telegraphy. In this process, the whole process is experienced inwardly by the soul. We are then speaking of something very real when we say: something jumps over, just as an electric spark jumps over when I cut a telegraph wire. - This is the process that takes place in the so-called central nervous organs.

If we summarize what can be determined about the nature of the nervous system, then this will become the basis for further research into the nature of volitional impulses. It is, after all, only a hypothetical theory that what we call 'will' is in some way represented by the motor nerve, which is also a sensory nerve. Rather, the fact that we really understand the phenomena leads us to seek the relationship of the will to organs quite different from nerves. But this leads one to study precisely that which is so often treated with hostility – the higher members of human nature; one comes to see how the will cannot be understood at all if one regards it in the same relation to materiality as one regards, for example, the images in relation to materiality. In the study of the will, one then becomes acquainted with something that must essentially be viewed spiritually, while the life of imagination is really present in it in a material context. While the structures of the brain can be shown to parallel the structures of the imagination, the same cannot be said for the life of the will. However, if one wants to find the material correlates, one must look for metabolic processes, but one is led to completely different insights, which then lead upwards to spiritual contemplation. This is approximately how the answer to the question can be formulated here.

It is somewhat shocking to realize that the life of the imagination, which since scholastic philosophy has been regarded as the spiritual life in man, is so closely related in its structure to the material life of the body – although, as I have shown in these lectures, it is based only on it. But that is just how it is. On the other hand, we are led into a much more spiritual region when we consider the structures of the emotional life. There everything is so intimately connected with the rhythmic life of the body. And then one is led into the region of metabolism when it comes to the will; but in truth it is a matter of the mastery of matter through spiritual forces, which one has before one in direct contemplation when one rises up to what the will is - undeceived by the motor nerves. One sees how the will does not intervene in the material world in such a differentiated way as the life of the imagination.

I remember a discussion that followed a lecture by a real, solid materialist. He had explained the whole life of imagination from the brain, so that in the end nothing remained of the life of imagination, because he had actually only described brain processes, but described them very well, and then also drew figures on the blackboard, which in turn the chairman, who was a solid Herbartian, looked at. He then said that he was not as materialistic as the lecturer, but that if he were to draw the associations and suppressions of associations based on his Herbartian teaching, the figures would be exactly the same as those of the materialistic lecturer. So when a staunch opponent of materialism draws the structures of the representations, the same figures emerge as in the materialist, who only records what he has learned from Meynert about nerve phases, nerve centers, and so on.

From this, however, one can clearly see how similar what can be observed in the Herbartian sense as phenomena and connections between phenomena in pure mental life is to what someone who disregards this and describes the brain with Meynert's or similar hypotheses draws on the board. You cannot do that with the emotional life, and least of all with the life of the will. There you have to go to things that are made vivid, but made vivid mentally, but not in the way that what can be drawn in direct connection with material life.

Question: Why, according to the anthroposophical approach, does one suddenly have to work with opposite signs in the Einstein problem, where one passes from ponderable to ether?

Rudolf Steiner: Of course, this can be done quite without an anthroposophical approach, simply by doing things as in numerous other fields of science: one studies the phenomena. In a course I gave a few months ago to a small audience here, I showed how to look at the phenomena of so-called thermodynamics without prejudice. The aim is to try to express in mathematical formulas what is presented to us as phenomena. The peculiar thing about such expressions in mathematical formulas is that they are only correct if they correspond to the process that can then be observed, if, so to speak, what results from the mathematical formula also applies in reality, if it can be verified by reality. If you have a sealed chamber containing heated gas under pressure and you want to understand the phenomena that arise, you can apply Clausius's and other formulas, albeit in a very contrived way, but you will see - and this is also admitted today - how the facts do not match the formulas. In Einstein's theory, the strange thing is that experiments are available first; these experiments are set up because a certain theory is assumed; the experiments do not confirm this theory, and then another theory is constructed, which is actually based on imagined experiments. If, on the other hand, you try to treat the phenomena of heat in such a way that you insert corresponding positive and negative signs into the formulas, depending on whether you are dealing with conductive or radiant heat, then you will find these formulas verified by reality. However, when we proceed to other imponderables, we cannot stop at mere positive or negative signs, but must then add other conditions. We must, as it were, imagine a force that acts in the ponderable in a radial direction, and that which belongs to the realm of the ethereal, as coming from the periphery, acting only in the circular area, but still with a negative sign. And so, when we turn to other factors, we have to express the magnitude concerned differently; then we find that we arrive at formulas that can be verified through the phenomena. This is a path that anyone can take, even if they do not have an anthroposophical attitude.

But there is something else I would like to emphasize: do not think that the things I have told you in these four lectures were told to you because I was in an anthroposophical frame of mind. I told you these things because they are so. And the anthroposophical attitude follows only from the fact that one properly surveys things; the anthroposophical attitude does not precede things, but follows afterwards. One wants to recognize and understand things impartially, and then the anthroposophical attitude can follow. It would be badly ordered what I have said if one had to start from a prejudiced attitude. No, that is not the point at all. The point is to follow the phenomena in a strictly empirical way. The anthroposophical attitude must then be the last thing — even if I do not want to claim anything other than that it can nevertheless always be the best.

Question: What can be said about Schleich's works?

Rudolf Steiner: I prefer to talk about things in concrete rather than abstract terms. I have discussed many things with Professor Schleich and found that he is really very open to many ideas and has extremely interesting views on some subjects. But he cannot make the transition to the latter because he forms theories out of certain presuppositions - not out of a lack of presuppositions, but out of assumed presuppositions. Most of all, this confronted me – and I will now speak of an example – in a case he described to me; Professor Schleich described it to me before his book was published. A man came to him once who had pricked himself somewhere in an innocuous place with an ink pen, and he imagined that he had blood poisoning and would have to die during the night. He came to Schleich and wanted to have his arm amputated. Schleich looked at the arm and said: “That's not possible, it's not necessary at all, the sting is harmless, and I can't take your arm away.” The man went crazy with fear that he would die, he absolutely wanted to have his arm cut off, but Schleich sent him away. The man then went to another doctor, but he did not want to amputate the arm either. The next morning Schleich, who is a great philanthropist and humane man and, when he starts something, does not just leave it, went to the man. The man had actually died during the night. There was no trace of blood poisoning, and Schleich diagnosed: death by autosuggestion. Yes, that is easy to diagnose. But this is something completely different. It is a pity – or perhaps it was not possible – that the autopsy did not determine the real cause of death with certainty. It lay in something completely different. The man felt a certain presentiment, a certain premonition, that did not come to consciousness in such a way that one could have grasped it as a fully articulated presentiment. In the man's case, the approach of death was expressed not as some kind of physical sensation, but only in a mad fear; and the stabbing with the feather was nothing more than the man becoming clumsy and stabbing himself. And his whole behavior was nothing more than a certain presentiment; he would have died — stabbed or not. What was present was the premonition of the death living in the body, and the other was only symptomatic. One should also examine the case more closely from a psycho-physical point of view and not simply say: death by autosuggestion. - The matter was as I have now explained it, at least most likely. But this is something that Schleich did not want to be persuaded of; he stuck to his auto-suggestion, for which there is no evidence and which can only be said to be a daring hypothesis.

The same applies to other problems. Spiritual science wants to investigate everything empirically and not start from assumptions, while Schleich in particular really does have such favorite ideas in many cases. He is a witty and very humane man, but he cannot bring himself to be completely impartial and unprejudiced. But that is what must be striven for in anthroposophy, even with regard to such things that one values. And I can assure you, I appreciate Schleich's thoughts and work, which I know well; but if one asks, it must be pointed out that he always stops at something in this way. Anthroposophy wants to observe the phenomena in full impartiality in order to get to the bottom of reality, so that one can penetrate this reality with mathematical clarity.

I must again and again emphasize that it is not in the sense of any kind of sectarianism or amateurishness that anthroposophically oriented spiritual science wants to assert itself here in Stuttgart. What is being striven for, even if it can only be done with the weakest of forces today, is genuine, true science. And the more spiritual science is examined in this way, the more it will be recognized as fully equal to every scientific method of examination. Spiritual science is not heaped with such misunderstandings out of real scientificness, as it is heaped today; its opponents truly do not fight it because they are too scientific, but - one goes after the thing -, because they are too little scientific. But in the future, we need not a drying up, but an increase, a real true progress of science, and in the end this can only be a progress that leads not only into the material, but also into the spiritual with complete precision.

Public lecture given to students at the Technical University

Dear students, If I attempt to present to you today something from the field of what for a number of years I have called anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, I do so in the knowledge that this evening, in what is effectively my first lecture, I will be able to give nothing more than a few suggestions, and that I am under no illusion that such a presentation will instantly create any kind of conviction. But perhaps it will be possible, after the general description that I will give, to satisfy specific wishes and address specific questions in the discussion that follows.

In order not to take up too much of our time, I would like to address the most important point first, and that is to give a characteristic of what spiritual science in an anthroposophically oriented sense actually wants to be. It differs from what is usually called science in the method of its research. And it is convinced that, in the latest period of time, a serious and honest striving in science, if consistently pursued, must ultimately lead to its method. I would like to speak to you in a thoroughly scientific sense, since I myself truly did not start from any theological point of view, nor from any world-view questions or philosophies in the sense in which they are usually cultivated, but rather I myself started from technical studies. And out of technical studies themselves, this spiritual science presented itself to me as a necessity of our historical period of development. Therefore, I am particularly pleased to be able to speak to you this evening.

When we do natural science, in the sense of today's thinking, we first have something in front of us that extends around us as the world of sensual facts. And we then use our thinking, we use in particular our methodically trained thinking, to find laws from a corresponding pursuit of these sensual facts. We look for what we are accustomed to calling natural laws, historical laws and so on. This way of relating to the world is not something that the humanities reject, but they want to stand on the firm ground of this research. But it does its research, standing on this firm ground, I might say, by starting from the point of view of human life itself. It comes, precisely because it wants to do serious scientific research, simply to the limit of scientific knowledge, which is fully admitted by level-headed natural scientists. And with regard to what natural science can be, it is firmly grounded in the view of those who say: In summarizing external facts, we advance to a certain level with scientific methodology, but we cannot go beyond a certain limit if we remain on the ground of this natural scientific research itself.

But then, when what is sought in ordinary life and in ordinary natural science is achieved, only then does the goal of spiritual science as it is meant here begin. By thinking about and understanding the facts around us, we arrive at certain boundary concepts. I am mentioning here only such limiting concepts, whether they are conceived as mere functions or as realities, limiting concepts such as atom, matter and so on. We operate at least with them, even if we do not seek demonic entities behind them. These limiting concepts, limiting ideas, which confront us particularly when we follow the scientific branches that are fundamental to technology, stand there as it were like pillars. And if you want to stop at the limits of ordinary science, you will remain standing right in front of these boundary pillars.

But for the spiritual researcher, as I mean him here, the actual work begins only at these border pillars. There it is a matter of the spiritual researcher, in what I call meditation - please do not take offense at this, it is a technical term like others - entering into a certain inner struggle, an inner struggling of life with these concepts, more or less with all the border concepts of natural science. And this inner struggle does not remain unfruitful for him.

In this context, I must mention a man who taught here in this city, at this university, in the second half of the last century, and who repeatedly emphasized this struggle that man enters into when he comes to the limits of ordinary science. It is Friedrich Theodor Vischer who knew something of what the human being can experience when he arrives at the concepts of matter, atom, natural law, force, and so on. What I mean here does not consist in brooding, but in consulting everything in the depths of our soul that has led to these concepts, in trying to live with these concepts in meditation.

What does that actually mean? It means establishing the inner discipline within oneself to be able to look, just as one otherwise looks at external objects, at what one finally has in one's soul when one arrives at such a borderline concept; I could name many others to you besides those I have just mentioned. Then, when one tries to concentrate the whole range of the soul on such concepts, abstracting from all other experiences, one makes an inward discovery. And this inner discovery is a shattering one. It shows us that from a certain point in life, in our inner life, our concepts become something that grows in our soul through itself, that is different after such inner meditative work than it is when we take it only as the result of external observation. Just as we observe in the growing child how certain organs, which first appear more undifferentiated, become more differentiated, how we perceive how organs grow, so in such meditative devotion to the results of scientific experience we feel how an inner growth of the soul takes place. And then comes the shocking realization that it is not through speculation, not through speculative philosophy that one goes beyond what is called the limit of natural knowledge, but through direct experience, that is, by transforming what one has gained through thinking into inner experience of beholding.

That, ladies and gentlemen, is the first step that is taken. It can be clearly felt how the method becomes quite different and how, therefore, something completely new occurs in comparison to the usual scientific method, which can be objectively recognized more than by anyone else, but also by me, in that mere thinking, mere comprehension, passes over into inner experience. And then, through consistent, patient, persistent experience in this direction, something occurs that cannot be called anything other than an experience of spiritual existence. One cannot speak about the experience of the spiritual world in any other way from an anthroposophically oriented spiritual science. Because this experience of the spiritual world is not something that is innate in man. It is something that must be achieved by man. When one has reached a certain level of this experience, one realizes that our thinking, which we otherwise use to grasp our environment, is in a different relationship to our entire physical being than one is forced to assume from mere knowledge of nature.

From the mere knowledge of nature, one notices how the physical changes and transformations, with youth, with old age and so on, also change the states of the soul. With scientific thinking, one can go further physiologically. It can be shown how the nervous system and the brain actually express the structure and configuration of our thinking. And if you follow the matter consistently from one side, you can say: Yes, something emerges from something else, which today could only be stated hypothetically, that which is thinking, that which is life in thought.

The person who has experienced this inwardly, which I have characterized as being able to be experienced, speaks differently, saying: When one walks, for my part over a soggy road, or when a car drives over a soggy road, then one has the impression of furrows, of footsteps. It would obviously be quite wrong to put forward the theory that it must have been an extraterrestrial being that created these footsteps, these furrows, just because one does not know, or to hypothesize that there are certain forces below the earth's surface that work in such a way as to have caused these footsteps, these furrows.

Thus one says – and I say expressly, with a certain right – from a scientific point of view: That which is the physiological formation of the brain is what, in the end, is expressed in the function of thinking. The person who has experienced what I have characterized does not say it that way; they say: Just as these grooves and furrows are not raised from within by the earth's inner forces, but rather as if something has passed over them, so the physical brain has been placed in its furrows by the body-free thinking. And that which, in a certain way, when we entered physical existence through birth, changes these furrows, that is also what, descending from spiritual worlds, does the work of shaping these furrows in the first place.

In this way, it is established that the soul is absolutely the active principle, that it is the soul that gives form to the body. I know, esteemed readers, that, of course, hundreds of objections can be raised against what I am saying, if one starts only from the intellectual-theoretical point of view. But spiritual science must point to the experience. It must point out that until this experience takes place, one is justified in believing that thought arises from the physical brain as a function, whereas when one experiences this thought life oneself, one knows how it is active in itself, how it is substantial and in motion in itself, and how it is actually active in relation to the passivity of the physical body.

So what is presented as a first initial experience is not something that is gained through a straightforward continuation of ordinary scientific methods, but only through a metamorphosis, only through a transformation of the ordinary scientific method into a method that can only be experienced, which consists not in speculation but in an inner experience.

That is one side of it. The other side of this inner experience relates more to the inner development of the human will. By looking at our lives, we can see the transformations we have undergone in life. We think back to how we were in our inner soul and outer bodily state one, five, ten years ago, and we say to ourselves: we have undergone changes, transformations. These changes, these transformations that we undergo, how do we undergo them? We passively surrender to the outside world in a certain way. We just need to say: hand on heart, how active are we in what we have initially become through the outside world? The outside world, heredity, upbringing and so on, shapes us; and what shapes us in it continues to have an effect. As a rule, we are actually the passive ones. If we now transform this into activity, if we form out of it what might be called in the most eminent sense self-discipline, and in the way I will characterize it in a moment, then the second element is added to what we have characterized as the first element in the path of spiritual research. If one can bring it to that, and that can only be achieved through methodical schooling in the sense described in my book “How to Know Higher Worlds” and in other books, if one can bring it to say to oneself: I will plan, even if only a small part of what what is to arise in me, I will resolve that this or that quality shall become mine; and if I can bring it to produce such a quality in me by a strong arousal of the will, perhaps only after years, when I make out of myself what I would otherwise only passively encounter in life , if I take my will, if I may express it somewhat paradoxically, into my own hands and take full control of my development – in a certain part one can of course only do so – then what otherwise is merely memory, in a certain way, also comes together to form a real area. You get a kind of overview of your life, as if you were looking at a series of things, and you then come to know the will in its true character.

While one gets to know thinking as something that actually detaches itself from the physical the more one delves into life, one comes to recognize one's will in such a way that it actually encompasses the physical more and more, permeates us more and more, flows through us, and that basically death is nothing more than a struggle of the will with the bodily functions have reached a certain limit when we pass through an earlier or later death, and that then that which can no longer work our body in this way, the will, is completely absorbed in what the body does, that this will detaches itself and that an element of the soul now actually enters a real, spiritual world when we pass away.

So it is a matter of the fact that what is usually called the idea of immortality is not pursued by any speculation of the spiritual science meant here, that basically this spiritual science completely breaks with the way the world usually approaches this idea. The point is that spiritual science, as a continuation of natural science through the training of thought and will, actually manages to grasp what we carry within us, thinking and willing, in such a way that we can also grasp it when this soul, which lives in thinking and willing, lives in a disembodied way that cannot be reached by the senses.

Of course, what I have briefly explained here will be regarded by the widest circles of our present time as something fantastic and visionary. But how could it be otherwise? Everything that comes into the world as something new and seemingly contradicts what was already there is initially regarded as something fantastic and visionary. But I do not believe that it will remain so for all time, that people will not recognize that what has been described here as the method of spiritual science, at least in two of its characteristic elements, is only a continuation, but a lively continuation, of what natural science actually achieves, but with which natural science comes up against a certain limit.

Today, when one speaks of the spirit in general, it is no longer entirely taken amiss. This was still the case in the last third of the 19th century, when a certain materialistic way of forming a world view out of scientific knowledge was used to draw the only logical conclusion of scientific thinking itself. Today it is again permitted to speak of the spirit, at least in a speculative way. But one is still very much taken aback when one speaks of the spirit in the way I have just done, because that has a certain consequence.

When one has acquired what I have called the “seeing consciousness” in my book “The Human Council,” when one has acquired what arises from such developed thinking and willing, then one knows oneself in a spiritual world through this seeing consciousness — just as one knows oneself through one's eyes and ears in a world of color and sound. In a sense, the world around is permeated with spirit. Just as the world around a person who was born blind undergoes a transformation when, after an operation, he begins to see colors at a certain point in his life, and the world that was previously around him is now filled with something different, so it is when this seeing consciousness occurs. The world that one was previously accustomed to seeing as the world of the senses and of the combining mind is filled with spirituality. And the spirit becomes something concrete. The spirit becomes something that one can also follow in its concrete form. One no longer speaks of the spirit in general. When someone speaks of the spirit in general, it is as if a person were walking across a meadow with flowers. If you ask him, “What kind of flower is that and what kind is that?” He will say, “They are all plants, plants, plants.” So today people are also allowed to say: Behind the sensory world is a spiritual world. But spiritual science cannot stop there. Rather, it must examine the spiritual facts in the concrete — because the spiritual world is around us just as the colored or the sounding world is — in the same way as one otherwise examines the colored and sounding world with the senses and the combining intellect. And there one acquires, before everything else, a quite definite way of relating to the world. It is also the case that if one is born blind and suddenly gains sight, one acquires a different relationship to the world. One must first find one's bearings; one knows nothing about spatial perspective, one must first learn it. So, of course, one must also acquire a certain relationship, a certain position to the world when one passes over into the consciousness of observation. Then many things appear in a peculiar way. That is why the spiritual researcher is still misunderstood by his contemporaries.

You see, the spiritual researcher never says that what has been gained through the method of strict natural science, or what has been drawn from the consequences of these results of strict natural science, is in any way logically incorrectly followed or anything of the sort, but he is compelled to add something from his spiritual insight, which is then not merely added on, but which in many respects completely changes the results of natural science.

Take geology, for example. I will pick out one example. It is better to talk about specific questions than to use general phrases. I understand completely and have followed this method myself: if, from what is happening around us today in the formations of rock, in the deposits of rivers and water and so on, we examine the geological layers that lie on top of each other and then calculate – even if it is not always a real calculation, but only something approximate, if you calculate how long these respective rock layers have existed, then you get the known figures. And then, as you all know, we arrive at the beginning of the earth's development, where the earth - as is hypothetically assumed - formed out of something, out of a kind of primeval nebula or something similar. I do not need to go into this in more detail. You are familiar with all this.

But for the spiritual researcher it is so, simply because he has experienced such things as I have described to you - though only in outline, to stimulate interest, not to convince - for the spiritual researcher it is so that he must say to himself: I assume that someone is examining the changes in a human organism, say the changes in the heart every five years. I follow how the human heart or another organ changes over the course of five or ten years, what happens there. And now I calculate what I have seen, if I simply consistently deduce from what I have calculated what it was like three hundred years ago. I get a certain result, albeit purely arithmetical, as to what this human heart was like three hundred years ago. The only objection to this is that this heart did not even exist at that time. Just as correct as the geological approach would be to conclude from the small changes in the human heart what that heart was like three hundred years ago – only it was not even there at that time. Equally correct – for I fully recognize that what geology reveals has at least a relative correctness – is also everything that is deduced from the geological facts for the development of the earth. But then we transpose what presents itself to us as a consequence of our calculations into times when the earth did not yet exist in its present form. Or we transpose what arises from our observations, which were made over a limited period of time, into an epoch that lies millions of years ahead, by calculating an end state and speaking of entropy or the like. For the spiritual researcher, this is the same as if he were to calculate what the nature of the human heart will be after three hundred years.

That is what you arrive at when you convert the ordinary scientific method into something that can be experienced. Because, you see, man is actually like an extract of the whole cosmos. In man you find - somehow changed, somehow extracted, compensated or the like - what is present in the cosmos as a law. You will ask me: Yes, how can you enthusiast claim that the earth has not yet existed in its present form? You must show us a way to claim something like that.

I will, however only sketchily, characterize how one comes to such assertions as I have put forward. One discovers, by experiencing the volition, the thinking, as I have described to you, that man really is a kind of microcosm. I do not say this as a phrase, as the nebulous mystics say, but in the awareness that it has become as clear to me as any solution to a differential equation, out of complete logical clarity. Man is inwardly a compendium of the whole world. And just as in our ordinary life we do not know only what is sensually surrounding us at the moment, just as we, by looking beyond what is sensually surrounding us at this moment, look at the image of something we have experienced about ten or fifteen years ago , how it emerges before us as something that no longer exists – but something of it is present in us, which enables us to reconstruct what was present back then – it is the same with the expanded consciousness that arises from the transformation of ordinary thinking and willing. In that man was actually connected with all that is past, only in a more comprehensive sense, in a completely different sense, in a more spiritual sense, was connected with what is past than he was connected with experiences ten or fifteen years ago, which he can bring up again from his inner being, so it is possible, when consciousness is broadened, we simply find out, as from a cosmic memory, that which we were part of, which simply does not live on in us for ordinary consciousness, but which lives on for the consciousness that has arisen through the metamorphosis that I have described.

It is therefore nothing more than an expansion, an increase of that power which is otherwise our power of remembrance, whereby man inwardly, simply from his own nature, which is a summary of the macrocosm, constructively resurrects that which actually was on our earth in a certain period of time. Man then looks at a state of the earth when it was not yet material. And while he otherwise has to construct something from the present-day experiences of geology that is supposed to have existed at that time, he now looks at a point in time when the earth was not yet there, when it was in a much more spiritual form. He sees, by constructively recreating what lives in him, that which actually underlies the formation of our earth.

And it is the same with what can emerge in us from a future state of the earth as something constructive in a certain way. I know how unsatisfactory such a sketchy description must be, but you can see from it that what I characterize as spiritual science is not drawn from thin air or from fantasy. It is, of course, something unusual. But once you have undergone the metamorphosis of consciousness, what you constructively represent inwardly is as clear to your consciousness as what you conjure up in mathematics or geometry, which is also constructed from within the human being.

And when someone comes and says, “Yes, but you have to assert something that all people can understand,” I say, “Yes, that is also the case, but the first thing to be considered is that the person who wants to understand something must first go through everything that is necessary to do so – just as someone who wants to solve a differential equation must first go through what will enable him to solve it.

And if someone objects on the other hand: Yes, mathematical geometry only presents something to our consciousness that we apply when we follow the reality of the external world – then I say: Yes, that is so, but if we constructively present this to ourselves, then we arrive at the conviction that it is a mere formality. If you are aware of what has been characterized, you know that it is a reality. And if someone says that this is perhaps self-suggestion, then I say: everything that gives us the possibility of saying that something is real is only a result of experience. And when some people object that someone could be mistaken, that someone could, for example, have the vivid thought of citric acid when drinking something and if they are sensitive, they could even have the taste of lemon – I say: that is possible. But just as in ordinary life one can distinguish the mere thought of heat from the heat that comes from actually touching a hot iron, so too, through inner experience, if one has the seeing consciousness, one can distinguish between what is mere imagination, what is mere suggestion, and what is reality, because the grasping of all reality is an inner experience. And it is necessary to follow things through to the end, not to stop somewhere. Anyone who stops short of where the path should actually lead may succumb to suggestion. I therefore say: It is indeed possible, if someone is sensitive and gives themselves over to autosuggestion, to say: I have the thought of lemonade, I even feel the taste – but the thought of lemonade will not quench one's thirst. What matters is that one passes from the sensation of taste to quenching one's thirst, that one follows the path consistently. The experience must be pursued consistently, then the fact that one designates something as reality in the spiritual sense is also entirely the result of the experience. The designation of a sensual reality or reality cannot be theoretically established, but is a result of experience.

Now, dear attendees, I have characterized the spiritual science that comes to a modern, natural scientific person when they go through what life offers today. This life has truly changed extraordinarily in the last thirty to fifty years, especially through the advances in technology. When I think back to the time when the first chair of technology was established in Vienna in the early 1880s, and consider all that has happened since then, I get some idea of how much this modern man has changed as a result of everything that has been drawn into our cognitive, our moral, but especially our social life. Those who have honestly gone through this, who do not say out of some prejudice: Oh well, science can't give us anything! but who takes the view that natural science can give us a great deal, who is completely absorbed in the triumphs of modern natural science, can come to the realization that the spiritual foundations of the world must be grasped in the way I have tried to present to you today.

Then one looks back to earlier times in the development of humanity and says to oneself: In these earlier times of human development, people hardly spoke of the spirit at all. And the way in which they spoke of the spirit has been preserved traditionally in various religious denominations, which, if one is completely honest and does not want to keep double accounts of life, one truly cannot reconcile with the results of ordinary natural science today. These spiritual experiences, it must be said, arise from a completely different state of consciousness in people. What we have learned through the three to four centuries in which scientific methods have been developed, what we have become as a state of mind through the Copernican and Galilean way of thinking, through Kepler, we have gone through everything that has subtracted the technical laws from the laws of nature in more recent times, through Kepler, through the Copernican and Galilean way of thinking, through Kepler, The entire configuration of the soul has changed, not by becoming more theoretical, but by becoming more conscious. Through the development of humanity, we have necessarily left certain instinctive states of earlier ages. And we look back at what earlier ages sensed as spirituality, which has been preserved in religious traditions, and we say to ourselves: What was there then as spirituality was grasped by human instinct. One could not say that this was dependent on such a heightening of consciousness through the methods of natural science, through the methods of social experience in modern times. People spoke in such a way that, when they saw natural phenomena, these natural phenomena, as it were, endowed them with the spirit of what they were speaking about. How did an ancient civilized Egyptian relate to the world? He looked up, followed the course of the stars, the configuration of the starry sky. He did not just see what Copernicus, Galileo and Kepler saw in this starry sky, but he saw something that at the same time revealed a spiritual reality to him. Just as, when I move my arm, a soul-active underlies this hand movement, so the person of earlier epochs felt in what happened externally that which underlies this external event as a spiritual, but instinctively.

Then came the more recent period, the time of natural science. I would like to say that we look back on a long period of human development that did not actually reach its conclusion until around the middle of the 15th century, a long period in which people could not help but see what was around them with their senses as something spiritual at the same time. When we speak of physical states today, of solid, liquid, gaseous forms, we speak in such a way that we consider the material. Ancient man, when he spoke of what are for us today the physical states, saw them as elements, but these elements were not merely material; they were the spiritual that manifested itself in them. What surrounded man as the material world was for him just as much the external physical-spiritual expression of the spiritual-soul as the physical organism is for us an expression of the spiritual-soul - but all instinctively. This path has necessarily been abandoned in the last three to four centuries, when humanity passed over to something quite different, which then became guiding in civilization. Mankind moved on to what distinguished the observation of nature from mere observation, which is always connected with the instinctive, with the spiritual observation of nature, which is still hidden in the name 'contemplation'. Man moved on from mere observation of nature to what could be called experimental comprehension of nature.

Since Bacon and others have been working, the mere observation of nature has been replaced by the experimental comprehension of nature. We do the experiment in the laboratory, in the physics cabinet, which we then extend to the technical work. In that which we ourselves bring about as a condition for some natural event, we survey these very conditions. Through the experiment, we are in a different position than in mere observation of nature. In nature, I cannot know whether what is revealed to me, be it for my mind or for my imagination, whether that is also some totality or whether I have to delve into it, much, much deeper than the thing initially presents itself to me. In short, despite all exact observation, what I observe in nature remains before me as an unknown. When I have an experiment before me, I establish the conditions myself; I follow how one thing is evoked out of another, and what is then still unknown is basically what is actually of interest. When you design an experiment and then observe what can be observed, you are actually looking at the result of what follows from the conditions that are manageable for you. In the experiment, everything is transparent in a completely different way than what I observe in nature.

And so, little by little, people have become accustomed to regarding themselves as interpreters of nature in the manageable context of the experiment, to some extent to tracing the law of nature where they themselves can trace the conditions of its manifestation. However, this experimental method is still linked to a certain inner yearning that used to underpin knowledge through and through. In those ancient times, when there was as yet no technology and no natural science in our sense, what was regarded as science arose above all out of the desire for knowledge, out of the desire to recognize, to explore, “what holds the world together in its inmost being,” if I may express it in this way. Now that the experimental method has emerged, it is not only the desire for knowledge that drives us, but also the desire to recreate what forms nature. But the old desire for knowledge still lives on. We recreate what we want to see in the experiment in order to unravel nature itself through what we can see. In recent times, technology has emerged from this experimental method with a certain degree of implicitness, and with technology we have entered a new phase.

We can therefore say that in the history of human development, we first have research determined by the desire for knowledge, then the experimental method, which, however, still combines the yearning of the old quest for knowledge with the recreation of nature. But when we pass over - one need only follow what has actually happened - from what can be experienced with the experiment to what then happens out of the experiment with the recognized laws of nature through the technical designs, which intervenes so deeply in human and social life, we must say to ourselves: there is a third element present that passes over from what we still have in recreating nature to what is now creative in man himself. This creative power – I do not believe that I am speaking to completely insensitive souls when I say the following about this creative power: the person who, with that peculiar characteristic style, with that peculiar state of soul constitution is undergoing a technical training, feels differently in this training than someone who is undergoing, for example, a theological training, which is a reproduction of the oldest methods of knowledge, or an already experimental scientific training. Those who undergo an experimental scientific training apply the mathematical, the geometrical, the theoretical-mechanical, the photometric, and so on, to what they observe there. He, as it were, recalculates nature.

One stands on a completely different level of consciousness when one first has before one what is, as it were, completely inwardly transparent: the mathematical, the geometrical —, and when one applies this not only in experiment, thus in imitating nature, but when one applies it in completely free designing machines, when you see that what you have experienced as mathematics, as theoretical-mechanistic chemistry, penetrates into the design of a technical structure, you experience the world in a completely different way than the mere naturalist or the theorizing technician.

What is the actual difference? One often fails to consider this. Imagine that in our ordinary, trivial lives we describe everything as “real”, even that which is not real in a higher sense. We call a rose “real”. But is a rose real in a higher sense? If I have it here in front of me, torn from the rose stem, it cannot live. It can only be shaped as it is when it grows on the rose stem, when it grows out of the rose root. By cutting it off, I actually have a real abstraction in front of me, something that cannot exist as I have it in front of me. But this is the case with every natural structure to a certain extent. When I look at a natural formation, even at a crystal, which is the least likely to exist, I cannot understand it just by looking at it, because it basically cannot exist by itself any more than the rose can. So I would have to say: this crystal is only possible in the whole environment, perhaps having grown out of a geode in the mountain formation.

But when I have before me something that I myself have formed as a technical structure, I feel differently about it. You can feel that, even feel it as something radically significant in the experience of the modern human being, who looks at what technology has become in modern life from the perspective of his or her technical education. When I have a technical structure that I have constructed from mathematics, from theoretical mechanics, I have something in front of me that is self-contained. And if I live in what is basically the scope of all technical creation, then I have before me not just a reflection of the laws of nature, but in what has become technical entities out of the laws of nature, there is actually something new before me. It is something different that underlies the laws of the technical entities than that which also underlies inorganic nature. It is not just that the laws of inorganic nature are simply transferred, but that the whole meaning of the structure in relation to the cosmos becomes different, in that I, as a freely creative human being, transfer what I otherwise experience from the design of physical or chemical investigations into the technical structure.

But with that, one can say: in that modern humanity has come to extract the technical from the whole scope of the natural, in that we had to learn in modern times to live in the realm of the technical in such a way that we we stand with human consciousness in a completely different relationship to the technical than to that which is produced in nature, we say to ourselves: Now it is for the first time that we stand before a world that is now, so to speak, spiritually transparent. The world of nature research is in a certain way spiritually opaque; one does not see to the bottom of it. The world of technology is like a transparent crystal - spiritually understood, of course. With this, a new stage in the spiritual development of humanity has truly been reached, precisely with modern technology. Something else has entered into the developmental history of humanity. That is why modern philosophers have not known how to deal with what has emerged in this modern consciousness precisely through the triumphs of technology. Perhaps I may point out how little the purely philosophical, speculative way of thinking could do with what has seized modern human consciousness, precisely from the point of view of technology. Today we are much more seized by what emanates from the leading currents of human development than we realize. What is now general consciousness was not yet there when there were no newspapers, when the only spiritual communication was that people heard the pastor speak from the pulpit on Sundays. What is now general education flows through certain channels from the leading currents into the broad masses, without people being aware of it. And so, basically, what came through technical consciousness has, in the course of a very short time, shaped the forms of thought of the broadest masses; it lives in the broadest masses without them being aware of it.

And so we can say that something completely new has moved in. And where a consciousness has become one-sided — which, fortunately, we have not yet achieved in Europe — where a consciousness has become one-sided, almost obsessed with this abstraction, a strange philosophical trend emerged: the so-called pragmatism of William James and others, which says: truth, ideas that merely want to be truth, that is something unreal at all. In truth, only that which we see can be realized is truth. — We as human beings form certain goals; we then shape reality according to them. And when we say to ourselves: this or that is real according to a natural law —, we form a corresponding structure out of it. If we can realize in the machine, in mechanics, what we imagine, then it is proved to us by the application in life that this is true. But there is no other proof than that of application in life. And so only that which we can realize in life is true. The so-called pragmatism, which denies all logical internal pursuit of truth and actually only accepts the truth of truth through what is carried out externally, is presented today in the broadest circles as American philosophy. And that is something that some people in Europe have also been grasping at for decades, even before the war.

All those philosophers who still want to think in the old ways know of no other way to proceed with what has emerged as a newer technique, as the awareness of newer techniques, than to set the concept of truth aside altogether. By stepping out of the instinctive grasping of nature, out of the experimental recreation of nature, into the free shaping of nature, nothing remains for them but free external shaping. The inner experience of truth, that spiritual experience of the soul that can permeate the soul as a spiritual being, is actually denied by this, and only that which can be realized in the external functional forms is considered truth. That is to say, the concept of truth that is inherent in the human soul is actually set aside.

Now, another development is also possible; it is possible that we will experience how something is emerging in the actual substance of technical structures from that which is natural, which now contains nothing that we can intuit, but only that which we can comprehend. For if we cannot grasp it, we cannot shape it. By experiencing this, by thoroughly permeating ourselves with what can be experienced in it, a certain need must awaken in us all the more. This new external world presents itself to us without the inner realization of the ideas, it presents itself to us without the inner experience of the ideas. Therefore, through this new experience, we are prepared for the pure experience of what spirituality is, of what man, subtracted from all external observation, must experience within, as I tried to sketch out for you at the beginning of my reflections today.

And so I believe that, because we have advanced in the developmental history of humanity to a view of that reality that we can survey externally, where we can no longer see any demoniacal, ghostly aspect in externality, because we have finally arrived at the point where we can no longer interpret the external sensual as being opaque to us, behind which we can assume something spiritual. We must seek the forces for the spirit within us through the development of the soul.

It has always seemed to me that a truly honest experience of the consciousness that comes to us precisely from technology calls upon us - because otherwise what is intimately connected with our human nature would almost have to be lost - to experience that what spirituality is, to experience it inwardly, in order to add to the one pole of transparent mechanics, of transparent chemistry, that which can now be attained through spiritual insight, which can be presented to people in the spirit. It seems to me that it is necessary in our time for the spiritual vision of anthroposophy to reveal itself, for the reason that we have indeed reached a certain stage of development in human history.

And another thing, honored attendees, is added: with this newer technology, a new social life has emerged at the same time. I do not need to describe how modern technology has created modern industrialism, how this modern technology has produced the modern proletariat in the way it is today. But it seems to me that if we only want to take the standpoint of the earlier scientific method, the standpoint of that which emerges from observation, then our thoughts fall short. We cannot grasp what is truly revealed in social life. In order to grasp what emerges in social life from the human, it is necessary that we come to truths that reveal themselves only through human nature itself. And so I believe that Marxism and other similar quackery, which today put people in such turmoil, can only be overcome if one finds special methods that are necessary as a counterbalance to technology, applied to the social life of human beings, and if, through this, it becomes possible to bring spirituality into the outer life, into the broad masses, because one has found this spirituality through inner experience.

Therefore it is no mere accident that out of the same soil out of which anthroposophically oriented spiritual science arose for me, there also grew, truly unsought, what I tried to present in my book 'The Core of the Social Question'. I simply tried to draw the consequences for social life from spiritual-scientific knowledge. And what I presented in this book emerged quite naturally.

I do not believe that without spiritual science one can find the methods that grasp how man stands to man in social life. And I believe that, because we have not yet been able to recognize social life, this life will not allow itself to be conquered by us and that we will therefore initially be plunged into chaos at the moment when, after the terrible catastrophe of war, people are faced with the necessity of rebuilding it. It is necessary to carry out what is to be carried out on the basis of spiritual laws, not on the basis of the law that a misconceived understanding believes can be based on natural laws, as is the case in Marxism and other radical formulations of social science.

So, dear attendees, I was able to give a reason for something that is actually quite personal to me, right here in front of you. And I may say: Speaking to you now, I feel transported back to an earlier time, to the 1880s, when we in Central Europe were living in a time that was felt by everyone as a time of ascent. We – those people who, like me, have grown old – have now arrived at a point in time where the hopes of spring that emerged back then stand before our spiritual eyes in a certain, quite tragic form. Those who look back on what seemed like an invincible ascent at the time now look back on something that reveals to many people that it was, after all, a mistake in many respects.

In speaking to you, I am speaking to fellow students who are in a different situation. Many of you are probably the same age as I was when I experienced that springtime hope; now you are experiencing something that is very different from the fantasies that arose from the springtime hopes of that time in the human soul. But someone who is as filled with the possibility and necessity of spiritual knowledge as the one speaking to you can never be pessimistic about the power of human nature; he can only be optimistic. And that is why it does not appear to me as something that I do not present as a possibility before my soul, that once you have reached the age at which I am speaking to you today, you have gone through the opposite path – that opposite path that now leads upwards again from the power of the human soul, above all from the spiritual power of the human soul. And because I believe in man out of spiritual knowledge, I believe that one cannot speak, as Spengler does, of a downfall, of a death of Western civilization. But because I believe in the power of the soul that lives in you, I believe that we must come to an ascent again. Because this ascent is not caused by an empty phantom, but by human will. And I believe so strongly in the truth of the spiritual science described to you that I am convinced: This will of men can be carried, can cause a new ascent, can cause a new dawn. And so, my honored audience, I would like to close with the words that first fell on my ears as a young student when the new rector for mechanics and mechanical engineering in Vienna delivered his inaugural address. At that time, for people who also believed in a new ascent, and rightly believed in it, even if only a technical ascent came later, not a social, not a political ascent. But now we are in a period in which, if we do not want to despair, we can and must think only of an ascent. That is why I say what that man said to us young people back then: “Fellow students, I conclude by saying that anyone who feels honestly about the development of humanity in the face of what is to arise from all science and all technology can only say: Always forward!”

Pronunciation

Question: What entitles us to go beyond the limits of thinking, to leave the unity of thinking and to move from thinking to meditation?

Rudolf Steiner: Dearly beloved! It seems to me that this question is about something very significant, which, however, can only be fully understood through thorough epistemological and epistemological reflection. But I will try to point out a few things that come into consideration when answering this question.

Perhaps I may draw attention to the last chapter that I added to the second edition of my book “The Riddles of Philosophy”, in which I described the development of philosophy itself and in which I then tried to show how, at the present moment in human development has arrived at the point where philosophy, so to speak, demands of itself this going beyond of thinking about the point of view of thinking that arises precisely when one has reached the limits of the knowledge of nature. I tried to show the following at the time:

People can, if they study the methods of knowledge acquisition in detail, as the great physiologist Du Bois-Reymond did, arrive at the point of view that Du Bois-Reymond expressed in his lecture “On the Limits of Natural Knowledge” at the famous natural science conference in Leipzig in the 1870s and also repeated in his lecture on “The Seven World Riddles”. I will only briefly point out that at that time Du Bois-Reymond spoke of the fact that with the application of what has been called “unified thinking” here, one comes to develop the so-called Laplacian mind, that is, to develop such thinking about matter as is possible when one seeks to grasp the course of the planets of a solar system using astronomical-mathematical methods.

If we now turn our attention, through a certain inner vision, to what is taking place within ourselves, if we try to make the subject into the object, then it turns out that this thinking, which we develop, cannot be defined as being there to depict some external world or to combine the facts of an external world. In what is thought about thinking, I must still see a last remnant of that old teleology, that old doctrine of purpose, which everywhere asks not why but for what purpose, which does not ask how it comes that the whole organization of man or any other organism or an organ like the hand is formed in a certain way, but which asks how this hand would have to be formed for a certain purpose. This is extended, even if one is no longer aware of it today or is not yet aware of it, to the consideration of thinking. One asks: What is thinking actually for? One does not always realize this, but unconsciously one asks. One thinks that thinking, and cognition in general, is there to enable one to draw an external world into oneself, so that what is outside is within, even if only in the form of an image. But now, one can follow realistically, but of course spiritually and realistically, what thinking actually is. Then one notices that thinking is a real power that shapes us.

You see, the spiritual science I am talking about here is not an abstract theory, not something that just wants to be a world view in ideas. Among other things, I have recently given a pedagogical course here in which I tried to apply spiritual science to pedagogy. It was a course for teachers before the Waldorf School was founded. In addition to this pedagogical course, I also gave a course that tried to take the therapeutic aspect of medicine from spiritual science and show how spiritual research can shed light on something that can never be fully understood if one only uses today's methods of physiology and biology for research. Now, I do not want to tell you something specifically therapeutic, but there is one thing I would like to mention to characterize the method. That is that today in conventional philosophy there is actually only speculation about the connection between the spiritual-mental and the physical-corporeal. There are all kinds of theories about interactions, about parallelism and so on, all kinds of materialistic interpretations of the soul processes. But actually, in a certain abstraction, we always have on the one hand 'observation of the spiritual-soul' and on the other hand 'observation of the physical body', and then we speculate how these two can come into a relationship with each other. Spiritual science really studies methodically - but precisely with the thinking that is awakened there - how the soul-spiritual works in the physical body. And even if I expose myself to some misunderstanding, that what I say is taken as paradoxical, I want to emphasize one thing:

When we observe a child as it grows up until the change of teeth around the seventh year, we notice that not only does the change of teeth take place, but that the configuration of the soul and spirit also undergoes a significant change. If you now think back over your own life, even if you are not yet conducting methodical research, you will find that the sharply contoured thoughts that then solidify into memories and reproduce themselves in the course of life, that these sharply can only be formed out of the power of thought at the time when the organism drives out what are called second teeth - it is something that comes from the whole organism, not just from the jaw. If one pursues this methodically, one comes to say to oneself: Just as, for example, in physical processes, some kind of force, such as mechanical force, can be transformed into heat and one then says: heat is released, heat appears, so in the human course of life one has to observe what is released in the organism – we have completely lost the expression for this – in the change of teeth, and what is then released when the change of teeth gradually takes place, what then passes from the latent state to the free state, what initially only worked internally. The second teeth have appeared; a certain connection of forces is at work, a system of forces within, until these second teeth emerge. Then this interrelatedness of forces is released, and in its release it appears as that spiritual-soul element which then gives the sharply contoured thoughts of memory.

With this example I only want to show how this spiritual science is actually applied to areas that one does not think of today. It is a continuation of the natural sciences. It is exactly the same form of thinking that is applied when one speaks of the release of warmth. The same form, which has only just emerged, is then applied to human development, and one says to oneself: that which appears as memory, as thinking power, that pushes the second teeth out - if I may express myself trivially.

In this case, one is not speculating about the connection between body and soul, but rather one is pursuing, in a completely empirical way, as one is accustomed to doing as a natural scientist, only with more highly developed methods of thought, that which can be observed. Only the whole of what one has around one is also observed spiritually. And so one comes to speak no longer in an abstract, nebulous way about the interaction of body and soul and spirit, but one states how at a certain age a force works physically, which then emancipates itself as a spiritual-soul force at a different age. And one comes to enter with the spirit into the material, to understand the material spiritually. That is the peculiar thing, that materialism has not understood the material, that it actually stands before matter in such a way that it remains incomprehensible to it. Materialism has not understood matter. Spiritual science, which is meant here, advances to the understanding of the material through its spiritual method. And it was indeed extremely interesting for the doctors and medical students who were listening [to the course for medical professionals] that they were able to be shown how one can really arrive at an effective representation of the spiritual and soul in the physical, how one can, for example, show how the heart, in its function, can be understood in a completely different way from the methods of today's physiology or biology, based on spiritual science.

So it is a matter of developing thinking not just through some kind of fanciful elaboration, but through a real continuation, which must simply pass through a borderline or critical state. In this passage through the borderline state, thinking becomes something else. You must not say that the unity of thinking is somehow destroyed by this. For example, the power that works in ice does not become something that should no longer be when the ice melts and turns into water. And the power that works in water does not become something else when the water passes through the boiling point and through vaporization. So it is a matter of the fact that at the point that I have characterized as a point of development for thinking, this thinking power passes through such a borderline state and then indeed appears in a different form, so that the experience differs from the earlier experience like steam from water. But this leads one to understand the thinking power itself, thinking – I could also prove the same for willing – as something that works realistically in man. In the thinking power that one has later in life, one then sees what has been working in the body during childhood. So everything becomes a unity in a remarkable way.

I readily admit that spiritual science can err in some individual questions. It is in its early stages. But that is not the point. The point is the direction of the striving. And so one can say: an attempt is made to observe that which reveals itself in thinking, in its formation of the human being, to observe it as a real force that forms and develops the human organism. Thought is observed in its reality. Therefore, one says to oneself in the end: Those who still look at thought in a critical way, asking only one question: Why is thought such that it combines external sense perceptions? – they are succumbing to a certain error, an error that I would like to characterize for you now.

Let us assume that the grain of wheat or the ear of wheat grows out of the root tip through the stalk; the plant-forming power manifests itself and can shape a new plant out of the seed, which in turn grows into a seed and so on. We see that the formative power at work in the plant is continuously effective in the plant itself, from formation to formation, as Goethe says: from metamorphosis to metamorphosis. In spiritual science, we try to follow thinking, which expresses itself in human beings, as a formative force, and we come to the conclusion that, in that thinking is a formative force in human beings, a side effect also comes about, and this side effect is actually only ordinary cognition. But if I want to characterize thinking in its essence according to this side effect, then I am doing exactly the same as if I say: What interests me is what shoots up through the root, the stalks into the ear as a formative force in the plant; that does not interest me; I start from the chemistry of nutrition and examine what appears in the wheat grain as a nutritional substance. Of course, this is also a legitimate way of looking at the wheat grain. You can look at it that way. But if I do, then I disregard what actually flows continuously in plant formation. And so it is with cognition. In what is usually thought by epistemologists, by philosophers and by those who want to ground natural science with some kind of observation, there are the same effects that occur when thinking, which actually wants to shape us, expresses itself outwardly in a side effect. It is as if what grows in the wheat plant is only thought of as the basis for the nutrition of another being. But it is wrong to examine the wheat only in terms of this. This has nothing to do with the nature of the wheat grain. I am introducing a different point of view.

Thus, philosophy today is on the wrong track when it examines cognition only in terms of the apprehension of the external world. For the essential thing is that cognition is a formative force in man, and the other thing appears as a mere side effect. And the way of looking at it, which wants to leave thinking only in the state in which it abstracts natural laws, collects perceptions, is in the same position as someone who would claim that one should not do plant biology to learn about the nature of the plant, but nutritional chemistry.

These are things that are not thought of today, but they play a major role in the further development of the scientific future, that scientific future that is at the same time also the future for such a social organization through which man, in grasping social life through the spirit, can truly intervene in this social organization. Because that seems to me to be precisely what led to the catastrophe: that we no longer master life because we have entered a state of human development in which life must be mastered by the spirit, by that spirit that is recognized from within and thereby also recognizes what confronts us in the external world.

Yes, my dear audience, with such things one is considered an eccentric in the broadest circles today, a dreamer, and in any case one does not expect such a person to really see through the outside world realistically. But I believe that I am not mistaken when I say: the application of spiritual science to the entire external world can be compared to the following. If someone lays down a horseshoe-shaped iron, a farmer comes and says: I will shoe my horse with that. Another, who knows what kind of object it is, says to him: That is not a horseshoe, it is a magnet, it serves a completely different purpose. But the farmer says: What do I care, I will shoe my horse with it. This is how it seems today: a scientific attitude that refuses to admit that the spiritual lives everywhere in the material. Those who deny the spiritual in the material are like the man who says, “What do I care about the magnet? I'll shoe my horse with the iron.” I do believe, however, that we must come to the realization that in all material things we have to recognize not only an abstract spiritual essence, but also a concrete spiritual essence, and that we must then be willing to study this concrete spiritual essence in the same way as we do the material, and that this will mean progress in cognitive and social terms for the future.

But it is easier to express speculative results and all kinds of philosophies about what the spirit is, it is easier to be a pantheist or the like out of speculation than to follow the example of strict natural science, only with the experiential method, as I have described it, to continue the scientific research and then to come to it, [to find the spiritual in the material] - just as one brings warmth to light, even if it does not express itself, by showing under which circumstances that which is latent reveals itself. If we apply this method, which is usually applied externally, and continue it internally, but especially to the whole human being, then we will understand the spiritual in the material from the inside out. And above all, that which has actually been resonating to us from ancient times and yet, for human beings, is a profound necessity, that which still resonates from the Apollonian temple at Delphi to the ears of the spirit: 'Man, know thyself!' And just as philosophers and theologians have spoken of this “know thyself”, so too has the naturalist Ernst Haeckel, who was more or less inclined towards materialism. This “know thyself” is deeply rooted in human nature, and the modern age has now reached a point where this “know thyself” must be approached in a concrete way.

With these suggestions, I believe I have shown that it is not a matter of sinning against the unity of thought, but of continuing thought beyond a boundary point. Just as it is not impossible to bring the forces in water to a completely different manifestation after passing through the boiling point, so too, there is no sin against what is experienced in the combining thinking with the perception when this thinking is taken beyond the boundary point. It is quite natural that a metamorphosis of thinking is then achieved. But by no means has a uniformity of thinking been violated. You will not find at all that spiritual science leads to the rejection of natural science, but rather to a deeper penetration of it. One arrives precisely at what I consider to be particularly important for the development of humanity: the introduction of scientific knowledge into the whole conception of the world, which fertilizes life, but which can only be achieved by our ascending from the spiritual observation of nature to the pure experience of the spiritual, which can then also pour into our will and become a living force in us. Because it can do this, because living knowledge makes us not only wise but also skillful, I believe in a future for humanity, in human progress, if in the future more attention is paid to the spiritual in the material than has been the case so far, if the spiritual is sought in the material, and this can then be transferred to the social, so that in the future the solution of the social question will appear to us as the spiritualization of social life, as spiritualization with that spirit which we can gain precisely as a continuation of scientific research.

Professor Dr. Th. Meyer: I am in complete agreement with Dr. Steiner that the limiting concepts of scientific knowledge are not the limiting concepts of existence and reality. I have also heard him speak with warm and moved heart of the hopes that the German people may cherish for the future despite their collapse. But I do have some doubts as to whether spiritual science oriented towards anthroposophy will precisely possess the ability to lead to a new height to which Germany should strive. And I think the concern lies in the following: Dr. Steiner has repeatedly emphasized that the path to the higher worlds, of which he has spoken, is achieved through vision, through a seeing consciousness, through an experience, and that this path is absolutely scientific, not imaginative. This inner vision naturally has the same status as something that is evident in logic. That is to say, what I have seen with my outer or inner eyes cannot be disputed. I see a tree and do not need to prove that the tree must be there. There is no metaphysical proof for it, it is evident that the tree is there. Dr. Steiner now claims this evidence for his inner vision. That means he sees the higher world and sees the connections of the higher world, and because he sees them, precisely for that reason this higher world is there; it is indisputable. I do not want to dispute that the higher world is evident to him who beholds it. The only question is whether it is evident to everyone, and here I have a reservation. Ever since I have known anthroposophy, it has been based on the fact that this inner vision, this seeing consciousness, is ancient, that there have long been people who rise to the height of this seeing consciousness, have long since risen to it in India. That is why anthroposophy also adopts a whole series of expressions from the Indian language. It needs Indian expressions for the various spiritual insights it imparts. But the fact of the matter is that Dr. Steiner claims that he is bringing something new. However, there were a number of Theosophical Societies in Germany and England before Dr. Steiner came on the scene. Dr. Steiner originally belonged to these Theosophical Societies, but then came into conflict with them and resigned from these associations. Because he came into inner conflict with them, he no longer referred to his view of things as theosophy, but rather, because his inner vision differs from the inner vision of the other 'theosophists', he called it anthroposophy.

Now I would like to say: If the earlier seeing consciousness was mistaken, if Dr. Steiner was the first to bring the right thing, who guarantees me that another will not come and say: This higher seeing consciousness that Dr. Steiner brought has not reached the ultimate goal. Another can come to a completely different goal. In that case Steiner's vision becomes subjective. It is the vision of an individual. It is doubtful whether one can rely on it.

This is my concern, which arises in relation to the supersensible of the whole movement, that there is a different inner vision. There should be no discord between the different visionaries. But I do not want to conclude without expressing my sincere and warm thanks to Dr. Steiner for the many fine suggestions he has given in his speech tonight.

Rudolf Steiner: Ladies and Gentlemen, I do not need to keep you any longer, for I only wish to point out that the esteemed gentleman who spoke before me has made a few errors in the most important point that he has raised.

First of all, I would like to start from the end and correct a few errors. The fact is not that what I have presented to you here was preceded by the teachings of other theosophical societies to which I belonged. It is not like that. Rather, I began to write my interpretations of Goethe's world view in the 1880s. At the time, they were published as an introduction to Goethe's scientific writings in Kürschner's “Deutsche National-Literatur” in Stuttgart. Anyone who follows them will find that the germ of everything I have presented to you today is to be found in those introductions. You will then find that in my “Philosophy of Freedom”, in the first edition of 1894, I tried to show how man gradually develops his thinking to a certain level, and how this is followed by what then leads discursive thinking into intuitive thinking.

Then it came about, in Berlin around 1902, that I was once asked to present what I had to say about the spirit in a circle that called itself a theosophical one. At that time I had become acquainted with various Theosophists, but what they had to say did not really prompt me to follow with any attention the Theosophical literature that was common in this Theosophical Society. And so, at that time, I simply presented what had emerged from my own intuitive research. As a result, people in England who had read my book Mysticism in the Dawn of Modern Spiritual Life very soon translated these lectures into English and published them in an English newspaper. I was then invited to give lectures to a number of people in the society that called itself the Theosophical Society. I have never hesitated to speak to those who called upon me, whether they called themselves by this or that name, about what I had to say. But I have never advocated anything but what I myself had arrived at through my own research. During the time that I belonged to the Theosophical Society I advocated nothing but what I myself arrived at through my own research.

That I called what I presented “Anthroposophy” even then may be gathered from the fact that during the same period - not only later, when I had come to a different view from that of the Theosophical Society - I also presented to a different circle of people in Berlin, and I did not present a single iota of what I had to present from my research. And I announced my lectures there – so that people could not possibly be in error – as anthroposophical observations on the development of humanity. So for as long as any human being can bring me into contact with Theosophy, I have called my world view “Anthroposophy”. There has never been a break. That is what I would like to say about it now, so as not to keep you waiting too long.

Now, dear ladies and gentlemen, some people say that if you study the history of philosophy, you find that philosophers - let's start with Thales and go up to Eucken or others - have put forward all sorts of views and that they have often contradicted each other; how can you arrive at a certainty of knowledge? — That is precisely what I set out to do in my “Riddles of Philosophy”: to show that the matter is not so, but that what appear to be deviations in the various philosophies worthy of the name only ever come from the fact that the one looks at the world from one point of view, [the other from a different point of view]. If you photograph a tree from one side, what you see in the picture is only from a certain side. If you photograph the tree from a different side, you get a completely different picture - and yet it is the same tree. If you now come to the conclusion that many truly truthful philosophies do not differ from one another in that one deviates from the other, but that they simply look at one and the same thing from different points of view, because you cannot come to a single truth at all, then you realize that it is a prejudice to say that the philosophies contradict each other.

In my book “The Riddles of Philosophy”, I have shown that it is a prejudice to say that philosophers contradict each other. There are indeed some who contradict each other to a certain extent, but these are the ones who have simply made a mistake. If two children in a class solve a problem differently, one cannot say that it is therefore not certain which of them has found the right solution. If one understands the right solution, one already knows what the right thing is. So it cannot be deduced from the fact that things are different that they are wrong. That could only be deduced from the inner course of the matter itself. One would have to look at the inner course of the matter itself. And it is an external consideration to say that Steiner resigned from the Theosophical Society. First of all, I did not resign. After I was first dragged in with all my strength to present my own world view, nothing else at all, I was thrown out, and I may perhaps use the sometimes frowned-upon expression before you, ladies and gentlemen, for the following reason: dear attendees, because the “other kind of truth,” namely, the madness of those theosophists who finally managed to present an Indian boy who was said to be the newly appeared Christ; he was brought to Europe and in him the re-embodied Christ had appeared. Because I, of course, characterized this folly as folly and because at that time this folly found thousands of followers all over the world, these followers took the opportunity to expel me. I did not care. At any rate, I did not believe that what one had gained through inner research seemed uncertain simply because a society that calls itself theosophical expelled me, a society that claims that the Christ is embodied in the Indian boy.

Such things should not be considered superficially, simply overlooking the specifics and saying, “Well, there are different views.” One must take a closer look at what is occurring. And so I would like to leave it to you, when you have time - but you would have a lot to do with it - to compare all the quackery that has appeared in the so-called theosophical societies with what I have always tried to bring out of good science. I say this not out of immodesty, but out of a recognition of the reality of the matter and out of spiritual struggle. And bear in mind that I myself said today: “Some details may be wrong, but the important thing is to show a new direction.” It does not have to be the case that the absolutely correct thing is stated in all the details. So someone could well say that he is looking at a right-angled triangle and getting all sorts of things out of it. Then someone comes along and says: The square of the hypotenuse [of a right-angled triangle] is equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides. You can't be sure whether it could be universally true just because he is the only one saying it. No, if it has become clear to you through an intuitive insight that the square of the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides, then a million people may say that it is not so, but you know it to be so and contradict a million people. For the truth does not merely have an external justification for its agreement, but above all it also has a justification in its inner substantiality.

Of course, anyone can check this. And I have never claimed anything other than that anyone who wants to can learn about the spiritual scientific method just as easily as they can learn about the methods of chemistry. But once the things have been researched, they can be verified by any thinking person. And so, too, can what I say or write and have written from the perspective of spiritual science be verified by any thinking person. There are bound to be various errors in it, of course, but that is the same as with other research. It is not about these errors in particular, but about the basic character of the whole.

Have I used a single Indian expression to you today? And if something is sometimes referred to by using some old expression, then that is just a technical term used because there is no such expression in current usage. Even if I can prove the Pythagorean theorem on the blackboard, or something else, can I be criticized for the fact that it was already there centuries ago? For me, it is not a matter of putting forward ancient Indian or similar ideas, but of putting forward what arises from the subject itself. Just as today, anyone who grasps and understands the Pythagorean theorem grasps it from the subject itself, even though it can be found at a certain point in time as the first to emerge, so of course some things must, but only seemingly, agree with what was already there. But it is precisely this that I have always most vigorously opposed: that what is being attempted here from the present point in the development of human consciousness has anything to do with some ancient Indian mysticism or the like. There are, of course, echoes, because instinctive knowledge found much in ancient times that must resurface today. But what I mean is not drawn from ancient traditions. It is really the case that what is true, what is true for me, is what I wrote down when I wrote the first edition of my book “Theosophy” in 1904: I want to communicate nothing other than what I have recognized through spiritual scientific research, just as any other scientific truth is recognized through external observation and deductive reasoning, and which I myself can personally vouch for. There may well be those who disagree, but I am presenting only that which I can personally vouch for. I say this not out of immodesty, but because I want to appear as a person who does not want to present a new spiritual science out of a different spirit than out of the spirit of modern science and also of newer technology, and because I think that one can only understand this new consciousness in terms of its scientific and technical nature, when one is driven by both to the contemplation of the spirit.

I ask that my words not be taken as if I had wanted to avoid what the honorable previous speaker said. No, I am grateful that I was given the opportunity to correct some factual errors that have become very widespread. But much, very much even, of what is being spread today about what I have been presenting in Stuttgart for decades is based on errors. And it seemed necessary to me, as the previous speaker has commendably done, to address what has been presented, because it is not just a matter of correcting what affects me personally, but also something that the previous speaker brought together with the substantive of the question, by correcting the historical.

Question: If Dr. Steiner proves just one point of spiritual science to me in the same way that the Pythagorean theorem can be proved, then I will gladly follow him, then it is science.

Rudolf Steiner: Dearly beloved attendees, who can really prove the Pythagorean theorem? The Pythagorean theorem cannot be proved by drawing a right-angled triangle on the blackboard and then using one of the usual methods to prove it. That is only one illustration of the proof. The point is that anyone who wants to prove the Pythagorean theorem is forced to have what can be constructed mathematically in their inner vision - even if only in the inner vision of the geometric spatial vision. So imagine a consciousness that did not have this spatial vision. He would not have before him the substantial element of that Pythagorean proposition, and it would be quite senseless to prove the Pythagorean theorem. We can only prove the Pythagorean theorem by having before us the substantial element of the conception and shaping of space. The moment we ascend to another form of consciousness, something else is added to the ordinary view of space. [...] The point, then, when it comes to the Pythagorean theorem, if it is to be proved, is that this view of space must underlie it. But for this it is first necessary to find one's way, as it were, into this new configuration of consciousness. But as long as one has no conception of the configuration of space, one cannot arrive at the observation that leads to the proof of the Pythagorean theorem. And one believes that the results of spiritual scientific research cannot be proved in the same way only as long as one has not yet made the transition from ordinary consciousness to the experiencing consciousness that I have described.

I have assumed that the experiencing consciousness is there first. And just as someone who does not have a spatial view cannot talk about the Pythagorean theorem, so one cannot talk about the proof of any proposition of spiritual science if one does not admit the whole view. But this view is something that must be achieved. It is not there by itself. But our time demands that one resolves to do something completely new if one wants to proceed to this progress of science. And I do believe that there is still a great deal to be overcome before spiritual science is advocated in broader circles in the way that Copernicus's world view was advocated over all earlier ideas of the infinity of space. In the past, people imagined space as a blue sphere. Now we imagine: there are limits to the knowledge of nature that cannot be overcome, or: we cannot go beyond ordinary thinking. Such things are well known to anyone who follows the history of human development. And I can only say: either what I have tried to present is a path to the truth – not the finished truth – in which case it will be trodden, or else it is a path to error, in which case it will be avoided. But that does no harm. What must not be extinguished in us, not be swept away by hasty criticism, is the everlasting striving upwards and onwards. And it is only this striving that really animates what I have tried to characterize today as the path that anthroposophically oriented spiritual science wants to take.

Question: We must have the firm belief that the effort we expend will also be worthwhile. Is it at all possible to recognize spiritual life in and of itself? Dr. Steiner says it is possible to recognize the spirit of the world, the spirit of all life and of all nature, and to come into contact with it. Is that possible with our spirit, with our thinking? I doubt it. Thinking consists of images. I think in pictures.

Rudolf Steiner: If I were to answer the question, I would have to take up a great deal of your time. I do not want to do that and I will not do it. I only regret that this question was not asked earlier, then I could have answered it more thoroughly.

You can find in my writings everywhere those things that I hypothetically object to and that are also discussed there, so that you can find a remedy for your doubts in the literature. Here, however, I would just like to say the following: It is the case with certain people that they make it virtually impossible for themselves to get ahead of the phenomenon through preconceived notions. They point to the phenomena and then say: What lies behind them, we do not recognize. The whole of Kantianism is basically based on this error. And my whole striving began with the attempt to combat this error. I would like to make clear to you, by means of a comparison, how one can gradually come to a resolution of these doubts.

When someone looks at a single letter, they can say: This single letter indicates nothing other than its own form, and I cannot relate this form to anything else; it tells me nothing more. And when I look at, say, an electrical phenomenon, it is just the same as looking at a letter that tells me nothing. But it is different when I look at many letters in succession and have a word, so that I am led from looking to reading. I also have nothing else in front of me than what is being looked at, but I advance to the meaning. There I am led to something completely different. And so it is also true that as long as one only grasps individual natural phenomena and individual natural elements — elements in the sense of mathematical elements — one can rightly say that one does not penetrate to the inner core. But if one tries to enliven them all in context, to set them in motion with a new activity, then, as in the transition from the mere individual letter to the reading of the word, something quite different will come about. That is why that which wants to be spiritual science is nothing other than phenomenology, but phenomenology that does not stop at putting the individual phenomena together, but at reading them in the context of the phenomena. It is phenomenology, and there is no sin in speculating beyond the phenomena; rather, one asks them whether they have something to say about a certain inner activity, not only in terms of details but also in context.

It is understandable that if one only looks at the individual phenomena, one can stand on the point of view that Haller stood on when he said:

No created spirit penetrates into the innermost part of nature,
happy he to whom it only shows the outer shell.

But one also understands when someone grasps the phenomenology as did Goethe – and spiritual science is only advanced Goetheanism – that Goethe, in view of Haller's words, says:

“Into the innermost recesses of nature –”
Oh, you philistine!
“No created spirit can penetrate,
Happy the one to whom she shows only
the outer shell."

I have heard this repeated for sixty years,
I curse it, but furtively;
Tell me a thousand, a thousand times:
She gives everything abundantly and gladly;
Nature has neither core
nor shell,
She is all at once everything.
Only you, most of all, test her,
Whether you are core or shell.

Preliminary note: Eugen Kolisko's lecture was not written down. However, Kolisko later gave further lectures on the same topic during the first college course in the fall of 1920. These were printed in a revised form by him in the anthology “Aenigmatisches aus Kunst und Wissenschaft” (Enigmas from Art and Science), Stuttgart 1922.

First question: How do the various qualities of heat, light, electricity and the different states actually relate to the periodic system and how did the periodic system come about?

Second question: In the alchemical literature, chemical substances are classified in such a way as to indicate how the individual metals are assigned to the planets. How does this sevenfold classification of the assignment of metals to planets relate to that found in the periodic system?

Rudolf Steiner: Well, Dr. Kolisko has spoken very beautifully about important aspects of how we might strive to free chemistry from those habits of thought that led from the outset to this atomistic hypothesis or, let us say, to the building of chemistry out of the atomistic hypothesis. In view of the questions that have been asked, I would like to draw attention to one thing first. To me, the discovery of the periodic system does not appear to be something absolutely new. Of course, it is not possible to go into the great diversity that exists between our chemical interpretation of phenomena and older views of the constitution of matter in a short consideration. What makes the periodic system particularly interesting is the attempt – an attempt that has been made, I believe, on several occasions – to arrange the periodic system in such a way that the seven elements are plotted on a curve, and then the next seven elements are plotted on a curve passing over it, and so on, so that when intermediate states are created, the correct structure is obtained in a spiral. We can draw this: Here, for example, is lithium, sodium is, as it were, above it, and above that would be potassium. The point is that with the old Mercury rod you really have to connect something like the idea of a universal remedy of nature to bring about the facts of nature. If we can imagine that the elements are superimposed in the way I have arranged them in the periodic system, and I then connect these elements with lines that represent a spiral, then the emergence of each element would only be possible under certain force relationships that are related to a certain motion of these states.

Now, in an interesting way, Crookes pointed out in a Cambridge lecture at the Royal Society that if you want to get the superimposed spiral, you would do well to imagine that a progression of the heat condition takes place in the direction of the axis of the spiral, that thus, so to speak, the series of the next seven elements compared to the series of the previous seven elements came about in a similar way to a higher temperature degree compared to a lower temperature degree. But it is not a progression merely in an expansion, but in a genesis. We would have something similar in a complicated natural system, as we have it in the elementary case of a simple expansion through temperature. And now it is, of course, extraordinarily suggestive to think not at all of a spiral that has a straight line axis, but perhaps to think of something that has a circular axis, then we would get a solenoid line. But again, we can think of this as a spiral. Then we would get a triple spiral progressing in space.

While Crookes initially assumes only a decrease in heat as an analogy for the progression here on this axis, we would - by expanding on Crookes's idea - already get a progression in the axis towards light and chemical effects, which are, of course, different from the chemical forces that act in the substances. We would thus, as it were, obtain entities in heat, light and chemical effects, that is, in what underlies chemical activity, which are not present in the individual bodies, but which are present in the inner workings of, for example, our earthly nature or otherwise.

What I am drawing here are only spatial sensualizations; there are no things in space, but the spatial images are spatial sensualizations.

We would be given the opportunity to think that these successive elements and then, as it were, the next potencies of the same and the counter-potencies of the same are connected with a confused interaction of heat, light and precisely chemical effects, so that this triple helical structure of the elements would actually be nothing more than a certain kind of interaction of the various ether potencies. But then we would have to assume that these ether potencies are radically different from each other, that they cannot be transformed into each other in their essential nature, but that they act on each other in their own essential nature and that the results arise, not transformation products.

This is just a brief answer to the first question. This question covers so much that it is not possible to answer it exhaustively in a short time.

Now the second question. Here one would have to go back to very ancient principles. You see, you must be clear about the fact that what is active in any substance today, forming shapes, potassium or sodium for example, does not necessarily have to arise in the universe today. It may be something that originated at some time, may have been active a very long time ago, and has been preserved, so that the original forms, the original crystal forms of our elements - whether they are distinct crystal forms or something else - were formed from the cosmos in prehistoric times, let us assume during the lunar period, and that in these elements the tendency remained to preserve these forms. We must therefore be clear about the following: on the one hand, we are dealing with today's forms, which appear as if in an imprint, having formed in a very early period of cosmic development; on the other hand, we are dealing with the effects of what has now become of the factors located around the earth. We are therefore not dealing directly with our elemental forms, so that we could speak of a cosmic effect.

Here, somewhere, would be the earth, here the planets, and the planets bring about something through their constellation. If, for the sake of argument, we have Venus, Mars and Mercury here, the constellation of Venus, Mars and Mercury will not directly cause a tetrahedrally shaped body to appear today, as they act on the earth through their mutual forces. Instead, Venus, Mars and Mercury will have endowed the tetrahedron during the lunar period, and the reason it appears today is because the moon's effect has been preserved. Whereas when Mercury and so forth act from the cosmos today, they act, as it were, according to the laws of the imponderables; they actually counteract the ponderables. Thus, the formation already has its cosmic origin, but every formation that occurs on earth is, so to speak, deformed by that which today emanates from the same cosmic planets that previously caused the formations; so that, for example, we have to understand a volatilization as a cosmic effect that exists today, but a crystallization as one in which the earlier is again produced against the present. Here we have temporal effects that diverge.

Now, you do not have to think of what I have now presented in a somewhat schematic way, of course, as if there were only a few constellations, but there are many constellations. If you imagine this, you naturally get a complicated system, something like a complicated system of curves that you can imagine in the cosmos and in the earth.

If you summarize the original sites where the metal forms is formed in the earth using curves – these curves must be imagined in the interior of the earth because that is where the center is; the metals do indeed come to the surface in later epochs , but it is actually in the interior of the earth that the forces by which the preservation takes place are located – and outside in the cosmos the forces that lead to the crystal forms. And if you now visualize this, we have a sphere and spherical shells intertwining in the most diverse ways and the resultant that would arise from it if I imagine the difference in strength between what is conserved and what is in the cosmos today. If I now imagine the differences in the forces in these two force systems, I actually get what represents the present state of the cosmic effect on earth. And everything that appears in the periodic system must be contained in this. The periodic system is nothing more than the interaction of a pre-earthly state with a present cosmic state that plays around the earth. These are only hints in answer, but I believe one can understand it.

Eugen Kolisko: So what we assign as metals to the individual planets has nothing to do directly with the substances we have in the periodic system?

Rudolf Steiner: No. Why iron is assigned to Mars, silver to the moon and so on, these are things that can no longer be understood by external science, quite impossible, because this assignment was obtained in a completely different way than is believed today, even by occultists. The older occultism, which was still based on atavistic clairvoyance, knew that our earth itself is internally structured, but only latently structured, and that we have to distinguish seven spheres in the earth sphere as a remnant of the pre-earthly cosmic effect on the earth, which were not quite regular, but different. So here there are seven spheres inside, that is the inner cosmos of the earth, that is the mirror image of the outer cosmos. And earthly iron is associated with this part of the earth, that is the Martian part of the earth, and mercury is associated with the Mercury sphere of the earth, and so on. So these substances of ours, as we have them today, would actually ultimately have to be traced back to the seven metals; they would have to. But we have to imagine that all these substances are actually quite complicated things.

We are talking about the atomic weights of these substances, aren't we? But these atomic weights don't really exist. You have to find the atomic weight of lead: 207. It is true that the atomic weight of lead is 207, but when you look for it, you don't actually find 207 in reality, but you actually find a number: 207 + x in an indeterminate way. What you actually find fluctuates back and forth, and the atomic weight for our elements is such that you can say: If you wanted to capture the state that represents the atomic weight, you would have to show an oscillating movement here, not a point. And we would not be allowed to describe the periodic system as it is, but we would have to have it in quivering movements, in inner quivering movement. It is the case that we cannot say at all that the atomic weight shows that we are now really dealing with solid elements. This idea of a rigid atom - think of what it means, what Dr. Kolisko just said: water is no longer water at a certain temperature. But the atomist of today is obliged to imagine hydrogen and oxygen, which are in the water, when the water is no longer there, unchanged, if he imagines atoms correctly. So one comes to regard such a property of matter as the actual determining factor: this rigidity, which is not present even at the point where the element is created. The element is not yet present, but the element is something that already escapes you when you want to grasp it. Because to determine atomic weights strictly is an absurdity. There is no atomic weight, but there are intermediate states around which the atomic weight varies, and one says: in the intermediate state, the atomic weight is such and such. There are just as few atomic weights as there is a certain size to a grain of wheat. Of course there is a mean size for the wheat grain, but the size fluctuates back and forth. It is the same with the atomic weight; there is only a mean state.

These considerations, which Dr. Kolisko has presented today, are extraordinarily fruitful and should be further developed, especially for chemistry. Then one would see that the course of development is such that in alchemical concepts, including the staff of Mercury, which was particularly cultivated there, certain concepts were generated that were appropriate to reality. We must work our way through to a way of looking at things that is appropriate to reality. But to do that, we need to — and this is what I would like to link to Dr. Kolisko's lecture, namely to answer these two questions very precisely — we need to come to that, and I would like to say this to Mr. Blümel as well, we need to learn to understand the extension as a function of the intensive, and vice versa, the intensive as a function of the extensive, so that these two things, which are so parallel to each other, can really be derived from each other. If it is possible to bring the intensive and the extensive into a functional context, it will also be possible to develop the symbolism needed to fully understand this periodic system, otherwise there will always be an ununderstood remainder.

Please forgive me, but these things are so unclear because they cover such a large area that one can say nothing else but just make out the outlines with the concepts. The concepts cannot be sharply contoured.

Preliminary remark: Paula Matthes' lecture was not written down. The question she or one of the audience members asked about the relationship between imagination, inspiration and intuition and ordinary consciousness was also not recorded by the stenographer.

Rudolf Steiner: The best way to solve this, as I understand it, is to think of the scale of imagination, inspiration and intuition not being built in such a way that they stand above one another; rather, it must actually be built in such a way:

And if we were to imagine our ordinary consciousness wandering around there, if we develop in this way, then we have imagination, inspiration and intuition. We then have an ascent to intuition, but when we rise to this height, which really takes place in the spiritual world, we also have a kind of projection of it into our ordinary life - for those abilities of ordinary consciousness that play into the ethical realm. In the ethical realm, the ordinary consciousness is, I would say, instinctively intuitive. This is also what causes the word “intuition” to be used in a popular sense. Today, the word “inspiration” is sharply rejected because inspiration, in a certain sense, goes back a little further, but the word “intuition” is accepted because the moral consciousness that arises in ordinary consciousness already has something akin to intuition, but precisely because it is instinctive. Thus the word intuition occurs very frequently and is sometimes used with some justification. And so, if one proceeds in a straightforward way, as I have done in “The Philosophy of Freedom”, from thinking to enter the realm of living morality, if one wants to speak of intuition by skipping imagination and inspiration, one can have a point of reference in ordinary moral consciousness.

I may then perhaps add a few words at this point - not, of course, to say anything about the lecture by Miss Matthes, which was completely self-contained and very beautiful in itself. She presented a thoroughly self-contained picture that is likely to shed light on the relationship - which would be desirable today - between the general consciousness of the times and what one could get from philosophy. Now, of course, it is a matter of the most diverse circumstances interacting to produce the present situation, which Miss Matthes has so aptly characterized.

You see, it is quite true that in recent years, brought about by the tragic world situation in our Europe, something has emerged that is an increased interest in philosophy among young people. But perhaps we will only be able to fully assess this interest psychologically if we follow how, over time, throughout the entire 19th century and also at the beginning of the 20th century, where there was an opportunity, the interest of young people in philosophy did flare up after all. I would like to cite a few facts in support of this. For example, in Vienna in the 1860s and 1870s, the generally prevailing philosophical view was that of the Herbartian school. The main representative of this Herbartian school in Vienna at the time was Robert Zimmermann. Robert Zimmermann had a very strange situation in his lectureship when he taught practical philosophy, which was even a compulsory course. In the first two or three lectures, he usually had one of the largest audiences of the University of Vienna; it was all full, overcrowded. But then the audience decreased very quickly, and there were usually only seven or eight who stuck with the course, out of the several hundred who had actually remained. Robert Zimmermann himself, who spoke very beautifully and measuredly, often said of his lectures on practical philosophy: at the beginning the whole lecture hall is full, a large class, then it becomes a thinner thread, and finally, when the test comes, when people need the signatures, then they all come again. - This was not only due to the students and their lack of interest. In 1874 Franz Brentano was called to Vienna, who had an extraordinarily loyal audience. Brentano's lectures in Vienna, as in Würzburg, were very well attended. It cannot be said that this was due to the students only for the reason that it was also a compulsory course, but the lectures were still well attended even when Brentano, who had first been appointed as a full professor in Vienna, became a private lecturer again because of his private circumstances – he had married as a former Catholic priest and therefore had to resign the Vienna professorship. He always hoped that he would be called again, but that could not happen, even though his lecture hall was always overcrowded and the lectures of the other professors, who then had to take the exam, were just as empty as Zimmermann's. Brentano was repeatedly proposed by his colleagues for the full professorship in the first places, but there was always the obstacle that he was excommunicated as a clergyman because he had married, and a Jewish woman at that; the church claims to have authority over those whom it has excommunicated. And when the then emperor, to whom the matter was repeatedly brought, heard that Brentano, as a former clergyman, had married a Jewish woman, he said to the Minister for Education and Worship, who had brought the matter before him and who himself had advocated that Brentano should again have a full professorship: “Is she at least clean, the Jewish woman?” And when they couldn't say that with a clear conscience – she was, incidentally, the daughter of Professor von Lieben in Vienna – the Emperor said, “No, it's no use.” And this went on until Brentano left the professorship as a private lecturer in the 1890s.

So you could see that when really stimulating things were discussed, the students were interested. Brentano had also had a full college in Würzburg in the Auditorium maximum, where, when he first entered it, the students' verdict on his predecessor was written: “sulfur hut”! It had been completely empty before that. The same Auditorium maximum on which the students had written “sulfur hut” was filled by Brentano because he was, after all, a very stimulating personality, regardless of what one thinks of his philosophy.

It is the case that the intellectual development of the 19th and early 20th century actually increasingly suppressed the active pursuit of intellectual life, which emerged from ideas and the like. This suppression of actual intellectual production became more and more pronounced. And of course the spread of the natural sciences is entirely to blame for this. Now a kind of impossible situation has actually arisen from all this. And from this impossible situation, in turn, individual directions have emerged that have at least tried to become philosophically active again.

Now, Miss Matthes has presented the German schools in an excellent way here. For Switzerland, I have the feeling that these four German schools initially have less significance. Here, in broader circles, the Bergsonian school has gained a certain influence. And only to a lesser extent have these four German schools penetrated into the philosophical life of Switzerland. In Switzerland, too, it is probably not possible to perceive the same thing as is said to have been the case at German universities in recent years. In a sense, the emptiness that arose in the souls was already there before the war, where someone like Eucken in Jena, to whom the students trotted, was stimulating, albeit in a, I would say, more talkative way. Eucken's lectures were not very strong, but they were at least attended. And then came the war, with its devastating effects, also in the moral life, in the whole way of life, which nevertheless led to a certain longing in people to somehow hear something about that which is now the determining factor in life, that which holds it together.

Now, these four directions, which have been characterized by Miss Matthes, they all actually already existed before the war, and it is precisely in them that perhaps the bleakness of the intellectual substance of our present can be seen so clearly. The Marburg School has been rightly mentioned, which is based primarily on the very astute thinking of Cohen. Cohen has probably had the most significant influence in the Marburg School, and a great deal can be traced back to his astute thinking. One could also say that at a time when perhaps only Otto Liebmann was a truly astute thinker in German philosophy, except for the Marburg thinker, that the Marburg School actually had a disciplining effect and was educational for the development of a certain astute thinking. This Marburg School is actually quite dependent on a certain one-sided training of Kantianism. One would like to say that it was precisely through Cohen that the Marburg School came to the conclusion that thinking as such should not be regarded merely in its passivity, but that it must be taken in its activity. And of course the age was not at all suited to perceive the inner validity of thinking as something extra-human, as Fichte did, for example, but rather thinking has been thought of, or I should say worked out, more or less as subjective by the moderns, too, albeit with the claim of objective validity, as subjective at least. And it is this active aspect of thinking that was discovered. This was at a time when it was impossible to understand the objective structure of the world process, when it was almost impossible to look at anything other than this activity of thinking.

I would like to ask all philosophers who think along the lines of the Marburg School — and I am only saying a few aphoristic remarks here — how they can see a real being in thinking when the thinking subject, that is, the human being, has this activity of thinking interrupted every time from falling asleep to waking up? This is a crucial question that should be posed to the entire Marburg School. The point is that the Marburg School is basically a consistent elaboration of Descartes's phrase “I think, therefore I am,” but this is only based on a particular judgment about thinking in the present. For there is no denying that we are also then, when we are not thinking in our ordinary consciousness between falling asleep and waking up. And when we think backwards, our retrospective is divided into those currents in which we think and those currents in which we do not think, then think again and so on, and in the meantime we are without thinking. This is the cardinal problem, and it is the source of failure not only for the Marburg School but also for Bergson and certain American schools, which are noteworthy in their own way. First of all, we must overcome the influence of Descartes' “I think, therefore I am”.

It is therefore necessary to get into the scope of human consciousness what encompasses, on the one hand, the activity of thinking and, on the other, the discontinuity of thinking. This is what must be raised as a problem in relation to this school, and it is a problem that has not even been touched upon by this Marburg school. There is not even an awareness that this problem exists, just as little as, for example, in Bergson and in the current epistemological direction; I do not mean James – he develops pragmatism – but I mean some other American directions. The problem is actually not touched upon, and when it is raised, there is no awareness of how to deal with it, not even epistemologically.

Then, of course, there is the direction of Husserl, but it is not given much consideration. My feeling is that he is a disciple of Franz Brentano. In Franz Brentano, the fact that he is a sharply trained Aristotelian and a sharply trained Thomist is evident everywhere, a good, thorough connoisseur of Thomism, so that some of both Aristotelianism and Thomism has been transferred to Husserl. Of course, a modern philosopher like Husserl cannot readily admit this, but it can be seen in his psychology and in everything that comes to light in him.

Now, I don't know what Miss Matthes thinks about this – I must confess that when I wrote my “Riddles of Philosophy” in the new edition and tried to incorporate some of these newer directions, I was repeatedly faced with the question: What should one actually do with Husserl? No matter how hard you try to get at it, to somehow get hold of it, to grasp it, you can't do it; nothing special comes of it. It struck me so strongly how Husserl basically rummages in words, how, despite all his insight into the essence of things and so on, he is completely dependent on the secondary content of words and how he cannot come to a real insight into even the simplest facts of consciousness. It seems, for example, to be impossible for Husserl to grasp the difference between the image of Cologne Cathedral that I have only in my memory, but noted in my consciousness down to the last detail, and the image that I have before me when I actually stand in front of Cologne Cathedral and really look at it. I don't see how, in the whole structure of Husserl's philosophy, a difference between these two images could be found as essentially real. And if I am not mistaken, Husserl himself once used this image of Cologne Cathedral in these two relationships, I believe for the sake of illustration. One does not actually come out of his confusion through all possible discussions to something tangible.

I also have this feeling when I consider Scheler's sometimes quite beautiful treatises. Scheler is a talented person, but I always ask myself why Scheler – who, for example, has written beautiful treatises on the direct perception of feeling, that is, on the direct experience of compassion – why he does not manage to somehow really gain an independent worldview? Why does he so terribly proselytize? Why does he seek the support of old Catholicism? This is something that shows me that these philosophers are disciples of Brentano.

Brentano has only [...] gap in the stenographer's notes] of his philosophy because he could not merge into a real spiritual science. He did not want to, nor could he. And it is not true, for Brentano was so strong that he did not turn to Catholicism, but his students are terribly Catholic in their efforts to find a connection for their world view.

As for the people of Baden – Windelband, Rickert and some others – it seems to me that the whole matter rests on an appalling one-sidedness in their conception of reality. It is not true that these people no longer know what to do with philosophy and want to save themselves by even excluding the value problem. They separate it out in such a way that they then have no need to make any kind of statements about the relationship of value to themselves. They crystallize the value problem out of the scope of the world problems, so to speak, and refer to John Mackay without feeling any obligation to somehow integrate value into the currents of being. This will also be completely impossible as long as we do not overcome the law of the conservation of energy and matter in the near future. For one must realize that with value something is given that is germinal for future values, that is there when the present has decayed. One must therefore come to think of matter and force as transitory and to see the fruits, the germs that they have in them, as values. Only then will one be able to gain a further insight into these problems, into value problems. Today, there is a lack of courage for that. Of course, people completely lack the courage to somehow attack the law of the conservation of energy and matter. There are a few tentative attempts – Drews occasionally points out, after all, that the law of the conservation of matter and energy is only a kind of empirical problem and the like – but one will hardly find any far-reaching insight in this field.

With regard to Nelson and his direction, one should perhaps not overlook the fact that the people started from Hegel and the Fries, which he regarded as the “father of all shallowness”, because the people were all Friesians at first, weren't they? It was a Fries School at first. And now we must not forget that what I have emphasized time and again comes into play here: you can be an extraordinarily astute logician – there is no doubt about that in Nelson's case – but for real life problems, it is not enough. I must say that when he spoke at the Bologna Congress in 1911, among all the various illustrious philosophers, including Bergson, he was actually the very best in terms of dialectical power and solid craftsmanship in the use of thought. But then, especially when I saw Nelson again recently in Bern, I got the feeling that it is not at all sufficient for real life problems, that it leads to an abstractness - which is actually quite dreadful, but which was excellently characterized by Ms. Matthes - in that he tries to gain an ethic in three volumes from an abstract sentence. You see, you can be an excellent dialectician without having the slightest sense of reality. This can also be seen from the way Nelson treats the problem of knowledge. It is ultimately all the same to him whether the problem of knowledge is treated in the way of the many neo-Kantians who actually start from quite secondary things.

You see, it was perhaps in 1888 that I once sat in Berlin with Eduard von Hartmann, and the conversation revolved almost entirely around the fundamental questions of epistemology. Well, Eduard von Hartmann really could not be approached in this direction. So I expressed the opinion that when one speaks of the idea, one can initially say, for my sake, that the idea is something subjective, but that it is not possible to stick to it when one moves on to considerations. I recently compared it to this: if someone takes a letter, E or something else, they cannot raise the abstract question of what this individual letter means in itself. But if you have letters that then combine into words and the words combine into sentences, then the whole thing comes together. And so you can say: Certainly, if you just take a small thing from phenomenology, the problem of how this individual thing relates to the thing in itself and so on becomes a kind of life problem again and again. But if you connect the phenomena with each other, a certain structure arises, and you can no longer think the same about a certain sphere of phenomena in relation to reality as you can about an individual. Non-epistemologists like Nelson completely ignore such things. It really does not matter whether, on the one hand, it is said against epistemology, as Hegel said: you can't recognize without recognizing, because that would be the same as wanting to learn to swim without getting into the water - or whether on the other hand you say: in order to pose a problem of recognition, there would have to be a recognition already. - What is really at issue here is to realize that the problem of recognition could still be a completely valid problem, even though it presupposes a certain recognition. One could practise recognition first, and then afterwards one could observe it, and afterwards one could critically determine - or whatever you want to call it - whether the recognition is valid or not. So an epistemology could never be eliminated by Nelson's arguments.

So these things are there. Other images could be given, some noteworthy philosophical directions could be mentioned. I will only mention that, for example, pragmatism also has a great many followers in Germany, and that neo-Thomism also has a certain significance in the present, especially among Catholic philosophers, even if it is not noticed because of the divisions that exist and because people do not care what some produce when they live in the circle of others.

But all these schools of thought are actually faced with the necessity of finding a transition to a reality, of getting out of the mere formal. When one hears or reads Eucken – every book by Eucken says roughly the same thing – it really is as if someone were not standing on the ground, but were constantly floating in the air, pulling himself up by his hair. It is a lot of beating about the bush for no reason. This is especially striking in Eucken's work. And one must say, when one looks at what is there and what cannot be connected to reality, one can understand that young people, who really have the tendency to absorb something about the world, cannot get their rights and must ultimately be truly disappointed and must become desolate. It is really quite sad when one sees how little that which has been brought to the surface from the last moments of development is inclined to meet this longing of youth. Not true, the students might like to hear something, but what they can hear is really not worth listening to. And what happens next is basically terrible.

At a German university, they tried to interest a man who is actually well-intentioned but who came from the old system in the GDR in the threefold order. At the time, he had resolved, in order to get to know the threefold order, to give a student who wanted to take his exam with him a dissertation on the threefold order, because this would save him from having to read the “key points” himself. He then corrected the dissertation and believed that by becoming acquainted with the ideas of the “key points” in the course of his official duties, he was in this way getting to know the threefold order; because otherwise, directly, he does not do it. This reminds me vividly of how a student once asked his professor about Soloviev at a university. Well, the professor hardly knew the name, but he said to himself: There is the best opportunity for me to get to know him too. [And to the student he said:] Do a dissertation on it. — So it is at a German university when a dissertation is to be done on Soloviev. At the moment he gave the dissertation, the professor had no idea about Soloviev – nor did he later, he didn't know more than what he had taken from the dissertation itself.

It is almost impossible to describe the state we gradually entered into. And the subordination of the spiritual realm to the state structure is closely related to these conditions. And the only thing that can help is a truly emancipated, free spiritual life. Only on the basis of a free spiritual life can anything of what the students are actually looking for succeed today, when the need is so great. Here in Switzerland, people do not know; they do not know the hardship. It is really much more difficult, much worse than one thinks. And that is what I always try to explain to our friends, also in my anthroposophical reflections: that it is much worse than one thinks. If we could somehow manage to reach a sufficiently large number of people with ideas from spiritual science, on the one hand, and with the ideas of the threefold social order, on the other, which are necessary for the public introduction of spiritual science, we would be able to take a significant step forward.

What Ms. Matthes presented today can also fully prove to you that a completely new approach is necessary, that we cannot continue to muddle through in what has developed. We need a new approach in our public life; without it, we will not get anywhere.

The break [in spiritual life] actually happened relatively early on. You see, it may perhaps be pointed out after all that the great philosophers have no longer found great disciples. Take all of Hegel's disciples – the Hennings and Marheinekes and so on, Michelet is the name of one of them – take them all, they can be found first among those who published the Hegelian estate, and then take what actually emerged, the reactionary course of these sages, or take Immanuel Hermann Fichte, and then in philosophy take all those who were philosophers like Carriere and so on, even Friedrich Theodor Vischer, who was a daredevil in many respects, one must still say: there was a major break in intellectual life as such in the mid-19th century. And instead of there being, in the second half of the nineteenth century, in Germany, where it would have been natural for there to be a real deepening of intellectual life, there was, in particular, a flood in German philosophy of everything that was less than German philosophy. There was actually a spirit; what was missing was a sense of reality.

You see, I knew a philosopher who actually didn't play a role at all, but who was truly smarter than many who did play a role. His name was Gregor Itelson. As a dialectician, he actually outwitted everyone, and you can be sure that he would easily outwit Nelson in a discussion as well. Gregor Itelson, if he wanted to, could brilliantly refute someone who spoke in such a way as Father Wasman, for example. When he had appeared in Berlin – it was on the occasion of this Life-Jesus movement, in 1905 or so, at the beginning of the 20th century in any case – Gregor Itelson gave a brilliant speech against the Jesuit Father Wasman. But just recently I have again heard it said that Gregor Itelson, when a monist was defending his world view, did everything in the most brilliant way to bring the monist in question to his knees. But I never heard Gregor Itelson put forward any of his own positive thoughts. A brilliant dialectician – but no positive thoughts whatsoever! I once had a discussion with him, perhaps in 1901 or 1902. I said something like: What you said again today is nice, but why have you never said anything that is your own view? Yes, he said, that's what I'm working on; I've been working on a revision of logic since my youth, but I'm not finished yet. If you listen to people talking today, everywhere, whether they are natural scientists or theologians and so on – he was right, you can prove logical errors everywhere. And he said: We don't need a revolution in logic, we just need a revision of logic. Then he said, as we talked a little further: But this revision of logic, it is actually not that difficult, you can write it on two quart pages. I said: Yes, why don't you finally write these two quart pages? Why does it have to be two quart pages? But he still hasn't written them, at least I haven't seen them in front of me.

It is not a lack of logic or dialectics. During the time I knew Itelson, he got up at 10 o'clock in the morning, then went to the coffeehouse, read his newspapers; then he went to lunch, then he went back to the coffeehouse, and if you came to the coffeehouse after some lecture, you would meet him there as well. He was a dawdler, but he could still be extraordinarily stimulating, even at midnight, for example, talking about the impossibility of Maeterlinck's ideas. And a person like Nelson differs from dialecticians like Itelson only in that he is more brazen, that he relies more on his legs, is more brazen in his appearance, is not a drifter, is a hard-working person, an intellectual giant. Nelson has a brutal, not very wide-meshed [way of thinking], not the slightest finesse in his thinking. It is actually sad, basically, that a whole number of young people today let themselves be taken in tow by Nelson.

These also include people like Mühlestein, who appeared in Basel in the discussion after a lecture and said that threefolding was not possible after all, that everything had to be united into one unit. I replied that the right also has its place in the life of the spirit and in economic life; I said: Yes, the unit is, for example, a farming family, which includes the farmer, the farmer's wife, the children, the farmhands and also the cows. If the cows give plenty of milk, the whole family will have milk. Therefore, it is not necessary to demand that all members of the family give milk. And so it is in the social threefold order: if only the political state provides the law, then economic life and spiritual life will also have the law. Just as the farmer's wife or the farmer himself do not have to provide milk for the family to be supplied with milk, economic life and spiritual life do not have to produce law. Thoughts such as these, when they are examined with a sense of reality, are very easy to unhinge. And so it is with Nelson, especially in his ethical and political views.

What all such considerations point to, however, is that today, above all, we need the courage to leap the river and really penetrate into spiritual science. Then, as Miss Matthes quite rightly said, philosophy too will be able to become something very fruitful again. Without spiritual science, philosophy will always remain something that cannot be put into practice in life and that cannot prove that it has a solid foundation. Today, philosophy without spiritual science only leads to an empty formalism, not to content.

That is what I might add to what Miss Matthes said. We can certainly be very grateful to Miss Matthes for raising this topic in such an excellent and vivid way before us today.

Preliminary note: During the first three-week “Anthroposophical College Course” (September 26 to October 16, 1920 in Dornach), at which 30 representatives of various disciplines gave lectures in addition to Rudolf Steiner, Three evenings of conversation also took place, on October 4, 6 and 15, 1920. During these so-called “Conversations on Spiritual Science,” questions on any topic could be asked, to which Rudolf Steiner then responded in more or less detail. The stenographers did not record the conversation evenings in their entirety, and there are gaps in some of them.

Rudolf Steiner: Dearly beloved! I imagine that today, in a kind of conversation, we will discuss all kinds of questions and the like that arise in one or other of the honored listeners in connection with what has been developed here in recent days as anthroposophy. Although, as I have endeavored to arrange, you will be offered a hundred lectures during these three weeks, it is not possible to do more than touch on individual topics in outline. What can be given to you here can only be suggestions at first, but these suggestions may perhaps show that the anthroposophically oriented spiritual science meant here is no less well founded

Asa is more firmly grounded than that which is taken from the external life of today's strict science, yes, that it absorbs all the methodical discipline of this science and also perceives that which stands as a great demand of the time, the demand for further development. This demand for further development arises from the fact that those impulses of scientific life, in particular, which have produced great things in the past epoch, are now in the process of dying out and would have to lead to the decline of our civilization if a new impetus were not to come.

The suggestions that have now been made for such a new impact can certainly be expanded in a variety of directions in the context of a discussion such as the one taking place today, and I would now like to ask you to contribute to this expansion. Please ask questions, express your wishes and in general put forward anything you wish to say. The questions can best be put in writing, and I ask you to make good use of this opportunity.

Mr. Conrad: The question I have to ask relates to a therapeutic area. In his lectures, Dr. Steiner pointed to certain illnesses that are currently occurring very frequently. There are certain mental disorders in this regard for which I would be grateful for an answer about the deeper causes. These are mainly speech disorders. I would like to point out that I am not motivated by personal interests, but am only asking to the extent that pedagogical interests are involved. Teachers have often asked me what to do about speech disorders. However, since this question touches on the field of therapy, I do not want to encourage questions that only concern illnesses. I would be very grateful for an answer because this question seems to be very pressing at the moment.

Rudolf Steiner: Perhaps we can start by answering this question. When something specific like this comes up, we must of course bear in mind that such specific disturbances in the human organism can have the most diverse causes and that it is extremely difficult to talk about these things in general if we want to get to the real cause. In all such matters, my esteemed audience, it is actually a matter of using spiritual science to enable one to assess the individual case in the right way. And here I would like to say something that perhaps has a much more general significance than this question requires.

You see, we live in an age of abstraction, in an age when people love to reduce the manifold world, the multiform world, to a few formulas, when people love to establish abstract laws that encompass vast areas of existence. They can only do so in an abstract way, ignoring the individual. Spiritual science will have to bring about a significant change in this direction in particular. It will indulge less in simplifying the manifold existence and will bring insights about the concrete spiritual. But by approaching the concrete spiritual, one's soul is stimulated in such a way that the ability to observe and judge is strengthened and invigorated. This will become apparent in people's general social interaction. A large part of the social question today actually lies in the fact that we no longer have any inclination to really get to know the person we pass by, because our inner being does not have the kind of stimuli that enable us to properly grasp the individual, the particular. Here spiritual science will achieve something different. Spiritual science will enrich our inner life again, enabling it to grasp the particular. And so our powers of observation and discrimination and all that will be particularly developed. Therefore, we will have less desire for abstract generalizations, but more desire for the particular, the individual. In a sense, we will adhere more to the exemplary than to the abstract. And especially when dealing with something like physical disorders, with speech disorders, one must say: almost every single case is different – it is of course a slight exaggeration, but still generally valid – almost every single case is different, and at least one must distinguish typical ones.

We must be clear about the fact that some of the things that cause speech disorders are, of course, organically determined, that is, in a certain way, based on the inadequate development of this or that organ. But a whole series of such disorders in the present day are due to the fact that the human being's spiritual and soul forces are not being developed in the right way. And it may even be said that if a proper development of the spiritual and mental abilities of the human being can be achieved through education in childhood, at a time when the human organism is still pliable, then organic disorders can also be overcome to a certain extent; they can be overcome more easily than at a later age, when the body is more solidified. Our entire education system has gradually become more and more abstract. Our pedagogy does not suffer from bad principles. In general, if we look at the abstract treatment of pedagogical principles, we can see that we had great and significant achievements in the 19th century. And if you look at today's abstract way of applying how to do this or that in school, you have to say that 19th-century pedagogy really means something quite tremendous. But the art of responding to the individual child, of noticing the particular development of the individual child, is something that has been lost in modern times through the rush towards intellectuality and abstraction. To a certain extent, we are no longer able to strengthen the child's soul and spirit in the right way through abstract education. Do not think that when such a demand is made, it is only to point to a one-sided, unworldly education of soul and spirit – oh no. It may seem paradoxical today, but it is actually the case that materialism has had the tragic fate of being unable to cope with material phenomena. The best example of this is that we have such psychological theories as psycho-physical parallelism. On the one hand, we have human corporeality, which is only known from the point of view of anatomy, which only learns from the corpse; on the other hand, we have theories about the soul and spirit that are imagined up or even only live in words , and then one reflects on how this soul-spiritual, which bears no resemblance to the physical body, how this soul-spiritual is to affect the physical body. Spiritual science will lead precisely to the fact that one will be able to deal with the physical in a concrete way, that one will know such things as those which I already hinted at yesterday in the lecture and whose importance I would like to mention again here: From birth until the second set of teeth has come through, something is at work in us as human beings that we can call a sum of equilibrium forces that organize us thoroughly, and something that is mobile forces, that are life forces. This is particularly strong in our organism within this human age. What is at work in the human being is what really, I would say, pushes out the second teeth, what finds its conclusion in the pushing out of the second teeth, what, for its effectiveness in the organism, comes to a certain degree - it continues, of course - but comes to a certain degree to a conclusion with the appearance of the second teeth. It then transforms into what we can call mathematical, geometric thinking, what we can call thinking about the equilibrium conditions in space, thinking about the conditions of movement in space, what we can call finding oneself in the conditions of life in space and in time. We study what emerges from this, what passes, as it were, from a state of latency into a state of freedom, when it has just been released. There it is, as spiritual soul, as a very concrete spiritual soul, as we see it growing up in the child, when the change of teeth begins and continues into the later years of life. And now we look at this and see: what is spiritual and soul-like has an organizing effect in the body during the first seven years of life. And again, we study the connection between the spiritual and soul-like and the physical organization when we consider what the human being can then experience - albeit consciously only in inspiration - that is, what he experiences with ordinary consciousness, but still unconsciously, in the period from the change of teeth to sexual maturity. It is more of an immersion into physical corporeality, where in its course, first of all, as the most important phenomenon – but there are others as well – it awakens the love instinct, where it marks the end, for example, with the change of voice in the male sex, and with somewhat broader effects in the female sex. What we recognize when we observe the development of the emotional world, and when we observe, for example, something like the development of the sense of music, especially at the time when the emotional world is developing, we study this again as the connection between the soul and spiritual life and the physical organization from the seventh to the fourteenth or fifteenth year.

In short, spiritual science does not ask the abstract question: How does the soul affect the body?, but rather it studies the concrete soul, it knows that one must look at the concrete soul at certain ages and how it affects the body in other ages. Thus it transforms the abstract and therefore so unsatisfactory method of treatment of today's psychology and physiology into very concrete methods. And in the further course, one then comes to the point where one can not only determine in general through spiritual science: in the first seven years of life, equilibrium, movement, and life force are at work; but one can also specialize in how this spiritual force expresses itself in the organs, how it works in the lungs, heart, liver, and so on; one has the opportunity to really look into the human body in a living way. In this way, the knowledge of the material turns out to be quite different from what materialism can [recognize]. The peculiar thing about materialism is that it devotes itself to a false, namely an abstract, a deducted spirituality. The peculiar thing about spiritual science is that it is precisely able to assess the material in the right way. Of course, it also goes in the right way to the spiritual on the other side. More and more clearly should we fight the opinion, which starts from nebulous mystics, that spiritual science is something that deals with phantasms in general talk. No, spiritual science deals precisely with the concrete and wants to provide a view of how the spiritual and soul life works down into the individual organs. For it is only by getting to know the workings of the spiritual in a concrete way in the material existence that one recognizes the material existence. But through such a concrete penetration into the human organism, one gradually acquires — through a kind of imagination, inspiration and so on — an ability, I would say a gift, to really see the individual and then to be able to judge where any particular fault lies, for example, when speech disorders are present. At a certain childlike age, it will be possible to influence the development of the speech organs through special speech exercises. The important thing is to be able to observe what physical disorders may be present at the right age. And although all kinds of obstacles are present simply due to external circumstances – after all, today only that which is officially certified in this direction is recognized and allowed to be practiced in any way – although all kinds of obstacles are present, we can still say that, for example, some beautiful results have been achieved in the case of speech disorders simply by rhythmic speech exercises were carried out, that the particular defect was recognized, and that the person with the defective speech organism was then allowed to recite things in this or that speech rhythm, always repeating them, and that he was then instructed to place himself in the rhythmic process of these or those tones, feeling them particularly. In this direction one can achieve very significant improvements or at least relief from such disorders. But something else is also possible. For example, in the case of speech disorders, one can work particularly on regulating the respiratory process, a regulation of the respiratory process that must, however, be completely individual. This regulation of the breathing process can be achieved by letting the person you are treating develop a feeling between the internal repetition, or perhaps just thinking, but broad thinking, slow thinking of certain word connections [and the breathing process]. The peculiar thing is that if you form such word connections in the right way, then, by surrendering to such a rhythm of thought or inner rhythm of words, you convey a feeling to the person being treated: With this word and its course, its slow or fast course, you notice it in your breathing, it changes in this or that way, and you follow that. In a certain way, you make him aware of what arises as a parallel phenomenon to breathing for speech. You make him aware of it. And when he can then tell you something about it, you try to help him further, so that once he has become aware of the breathing process, he gradually reaches the point where he can consciously snap into it himself, I would even say in word contexts that he forms during this breathing process, which he can now consciously follow in a certain way, in an appropriate manner.

So you have to think of it this way: by first giving rhythms, which, depending on how the matter lies, are to be thought inwardly, murmured, whispered or recited aloud, you cause the person in question to notice a change in breathing. Now he knows that the breath changes in this way. And now he is, in a sense, forbidden from using the very word or thought material that has been given to him. He is made aware that he is now forming something similar within himself, and then he comes up with the idea of consciously paralleling this entire inner process of thinking or speaking or inwardly hearing words with the breathing process, so that a certain breathing always snaps into an inner imagining or inner hearing of words. In this way, a great deal of what I would call a poor association between the processes that are more mental, more soul-like, in speaking, and those processes that take place in the organism as more material, as physical processes, is balanced out. All of this has a particularly favorable effect when applied in the right childhood period. And it can be said that if our teachers were better psychologists, if they really had a concrete knowledge of the human body from the spirit, they would be able to work with speech disorders in a completely different way, especially in a pedagogical way.

Now, what I have mentioned can also be developed into a certain therapy, and it can also be used to achieve many favorable results for later stages of life. But it seems to me to be of particular importance – and here we could already point to certain successes that have been achieved in this direction – that such things can be cured by a particularly rational application of the principle of imitation. But then one must have a much more intimate, I might say subjective-objective knowledge of the whole human organism and its parts.

You see, people speak to each other in life; but they are hardly aware of the, I would say imponderable, effects that are exerted from person to person when speaking. But these effects are there nevertheless. We have become so abstract today that we actually only listen to the other person's intellectual content. Very few people today have a sense of what is actually meant when a person with a little more psychic-organic compassion feels, after speaking to another, how he consciously carries the other person's speech to a high degree in his own speech organism. Very few people today have any sense of what is experienced in this respect when one has to speak in succession with four, five or six people, one of whom is coughing, the second hoarse, the third shouting, the fourth speaking quite unintelligibly, and so on, because one's own organism is also involved; it vibrates along with everything, it experiences it all. And if you develop this feeling of experiencing speech, you certainly acquire a strong feeling, I might say, for defense mechanisms too. The peculiar thing is that it is precisely in the case of such things, which are so closely connected with the subjectivity of the human being as speech disorders, that one then finds out how one has to speak to someone who suffers from speech disorders, how one has to speak to him so that he can achieve something through imitation. I have met stutterers; if you have been able to empathize with their stuttering and then spoken to them rhythmically by name, then you could get them to really achieve something like forgetting their stuttering, by running after what is spoken to them, so to speak. However, you then have to be able to develop human compassion to the point where it is organic. In therapy, an enormous amount depends on the ability to make the patient forget the subjective experience associated with some objective process. And in particular, for example, a real remedy for speech disorders is, if the time between the ages of seven and fourteen is used correctly, by lovingly encouraging those with speech disorders to engage in the kind of imitation just described. It is often the case that one experiences that stutterers sometimes cannot pronounce three words properly without stumbling, cannot say three words

properly one after the other. If you give them a poem to recite that they can become completely absorbed in, that they can love, and if you stand behind it as it were as an attentive listener, then they can say whole long series of verses without stuttering. Creating such opportunities for them to do something like this is something that is a particularly good therapeutic tool from a psychological point of view. It is a bad thing to point out such defects to people, no matter what the reason. I had a poet friend who always lost his temper when someone tactless pointed out his stammering. When someone tactfully asked him, “Doctor, do you always stammer like that?” he replied, “No, only when I am confronted with someone who is thoroughly unpleasant to me.” Of course, I would have had to stutter terribly now if I had really wanted to imitate the way this answer was given.

But then, little by little, one will recognize what a significant remedy can be found in eurythmy for such and similar defects in the human organism. Eurythmy can be studied from two sides, as it were. I always draw attention to this in the introductions to the performances. I show how the speech organism and its movement tendencies can be perceived through sensory and supersensory observation of the human being today, and how these are then transferred to the whole human organism. However, the reverse approach is no less important. For, as has been very well presented to you today from a different point of view by Dr. Treichler, in the development of speech, a primeval eurythmy of human beings undoubtedly and most certainly plays a very significant role. Things do not have the sound within them, as it were, in the sense that the bim-bam theory asserts, but there is a relationship between all things, between the whole macrocosm and the human organization, this microcosm, and basically everything that happens externally in the world can also be reproduced in a certain way in movement by the human organization. And so, basically, we constantly tend to recreate all phenomena through our own organism. We do this not only with the physical organism, but also with the etheric organism. The etheric organism is in a state of perpetual eurythmy. Primitive man was much more mobile than he is today. You know, this development from mobility to stillness is still reflected in the fact that in certain circles it is considered a sign of education to behave as phlegmatically as possible when speaking and to accompany one's speech with as few gestures as possible. It is “considered” a mark of certain speakers that they always keep their hands in their trouser pockets, so that they do not make any gestures with their arms, because it is considered an expression of particularly good speech delivery when one stands still like a block. But what is caricatured here only corresponds to humanity's progression from mobility to stillness. We have to recognize a transition from a gestural language, from a kind of eurythmy, to phonetic language at the very bottom of human development in primeval times. That which has come to rest in the organism has specialized in the organs of speech, and has naturally first actually developed the organs of speech. Just as the eye is formed by light, so the speech organ is formed by a language that is initially soundless. And if we are aware of all these connections, we will gradually be able to use eurythmy particularly well by introducing it properly into the didactic process, in order to counteract anything that could interfere with speech. And in this direction, if there is even a little leisure time, it will be a very appealing task to develop our current, more artistic and pedagogically trained eurythmy more and more towards the therapeutic side and to create a kind of eurythmy therapy that will then extend in particular to such therapeutic demands as the one we have been talking about here. I am not sure whether what I have said is already exhaustive, but I wanted to address it briefly. Of course, as questions accumulate, the level of detail in the answers will have to decrease.

A participant asks how the movement of eurythmy is meant in relation to the ether body, and whether, according to spiritual scientific research, it has the same form as the body. Is the ether body localized at the larynx?

Did the Hungarians, who were recently observed by Dr. Steiner playing cards in a Hungarian border town, themselves fall under the tables or only their etheric bodies? Was this a process that could only be observed in the etheric body?

Rudolf Steiner: Please understand me correctly. Eurythmy is such that it can be performed in the physical body and through the physical body, which otherwise only the etheric body of the human being can perform. The fact that a person as a eurythmist performs the movements studied in the ether body with his physical body does not mean that the person who stands there doing eurythmy when he has some horrible thought is not carrying out this horrible thought with his ether body. He can perform the most beautiful movements with his outer, physical body, and then the etheric body, following his emotions, may dance in a rather caricature-like manner. But those people I characterized the other day as being at the Hungarian border playing cards were, of course, characterized entirely on the basis of their physical behavior. I only said that one could study these passions in the soul and spirit, the passions that led them to do such things above and below the table, and that one could study these passions in the soul and spirit.

I would like to say the following. It is generally the case, when you look at a person at rest, that the etheric body is calm and only slightly larger than the physical body. But this is only because, schematically speaking, the physical body has a dilating effect on the etheric body of the human being in all directions. If the etheric body were not held in its form by the physical body, if it were not banished from the physical body, then it would be a very mobile being. The etheric body has the inherent possibility of moving in all directions, and in addition, in an awakened state, it is under the constant influence of the mobile astral, which follows everything of a spiritual nature. The etheric body in itself is therefore something thoroughly mobile. As a painter, for example, one has the difficulty when one wants to paint something ethereal, that one must paint, I would say, as if one could paint lightning. One must translate the moving into stillness. So at the moment when you step out of the physical world, at that moment the concept of distance also ceases to apply, along with all the things that actually only relate to resting space; all that ceases, and a completely different kind of imagining begins. A form of imagining begins that can actually only be characterized by saying that it relates to the ordinary imagining of spatial things as a suction effect relates to a pressure effect. One is drawn into the matter instead of touching it and so on. This is how it is with the relationship between the etheric body and the physical body.

A participant (also speaking for others): Dear attendees, prompted by discussions with many friends, I would like to ask a few questions that may express some of what has been going through many minds and hearts over the past week. We have heard that young students in particular can hear and learn many things here that need to be carried out into our people to build a new culture. Now, in the midst of all the problems that are being discussed here, the question of the fate of our German people often arises. How must our youth place themselves in the context of the fate of our German people if they want to fulfill their inner duties in the right way and of their own free will? Just as Fichte brought forth great and powerful thoughts a hundred years ago, so too are we receiving powerful thoughts today, the realization of which we long for. In wide circles, at least in those circles that are close to the threefold order, the view prevails today that this threefold order will also be realized without intensive work, that it can thus come about all by itself, so to speak, even if people contribute nothing to it.

Now I would like to raise the question: What will actually be the fate of our nation if this fatalistic attitude prevails in our circles – which is, of course, very easily explained from our overall cultural development – and if it is not replaced by the courageous will that is wanted from here? Today one often hears that it is possible that Bolshevism will spread even further, that it is possible that anarchic conditions in Germany will continue to spread. How should we position ourselves in the face of these questions, when this fatalistic element, which I have tried to describe, is confronted with the courageous, forward-storming will?

A second question: we are talking here about anthroposophy, about human wisdom. Now the question has been repeatedly asked in recent days: what would the whole world view actually look like if one did not start from the point of view of the anthroposophist, but if one started from the point of view of some other consciousness? We know from Dr. Steiner's lectures, but also from other lectures, that the three lower realms, that is, the mineral, plant and animal kingdoms, are actually the brothers of man who have remained behind. How would this now present itself if we were to relate man again to the higher hierarchy, for example to the angelic beings? Is it conceivable that what is presented from a human point of view today as anthroposophy might be presented from the point of view of a higher consciousness, that is, from the point of view of an angelic consciousness - one could perhaps speak of an angeloisophy in this context - and how would the problems appear from this point of view? I ask this question because it has repeatedly come up in our conversations in recent days.

A third question: From the previous remarks by Dr. Steiner, it is clear that eurythmy is extremely important from a therapeutic point of view. Now I would like to point out that if we observe certain things today, things that appear to be trivial, we can see how absolutely necessary eurythmy is from a different point of view. Even in certain children's toys, we can see how certain forces appropriate to the present time want to come out, push towards manifestation. [There follows a reference to diabolo games and toys that were introduced by French and American soldiers in particular.] Do such toys not show certain forces that pull downwards? Is there not something in them that expresses forces that are polar to human nature, perhaps a hint of the devilish? And so I wanted to raise the question: Is it not possible that the harmful aspects of these or other materialistic games given to children today could be overcome through eurythmy? Just yesterday in children's eurythmy we had a living example of how children can respond to eurythmy in an ingenious way and then reject everything that is contained in such games.

Rudolf Steiner: I will try to answer the questions briefly, although each one would require a lecture in itself. However, I would ask you to bear in mind that if one says something in a brief answer to a question, it is of course easy for some inaccuracies or misunderstandings to arise.

First of all, the question of the fate of the German people: it is true that today an enormous sense of fatalism is emerging within broad sections of the German people. This fatalistic mood can be observed on a large scale and in detail. And this fatalistic mood was also, I might say tragically there when we began in April of last year in Stuttgart to seek understanding for the threefold social organism and for the upliftment of what lies in such a terrible way, that comes from this understanding. But on the other hand, it must be said that we have arrived at a very special point in the development of humanity. I must frankly admit that when I was invited by the Anthroposophical student group in Stuttgart to give a lecture for the students of the Technical University in their assembly hall, I was still under the impression of Spengler's book “The Decline of the West”. Yes, my dear audience, we have come to the point where today we can prove the decline in a strictly methodical way. Now, Spengler's book is by no means a talentless book. On the contrary, in many respects it is extraordinarily ingenious. What is presented there testifies to nothing other than this: if only the forces of which Spengler is aware were to be effective in the future – he is not aware of anthroposophy, but, as can be seen from some of his writing, he would probably turn red with rage just hearing about it — if only what Spengler knows remains effective, then the downfall of Western civilization would be absolutely certain well into the second millennium. Just let everything that has developed in humanity be effective — the downfall is certain. Just as a human being ages when he has reached a certain number of years and is heading towards death, so this culture is heading towards death. What people like Spengler do not know is what has developed in the successive cultural periods, which you will find described in my “Occult Science”.

In the first cultural period — I have called it the primeval Indian period — there was a primeval culture based on the wisdom of the time. Some of this has already been characterized in these lectures. From this there was an inheritance in the next age, in the ancient Persian, in the Zarathustra culture; from there, in turn, diluted into that age, what can be called the Egyptian-Chaldean culture, the third period, which closes approximately in the 8th century BC before the Mystery of Golgotha. Then very little goes into the fourth period, where Plato still lets his teaching and his writings be steeped in ancient mystery wisdom, but where naturalism and intellectualism already begin with Aristotle. During this period, in which human original wisdom is already beginning to decline, Christianity is founded. The Mystery of Golgotha is still understood with the last original wisdom. But as this ancient wisdom itself fades, it finally becomes modern theology, which either degenerates into a material dogmatism and church belief or into a description of Jesus as a simple man from Nazareth, in whom the Christ, the Christ-being, has been completely lost. But of course a new understanding of Christianity itself must come. The origin of Christianity extends into this fourth period, and from the point of view of Primordial Wisdom, it extends a little into our fifth period. The fifth period is the one in which Primordial Wisdom disappears, is paralyzed, and in which man must find a new spirituality from within himself. All talk about this spirituality coming from outside is in vain for the future. In the future, the gods must speak through the human soul. Today, the question is not addressed to any other power of the soul than to our will alone. That is to say, today it is a matter for all mankind to thoroughly overcome fatalism and consciously absorb spirituality into the will. This mission has already fallen to the German people to a very considerable extent. Anyone who studies this in more detail, by looking at the great figures of the German people, will notice how this people in particular has the mission to reshape its world, I would say its social world, out of its will, despite all the hardship and all the terrible things that are now unfolding within this people. Only for the time being there is no awareness of the actual facts and the great world-historical context.

I would like to do as I sometimes like to do, not just give my own opinion, but refer to the opinion of someone else, Herman Grimm, who certainly cannot be said to have been a Bolshevik or anything of the sort. As early as the 1880s, Herman Grimm wrote that the greatness of the German people is not based on its princes or its governments, but on its intellectual giants. But it may also be said that this is precisely what has been most misunderstood and most forgotten. Today there is a significant fact that one must only properly observe. Take the general intellectual life, untouched by a real spiritual upsurge. Study it as it lives itself out in popular literature, be it in Berlin, Vienna or elsewhere – I am not just talking about after the war here, but long before the war. study how it is lived out in Berlin, Vienna, Munich, Cologne, Hamburg, Bremen and so on, study it in popular literature, especially in newspaper literature, which can be said to represent the opinions of a very large number of people. Yes, especially during the war, it turned out that sometimes people also remembered that there was a Goethe, that there was a Schiller, that there was a Fichte – yes, even Fichte's sayings were quoted. But the fact of the matter is this: anyone today who has a feeling, a real receptivity for the inner structure, for the direction, for the whole signature of intellectual life, knows that what was written in the 20th century in Vienna, Berlin, Munich, Hamburg, Dresden, Leipzig was more similar to what was written in Paris, Chicago, New York, and London than to what a Herder, a Goethe, or a Fichte felt vibrating through their souls.

This fact is widely misunderstood. What Central Europe's greatness is actually based on has been forgotten. Once we describe figures like Frederick the Great according to the truth, not according to legend, then some of it will melt away in the face of the real intellectual greatness in Central Europe. And this must come. We must learn again, not just to quote the words of Fichte, not just to quote the words of Goethe, but to be able to live again in what lived at the turn of the 18th to the 19th century. And we must become aware that only through the individual shaping of the peoples differentiated across the earth can something of what is to be achieved be achieved – not, however, by some unified culture emanating from some side, which is a Western culture, and one that is justified only for the West, has flooded Central Europe, not through the fault of the West alone, but above all because Central Europe allowed itself to be flooded and accepted everything. And this awareness of what is at stake is what must be spread today by those who mean well.

Dear attendees, I knew an Austrian poet; I met him when he was already very old: his name is Fercher von Steinwand. He wrote many important works that unfortunately have remained unknown.

I will just add what I wrote in my booklet [1895] about Nietzsche, a fighter against his time. Right at the beginning, I quoted a saying of Nietzsche that actually deserves to be better known: the saying that Nietzsche wrote down when he served in the Franco-Prussian War, albeit as a military hospital attendant. There he wrote [about the terrible, dangerous consequences of the victorious war and called it a delusion that German culture had also triumphed; this delusion posed the danger of transforming victory into complete defeat,] yes, into the extirpation of the German spirit in favor of the German Reich. In recent decades, when people spoke of the extirpation of the spirit, they understood little of this, if they spoke of the will to let this spirit flow in again.

And when all this is taken into account, it is necessary to recall what Fichte felt and what he expressed so magnificently in his “Addresses to the German Nation”: that the gods serve the will of men, that they work through the will of self-aware men.

And after Herder, Goethe, Schiller, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel and others, it is precisely this German nation that should be aware that the will must arise, but that will must be imbued with spirituality. What strange mental wanderings this German nation has gone through. There are many things that can be recalled that are only rarely presented in external history.

I advise everyone to buy the Reclam booklet by Wilhelm von Humboldt: “Ideas for an Attempt to Determine the Limits of the Effectiveness of the State”. You will see how much of it is already contained in the middle part of the threefold social organism, the legal, state part. Of course, the threefolded social organism is not in it, but what can be said about the state itself is there. In this writing, Wilhelm von Humboldt attempts to protect the individual against the state, against the increasing power of the state in the intellectual and economic realms. Wilhelm von Humboldt was Prussian Minister of Education from 1809 to 1819 – one almost dare not say this in view of what happened afterwards.

And so many more examples could be given. What is necessary, above all, is that those who feel this question before their soul really let history come to life in them. My dear audience, as an Austrian, one has a very special feeling for this when one gets to know the school history books of northern Central Europe. In 1889, I came from Vienna to Weimar to work on the publication of Goethe's works at the Weimar Goethe-Schiller Archive. And since I had previously been involved in education and teaching, I was also given the friendly task of guiding the director of the Goethe-Schiller Archive's boys a little. They were then in high school, and it was only then that I got to know their history books a little – I hadn't taken that into account before – starting with the creation of the world and going up to the development of the Hohenzollern dynasty, and only then the actual world history. Several textbooks presented it this way, one being roughly the same as the other. But is it not always a mere radicalism when speaking in this way, but sometimes it is also the right love for the German nation. And the right love, if it can really come through spiritual-scientific stimulation, will in turn give rise to a culture of the will from mere fatalism, and that is what matters. Unless we grasp this either/or, either destruction or ascent through our own will, we will not escape destruction. Of course, ascent will not come, but something quite different. Well, I could say a lot more about this topic, but perhaps that's enough for now. We'll see each other more often.

Regarding the question: What would our world view look like from the standpoint of a different consciousness, for example, an angelic consciousness?

Well, in a certain sense, spiritual science describes completely different forms of consciousness, such forms of consciousness that people had in the earlier stages of development, or such forms of consciousness that one can ascend to through inspiration or imagination. So, in a certain sense, one learns through spiritual science to recognize what the world view of another consciousness is. But as far as the question of an angelic consciousness is concerned, ladies and gentlemen, it is very important that we do not choose more abstract questions than are necessary for a certain, I would say elasticity, of our conceptual ability. Because, you see, we do not have our consciousness to satisfy ourselves with all kinds of sensational news from the most diverse worlds, but so that we can go through our overall human development through its development. And the angels have their consciousness precisely so that they can undergo angelic development. And if someone were to ask what the world would look like with a different consciousness, it would be like someone asking me how a person would eat if they had a beak instead of a mouth. It is a textbook example of moving out of concreteness and into abstraction. Anthroposophy is supposed to achieve precisely that, to remain within the realm of experience and to extend it only

extended only to the spiritual world, that one is always ready to broaden one's experience, but not that one constructs all kinds of questions out of pure abstractness. It is not at all necessary for us to speculate in any way about angelic consciousness or mammalian consciousness or the like, but it is necessary for us to simply abandon ourselves to experience. It gives us the input into our consciousness that we need for our orientation and for our further development in the world. And that is what we have to learn from anthroposophy: to remain within the sphere that concerns us as human beings, because that is where we make appropriate progress.

This is connected with the question I heard here just now, which is asked incredibly often: what is the ultimate goal of human development in the first place?

What is the ultimate purpose of human life, or rather of life?

You see, it is precisely in relation to such questions that spiritual science must be approached not in an abstract but in a concrete way. If you had no possibility of getting a timetable for the journey to Rome here in Dornach, but only as far as Lugano, and you knew that you could get a further timetable in Lugano to go on to Florence, and from there on to Rome, one would do well not to refrain from the journey or to speculate about how I have to organize the journey from here to Rome, but to travel first to Lugano, and then see how things go from there. It is the same with human life, especially if one knows that there are repeated earthly lives. If I now tell you something about the goal of all human life here with the abilities that one can have in this one earth life, then it could indeed be something more perfect next time and then one could answer more completely how one gets the timetable to Rome. So one has to take into account what is immediately given in the concrete, and one must know that human life is in a state of perpetual development. So one cannot ask about its ultimate purpose, but only about the direction of development in which one is moving. If you really look into it, there is truly a lot to be done for the physical, soul and spiritual life. And this path to Lugano is not quite close – I now mean the path in the development of humanity – and how that will continue, we want to leave that to the more fully developed abilities of the future. In short, it is a matter of remaining in the concrete, bit by bit, and of getting rid of the abstractness that also gives birth to such questions. Now, something else is needed here about eurythmy:

Can eurythmy, when used correctly, bring important achievements for our folk culture to light?

Yes, dear readers. From some of the comments I have already made about eurythmy, you will be able to see that eurythmy can have a great pedagogical-didactic significance. If you are convinced of this, and if you are not not only believe it but also recognize that it can even help to alleviate disturbances in life through appropriate eurythmic didactics, then there is much more that can be brought into the right channels in social life through healthy eurythmy. But of course one thing needs to be noted in this regard. You see, we should be able to take this eurythmy into children's play. The esteemed questioner spoke of children's toys and asked whether eurythmy could not be used for a lot of things. And it was also asked whether eurythmy can have a healing effect on children aged five to seven who suffer from epilepsy.

It can certainly do so if it is applied in the right way. Admittedly, we are only just beginning with eurythmy. But the continuation of this beginning does not always depend only on the intellectual momentum. For example, we had intended to build a kind of eurythmeum in Stuttgart to begin with, because of course the Waldorf School is there, and later here in the building itself. You really need opportunities if these things are to be developed bit by bit. You cannot pursue these things without practising them, without having the necessary premises and also the necessary connection with the rest of human culture; you cannot pursue these things out of the blue. It would have been terribly expensive to build a eurythmy in Stuttgart and we only had a small sum of money together. Perhaps I may say the following about this. In the first year, through the dedicated work of our Waldorf teachers, which cannot be sufficiently recognized, we really achieved everything possible for the Waldorf School in the first year. Although, in spiritual and psychological terms, everything that could be expected has been achieved – it is fair to say this without being immodest – this year began with extraordinary worries for those who were sincere about the Waldorf School. It is a fact that the Waldorf School had to be enlarged because a large number of children came from outside; the number of children has more than doubled compared to the previous year. We were facing a very considerable deficit, and the fund that we had for a eurythmy school was first eaten up by the Waldorf School. It is only natural that the Waldorf School should take this on, but it means that we cannot build a eurythmy school. What lets us down is people's lack of understanding. Nowadays people are willing to understand anything, except for work that comes out of the truly concrete soul and spiritual life. I do not want to be polemical here, but I could tell you many things that would show you the dilettantism and the philosophical emptiness that is added to it today, as it performs a few somersaults before all possible reactionary powers in the world. We do not easily find the understanding of those who could do something on the material side to help things move forward. And anyone who wants the didactic, pedagogical, and especially the folk-pedagogical side of eurythmy and other aspects of a spiritual-scientific art of education to be further developed must ensure that understanding of what is actually intended is drawn into as many minds and as many souls as possible, with what is asserted here as anthroposophical spiritual science.

Question: It is often mentioned in spiritual science that those or those of the higher hierarchies have gone through their stage of humanity in these or other circumstances. What does stage of humanity mean in this sense, that is, the goal of human development? Is the goal set as the development of the I, of freedom, which freedom is denied to the higher hierarchies? So what is the stage of humanity?

Rudolf Steiner: Yes, I don't know who has denied the higher hierarchies the freedom in its special form of education. What is meant when I speak, for example, in 'Occult Science' or in the other writings of the human stage of other beings, is essentially characterized by degrees, by the different states of consciousness. In spiritual science, the term “stage of human development” is to be understood as follows:

Today, within human development in the broadest sense, we live in a state of consciousness when we are awake, which we can call object consciousness. This state of consciousness can be described as Dr. Stein described it to you in his lectures, according to his activity in imagination, concept, judgment. One can also add perception and the special kind of emotional effect, the volitional emotion, volitional impulses and so on. Then present-day humanity also still knows, but only in reminiscences, in chaotic images, the dream state, but this points back, it is an atavistic remnant of an earlier state of consciousness, of an ego-less image consciousness; this is therefore an underhuman consciousness. And it is preceded by two other states of consciousness, so that we can say: the present state of consciousness is the fourth in the series. It will be followed by a fifth, which we can anticipate today through imagination, inspiration and so on. We can also characterize this progression as future states of the sixth and seventh states of consciousness. The fourth, however, the one we have today, is in the narrower sense the state of consciousness of humanity as it is today. So when we speak of the human stage, we mean beings with object consciousness. Beings who do not perceive through such senses as human beings do, who have a special education, perhaps through very different senses, but who, in their inner being, depend on imagining and grasping and then, in a more or less subconscious activity, connecting perception with ideas and concepts. The higher, fifth state of consciousness would thus be one in which one consciously differentiates between the inner, spiritual realm, which one first grasps in pure thinking, as has been attempted in the Philosophy of Freedom, and then has perception as such as a phenomenon of development in its own right, into which one no longer mixes concepts and ideas, so that, as in the process of inhalation, in inhaling and exhaling, an inner interaction between perception and concept consciously takes place. That would be the next higher state of consciousness.

When we speak of other beings and say that they were at the human stage of development at different times, we mean that they had a perception of the external world in the past – regardless of which senses were involved – which they connected in a more or less conscious way with the inner soul life, so that at that time they were not yet at a stage that humanity will reach in the future, the stage of a separate experience of perception, of the spiritual soul realm, and a conscious synthesis. That is what needs to be said about this question.

Dear attendees, it is now 10 a.m., I think I will collect the questions that have yet to be asked and save them, and we can meet again in the next few days. I think we will be able to discuss the matters on the other notes better and with more focus if we don't rush through it in a few minutes, but instead come together again to answer these questions. I also think you will agree to this, after we have spent two hours having this conversation. So we will conclude today and continue in some way soon.

Rudolf Steiner: There are still a number of questions that were left over from the last time we met here. There are about twenty questions. We will have to take another opportunity to address these twenty questions, some of which are interesting. But I have been asked - and that is why we want to stay a few more minutes - to answer those of these twenty questions today that come from those present who have to leave tomorrow or in the next few days. So I would ask you to point out which questions are urgent.

Audience: I would like to hear about marriage in the light of spiritual science.

Rudolf Steiner: This question really suffers from a certain vagueness because it is not clear what the questioner would actually like to know. Marriage is certainly a phenomenon, an appearance within the whole of social life; it has developed with social life, and in the course of time it has actually taken on the most diverse forms, especially the most diverse meanings, so that one could talk about it: What is marriage in today's rationalistic social life? — or: What is marriage for Catholics? — and so on. So I don't know what the question is actually supposed to mean. Because, right, there is no need to talk about the essence of marriage as such from the point of view of spiritual science. I can't really imagine what it means. The gentleman who asked the question was surprised that nothing about marriage from a social point of view was included in our lecture programs, in our course programs. It could have been, of course, that marriage would have been touched upon in the context of the social lectures. But that is not the case. The fact is that for the time being other social questions are much more pressing than those that are usually linked to the marriage problem today.

For some time now, psychological and anthropological questions, and so on, have been linked to the marriage problem, and when one talks about such a problem at all, it is of course necessary to approach it from some particular angle. One can hardly talk about the problem of marriage without having, for my part, talked about the problem of love. When one talks about the problem of love, the problem of marriage can arise as a consequence. But it is actually hardly possible to talk about such a problem in isolation, because, firstly, what I have said comes into consideration, and, secondly, one must bear in mind that when they ask such a question, most people have something normative in mind, something standardizing, whereas since the middle of the 15th century, people have really become more and more individual beings. So for the immediate psychological understanding of the marriage problem, it is clear that marriage is initially related to the human being himself, to the human soul life, and like any other relationship from person to person, it can also take on a very individual character. And to construct general theories about things of such an individual character would lead us into an abstract discussion, which, when such intimate, individual matters are considered, would basically always miss the point, would not reflect reality.

Now, of course, the problem of marriage can also be viewed from a social point of view. I did that years ago when a member of our Anthroposophical Society organized a printed survey in which he asked people to answer the question about the marriage problem from the point of view of the state. Yes, if you start from such a point of view, then you can talk about it. Then you can state very precisely that we live in a (we do not want to say state community, but that we live in a social community, that this social community has a very definite interest in the child that comes from the marriage or the children that come from the marriage, and that actually for the social community the child problem exists as a special problem. Here one can point out that marriage must be thought of in terms of the next generation and that, in the face of this thinking of marriage in terms of the next generation, individual aspirations must indeed take a back seat, so that the person should feel that they are a member of their social community and cannot then arrange their marriage in a way that suits them personally.

These things are such that they lead into the most individual and that, when they are treated, they actually always lead into a normalizing way of looking at things, which actually destroys the realities in the process. What does one want, after all, when asking such a question? One usually wants to have instructions for life. And it is not the business of spiritual science to give such instructions for life. The task of spiritual science, ladies and gentlemen, is to fill the human being with spiritual and mental content so that he becomes a whole person. And then, when he becomes a whole person, when his soul is filled with what spiritual science can give him, when spiritual science brings from the depths of his soul to the surface all the soul abilities, power impulses in him, so that the human being is able to place himself in life and find his way in life, then that which should not be standardized, but rather what should arise between human being and human being, will also arise.

If you read my “Philosophy of Freedom”, you will find, above all, that it amounts to shaping the human being from within in such a way that he receives the necessary and right impulses for shaping his life, so that he does not want to be regulated from the outside by any dogmatic commandments. This is what must always be taken into account, even when posing such a question. It will be seen that the one who follows the path of spiritual science will find the way in the individual in the right way. To set up theories about these things in general cannot be the task of spiritual science, because that would mean forcing people into a system, into a mold. But to provide templates, general abstractions, that cannot be the task of spiritual science, because it can no longer be the task of our present life either. The task of spiritual science is to place the human being on his or her own individual ground and to make him or her resilient and full of life there.

That is what I have to say about it. It probably does not meet what you meant. But it is this question exactly the same as when someone asks how to act in the sense of spiritual science when choosing a career. Of course, one can say all sorts of nice things about choosing a career, but one cannot say it in general, because it always depends on the individual circumstances.

Audience: Where does the sensation of a sour taste come from after a harrowing experience?

Rudolf Steiner: If we consider the interactions that take place between the soul and spiritual and the physical aspects of the human being, as presented in the various lectures here, then it is indeed the case that some soul-shattering event can permeate the human organism with such intensity that it triggers physical processes that are not perceived directly in ordinary, normal life. When a shattering event occurs, it is not only that something happens in our soul, but the shock to the soul has its organic, its physical parallel manifestation, and in a very specific way. One must only be clear about how complicated this human organization actually is.

In one of my lectures, I pointed out that the sense of balance, sense of movement and sense of life emancipate themselves from within the human being, while at the same time the senses of taste, smell and touch develop, and that when the senses are penetrated, the experiences of smell, taste and touch can precede what we would experience through the senses of balance, movement and life. And I have shown that if you stop halfway, instead of penetrating to the core, you enter into a nebulous mysticism. This can admittedly be very beautiful, very significant, but essentially it is the case that in this inward journey, which stops halfway, you actually stop in the regions of taste, smell and tactile experience. One need only read the sayings, such as the sayings of the poets of the saints, of Mechthild of Magdeburg, for example, and one will be able to grasp, I would say spiritually with hands, how an inward sense of taste, smell, and touch comes about in very beautiful experiences through what I have just described. Now, when a harrowing experience occurs, it usually has to do with the fact that the spiritual-soul, which we call the I and the astral body in our way of expressing it, but which is precisely the carrier of that which has an inward effect on the human being, that this spiritual-soul, as in sleep, tears itself out of the organism. Of course, such shocks to the soul can cause a state of unconsciousness, which is simply due to the fact that the astral, the soul, does not control the etheric and physical bodies because it does not intervene in the right way. Now imagine the process as a living thing. A shock occurs; the astral body and the ego are loosened. They are loosened, but the person still holds on. That is, the astral body and the ego strive to go out, but are held back, and so a continuous swinging back and forth occurs. In this to and fro swinging, the experiences occur that take place in the area in front of the actual interior of the human being, where the senses of taste, smell and touch are located. If a taste, a taste illusion, is then also subjectively experienced, that is, an irritation of the taste organism during this to and fro swinging, then this is a completely natural phenomenon.

A participant asks about the terms salt, mercury and sulfur.

Rudolf Steiner: It has already been said quite correctly that if one wants to penetrate into such concepts as those used by Paracelsus, and also the concepts of sulfur, mercury, salt used by others, one must of course completely disregard modern chemistry. One must also bear in mind that at the time of Paracelsus, this modern chemistry as such did not actually yet exist. The whole way of thinking was different back then. It is interesting to note how modern historians, when they go back to older times, as a Nordic chemist who recently wrote the history of alchemy did, write that only the personalities of the 13th to 15th centuries could make sense of the processes described, but not the modern chemist, who cannot make sense of what is being dealt with at all. This is because the whole way of thinking was different. The thinker before the emergence of modern chemistry did not have the concept of matter at all as we have it today. He followed more the process of how one state developed into another. So he asked more about what the relationship of one state to another is in the material world. So for the external world, for the non-human world, for the outer, organic world, one would have to say the concepts of earthy, watery, airy, fiery or warm. By this one did not mean the substances as they are understood today, but one meant the state of the earthy, the liquid - water was the liquid as such - and so on. And one had a certain feeling for it, in that one distinguished the earthy, the watery, the airy, the fiery, so that the whole context, which one brought into the state of the world, related to the extra-organic, namely to the extra-human. And for the human being, it was not assumed at all that the same kind of state was present in the organism, but rather a different kind of state was assumed. According to the ideas that were held at the time, it was not easy to say how the airy or the earthy occurs in the human being. One saw the human being as a, I would say, self-constructed constitution and attributed what the human being was, for example, as a thinker, to certain conditions of his physical organism. One simply said to oneself: Something is happening physically in the human being by being a thinking being or by being in the state of thinking. This event was seen in a certain congruence or similarity to the solidification of the earthly. It was imagined that the state in which the earthly, the whole earthly, was once in times past, had not yet reached the solid state of the earth, that the solid state of the earth had, so to speak, just solidified from a less dense state. But this same process of solidification, which was thought of in terms of the non-human, was not attributed to the human as such. Instead, when the human was in a state of thinking, a process was ascribed to the human, which was described as the formation of salt, so that these were parallel processes for the external and for the internal: earthification - salt formation in man; cosmic thought formation, the emergence of the solid, that is, the earthy - planetary inner-human thought formation, the corresponding physical process, oversalting. And so everything that was understood by salt was imagined to be related to what is physically present in man when he thinks, when he reveals himself as a thinking being.

Of course, in a sense, what was initially attributed to man was transferred by analogy to the processes that were behind the actual solidification of the planet, the formation of external salt. Some of these expressions have remained to this day. They are still used, but their historical origin is no longer known.

In so far as physical processes take place in man as a sentient being, or, to sum up, if we take the sum of all those processes in man - which are manifest as physical processes - that are the bearers of emotional life, then we have the mercurial in man. And if we consider everything in man that is the bearer of the life of will, then we have the sulphurous in man.

And so such personalities thought of the human constitution, the human organism, as consisting of these three interlocking processes: the salt-like, which to a certain extent kills people, parallel to the thought process - because the fact that we are thinking beings means that we are in a state is related to that which constantly leads us to death, that is, deposition processes, salt formation processes; then the sulfur process, which is, in a sense, what awakens the human being, what constantly permeates him with a new sulfur-like element that inhibits consciousness. And that which rhythmically balances between the two is the mercurial.

When going back to earlier times, one has to simply get involved in thinking no longer with the thought forms of today's science, but with the thought forms that were present earlier, but which were actually based on a very different state of mind than ours today. We can only artificially put ourselves back into the state of mind from which such ideas arose. It is not enough to take up terms such as Mercur, Sal, Sulfur and so on from Paracelsus or Basilius Valentinus and simply look them up in our textbooks or in the encyclopedia. Rather, it is necessary to put oneself back into a completely different way of thinking. Only then can one begin to talk about these things.

Are there any more questions that need a quick answer?

Participant: Isn't the Song of Solomon a song that represents an initiation? I came up with this during my Hebrew studies by trying to approach the text based on Ritter's original texts. Theology offers various answers, but they are unsatisfactory. It seems to me that the Biblical text is deliberately confused so that the esoteric meaning is no longer apparent to the general reader. Is not the Song of Songs a work of initiation?

Rudolf Steiner: You see, in general, when dealing with such matters, one must follow the principle that I have already mentioned here on another occasion: to interpret, but not to underlay, that is, not to look for false things and the like in the texts in question. With such old works as the Song of Solomon, it really does depend on our first completely putting ourselves back into the way of thinking and the state of mind out of which something like this arose. I just mentioned the example a moment ago: If one wants to read the writings of the alchemists, one has to put oneself back into the whole state of mind out of which these people thought about matter and processes – and that is not so far back. For example, it is quite clear that what Professor Beckh said about the oriental texts here recently is true in a sense that cannot be sufficiently taken into account by the translator today. First of all, it must be clear that the abstractness, I would even say rarity of the content of our ideas is basically not that old. If you have lived in the country and know the language of the peasants, you will know that even the language of the peasants had something that did not distinguish material processes from spiritual processes, as the intellectual life of today's civilization does; things were thought more interrelated. Now that has more or less ceased, it is disappearing rapidly, giving way to a general materialism.

Just think of what today's educated person says when they say “night's sleep”. Of course, they have vague ideas, but please analyze the actual content of the ideas you have when you say “night's sleep”. You will certainly pick out one or the other from your consciousness, then glue all sorts of things together and thereby have the concept of “night's sleep” as a modern educated person. But when the farmer spoke of the night's sleep, he spoke of something very limited and specific, only it was not thought of materially or spiritually or mentally, but it was both at the same time. When he spoke of the night's sleep, he rubbed out what he had in his eyes in the morning, and he called that the night's sleep. In this material fact he had at the same time everything that he thought when he said the word “night's sleep” and what he thought of as having been, so to speak, coagulated out of what he had experienced during the night. And that he could then wipe out of his eyes. He had an idea in which the material and the soul were one.

I still remember that in my childhood, when I had such language around me, an expression was used very often when someone forgot to turn off the light in the morning and it had already become light; people would say: You're burning the day's eyes out! — There you have an idea that is given in very concrete images. You wouldn't use some abstractions for something like that: You burn out the eyes of the day. It is something where you have more of a spiritual, but characterizing, material image and have learned the use of language from it. This is something that still lives among us today.

If we go back to ancient epochs, we have to think in very different mental states. And when we now come back to the time when the Song of Solomon was written, when everything was only a derivative of the mystery culture, we have to be aware that something that is translated with our present-day means may have an erotic touch, that within the state of mind of that ancient time it was quite something else. There is no doubt that, to a certain extent, a kind of dichotomy has taken place. Certain word meanings were originally unified, encompassing the spiritual and the physical. Then the spiritual became abstract; I would say it was bifurcated on one side, the physical on the other. This is particularly the case with erotic ideas. Eroticism is basically something that, as we understand it today, makes no sense at all for the time from which the Song of Solomon originates, not the slightest sense, because the ideas on this side were not yet as well-founded as they are today. In this respect, the strangest things are happening in our time. People come and explain to you, for example, about all kinds of sexual sins of children, and when you ask them how old the child is, it turns out to be three years old. This is, of course, complete nonsense, because talking about sexuality before the change of teeth is utter nonsense. The facts are quite different, and only our present time, which, as a certain phase of analytical psychology shows, can only develop in a very one-sided way, attributes these things to everything because it cannot see the real, true conditions.

So we must be careful not to translate something like the Song of Solomon into our abstract language. We can certainly allow it its abundance, but we must be clear that the state of mind of people in those days was different, and that the state of mind of today's people, because they throw everything into one big pot in this direction, is perhaps an erotic product. The state of mind of that era led to completely different regions. In some circles, it is a popular notion to explain the whole mystery, for example, in erotic terms. Of course, this is completely unfounded, because it is completely amateurish and has no idea what the state of mind of people in earlier times was. Therefore, it must always be said: In order to understand such things, it is essential to be able to put oneself in the shoes of the corresponding epoch. This also applies, for example, to our Gospels. Because what we have in terms of translations of the gospels does not at all reflect what is in the gospels, because the translations were basically created from a completely different state of mind and because one has to go back to the state of mind from which these writings were created.

That is what I can say about it. Of course, there is no time to go into details. I will answer the remaining eighteen questions in the next few days.