The Rudolf Steiner Archive

There is nothing in the experience of the “I” itself by the human being that is stimulated by a sensory process. On the other hand, the I incorporates the results of the sensory processes into its own experience and builds the structure of its inner being, the actual “I-human”, from them. This “I-human” thus consists entirely of experiences that originate outside the I and yet persist in the I after the corresponding sensory experiences. They can therefore be transformed into ego experiences. We can gain an idea of how this happens by looking at the experiences of the so-called sense of touch. In this sense, nothing comes from an object in the external world into the ego experiences. The ego, so to speak, radiates its own essence to the point of contact with the external object and then allows this own essence to return in proportion to the touch. The returning own essence forms the content of the tactile perception. Why does the I not immediately recognize the tactile perception as its own content? Because this content has received a counter-impact from the other side, from the outside, and now returns as this impact has shaped it from the outside world. The I-content thus returns with the imprint it has received from the outside. Thus, the I receives a certain peculiarity of the external world in the nature of its own content. The fact that these are truly inner I-experiences, which have only taken on the peculiarity of the external world, can only be determined by judgment. Now, suppose that the I's experience cannot come into contact with the external object. The external object radiates its essence; and the I-experience must recoil from the contact. Then, within the I, an experience similar to the sense of touch arises; only that, through the weaker resistance of the I, something like an influx from the outside occurs in its experience. In fact, the experience of smell can be characterized as such a process. If the impact from outside is so strong that the external radiation digs into the experience of the I, then the influx from outside can happen, and only when the inner experience, so to speak, puts up resistance can it close itself off from the nature of the outside world. But then it has absorbed the current from outside and now carries it within itself as its own inner essence. The sense of taste can be characterized in this way. But if the I does not apply its own original experience to external existence, but instead applies to it the kind of entity that it has itself taken in from outside, then an inner experience can be imprinted from the outside that has itself originally been taken in from the outside. The external world then imprints itself on an inner experience that has itself only been internalized from an external source. This is how the sense of sight presents itself. With it, it is as if the external world were dealing with itself within the experiences of the I. It is as if the external world first sends a part of its essence into the human being and then imprints its own nature on this part. One now further assumes that the external world, with what it has sent into the inner being as a sense organ, completely fills the I-experience, as it were; then the inner being will relive the peculiarity of an external event in the sense perception, although inner experience and external world are juxtaposed. And a radiance from the outer world will then reveal itself as something that is similar to an inner experience. The I will experience the outer and inner as similar. This is the case with the sense of warmth. Now compare the experiences of the sense of warmth with the life process of warming. An impression of warmth must be recognized as something similar to the warmth experienced within and filling the inner self.

With the sense of smell, taste and sight, we can speak of an influx of the outer world into the experiences of the self. Through the sense of warmth, the inner life is filled with the character of the outer world. A sense of the inner life manifests itself in the sense of equilibrium, the sense of one's own movement and the sense of life. Through them, the self experiences its inner physical fulfillment.

Another takes place in the sense of hearing. There the external being not only allows the I-experiences to approach it as in the sense of touch; nor does it dig into them as in the sense of smell, taste and sight, but it allows itself to be irradiated, as it were, by the I-experiences; it allows them to approach it. And only then does it counter them with its own forces. The I must thereby experience something that is like a spreading out into the external world, like a laying of these I-experiences outwards. Such a relationship can be recognized by the sense of hearing. (Those who do not make abstract comparisons will not object that, for example, such a spreading out also takes place with the sense of sight. The perception of sound is of a fundamentally different nature than the perception of sight. Color does not contain the sense of self in the same sense as sound.) This spreading of the sense of self into the environment is even more pronounced in the sense of sound and in the sense of concept.

In order to characterize the astral human being, it was necessary to point out the trinity of image-sensation, desire and impulse of movement. The “I-human being”, insofar as he is directly experienced in his sensory processes, shows himself as a unity. All sensory experiences are only, as the preceding considerations show, differently modified or graded I-experiences. In the experience of the I itself, the human being is in direct relationship with the supersensible world. The other I-experiences are mediated to him through organs. And through the organs, the I-experiences reveal themselves in the diversity of the sense fields. Now, with two organs, the sense of concept and the sense of sound, one can easily follow the development of the sense ability to a certain degree. When a concept is perceived, the concepts acquired in the person's previous life prove to be what absorbs the new concept. A person proves to be understanding of a concept that approaches him to the extent that he has previously absorbed this or that concept. In the understanding of a concept, there is therefore an opening of the person to the outside and a sinking of what has been absorbed into the structure of the already existing concept organism. The life that unfolds there blossoms outwards and takes root in the conceptual organism. A similar thing happens for the sense of sound. A person is receptive to a new sound meaning to the extent that he has already acquired other sound meanings. The human being really carries a conceptual and a sound organism within him. Both must be present before the I-experiences can take place through conceptual and sound organisms. The I-human being cannot bring about the creation of this sound and conceptual organism through forces that lie in the sense life. And a third thing is necessary. The I unfolds its experiencing in all directions, as it were; it cannot experience itself in this experiencing. It must confront its own experiencing with something that is itself an experience of the self. It confronts itself as a sensation. We see, then, that the sense of 'I', the experiences of the sense of concept and the sense of sound, are brought to the 'I' by three organisms. We can count the 'I' organism as a fourth. If we keep to the image chosen above, we can say that the experience of the I unfolds on all sides; it is rooted on one side in a supersensible world that is like itself and strives into the conceptual and phonetic organisms in such a way that its own experience grows towards it, as if it were bringing the I-organism, the conceptual and phonetic organisms to full bloom, like a flower. If we imagine the human being as a being of the sensory world, as the direction characterized is incorporated in it, we must think of the contrast between above and below. “From top to bottom” is a direction in which we can imagine the development of I-experience; from “bottom to top” this development is opposed by the I-organism, towards which the I-experiences grow. Just as the leaves attach to the leaf stalk of a plant, unfolding from bottom to top, so the structures of the conceptual and phonetic organisms attach to the ego organism from top to bottom. If we now say, as is justified from the above, that the original ego experience unfolds out of a supersensible world, then we can assume that for the formation of the ego, conceptual and phonetic organisms, their coming into being, forces are at work which possess the same material as is present in the I-experience. However, they build this material into forms that must already be there when the I-experience is perceived by the senses. It is therefore self-evident that human ego-experience is one that flows from a supersensible world, but can only be perceived when it takes root in an organism that is a structure of ego, concept and sound. We can also say that it is an organism that unfolds its sense organs in these three. To this we can add the description of the astral body given above. The image-feeling, desire and impulse to move of the astral human being point to its essence. It is easy to see that there is an image-feeling in the ego organism that is not the result of a sensory experience. For the I-organism is, after all, the I-experience itself, which opposes itself in the opposite direction. In the conceptual organism, forces can be recognized which unfold towards the inside of the human being - in the astral human being - as desire. In the attraction that the concept organism has for newly added concepts, a careful self-examination will easily be able to notice the desire of this concept organism. But the same applies to the sound organism. It develops this desire for the new meanings. From this one can recognize the activity of the “astral body” in the formation of the ego, concept and sound organism.

A being that did not experience the I within, as humans do, but observed it from the outside, would be able to follow the emergence of the I organism, the organism of sounds and concepts. Such a being would have to perceive the I-experience itself in such a way that it does not allow any of this I-experience to enter into itself, but only penetrates to the boundary, and at this boundary the being of the I radiates back into itself. One sees that this is the opposite of the so-called sense of touch. With this sense, the outer world is touched and nothing of its essence is absorbed. This is also the case with the assumed being's relationship to the I. But whereas in the sense of touch the I only kindles its own experiences through the touch, thus only experiences its own content, the being presses its own content into the I-experiences, so that within the I-experiences it becomes I-perception. So when the ego perceives itself, it does so as a result of its activity, which has the same content as its own experience and differs from it only in that it shows the ego its own nature from the outside, whereas the ego can only experience this nature within itself. In the case of the conceptual sense, when the I comes into contact with this assumed being, it would not only have to reflect back the conceptual experiences, but it would have to push them back into the I-experience, so that they form the structure of the conceptual organism there. Nothing need be added to these conceptual experiences, but they must be preserved within the conceptual experience. However, in the case of the sound organism, preservation would not suffice. Something must be added to the concepts if they are to become sounds. The hypothetically assumed being would have to transfer some of its own content into the I-experience. A survey of the given conditions shows that in the I-organism only the own nature of the I is reflected back from the outside, in the concept organism the own I-experience in a different form can be directed back into itself through an external expression; in the sound organism something of the nature of the external itself pours over into the I-experience. The perceived external being would have to perceive the emergence of the I-organism as a kind of reverse sense of touch. It would sense the forming of the conceptual organism, just as a human being senses his own life processes through the sense of life. The only difference is that in the sense of life an inner structure is sensed; but the assumed being would have to sense, in its corresponding sense, the way it forms itself into the I-experience of the human being. In the sense of sound, there is then a pouring in from the outside. Should the assumed external being experience this, it would have to happen through a reverse sense of its own movement. Through this, the human being perceives his own movements; through the reversal of the same, that being would perceive the inward movement of its own being into the I-experience. It would experience itself in the execution of an external movement of the I-human being.

Now, the sense of life in the human being must be based on his own life processes. As has been shown, the life processes can be divided into breathing, warming, nourishing, secreting, maintaining, growing and producing processes. One can indeed imagine the process of forming the organ of the sense as a process of production directed from the outside inward, and the formation of the sound organism as a growing-into of the I-experience by a part of the assumed external entity. Only one must bear in mind that the I-experiences themselves are used as the material for this production and growing.

It is now possible, by extending the assumed mode of observation, to interpret the other sense experiences in relation to that which stands behind them. For the sense of hearing, the experience is that the sound points to an external object, but the organ of hearing itself points to an activity by which it is formed in a similar way to the way the conceptual organism is formed by the reverse sense of life, and the sound organism by the reverse sense of its own movement. Now imagine that the sense of equilibrium shows itself in its opposite essence. Instead of causing a person to maintain their uprightness against the three external spatial directions, in its opposite state it would produce a rebellion against the three spatial directions directed inwardly in another being. If now the external being, as assumed above, really did place itself in relation to the human being in such a way that it poured its own nature into him and brought about a rebellion against the three spatial directions within him, then it could work in such a way that the essence poured into the inner life of the I is sensed as an inner experience, but the activity of the reverse sense of balance is not sensed, but acts in a similar way to the force that forms the conceptual organism in the reverse sense of life and the sound organism in the reverse sense of self-movement. In the auditory system, the reverse sense of balance then had a formative effect. Thus, the sound points to the inside of an outside that pours into the experience of the self; the organ of hearing points to a reverse sense of balance that has accumulated and organically arranged the structures of one's own being in a similar way to how the reverse sense of life accumulates and organises conceptual experiences. If the external being, as postulated, is then really taken up as clay, which is permeated by a reversed sense of balance, then it can also be thought that the development of the auditory system is based on a process that enables the organ, when it comes into contact with the human being, which flows as sound into the experience of the I. The opposite sense of balance represents the activity on which the sound is based and from which the auditory system has developed out of the organism towards the experience of sound.

The interpretation of the sense of warmth can be understood by thinking of the reverse of the olfactory experience. In the sense of smell, the external substance penetrates the human being, and the olfactory experience is an immediate reciprocal relationship with the substance. The reverse would be the case if the assumed external substance consisted of the content of the sensation of warmth, but was imbued with an activity that enters into a direct reciprocal relationship with the human being. Behind the content of the sensation of warmth, there would then be an activity forming the warmth. It would be such that warmth flows out from it, as smell flows out from the smelling substance. Just as the odor spreads out in all directions into the external world, so would this activity be conceived as radiating out from the human being in all directions, unfolding in this radiance the organ-forming power for the sense of warmth. And just as the external substance reveals itself to the sense of smell, so the inner human being would have to reveal itself to this activity. Such a revelation would be given if the activity striving outwards were based on a kind of life process; that is, if this activity filled the human being with its own essence. The sense of warmth would thus be based on a kind of nourishment of the human being with the substance that is revealed in the warmth-sense experience according to its content.

For the interpretation of the sense of sight, the reversal of the taste experience should be considered. If the organ of sight were to come about through an external activity of a being, as hypothetically assumed above, so that, for example, color filled this being but it was completely permeated by an activity that represents a reverse tasting, then this taste-radiating activity could be thought of as the organ-forming power of the sense of sight. The situation would have to be that the effect of an external substance is not felt in the taste experience, but that the human being's inner being flows towards the radiant taste of this being. Just as in the case of taste there is a change in the substance brought about by the human being, so too would the external being have to carry out a change with the human being. However, such a change is present in the inner processes of life, for example, in warmth. The warmth would have to arise in the human being from the taste radiating out from within. Only this warmth would not express itself in the same way as an external warmth, because it has not external warmth to the substance, but something that is the same as the content of the face-sense experience. One sees that in this warmth, which is given by the activity radiating from the inside of the human being and based on the color of the adopted being, lies the inner nature of the light itself. Not the visual experience, but the inner nature of light that underlies the visual experience, arouses a warmth that lives in the organ-forming power of the visual sense in the same way that the substance lives in the interaction with the sense of taste in the taste experience.

The sense of taste can also be described as a reversed sense of smell. Only here the reversal has a different meaning than in the comparison of the sense of taste and the sense of sight. If we imagine that such a reversal takes place in the organ of smell that does not send the smell from a substance into the human interior, but lets it rebound on contact, then we would indeed have an analogy of the human organ of taste. Only the human interior itself would have to be placed in the place of the external being assumed above. That is, for the sense of smell within the human being, an essence equal to that assumed external essence would have to be presupposed. But whereas that hypothetical essence allows its nature to approach the human being from the outside, for the sense of smell its image would have to be enclosed within the human being. In so far as the human organism presents itself as an odoriferous agent, it is filled with something essentially external and alien to it. An external factor has become internal and unfolds from the internal such forces as were active in the formation of the organs of sight, hearing and warmth. It is evident that something must express itself in the sense of smell that can be equated with an inner essence of the external itself. And if the sense of taste is the reverse of this, then it is justified to say that what strikes man in the taste experience as a revelation from outside is the same as what is effective in the inner being through the organ of smell. But then between the sense of taste and the sense of smell is the point where the outer world and the inner world show themselves to be the same. And we may imagine that behind the experience of smell there is something that really behaves as an organ-forming substance of the external world within the human being, namely in the structure of the organ of taste. This, then, is built by the substance of the external world. And in the organ of smell, only the outward flowing substance itself can be imagined, which is directly perceived as such in the experience of smell. The sensation of smell would thus be the self-perception of the substance, and the organ of taste the self-animation of the substance.

These remarks should indicate that there is no need to think of anything material behind the sense experiences, but only of spiritual entities. The sense experiences would then be the revelations of the spiritual. The sense experience reveals itself directly to the senses, but not the spiritual behind it.

If, from the observation of the I-experience in the I-organism, in the concept and sound organism, an image emerged like that of a plant form that strives from top to bottom, then one can imagine the rest of the human being as that which opposes the I-experience from bottom to top and inhibits it in its flow from top to bottom, so to speak, damming it up into itself. In this remaining human being, the essence that comes into existence through birth is given. This essence is the temporal prerequisite of what, in the above image, strives from top to bottom. One can therefore say that what opposes the experience of the self from bottom to top enters the earth with birth. In this human being, therefore, what has already taken place must have been described in the above as the activities that form the sense organs. The formation of these sense organs can then only be imagined in such a way that the forces forming the sense organs bore into the human being striving from bottom to top as currents. This then gives the picture of forces striving from different sides. These forces encircle the human being and must in turn encounter an inhibition, just as the ego experience flowing from top to bottom encounters an inhibition in the entire human being striving from bottom to top. This inhibition is present when we think of the forces that form the sense organs as encountering those present in the life processes. If we imagine the sense of equilibrium striving in the opposite direction to the activity of the tone force, we have the rudiment of the organ of hearing; if we imagine the sense of smell striving in the opposite direction to the warmth-experience force, we have the rudiment of the warmth organ. This extends throughout the whole human being. This fact fits into the picture when we consider that the reverse sense of taste runs in the opposite direction to the reverse senses of smell and balance. The reverse sense of smell then runs through the whole body, and from the other side the reverse sense of taste runs to prove itself as organ-forming for the sense of sight with the power of the light experience. In the sense of taste, the substance that is revealed in the sense of smell has an organ-building effect, and finds its inhibition in the organism that has been built up by the other senses. In the sense of smell, the substance-inner strives towards the substance-inner. One arrives at the image of a periphery from which the organ-building forces emanate to take effect in the human being as if in the center of the periphery. If only these forces were effective in forming organs, then the formation and order of the sense organs would be quite different from what they actually are. This can only be the case, however, if the organ-forming forces themselves are inhibited in their development. Suppose, for example, that the organ-forming force of the auditory system is strengthened at one point and weakened at others; then it will become particularly noticeable at one point. But this is the case when other forces are acting on the organ-forming forces themselves. The question now is whether there is anything in man to indicate that there are such forces outside of him. First of all, something special can be seen in the life processes. These continue even when the sensory experiences are at rest during sleep. This shows that there must be formative forces at work in their organs, which continue to function even when the senses are dormant. The forces that form the sense organs are thus, so to speak, only one side of the organ-forming activity. The life processes must, before they can be present, be prepared by the organ-forming forces of the life organs. The forces that underlie the life organs are even more remote from human consciousness than those that build the sense organs. In the sense organs, forces reveal their effects through the sense organs. In the life organs, however, it is not the forces that build them that reveal themselves, but only their effects, namely the organs themselves. Through the sense of warmth, warmth is sensed; through the sense of life, the life organs. The formation of the life organs thus presupposes a different world from that of the sense organs. But now the sense organs must fit harmoniously into the life organs. That is to say, in order for sense organs to arise in their corresponding form, the formative forces of the life organs must already contain the predispositions for the sense organs. This, however, points to a world in which the formative forces of the life organs work in such a way that they lay the potential for sense organs in these life organs, but do not yet form them themselves in them. Only after the life organs have been formed do they imprint the sense organs on the form of these life organs. Now, however, not all sense organs need to be present in the same way in the organ-forming forces of the life organs. The organs of the so-called sense of touch do not need to be present at all. This is because they only reflect the experiences of the life organs within themselves. But even of the life, self-movement and equilibrium senses, nothing needs to be present that only has a meaning when sense organs are imprinted on the life organs. Thus, what relates to the emotional experiences of the sense of life and self-movement at the sense organs themselves is not included in the indicated predispositions. But this points to a world in which the organ-forming forces of the life organs and the predispositions for the organ-forming forces of the senses of hearing, warmth, sight, taste and smell can be found. If the sense organs impress themselves on the already existing life organs, then the formative forces of the life organs must have created a foundation in these life organs. On this basis, the life organs develop the life processes, and the organ-forming forces of the senses radiate their currents into these life processes. These organ-forming forces thus encounter an inhibition in the life organs. Their activity collides with this inhibition. The senses can only be developed where the life organs allow it. The image of the human being shows that the distribution of the sense organs mentioned above is reflected in the contrast between “left-right” and “right-left”. And the symmetrical structure of the human being in these directions shows once again that the relationship between the life organs and the sense organs is twofold. One need only observe the sense organs in a human being facing forward to arrive at the picture, for instance, that the right ear, in so far as it owes its origin to the stage in which the formative forces of the life organs hold sway, is shaped from left to right, and that it has become a sense organ through the sense-forming forces having opposed its formation from right to left. The reverse would apply to the left ear. Similar considerations apply to the other symmetrically arranged sense organs.

In so far as man is a being who has experiences through sense organs, his origin can be sought in that world from which it is said above that the astral man comes from. If we now consider that the forces that form the sense organs are the inverted sense experiences themselves, we may assume that we are talking about the world from which the astral man comes when we presuppose the existence of a being that forms the sense organs through forces that, as it were, collide from outside. For it has been shown that, during the formation of the sense organs, the reverse sense experiences flow into the human interior. Thus pictorial sensations are aroused by these forces. But the pictorial sensations, along with desires and impulses of movement, are what points to the astral body of the human being. If we now consider the forces that form the sense organs, also as a reversal of movement impulses and desires, we have an idea of how the human astral body, as the shaper of the sense organisms, is taken from an imperceptibly imperceptible world. - This presupposes a world underlying the world of sense experiences, which has been called the 'astral world'. We then have to take everything that man experiences through the senses as immediate reality and assume an astral reality hidden within it. The first is called the physical world. The astral world underlies it. It has now been shown that the latter is based on yet another. The formative forces of the life organs and the predispositions for hearing, warmth, sight and taste are rooted in this. Since it contains the formative forces for the organs of life, it can be said that the human being himself, insofar as he has the formative forces of the organs of life in his body, also comes from it. If we now call the sum of the formative forces of the human life organs (in the sense of §53) the “etheric” body of man, we can recognize that this etheric body has its origin in the world beyond the astral. This world has now been called the “lower spiritual world”, whereby again nothing more is to be thought of by this name than what is stated here.

Among the processes of life, there are three whose organs point beyond the world in which, according to what has been presented above, the origin of the organs of life is to be sought. In generation, the living physical body repeats its own structures; in growth, it adds something new to what already exists, out of the material of that which already exists; in maintenance, what already exists acts on what already exists; and in secretion, something that was only present in the living process is secreted out of it. These, then, are the life processes that take place within the life organs themselves. It is not so with nutrition, warmth, and breathing. These processes are only possible if the life organs absorb something from an external world.

Among the sense experiences, there are five whose organs point out in the same way to the world in which the origin of the organs corresponding to the other sense experiences is to be found. According to the above, the sense of taste is a kind of inverted sense of smell, in that the taste organ turns the experience felt by the sense of smell on the outer substance inward, so that the smell of the substance already inside the body is tasted. The sense of taste therefore presupposes a substance that is already in the organism. The sense of smell, however, requires the substance of the external world. Regarding the sense of sight, it is clear from the above considerations that its organ comes into being when an entity is active in this process of becoming, which does not treat the color experiences as they are when they are perceived through the sense of sight, but when it sets them in motion in an activity that is the opposite of that which builds up the sense of taste. Thus, if such an activity is present in an organism, a visual organ can arise from a preexisting taste organ being transformed into a visual organ. Thus, while an olfactory organ is inconceivable without contact with an external substance, and a gustatory organ is an inward-facing olfactory organ, and therefore requires a substance to be present within the body, the visual organ can come into being if a gustatory organ that is present in the germ is not developed as such but is transformed internally. Then the substance must also pour inwardly to this organ. It is the same with the organ of warmth. For the same reason as that given for the organ of sight, it can be regarded as an organ of smell that is arrested in its formation and transformed inwardly. (Thus the organ of taste would be regarded as a simply upturned organ of smell, and the organ of warmth as a transformed organ of smell.) The organ of hearing would be regarded in the same sense as a transformed organ of equilibrium, the organ of sound as an organ of the sense of one's own movement, whose formation was halted early on, and the organ of concept as an organ of the sense of life, transformed in its very origin. The formation of these organs does not presuppose the presence of an external substance, but it is only necessary that the substance flowing within is grasped by higher formative forces than those that prevail in the sense of smell.

On the other hand, contact with an external substance is necessary for the sense of smell. Now, the sense of equilibrium does not presuppose contact with the external substance, but it does presuppose a relationship to the three directions of space. If these directions were such in empty space, the sense of equilibrium could not exist; it can only exist if space is filled with matter and the material filling is permeated by forces with which the human body comes into contact. But for a reciprocal relationship to come about, other forces must be related to forces. Thus, the human body must counter the three forces of the material filling the space with three forces of its own material. The human body must therefore have an organ that is not only related to the external material in the same way as the organ of smell, but through which its three directions of force can be sensed. It has been shown above that the inverted sense of balance can be thought of as active in the formation of the organ of hearing. Now, let us assume that this inverted sense of balance takes an existing auditory system beyond the formation of an organ of hearing, that is, it does not end this formation at the moment when it has become an organ of hearing, but continues to develop it from that point on. Then the auditory system would become an organ of balance. In the same way, it can now be imagined that the reversed sense of self-movement would lead an organ of sound beyond the character of the organ of sound. Then, through a corresponding organ, the human being would not perceive sounds, but would sense the relationships that exist with the forces of external matter. And if the reversed sense of life were to lead an organ of perception far beyond its formation, then it would sense through a corresponding organ the relationship of its own substance to external substance. For this to be possible, the substance would not only have to prove effective in the human body, but it would have to be able to enter the body from the outside, without touching it, and allow its powers to play within. Then there would be three organs in the sense of balance, the sense of self-movement and the sense of life, for which the external world would be necessary for their development. But this is clear from the sense of touch, since it only recognizes an external world through a hidden judgment, and thus necessarily presupposes one. One can thus say that in the organs of taste, sight, warmth and hearing, organs are given that can be formed in the organism by the forces of the material flowing in it; for the sense of smell, sense of balance, sense of one's own movement, sense of life and sense of touch, external material with its forces proves to be a condition.

Just as the organs of life point to the material outside world in breathing, warming, and nourishing, so do the organs of the sensory organs mentioned. In contrast, secretion, maintenance, growth, production, taste, vision, hearing, speech, thought, and ego organisms presuppose inner formative principles that can only be active in internalized material.

If we now assume, as we have done above, that the formative forces for the organs of life and the predispositions for the sense organs lie in the lower spiritual world, then a distinction arises for the formative forces of the organs of life prevailing in this world between those that presuppose an internalized substance and those that shape their organs for the absorption of the substance from outside. It is easy to see that the latter are a prerequisite for the former. For if matter itself did not possess the potential to become internalized, it could not become active within itself. Thus, forces must prevail in matter that enable it to evoke counter-effects from what is external to it. The above description has shown that matter can produce such counter-effects in itself. The reversed senses of life, of self-movement and of equilibrium carry within them the hidden possibility of acting in such a way that, in order to produce internal formations, they are active as substance itself, without using the internal formative principles as such. They act, after all, not only within, but also outside their measure. If we now imagine these three inverted sensory activities as being so effective that they do not encounter any internally formed organ, but remain in the character of their effectiveness, then they reach a boundary where they must return into themselves. At this boundary, therefore, the material would throw itself back into itself; it would be inhibited in itself. At this boundary, what could be called materiality in materiality would be given. And this points to the possibility of how the organs that need inner substance arise out of a world in which the material-outer becomes material-inner. In this world, the first rudiments would have to lie both for those organs of the life process that are supplied by internalized substance and for those that need external substance. And the forces that bring the external substance to the interior should already have the potential for this internalization. Just as the forces in the organs of life themselves point to a world of other forces, from which the organs of life are first formed, so the internal flow of matter in the organs of life points to potentialities from an even higher world, from which they are formed. We are led to point to an outer world which, through the contrast between the sense of life, the sense of self-movement and the sense of equilibrium, can spark an inner world within itself. This world, however, can be called the “higher spiritual world”. What would be sought in it? Not forces that shape organs of life in the first place, but those that implant in their structures the potential to become organs of life. These forces, however, are to be thought of as the opposites of the sense of equilibrium, the sense of self-movement and the sense of life. If these forces are stopped before they reach the limit of their effectiveness, through inner formative processes in organs that are already being formed, then they shape the sense organs of hearing, of sound and of concept out of such organ predispositions. What happens when they reach the limit of that activity which lies in their own character? If the sense of life that is turned inwards did not encounter something in the organ of concepts that it only has to reshape, then it would obviously lead the conceptual experience back into itself. And in its reflection, it would immediately encounter itself. It would be the same as in a sensory experience, but it would have an independent existence without an underlying sensory organ. The same could be said for the sense of balance and equilibrium when reversed. In the higher spiritual world, we would thus find sense experiences that are at rest in themselves and which prove to be related to those sense experiences to which the human being in the physical world is closest with his ego, the experiences of the sense of concept, sound and hearing. But those experiences are as if there were not, as it were, a human ego standing before them and taking them in, but as if there were a being behind them that creates them in its own activity.

On the basis of the above considerations, the following can be said about the principles of education for humans:

It is assumed:

1. A higher spiritual world; in this lie forces that form structures which, in independent substance, represent living sensory experiences. And imprinted in these structures are the predispositions for the organs of life.

2. A lower spiritual world; in this lie the formative powers of the organs of life. The forces active in the first world form such structures that nourish themselves from the already internalized substance. The forces of this world themselves attach to them those that first internalize external matter. This results in a difference between the organs of life in terms of how they are produced and how they are nourished. The formations formed out of the first world are transformed into sense organs that nourish themselves from internalized matter. The formative forces of this world themselves add to these sense organs those that are in an interdependent relationship with external matter.

3. The astral world; in this lie the formative forces of the sense organs. But the life organs must also be transformed out of this world in such a way that they can receive the sense organs.

4. The physical world; in this world lie the sensory experiences of the human being.

It must now be recognized that these four worlds interact, that the forces of each higher world persist in the lower ones. The fact that the organs mentioned are derived from the forces of higher worlds can only mean that these organs are subject to the influences of the higher worlds, even if they occur in the lower worlds. From the physical world the forces of the higher worlds do not act on the sense organs; from the astral world the forces of the two spiritual worlds do not act on the life organs; and from the lower spiritual world the forces of the higher ones do not act on the endowments of the life organs characterized above. It follows that the forces of the higher worlds must show themselves active in a different way from the physical world than if they were to act directly from their own world. The forces of the higher spiritual world can only act as formative forces on the human being, who is endowed with sense organs, life organs and organ systems. They can determine the shape and position of the organs. Thus, the shape and position of the organs of the human body result from the activity of the higher spiritual world in the physical one. The I experiences concepts in conceptual perception; the sense of life, in its inverted form, produces the living concepts of the higher spiritual world. In the physical world, they can only function as formative forces. It is certainly clear that man owes his ability to perceive concepts to his upright form. No other creature on earth has the ability to perceive concepts, nor has any other the same upright form. (A little thought will show that in the case of animals that appear to have an upright form, this is due to something other than inner forces). In this way, one can see from bottom to top that which is connected to conceptual perception when the inverted sense of life is not involved. From this, one can conclude that there is a direction from top to bottom for the inverted sense of life. It would be even more correct to say that there is a direction almost from top to bottom. For one should see something in the direction of growth from bottom to top that is opposed to the reversed sense of touch. Insofar as the ego represents a contrast to the sense of touch, in the sense of the above explanations, one can regard the vertical direction of growth of the body upwards as an ego-bearer, like a continuous overcoming of the weight downwards, which of course represents a reversal of the sense of touch. From all this, the contrast between 'up-down' and 'down-up' in the human body can be interpreted as if a current from bottom to top takes place in such a way that the overcoming of the reversed sense of life from top to bottom is given in it. Now, the effect of the higher spiritual world on the physical human body must be seen in this reversed sense of life. Thus we can say that the human body, in so far as it is the carrier of the I, strives upwards; the physical human body, in so far as it shows in its form the effect of the higher spiritual world, from above downwards. In so far as the human being physically expresses the image of a being belonging to the higher spiritual world, one can see it as the meeting of the ego body with the physical body, arising from the interpenetration of two directions of force. In his ego experience, the human being belongs to the physical outer world, but at the same time he represents that which gives an image of the experience reflected back into itself. This is an image of what has been characterized as the self-contained sensory experiences of the higher spiritual world. In the body, insofar as it is the carrier of the ego, we can thus see an image of matter internalizing itself. Another contrast comes to light in 'backwards-forwards'; 'forwards-backwards'. The sense organs, together with the nerves belonging to them, now essentially represent organs that reveal their growth from front to back; if one imagines them, as is certainly justified, growing in such a way that their formative forces are opposed to the original direction of growth, coming from the lower spiritual world, then one may look for this latter direction in the direction from back to front. And then we shall be able to say that in the conclusion from behind in relation to the human form there is something analogous to that in the conclusion from below upwards in relation to the higher spiritual world. In the outer form, the forces of the lower spiritual world that cannot act on the human being from the physical world then worked from the front to the back on the organs of life; but from the back to the front, the forces of the lower spiritual world worked into the physical human world. They express what, in the sense of the above considerations, may be called the astral human being. Insofar as the astral human being shows itself in its bodily form, it strives from behind to the front just as the physical human body strives upwards. The third antithesis would be “right-left”; “left-right”. The symmetry of the human form in relation to this direction can be seen as an indication that the forces are balanced there. This can be seen when one observes the interaction in these directions of the human physical form, insofar as the physical organs have already been formed from the lower spiritual world, with the formative forces of the sense organs. In the left half of the body of the person facing forward, one would have to imagine the formative forces of the astral world for the sense organs, insofar as these forces no longer have a direct effect in the physical world, as from the left half of the body to the right; those forces of the astral world that have such an effect on the body that their effect is expressed in the body would then have to work to the left. Since these forces must act on organs that already come from the lower spiritual world, they will show an inward effect, as the forces of the higher and lower spiritual worlds show an outward effect in their formation. (What has been said here can be found substantiated in anthropology in the lines of the nerve tracts that cross in the organism.) This points to a permeation of the astral world with the etheric body of the human being, insofar as this is expressed in the physical form. It can be said:

1. The formation of the physical human body is conditioned by the direction from above to below from the higher spiritual world.

2. The shape of the human body, insofar as it is the carrier of the astral human being, points in the direction from back to front.

3. The shape of the human body, insofar as it is the carrier of the life processes, points both to the direction “right-left” and “left-right”.

4. The result of these formations would then be the actual physical human form. In order for this to come about, the formative forces indicated must permeate each other. Such interpenetration can only be conceived if the human being places himself in the physical world in such a way that the forces of the physical outer world in the direction of “right-left” and “left-right” are grasped by the forces of the astral world in such a way that the possibility remains open in their formation to then shape themselves further in the direction from back to front, and according to this determination, that from top to bottom remains open. For only if one imagines a direction that in principle goes from right to left and from left to right, acting on all sides, and then changes as in the direction towards the front, and is then transformed again upwards, can one imagine how the above comes about. But in order that this may result in the human form, for these forces, opposing forces must be thought of, proceeding from the physical world itself. These are then those forces which show themselves to be no longer acting from the physical world, but as forces coming from the higher worlds, as characterized above. But the latter alone may be sought in the physical human being. Man enters into relation with the others only as such a disposition. If we seek in the physical world the clue to man's relation to higher worlds, we must look not to the life processes and their connection with the organs, nor to the life of the sense organs, nor to the brain, but solely to the 'how', the form of the bodily shape and the organs. This 'how' shows that the clues to the spiritual worlds can still be perceived in the physical human being. (The difference between man and animal in relation to the higher worlds can therefore be seen from an observation of the bodily form, insofar as the animal is arranged in a different way in the spatial directions; but this different arrangement reveals that the higher worlds have a different effect on the animal and on man).

The anthroposophical considerations can be made fruitful if one applies the given considerations to the details of the human body shape. It will then everywhere result in full harmony with the anthropological observations. The indication of how in the organ of hearing, organ of sight, etc. conversions of organ systems that are in the process of developing or an inverted sense of smell in the organ of taste, can lead to ideas that must be found again in the organ forms. The asymmetrical organs are understood if we conceive of them in such a way that their forms have been formed by the fact that the “left-right” and “right-left” forces of the astral world could be excluded. If one recognizes, as has been done above, a reversal of the sense organs, a turning inwards of the same, then one will also be able to admit that the transformation can also be conditioned by other principles. Take the organ of hearing. The same has been related to the sense of balance. One can imagine that the activity that manifests itself in the sense of balance, an inward-facing organ system that has not yet differentiated into the organ of hearing, diverts it from its original direction of formation. The sense of sound would then come about if another activity were directed towards the corresponding organ system. This could be related to the experiences of the sense of self-movement. This would throw light on the fact that the organ of hearing finds expression in an organ turned towards the outer material, while the organ of speech cannot be perceived externally. The experience of the sense of self-movement corresponds to the inside of the body, while the experience of the sense of balance is expressed in relation to the outer spatial directions. One could therefore also call the speech organ a hearing organ held back inside the body. For the experience of the self, which does not correspond to any sensory experience, not a special organ, but only the upward striving of other organ systems, would come into consideration. Thus, in the speech organ and the organ of concepts, we can see structures whose physical form is determined by their tendency towards the experience of self. In what the body, as the carrier of the 'I', participates in from within, we can recognize the inversion in the formative forces, and say that when the body, as the carrier of the 'I', reshapes an organ, the nature of the formations of the higher spiritual world must be recognizable in its image. One such organ is the speech organ (the larynx). If the series of organs comprising the ear, sense of sound and sense of concept can be called a progressive bodily internalization of the sense potential, then the sense of sound can be recognized as reversed in the speech organ. Here the sound does not become a sense experience that strives inward through an organ toward the I, but is a sense content that is self-contained and creative, a truly reversed sense experience. The formation of the larynx corresponds exactly to these conditions. One can then also look for an organ that corresponds to an ability in man that stands between speaking and I, as grasping stands between hearing and I. Through this, something would have to arise from within man that is not as poor in content as the I-experience and does not yet flow directly into the outer world in its revelations. This would be the organ in the human brain that corresponds to the imagination. We will gradually learn to distinguish between the organ of concept and the organ of imagination in the brain.

Since the formative forces of the three higher worlds are to some extent still present in the form of the physical human body, it must also be recognized that the formative forces of the two higher spiritual worlds can act on the astral body directly from the astral world; and finally, that the life organs, as they are from the lower spiritual world, are directly influenced by the higher spiritual world. Taking into account such forces, the shape and position of the heart, the respiratory and circulatory organs, the muscular and skeletal systems, etc. can arise.

In the human form within the physical world, it is revealed that its development has not merely followed an adaptation to circumstances that are alien to the inner nature of the human being, but that this form ultimately expresses in image what the character of the “I” is. The human being's developmental disposition must be conceived in such a way that, in its formation, points of contact are given to the forces of the higher worlds. In the sense-perceptible world, only the content of sensations is given for perception, and the I, when it perceives itself, confronts these as pictorial sensations. Pictorial sensation, however, belongs to the astral world. In the I's experience of itself, the pictorial sensation thus stands, as it were, free in space. It has been shown that the sense of taste can be seen as an inverted sense of smell. If we do not think that the impact of the substance in the sense of smell is what causes the sensation, but rather that the experience of smell itself, as a self-experience in the I, becomes a component of the latter, then we can see in a desire or in a movement impulse of the astral I the response of this I to something that originates from the substance and is incorporated into the I without physical mediation. Behind the experience of smell, in addition to the experience of images, are the astral counter-effects against the desires and impulses of the ego. In the case of sound, it is possible to clearly distinguish between what is detached from the external object and what is perceived about this object through senses other than hearing. And what is detached is the experience of the self by the ego. We can certainly say that when an object is heard, only the sound-producing object belongs to a world in which the ego is not present, in which it cannot identify with the sensory experience. In the sense of one's own movement, the position and change in the shape of one's own organism is perceived. In this case, it seems obvious that, in addition to the self-experience of the ego, only an astral counter-effect to a movement impulse needs to be assumed. If there are only sense experiences in the physical world, then we can only speak of sense experiences in this world. But since a physical body must have sense organs in order to have sense experiences, there is nothing in this physical world for a human being but sense experiences and the perception of the self as an astral image experience. The ego has no other possibility than to experience objects of the external world, and to find the sense experiences combined in the most diverse ways. What happens is nothing but a free-floating in space of sense experiences. But let us assume that the human form as such is not meaningless, but that it depends on the direction and position of one organ in relation to another. And if we look at the physical world from this point of view, it is essential that the organ of taste is an upturned organ of smell. For if we now think of the experience of smell, as it is, as an image-sensation, without denying the substance itself, as space-filling, the ability to present this experience as an image-sensation, just as the ego-perception is in itself a freely floating image-sensation in space , then it must be recognized that something depends on whether the surface of an object is turned towards an object in such a way that, in order to receive the image sensation emanating from it, one sensory organ or the other must be turned towards it. For the human being in the physical world, however, it will only follow that, depending on the use of the organ, it perceives smell one time and taste the next. But if not only the ego perception in the physical world comprised the ego, but this ego were essentially based on the shape of its body in such a way that it experienced all visual impressions as its own, then in this ego the visual sensation of smell would be the ego's experience of itself on the one hand, and that of taste on the other. If we were dealing not with the finished physical form, but with one in the process of formation, there would be no perception of the self; the self-experience of the self would have to be quite different.

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.

Preliminary note: At the beginning of the evening's discussion, a question was asked about the third Copernican law. Rudolf Steiner's detailed answer is published in the volume “The Fourth Dimension”, GA 324a, pp. 177-189.

Rudolf Steiner: Now a series of other questions have been asked, to which I would like to refer only briefly, because some of them are nonsensical. Here, for example, this question:

What criteria can a non-clairvoyant use to distinguish whether communications from a clairvoyant originate from spiritual knowledge or from illusions?

Dear attendees, I would actually prefer to eliminate the word 'clairvoyance', which so many people use to do mischief with, like Count Keyserling recently. If such words do not give rise to mischief, then it does not matter if they appear in our literature, but with all that such people call 'clairvoyance', who would rather do anything than set out , which I also characterized in my lecture cycle on the “Limits of Knowledge”, I would rather use a different word for the real seeing of the spirit - seeing brightly, that is, seeing brightly. That is why I have tried to gradually eliminate this word everywhere in the newer editions of my books, which always causes confusion with all kinds of amateurish and charlatan-like stuff.

Now, if it is a single case of someone coming to you and saying that he is a psychic and telling you something he has seen, then you have no way of distinguishing whether he is telling you some kind of illusion or whether what he is saying is based on truth. You can't do that in an individual case; there is no universal guide for that. You can only, as a reasonable person, gain a judgment from the whole context of life, but also an almost completely certain judgment. You see, if some alleged psychic tells you all kinds of stuff and, when he talks about things of ordinary life, talks nonsense, then you can be pretty sure that what he tells you from the higher worlds is also nonsense. But if you find that a person has a healthy sense of external, physical reality, that he looks at external reality with a healthy mind, like other rational people, that he finds his way into it, that he orients himself to external reality, then when he speaks of things of the spiritual world, there is something that speaks for him, that is, not for him as a person, but for the correctness of his view. If, in addition, he presents what he says about the spiritual worlds in such a way that it is logical, then one can test the reality of the context without being clairvoyant. As I said, you cannot draw any conclusions from a single message, but from the context of a whole series of messages, you will, simply through an ability that every person has, even without being clairvoyant, come to understand what is meant by what someone says. Furthermore, a person who deserves to be called a clairvoyant today – but now in a higher sense – when a person speaks about the spiritual world as it must be done here in this place, then, my dear audience, he does not stop at telling things only from the higher worlds, but he always speaks at the same time about the things of this world, in which the higher worlds play a role. He speaks to you, for example, about how what one has experienced in the spiritual can be applied to medicine, to the kind of medicine that really needs to be studied. He does not speak of medical charlatanry, where a person is chosen by some Luciferic or Ahrimanic spirit and then dabbles and cures whatever comes to hand. It cannot be about anything like that. The only thing it can be about is the penetration of that which is physically real, but in which the spirit always lives, with the spirit. For materialism never understands the physical. And I believe that, for example, working in the social sphere could be one of the external reasons for proving the inner justification of what is being asserted here in spiritual terms.

So there is no externally abstract criterion, but only from the whole context of life can one know whether one is dealing with illusions or realities when it comes to the claims of the spiritual researcher. His spiritual research is certainly no illusion if he can descend into realities with them, if he is able to give something to the life that is allotted to man here between birth and death precisely through his spiritual science. For example, when I presented research results about higher worlds, people often objected to me, saying that I was starting from abstractions. Yes, but all that could be mere auto-suggestion, just as there are people who get a taste of lemon in their mouths just by thinking of lemonade, even if they don't get any lemonade. — I could only tell people: Of course, it is true that one can evoke all kinds of illusory hallucinations or visions through thought, but these are just illusions. You can indeed have the illusion through suggestion that you have a taste of lemonade, but whether the mere thought of lemonade will quench your thirst, I would doubt; you would still need the real lemonade for that.

Anyone who is completely involved in things, not outside of them, can distinguish between what is reality and what is merely thought, and for them it is clear that there are just as many differences in life for looking into the higher worlds as there are here in the physical world. I can even reveal to you, my dear audience, the criteria for determining whether something is a lie or the truth, which apply to the clairvoyant as well as to anyone else. The clairvoyant cannot test whether his observations are based on reality better or worse than the person to whom they are communicated, because he too must test them from the whole context of life, which one simply finds with common sense, even if one has common sense in ordinary life. Another person, if they have common sense, can always test the clairvoyant results.

We are not at all afraid of a scientific criticism of spiritual science, especially not if this scientific criticism is carried out with the utmost exactness and precision. What harms us is only the criticism of superficial people, those people with empty thoughts, with thought-shells. Such people, who are afflicted with mere thought-shells, like Count Hermann Keyserling, who has no will at all to go into the matter, then simply end up telling lies. In his latest book, Keyserling makes the very nice claim that Steiner's entire anthroposophy is actually just materialistic natural science elevated to the spiritual; this can be seen from the fact that Steiner started from Haeckel.

Now let us examine this utterly dishonest assertion in the light of what I wrote as a starting point in the introduction to Goethe's scientific writings. You see, dishonesty is actually always the height of mental dullness.

These things must be said, ladies and gentlemen. I always wait a long time before I am forced to say such a thing myself, and I actually only talk about these things when they have not been emphasized by others for a long time. Because after all, these things do not affect me at all. I cannot read Count Keyserling's books because I cannot find any thoughts in them. And I am used to people complaining. But today it is about something else. Today it is about the fact that we are indeed rapidly sailing into destruction if full clarity and courageous clarity are not established in this area. Today it is about the salvation or destruction of humanity, and today the pests must be sharply pointed out who try to drive out the necessary thoughts from people through such filth by saying that it is not necessary to undergo a spiritual development because what one can learn from something like the writing “How to Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds” is not needed by someone who is a gentleman and has a good upbringing.

Now, my dear attendees, at a time when such assertions can be made, the fire is burning, and it must be extinguished!

I would now like to quickly discuss another question:

What is anthroposophy's position on the use of hypnosis in medicine?

Well, dear attendees, all these things, hypnosis or suggestion and the like in therapy, always lead into an area that lies below that which we encompass with our ordinary day-consciousness. If I were to draw you a diagram quickly, it would look like this: (diagram missing)

If ordinary consciousness is here, the anthroposophical science in question strives upwards into a higher consciousness, into imaginative, inspired, intuitive consciousness. But one can also bring consciousness down to a lower level. This is already the case in ordinary dreaming; in deep sleep, in dreamless sleep, it is moved down even further. Now there are all kinds of intermediate states, and such a tuning down of consciousness actually transforms the human being into an Untermensch, in that his soul and spirit are so elevated that they cannot fully engage with the physical body and also cannot be conscious of themselves and the world, because the human being is not yet developed enough to have consciousness outside of the body. In this case, we are dealing with a demotion of the spiritual-mental to the etheric-physical plane, and then all the effects that can be brought about, which you are indeed familiar with, actually take place in a subhuman sphere. You downgrade the whole constitution of the person, the spiritual-soul-physical constitution of the person. And that is why such things are only to be applied when it comes to therapeutic issues. But even in the therapeutic area it is a matter of ensuring that they may only be applied by the person who understands the things – by which I do not want to claim that modern medicine, as it is practised today, is a good guide to understanding these things. But once these things are understood, they can of course be applied to the human organization in the same way as other poisons – because they are poisons.

So, in all these things, we are dealing with the fact that, therapeutically, we can resort to anything that can improve a person's state of health in a desirable way. However, we should not imagine that we are leading people into a higher sphere when we convey something to them where their consciousness, their ordinary consciousness, is completely shut out. Instead, we lead them into the subhuman, into the etheric-animalistic, not into the physical-animalistic but into the etheric-animalistic, if we put him into a state like hypnosis and if he is receptive to such a state. This lowering of consciousness is basically particularly loved today because the upward development into the spiritual worlds is perceived as something uncomfortable.

Here is another question: What is anthroposophy's position on healing magnetism?

Well, my dear audience, this can only be discussed if one can really treat things seriously. With a simple yes or no or with a simple sentence, such things cannot be treated if one has a scientific conscience. Today's healing magnetism – yes, one would not have to have learned about it in order not to know that there are a great many people working in it who have sought employment everywhere else, and when they have not found any anywhere else, they have become healing magnetizers. To demand spiritual-scientific explanations for such things is a bit much. But I would like to point out to you that these things must all be traced back to their elementary prerequisites. For example, there is the fact that for certain mental and physical conditions of the soul, the mere loving assurance contributes something to the healing process. Just think how much real therapeutic effect comes from genuine loving treatment of the sick person in one direction or another. Now imagine these things intensified, imagine loving treatment intensified to caressing treatment, and you have something that leads very strongly to what is healing magnetism. However, these are such imponderable things that they cannot be grasped in rough terms. It is entirely possible – depending on the case, it really depends on the how and not on the what – that the person who talks about these things, depending on whether he has the imponderables in mind or not, may just as well say something important or talk nonsense. So it is more important that one approaches these things only with a truly scientific conscience. And that is why I have always been careful to discuss these things publicly, for example, because some things are extremely colored when they are passed on.

Now, I would not want anything personal to come of it either, but anthroposophy must be something that really meets the necessary demands of our time, and one must not do anything that could in any way bring one into the danger of being a dilettante. It is very easy to fall into this amateurish neighborhood when dealing with these matters. One could say that healing magnetism is beneficial, depending on whether it occurs with knowledgeable, but now imponderable, genuine healers, or whether it occurs with people who are mere charlatans, who, after trying their hand at other fields, now also try their hand at the field of healing. Of course, as soon as the subject of healing magnetism was mentioned, before that it was suggestion, and now Christian Science is mentioned, which is asked about here:

How is it that Christian Science can heal if it merely suggests the mind?

Isn't it true that with Christian Science one must say approximately the same as with healing by magnetism, only in a somewhat different field. Whether a thing works or not does not depend on what we think about it. Because just imagine if you were to slap someone and you had the opinion that it was about some forces that don't even exist, the slap on the person's cheek will be exactly the same regardless of whether you have a false theory, a self-suggested theory, or something similar. When we speak of Christian Science, we are dealing with similar phenomena; you can also test these very similar phenomena in the field of education.

I have repeatedly spoken of the imponderables that operate from person to person and also applied them to the field of education. Suppose you want to explain the immortality of the soul to a child, the passing of the soul through the death of the human being, and you point to a butterfly pupa: that is, so to speak, the human body. The butterfly comes out: that is the soul. And you then apply this to the supersensible. You can now get two things. In your own state of mind, you can be a very clever, intelligent person who, of course, in this day and age does not believe that what you are describing with the butterfly chrysalis really has any other connection to immortality than as a symbol. The clever person makes it up; he does not believe in any connection himself, but says it to the child because the child is stupid and he is clever, because he makes something up that he presents as a comparison. That is one state of mind. The other state of mind is that of the spiritual researcher. He sees everywhere stages of an existence that is in polarity and intensification - words that Goethe already used. He looks at the chrysalis from which the butterfly crawls out, and he himself comes to believe that the butterfly crawling out is an image that the spiritual worlds are drawing for him. He is not a clever person in today's sense, he is not a clever person, but he is a person with a sense of reality. In reality, the deeds of the spirit are everywhere.

Now there is a difference in teaching: if you are a very clever person and want to make the child understand the matter through the invented symbol, you will generally achieve nothing. But if the picture lives in us, if we are imbued with the feeling that here the spirit of nature itself has drawn the image of the immortal soul in the emerging butterfly, then imponderables work from your soul to the soul of the child, then the child, because it receives something of life, also has something for life.

However, forces are at work from person to person that cannot be weighed with a scale or measured with a ruler, even though everything is set up according to measure, number and weight. And these things will still provide a rich contribution to what should enrich our lives, things that will be more meaningful for the salvation of humanity than some applications of science. If we look into these things, we will see that there are still quite other forces that will come to humanity precisely through the application of spiritual science. But for this to happen, on the one hand, true scientific conscientiousness must be taught, and on the other hand, the will must arise to penetrate into the spiritual worlds with this scientific conscientiousness.

I would like to conclude for today. We will then try, tomorrow, before you leave, my dear honored attendees, to present a summary in the evening, not so much in the form of questions as in the form of a lecture, as a farewell.

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.