The Rudolf Steiner Archive

When we can meet so seldom, one has naturally the desire to put as much as possible into a lecture, and it may sometimes happen that one gives perhaps too much. I intend nevertheless making the bold attempt to give you today a description from one point of view of what may be called the other side of man's earthly existence; and I want to make clear to you at the same time the importance and significance for our age of this deeper kind of knowledge,—this spiritual knowledge.

How much, after all, does man know ordinarily of his existence here on Earth? What can his senses and his sense-bound intellect tell him? With ordinary consciousness he is conscious only of his waking life, Yet it is surely not without meaning that the guiding Spiritual Powers of the World have inserted into man's life on Earth the condition of sleep.

Between the time of falling asleep and the time of awaking a very great deal takes place. In fact, of all that the Spirit has to accomplish on Earth through man, by far the greater part is accomplished during sleep. As long as we are awake, what happens on Earth through us is limited to what we do,—either to ourselves or to the things that are around us. When we go to sleep, however, another activity begins. Whilst we are asleep, lofty Spiritual Beings work upon the human soul, with the object of bringing man to his full and complete evolution in Earth existence.

It is possible for one who has acquired modern initiation knowledge to have clear and detailed insight into the significant events that take place during sleep. We must not of course make the mistake of imagining that these events take place for the initiate alone; they are experienced by all human beings alike. Indeed, human evolution is entirely dependent upon these events that happen with us between the moment of falling asleep and the moment of awaking. The difference with the initiate is just this,—that he is able to draw our attention to these events. And it is increasingly important that all who give any thought at all to the meaning of existence on Earth should be alive to the significance of what happens in sleep.

Let me now sketch for you in bold outline the influences that play into the sleep of man. Suppose someone goes to sleep. As you know, we describe the process in the following way. His astral body, we say, and his I loosen themselves from the physical body and the ether-body, and are in the Spiritual World; they no longer permeate the physical and etheric bodies as they do in the waking state. But when we try to go a little further and form a picture of what really takes place with man during the condition of sleep, we find that it is necessary first to come to a clearer perception of the nature of man's connection with the Earth during waking hours. How is man connected with the Earth while he is awake? First of all, through his senses. With the aid of his senses, he perceives and cognizes the phenomena of the various kingdoms of Nature. But this is not all. Man is also connected with the Earth through activities he performs unconsciously,—unconsciously, that is, even while he is awake. Man breathes, for instance, and is thus connected with the whole Earth. The whole Earth plays into the air man takes in with his breath. In the air he breathes, countless substances are present in a highly rarefied condition. And the very fact that they are present in this rarefied state enables them to exercise an influence that is of no small importance when they are received through the breath into the organism of man. What man perceives with his senses enters into him consciously; but subconsciously, even during waking life a vast amount enters into man that is more substantial than what enters him by the more tenuous and ideal paths of perception and thought. By way of the breath man's environment comes into him in a more material and substantial manner. Nor need I remind you of how utterly dependent the human organism is on what it receives in the way of earthly nourishment. So that altogether we have to recognise many influences working from the Earth upon the awake human being.

We are not, however, at present pursuing the study of that any further; what concerns us today is the influences that work upon man in sleep. And here we find that whereas during waking hours man stands in connection with external earthly substances, when he passes over into sleep, he comes into a certain connection with the whole Cosmos. I do not mean to imply that man's astral body assumes every night the vastness of the Cosmos. That would be an exaggeration. It is nevertheless a fact that every night man grows out into the Cosmos. Just as here on Earth we are connected with the plants, with the minerals, with air, so are we connected in the night with the movements of the planets, and with the constellations of the fixed stars. From the moment we fall asleep, the starry heavens become our world, even as the Earth is our world when we are awake.

Coming now to describe rather more in detail how we make our way after falling asleep, we find we can distinguish different spheres through which we pass. First comes the sphere where the I and the astral body—that is to say, the soul of man as it finds itself in sleep—feel united with the movements of the World of the planets. When we wake up in the morning and slip into our physical body, we have in us, as we know, our lungs, our heart, our liver, our brain. In the first sphere with which we come in contact after falling asleep—and it will also be again the last sphere we enter before awaking—we have in us the forces of the movements of the planets. This does not mean of course that we receive into us every night the entire planetary movements; we carry within us a little picture, as it were, wherein the movements of the planets are reproduced. And this picture is different for each single human being. That, then, is the first experience every one of us encounters after falling asleep. We follow, as it were, with our astral body all that happens with the planets, as they move out there in the wide spaces of the Universe; we experience it all in our astral body in a sort of planetary globe.

Perhaps you will say: But how does this concern me, if I cannot perceive it? True, you do not see it with your eyes, nor hear it with your ears. But no sooner have you passed over into the condition of sleep than the part of your astral body which belongs in waking life to your heart, becomes for you an eye,—becomes, in very fact, what we may call a heart-eye; and with this heart-eye you ‘see’ what is now taking place. For present-day mankind, the perception is a very dim one. Nevertheless it is more assuredly there; the heart-eye perceives the experiences of this first sphere of sleep.

Very soon after you have fallen asleep, the heart-eye begins also to look back at what has been left lying in bed. Your ego and astral body look back with the heart-eye upon your physical and etheric bodies. And the picture of planetary movements that you are now experiencing in your astral body, rays back to you from your ether-body; you behold a reflection of it in your ether-body.

Present-day man is so constituted that as soon as ever he wakes up, he immediately forgets the dim consciousness that he had in the night by means of his heart-eye. There are however, dreams in which we can catch, as it were, an echo of it. Such dreams are astir with an inner movement that is reminiscent of the planetary movements. Then into these dreams come pictures from real life; but that is only when the astral body has begun to dive down into the ether-body, which latter carries and preserves for us the memory of our life.

Let me describe for you something that can easily happen. You wake up in the morning, having passed again on your return through the sphere of the planetary movements. Let us suppose that you have experienced a particular relationship between Jupiter and Venus. Such an experience must be intimately connected with your destiny, otherwise you would not have it; and if you could bring the experience back into life—into your ordinary day-time life—it would shed a wonderful light on your faculties and capabilities. For the fact is, these faculties of ours are not of the Earth, they have come hither from the Cosmos. According as is your connection with the Cosmos, so are your gifts and talents, so is your goodness,—or, at any rate, so is your inclination to good or to evil. If you could bring back into day-life the experience of which we were speaking, you would be able to see what Jupiter and Venus were saying to one another, for you would see what you had seen in the night with your heart-eye,—I could equally well say, heard with your heart-ear, for these finer distinctions do not exist for the experiences of sleep. Since, however, all this is only very dimly perceived, it is forgotten. But the result of the experience remains in your astral body; the mutual relationship between Jupiter and Venus produces a corresponding movement within your astral body. And now there mingles with it some experience you had long ago, perhaps when you were 17 or 25 years old,—let us say at noon one day, in Oxford, for example, or in Manchester. The pictures of this long-past experience of yours intrude themselves into the cosmic experience; the two get mixed up together. As you will see, therefore, the pictures that are given us in dreams have a certain significance, yet are not the essential part of the dream; they are like a garment that weaves itself around the cosmic experiences.

Now, through this whole experience that comes to you in the way I have described, runs a vein of anxiety. In almost every case it is accompanied by a more or less intense feeling of anxiety,—anxiety, that is, of a spiritual nature; and particularly at the moment when the cosmic experience sounds back, shines back, to the soul from the ether-body. Suppose the influence due to a certain relationship between Jupiter and Venus is raying back to you from your ether-body, and one ray—I call it quite simply one ray, but it tells ever so much to your heart-eye!—one ray comes back from your forehead, while a second, that comes from the region below the heart, mingles its music and its light with the first. In every human soul that is not completely hardened, this will give rise to the feeling of anxiety and apprehension of which I have spoken. The soul will be constrained to say to itself in sleep: The cosmic mist has enveloped me, it has received me into itself. We feel indeed as though we ourselves are becoming as dim and as nebulous as the cosmic mist, as if we are now nothing but a cloud of mist floating in the Mist of the Worlds. Such is the character of the first experience that meets the soul after falling asleep.

And then another feeling begins to arise in the soul. Out of this first experience, where we are anxious and apprehensive, feeling ourselves to be no more than a little wave of mist within the Mist of the Worlds, another mood develops within us, a mood of devotion to the Divine, devotion and surrender to the Divine that fills the Universe and pervades it.

This then is how it is with us, my dear friends, in the first sphere into which we come after falling asleep. Two fundamental feelings live in our soul; I am in the Mist of the Worlds,—I would fain rest in the bosom of the Godhead, that I be safe and protected and dissolve not away in the Mist of the Worlds. This is moreover an experience which the heart-perception must needs carry over into waking life in the morning, when the soul dives down again into the physical and ether bodies. For if this experience were not brought over, then the substances we take as nourishment during the day would assume within us their own completely earthly character and throw our whole organism into disorder. And this applies not only to what we eat but to all the substances that undergo within us the process of metabolism. For even if we go hungry, substances are nevertheless continually being taken—in this case, from our own body—and worked upon through metabolism.

Sleep has, as you see, my dear friends, immense significance for the waking condition. And we can only record our acknowledgment of the fact that in this epoch of evolution it is not left to man himself to see that the Divine forces are carried over into waking life. For it would go hard with human beings as they are in the present age, did it rest with them to bring these influences in full consciousness from the other side of existence and bear them into the waking life of day.

And now man comes into the next sphere. This does not mean, he leaves the first; no, for the heart-perception it is still there. This next sphere, which is a much more complicated one, is perceived by another part of the astral body,—the part which belongs in waking life to the solar plexus, and to the whole limb organisation of man. The part of the astral body that permeates the solar plexus and the arms and legs is now the organ of perception, and with the aid of this organ man begins to feel the forces in his astral body that come from the Signs of the Zodiac. These are of two kinds—the forces that reach him from the Zodiac direct, and the forces that have first to pass through the Earth. For it makes a great difference whether a particular sign is above or below the Earth.

Man has therefore in this second Sphere what we might call a solar or Sun-perception. He perceives with the part of his astral body that is associated with the solar plexus and the limbs,—an organ of perception that can rightly be called a Sun-eye. And by means of his Sun-eye man becomes aware of his relationship, not now merely, as before, with the planetary movements, but with the entire Zodiac. The picture you see, is widening; or rather, man himself is growing out further into the picture of the Cosmos. And here again, man is able to behold a reflection of the experience when he looks back on his own physical and etheric bodies.

Every night it is thus given to man,—that is to say, to the part of him that goes out of the body—to come into relationship with the whole Cosmos; first, with the planetary movements, and then with the constellations of the fixed stars. In this latter experience—which may come half an hour after falling asleep, or rather later, but with many people comes quite soon—man feels himself within all twelve constellations of the Zodiac. And the experiences he encounters with the constellations are exceedingly complicated.

I verily believe, my dear friends, you might have traveled far and wide and visited the most interesting and important regions of the whole Earth, and yet not have had such an amount and variety of experiences as your Sun-eye affords you every night in connection with one single constellation of the Zodiac. For the men of an older time, who still possessed in full force the powers of clairvoyance and could perceive in a dreamlike consciousness very much of what I have been describing to you, the experiences of sleep were less bewildering. In our time it is exceedingly difficult for man to attain with his Sun-eye to any degree of clarity in regard to this complicated twelvefold experience of the night. He needs to do so, even if by day-time he has forgotten all about it; but he hardly can unless he has received, with the understanding of the heart, knowledge of the Christ and of all that the Christ willed to become for the Earth in that He passed through the Mystery of Golgotha. If we have once felt what it means for the life of the Earth that Christ has gone through the Mystery of Golgotha, if in our ordinary waking life we have thought about the Christ, then our astral body is able to receive via the physical and etheric bodies, a certain tincture or quality which brings it about that Christ becomes our Guide and Leader through the Zodiac during sleep. For, as in the sphere of the planetary movements, so here again a feeling of anxiety comes over man. He feels: What if I lose myself in the multitude of the stars, and in all the manifold happenings that take place among them! But if he is then able to look back upon thoughts and feelings and impulses of will that he has directed in waking life to the Christ, then Christ becomes for him a Guide, bringing order into the bewildering events of this sphere. And so the fact is brought home to us that only when we turn our attention to the other side of life, are we able to appreciate the full significance of the Christ for the life of Earth, as it has been up till now; and as for what the Christ has yet to become for the life of Earth,—no one within the ordinary civilisation of the present day can really understand this.

There are of course few among us who can be said to go through the experiences of sleep aright; and these experiences are often given a false interpretation. Human beings who have not come in touch with the Christ Event bring these experiences of the night into the waking consciousness of day-time in a disordered and confused manner. We can understand how this happens when we know what it is that really takes place with us during sleep. As we have seen, when we have passed through the sphere of existence where we are enveloped in mist or cloud, we find ourselves approaching a world that confuses and amazes us. Here it is that the Christ appears before us as a spiritual Sun and becomes our Guide; and then all the confusion resolves itself into a kind of harmony that we hear and understand. That this should be so, that we should have in the time of sleep the Christ for our Guide, is a matter of the very greatest importance for us. For, the moment we enter this sphere and begin to have all around us the living interplay of constellations of the Zodiac and movements of the planets—at this moment we encounter also our Karma. With our Sun-eye we behold our Karma. Yes, it is indeed so, every human being has sight of his Karma—in sleep. All that is left of the perception in waking life, is a kind of faint echo vibrating in the feelings.

Suppose a man has begun to tread the path of self-knowledge. He will find perhaps that his soul is imbued at times with a mood and attitude to life that are like a distant echo of the experience he has had in sleep, where the Christ came forward as his Guide and led him in the night from Aries through Taurus and Gemini, etc., making plain to him the World of the Stars, so that he has returned with renewed strength to the life of day. For that is the marvellous experience that awaits man in this sphere, None other than the Christ Himself becomes his Guide through the bewildering events of the Zodiac, going before him and pointing the way from constellation to constellation, that he may be able to receive into his soul in their right order and harmony the forces he needs for waking life.

Such then is the experience man undergoes every night between falling asleep and awaking,—an experience he owes to the fact that his soul and spirit have kinship with the Cosmos. For, even as he is related to the Earth with his physical and etheric bodies, so with his soul arid spirit, with his astral body and Ego, is man related to the Cosmos. And when he has come away from his physical and etheric bodies and has grown out into the cosmic world, and the experiences he undergoes there shine back to him, in a kind of inner picture, from the part of him that remains in bed, he feels very deeply connected with the Cosmos and would, in fact, be strongly drawn to go still further out, to go out beyond the Zodiac,—were it not for the presence of another force that draws him back. On account of this other element that enters into all the experiences that befall man during sleep, it, is not possible for him, between birth and death, to go out beyond the Zodiac, We have here to do with an influence of an entirely different kind and quality, the influence, namely, of the Moon.

The effect of the influence of the Moon is to tinge the whole Cosmos during the night—and this happens even at the time of New Moon too—with a certain substantiality. This substantiality man experiences, in addition to all else. He feels how the Moon forces hold him back within the world of the Zodiac and bring him again to the moment of awaking. Even in the very first sphere he enters after falling asleep, man already divines dimly within him the presence of this influence; he begins to be acutely sensible of it in the second sphere, where he has a powerful and vivid experience of the mysteries of birth and death. The organ for this experience lies much deeper within man than the heart-eye or even the Sun-eye; it may be said to extend over and involve the entire man. With this organ, man experiences every night how he came down as soul and spirit from the world of soul and spirit, how he entered through birth into a physical existence, and how his body is gradually passing over into death, For the fact is, we overcome death, until the time when death really occurs as a final event. Something else too is associated with this experience. The very forces that enable us to experience how the soul goes on its journey through the earthly and bodily reveal to us also in the same moment our connections with the rest of mankind.

I would have you mindful of the fact, my dear friends, that even a most insignificant meeting or contact with another human being is not without its place and connection in our whole destiny. And whether the souls, with whom we have been together in some past Earth life or with whom we are connected in this present life, are now in the spiritual world or are with us here on Earth, all that we have had to do with one another as man to man, all human ties, intimately related as these are to the secrets of birth and death, show themselves now to the spiritual eye, if I may call it so, of the entire man. And as all this comes before our view, we feel we are indeed standing within the stream of our whole life-destiny.

This has to do with the fact that whereas all other forces—the forces of the planets and of the fixed stars—tend to draw us out into the distant Cosmos, the Moon wants to place us once more into the world of men. The Moon draws us away from the Cosmos. The Moon has forces that are directly opposed to the forces both of Sun and of Stars; it ensures for us our kinship with the Earth. It is accordingly the Moon that brings us back every night,—drawing us away from the Zodiac experiences into the experiences of the planets, and thence into the experiences of Earth, taking us back once again into our physical body.

Here you have the difference, from one point of view, between sleep and death. When man goes to sleep, he remains still in close connection with the forces of the Moon. The forces of the Moon point out to him every night afresh the significance of his life on Earth. This is made possible by the fact that he can see in his ether body the reflection of all his experiences of the night. At death, however, man withdraws his ether body from the physical body. Then begins, as you know, the memory that looks back over the last Earth life. The ether body expands and fills for a few days the cosmic cloud of which I have spoken. I told you how every night we live our way as cloud, as mist, into the Mist of the Worlds. In the night this cloud of mist which we are, is there without the ether-body; but when we die, our ether-body is present with it for the first few days. Then the ether-body gradually dissolves away into the Cosmos, memory fades and disappears, and we have—instead of a reflection of star experiences thrown back from the part of us we left lying in bed—we have now after death an immediate inner experience of the movements of the planets and of the constellations of the fixed stars.

You can read in my book Theosophy a description of these experiences from another point of view. You have there a description of what man finds, as it were, around him between death and new birth. But just as here on Earth you would not have around you colours and sounds, for instance, unless you had in your body eyes and ears, and unless you could breathe and had within you lungs and a heart, so neither could you after death perceive around you what you find described in my book as “soul world” and “spirit land,” unless you had within you Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Aries, Taurus, Gemini, etc. These are within you, they are your organism, your cosmic organism by means of which you experience after death. And the Moon cannot now bring you back, for it could only bring you back to your ether-body, and that has dissolved away into the Cosmos.

Man has however even after death something left in him of the force which he inherits from the Moon, enough to enable him to remain for a season in the soul world, with gaze still fixed upon the Earth. Then he passes on to spirit-land, and here he feels and knows that he is undergoing an experience where he is beyond the Zodiac, beyond the Heaven and the Fixed Stars. Such is the course of man's life in the time between death and new birth.

I could also give you another description of man's nightly journey to the spiritual world, describing it for you in a picture. Only, you must beware of taking the picture too literally, for, as you know, it is well nigh impossible to express these things in earthly concepts. Nevertheless it is a true picture that I am giving you, and it will help you to follow this journey in all its detail.

Imagine before you a meadow. From each single flower on the meadow—from the flowers too that blossom on the trees around—a spiral rises and goes out and out into cosmic space. These circling spirals carry the forces whereby the Cosmos fosters and regulates the growth of plants on Earth. For plants do not grow merely out of their seed; they need also for their growth the cosmic forces that surround the Earth with their spirally directed influences. And the cosmic forces are there in winter too; they are there even in the desert where no plants grow. When night comes for man, he has to use these spiral forces as a kind of ladder whereon he may mount up into the realm of the planetary movements. Man ascends into the movements of the planets on the ladder of the spiral rays that circle upwards from the plants. And then there is another force, the force that makes the plant shoot upwards from its root,—for there must be a force at work, to enable the plant to grow upwards. With the aid of this force man is carried up into the second sphere that I described.

Recall for a moment those experiences I related to you, where man comes into a state of anxiety, and feels: I am no more than a tiny cloud of mist in the great Mist of the Cosmos,—I must rest in the bosom of the Godhead. If we would relate this experience of the soul to the conditions within which we live on Earth, we would have to express it in the following way. It is as if the soul would say: I rest in the blessing of the Cosmos as it hovers over a cornfield that is just opening into flower, I rest in the blessing of the Cosmos as it hovers over a meadow whose blossoms are unfolding to the light. For what is it that sinks down to the plants in spiral lines of force? It is the bosom of the Godhead, quick and instinct with life, the same within which man finds himself sheltered and enclosed every time he falls asleep.

The Moon, on the other hand, leads man back to the animal aspect of his nature. The forces of the plants tend perpetually to carry him out—farther and farther out into the wide universe. But man has also in his make-up something that he shares with the animal kingdom, and because of this the Moon is able to bring him back again every morning,—back into his own animal nature.

Here, then, you have a picture of man's connection with the Cosmos, and of its influence upon him during sleep. We can carry the picture a little further. With the heart-eye, the Sun-eye and the eye that is entire man, we may experience in sleep the kind of feeling to which we are accustomed in waking life when we are drawn into an intimate and near relationship with some other person. It is not said to us in words, nor do we reason it out. The plants it is who tell us of it; we hear of it from the plants that lift us up, as though on a spiral ladder, into the world of the planets, whence we are sent forth again into the world of the Zodiac.

If we wanted to put into words what we experience in this way, we could say: I have a relationship to this person; the lilies tell me so, the roses tell me; the power of the rose, the power of the lily, the power of the tulip has moved me to experience this relationship. Thus does the whole Earth become a book of life which interprets for us the world of the human soul,—that world into which we have to find our way as we go through our life.

Now, these experiences that come to man during sleep have not always been the same, they have varied in different epochs. If we go back to ancient India, we find that in those times men who wanted to learn what sleep could teach them by bringing them into relation with the world of the stars, limited their search to those constellations of the Fixed Stars which were above the Earth—above, that is, at the particular moment of time, for the constellations are, of course, continually changing their places in the Heavens. The ancient Indian had no desire to make connection with the constellations that are below the Earth, whose forces can reach man only through the Earth.

Look at the characteristic posture of a Buddha,—or of any wise man of the East who sets out to perform exercises that shall enable him to achieve spiritual wisdom; He sits with his legs crossed under him. The upper part of his body where he is in relation with the upper constellations,—that he wants to be active, and that alone. Through the Sun-eye, there is also working in him what works through the limbs; but this he does not want to activate. He wants, as it were, to eliminate the forces of the limbs during his spiritual exercises. One can see quite plainly from his posture that the Eastern seeker after wisdom desires to find relation with what is above the Earth, and only that. His whole interest is directed to knowledge that concerns the soul.

The world would however be incomplete if man's quest for knowledge had remained limited in this way, if men had continued to assume always and exclusively the Buddha posture when they set out on the path of knowledge. It was not so. In the age of Greece, men began to feel impelled to make connection also with the forces working from the constellations that are—at the particular moment—below the Earth. Greek mythology contains beautiful intimations of this. Again and again we are told of a kind of initiation where the candidate descends to the underworld. Whenever you read of some Greek hero that he goes down into the underworld, you may be sure the meaning is that he is going through an initiation which yields him knowledge of those forces of the Cosmos that work through the Earth and that were known to the Greeks as the Chthonic forces.

Each epoch of time has, you see, its own task and mission. The oriental initiate had to learn, in order that he might then communicate the knowledge to his fellowmen, about the region of soul and spirit where man was before birth—or I should say, before conception—and about man's experiences there before he descends to the earthly world. All that we feel to be so grand and majestic in the poetry of the East and in its conceptions of the universe, is due to the fact that in those far-off days men were able to look into the life they had lived before they came down to Earth. In Greece, men began to take knowledge of the Earth and of all that belongs to the Earth. The Greek takes Uranus and Gaia—the Earth—as the starting point for his cosmology. He aspires to know also the Mysteries of the Earth itself, which include at the same time the cosmic Mysteries that work through the Earth. The Mysteries of the underworld,—these too the Greeks were wanting to discover, and in this way they developed their true cosmology.

Think how little there is among the Greeks—none whatever among the Orientals—but how little among the Greeks of the study of history in our sense of the word. The Greek is much more interested in the far-off beginnings when the Earth was being formed within the Cosmos, when the interior forces of the Earth, the Titanic forces, waged war on those other forces, those mighty spiritual forces which the Greek conceived as underlying the web of earthly conditions within which man finds himself enwoven. But we men of modern times are called upon to understand history; we must be able to show how man started from an ancient dream-like clairvoyance and has now arrived at a consciousness that is intellectual in character and tinged only with a memory of the mythical, and then go on to show how there is need for man now to work his way out of this intellectual consciousness and learn to look right into the world of the Spirit. For the present epoch of time marks the transition to the attainment of conscious experience in the spiritual world. That is why it is so very important for us that we should turn our attention to history. You will find that in our anthroposophical work we give ourselves again and again to the study of the different epochs of history, going back first of all to the time when men still received their knowledge from higher Beings, and then following the whole development right up to our own age.

The study of history has, of course, become hopelessly abstract in our schools and universities today. Could anything be more abstract then the lines of demarcation that people draw when they are developing some historical theme! For the men of olden time, history was still clothed in the garment of myth and was brought into connection with Nature and with all that goes on in her world. People cannot do this any more. Neither do they show any readiness as yet to enquire more deeply into the times of long ago. They do not feel any need to ask how it was with man in the days when he received wisdom from higher Beings, how it was with him later when less and less of the wisdom came through to him, or how it was with him when a God Himself descended to incarnate through the Mystery of Golgotha in a human body and carry out a sublime cosmic mission with the Earth, so that it was given her at last to have her real meaning.

The whole theology of the 19th and 20th centuries has failed, because it cannot understand the Christ in His spiritual significance. That, my dear friends, is what modern Initiation Science must bring,—understanding of the Christ. We need an Initiation Science that can penetrate again into the spiritual world, that can speak again about birth and death, about the life between birth and death and the life also between death and a new birth, and about the life of the soul in sleep,—can speak of these things in the way we have been speaking of them together today. The possibility must be there for man to come again to a knowledge of the other side—the spiritual side—of existence. Otherwise, he will simply not be able to go forward into the future.

Once, long ago, men directed their search for knowledge to the upper worlds—we see it demonstrated in the posture of the Buddha. Then, in later times, man took the evolution of the Earth as his starting-point and read his cosmology out of the evolution of the Earth; he became initiated in Greece into the Chthonic Mysteries, as we find related in many a Greek myth, where the account of such initiation is often a prominent feature of the story. Our search, has to take a new turn. Having studied in the past the Mysteries of the Earth and the mysteries of the Heavens, we need in our day an Initiation Science that is able to move rhythmically between Heaven and Earth, an Initiation Science that asks of the Heavens when it wants to understand the Earth, and asks of the Earth when it would inform itself of the Heavens.

And this is how you will, find the questions put and answered—insofar as they can be answered today—in my book An Outline of Occult Science. Let me say here in all humility that the attempt has been made in this book to describe the knowledge of which modern man stands in need,—needing it as surely as ever the Oriental needed the Mysteries or the Heavens or the Greek the Mysteries of the Earth, For it is required of us to take note and observe how it stands with initiation in modern times and what is man's relation to it in this present age. Let me endeavour therefore to describe for you quite briefly in the third part of my lecture the tasks that lie before modern initiation.

In order to give you some idea of the tasks of modern initiation, I shall have to repeat here what some of you will have heard me say in Oxford a few days ago,

I was pointing out just now that whereas the initiates of very ancient times laid particular emphasis on the looking upwards into the spiritual worlds whence man descends to clothe himself in an earthly body, while on the other hand for the initiates of a somewhat later time it was what we find described by the Greeks as the descent into the underworld that was of first importance, the initiate of our own time has yet another task. He has to look, in search after knowledge, at the rhythmic relation of the Heavens to the Earth. To this end he has to know the Heavens and the Earth, but he must in his search hold always before him the thought of Man, in whom alone, among all the beings that are around us, Heaven and Earth work together to form a complete whole. Yes, Man himself must be the goal of his study. The heart-eye, the Sun-eye, the spiritual eye (which is formed of the whole human being) must all be turned upon Man. For Man carries within him, my dear friends, infinitely more secrets and mysteries than the worlds we can perceive with our external senses and explain with the sense-bound intellect. To achieve a knowledge of Man as a spirit, to achieve a spiritual knowledge of Man, is the task of modern initiation. On this path of initiation knowledge we have therefore to set out in quest of a universal knowledge, but always with this goal in view,—that, through learning to understand the world, through learning to understand the whole Cosmos, we may attain at last to understand Man.

And now compare the situation of an initiate of out own age with the situation of an initiate of ancient times. The men of those early times had faculties of soul that made it possible for the initiate to awaken within them a memory of the time we pass through before we descend into an earthly body. It was therefore for the initiate of those days a question of awakening cosmic memories. And for the Greeks it was a matter of looking into Nature, of beholding Nature. But the initiate of modern times has to set before him as his goal the knowledge of Man; he is called upon to learn to know Man, directly, as a spiritual being. For this, he must learn to free himself from his present limited and earthly understanding of his connection with the Universe. Let me repeat an example I gave recently to Oxford of how this liberation has to be effected.

One of the tasks undertaken by initiation knowledge, that presents unusual difficulty, is that of making connection with souls who have left the Earth and gone through the gate of death. It is not at all easy to establish such connections, but it can be done by arousing the deeper forces of the soul. It is necessary to realise from the first that one has to accustom oneself, by the careful pursuance of certain exercises, to the only kind of language it is possible to speak with the dead. This language is, in a way, a child of our ordinary human speech. Yet you would fail completely, were you to set out with the idea that ordinary human speech, just as it is, would be of any assistance to you in establishing intercourse with the dead. One of the first things we discover is that the dead can understand only for a very short time what we call nouns. There is in their language no way of expressing a ‘thing,’ an isolated thing, which we denote with a word we call a noun. The words in their language all convey the feeling of movement, they are all full of inner activity. Consequently we find that when a little time has gone by since the soul passed through the gate of death, he is responsive only to words that denote activity,—that is, to verbs. In our intercourse with the dead, we shall, from time to time, want to put questions to them; we must then put our questions to them; we must then put our questions in a form they can understand. If we are able to do this, after a time the answer will come; only, we must know how to be watchful for it, how to give heed to it. As a rule, a few nights will have to elapse before the one who has died can answer the question we put to him. It is, as you see, a matter of finding our way gradually into the language of the dead, and it takes a long time before this language shows itself to us. The dead themselves have had to live their way into it; for they have, as you know, to withdraw their soul-life completely from the Earth. The proper language of the dead bears no relation to earthly conditions, it arises from the heart,—yes, it is verily a language of the heart. It is formed rather in the same manner as exclamations or interjections are formed in earthly languages. You know, for instance, how we say ‘Ah!’ when we are moved to wonder or admiration. The language of the dead takes its origin in the same kind of way. Sounds and combinations of sounds enjoy in this language as in no other their full and real significance. From the moment of death, language begins to change for us altogether. It is no longer something that is uttered forth from the organs of speech. It becomes the kind of language of which I spoke a little while ago, when I told you how what rises up from the flowers, gives tidings to us concerning some fellow human being. We begin ourselves to speak, instead of with speech organs, with that which comes from the flowers. We ourselves become flowers, we blossom with the flowers. We enter, for instance, with the forces of our soul into the flower of the tulip, and express, in the imagination of the tulip, the same that came to expression here on Earth in the formation of the word. We grow again into the spirit, the omnipresent spirit,

You will easily see, from this one example of language, that man has to feel his way into entirely different conditions, when he has gone through the gate of death. In reality, our knowledge of man is small indeed, if we know of him only what we see with our eyes. Modern initiation knowledge has to learn about the other side of man. What I have shown you in the case of language is a beginning. We shall find that the very body of man is something altogether different from the descriptions that are given us in scientific books. As we go farther in initiation knowledge, the human body becomes for us a world in itself. It was the task of the initiate of olden times to re-awaken in man a lost faculty, to bring to remembrance in him what his life was like before he came down to Earth, The initiate of the present day has an altogether different mission. He has to accomplish something new, something that means a new step forward. What he does will continue still to have significance even when man has left the Earth,—yes, even when Earth itself is no longer there in the Cosmos. That is the nature of the task modern initiation knowledge has to fulfil; and in the strength and power of that task, it must stand forth and speak.

It is well-known to you, my dear friends, that initiation science has from time to time taken a part in the spiritual evolution of the Earth. Again and again it has made its appearance among men. The initiation knowledge that has to come into the world today and that cannot but regard all the knowledge of our time as a mere beginning of the whole knowledge man should really possess, will assuredly meet with increasing opposition and resistance. So great are the forces arrayed against it, that you will need all your strength to win through. Even before modern initiation—which opens the way for man to have intercourse again with Supersensible Powers,—even before this modern initiation began to take its true place in the world in the last third of the 19th century, opposing powers were already at work, were at pains to imbue civilisation—quite unconsciously, for the most part, as far as the human beings themselves are concerned—with tendencies that would ultimately destroy modern initiation, would wipe it clean off the face of the Earth.

Have you ever observed how constantly one hears people say, when some new fact of knowledge is brought forward: “This is how I look at it! This is my point of view!” And they say this so easily, without having undergone any special development of mind or soul. It is indeed quite generally accepted that everyone has a right to pronounce his verdict, speaking from the point of view of wherever he stands at the moment. And people are even deeply offended and grow quite angry if one ventures to suggest that there is a kind of knowledge for the attainment of which it is necessary to undergo inner development. I said just now that when in the last third of the 19th century the possibility began to arise for men to seek initiation in the modern way, enemy powers were already in action. As you see, they wanted to carry the principle of equality even into the realm of mind and spirit, so that there too all human beings shall be regarded as on the same level. I could point to many persons in whom this method of resistance to modern initiation has been at work.

My dear friends, do you think that when I have to speak out of the spirit of initiation science, the words will have the same ring as when one is speaking from an ordinary earthly standpoint? I have just been trying to explain to you how language has to change and become something quite different when it is a question of carrying on intercourse with beings of the spiritual world, and I think you will not now misunderstand me if I tell you how initiation science sees, for instance, such a man as Rousseau. Speaking from the earthly standpoint, I shall never fail to recognise the greatness and significance of Rousseau, and I am fully prepared to associate myself with the high praise and favourable criticism to which others have given expression. Should I however make bold to clothe in earthly words how Rousseau appears when one sees him from the standpoint of initiation knowledge, I should have to say: Rousseau, with his spiritual leveling of human beings,—what is he, after all, but one of the many everlasting talkers of our modern civilisation! A prince and a leader, shall we say, among them all! People do not readily understand how it is possible, from an earthly point of view to call a man great, and at the same time, from the point of view of initiation to call him an arch-talker! But if we honestly desire to attain a knowledge of man, and if we recognise that to this end we have, as I said, to take the Heavens and the Earth for our province and then discern the rhythm that beats between them, we shall find that even such a seemingly paradoxical utterance is true and requires to be said. For it is, in fact, as we learn to listen to both,—to what sounds forth from the one side and from the other side of existence, it is as we learn to hear these together, that guidance can come to us in our quest for a true knowledge of Man.

A true knowledge of Man has to build on the same foundation whereon the initiates of olden times built, on the EX DEO NASCIMUR; in recollection it must build on that which meets us when we look out into the universe where—all unconsciously to us—the Christ becomes our Guide, as I have described to you. It is however our task to bring the Christ more and more into our consciousness, so that we may gain knowledge under His guidance of the content of this world, to which death belongs. Then shall we know for a surety that we live our way into this dead and dying world with Christ; IN CHRISTO MORIMUR.

And inasmuch as we go down with Christ into the grave of Earth life, so will there follow for us too, with Him, the Resurrection and the Bestowal of the Spirit: PER SPIRITUM SANCTUM REVIVISCIMUS.

This PER SPIRITUM SANCTUM REVIVISCIMUS the modern initiate has to set before him as the goal of all his strivings. Ponder it well, and compare it with the manner and mood of thought that belongs to the science of the present day; and you will see for yourselves that opposition to modern initiation is inevitable. A terrible resistance will, without doubt, be put up to the new initiation,—perhaps a resistance of which we can have today no conception, a resistance that will take the form of deed rather than word and express itself in drastic attempts to make initiation knowledge utterly impossible and inaccessible.

It was accordingly my earnest desire, speaking as I do now in a smaller and more intimate circle, to give you descriptions of what modern initiation science can attain to know, in the hope that these descriptions may strike home to your hearts and souls and awaken strength within them; so that there may be a few at least in this generation who know how to relate themselves rightly,—on the one hand, to that which is seeking entrance to our world from the worlds of the Spirit, and on the other hand, to that which is doing all it can to prevent and make impossible the permeation of Earth life with spirituality. This is what I wanted to lay upon your hearts, my dear friends; gathered as we are here in a smaller circle, after having had, to my great satisfaction, opportunity in Oxford for lectures of a more public character. I was able in those lectures to deal with the more external aspects, and it was important that here in this smaller circle we should be able to touch on the more esoteric side of initiation knowledge.

And it is surely time we got beyond feeling puzzled and embarrassed because statements about the spiritual worlds seem paradoxical. They are bound to do so. The language of the spiritual worlds is quite another language from the languages that belong to Earth; one has actually to take great pains and put forth all one's strength before one can render in the words of earthly speech truths that should really be expressed in some entirely different way. You must therefore be quite prepared to find that it will often give people a shock when you tell them, quite simply and directly, of something that takes place in the spiritual worlds.

I wanted in this way to draw your attention to the feeling and impulse that lay behind today's lecture, and I would like now to unite what I have said with an expression of deep satisfaction at being able once again to speak to you here in London. It is always a source of satisfaction to me to be able to do this. As we said before, it happens very seldom. But on the rare occasions when we are for a short time together, may it indeed be that we use the opportunity to stimulate anew in our hearts and souls that stronger kind of ‘togetherness’ that should subsist, the world over, without interruption, among those who espouse the cause of Anthroposophia. This has been my endeavour today, and it is in this sense that I would express in conclusion the earnest desire, my dear friends, that we may in future remain together, however far we are in space from one another.

[ 1 ] If the human being were a mere creature of nature and not a creator at the same time, he would not stand questioningly before the phenomena of the world and would also not seek to fathom their essential being and laws. He would satisfy his drive to eat and to propagate in accordance with the inborn laws of his organism and otherwise allow the events of the world to take the course they happen to take. It would not occur to him at all to address a question to nature. Content and happy he would go through life like the rose of which Angelus Silesius says:

The rose has no “wherefore?”; it blooms because it blooms.
It pays itself no mind, asks not if it is seen.

[ 2 ] The rose can just be like this. What it is it is because nature has made it this way. But the human being cannot just be like this. There is a drive within him to add to the world lying before him yet another world that springs forth from him. He does not want to live with his fellowmen in the chance proximity into which nature has placed him; he seeks to regulate the way he lives with others in accordance with his reason. The form in which nature has shaped man and woman does not suffice for him; he creates the ideal¹ figures of Greek sculpture. To the natural course of events in daily life he adds the course of events springing from his imagination as tragedy and comedy. In architecture and music, creations spring from his spirit that are hardly reminiscent at all of anything created by nature. In his sciences he draws up conceptual pictures through which the chaos of world phenomena passing daily before our senses appears to us as a harmoniously governed whole, as a structured organism. In the world of his own deeds, he creates a particular realm—that of historical happenings—which is essentially different from nature's course of events.

[ 3 ] The human being feels that everything he creates is only a continuation of the workings of nature. He also knows that he is called upon to add something higher to what nature can do out of itself. He is conscious of the fact that he gives birth out of himself to another, higher nature in addition to outer nature.

[ 4 ] Thus the human being stands between two worlds; between the world that presses in upon him from outside and the world that he brings forth out of himself. His effort is to bring these two worlds into harmony. For, his whole being aims at harmony. He would like to live like the rose that does not ask about the whys and wherefores but rather blooms because it blooms. Schiller demands this of the human being in the words:

Are you seeking the highest, the greatest?
The plant can teach it to you.
What it is will-lessly, you must be will-fully—that's it!

[ 5 ] The plant can just be what it is. For no new realm springs forth from it, and therefore the fearful longing can also not arise in it: How am I to bring the two realms into harmony with each other?

[ 6 ] The goal for which man has striven throughout all the ages of history is to bring what lies within him into harmony with what nature creates out of itself. The fact that he himself is fruitful becomes the starting point for his coming to terms with nature; this coming to terms forms the content of his spiritual striving.

[ 7 ] There are two ways of coming to terms with nature. The human being either allows outer nature to become master over his inner nature, or he subjects this outer nature to himself. In the first case, he seeks to submit his own willing and existence to the outer course of events. In the second case, he draws the goal and direction of his willing and existence from himself and seeks to deal in some way or other with the events of nature that still go their own way.

[ 8 ] Let us speak about the first case first. It is in accordance with his essential being for man, above and beyond the realm of nature, to create yet another realm that in his sense is a higher one. He can do no other. How he relates to the outer world will depend upon the feelings and emotions he has with respect to this his own realm. Now he can have the same feelings with respect to his own realm as he has with respect to the facts of nature. He then allows the creations of his spirit to approach him in the same way he allows an event of the outer world, wind and weather, for example, to approach him. He perceives no difference in kind between what occurs in the outer world and what occurs within his soul. He therefore believes that they are only one realm, i.e., governed by one kind of law. But he does feel that the creations of his spirit are of a higher sort. He therefore places them above the creations of mere nature. Thus he transfers his own creations into the outer world and lets nature be governed by them. Consequently he knows only an outer world. For he transfers his own inner world outside himself. No wonder then that for him even his own self becomes a subordinate part of this outer world.

[ 9 ] One way man comes to terms with the outer world consists, therefore, in his regarding his inner being as something outer; he sets this inner being, which he has transferred into the outer world, both over nature and over himself as ruler and lawgiver.

[ 10 ] This characterizes the standpoint of the religious person. A divine world order is a creation of the human spirit. But the human being is not clear about the fact that the content of this world order has sprung from his own spirit. He therefore transfers it outside himself and subordinates himself to his own creation.

[ 11 ] The acting human being is not content simply to act. The flower blooms because it blooms. It does not ask about whys and wherefores. The human being relates to what he does. He connects feelings to what he does. He is either satisfied or dissatisfied with what he does. He makes value judgments about his actions. He regards one action as pleasing to him, and another as displeasing. The moment he feels this, the harmony of the world is disturbed for him. He believes that the pleasing action must bring about different consequences than one which evokes his displeasure. Now if he is not clear about the fact that, out of himself, he has attached the value judgments to his actions, he will believe that these values are attached to his actions by some outer power. He believes that an outer power differentiates the happenings of this world into ones that are pleasing and therefore good, and ones that are displeasing and therefore bad, evil. A person who feels this way makes no distinction between the facts of nature and the actions of the human being. He judges both from the same point of view. For him the whole cosmos is one realm, and the laws governing this realm correspond entirely to those which the human spirit brings forth out of itself.

[ 12 ] This way of coming to terms with the world reveals a basic characteristic of human nature. No matter how unclear the human being might be about his relationship to the world, he nevertheless seeks within himself the yardstick by which to measure all things. Out of a kind of unconscious feeling of sovereignty he decides on the absolute value of all happenings. No matter how one studies this, one finds that there are countless people who believe themselves governed by gods; there are none who do not independently, over the heads of the gods, judge what pleases or displeases these gods. The religious person cannot set himself up as the lord of the world; but he does indeed determine, out of his own absolute power, the likes and dislikes of the ruler of the world.

[ 13 ] One need only look at religious natures and one will find my assertions confirmed. What proclaimer of gods has not at the same time determined quite exactly what pleases these gods and what is repugnant to them? Every religion has its wise teachings about the cosmos, and each also asserts that its wisdom stems from one or more gods.

[ 14 ] If one wants to characterize the standpoint of the religious person one must say: He seeks to judge the world out of himself, but he does not have the courage also to ascribe to himself the responsibility for this judgment; therefore he invents beings for himself in the outer world that he can saddle with this responsibility.

[ 15 ] Such considerations seem to me to answer the question:

What is religion? The content of religion springs from the human spirit. But the human spirit does not want to acknowledge this origin to itself. The human being submits himself to his own laws, but he regards these laws as foreign. He establishes himself as ruler over himself. Every religion establishes the human “I” as regent of the world. Religion's being consists precisely in this, that it is not conscious of this fact. It regards as revelation from outside what it actually reveals to itself.

[ 16 ] The human being wishes to stand at the topmost place in the world. But he does not dare to pronounce himself the pinnacle of creation. Therefore he invents gods in his own image and lets the world be ruled by them. When he thinks this way, he is thinking religiously.

[ 17 ] Philosophical thinking replaces religious thinking. Wherever and whenever this occurs, human nature reveals itself to us in a very particular way.

[ 18 ] For the development of Western thinking, the transition from the mythological thinking of the Greeks into philosophical thinking is particularly interesting. I would now like to present three thinkers from that time of transition: Anaximander, Thales, and Parmenides. They represent three stages leading from religion to philosophy.

[ 19 ] It is characteristic of the first stage of this path that divine beings, from whom the content taken from the human “I” supposedly stems, are no longer acknowledged. But from habit one still holds fast to the view that this content stems from the outer world. Anaximander stands at this stage. He no longer speaks of gods as his Greek ancestors did. For him the highest principle, which rules the world, is not a being pictured in man's image. It is an impersonal being, the apeiron, the indefinite. It develops out of itself everything occurring in nature, not in the way a person creates, but rather out of natural necessity. But Anaximander always conceives this natural necessity to be analogous to actions that proceed according to human principles of reason. He pictures to himself, so to speak, a moral, natural lawfulness, a highest being, that treats the world like a human, moral judge without actually being one. For Anaximander, everything in the world occurs just as necessarily as a magnet attracts iron, but does so according to moral, i.e., human laws. Only from this point of view could he say: “Whence things arise, hence must they also pass away, in accordance with justice, for they must do penance and recompense because of unrighteousness in a way corresponding to the order of time.”

[ 20 ] This is the stage at which a thinker begins to judge philosophically. He lets go of the gods. He therefore no longer ascribes to the gods what comes from man. But he actually does nothing more than transfer onto something impersonal the characteristics formerly attributed to divine, i.e., personal beings.

[ 21 ] Thales approaches the world in an entirely free way. Even though he is a few years older than Anaximander, he is philosophically much more mature. His way of thinking is no longer religious at all.

[ 22 ] Within Western thinking Thales is the first to come to terms with the world in the second of the two ways mentioned above. Hegel has so often emphasized that thinking is the trait which distinguishes man from the animal. Thales is the first Western personality who dared to assign to thinking its sovereign position. He no longer bothered about whether gods have arranged the world in accordance with the order of thought or whether an apeiron directs the world in accordance with thinking. He only knew that he thought, and assumed that, because he thought, he also had a right to explain the world to himself in accordance with his thinking. Do not underestimate this standpoint of Thales! It represents an immense disregard for all religious preconceptions. For it was the declaration of the absoluteness of human thinking. Religious people say: The world is arranged the way we think it to be because God exists. And since they conceive of God in the image of man, it is obvious that the order of the world corresponds to the order of the human head. All that is a matter of complete indifference to Thales. He thinks about the world. And by virtue of his thinking he ascribes to himself the power to judge the world. He already has a feeling that thinking is only a human action; and accordingly he undertakes to explain the world with the help of this purely human thinking. With Thales the activity of knowing (das Erkennen) now enters into a completely new stage of its development. It ceases to draw its justification from the fact that it only copies what the gods have already sketched out. It takes from out of itself the right to decide upon the lawfulness of the world. What matters, to begin with, is not at all whether Thales believed water or anything else to be the principle of the world; what matters is that he said to himself: What the principle is, this I will decide by my thinking. He assumed it to be obvious that thinking has the power in such things. And therein lies his greatness.

[ 23 ] Just consider what was accomplished. No less an event than that spiritual power over world phenomena was given to man. Whoever trusts in his thinking says to himself: No matter how violently the waves of life may rage, no matter that the world seems a chaos: I am at peace, for all this mad commotion does not disquiet me, because I comprehend it.

[ 24 ] Heraclitus did not comprehend this divine peacefulness of the thinker who understands himself. He was of the view that all things are in eternal flux. That becoming is the essential beings of things. When I step into a river, it is no longer the same one as in the moment of my deciding to enter it. But Heraclitus overlooks just one thing. Thinking preserves what the river bears along with itself and finds that in the next moment something passes before my senses that is essentially the same as what was already there before.

[ 25 ] Like Thales, with his firm belief in the power of human thinking, Heraclitus is a typical phenomenon in the realm of those personalities who come to terms with the most significant questions of existence. He does not feel within himself the power to master by thinking the eternal flux of sense-perceptible becoming. Heraclitus looks into the world and it dissolves for him into momentary phenomena upon which one has no hold. If Heraclitus were right, then everything in the world would flutter away, and in the general chaos the human personality would also have to disintegrate. I would not be the same today as I was yesterday, and tomorrow I would be different than today. At every moment, the human being would face something totally new and would be powerless. For, it is doubtful that the experiences he has acquired up to a certain day can guide him in dealing with the totally new experiences that the next day will bring.

[ 26 ] Parmenides therefore sets himself in absolute opposition to Heraclitus. With all the one-sidedness possible only to a keen philosophical nature, he rejected all testimony brought by sense perception. For, it is precisely this ever-changing sense world that leads one astray into the view of Heraclitus. Parmenides therefore regarded those revelations as the only source of all truth which well forth from the innermost core of the human personality: the revelations of thinking. In his view the real being of things is not what flows past the senses; it is the thoughts, the ideas, that thinking discovers within this stream and to which it holds fast!

[ 27 ] Like so many things that arise in opposition to a particular one-sidedness, Parmenides's way of thinking also became disastrous. It ruined European thinking for centuries. It undermined man's confidence in his sense perception. Whereas an unprejudiced, naive look at the sense world draws from this world itself the thought-content that satisfies the human drive for knowledge, the philosophical movement developing in the sense of Parmenides believed it had to draw real truth only out of pure, abstract thinking.

[ 28 ] The thoughts we gain in living intercourse with the sense world have an individual character; they have within themselves the warmth of something experienced. We unfold our own personality by extracting ideas from the world. We feel ourselves as conquerors of the sense world when we capture it in the world of thoughts. Abstract, pure thinking has something impersonal and cold about it. We always feel a compulsion when we spin forth ideas out of pure thinking. Our feeling of self cannot be heightened through such thinking. For we must simply submit to the necessities of thought.

[ 29 ] Parmenides did not take into account that thinking is an activity of the human personality. He took it to be impersonal, as the eternal content of existence. What is thought is what exists, he once said.

[ 30 ] In the place of the old gods he thus set a new one. Whereas the older religious way of picturing things had set the whole feeling, willing, and thinking man as God at the pinnacle of the world, Parmenides took one single human activity, one part, out of the human personality and made a divine being out of it.

[ 31 ] In the realm of views about the moral life of man Parmenides is complemented by Socrates. His statement that virtue is teachable is the ethical consequence of Parmenides's view that thinking is equitable with being. If this is true, then human action can claim to have raised itself to something worthily existing only when human action flows from thinking, from that abstract, logical thinking to which man must simply yield himself, i.e., which he has to acquire for himself as learner.

[ 32 ] It is clear that a common thread can be traced through the development of Greek thought. The human being seeks to transfer into the outer world what belongs to him, what springs from his own being, and in this way to subordinate himself to his own being. At first he takes the whole fullness of his nature and sets likenesses of it as gods over himself; then he takes one single human activity, thinking, and sets it over himself as a necessity to which he must yield. That is what is so remarkable in the development of man, that he unfolds his powers, that he fights for the existence and unfolding of these powers in the world, but that he is far from being able to acknowledge these powers as his own.

[ 33 ] One of the greatest philosophers of all time has made this great, human self-deception into a bold and wonderful system. This philosopher is Plato. The ideal world, the inner representations that arise around man within his spirit while his gaze is directed at the multiplicity of outer things, this becomes for Plato a higher world of existence of which that multiplicity is only a copy. “The things of this world which our senses perceive have no true being at all: they are always becoming but never are. They have only a relative existence; they are, in their totality, only in and through their relationship to each other; one can therefore just as well call their whole existence a non-existence. They are consequently also not objects of any actual knowledge. For, only about what is, in and for itself and always in the same way, can there be such knowledge; they, on the other hand, are only the object of what we, through sensation, take them to be. As long as we are limited only to our perception of them, we are like people who sit in a dark cave so firmly bound that they cannot even turn their heads and who see nothing, except, on the wall facing them, by the light of a fire burning behind them, the shadow images of real things which are led across between them and the fire, and who in fact also see of each other, yes each of himself, only the shadows on that wall. Their wisdom, however, would be to predict the sequence of those shadows which they have learned to know from experience.” The tree that I see and touch, whose flowers I smell, is therefore the shadow of the idea of the tree. And this idea is what is truly real. The idea, however, is what lights up within my spirit when I look at the tree. What I perceive with my senses is thus made into a copy of what my spirit shapes through the perception.

[ 34 ] Everything that Plato believes to be present as the world of ideas in the beyond, outside things, is man's inner world. The content of the human spirit, torn out of man and pictured as a world unto itself, as a higher, true world lying in the beyond: that is Platonic philosophy.

[ 35 ] I consider Ralph Waldo Emerson to be right when he says: “Among books, Plato only is entitled to Omar's fanatical compliment to the Koran, when he said, ‘Burn the libraries; for their value is in this book.’ These sentences contain the culture of nations; these are the cornerstone of schools; these are the fountain-head of literatures. A discipline it is in logic, arithmetic, taste, symmetry, poetry, language, rhetoric, ontology, morals, or practical wisdom. There was never such range of speculation. Out of Plato come all things that are still written and debated among men of thought.”² Let me express the last sentence somewhat more exactly in the following form. The way Plato felt about the relationship of the human spirit to the world, this is how the overwhelming majority of people still feel about it today. They feel that the content of the human spirit—human feeling, willing, and thinking—does stand at the top of the ladder of phenomena; but they know what to do with this spiritual content only when they conceive of it as existing outside of man as a divinity or as some other kind of higher being such as a necessary natural order, or as a moral world order—or as any of the other names that man has given to what he himself brings forth.

[ 36 ] One can understand why the human being does this. Sense impressions press in upon him from outside. He sees colors and hears sounds. His feelings and thoughts arise in him as he sees the colors and hears the sounds. These stem from his own nature. He asks himself: How can I, out of myself, add anything to what the world gives me? It seems to him completely arbitrary to draw something out of himself to complement the outer world.

[ 37 ] But the moment he says to himself: What I am feeling and thinking, this I do not bring to the world out of myself; another, higher being has laid this into the world, and I only draw it forth from the world—at this moment he feels relieved. One only has to tell the human being: Your opinions and thoughts do not come from yourself; a god has revealed them to you—then he is reconciled with himself. And if he has divested himself of his belief in God, he then sets in His place the natural order of things, eternal laws. The fact that he cannot find this God, these eternal laws, anywhere outside in the world, that he must rather first create them for the world if they are to be there—this he does not want to admit to himself at first. It is difficult for him to say to himself: The world outside me is not divine; by virtue of my essential being, however, I assume the right to project the divine into the outer world.

[ 38 ] What do the laws of the pendulum that arose in Galileo's spirit as he watched the swinging church lamp matter to the lamp? But man himself cannot exist without establishing a relationship between the outer world and the world of his inner being. His spiritual life is a continuous projecting of his spirit into the sense world. Through his own work, in the course of historical life, there occurs the interpenetration of nature and spirit. The Greek thinkers wanted nothing more than to believe that man was already born into a relationship which actually can come about only through himself. They did not want it to be man who first consummates the marriage of spirit and nature; they wanted to confront this as a marriage already consummated, to regard it as an accomplished fact.

[ 39 ] Aristotle saw what is so contradictory in transferring the ideas—arising in man's spirit from the things of the world—into some supersensible world in the beyond. But even he did not recognize that things first receive their ideal aspect when man confronts them and creatively adds this aspect to them. Rather, he assumed that this ideal element, as entelechy, is itself at work in things as their actual principle. The natural consequence of this basic view of his was that he traced the moral activity of man back to his original, moral, natural potential. The physical drives ennoble themselves in the course of human evolution and then appear as willing guided by reason. Virtue consists in this reasonable willing.

[ 40 ] Taken at face value, this seems to indicate that Aristotle believed that moral activity, at least, has its source in man's own personality, that man himself gives himself the direction and goal of his actions out of his own being and does not allow these to be prescribed for him from outside. But even Aristotle does not dare to stay with this picture of a human being who determines his own destiny for himself. What appears in man as individual, reasonable activity is, after all, only the imprint of a general world reason existing outside of him. This world reason does realize itself within the individual person, but has its own independent, higher existence over and above him. .

[ 41 ] Even Aristotle pushes outside of man what he finds present only within man. The tendency of Greek thinking from Thales to Aristotle is to think that what is encountered within the inner life of man is an independent being existing for itself and to trace the things of the world back to this being.

[ 42 ] Man's knowledge must pay the consequences when he thinks that the mediating of spirit with nature, which he himself is meant to accomplish, is accomplished by outer powers. He should immerse himself in his own inner being and seek there the point of connection between the sense world and the ideal world. If, instead of this, he looks into the outer world to find this point, then, because he cannot find it there, he must necessarily arrive eventually at the doubt in any reconciliation between the two powers. The period of Greek thought that follows Aristotle presents us with this stage of doubt. It announces itself with the Stoics and Epicureans and reaches its high-point with the Skeptics.

[ 43 ] The Stoics and Epicureans feel instinctively that one cannot find the essential being of things along the path taken by their predecessors. They leave this path without bothering very much about finding a new one. For the older philosophers, the main thing was the world as a whole. They wanted to discover the laws of the world and believed that knowledge of man must result all by itself from knowledge of the world, because for them man was a part of the world-whole like all other things. The Stoics and Epicureans made man the main object of their reflections. They wanted to give his life its appropriate content. They thought about how man should live his life. Everything else was only a means to this end. The Stoics considered all philosophy to be worthwhile only to the extent that through it man could know how he is to live his life. They considered the right life for man to be one that is in harmony with nature. In order to realize this harmony with nature in one's own actions, one must first know what is in harmony with nature.

[ 44 ] In the Stoics' teachings there lies an important admission about the human personality. Namely, that the human personality can be its own purpose and goal and that everything else, even knowledge, is there only for the sake of this personality.

[ 45 ] The Epicureans went even further in this direction. Their striving consisted in shaping life in such a way that man would feel as content as possible in it or that it would afford him the greatest possible pleasure. One's own life stood so much in the foreground for them that they practiced knowledge only for the purpose of freeing man from superstitious fear and from the discomfort that befalls him when he does not understand nature.

[ 46 ] A heightened human feeling of oneself runs through the views of the Stoics and Epicureans compared to those of older Greek thinkers.

[ 47 ] This view appears in a finer, more spiritual way in the Skeptics. They said to themselves: When a person is forming ideas about things, he can form them only out of himself. And only out of himself can he draw the conviction that an idea corresponds to some thing. They saw nothing in the outer world that would provide a basis for connecting thing and idea. And they regarded as delusion and combated what anyone before them had said about any such bases.

[ 48 ] The basic characteristic of the Skeptical view is modesty. Its adherents did not dare to deny that there is a connection in the outer world between idea and thing; they merely denied that man could know of any such connection. Therefore they did indeed make man the source of his knowing, but they did not regard this knowing as the expression of true wisdom.

[ 49 ] Basically, Skepticism represents human knowing's declaration of bankruptcy. The human being succumbs to the preconception he has created for himself—that the truth is present outside him in a finished form—through the conviction he has gained that his truth is only an inner one, and therefore cannot be the right one at all.

[ 50 ] Thales begins to reflect upon the world with utter confidence in the power of the human spirit. The doubt—that what human pondering must regard as the ground of the world could not actually be this ground—lay very far from his naive belief in man's cognitive ability. With the Skeptics a complete renunciation of real truth has taken the place of this belief.

[ 51 ] The course of development taken by Greek thinking lies between the two extremes of naive, blissful confidence in man's cognitive ability and absolute lack of confidence in it. One can understand this course of development if one considers how man's mental pictures of the causes of the world have changed. What the oldest Greek philosophers thought these causes to be had sense-perceptible characteristics. Through this, one had a right to transfer these causes into the outer world. Like every other object in the sense world, the primal water of Thales belongs to outer reality. The matter became quite different when Parmenides stated that true existence lies in thinking. For, this thinking, in accordance with its true existence, is to be perceived only within man's inner being. Through Parmenides there first arose the great question: How does thought-existence, spiritual existence, relate to the outer existence that our senses perceive? One was accustomed then to picturing the relationship of the highest existence to that existence which surrounds us in daily life in the same way that Thales had thought the relationship to be between his sense-perceptible primal thing and the things that surround us. It is altogether possible to picture to oneself the emergence of all things out of the water that Thales presents as the primal source of all existence, to picture it as analogous to certain sense-perceptible processes that occur daily before our very eyes. And the urge to picture relations in the world surrounding us in the sense of such an analogy still remained even when, through Parmenides and his followers, pure thinking and its content, the world of ideas, were made into the primal source of all existence. Men were indeed ready to see that the spiritual world is a higher one than the sense world, that the deepest world-content reveals itself within the inner being of man, but they were not ready at the same time to picture the relationship between the sense world and the ideal world as an ideal one. They pictured it as a sense-perceptible relationship, as a factual emergence. If they had thought of it as spiritual, then they could peacefully have acknowledged that the content of the world of ideas is present only in the inner being of man. For then what is higher would not need to precede in time what is derivative. A sense-perceptible thing can reveal a spiritual content, but this content can first be born out of the sense-perceptible thing at the moment of revelation. This content is a later product of evolution than the sense world. But if one pictures the relationship to be one of emergence, then that from which the other emerges must also precede it in time. In this way the child—the spiritual world born of the sense world—was made into the mother of the sense world. This is the psychological reason why the human being transfers his world out into outer reality and declares—with reference to this his possession and product—that it has an objective existence in and for itself, and that he has to subordinate himself to it, or, as the case may be, that he can take possession of it only through revelation or in some other way by which the already finished truth can make its entry into his inner being.

[ 52 ] This interpretation which man gives to his striving for truth, to his activity of knowing, corresponds with a profound inclination of his nature. Goethe characterized this inclination in his Aphorisms in Prose in the following words: “The human being never realizes just how anthropomorphic he is.” And: “Fall and propulsion. To want to declare the movement of the heavenly bodies by these is actually a hidden anthropomorphism; it is the way a walker goes across a field. The lifted foot sinks down, the foot left behind strives forward and falls; and so on continuously from departing until arriving.” All explanation of nature, indeed, consists in the fact that experiences man has of himself are interpreted into the object. Even the simplest phenomena are explained in this way. When we explain the propulsion of one body by another, we do so by picturing to ourselves that the one body exerts upon the other the same effect as we do when we propel a body. In the same way as we do this with something trivial, the religious person does it with his picture of God. He takes human ways of thinking and acting and interprets them into nature; and the philosophers we have presented, from Parmenides to Aristotle, also interpreted human thought-processes into nature. [ 53 ] Max Stirner has this human need in mind when he says: “What haunts the universe and carries on its mysterious, ‘incomprehensible’ doings is, in fact, the arcane ghost that we call the highest being. And fathoming this ghost, understanding it, discovering reality in it (proving the ‘existence of God’)—this is the task men have set themselves for thousands of years; they tormented themselves with the horrible impossibility, with the endless work of the Danaides, of transforming the ghost into a nonghost, the unreal into a real, the spirit into a whole and embodied person. Behind the existing world they sought the ‘thing-in-itself,’ the essential being; they sought the non-thing behind the thing.”

[ 54 ] The last phase of Greek philosophy, Neo-Platonism, offers a splendid proof of how inclined the human spirit is to misconstrue its own being and therefore its relationship to the world. This teaching, whose most significant proponent is Plotin, broke with the tendency to transfer the content of the human spirit into a realm outside the living reality within which man himself stands. The Neo-Platonist seeks within his own soul the place at which the highest object of knowledge is to be found. Through that intensification of cognitive forces which one calls ecstasy, he seeks within himself to behold the essential being of world phenomena. The heightening of the inner powers of perception is meant to lift the human spirit onto a level of life at which he feels directly the revelation of this essential being. This teaching is a kind of mysticism. It is based on a truth that is to be found in every kind of mysticism. Immersion into one's own inner being yields the deepest human wisdom. But man must first prepare himself for this immersion. He must accustom himself to behold a reality that is free of everything the senses communicate to us. People who have brought their powers of knowledge to this height speak of an inner light that has dawned for them. Jakob Böhme, the Christian mystic of the seventeenth century, regarded himself as inwardly illumined in this way. He sees within himself the realm he must designate as the highest one knowable to man. He says: “Within the human heart (Gemüt) there lie the indications (Signatur), quite artfully set forth, of the being of all being.”

[ 55 ] Neo-Platonism sets the contemplation of the human inner world in the place of speculation about an outer world in the beyond. As a result, the highly characteristic phenomenon appears that the Neo-Platonist regards his own inner being as something foreign. One has taken things all the way to knowledge of the place at which the ultimate part of the world is to be sought; but one has wrongly interpreted what is to be found in this place. The Neo-Platonist therefore describes the inner experiences of his ecstasy like Plato describes the being of his supersensible world.

[ 56 ] It is characteristic that Neo-Platonism excludes from the essential being of the inner world precisely that which constitutes its actual core. The state of ecstasy is supposed to occur only when self-consciousness is silent. It was therefore only natural that in Neo-Platonism the human spirit could not behold itself, its own being, in its true light.

[ 57 ] The courses taken by the ideas that form the content of Greek philosophy found their conclusion in this view. They represent the longing of man to recognize, to behold, and to worship his own essential being as something foreign.

[ 58 ] In the normal course of development within the spiritual evolution of the West, the discovery of egoism would have to have followed upon Neo-Platonism. That means, man would have to have recognized as his own being what he had considered to be a foreign being. He would have to have said to himself: The highest thing there is in the world given to man is his individual “I” whose being comes to manifestation within the inner life of the personality.

[ 59 ] This natural course of Western spiritual development was held up by the spread of Christian teachings. Christianity presents, in popular pictures that are almost tangible, what Greek philosophy expressed in the language of sages. When one considers how deeply rooted in human nature the urge is to renounce one's own being, it seems understandable that this teaching has gained such incomparable power over human hearts. A high level of spiritual development is needed to satisfy this urge in a philosophical way. The most naive heart suffices to satisfy this urge in the form of Christian faith. Christianity does not present—as the highest being of the world—a finely spiritual content like Plato's world of ideas, nor an experience streaming forth from an inner light which must first be kindled; instead, it presents processes with attributes of reality that can be grasped by the senses. It goes so far, in fact, as to revere the highest being in a single historical person. The philosophical spirit of Greece could not present us with such palpable mental pictures. Such mental pictures lay in its past, in its folk mythology. Hamann, Herder's predecessor in the realm of theology, commented one time that Plato had never been a philosopher for children. But that it was for childish spirits that “the holy spirit had had the ambition to become a writer.”

[ 60 ] And for centuries this childish form of human self-estrangement has had the greatest conceivable influence upon the philosophical development of thought. Like fog the Christian teachings have hung before the light from which knowledge of man's own being should have gone forth. Through all kinds of philosophical concepts, the church fathers of the first Christian centuries seek to give a form to their popular mental pictures that would make them acceptable also to an educated consciousness. And the later teachers in the church, of whom Saint Augustine is the most significant, continue these efforts in the same spirit. The content of Christian faith had such a fascinating effect that there could be no question of doubt as to its truth, but only of lifting up of this truth into a more spiritual, more ideal sphere. The philosophy of the teachers within the church is a transforming of the content of Christian faith into an edifice of ideas. The general character of this thought-edifice could therefore be no other than that of Christianity: the transferring of man's being out into the world, self-renunciation. Thus it came about that Augustine again arrives at the right place, where the essential being of the world is to be found, and that he again finds something foreign in this place. Within man's own being he seeks the source of all truth; he declares the inner experiences of the soul to be the foundations of knowledge. But the teachings of Christian faith have set an extra-human content at the place where he was seeking. Therefore, at the right place, he found the wrong beings.

[ 61 ] There now follows a centuries-long exertion of human thinking whose sole purpose, by expending all the power of the human spirit, was to bring proof that the content of this spirit is not to be sought within this spirit but rather at that place to which Christian faith has transferred this content. The movement in thought that grew up out of these efforts is called Scholasticism. All the hair-splittings of the Schoolmen can be of no interest in the context of the present essay. For that movement in ideas does not represent in the least a development in the direction of knowledge of the personal “I.”

[ 62 ] The thickness of the fog in which Christianity enshrouded human self-knowledge becomes most evident through the fact that the Western spirit, out of itself, could not take even one step on the path to this self-knowledge. The Western spirit needed a decisive push from outside. It could not find upon the ground of the soul what it had sought so long in the outer world. But it was presented with proof that this outer world could not be constituted in such a way that the human spirit could find there the essential being it sought. This push was given by the blossoming of the natural sciences in the sixteenth century. As long as man had only an imperfect picture of how natural processes are constituted, there was room in the outer world for divine beings and for the working of a personal divine will. But there was no longer a place, in the natural picture of the world sketched out by Copernicus and Kepler, for the Christian picture. And as Galileo laid the foundations for an explanation of natural processes through natural laws, the belief in divine laws had to be shaken.

[ 63 ] Now one had to seek in a new way the being that man recognizes as the highest and that had been pushed out of the external world for him.

[ 64 ] Francis Bacon drew the philosophical conclusions from the presuppositions given by Copernicus, Kepler, and Galileo. His service to the Western world view is basically a negative one. He called upon man in a powerful way to direct his gaze freely and without bias upon reality, upon life. As obvious as this call seems, there is no denying that the development of Western thought has sinned heavily against it for centuries. Man's own “I” also belongs within the category of real things. And does it not almost seem as though man's natural predisposition makes him unable to look at this “I” without bias? Only the development of a completely unbiased sense, directed immediately upon what is real, can lead to self-knowledge. The path of knowledge of nature is also the path of knowledge of the “I.”

[ 65 ] Two streams now entered into the development of Western thought that tended, by different paths, in the direction of the new goals of knowledge necessitated by the natural sciences. One goes back to Jakob Böhme, the other to René Descartes.

[ 66 ] Jakob Böhme and Descartes no longer stood under the influence of Scholasticism. Böhme saw that nowhere in cosmic space was there a place for heaven; he therefore became a mystic. He sought heaven within the inner being of man. Descartes recognized that the adherence of the Schoolmen to Christian teachings was only a matter of centuries-long habituation to these pictures. Therefore he considered it necessary first of all to doubt these habitual pictures and to seek a way of knowledge by which man can arrive at a kind of knowing whose certainty he does not assert out of habit, but which can be guaranteed at every, moment through his own spiritual powers.

[ 67 ] Those are therefore strong initial steps which—both with Böhme and with Descartes—the human “I” takes to know itself. Both were nevertheless overpowered by the old preconceptions in what they brought forth later. It has already been indicated that Jakob Böhme has a certain spiritual kinship with the Neo-Platonists. His knowledge is an entering into his own inner being. But what confronts him within this inner being is not the “I” of man but rather only the Christian God again. He becomes aware that within his own heart (Gemüt) there lies what the person who needs knowledge is craving. Fulfillment of the greatest human longings streams toward him from there. But this does not lead him to the view that the “I,” by intensifying its cognitive powers, is also able out of itself to satisfy its demands. This brings him, rather, to the belief that, on the path of knowledge into the human heart, he had truly found the God whom Christianity had sought upon a false path. Instead of self-knowledge, Jakob Böhme seeks union with God; instead of life with the treasures of his own inner being, he seeks a life in God.

[ 68 ] It is obvious that the way man thinks about his actions, about his moral life, will also depend upon human self-knowledge or self-misapprehension. The realm of morality does in fact establish itself as a kind of upper story above the purely natural processes. Christian belief, which already regards these natural processes as flowing from the divine will, seeks this will all the more within morality. Christian moral teachings show more clearly than almost anything else the distortedness of this world view. No matter how enormous the sophistry is that theology has applied to this realm: questions remain which, from the standpoint of Christianity, show definite features of considerable contradiction. If a primal being like the Christian God is assumed, it is incomprehensible how the sphere of human action can fall into two realms: into that of the good and into that of the evil. For, all human actions would have to flow from the primal being and consequently bear traits homogeneous with their origin. Human actions would in fact have to be divine. Just as little can human responsibility be explained on this basis. Man is after all directed by the divine will. He can therefore give himself up only to this will; he can let happen through him only what God brings about.

[ 69 ] In the views one held about morality, precisely the same thing occurred as in one's views about knowledge. Man followed his inclination to tear his own self out of himself and to set it up as something foreign. And just as in the realm of knowledge no other content could be given to the primal being—regarded as lying outside man—than the content drawn from his own inner being, so no moral aims and impulses for action could be found in this primal being except those belonging to the human soul. What man, in his deepest inner being, was convinced should happen, this he regarded as something willed by the primal being of the world. In this way a duality in the ethical realm was created. Over against the self that one had within oneself and out of which one had to act, one set one's own content as something morally determinative. And through this, moral demands could arise. Man's self was not allowed to follow itself; it had to follow something foreign. Selflessness in one's actions in the moral field corresponds to self-estrangement in the realm of knowledge. Those actions are good in which the “I” follows something foreign; those actions are bad, on the other hand, in which it follows itself. In self-will Christianity sees the source of all evil. That could never have happened if one had seen that everything moral can draw its content only out of one's own self. One can sum up all the Christian moral teachings in one sentence:

If man admits to himself that he can follow only the commandments of his own being and if he acts according to them, then he is evil; if this truth is hidden from him and if he sets—or allows to be set—his own commandments as foreign ones over himself in order to act according to them, then he is good.

[ 70 ] The moral teaching of selflessness is elaborated perhaps more completely than anywhere else in a book from the fourteenth century, German Theology. The author of this book is unknown to us. He carried self-renunciation far enough to be sure that his name did not come down to posterity. In this book it is stated: “That is no true being and has no being which does not exist within the perfect; rather it is by chance or it is a radiance and a shining that is no being or has no being except in the fire from which the radiance flows, or in the sun, or in the light. The Bible speaks of faith and the truth: sin is nothing other than the fact that the creature turns himself away from the unchangeable good and toward the changeable good, which means that he turns from the perfect to the divided and to the imperfect and most of all to himself. Now mark. If the creature assumes something good—such as being, living, knowing, recognizing, capability, and everything in short that one should call good—and believes that he is this good, or that it is his or belongs to him, or that it is of him, no matter how often nor how much results from this, then he is going astray. What else did the devil do or what else was his fall and estrangement than that he assumed that he was also something and something would be his and something would also belong to him? That assumption and his “I” and his “me,” his “for me” and his “mine,” that was his estrangement and his fall. That is how it still is. For, everything that one considers good or should call good belongs to no one, but only to the eternal true good which God is alone, and whoever assumes it of himself acts wrongly and against God.”

[ 71 ] A change in moral views from the old Christian ones is also connected with the turn that Jakob Böhme gave to man's relationship to God. God still works as something higher in the human soul to effect the good, but He does at least work within this self and not from outside upon the self. An internalizing of moral action occurs thereby. The rest of Christianity demanded only an outer obedience to the divine will. With Jakob Böhme the previously separated entities—the really personal and the personal that was made into God—enter into a living relationship. Through this, the source of the moral is indeed now transferred into man's inner being, but the moral principle of selflessness seems to be even more strongly emphasized. If God is regarded as an outer power, then the human self is the one actually acting. It acts either in God's sense or against it. But if God is transferred into man's inner being, then man himself no longer acts, but rather God in him. God expresses himself directly in human life. Man foregoes any life of his own; he makes himself a part of the divine life. He feels himself in God, God in himself; he grows into the primal being; he becomes an organ of it.

[ 72 ] In this German mysticism man has therefore paid for his participation in the divine life with the most complete extinguishing of his personality, of his “I.” Jakob Böhme and the mystics who were of his view did not feel the loss of the personal element. On the contrary: they experienced something particularly uplifting in the thought that they were directly participating in the divine life, that they were members in a divine organism. An organism cannot exist, after all, without its members. The mystic therefore felt himself to be something necessary within the world-whole, as a being that is indispensable to God. Angelus Silesius, the mystic who felt things in the same spirit as Jakob Böhme, expresses this in a beautiful statement:

I know that without me God cannot live an instant,
Came I to naught, he needs must yield the spirit.

And even more characteristically in another one:

Without me God cannot a single worm create;
Do I not co-maintain it, it must at once crack open.

[ 73 ] The human “I” asserts its rights here in the most powerful way vis-à-vis its own image which it has transferred into the outer world. To be sure, the supposed primal being is not yet told that it is man's own being set over against himself, but at least man's own being is considered to be the maintainer of the divine primal ground.

[ 74 ] Descartes had a strong feeling for the fact that man, through his thought-development, had brought himself into a warped relationship with the world. Therefore, to begin with, he met everything that had come forth from this thought-development with doubt. Only when one doubts everything that the centuries have developed as truths can one—in his opinion—gain the necessary objectivity for a new point of departure. It lay in the nature of things that this doubt would lead Descartes to the human “I.” For, the more a person regards everything else as something that he still must seek, the more he will have an intense feeling of his own seeking personality. He can say to himself: Perhaps I am erring on the paths of existence; then the erring one is thrown all the more clearly back upon himself. Descartes' Cogito, ergo sum (I think, therefore I am) indicates this. Descartes presses even further. He is aware that the way man arrives at knowledge of himself should be a model for any other knowledge he means to acquire. Clarity and definiteness seem to Descartes to be the most prominent characteristics of self-knowledge. Therefore he also demands these two characteristics of all other knowledge. Whatever man can distinguish just as clearly and definitely as his own existence: only that can stand as certain.

[ 75 ] With this, the absolutely central place of the “I” in the world-whole is at least recognized in the area of cognitive methodology. Man determines the how of his knowledge of the world according to the how of his knowledge of himself, and no longer asks for any outer being to justify this how. Man does not want to think in the way a god prescribes knowing activity to be, but rather in the way he determines this for himself. From now on, with respect to the world, man draws the power of his wisdom from himself.

[ 76 ] In connection with the what, Descartes did not take the same step. He set to work to gain mental pictures about the world, and—in accordance with the cognitive principle just presented—searched through his own inner being for such mental pictures. There he found the mental picture of God. It was of course nothing more than the mental picture of the human “I.” But Descartes did not recognize this. The idea of God as the altogether most perfect being » brought his thinking onto a completely wrong path. This one characteristic, that of the altogether greatest perfection, outshone for him all the other characteristics of the central being. He said to himself: Man, who is himself imperfect, cannot out of himself create the mental picture of an altogether most perfect being. Consequently this altogether most perfect being exists. If Descartes had investigated the true content of his mental picture of God, he would have found that it is exactly the same as the mental picture of the “I,” and that perfection is only a conceptual enhancement of this content. The essential content of an ivory ball is not changed by my thinking of it as infinitely large. Just as little does the mental picture of the “I” become something else through such an enhancement.

[ 77 ] The proof that Descartes brings for the existence of God is therefore again nothing other than a paraphrasing of the human need to make one's own “I,” in the form of a being outside man, into the ground of the world. But here indeed the fact presents itself with full clarity that man can find no content of its own for this primal being existing outside man, but rather can only lend this being the content of his mental picture of the “I” in a form that has not been significantly changed.

[ 78 ] Spinoza took no step forward on the path that must lead to the conquest of the mental picture of the “I”; he took a step backward. For Spinoza has no feeling of the unique position of the human “I.” For him the stream of world processes consists only in a system of natural necessity, just as for the Christian philosophers it consisted only in a system of divine acts of will. Here as there the human “I” is only a part within this system. For the Christian, man is in the hands of God; for Spinoza he is in those of natural world happenings. With Spinoza the Christian God received a different character. A philosopher who has grown up in a time when natural-scientific insights are blooming cannot acknowledge a God who directs the world arbitrarily; he can acknowledge only a primal being who exists because his existence, through itself, is a necessity, and who guides the course of the world according to the unchangeable laws that flow from his own absolutely necessary being. Spinoza has no consciousness of the fact that man takes the image in which he pictures this necessity from his own content. For this reason Spinoza's moral ideal also becomes something impersonal, unindividual. In accordance with his presuppositions he cannot indeed see his ideal to be in the perfecting of the “I,” in the enhancement of man's own powers, but rather in the permeating of the “I” with the divine world content, with the highest knowledge of the objective God. To lose oneself in this God should be the goal of human striving.

[ 79 ] The path Descartes took—to start with the “I” and press forward to world knowledge—is extended from now on by the philosophers of modern times. The Christian theological method, which had no confidence in the power of the human “I” as an organ of knowledge, at least was overcome. One thing was recognized: that the “I” itself must find the highest being. The path from there to the other point—to the insight that the content lying within the “I” is also the highest being—is, to be sure, a long one.

[ 80 ] Less thoughtfully than Descartes did the two English philosophers Locke and Hume approach their investigation of the paths that the human “I” takes to arrive at enlightenment about itself and the world. One thing above all was lacking in both of them: a healthy, free gaze into man's inner being. Therefore they could also gain no mental picture of the great difference that exists between knowledge of outer things and knowledge of the human “I.” Everything they say relates only to the acquisition of outer knowledge. Locke entirely overlooks the fact that man, by enlightening himself about outer things, sheds a light upon them that streams from his own inner being. He believes therefore that all knowledge stems from experience. But what is experience? Galileo sees a swinging church lamp. It leads him to find the laws by which a body swings. He has experienced two things: firstly, through his senses, outer processes; secondly, from out of himself, the mental picture of a law that enlightens him about these processes, that makes them comprehensible. One can now of course call both of these experience. But then one fails to recognize the difference, in fact, that exists between the two parts of this cognitive process. A being that could not draw upon the content of his being could stand eternally before the swinging church lamp: the sense perception would never complement itself with a conceptual law. Locke and all who think like him allow themselves to be deceived by something—namely by the way the content of what is to be known approaches us. It simply rises up, in fact, upon the horizon of our consciousness. Experience consists in what thus arises. But the fact must be recognized that the content of the laws of experience is developed by the “I” in its encounter with experience. Two things reveal themselves in Hume. One is that, as already mentioned, he does not recognize the nature of the “I,” and therefore, exactly like Locke, derives the content of the laws from experience. The other thing is that this content, by being separated from the “I,” loses itself completely in indefiniteness, hangs freely in the air without support or foundation. Hume recognizes that outer experience communicates only unconnected processes, that it does not at the same time, along with these processes, provide the laws by which they are connected. Since Hume knows nothing about the being of the “I,” he also cannot derive from it any justification for connecting the processes. He therefore derives these laws from the vaguest source one could possibly imagine: from habit. A person sees that a certain process always follows upon another; the fall of a stone is followed by the indentation of the ground on which it falls. As a result man habituates himself to thinking of such processes as connected. All knowledge loses its significance if one takes one's start from such presuppositions. The connection between the processes and their laws acquires something of a purely chance nature.

[ 81 ] We see in George Berkeley a person for whom the creative being of the “I” has come fully to consciousness. He had a clear picture of the “I's” own activity in the coming about of all knowledge. When I see an object, he said to himself, I am active. I create my perception for myself. The object of my perception would remain forever beyond my consciousness, it would not be there for me, if I did not continuously enliven its dead existence by my activity. I perceive only my enlivening activity, and not what precedes it objectively as the dead thing. No matter where I look within the sphere of my consciousness: everywhere I see myself as the active one, as the creative one. In Berkeley's thinking, the “I” acquires a universal life. What do I know of any existence of things, if I do not picture this existence?

[ 82 ] For Berkeley the world consists of creative spirits who out of themselves form a world. But at this level of knowledge there again appeared, even with him, the old preconception. He indeed lets the “I” create its world for itself, but he does not give it at the same time the power to create itself out of itself. It must again proffer a mental picture of God. The creative principle in the “I” is God, even for Berkeley.

[ 83 ] But this philosopher does show us one thing. Whoever really immerses himself into the essential being of the creative “I” does not come back out of it again to an outer being except by forcible means. And Berkeley does proceed forcibly. Under no compelling necessity he traces the creativity of the “I” back to God. Earlier philosophers emptied the “I” of its content and through this gained a content for their God. Berkeley does not do this. Therefore he can do nothing other than set, beside the creative spirits, yet one more particular spirit that basically is of exactly the same kind as they and therefore completely unnecessary, after all.

[ 84 ] This is even more striking in the German philosopher Leibniz. He also recognized the creative activity of the “I.” He had a very clear overview of the scope of this activity; he saw that it was inwardly consistent, that it was founded upon itself. The “I” therefore became for him a world in itself, a monad. And everything that has existence can have it only through the fact that it gives itself a self-enclosed content. Only monads, i.e., beings creating out of and within themselves, exist: separate worlds in themselves that do not have to rely on anything outside themselves. Worlds exist, no world. Each person is a world, a monad, in himself. If now these worlds are after all in accord with one another, if they know of each other and think the contents of their knowledge, then this can only stem from the fact that a predestined accord (pre-established harmony) exists. The world, in fact, is arranged in such a way that the one monad creates out of itself something which corresponds to the activity in the others. To bring about this accord Leibniz of course again needs the old God. He has recognized that the “I” is active, creative, within his inner being, that it gives its content to itself; the fact that the “I” itself also brings this content into relationship with the other content of the world remained hidden to him. Therefore he did not free himself from the mental picture of God. Of the two demands that lie in the Goethean statement—“If I know my relationship to myself and to the outer world, then I call it truth”—Leibniz understood only the one.

[ 85 ] This development of European thought manifests a very definite character. Man must draw out of himself the best that he can know. He in fact practices self-knowledge. But he always shrinks back again from the thought of also recognizing that what he has created is in fact self-created. He feels himself to be too weak to carry the world. Therefore he saddles someone else with this burden. And the goals he sets for himself would lose their weight for him if he acknowledged their origin to himself; therefore he burdens his goals with powers that he believes he takes from outside. Man glorifies his child but without wanting to acknowledge his own fatherhood.

[ 86 ] In spite of the currents opposing it, human self-knowledge made steady progress. At the point where this self-knowledge began to threaten man's belief in the beyond, it met Kant. Insight into the nature of human knowing had shaken the power of those proofs which people had thought up to support belief in the beyond. One had gradually gained a picture of real knowledge and therefore saw through the artificiality and tortured nature of the seeming ideas that were supposed to give enlightenment about other-worldly powers. A devout, believing man like Kant could fear that a further development along this path would lead to the disintegration of all faith. This must have seemed to his deeply religious sense like a great, impending misfortune for mankind. Out of his fear of the destruction of religious mental pictures there arose for him the need to investigate thoroughly the relationship of human knowing to matters of faith. How is knowing possible and over what can it extend itself? That is the question Kant posed himself, with the hope, right from the beginning, of being able to gain from his answer the firmest possible support for faith.

[ 87 ] Kant took up two things from his predecessors. Firstly, that there is a knowledge in some areas that is indubitable. The truths of pure mathematics and the general teachings of logic and physics seem to him to be in this category. Secondly, he based himself upon Hume in his assertion that no absolutely sure truths can come from experience. Experience teaches only that we have so and so often observed certain connections; nothing can be determined by experience as to whether these connections are also necessary ones. If there are indubitable, necessary truths and if they cannot stem from experience: then from what do they stem? They must be present in the human soul before experience. Now it becomes a matter of distinguishing between the part of knowledge that stems from experience and the part that cannot be drawn from this source of knowledge. Experience occurs through the fact that I receive impressions. These impressions are given through sensations. The content of these sensations cannot be given us in any other way than through experience. But these sensations, such as light, color, tone, warmth, hardness, etc., would present only a chaotic tangle if they were not brought into certain interconnections. In these interconnections the contents of sensation first constitute the objects of experience. An object is composed of a definitely ordered group of the contents of sensation. In Kant's opinion, the human soul accomplishes the ordering of these contents of sensation into groups. Within the human soul there are certain principles present by which the manifoldness of sensations is brought into objective unities. Such principles are space, time, and certain connections such as cause and effect. The contents of sensation are given me, but not their spatial interrelationships nor temporal sequence. Man first brings these to the contents of sensation. One content of sensation is given and another one also, but not the fact that one is the cause of the other. The intellect first makes this connection. Thus there lie within the human soul, ready once and for all, the ways in which the contents of sensation can be connected. Thus, even though we can take possession of the contents of sensation only through experience, we can, nevertheless, before all experience, set up laws as to how these contents of sensation are to be connected. For, these laws are the ones given us within our own souls.

We have, therefore, necessary kinds of knowledge. But these do not relate to a content, but only to ways of connecting contents. In Kant's opinion, we will therefore never draw knowledge with any content out of the human soul's own laws. The content must come through experience. But the otherworldly objects of faith can never become the object of any experience. Therefore they also cannot be attained through our necessary knowledge. We have a knowledge from experience and another, necessary, experience-free knowledge as to how the contents of experience can be connected. But we have no knowledge that goes beyond experience. The world of objects surrounding us is as it must be in accordance with the laws of connection lying ready in our soul. Aside from these laws we do not know how this world is “in-itself.” The world to which our knowledge relates itself is no such “in-itselfness” but rather is an appearance for us.

[ 88 ] Obvious objections to these Kantian views force themselves upon the unbiased person. The difference in principle between the particulars (the contents of sensation) and the way of connecting these particulars does not consist, with respect to knowledge, in the way we connect things as Kant assumes it to. Even though one element presents itself to us from outside and the other comes forth from our inner being, both elements of knowledge nevertheless form an undivided unity. Only the abstracting intellect can separate light, warmth, hardness, etc., from spatial order, causal relationship, etc. In reality, they document, with respect to every single object, their necessary belonging together. Even the designation of the one element as “content” in contrast to the other element as a merely “connecting” principle is all warped. In truth, the knowledge that something is the cause of something else is a knowledge with just as much content as the knowledge that it is yellow. If the object is composed of two elements, one of which is given from outside and the other from within, it follows that, for our knowing activity, elements which actually belong together are communicated along two different paths. It does not follow, however, that we are dealing with two things that are different from each other and that are artificially coupled together.

Only by forcibly separating what belongs together can Kant therefore support his view. The belonging together of the two elements is most striking in knowledge of the human “I.” Here one element does not come from outside and the other from within; both arise from within. And here both are not only one content but also one completely homogeneous content.

[ 89 ] What mattered to Kant—his heart's wish that guided his thoughts far more than any unbiased observation of the real factors—was to rescue the teachings relative to the beyond. What knowledge had brought about as support for these teachings in the course of long ages had decayed. Kant believed he had now shown that it is anyway not for knowledge to support such teachings, because knowledge has to rely on experience, and the things of faith in the beyond cannot become the object of any experience. Kant believed he had thereby created a free space where knowledge could not get in his way and disrupt him as he built up there a faith in the beyond. And he demands, as a support for moral life, that one believe in the things in the beyond. Out of that realm from which no knowledge comes to us, there sounds the despotic voice of the categorical imperative which demands of us that we do the good. And in order to establish a moral realm we would in fact need all that about which knowledge can tell us nothing. Kant believed he had achieved what he wanted: “I therefore had to set knowledge aside in order to make room for faith.”

[ 90 ] The great philosopher in the development of Western thought who set out in direct pursuit of a knowledge of human self-awareness is Johann Gottlieb Fichte. It is characteristic of him that he approaches this knowledge without any presuppositions, with complete lack of bias. He has the clear, sharp awareness of the fact that nowhere in the world is a being to be found from which the “I” could be derived. It can therefore be derived only from itself. Nowhere is a power to be found from which the existence of the “I” flows. Everything the “I” needs, it can acquire only out of itself. Not only does it gain enlightenment about its own being through self-observation; it first posits this being into itself through an absolute, unconditional act. “The ‘I’ posits itself, and it is by virtue of this mere positing of itself; and conversely: The ‘I’ is, and posits its existence, by virtue of its mere existence. It is at the same time the one acting and the product of its action; the active one and what is brought forth by the activity; action and deed are one and the same; and therefore the ‘I am’ is the expression of an active deed.” Completely undisturbed by the fact that earlier philosophers have transferred the entity he is describing outside man, Fichte looks at the “I” naively. Therefore the “I” naturally becomes for him the highest being. “That whose existence (being) merely consists in the fact that it posits itself as existing is the ‘I’ as absolute subject. In the way that it posits itself, it is, and in the way that it is, it posits itself: and the ‘I’ exists accordingly for the ‘I,’ simply and necessarily. What does not exist for itself is no ‘I’ ... One certainly hears the question raised: What was I anyway, before I came to self-awareness? The obvious answer to that is: I was not at all; for I was not I... To posit oneself and to be are, for the ‘I,’ completely the same.” The complete, bright clarity about one's own “I,” the unreserved illumination of one's personal, human entity, becomes thereby the starting point of human thinking. The result of this must be that man, starting here, sets out to conquer the world. The second of the Goethean demands mentioned above, knowledge of my relationship to the world, follows upon the first—knowledge of the relationship that the “I” has to itself. This philosophy, built upon self-knowledge, will speak about both these relationships, and not about the derivation of the world from some primal being. One could now ask: Is man then supposed to set his own being in place of the primal being into which he transferred the world origins? Can man then actually make himself the starting point of the world? With respect to this it must be emphasized that this question as to the world origins stems from a lower sphere. In the sequence of the processes given us by reality, we seek the causes for the events, and then seek still other causes for the causes, and soon. We are now stretching the concept of causation. We are seeking a final cause for the whole world. And in this way the concept of the first, absolute primal being, necessary in itself, fuses for us with the idea of the world cause. But that is a mere conceptual construction. When man sets up such conceptual constructions, they do not necessarily have any justification. The concept of a flying dragon also has none. Fichte takes his start from the “I” as the primal being, and arrives at ideas that present the relationship of this primal being to the rest of the world in an unbiased way, but not under the guise of cause and effect. Starting from the “I,” Fichte now seeks to gain ideas for grasping the rest of the world. Whoever does not want to deceive himself about the nature of what one can call cognition or knowledge can proceed in no other way. Everything that man can say about the being of things is derived from the experiences of his inner being. “The human being never realizes just how anthropomorphic he is.” (Goethe) In the » explanation of the simplest phenomena, in the propulsion of one body by another, for example, there lies an anthropomorphism. The conclusion that the one body propels the other is already anthropomorphic. For, if one wants to go beyond what the senses tell us about the occurrence, one must transfer onto it the experience our body has when it sets a body in the outer world into motion. We transfer our experience of propelling something onto the occurrence in the outer world, and also speak there of propulsion when we roll one ball and as a result see a second ball go rolling. For we can observe only the movements of the two balls, and then in addition think the propulsion in the sense of our own experiences. All physical explanations are anthropomorphisms, attributing human characteristics to nature. But of course it does not follow from this what has so often been concluded from this: that these explanations have no objective significance for the things. A part of the objective content lying within the things, in fact, first appears when we shed that light upon it which we perceive in our own inner being.

[ 91 ] Whoever, in Fichte's sense, bases the being of the “I” entirely upon itself can also find the sources of moral action only within the “I” alone. The “I” cannot seek harmony with some other being, but only with itself. It does not allow its destiny to be prescribed, but rather gives any such destiny to itself. Act according to the basic principle that you can regard your actions as the most worthwhile possible. That is about how one would have to express the highest principle of Fichte's moral teachings. “The essential character of the ‘I,’ in which it distinguishes itself from everything that is outside it, consists in a tendency toward self-activity for the sake of self-activity; and it is this tendency that is thought when the ‘I,’ in and for itself, without any relationship to something outside it, is thought.” An action therefore stands on an ever higher level of moral value, the more purely it flows from the self-activity and self-determination of the “I.”

[ 92 ] In his later life Fichte changed his self-reliant, absolute “I” back into an external God again; he therefore sacrificed true self-knowledge, toward which he had taken so many important steps, to that self-renunciation which stems from human weakness. The last books of Fichte are therefore of no significance for the progress of this self-knowledge.

[ 93 ] The philosophical writings of Schiller, however, are important for this progress. Whereas Fichte expressed the self-reliant independence of the “I” as a general philosophical truth, Schiller was more concerned with answering the question as to how the particular “I” of the simple human individuality could live out this self-activity in the best way within itself.

Kant had expressly demanded the suppression of pleasure as a pre-condition for moral activity. Man should not carry out what brings him satisfaction; but rather what the categorical imperative demands of him. According to his view an action is all the more moral the more it is accomplished with the quelling of all feeling of pleasure, out of mere heed to strict moral law. For Schiller this diminishes human worth. Is man in his desire for pleasure really such a low being that he must first extinguish this base nature of his in order to be virtuous? Schiller criticizes any such degradation of man in the satirical epigram (Xenie):

Gladly I serve all my friends, but do so alas out of liking;
Therefore it rankles me often that I'm not a virtuous man.

No, says Schiller, human instincts are capable of such ennobling that it is a pleasure to do the good. The strict “ought to” transforms itself in the ennobled man into a free “wanting to.” And someone who with pleasure accomplishes what is moral stands higher on the moral world scale than someone who must first do violence to his own being in order to obey the categorical imperative.

[ 94 ] Schiller elaborated this view of his in his Letters on the Aesthetic Education of the Human Race. There hovers before him the picture of a free individuality who can calmly give himself over to his egoistical drives because these drives, out of themselves, want what can be accomplished by the unfree, ignoble personality only when it suppresses its own needs. The human being, as Schiller expressed it, can be unfree in two respects: firstly, if he is able to follow only his blind, lower instincts. Then he acts out of necessity. His drives compel him; he is not free. Secondly, however, that person also acts unfreely who follows only his reason. For, reason sets up principles of behavior according to logical rules. A person who merely follows reason acts unfreely because he subjugates himself to logical necessity. Only that person acts freely out of himself for whom what is reasonable has united so deeply with his individuality , has gone over so fully into his flesh and blood, that he carries out with the greatest pleasure what someone standing morally less high can accomplish only through the most extreme self-renunciation and the strongest compulsion.

[ 95 ] Friedrich Joseph Schelling wanted to extend the path Fichte had taken. Schelling took his start from the unbiased knowledge of the “I” that his predecessor had achieved. The “I” was recognized as a being that draws its existence out of itself. The next task was to bring nature into a relationship with this self-reliant “I.” It is clear: If the “I” is not to transfer the actual higher being of things into the outer world again, then it must be shown that the “I,” out of itself, also creates what we call the laws of nature. The structure of nature must therefore be the material system, outside in space, of what the “I,” within its inner being, creates in a spiritual way. “Nature must be visible spirit, and spirit must be invisible nature. Here, therefore, in the absolute identity of the spirit in us and of nature outside of us, must the problem be solved as to how a nature outside of us is possible.” “The outer world lies open before us, in order for us to find in it again the history of our spirit.”

[ 96 ] Schelling, therefore, sharply illuminates the process that the philosophers have interpreted wrongly for so long. He shows that out of one being the clarifying light must fall upon all the processes of the world; that the “I” can recognize one being in all happenings; but he no longer sets forth this being as something lying outside the “I”; he sees it within the “I.” The “I” finally feels itself to be strong enough to enliven the content of world phenomena from out of itself. The way in which Schelling presented nature in detail as a material development out of the “I” does not need to be discussed here. The important thing in this essay is to show in what way the “I” has reconquered for itself the sphere of influence which, in the course of the development of Western thought, it had ceded to an entity that it had itself created. For this reason Schelling's other writings also do not need to be considered in this context. At best they add only details to the question we are examining. Exactly like Fichte, Schelling abandons clear self-knowledge again, and seeks then to trace the things flowing from the self back to other beings. The later teachings of both thinkers are reversions to views which they had completely overcome in an earlier period of life.

[ 97 ] The philosophy of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel is a further bold attempt to explain the world on the basis of a content lying within the “I.” Hegel sought, comprehensively and thoroughly, to investigate and present the whole content of what Fichte, in incomparable words to be sure, had characterized: the being of the human “I.” For Hegel also regards this being as the actual primal thing, as the “in-itselfness of things.” But Hegel does something peculiar. He divests the “I” of everything individual, personal. In spite of the fact that it is a genuine true “I” which Hegel takes as a basis for world phenomena, this “I” seems impersonal, unindividual, far from an intimate, familiar “I,” almost like a god. In just such an unapproachable, strictly abstract form does Hegel, in his logic, expound upon the content of the in-itselfness of the world. The most personal thinking is presented here in the most impersonal way. According to Hegel, nature is nothing other than the content of the “I” that has been spread out in space and time. Nature is this ideal content in a different state. “Nature is spirit estranged from itself.” Within the individual human spirit Hegel's stance toward the impersonal “I” is personal. Within self-consciousness, the being of the “I” is not an in-itself, it is also for-itself; the human spirit discovers that the highest world content is his own content.

Because Hegel seeks to grasp the being of the “I” at first impersonally, he also does not designate it as “I,” but rather as idea. But Hegel's idea is nothing other than the content of the human “I” freed of all personal character. This abstracting of everything personal manifests most strongly in Hegel's views about the spiritual life, the moral life. It is not the single, personal, individual “I” of man that can decide its own destiny, but rather it is the great, objective, impersonal world “I,” which is abstracted from man's individual “I”; it is the general world reason, the world idea. The individual “I” must submit to this abstraction drawn from its own being. The world idea has instilled the objective spirit into man's legal, state, and moral institutions, into the historical process. Relative to this objective spirit, the individual is inferior, coincidental. Hegel never tires of emphasizing again and again that the chance, individual “I” must incorporate itself into the general order, into the historical course of spiritual evolution. It is the despotism of the spirit over the bearer of this spirit that Hegel demands.

[ 98 ] It is a strange last remnant of the old belief in God and in the beyond that still appears here in Hegel. All the attributes with which the human “I,” turned into an outer ruler of the world, was once endowed have been dropped, and only the attribute of logical generality remains. The Hegelian world idea is the human “I,” and Hegel's teachings recognize this expressly, for at the pinnacle of culture man arrives at the point, according to this teaching, of feeling his full identity with this world “I.” In art, religion, and philosophy man seeks to incorporate into his particular existence what is most general; the individual spirit permeates itself with the general world reason. Hegel portrays the course of world history in the following way: “If we look at the destiny of world-historical individuals, they have had the good fortune to be the managing directors of a purpose that was one stage in the progress of the general spirit. One can call it a trick of world reason for it to use these human tools; for it allows them to carry out their own purposes with all the fury of their passion, and yet remains not only unharmed itself but even brings forth itself. The particular is usually too insignificant compared to the general: individuals are sacrificed and abandoned. World history thus presents itself as the battle of individuals, and in the field of this particularization, things take their completely natural course. Just as in animal nature the preservation of life is the purpose and instinct of the individual creature, and just as here, after all, reason, the general, predominates and the individuals fall, thus so do things in the spiritual world also take their course. The passions mutually destroy each other; only reason is awake, pursues its purpose, and prevails.” But for Hegel, the highest level of development of human culture is also not presented in this sacrificing of the particular individuals to the good of general world reason, but rather in the complete interpenetration of the two. In art, religion, and philosophy, the individual works in such a way that his work is at the same time a content of the general world reason. With Hegel, through the factor of generality that he laid into the world “I,” the subordination of the separate human “I” to this world “I” still remained.

[ 99 ] Ludwig Feuerbach sought to put an end to this subordination by stating in powerful terms how man transfers the being of his “I” into the outer world in order then to place himself over against it, acknowledging, obeying, revering it as though it were a God. “God is the revealed inner being, the expressed self, of man; religion is the festive disclosing of the hidden treasures of man, the confessing of his innermost thoughts, the public declaration of his declarations of love.” But even Feuerbach has not yet cleansed the idea of this “I” of the factor of generality. For him the general human “I” is something higher than the individual, single “I.” And even though as a thinker he does not, like Hegel, objectify this general “I” into a cosmic being existing in itself, still, in the moral context, over against the single human being, he does set up the general concept of a generic man, and demands that the individual should raise himself above the limitations of his individuality.

[ 100 ] Max Stirner, in his book The Individual and What Is His (Der Einzige und sein Eigentum), published in 1844, demanded of the “I” in a radical way that it finally recognize that all the beings it has set above itself in the course of time were cut by it from its own body and set up in the outer world as idols. Every god, every general world reason, is an image of the “I” and has no characteristics different from the human “I.” And even the concept of the general “I” was extracted from the completely individual “I” of every single person.

[ 101 ] Stirner calls upon man to throw off everything general about himself and to acknowledge to himself that he is an individual. “You are indeed more than a Jew, more than a Christian, etc., but you are also more than a man. Those are all ideas; you, however, are in the flesh. Do you really believe, therefore, that you can ever become ‘man as such’?” “I am man! I do not first have to produce man in myself, because he already belongs to me as all my characteristics do.” “Only I am not an abstraction alone; I am the all in all;... I am no mere thought, but I am at the same time full of thoughts, a thought-world. Hegel condemns what is one's own, what is mine ... ‘Absolute thinking’ is that thinking which forgets that it is my thinking, that I think, and that thinking exists only through me. As ‘I,’ however, I again swallow what is mine, am master over it; it is only my opinion that I can change at every moment, i.e., that I can destroy, that I can take back into myself and can devour.” “The thought is only my own when I can indeed subjugate it, but it can never subjugate me, never fanaticize me and make me the tool of its realization.” All the beings placed over the “I” finally shatter upon the knowledge that they have only been brought into the world by the “I.” “The beginning of my thinking, namely, is not a thought, but rather I, and therefore I am also its goal, just as its whole course is then only the course of my self-enjoyment.”

[ 102 ] In Stirner's sense, one should not want to define the individual “I” by a thought, by an idea. For, ideas are something general; and through any such definition, the individual—at least logically—would thus be subordinated at once to something general. One can define everything else in the world by ideas, but we must experience our own “I” as something individual within us. Everything that is expressed about the individual in thoughts cannot take up his content into itself; it can only point to it. One says: Look into yourself; there is something for which any concept, any idea, is too poor to encompass in all its incarnate wealth, something that brings forth the ideas out of itself, but that itself has an inexhaustible spring within itself whose content is infinitely more extensive than everything this something brings forth. Stirner's response is: “The individual is a word and with a word one would after all have to be able to think something; a word would after all have to have a thought-content. But the individual is a word without thought; it has no thought-content. But what is its content then if not thought? Its content is one that cannot be there a second time and that consequently can also not be expressed, for if it could be expressed, really and entirely expressed, then it would be there a second time, would be there in the ‘expression’... only when nothing of you is spoken out and you are only named, are you recognized as you. As long as something of you is spoken out, you will be recognized only as this something (man, spirit, Christian, etc.).” The individual “I” is therefore that which is everything it is only through itself, which draws the content of its existence out of itself and continuously expands this content from out of itself.

This individual “I” can acknowledge no ethical obligation that it does not lay upon itself. “Whether what I think and do is Christian, what do I care? Whether it is human, liberal, humane, or inhuman, unliberal, inhumane, I don't ask about that. If it only aims at what I want, if I satisfy only myself in it, then call it whatever you like: it's all the same to me ...” “Perhaps, in the very next moment I will turn against my previous thought; I also might very well change my behavior suddenly; but not because it does not correspond to what is Christian, not because it goes against eternal human rights, not because it hits the idea of mankind, humanity, humaneness in the face, but rather—because I am no longer involved, because I no longer enjoy it fully, because I doubt my earlier thought, or I am no longer happy with my recent behavior.” The way Stirner speaks about love from this point of view is characteristic. “I also love people, not merely some of them but everyone. But I love them with the consciousness of egoism; I love them because love makes me happy; I love because loving is natural for me, because I like it. I know no ‘commandment of love’ ...” To this sovereign individual, all state, social, and church organizations are fetters. For, all organizations presuppose that the individual must be like this or like that so that it can fit into the community. But the individual will not let it be determined for him by the community how he should be. He wants to make himself into this or that. J. H. Mackay, in his book Max Stirner, His Life and Work, has expressed what matters to Stirner: “The annihilation, in the first place, of those foreign powers which seek in the most varied ways to suppress and destroy the “I”; and in the second place, the presentation of the relationships of our intercourse with each other, how they result from the conflict and harmony of our interests.” The individual cannot fulfill himself in an organized community, but only in free intercourse or association. He acknowledges no societal structure set over the individual as a power. In him everything occurs through the individual. There is nothing fixed within him. What occurs is always to be traced back to the will of the individual. No one and nothing represents a universal will. Stirner does not want society to care for the individual, to protect his rights, to foster his well-being, and so on. When the organization is taken away from people, then their intercourse regulates itself on its own. “I would rather have to rely on people's self-interest than on their ‘service of love,’ their compassion, their pity, etc. Self-interest demands reciprocity (as you are to me, thus I am to you), does nothing ‘for nothing,’ and lets itself be won and—bought.” Let human intercourse have its full freedom and it will unrestrictedly create that reciprocity which you could set up through a community after all, only in a restricted way. “Neither a natural nor a spiritual tie holds a society (Verein) together, and it is no natural nor spiritual association (Bund). It is not blood nor a belief (i.e., spirit) that brings it about. In a natural association—such as a family, a tribe, a nation; yes, even mankind—individuals have value only as specimens of a species or genus; in a spiritual association—such as a community or church—the individual is significant only as a part of the common spirit; in both cases, what you are as an individual must be suppressed. Only in a society can you assert yourself as an individual, because the society does not possess you, but rather you possess it or use it.”

[ 103 ] The path by which Stirner arrived at his view of the individual can be designated as a universal critique of all general powers that suppress the “I.” The churches, the political systems (political liberalism, social liberalism, humanistic liberalism), the philosophies—they have all set such general powers over the individual. Political liberalism establishes the “good citizen”; social liberalism establishes the worker who is like all the others in what they own in common; humanistic liberalism establishes the “human being as human being.” As he destroys all these powers, Stirner sets up in their ruins the sovereignty of the individual. “What all is not supposed to be my cause! Above all the good cause, then God's cause, the cause of mankind, of truth, of freedom, of humaneness, of justice; furthermore the cause of my folk, of my prince, of my fatherland; finally, of course, the cause of the spirit and a thousand other causes. Only my cause is never supposed to be my cause.—Let us look then at how those people handle their cause for whose cause we are supposed to work, to devote ourselves, and to wax enthusiastic. You know how to proclaim many basic things about God, and for thousands of years have investigated ‘the depths of the Divinity’ and looked into His heart, so that you are very well able to tell us how God Himself conducts ‘the cause of God’ that we are called to serve. And you also do not keep the Lord's conduct secret. What is His cause then? Has He, as is expected of us, made a foreign cause, the cause of truth and love, into His own? Such lack of understanding enrages you and you teach us that God's cause is, to be sure, the cause of truth and love, but that this cause cannot be called foreign to Him because God is Himself, in fact, truth and love; you are enraged by the assumption that God could be like us poor worms in promoting a foreign cause as His own. ‘God is supposed to take on the cause of truth when He is not Himself the truth?’ He takes care only of His cause, but because He is the all in all, everything is also His cause; we, however, we are not the all in all, and our cause is small and contemptible indeed; therefore we must ‘serve a higher cause.’—Now, it is clear that God concerns Himself only with what is His, occupies Himself only with Himself, thinks only about Himself, and has His eye on Himself; woe to anything that is not well pleasing to Him. He serves nothing higher and satisfies only Himself. His cause is a purely egoistical cause. How do matters stand with mankind, whose cause we are supposed to make into our own? Is its cause perhaps that of another, and does mankind serve a higher cause? No, mankind looks only at itself, mankind wants to help only mankind, mankind is itself its cause. In order to develop itself, mankind lets peoples and individuals torment themselves in its service, and when they have accomplished what mankind needs, then, out of gratitude, they are thrown by it onto the manure pile of history. Is the cause of mankind not a purely egoistical cause?” Out of this kind of a critique of everything that man is supposed to make into his cause, there results for Stirner that “God and mankind have founded their cause on nothing but themselves. I will then likewise found my cause upon myself, I, who like God am nothing from anything else, I, who am my all, I who am the single one.”

[ 104 ] That is Stirner's path. One can also take another path to arrive at the nature of the “I.” One can observe the “I” in its cognitive activity. Direct your gaze upon a process of knowledge. Through a thinking contemplation of processes, the “I” seeks to become conscious of what actually underlies these processes. What does one want to achieve by this thinking contemplation? To answer this question we must observe: What would we possess of these processes without this contemplation, and what do we obtain through this contemplation? I must limit myself here to a meager sketch of these fundamental questions about world views, and can point only to the broader expositions in my books Truth and Science (Wahrheit und Wissenschaft) and The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity (Die Philosophie der Freiheit).

[ 105 ] Look at any process you please. I throw a stone in a horizontal direction. It moves in a curved line and falls to earth after a time. I see the stone at successive moments in different places, after it has first cost me a certain amount of effort to throw it. Through my thinking contemplation I gain the following. During its motion the stone is under the influence of several factors. If it were only under the influence of the propulsion I gave it in throwing it, it would go on forever, in a straight line, in fact, without changing its velocity. But now the earth exerts an influence upon it which one calls gravity. If, without propelling it away from me, I had simply let go of it, it would have fallen straight to the ground, and in doing so its velocity would have increased continuously. Out of the reciprocal workings of these two influences there arises what actually happens. Those are all thought-considerations that I bring to what would offer itself to me without any thinking contemplation.

[ 106 ] In this way we have in every cognitive process an element that would present itself to us even without any thinking contemplation, and another element that we can gain only through such thinking contemplation.

When we have then gained both elements, it is clear to us that they belong together. A process runs its course in accordance with the laws that I gain about it through my thinking. The fact that for me the two elements are separated and are joined together by my cognition is my affair. The process does not bother about this separation and joining. From this it follows, however, that the activity of knowing is altogether my affair. Something that I bring about solely for my own sake.

[ 107 ] Yet another factor enters in here now. The things and processes would never, out of themselves, give me what I gain about them through my thinking contemplation. Out of themselves they give me, in fact, what I possess without that contemplation. It has already been stated in this essay that I take out of myself what I see in the things as their deepest being. The thoughts I make for myself about the things, these I produce out of my own inner being. They nevertheless belong to the things, as has been shown. The essential being of the things does not therefore come to me from them, but rather from me. My content is their essential being. I would never come to ask about the essential being of the things at all if I did not find present within me something I designate as this essential being of the things, designate as what belongs to them, but designate as what they do not give me out of themselves, but rather what I can take only out of myself.

Within the cognitive process I receive the essential being of the things from out of myself. I therefore have the essential being of the world within myself. Consequently I also have my own essential being within myself. With other things two factors appear to me: a process without its essential being and the essential being through me. With myself, process and essential being are identical. I draw forth the essential being of all the rest of the world out of myself, and I also draw forth my own essential being from myself.

[ 108 ] Now my action is a part of the general world happening. It therefore has its essential being as much within me as all other happenings. To seek the laws of human action means, therefore, to draw them forth out of the content of the “I.” Just as the believer in God traces the laws of his actions back to the will of his God, so the person who has attained the insight that the essential being of all things lies within the “I” can also find the laws of his action only within the “I.” If the “I” has really penetrated into the essential nature of its action, it then feels itself to be the ruler of this action. As long as we believe in a world-being foreign to us, the laws of our action also stand over against us as foreign. They rule us; what we accomplish stands under the compulsion they exercise over us. If they are transformed from such foreign beings into our “I's” primally own doing, then this compulsion ceases. That which compels has become our own being. The lawfulness no longer rules over us, but rather rules within us over the happenings that issue from our “I.” To bring about a process by virtue of a lawfulness standing outside the doer is an act of inner unfreedom; to do so out of the doer himself is an act of inner freedom. To give oneself the laws of one's actions out of oneself means to act as a free individual. The consideration of the cognitive process shows the human being that he can find the laws of his action only within himself.

[ 109 ] To comprehend the “I” in thinking means to create the basis for founding everything that comes from the “I” also upon the “I” alone. The “I” that understands itself can make itself dependent upon nothing other than itself. And it can be answerable to no one but itself. After these expositions it seems almost superfluous to say that with this “I” only the incarnate real “I” of the individual person is meant and not any general “I” abstracted from it. For any such general “I” can indeed be gained from the real “I” only by abstraction. It is thus dependent upon the real individual. (Benj. R. Tucker and J. H. Mackay also advocate the same direction in thought and view of life out of which my two above-mentioned books have arisen. See Tucker's Instead of a Book and Mackay's The Anarchists.

[ 1110 ] In the eighteenth century and in the greater part of the nineteenth, man's thinking made every effort to win for the “I” its place in the universe. Two thinkers who are already keeping aloof from this direction are Arthur Schopenhauer and Eduard von Hartmann, who is still vigorously working among us. Neither any longer transfers the full being of our “I,” which we find present in our consciousness, as primal being into the outer world. Schopenhauer regarded one part of this “I,” the will, as the essential being of the world, and Hartmann sees the unconscious to be this being. Common to both of them is this striving to subordinate the “I” to their assumed general world-being. On the other hand, as the last of the strict individualists, Friedrich Nietzsche, taking his start from Schopenhauer, did arrive at views that definitely lead to the path of absolute appreciation of the individual “I.” In his opinion, genuine culture consists in fostering the individual in such a way that he has the strength out of himself to develop everything lying within him. Up until now it was only an accident if an individual was able to develop himself fully out of himself. “This more valuable type has already been there often enough: but as a happy chance, as an exception, never as willed. Rather he was precisely the one feared the most; formerly he was almost the fearful thing;—and out of fear, the opposite type was willed, bred, attained: the domestic animal, the herd animal, the sick animal man, the Christian ...” Nietzsche transfigured poetically, as his ideal, his type of man in his Zarathustra. He calls him the Superman (Übermensch). He is man freed from all norms, who no longer wants to be the mere image of God, a being in whom God is well pleased, a good citizen, and so on, but rather who wants to be himself and nothing more—the pure and absolute egoist.

• 1. Throughout this essay, “ideal” usually means “in the form of ideas.” –Ed.
• 2. Second Chapter of Representative Men, “Plato; or the Philosopher”

[ 1 ] Besides the current of world conception that, through the idea of evolution, wants to bring the conception of the phenomena of nature and that of the spirit into complete unity, there is another that expresses their opposition in the strongest possible form. This current also springs from natural science. Its followers ask, “What is our basis as we construct a world conception by means of thinking? We hear, see and touch the physical world through our senses. We then think about the facts that our senses supply concerning that world. We form our thoughts accordingly concerning the world at the testimony of the senses. But are the statements of our senses really to be trusted?”

Let us consult actual observations. The eye conveys to us the phenomena of light. We say an object sends us red light when the eye has the sensation of red. But the eye conveys sensations of light to us also in other cases. When it is pushed or pressed, or when an electric current flows through our head, the eye also has sensations of light. It is, therefore, possible that in cases in which we have the sensation of a light-sending body, something could go on in that object that has no semblance to our sensation of light. The eye, nevertheless, would transmit light to us.

The physiologist, Johannes Mueller (1801–58), drew the conclusion from these facts that what man has as his actual sensation does not depend on the external processes but on his organization. Our nerves transmit sensations to us. As we do not have the sensation of the knife that cuts us but a state of our nerves that appears to us as pain, so we also do not have a sensation of the external world when something appears to us as light. What we then really have is a state of our optic nerve. Whatever may happen outside, the optic nerve translates this external event into the sensation of light. “The sensation is not a process that transmits a quality or a state of an external object to our consciousness but one that transmits a quality, a state of our nerves caused by an external event, to our consciousness. This Johannes Mueller called “the law of specific sense energies.” If that is correct, then our observations contain nothing of the external world but only the sum of our own inner conditions. What we perceive has nothing to do with the external world; it is a product of our own organization. We really perceive only what is in us.

[ 2 ] Natural scientists of great renown regarded this thought as an irrefutable basis of their world conception. Hermann Helmholtz (1821–94) considered it as the Kantian thought—that all our knowledge had reference only to processes within ourselves, not to things in themselves—translated into the language of natural science (compare Vol. I of this book). Helmholtz was of the opinion that the world of our sensations supplies us merely with the signs of the physical processes in the world outside.

I have been convinced that it is necessary to formulate the relation between the sensation and its object by declaring the sensation to be merely the sign of the effect of the object. The nature of the sign demands only that the same sign be always given to the same object. Beyond this requirement there is no more similarity necessary between the sensation and its object than between the spoken word and the object that we denote with it. We cannot even call our sense impression pictures, for a picture depicts the same by the same. In a statue we represent one bodily form through another bodily form; in a drawing we express the perspective view of an object by the same perspective in the picture; in a painting we depict color through color.

[ 3 ] Our sensations, therefore, must differ more from the events they represent than pictures differ from the objects they depict. In our sensual world picture we have nothing objective but a completely subjective element, which we ourselves produce under the stimulation of the effects of an external world that never penetrates into us. This mode of conception is supported from another side by the physicist's view of the phenomena of sensation. A sound that we hear draws our attention to a body in the external world, the parts of which are in a certain state of motion. A stretched string vibrates and we hear a tone. The string transmits the vibrations to the air. They spread and reach our ear; a tone sensation is transmitted to us. The physicist investigates the laws according to which the physical particles outside move while we hear these tones. He finds that the subjective tone sensation is based on the objective motion of the physical particles. Similar relations are observed by the physicist with respect to the sensations of light. Light is also based on motion, only this motion is not transmitted by the vibrating particles of the air, but by the vibrations of the ether, the thinnest matter that fills the whole space of the universe. By every light-emitting body, the ether is put into the state of undulatory vibrations that spread and meet the retina of our eye and excite the optic nerve, which then produces the sensation of light within us. What in our world picture appears as light and color is motion outside in space. Schleiden expresses this view in the following words:

The light outside ourselves in nature is motion of the ether. A motion can be slow and fast; it can have this or that direction, but there is obviously no sense in speaking of light or dark, of green or red motion. In short, outside ourselves, outside the beings who have the sensation, there is no such thing as bright and dark, nor are there any colors.

[ 4 ] The physicist expels colors and light from the external world because he finds only motion in it. The physiologist feels that he is forced to withdraw them into the soul because he is of the opinion that the nerve indicates only its own state of irritation no matter what might have excited it. The view that is given with these presuppositions is sharply delineated by Hippolyte Taine (1828–93) in his book, Reason. The external perception is, according to his opinion, nothing but hallucination. A person who, under the influence of hallucination, perceives a death skull three steps in front of him, has exactly the same perception as someone who receives the light rays sent out by a real skull. It is the same inner phantom that exists within us no matter whether we are confronted with a real skull or whether we have a hallucination. The only difference between the one perception and the other is that in one case the hand stretched out toward the object will grasp empty air, whereas in the other case it will meet some solid resistance. The sense of touch then supports the sense of sight. But does this support really represent an irrefutable testimony? What is correct for one sense is also valid for the other. The sensations of touch can also turn out to be hallucinations.

The anatomist Henle expresses the same view in his Anthropological Lectures (1876) in the following way:

Everything through which we believe to be informed about an external world consists merely of forms of our consciousness for which the external world supplies merely the exciting cause, the stimulus, in the language of the physiologists. The external world has no colors, tones and tastes. What it really contains we learn only indirectly or not at all. How the external world affects a sense, we merely conclude from its behavior toward the other senses. We can, for instance, in the case of a tone, see the vibrations of the tuning fork with our eyes and feel it with our fingers. The nature of certain stimuli, which reveal themselves only to the one sense, as, for instance, the stimuli of the sense of smell, is still inaccessible to us. The number of the properties of matter depends on the number and on the keenness of the senses. Whoever lacks a sense loses a group of properties without a chance of regaining them. A person who would have an extra sense would have an organ to grasp qualities of which we have no other inkling than the blind man has of color.

[ 5 ] If one glances over the physiological literature from the second half of the nineteenth century, one sees that this view of the subjective nature of the world picture of our perceptions has gained increasing acceptance. Time and again one comes across variations of the thought that is expressed by J. Rosenthal in his General Physiology of Muscles and Nerves (1877). “The sensations that we receive through external impressions are not dependent on the nature of these impressions but on the nature of our nerve cells. We have no sensation of what exerts its effect on our body but only of the processes in our brain.”

[ 6 ] To what extent our subjective world picture can be said to give us an indication of the objective external world, is expressed by Helmholtz in his Physiological Optics:

To ask the question if cinnabar is really red as we see it or if this is only a sense deception is meaningless. A red-blind person will see cinnabar as black or in a dark yellow-gray shade; this is also a correct reaction for the special nature of his eye. He must only know that his eye happens to be different from that of other people. In itself one sensation is neither more nor less correct or incorrect than the other, even if the people who see the red have the great majority on their side. The red color of cinnabar exists only insofar as the majority of men have eyes that are of a similar nature. One can say with exactly the same right that it is a quality of cinnabar to be black for red-blind people. It is a different question, however, if we maintain that the wave length of light that is reflected by cinnabar has a certain length. This statement, which we can make without reference to the special nature of our eye, is only concerned with the relations of the substance and the various systems of ether waves.

[ 7 ] It is apparent that for such a conception all phenomena of the world are divided into two completely separated parts, into a world of motions that is independent of the special nature of our faculty of perception, and a world of subjective states that are there only within the perceiving subjects. This view has been expressed sharply and pointedly by the physiologist, Du Bois-Reymond (1818–96), in his lecture, On the Limits of Natural Science, which he gave at the forty-fifth assembly of German naturalists and physicians on August 14, 1872 in Leipzig. Natural science is the reduction of processes we perceive in the world to motions of the smallest physical particles of a “dissolution of natural processes into mechanics of atoms,” for it is a “psychological fact of experience that, wherever such a dissolution is successful” our need for explanation is for the time being satisfied. Moreover, it is a known fact that our nervous system and our brain are of a material nature. The processes that take place within them can also be only processes of motion. When sound or light waves are transmitted to my sense organs and from there to my brain, they can here also be nothing but motions. I can only say that in my brain a certain process of motion goes on, and I have simultaneously the sensation “red.” For if it is meaningless to say of cinnabar that it is red, it is not less meaningless to say of a motion of the brain particles that it is bright or dark, green or red. “Mute and dark in itself, that is to say, without qualities,” such is the world according to the view that has been obtained through the natural scientific conception, which

...knows instead of sound and light only vibrations of a property-free fundamental matter that now can be weighed and then again is imponderable. . . . The Mosaic word, “And there was light,” is physiologically incorrect. Light came into being only when the first red eye spot of the infusoria differentiated for the first time between light and darkness. Without the substance of the optic and auditory sense this world, glowing in colors and resounding around us, would be dark and silent. (Limits of Natural Science.)

Through the processes in the substance of our optic and auditory senses a resounding and colorful world is, according to this view, magically called into existence. The dark and silent world is physical; the sounding and colorful one is psychic. Whereby does the latter arise out of the former; how does motion change into sensation? This is where we meet, according to Du Bois-Reymond, one of the “limits of natural science.” In our brain and in the external world there are only motions; in our soul, sensations appear. We shall never be able to understand how the one can arise out of the other.

At first sight it appears is if, through the knowledge of material processes in the brain, certain processes and latent abilities can become understandable. I am thinking of our memory, the stream of the association of our thought pictures, the effect of exercise, specific talents and so forth. But a little concentration at this point tells us that this view is an error. We would only learn something concerning the inner conditions of our mental life that are approximately of the same nature as our sense impressions, but we should learn nothing that would explain how the mental life comes into existence through these conditions. What possible connections can there be between certain motions of certain atoms in my brain, on the one hand, and, on the other, such undeniable and undefinable facts expressed by the words: I feel pain; I am delighted; I taste something sweet, smell the scent of roses, hear the sound of an organ, see red, and also the certainty that immediately follows from all this, Therefore I am. It is altogether incomprehensible that it should not be a matter of perfect indifference to a number of atoms of carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, etc., what their position is and how they move, how this has been and how it will be.

There is no bridge for our knowledge that leads from motion to sensation. This is the credo of Du Bois-Reymond. From motion in the material world we cannot come into the psychical world of sensations. We know that sensation arises from matter in motion, but we do not know how this is possible. Also, in the world of motion we cannot go beyond motion. For our subjective perceptions we can point at certain forms of motions because we can infer the course of these motions from the process of our perceptions, but we have no conception of what it is that is moving outside in space. We say that matter moves. We follow its motions as we watch the reactions of our sensations, but as we do not observe the object in motion but only a subjective sign of it, we can never know what matter is. Du Bois-Reymond is of the opinion that we might be able to solve the riddle of sensation if the riddle of matter were disclosed. If we knew what matter is, we should probably also know how it produces sensations, but both riddles are inaccessible to our knowledge. Du Bois-Reymond meant to check those who wanted to go beyond this limit with the words, “Just let them try the only alternative that is left, namely, supra-naturalism, but be sure that science ends where supra-naturalism begins.”

[ 8 ] The results of modern natural science are two sharply marked opposites. One of them is the current of monism. It gives the impression of penetrating directly from natural science to the most significant problems of world conception. The other declares itself incapable of proceeding any further with the means of natural science than to the insight that to a certain subjective state there is a certain corresponding process of motion. The representatives of the two currents vehemently oppose each other. Du Bois-Reymond rejected Haeckel's History of Creation as fiction (compare Du Bois-Reymond's speech, Darwin versus Galiani). The ancestral trees that Haeckel constructs on the basis of comparative anatomy, ontogeny and paleontology appear to Du Bois-Reymond to be of “approximately the same value as are the ancestral trees of the Homeric heroes in the eyes of historical criticism.” Haeckel, on the other hand, considers the view of Du Bois-Reymond to be an unscientific dilettantism that must naturally give support to the reactionary world conceptions. The jubilation of the spiritualists over Du Bois-Reymond's “Limitation Speech” was so much the more resonant and justified, as Du Bois-Reymond had, up to that time, been considered an important representative of the principle of scientific materialism.

[ 9 ] What captivates many people in the idea of dividing the world dualistically into external processes of motion and inner, subjective processes of sensation and perception is the possibility of an application of mathematics to the external processes. If one assumes material particles (atoms) with energies to exist, one can calculate in which way such atoms have to move under the influence of these energies. What is so attractive in astronomy with its methods of strict calculations is carried into the smallest elements. The astronomer determines the motion of the celestial bodies by calculating the laws of the mechanics of the heavens. In the discovery of the planet Neptune we experienced a triumph of the mechanism of the heavens. One can also reduce the motions that take place in the external world when we hear a tone and see a color to laws that govern the motions of the celestial bodies. Possibly one will be able in the future to calculate the motion that goes on in our brain while we form the judgment, two times two is four. The moment when everything that can be expressed in mathematical formulas has been calculated will be the one in which the world has been explained mathematically. Laplace has given a captivating description of the ideal of such an explanation of the world in his Essai Philosophique sur les Probabilités (1814):

A mind that would know for a given moment all forces that activate nature as well as the mutual position of the entities of which nature consists would, if its power of comprehension were otherwise sufficient, comprehend in the same formula the motions of the largest celestial body and of the lightest atom. Nothing would be uncertain for such a mind, and the future as well as the past would be within the scope of its perfect and immediate knowledge. Man's power of reasoning offers, with the perfection that it has given to astronomy, a feeble imitation of such a mind.

Du Bois-Reymond says in connection with these words:

As the astronomer predicts the day on which a comet reemerges from the depth of world space after years in the firmament of heaven, so would this mind read in its calculation the day when the Greek cross will shine from the mosque of the Hagia Sophia and when England will burn its last coal.

[ 10 ] There can be no doubt that even the most perfect mathematical knowledge of a process of motion would not enlighten me with regard to the question of why this motion appears to me as a red color. When one ball hits another, we can explain the direction of the second ball but we cannot in this way determine how a certain motion produces the red color. All we can say is that when a certain motion is given, a certain color is also given. While we can explain, apparently, as opposed to merely describe, what can be determined through calculation, we cannot go beyond a mere description in anything that defies calculation.

[ 11 ] A significant confession was made by Gustav Robert Kirchhoff (1824–87) when, in 1874, he defined the task of mechanics: “It is to describe the motions occurring in nature in the most complete and simple way.” Mechanics applies mathematics. Kirchhoff confesses that with the help of mathematics no more can be obtained than a complete and simple description of the processes in nature.

To those personalities who demand of an explanation something essentially more than just a description according to certain points of view, the confession of Kirchhoff could serve as a confirmation of their belief that there are “limits to our knowledge of nature.” Referring to Kirchhoff, Du Bois-Reymond praises the wise reserve of the master, who characterizes the task of mechanics as that of describing the motions of the bodies, and places this in contrast to Ernst Haeckel, who “speaks of atom souls.”

[ 12 ] An important attempt to base his world conception on the idea that all our perceptions are merely the result of our own organization has been made by Friedrich Albert Lange (1828–73) with his History of Materialism (1864). He had the boldness and consistency of thought that does not allow itself to be blocked by any obstacle but follows its fundamental conception to its last conclusion. Lange's strength lay in a forceful character that was expressed in many directions. His was a personality able to take up many things, and he had sufficient ability to carry them out.

[ 13 ] One important enterprise was his renewal of Kant's conception that, with the support of modern natural science, we perceive things not as they require it, but as our organization demands it. Lange did not really produce any new conceptions, but he did throw light into given thought worlds that is rare in its brightness. Our organization, our brain, in connection with our senses, produces the world of sensation. I see “blue,” or I feel “hardness,” because I am organized in this particular way. I combine the sensations into objects. By combining the sensations of “white” and “soft,” etc., I produce, for instance, the conception of wax. When I follow my sensation with my thoughts, I do not move in the external world. My intellect produces connections within the world of my sensations according to the laws of my reason. When I saw that the qualities I perceive in a body presuppose a matter with laws of motion, I also do not go outside of myself. I find that I am forced through my organization to add the thoughts of processes of motion to my sensations.

The same mechanism that produces our sensations also produces our conception of matter. Matter, equally, is only a product of my organization, just as color and tone. Even when we speak of things in themselves, we must be clearly aware of the fact that we cannot go beyond our own realm. We are so organized that we cannot possibly go beyond ourselves. Even what lies beyond our realm can be represented to ourselves only through our conception. We become aware of a limit to our world. We argue that there must be something beyond the limit that causes sensations in us. But we can only go as far as to that limit, even the limit we set ourselves because we can go no further. “A fish can swim in water in the pond, not in the earth, but it can hit its head against the bottom and the walls.” In the same way we live within the realm of our conceptions and sensations, but not in the external things. We hit against a limit, however, where we cannot go any further, where we must say no more than that beyond this is the unknown. All conceptions we produce concerning this unknown are unjustified because we cannot do anything but relate the conceptions we have obtained within ourselves to the unknown. If we wanted to do this, we should be no wiser than a fish that would say, “Here I cannot go any further. Therefore, I want to go into some other kind of water in which I will try to swim in some other way.” But the fact is that the fish can swim only in water and nowhere else.

[ 14 ] This is supplemented by another thought that belongs with the first line of reasoning. Lange, as the spirit of an inexorable desire for consistency, linked them together. In what situation am I when I contemplate myself? Am I not as much bound to the laws of my own organization as I am when I consider something else? My eye observes an object. Without an eye there is no color. I believe that there is an object in front of me, but on closer inspection I find that it is my eye, that is to say, I, myself, that produces the object. Now I turn my observation to my eye itself. Can I do this in any other way except by means of my organs? Is not the conception that I obtain of myself also just my idea? The world of the senses is the product of our organization. Our visible organs are like all other parts of the phenomenal world, only pictures of an unknown object. Our real organization remains, therefore, as unknown to us as the objects of the external world. What we have before us is merely the product of both. Affected by an unknown world through an unknown ego, we produce a world of conceptions that is all we have at our disposal.

[ 15 ] Lange asks himself the question: Where does a consistent materialism lead? Let all our mental conclusions and sense perceptions be produced by the activity of our brain, which is bound to material conditions, and our sense organs, which are also material. We are then confronted with the necessity of investigating our organism in order to see how it functions, but we can do this only by means of our organs. No color without an eye, but also no eye without an eye.

The consistently materialistic view is immediately reversed into a consistently idealistic one. There is no break to be assumed in our nature. We must not attribute some functions of our being to a physical nature and others to a spiritual one, but we are justified to assume physical conditions for everything, including the mechanism of our thinking, and we should not rest until we have found them. But we are as much justified if we consider as mere pictures of the really existing world, not only the external world as it appears to us, but also the organs with which we apprehend this world. The eye with which we believe we see is itself only a product of our imagination. When we find that our visual pictures are produced by the structure and function of the eye, we must never forget that the eye with all its contrivances—the optic nerve as well as the brain and the structures we may still discover in it as causes of our thinking—are only ideas that, to be sure, form a world that is consistent and interconnected in itself, but merely a world that points beyond itself. . The senses supply us, as Helmholtz says, with the effects of the things, not with faithful pictures, and certainly not with the things themselves. Among these effects are also the senses themselves as well as the brain and the molecular movements assumed in it. (History of Materialism, 1887.)

Lange, therefore, assumes a world beyond our world that may consist of the things in themselves or that may not even have anything to do with this “thing in itself,” since even this concept, which we form at the limit of our own realm, belongs merely to the world of our ideas.

[ 16 ] Lange's world conception, then, leads to the opinion that we have only a world of ideas. This world, however, forces us to acknowledge something beyond its own sphere. It also is completely incapable of disclosing anything about this something. This is the world conception of absolute ignorance, of agnosticism.

[ 17 ] It is Lange's conviction that all scientific endeavor that does not limit itself to the evidence of the senses and the logical intellect that combines these elements of evidence must remain fruitless. That the senses and the intellect together, however, do not supply us with anything but a result of our own organization, he accepts as evidently following from his analysis of the origin of knowledge. The world is for him fundamentally a product of the fiction of our senses and of our intellects. Because of this opinion, he never asks the question of truth with regard to the ideas. A truth that could enlighten us about the essence of the world is not recognized by Lange. He believes he has obtained an open road for the ideas and ideals that are formed by the human mind and that he has accomplished this through the very fact that he no longer feels the need of attributing any truth to the knowledge of the senses and the intellect. Without hesitation he considered everything that went beyond sensual observation and rational combination to be mere fiction. No matter what the idealistic philosophers had thought concerning the nature of facts, for him it belonged to the realm of poetic fiction.

Through this turn that Lange gave to materialism there arose necessarily the question: Why should not the higher imaginative creations be valid if even the senses are creative? What is the difference between these two kinds of creation? A philosopher who thinks like this must have a reason for admitting certain conceptions that is quite different from the reason that influences a thinker who acknowledges a conception because he thinks it is true. For Lange, this reason is given by the fact that a conception has value for life. For him, the question is not whether or not a conception is true, but whether it is valuable for man. One thing, however, must be clearly recognized: That I see a rose as red, that I connect the effect with the cause, is something I have in common with all creatures endowed with the power of perception and thinking. My senses and my reason cannot produce any additional values, but if I go beyond the imaginative product of senses and reason, then I am no longer bound to the organization of the whole human species. Schiller, Hegel and every Tom, Dick and Harry sees a flower in the same way. What Schiller weaves in poetic imagination around the flower, what Hegel thinks about it, is not imagined by Tom, Dick and Harry in the same way. But just as Tom, Dick and Harry are mistaken when they think that the flower is an entity existing externally, so Schiller and Hegel would be in error if they took their ideas for anything more than poetic fiction that satisfied their spiritual needs. What is poetically created through the senses and the intellect belongs to the whole human race, and no one in this respect can be different from anybody else. What goes beyond the creation of the senses and of reason is the concern of the individual. Nevertheless, this imaginative creation of the individual is also granted a value by Lange for the whole human race, provided that the individual creator “who produces it is normal, richly gifted and typical in his mode of thinking, and is, through his force of spirit, qualified to be a leader.”

In this way, Lange believes that he can secure for the ideal world its value by declaring that also the so-called real world is a product of poetic creation. Wherever he may look, Lange sees only fiction, beginning with the lowest stage of sense perception where “the individual still appears subject to the general characteristics of the human species, and culminating with the creative power in poetry.”

The function of the senses and of the combining intellect, which produce what is reality for us, can be called a lower function if one compares them with the soaring flight of the spirit in the creative arts. But, in general and in their totality, these functions cannot be classified as a principally different activity of the mind. As little as our reality is a reality according to our heart's desire, it is nevertheless the firm foundation of our whole spiritual existence. The individual grows out of the soil of the species, and the general and necessary process of knowledge forms the only secure foundation for the individual's rise to an esthetic conception of the world. (History of Materialism.)

[ 18 ] What Lange considers to be the error of the idealistic world conception is not that it goes beyond the world of the senses and the intellect with its ideas, but that it believes it possesses in these ideas more than the individual thinker's poetic fantasy. One should build up for oneself an ideal world, but one should be aware that this ideal world is no more than poetic imagination. If this idealism maintains it is more than that, materialism will rise time and again with the claim: I have the truth; idealism is poetry. Be that so, says Lange: Idealism is poetry, but materialism is also poetry. In idealism the individual is the creator, in materialism, the species. If they both are aware of their natures, everything is in its right place: the science of the senses and the intellect that provide proofs for the whole species, as well as the poetry of ideas with all its conceptions that are produced by the individual and still retain their value for the race.

One thing is certain: Man is in need of an ideal world created by himself as a supplement of reality, and the highest and noblest functions of his spirit are actively combined in such creations. But is this free activity of the spirit to be allowed repeatedly to assume the deceptive form of a proof-establishing science? If so, materialism will emerge again and again to destroy the bolder speculations and try to satisfy reason's demand for unity with a minimum of elevation above the real and actually provable. (History of Materialism.)

[ 19 ] In Lange's thinking, complete idealism is combined with a complete surrender of truth itself. The world for him is poetry, but a poetry that he does not value any less than he would if he could acknowledge it as reality.

Thus, two currents of a distinctly natural scientific character can be distinguished as abruptly opposing each other in the development of modern world conception: The monistic current in which Haeckel's mode of conception moved, and the dualistic one, the most forceful and consistent defender of which was Friedrich Albert Lange. Monism considers the world that man can observe to be a true reality and has no doubt that a thinking process that depends on observation can also obtain knowledge of essential significance concerning this reality. Monism does not imagine that it is possible to exhaust the fundamental nature of the world with a few boldly thought out formulas. It proceeds as it follows the facts, and forms new ideas in regard to the connections of these facts. It is convinced, however, that these ideas do supply a knowledge of a true reality. The dualistic conception of Lange divides the world into a known and an unknown part. It treats the first part in the same fashion as monism, following the lead of observation and reflective thought, but it believes that nothing at all can be known concerning the true essential core of the world through this observation and through this thought. Monism believes in the truth of the real and sees the human world of ideas best supported if it is based on the world of observations. In the ideas and ideals that the monist derives from natural existence, he sees something that is fully satisfactory to his feeling and to his moral need. He finds in nature the highest existence, which he does not only want to penetrate with his thinking for the purpose of knowledge, but to which he surrenders with all his knowledge and with all his love.

In Lange's dualism nature is considered to be unfit to satisfy the spirit's highest needs. Lange must assume a special world of higher poetry for this spirit that leads beyond the results of observation and its corresponding thought. For monism, true knowledge represents a supreme spiritual value, which, because of its truth, grants man also the purest moral and religious pathos. To dualism, knowledge cannot present such a satisfaction. Dualism must measure the value of life by other things, not by the truth it might yield. The ideas are not valuable because they participate in the truth. They are of value because they serve life in its highest forms. Life is not valued by means of the ideas, but the ideas are appreciated because of their fruitfulness for life. It is not for true knowledge that man strives but for valuable thoughts.

[ 20 ] In recognizing the mode of thinking of natural science Friedrich Albert Lange agrees with monism insofar as he denies the uses of all other sources for the knowledge of reality, but he also denies this mode of thinking any possibility to penetrate into the essential of things. In order to make sure that he himself moves on solid ground he curtails the wings of human imagination. What Lange is doing in such an incisive fashion corresponds to an inclination of thought that is deeply ingrained in the development of modern world conception. This is shown with perfect clarity also in another sphere of thinking of the nineteenth century. This thinking developed, through various stages, viewpoints from which Herbert Spencer (1820–1903) started as he laid the foundations for a dualism in England. Spencer's dualism appeared at approximately the same time as Lange's in Germany, which strove for natural scientific knowledge of the world on the one hand and, on the other, confessed to agnosticism so far as the essence of things is concerned. When Darwin published his work, The Origin of Species, he could praise the natural scientific mode of thought of Spencer:

Mr. Herbert Spencer, in an Essay (1852), has contrasted the theories of the Creation and the Development of organic beings with remarkable skill and force. He argues from the analogy of domestic production, from the changes which the embryos of many species undergo, from the difficulty of distinguishing species and varieties, and from the principle of general gradation that species have been modified; and he attributes the modification to the change of circumstances. The author (1855) has also treated Psychology on the principle of the necessary requirement of each mental power and capacity by gradation. (The Origin of Species, Historical Sketch.)

Also, other thinkers who followed the method of natural science felt attracted to Spencer because he tried to explain all reality from the inorganic to the psychological in the manner expressed in Darwin's words above. But Spencer also sides with the agnostics, so that Lange is justified when he says, “Herbert Spencer, whose philosophy is closely related to ours, believes in a materialism of the phenomenal world, the relative justification of which, within the realm of natural science, finds its limit in a thought of an unknowable absolute.”

[ 21 ] It is quite likely that Spencer arrived at his viewpoint from assumptions similar to those of Lange. He had been preceded in England by thinkers who were guided by a twofold interest. They wanted to determine what it is that man really possesses with his knowledge, but they also were resolved not to shatter by doubt or reason the essential substance of the world. They were all more or less dominated by the sentiment that Kant described when he said, “I had to suspend knowledge in order to make room for belief.” (Compare the first volume of this book.)

[ 22 ] The beginning of the development of the world conception of the nineteenth century in England is marked by the figure of Thomas Reid (1710–96). The fundamental conviction of this man can be expressed in Goethe's words as he describes his own activity as a scientist as non-speculative: “In the last analysis it seems to me that my method consists merely m the practical and self-rectifying operations of common sense that dares to practice its function in a higher sphere.” (Compare Goethe's Werke, Vol. 38, p. 595 in Kürschner's Deutsche National Literatur.) This common sense does not doubt in any way that it is confronted with real essential things and processes as it contemplates the world. Reid believes that a world conception is viable only if it upholds this basic view of a healthy common sense. Even if one admitted the possibility that our observation could be deceptive and that the true nature of things could be different from the picture that is supplied to us by our senses and our intellect, it would not be necessary to pay any attention to such a possibility. We find our way through life only if we believe in our observation; nothing beyond that is our concern.

In taking this point of view Reid is convinced that he can arrive at really satisfactory truths. He makes no attempt to obtain a conception of things through complicated thought operations but wants to reach his aim by going back to the basic principles that the soul instinctively assumes. Instinctively, unconsciously, the soul possesses what is correct, before the attempt is made to illumine the mind's own nature with the torch of consciousness. It knows instinctively what to think in regard to the qualities and processes of the physical world, and it is endowed instinctively with the direction of moral behavior, of a judgment concerning good and evil. Through his reference to the truths innate in “common sense,” Reid directs the attention of thought toward an observation of the soul. This tendency toward a psychological observation becomes a lasting and characteristic trait in the development of the English world conception.

Outstanding personalities within this development are William Hamilton (1788–1856), Henry Mansel (1820–71), William Whewell (1794–1866), John Herschel (1792 – 1871), James Mill (1773–1836), John Stuart Mill (1806 – 73), Alexander Bain (1818–1903) and Herbert Spencer (1820–1903). They all place psychology in the center of their world conception.

[ 23 ] William Hamilton also recognizes as truth what the soul from the beginning feels inclined to accept as true. With respect to fundamental truths proofs and comprehension ceases. All one can do is observe their emergence at the horizon of our consciousness. In this sense they are incomprehensible. But one of the fundamental manifestations of our consciousness is also that everything in this world depends on something that is unknown to us. We find in this world in which we live only dependent things, but not absolutely independent ones. Such independent things must exist, however. When a dependent thing is found, an independent thing is assumed. With our thinking we do not enter the independent entity. Human knowledge is meant for the dependent and it becomes involved in contradictions if its thoughts, which are well-suited to the dependent, are applied to the independent. Knowledge, therefore, must withdraw as we approach the entrance toward the independent. Religious belief is here in its place. It is only through his admission that he cannot know anything of the essential core of the world that man can be a moral being. He can accept a God who causes a moral order in the world. As soon as it has been understood that all logic has exclusively to do with the dependent, not the independent, no logic can destroy this belief in an infinite God.

Henry Mansel was a pupil and follower of Hamilton, but he expressed Hamilton's view in still more extreme forms. It is not going too far to say that Mansel was an advocate of belief who no longer judged impartially between religion and knowledge, but who defended religious dogma with partiality. He was of the opinion that the revealed truths of religion involve our knowledge necessarily in contradictions. This is not supposed to be the fault of the revealed truths but has its cause in the limitation of the human mind, which can never penetrate into regions from which the statements of revelation arise.

William Whewell believed that he could best obtain a conception concerning the significance, origin and value of human knowledge by investigating the method through which leading men of science arrived at their insights. In his History of the Inductive Sciences (1840), he set out to analyze the psychology of scientific investigation. Thus, by studying outstanding scientific discoveries, he hoped to find out how much of these accomplishments was due to the external world and how much to man himself. Whewell finds that the human mind always supplements its scientific observations. Kepler, for example, had the idea of an ellipse before he found that the planets move in ellipses. Thus, the sciences do not come about through a mere reception from without but through the active participation of the human mind that impresses its laws on the given elements. These sciences do not extend as far as the last entities of things. They are concerned with the particulars of the world. Just as everything, for instance, is assumed to have a cause, such a cause must also be presupposed for the whole world. Since knowledge fails us with respect to that cause, the dogma of religion must step in as a supplement. Herschel, like Whewell, also tried to gain an insight into the genesis of knowledge in the human mind through the observation of many examples. His Preliminary Discourse on the Study of Natural Philosophy appeared in 1831.

[ 24 ] John Stuart Mill belongs with those thinkers who are deeply imbued with the conviction that one cannot be cautious enough in determining what is certain and uncertain in human knowledge. The fact that he was introduced to the most diversified branches of knowledge in his boyhood, most likely gave his mind its characteristic turn. As a child of three he received instructions in the Greek language, and soon afterwards was taught arithmetic. He was exposed to the other fields of instruction at a correspondingly early age. Of even greater importance was the method of instruction used by his father, James Mill, who was himself an important thinker. Through him vigorous logic became the second nature of John Stuart. From his autobiography we learn: “Anything which could be found out by thinking I was never told until I had exhausted my efforts to find it out for myself.” The things that occupy the thinking of such a person must become his destiny in the proper sense of the word. “I have never been a child, I have never played cricket. It is, after all, better to let nature take its own course,” says John Stuart Mill as one whose destiny had so uniquely been to live almost exclusively in thinking. Because of his development, he had to experience to the fullest the problems concerning the significance of knowledge. How can knowledge, which for him was life, lead also to the source of the phenomena of the world? The direction in which Mill's thought developed in order to obtain clarity concerning these problems was probably determined early by his father. James Mill had proceeded by starting from psychological experience. He had observed the process by which idea is linked to idea in man's mind. Through connecting one concrete idea to another we obtain our knowledge of the world. We must then ask ourselves: What is the relation between the order in which the ideas are linked and the order of the things in the world? Through such a mode of conception our thinking begins to distrust its own power because man can associate ideas in a manner that is entirely different from the connection of the things in the external world. This mistrust is the basis of John Stuart Mill's logic, which appeared in 1843 as his chief work under the title, System of Logic.

[ 25 ] In matters of world conception a more pronounced contrast is scarcely thinkable than that between Mill's Logic and Hegel's Science of Logic, which appeared twenty-seven years earlier. In Hegel we find the highest confidence in thinking, the full assurance that we cannot be deceived by what we experience within ourselves. Hegel experiences himself as a part, a member of the world, and what he experiences within himself must also belong to the world. Since he has the most direct knowledge of himself, he believes in the content of this knowledge and judges the rest of the world accordingly. He argues as follows: When I perceive an external thing, it is possible that the thing shows only its surface to me and that its essence remains concealed. This is not possible in my own case. I understand my own being. I can then compare the things outside with my own being. If they reveal some element of my own essence on their surface, I am justified in attributing to them something of my own nature. It is for this reason that Hegel expects confidently to find outside in nature the very spirit and the thought connections that he finds within himself.

Mill, however, experiences himself not as a part of the world but as a spectator. The things outside are an unknown element to him and the thoughts that man forms concerning them are met by Mill with distrust. One observes men and learns from his observations that all men die. One forms the judgment that all men are mortal. The Duke of Wellington is a man; therefore, the Duke of Wellington is mortal. This is the conclusion the observer comes to. What gives him the right to do so? This is the question John Stuart Mill asks. If a single human being would prove to be immortal, the whole judgment would be upset. Are we justified in supposing that, because all men up to this time have died, they will continue to do so in the future? All knowledge is uncertain because we draw conclusions from observations we have made and transfer them to things we cannot know anything about, since we have not observed them directly. What would somebody who thinks like Hegel have to say about such a conception? It is not difficult to imagine the answer. We know from definite concepts that in every circle all diameters are equal. If we find a circle in the real world, we maintain that its diameters, too, are equal. If we observe it a quarter of an hour later and find that its diameters are unequal, we do not decide [ 26 ] that under certain circumstances the diameter of a circle can also be unequal. But we say that what was formerly a circle has for some reason been elongated into an ellipse.

If we think like Hegel, this is the attitude we take toward the judgment, all men are mortal. It is not through observation but through an inner thought experience that we form the concept of man. For the concept of man, mortality is as essential as the equality of the diameters is for the concept of the circle. If we find a being in the real world that has all the other characteristics of man, we conclude that this being must also have that of mortality, in the same way that all other properties of the circle allow us to conclude that it has also that of the equality of diameters. If Hegel came across a being that did not die, he could only say, “That is not a man.” He could not say, “A man can also be immortal.” Hegel makes the assumption that the concepts in us are not arbitrarily formed but have their root in the essence of the world, as we ourselves belong to this essence. Once the concept of man has formed within us, it is clear that it has its origin in the essence of things, and we are fully justified in applying it to this essence. Why has this concept of mortal man formed within us? Surely only because it has its ground in the nature of things. A person who believes that man stands entirely outside of the order of things and forms his judgments as an outsider can argue that we have until now seen men die, and therefore we form the spectator concept: mortal men. The thinker who is aware that he himself belongs to the order of things and that it is they that are manifested within his thoughts, forms the judgment that up to this time all men have died; to die, then, is something that belongs to their nature, and if somebody does not die, he is not a man but something else. Hegel's logic has become a logic of things: For Hegel, the manifestation of logic is an effect of the essence of the world; it is not something that the human mind has added from an outside source to this essence. Mill's logic is the logic of a bystander, of a mere spectator who starts out by cutting the thread through which it is connected with the world.

[ 27 ] Mill points out that the thoughts, which in a certain age appear as absolutely certain inner experiences, are nevertheless reversed in a later time. In the Middle Ages it was, for instance, believed that there could not possibly be antipodes and that the stars would have to drop from the sky if they did not cling to fixed spheres. Man will, therefore, only be capable of the right attitude toward his knowledge if he, in spite of his awareness that the logic of the world is expressed in this knowledge, forms in every individual case his judgment through a careful methodical examination of his conceptual connections guided by observation, a judgment that is always in need of correction.

It is the method of observation that John Stuart Mill attempts to determine with cool detachment and calculation. Let us take an example. [ 28 ] Suppose a phenomenon had always occurred under certain conditions. In a given case a number of these conditions appear again, but a few of them are now missing. The phenomenon in question does not occur. We are forced to conclude that the conditions that were not provided and the phenomenon that failed to occur stood in a causal relationship. If two substances have always combined to form a chemical compound and this result fails to be obtained in a given case, it is necessary to inquire what condition is lacking that had always been present before. Through a method of this kind we arrive at conceptions concerning connections of facts that can be rightly considered as being grounded in the nature of things. Mill wants to follow the methods of observation in his analysis. Logic, which Kant maintained had not progressed a single step since Aristotle, is a means of orientation within our thinking itself. It shows how to proceed from one correct thought to the next. Mill's logic is a means of orientation within the world of facts. It intends to show how one obtains valid judgments about things from observation. He does not even admit mathematics as an exception. Mathematics must also derive its basic insights from observation. For example, in all observed cases we have seen that two intersecting straight lines diverge and do not intersect again. Therefore we conclude that they will never intersect again, but we do not have a perfect proof for this statement. For John Stuart Mill, the world is thus an alien element. Man observes its phenomena and arranges them according to what they announce to his conceptual life. He perceives regularities in the phenomena and through logical, methodical investigations of these regularities he arrives at the laws of nature. But there is nothing that leads him to the principle of the things themselves. One can well imagine that the world could also be entirely different. Mill is convinced that everybody who is used to abstraction and analysis and who seriously uses his abilities will, after a sufficient exercise of his imagination, have no difficulty with the idea that there could be another stellar system in which nothing could be found of the laws that have application to our own.

Mill is merely consistent in his bystander viewpoint of the world when he extends it to man's own ego. Mental pictures come and go, are combined and separated within his inner life; this is what man observes. He does not observe a being that remains identical with itself as “ego” in the midst of this constant flow of ideas. He has observed that mental pictures emerge within him and he assumes that this will continue to be the case. From this possibility, namely, that a world of perceptions can be grouped around a center, arises the conception of an “ego.” Thus, man is a spectator also with respect to his own “ego.” He has his conceptions tell him what he can know about himself. Mill reflects on the facts of memory and expectation. If everything that I know of myself is to consist of conceptual presentations, then I cannot say: I remember a conception that I have had at an earlier time, or I expect the occurrence of a certain experience, but I must say: A present conception remembers itself or expects its future occurrence. If we speak, so Mill argues, of the mind as of a sequence of perceptions, we must also speak of a sequence of perceptions that is aware of itself as becoming and passing. As a result, we find ourselves in the dilemma of having to say that either the “ego” or the mind is something to be distinguished from the perceptions, or else we must maintain the paradox that a mere sequence of perceptions is capable of an awareness of its past and future. Mill does not overcome this dilemma. It contains for him an insoluble enigma. The fact is that he has torn the bond between himself, the observer, and the world, and he is not capable of restoring the connection. The world for him remains an unknown beyond himself that produces impressions on man. All man knows of this transcendent unknown is that it can produce perceptions in him. Instead of having the possibility of knowing real things outside himself, he can only say in the end that there are opportunities for having perceptions. Whoever speaks of things in themselves uses empty words. We move on the firm ground of facts only as long as we speak of the continuous possibility of the occurrence of sensations, perceptions and conceptions.

[ 29 ] John Stuart Mill has an intense aversion to all thoughts that are gained in any way except through the comparison of facts, the observation of the similar, the analogous, and the homogeneous elements in all phenomena. He is of the opinion that the human conduct of life can only be harmed if we surrender to the belief that we could arrive at any truth in any way except through observation. This disinclination of Mill demonstrates his hesitation to relate himself in his striving for knowledge to the things of reality in any other way than by an attitude of passivity. The things are to dictate to man what he has to think about them. If man goes beyond this state of receptivity in order to say something out of his own self about the things, then he lacks every assurance that this product of his own activity has anything to do with the things. What is finally decisive in this philosophy is the fact that the thinker who maintains it is unable to count his own spontaneous thinking as belonging to the world. The very fact that he himself is active in this thinking makes him suspicious and misleads him. He would best of all like to eliminate his own self completely, to be absolutely sure that no erroneous element is mixed into the objective statements of the phenomena. He does not sufficiently appreciate the fact that his thinking is a part of nature as much as the growth of a leaf of grass. It is evident that one must also examine one's own spontaneous thinking if one wants to find out something concerning it.

How is man, to use a statement of Goethe, to become acquainted with his relation to himself and to the external world if he wants to eliminate himself completely in the cognitive process? Great as Mill's merits are for finding methods through which man can learn those things that do not depend on him, a view concerning man's relation to himself and of his relation to the external world cannot be obtained by his methods. All these methods are valid only for the special sciences, not, however, for a comprehensive world conception. No observation can teach what spontaneous thinking is; only thinking can experience this in itself. As this thinking can only obtain information concerning its own nature through its own power, it is also the only source that can shed light on the relation between itself and the external world. Mill's method of investigation excludes the possibility of obtaining a world conception because a world conception can be gained only through thinking that is concentrated in itself and thereby succeeds in obtaining an insight into its own relation to the external world. The fact that John Stuart Mill had an aversion to this kind of self-supporting thinking can be well understood from his character. Gladstone said in a letter (compare Gompertz: John Stuart Mill, Vienna, 1889) that in conversation he used to call Mill the “Saint of Rationalism.” A person who practices thinking in this way imposes rigorous demands on thinking and looks for the greatest possible precautionary measures so that it cannot deceive him. He becomes thereby mistrustful with respect to thinking itself. He believes that he will soon stand on insecure ground if he loses hold of external points of support. Uncertainty with regard to all problems that go beyond strictly observational knowledge is a basic trait in Mill's personality. In reading his books we see everywhere that Mill treats such problems as open questions concerning which he does not risk a sure judgment.

[ 30 ] The belief that the true nature of things is unknowable is also maintained by Herbert Spencer. He proceeds by asking: How do I obtain what I call truths concerning the world? I make certain observations concerning things and form judgments about them. I observe that hydrogen and oxygen under certain conditions combine to form water. I form a judgment concerning this observation. This is a truth that extends only over a small circle of things. I then observe under what circumstances other substances combine. I compare the individual observations and thereby arrive at more comprehensive, more general truths concerning the process in which substances in general form chemical compounds. All knowledge consists in this; we proceed from particular truths to more comprehensive ones. We finally arrive at the highest truth, which cannot be subordinated to any other and which we therefore must accept without further explanation. In this process of knowledge we have, however, no means of penetrating to the absolute essence of the world, for thinking can, according to this opinion, do no more than compare the various things with one another and formulate general truths with respect to the homogeneous element in them. But the ultimate nature of the world cannot, because of its uniqueness, be compared to any other thing. This is why thinking fails with regard to the ultimate nature. It cannot reach it.

[ 31 ] In such modes of conception we always sense, as an undertone, the thinking that developed from the basis of the physiology of the senses (compare above to the first part of this Chapter). In many philosophers this thought has inserted itself so deeply into their intellectual life that they consider it the most certain thought possible. They argue as follows: One can know things only by becoming aware of them. They then change this thought, more or less unconsciously, into: One can know only of those things that enter our consciousness, but it remains unknown how the things were before they entered our consciousness. It is for this reason that sense perceptions are considered as if they were in our consciousness, for one is of the opinion that they must first enter our consciousness and must become part of it in the form of conceptions if we are to be aware of them.

[ 32 ] Also, Spencer clings to the view that the possibility of the process of knowledge depends on us as human beings. We therefore must assume an unknowable element beyond that which can be transmitted to us by our senses and our thinking. We have a clear consciousness of everything that is present in our mind. But an indefinite consciousness is associated with this clear awareness that claims that everything we can observe and think has as its basis something we can no longer observe and think. We know that we are dealing with mere appearances and not with full realities existing independently by themselves. But this is just because we know definitely that our world is only appearance, that we also know that an unimaginable real world is its basis. Through such turns of thought Spencer believes it possible to arrange a complete reconciliation between religion and knowledge. There is something that religion can grasp in belief, in a belief that cannot be shaken by an impotent knowledge.

[ 33 ] The field, however, that Spencer considers to be accessible to knowledge must, for him, entirely take on the form of natural scientific conceptions. When Spencer himself ventures to explain, he does so in the sense of natural science.

[ 34 ] Spencer uses the method of natural science in thinking of the process of knowledge. Every organ of a living being has come into existence through the fact that this being has adapted itself to the conditions under which it lives. It belongs to the human conditions of life that man finds his way through the world with the aid of thinking. His organ of knowledge develops through the adaptation of his conceptual life to the conditions of his external life. By making statements concerning things and processes, man adjusts himself to the surrounding world. All truths have come into being through this process of adaptation, and what is acquired in this way can be transmitted through inheritance to the descendants. Those who think that man, through his nature, possesses once and for all a certain disposition toward general truths are wrong. What appears to be such a disposition did not exist at an earlier stage in the ancestors of man, but has been acquired by adaptation and transmitted to the descendants. When some philosophers speak of truths that man does not have to derive from his own individual experience but that are given a priori in his organization, they are right in a certain respect. While it is obvious that such truths are acquired, it must be stressed that they are not acquired by man as an individual but as a species. The individual has inherited the finished product of an ability that has been acquired at an earlier age.

Goethe once said that he had taken part in many conversations on Kant's Critique of Pure Reason and that he had noticed how on those occasions the old basic problem had been renewed, “How much does our inner self contribute to our spiritual existence, how much the external world?” And Goethe goes on to say, “I had never separated the two; when I was philosophizing in my own way on things, I did so with an unconscious naïveté and was really convinced that I saw with my eyes my opinion before me.”

[ 35 ] Spencer looks at this “old basic problem” from the point of view of natural science. He believed he could show that the developed human being also contributed to his spiritual existence through his own self. This self, is also made up of the inherited traits that had been acquired by our ancestors in their struggle with the external world. If we today believe we see with our eyes our opinions before us, we must remember that they were not always our opinions but that they were once observations that were really made by our eyes in the external world. Spencer's way of thinking, then, is, like that of John Stuart Mill, one that proceeds from psychology. But Mill does not go further than the psychology of the individual. Spencer goes from the individual back to his ancestors. The psychology of the individual is in the same position as the ontogenesis of zoology. Certain phenomena of the history of the individual are explainable only if they are referred back to phenomena of the history of the species. In the same way, the facts of the individual's consciousness cannot be understood if taken alone. We must go back to the species. We must, indeed, go back beyond the human species to acquisitions of knowledge that were accomplished by the animal ancestors of man. Spencer uses his great acumen to support this evolutionary history of the process of cognition. He shows in which way the mental activities have gradually developed from low stages at the beginning, through ever more accurate adaptations of the human mind to the external world and through inheritance of these adaptation. Every insight that the individual human being obtains through pure thought and without experience about things has been obtained by humanity or its ancestors through observation or experience. Leibniz thought he could explain the correspondence of man's inner life with the external world by assuming a harmony between them that was pre-established by the creator. Spencer explains this correspondence in the manner of natural science. The harmony is not pre-established, but gradually developed. We here find the continuation of natural scientific thinking to the highest aspects of human existence. Linnaeus had declared that every living organic form existed because the creator had made it as it is. Darwin maintained that it is as it is because it had gradually developed through adaptation and inheritance. Leibniz declared that thinking is an agreement with the external world because the creator had established this agreement. Spencer maintained that this agreement is there because it has gradually developed through adaptations and inheritance of the thought world.

[ 36 ] Spencer was motivated in his thought by the need for a naturalistic explanation of spiritual phenomena. He found the general direction for such an explanation in Lyell's geology (compare in Part 2 Chapter I). In this geology, to be sure, the idea is still rejected that organic forms have gradually developed one from another. It nevertheless receives a powerful support through the fact that the inorganic (geological) formations of the earth's surface are explained through such a gradual development and through violent catastrophes. Spencer, who had a natural scientific education and who had for a time also been active as a civil engineer, recognized at once the full extent of the idea of evolution, and he applied it in spite of Lyell's opposition to it. He even applied this idea to spiritual processes. As early as 1850, in his book, Social Statistics, he described social evolution in analogy with organic evolution. He also acquainted himself with the studies of Harvey and Wolff in embryonic development (compare Part I, Chapter IX of this book), and he plunged into the works of Karl Ernst von Baer (compare above in Part II Chapter II), which showed him that evolution proceeded from the development of a homogeneous uniform state to one of variety, diversity and abundance. In the early stages of embryological development the organisms are very similar; later they become different from one another (compare above in Part II Chapter II). Through Darwin this evolutionary thought was completely confirmed. From a few original organic forms the whole wealth of the highly diversified world of formations has developed.

From the idea of evolution, Spencer wanted to proceed to the most general truths, which, in his opinion, constituted the aim of all human striving for knowledge. He believed that one could discover manifestations of this evolutionary thought in the simplest phenomena. When, from dispersed particles of water, a cloud is formed in the sky, when a sand pile is formed from scattered grains of sand, Spencer saw the beginnings of an evolutionary process. Dispersed matter is contracted and concentrated to a whole. It is just this process that is presented to us in the Kant-Laplace hypothesis of world evolution. Dispersed parts of a chaotic world nebula have contracted. The organism originates in just this way. Dispersed elements are concentrated in tissues. The psychologist can observe that man contracts dispersed observations into general truths. Within this concentrated whole, articulation and differentiation take place. The original homogeneous mass is differentiated into the individual heavenly bodies of the solar system; the organism differentiates itself into the various organs.

[ 37 ] Concentration alternates with dissolution. When a process of evolution has reached a certain climax, an equilibrium takes place. Man, for instance, develops until he has evolved a maximum of harmonization of his inner abilities with external nature. Such a state of equilibrium, however, cannot last; external forces will effect it destructively. The evolutionary process must be followed by a process of dissolution; what had been concentrated is dispersed again; the cosmic again becomes chaotic. The process of evolution can begin anew. Thus, Spencer sees the process of the world as a rhythmic play of motion. [ 38 ] It is certainly not an uninteresting observation for the comparative history of the evolution of world conception that Spencer, from the observation of the genesis of world phenomena, reaches here a conclusion that is similar to one Goethe expressed in connection with his ideas concerning the genesis of life. Goethe describes the growth of a plant in the following way:

May the plant sprout, blossom or bear fruit, it is always by the same organs that the prescription of nature is fulfilled in various functions and under frequently changing forms. The same organ, which at the stem expands as a leaf and takes on a most differentiated shape, now contracts again in the calyx, spreads out in the petal, epitomizes in the organs of reproduction and finally once more swells as fruit.

If one thinks of this conception as being transferred to the whole process of the world, one arrives as Spencer's contraction and dispersion of matter.

[ 39 ] Spencer and Mill exerted a great influence on the development of world conception in the second half of the nineteenth century. The rigorous emphasis on observation and the one-sided elaboration of the methods of observational knowledge of Mill, along with the application of the conceptions of natural science to the entire scope of human knowledge by Spencer could not fail to meet with the approval of an age that saw in the idealistic world conception of Fichte, Schelling and Hegel nothing but degeneration of human thinking. It was an age that showed appreciation only for the successes of the research work of natural science. The lack of unity among the idealistic thinkers and what seemed to many a perfect fruitfulness of a thinking that was completely concentrated and absorbed in itself, had to produce a deep-seated suspicion against idealism. One may say that a widespread view of the last four decades of the nineteenth century is clearly expressed in words spoken by Rudolf Virchow in his address, The Foundation of the University of Berlin and the Transition from the Age of Philosophy into that of Natural Science (1893): “Since the belief in magic formulas has been forced back into the most backward circles of the people, the formulas of the natural philosopher have met with little approval.” And one of the most significant philosophers of the second half of the century, Eduard von Hartmann, sums up the character of his world conception in the motto he placed at the head of his book, Philosophy of the Unconscious: Speculative Results Obtained by the Inductive Method of Natural Science. He is of the opinion that it is necessary to recognize “the greatness of the progress brought about by Mill, through which all attempts of a deductive method of philosophy have been defeated and made obsolete for all times.” (Compare Eduard von Hartmann, Geschichte der Metaphysik, 2 part, page 479.)

[ 40 ] The recognition of certain limits of human knowledge that was shown by many naturalists was also received favorably by many religiously attuned souls. They argued as follows: The natural scientists observe the inorganic and organic facts of nature and they attempt to find general laws by combining the individual phenomena. Through these laws processes can be explained, and it is even possible to predetermine thereby the regular course of future phenomena. A comprehensive world conception should proceed in the same way; it should confine itself to the facts, establish general truths within moderate limits and not maintain any claim to penetrate into the realm of the “unknowable.” Spencer, with his complete separation of the “knowable” and the “unknowable,” met the demand of such religious needs to a high degree. The idealistic mode of thought was, on the other hand, considered by such religiously inclined spirits to be a fantastic aberration. As a matter of principle, the idealistic mode of conception cannot recognize an “unknowable,” because it has to uphold the conviction that through the concentrated penetration into the inner life of man a knowledge can be attained that covers not merely the outer surface of the world but also its real core.

[ 41 ] The thought life of some influential naturalists, such as Thomas Henry Huxley, moved entirely in the direction of such religiously inclined spirits. Huxley believed in a complete agnosticism with regard to the essence of the world. He declared that a monism, which is in general agreement with Darwin's results, is applicable only to external nature. Huxley was one of the first to defend the Darwinian conceptions, but he is at the same time one of the most outspoken representatives of those thinkers who believed in the limitation of that mode of conception. A similar view is also held by the physicist Johaan Tyndall (1820–93) who considered the world process to be an energy that is completely inaccessible to the human intellect. According to him, it is precisely the assumption that everything in the world comes into existence through a natural evolution that makes it impossible to accept the thought that matter, which is, after all, the carrier of the whole evolution, should be no more than what our intellect can comprehend of it.

[ 42 ] A characteristic phenomenon of his time is the personality of the English statesman, James Balfour (1840–1930). In 1879, in his book, A Defense of Philosophical Doubt, Being an Essay on the Foundations of Belief, he expressed a credo that is doubtless similar to that held by many other thinkers. With respect to everything that man is capable of explaining he stands completely on the ground of the thought of natural science. For him, there is no other knowledge but natural science, but he maintains at the same time that his knowledge of natural science is only rightly understood if it is clear that the needs of man's soul and reason can never be satisfied by it. It is only necessary to understand that, in the last analysis even in natural science, everything depends on faith in the ultimate truths for which no further proof is possible. But no harm is done in that this trend of thoughts leads us only to belief, because this belief is a secure guide for our action in daily life. We believe in the laws of nature and we master them through this belief. We thereby force nature to serve us for our purpose. Religious belief is to produce an agreement between the actions of man and his higher needs that go beyond his everyday life.

[ 43 ] The world conceptions that have been discussed under the title, “The World as Illusion,” show that they have as their basis a longing for a satisfactory relationship of the self-conscious ego to the general world picture. It is especially significant that they do not consciously consider this search as their philosophical aim, and therefore do not expressly turn their inquiry toward that purpose. Instinctively as it were, they permit their thinking to be influenced by the direction that is determined by this unconscious search. The form that this search takes is determined by the conceptions of modern natural science. We approach the fundamental character of these conceptions if we fix our attention on the concept of “consciousness.” This concept was introduced to the life of modern philosophy by Descartes. Before him, it was customary to depend more on the concept of the “soul” as such. Little attention was paid to the fact that only a part of the soul's life is spent in connection with conscious phenomena. During sleep the soul does not live consciously. Compared to the conscious life, the nature of the soul must therefore consist of deeper forces, which in the waking state are merely lifted into consciousness. The more one asked the question of the justification and the value of knowledge in the light of clear and distinct ideas, however, the more it was also felt that the soul finds the most certain elements of knowledge when it does not go beyond its own limits and when it does not delve deeper into itself than consciousness extends. The opinion prevailed that everything else may be uncertain, but what my consciousness is, at least, as such is certain. Even the house I pass may not exist without me; that the image of this house is now in my consciousness: this I may maintain. But as soon as we fix our attention on this consciousness, the concept of the ego inevitably grows together with that of the consciousness. Whatever kind of entity the “ego” may be outside the consciousness, the realm of the “ego” can be conceived as extending as far as the consciousness. There is no possibility of denying that the sensual world picture, which the soul experiences consciously, has come into existence through the impression that is made on man by the world. But as soon as one clings to this statement, it becomes difficult to rid oneself of it, for there is a tendency thereby to imply the judgment that the processes of the world are the causes, and that the content of our consciousness is the effect. Because one thinks that only the effect is contained in the consciousness, it is believed that the cause must be in a world outside man as an imperceptible “thing in itself.” The presentation that is given above shows how the results of modern physiological research lead to an affirmation of such an opinion. It is just this opinion through which the “ego” finds itself enclosed with its subjective experiences within its own boundaries. This subtly produced intellectual illusion, once formed, cannot be destroyed as long as the ego does not find any clues within itself of which it knows that they refer to a being outside the subjective consciousness, although they are actually depicted within that consciousness. The ego must, outside the sensual consciousness, feel a contact with entities that guarantee their being by and through themselves. It must find something within that leads it outside itself. been said here concerning thoughts that are brought to life can have this effect. As long as the ego has experienced thought only within itself, it feels itself confined with it within its own boundary. As thought is brought to life it emancipates the ego from a mere subjective existence. A process takes place that is, to be sure, experienced subjectively by the ego, but by its own nature is an objective process. This breaks the “ego” loose from everything that it can feel only as subjective.

So we see that also the conceptions for which the world is illusion move toward a point that is reached when Hegel's world picture is so transformed that its thought comes to life. These conceptions take on the form that is necessary for a world picture that is unconsciously driven by an impulse in that direction. But in them, thinking still lacks the power to work its way through to that aim. Even in their imperfection, however, these conceptions receive their general character from this aim, and the ideas that appear are the external symptoms of active forces that remain concealed.

Periodical Re-Births

Enq. You mean, then, that we have all lived on earth before, in many past incarnations, and shall go on so living?

Theo. I do. The life-cycle, or rather the cycle of conscious life, begins with the separation of the mortal animal-man into sexes, and will end with the close of the last generation of men, in the seventh round and seventh race of mankind. Considering we are only in the fourth round and fifth race, its duration is more easily imagined than expressed.

Enq. And we keep on incarnating in new personalities all the time?

Theo. Most assuredly so; because this life-cycle or period of incarnation may be best compared to human life. As each such life is composed of days of activity separated by nights of sleep or of inaction, so, in the incarnation-cycle, an active life is followed by a Devachanic rest.

Enq. And it is this succession of births that is generally defined as re-incarnation?

Theo. Just so. It is only through these births that the perpetual progress of the countless millions of Egos toward final perfection and final rest (as long as was the period of activity) can be achieved.

Enq. And what is it that regulates the duration, or special qualities of these incarnations?

Theo. Karma, the universal law of retributive justice.

Enq. Is it an intelligent law?

Theo. For the Materialist, who calls the law of periodicity which regulates the marshalling of the several bodies, and all the other laws in nature, blind forces and mechanical laws, no doubt Karma would be a law of chance and no more. For us, no adjective or qualification could describe that which is impersonal and no entity, but a universal operative law. If you question me about the causative intelligence in it, I must answer you I do not know. But if you ask me to define its effects and tell you what these are in our belief, I may say that the experience of thousands of ages has shown us that they are absolute and unerring equity, wisdom, and intelligence. For Karma in its effects is an unfailing redresser of human injustice, and of all the failures of nature; a stern adjuster of wrongs; a retributive law which rewards and punishes with equal impartiality. It is, in the strictest sense, "no respecter of persons," though, on the other hand, it can neither be propitiated, nor turned aside by prayer. This is a belief common to Hindus and Buddhists, who both believe in Karma.

Enq. In this Christian dogmas contradict both, and I doubt whether any Christian will accept the teaching.

Theo. No; and Inman gave the reason for it many years ago. As he puts it, while "the Christians will accept any nonsense, if promulgated by the Church as a matter of faith . . . the Buddhists hold that nothing which is contradicted by sound reason can be a true doctrine of Buddha." They do not believe in any pardon for their sins, except after an adequate and just punishment for each evil deed or thought in a future incarnation, and a proportionate compensation to the parties injured.

Enq. Where is it so stated?

Theo. In most of their sacred works. In the "Wheel of the Law" (p. 57) you may find the following Theosophical tenet: -"Buddhists believe that every act, word or thought has its consequence, which will appear sooner or later in the present or in the future state. Evil acts will produce evil consequences, good acts will produce good consequences: prosperity in this world, or birth in heaven (Devachan). . . in the future state."

Enq. Christians believe the same thing, don't they?

Theo. Oh, no; they believe in the pardon and the remission of all sins. They are promised that if they only believe in the blood of Christ (an innocent victim!), in the blood offered by Him for the expiation of the sins of the whole of mankind, it will atone for every mortal sin. And we believe neither in vicarious atonement, nor in the possibility of the remission of the smallest sin by any god, not even by a "personal Absolute" or "Infinite," if such a thing could have any existence. What we believe in, is strict and impartial justice. Our idea of the unknown Universal Deity, represented by Karma, is that it is a Power which cannot fail, and can, therefore, have neither wrath nor mercy, only absolute Equity, which leaves every cause, great or small, to work out its inevitable effects. The saying of Jesus: "With what measure you mete it shall be measured to you again" (Matth. vii., 2), neither by expression nor implication points to any hope of future mercy or salvation by proxy. This is why, recognising as we do in our philosophy the justice of this statement, we cannot recommend too strongly mercy, charity, and forgiveness of mutual offences. Resist not evil, and render good for evil, are Buddhist precepts, and were first preached in view of the implacability of Karmic law. For man to take the law into his own hands is anyhow a sacrilegious presumption. Human Law may use restrictive not punitive measures; but a man who, believing in Karma, still revenges himself and refuses to forgive every injury, thereby rendering good for evil, is a criminal and only hurts himself. As Karma is sure to punish the man who wronged him, by seeking to inflict an additional punishment on his enemy, he, who instead of leaving that punishment to the great Law adds to it his own mite, only begets thereby a cause for the future reward of his own enemy and a future punishment for himself. The unfailing Regulator affects in each incarnation the quality of its successor; and the sum of the merit or demerit in preceding ones determines it.

Enq. Are we then to infer a man's past from his present?

Theo. Only so far as to believe that his present life is what it justly should be, to atone for the sins of the past life. Of course — seers and great adepts excepted — we cannot as average mortals know what those sins were. From our paucity of data, it is impossible for us even to determine what an old man's youth must have been; neither can we, for like reasons, draw final conclusions merely from what we see in the life of some man, as to what his past life may have been.

WHAT IS KARMA?

Enq. But what is Karma?

Theo. As I have said, we consider it as the Ultimate Law of the Universe, the source, origin and fount of all other laws which exist throughout Nature. Karma is the unerring law which adjusts effect to cause, on the physical, mental and spiritual planes of being. As no cause remains without its due effect from greatest to least, from a cosmic disturbance down to the movement of your hand, and as like produces like, Karma is that unseen and unknown law which adjusts wisely, intelligently and equitably each effect to its cause, tracing the latter back to its producer. Though itself unknowable, its action is perceivable.

Enq. Then it is the "Absolute," the "Unknowable" again, and is not of much value as an explanation of the problems of life?

Theo. On the contrary. For, though we do not know what Karma is per se, and in its essence, we do know how it works, and we can define and describe its mode of action with accuracy. We only do not know its ultimate Cause, just as modern philosophy universally admits that the ultimate Cause of anything is "unknowable."

Enq. And what has Theosophy to say in regard to the solution of the more practical needs of humanity? What is the explanation which it offers in reference to the awful suffering and dire necessity prevalent among the so-called "lower classes."

Theo. To be pointed, according to our teaching all these great social evils, the distinction of classes in Society, and of the sexes in the affairs of life, the unequal distribution of capital and of labour — all are due to what we tersely but truly denominate KARMA.

Enq. But, surely, all these evils which seem to fall upon the masses somewhat indiscriminately are not actual merited and INDIVIDUAL Karma?

Theo. No, they cannot be so strictly defined in their effects as to show that each individual environment, and the particular conditions of life in which each person finds himself, are nothing more than the retributive Karma which the individual generated in a previous life. We must not lose sight of the fact that every atom is subject to the general law governing the whole body to which it belongs, and here we come upon the wider track of the Karmic law. Do you not perceive that the aggregate of individual Karma becomes that of the nation to which those individuals belong, and further, that the sum total of National Karma is that of the World? The evils that you speak of are not peculiar to the individual or even to the Nation, they are more or less universal; and it is upon this broad line of Human interdependence that the law of Karma finds its legitimate and equable issue.

Enq. Do I, then, understand that the law of Karma is not necessarily an individual law?

Theo. That is just what I mean. It is impossible that Karma could readjust the balance of power in the world's life and progress, unless it had a broad and general line of action. It is held as a truth among Theosophists that the interdependence of Humanity is the cause of what is called Distributive Karma, and it is this law which affords the solution to the great question of collective suffering and its relief. It is an occult law, moreover, that no man can rise superior to his individual failings, without lifting, be it ever so little, the whole body of which he is an integral part. In the same way, no one can sin, nor suffer the effects of sin, alone. In reality, there is no such thing as "Separateness"; and the nearest approach to that selfish state, which the laws of life permit, is in the intent or motive.

Enq. And are there no means by which the distributive or national Karma might be concentred or collected, so to speak, and brought to its natural and legitimate fulfilment without all this protracted suffering?

Theo. As a general rule, and within certain limits which define the age to which we belong, the law of Karma cannot be hastened or retarded in its fulfilment. But of this I am certain, the point of possibility in either of these directions has never yet been touched. Listen to the following recital of one phase of national suffering, and then ask yourself whether, admitting the working power of individual, relative, and distributive Karma, these evils are not capable of extensive modification and general relief. What I am about to read to you is from the pen of a National Saviour, one who, having overcome Self, and being free to choose, has elected to serve Humanity, in bearing at least as much as a woman's shoulders can possibly bear of National Karma. This is what she says: —

"Yes, Nature always does speak, don't you think? only sometimes we make so much noise that we drown her voice. That is why it is so restful to go out of the town and nestle awhile in the Mother's arms. I am thinking of the evening on Hampstead Heath when we watched the sun go down; but oh! upon what suffering and misery that sun had set! A lady brought me yesterday a big hamper of wild flowers. I thought some of my East-end family had a better right to it than I, and so I took it down to a very poor school in Whitechapel this morning. You should have seen the pallid little faces brighten! Thence I went to pay for some dinners at a little cookshop for some children. It was in a back street, narrow, full of jostling people; stench indescribable, from fish, meat, and other comestibles, all reeking in a sun that, in Whitechapel, festers instead of purifying. The cookshop was the quintessence of all the smells. Indescribable meat-pies at 1d., loathsome lumps of 'food' and swarms of flies, a very altar of Beelzebub! All about, babies on the prowl for scraps, one, with the face of an angel, gathering up cherrystones as a light and nutritious form of diet. I came westward with every nerve shuddering and jarred, wondering whether anything can be done with some parts of London save swallowing them up in an earthquake and starting their inhabitants afresh, after a plunge into some purifying Lethe, out of which not a memory might emerge! And then I thought of Hampstead Heath, and — pondered. If by any sacrifice one could win the power to save these people, the cost would not be worth counting; but, you see, THEY must be changed — and how can that be wrought? In the condition they now are, they would not profit by any environment in which they might be placed; and yet, in their present surroundings they must continue to putrefy. It breaks my heart, this endless, hopeless misery, and the brutish degradation that is at once its outgrowth and its root. It is like the banyan tree; every branch roots itself and sends out new shoots. What a difference between these feelings and the peaceful scene at Hampstead! and yet we, who are the brothers and sisters of these poor creatures, have only a right to use Hampstead Heaths to gain strength to save Whitechapels." (Signed by a name too respected and too well known to be given to scoffers.)

Enq. That is a sad but beautiful letter, and I think it presents with painful conspicuity the terrible workings of what you have called "Relative and Distributive Karma." But alas! there seems no immediate hope of any relief short of an earthquake, or some such general ingulfment!

Theo. What right have we to think so while one-half of humanity is in a position to effect an immediate relief of the privations which are suffered by their fellows? When every individual has contributed to the general good what he can of money, of labour, and of ennobling thought, then, and only then, will the balance of National Karma be struck, and until then we have no right nor any reasons for saying that there is more life on the earth than Nature can support. It is reserved for the heroic souls, the Saviours of our Race and Nation, to find out the cause of this unequal pressure of retributive Karma, and by a supreme effort to re-adjust the balance of power, and save the people from a moral ingulfment a thousand times more disastrous and more permanently evil than the like physical catastrophe, in which you seem to see the only possible outlet for this accumulated misery.

Enq. Well, then, tell me generally how you describe this law of Karma?

Theo. We describe Karma as that Law of re-adjustment which ever tends to restore disturbed equilibrium in the physical, and broken harmony in the moral world. We say that Karma does not act in this or that particular way always; but that it always does act so as to restore Harmony and preserve the balance of equilibrium, in virtue of which the Universe exists.

Enq. Give me an illustration.

Theo. Later on I will give you a full illustration. Think now of a pond. A stone falls into the water and creates disturbing waves. These waves oscillate backwards and forwards till at last, owing to the operation of what physicists call the law of the dissipation of energy, they are brought to rest, and the water returns to its condition of calm tranquillity. Similarly all action, on every plane, produces disturbance in the balanced harmony of the Universe, and the vibrations so produced will continue to roll backwards and forwards, if its area is limited, till equilibrium is restored. But since each such disturbance starts from some particular point, it is clear that equilibrium and harmony can only be restored by the reconverging to that same point of all the forces which were set in motion from it. And here you have proof that the consequences of a man's deeds, thoughts, etc. must all react upon himself with the same force with which they were set in motion.

Enq. But I see nothing of a moral character about this law. It looks to me like the simple physical law that action and reaction are equal and opposite.

Theo. I am not surprised to hear you say that. Europeans have got so much into the ingrained habit of considering right and wrong, good and evil, as matters of an arbitrary code of law laid down either by men, or imposed upon them by a Personal God. We Theosophists, however, say that "Good" and "Harmony," and "Evil" and "Dis-harmony," are synonymous. Further we maintain that all pain and suffering are results of want of Harmony, and that the one terrible and only cause of the disturbance of Harmony is selfishness in some form or another. Hence Karma gives back to every man the actual consequences of his own actions, without any regard to their moral character; but since he receives his due for all, it is obvious that he will be made to atone for all sufferings which he has caused, just as he will reap in joy and gladness the fruits of all the happiness and harmony he had helped to produce. I can do no better than quote for your benefit certain passages from books and articles written by our Theosophists — those who have a correct idea of Karma.

Enq. I wish you would, as your literature seems to be very sparing on this subject?

Theo. Because it is the most difficult of all our tenets.

Some short time ago there appeared the following objection from a Christian pen: —

"Granting that the teaching in regard to Theosophy is correct, and that 'man must be his own saviour, must overcome self and conquer the evil that is in his dual nature, to obtain the emancipation of his soul,' what is man to do after he has been awakened and converted to a certain extent from evil or wickedness? How is he to get emancipation, or pardon, or the blotting out of the evil or wickedness he has already done?"

To this Mr. J. H. Conelly replies very pertinently that no one can hope to "make the theosophical engine run on the theological track." As he has it: —

"The possibility of shirking individual responsibility is not among the concepts of Theosophy. In this faith there is no such thing as pardoning, or 'blotting out of evil or wickedness already done,' otherwise than by the adequate punishment therefor of the wrong-doer and the restoration of the harmony in the universe that had been disturbed by his wrongful act. The evil has been his own, and while others must suffer its consequences, atonement can be made by nobody but himself.

"The condition contemplated . . . . in which a man shall have been 'awakened and converted to a certain extent from evil or wickedness,' is that in which a man shall have realized that his deeds are evil and deserving of punishment. In that realization a sense of personal responsibility is inevitable, and just in proportion to the extent of his awakening or 'converting' must be the sense of that awful responsibility. While it is strong upon him is the time when he is urged to accept the doctrine of vicarious atonement.

"He is told that be must also repent, but nothing is easier than that. It is an amiable weakness of human nature that we are quite prone to regret the evil we have done when our attention is called, and we have either suffered from it ourselves or enjoyed its fruits. Possibly, close analysis of the feeling would show us that that which we regret is rather the necessity that seemed to require the evil as a means of attainment of our selfish ends than the evil itself."

"Attractive as this prospect of casting our burden of sins 'at the foot of the cross' may be to the ordinary mind, it does not commend itself to the Theosophic student. He does not apprehend why the sinner by attaining knowledge of his evil can thereby merit any pardon for or the blotting out of his past wickedness; or why repentance and future right living entitle him to a suspension in his favour of the universal law of relation between cause and effect. The results of his evil deeds continue to exist; the suffering caused to others by his wickedness is not blotted out. The Theosophical student takes the result of wickedness upon the innocent into his problem. He considers not only the guilty person, but his victims.

"Evil is an infraction of the laws of harmony governing the universe, and the penalty thereof must fall upon the violator of that law himself. Christ uttered the warning, 'Sin no more, lest a worse thing come upon thee,' and St. Paul said, 'Work out your own salvation. Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.' That, by the way, is a fine metaphoric rendering of the sentence of the Puranas far antedating him — that 'every man reaps the consequences of his own acts.'

"This is the principle of the law of Karma which is taught by Theosophy. Sinnett, in his 'Esoteric Buddhism,' rendered Karma as 'the law of ethical causation.' 'The law of retribution,' as Mdme. Blavatsky translates its meaning, is better. It is the power which

"'Just though mysterious, leads us on unerring /Through ways unmarked from guilt to punishment.'

"But it is more. It rewards merit as unerringly and amply as it punishes demerit. It is the outcome of every act, of thought, word and deed, and by it men mould themselves, their lives and happenings. Eastern philosophy rejects the idea of a newly created soul for every baby born. It believes in a limited number of monads, evolving and growing more and more perfect through their assimilation of many successive personalities. Those personalities are the product of Karma and it is by Karma and re-incarnation that the human monad in time returns to its source — absolute deity."

E. D. Walker, in his "Re-incarnation," offers the following explanation: —

"Briefly, the doctrine of Karma is that we have made ourselves what we are by former actions, and are building our future eternity by present actions. There is no destiny but what we ourselves determine. There is no salvation or condemnation except what we ourselves bring about. . . . Because it offers no shelter for culpable actions and necessitates a sterling manliness, it is less welcome to weak natures than the easy religious tenets of vicarious atonement, intercession, forgiveness and death-bed conversions. . . . In the domain of eternal justice the offence and the punishment are inseparably connected as the same event, because there is no real distinction between the action and its outcome. . . . It is Karma, or our old acts, that draws us back into earthly life. The spirit's abode changes according to its Karma, and this Karma forbids any long continuance in one condition, because it is always changing. So long as action is governed by material and selfish motives, just so long must the effect of that action be manifested in physical re-births. Only the perfectly selfless man can elude the gravitation of material life. Few have attained this, but it is the goal of mankind."

And then the writer quotes from the Secret Doctrine:

"Those who believe in Karma have to believe in destiny, which, from birth to death, every man is weaving, thread by thread, around himself, as a spider does his cobweb, and this destiny is guided either by the heavenly voice of the invisible prototype outside of us, or by our more intimate astral or inner man, who is but too often the evil genius of the embodied entity called man. Both these lead on the outward man, but one of them must prevail; and from the very beginning of the invisible affray the stern and implacable law of compensation steps in and takes its course, faithfully following the fluctuations. When the last strand is woven, and man is seemingly enwrapped in the network of his own doing, then he finds himself completely under the empire of this self-made destiny. . . . An Occultist or a philosopher will not speak of the goodness or cruelty of Providence; but, identifying it with Karma-Nemesis, he will teach that, nevertheless, it guards the good and watches over them in this as in future lives; and that it punishes the evil-doer — aye, even to his seventh re-birth — so long, in short, as the effect of his having thrown into perturbation even the smallest atom in the infinite world of harmony has not been finally re-adjusted. For the only decree of Karma — an eternal and immutable decree — is absolute harmony in the world of matter as it is in the world of spirit. It is not, therefore, Karma that rewards or punishes, but it is we who reward or punish ourselves according to whether we work with, through and along with nature, abiding by the laws on which that harmony depends, or — break them. Nor would the ways of Karma be inscrutable were men to work in union and harmony, instead of disunion and strife. For our ignorance of those ways — which one portion of mankind calls the ways of Providence, dark and intricate; while another sees in them the action of blind fatalism; and a third simple chance, with neither gods nor devils to guide them — would surely disappear if we would but attribute all these to their correct cause. . . . We stand bewildered before the mystery of our own making and the riddles of life that we will not solve, and then accuse the great Sphinx of devouring us. But verily there is not an accident of our lives, not a misshapen day, or a misfortune, that could not be traced back to our own doings in this or in another life. . . . . The law of Karma is inextricably interwoven with that of reincarnation. . . . . It is only this doctrine that can explain to us the mysterious problem of good and evil, and reconcile man to the terrible and apparent injustice of life. Nothing but such certainty can quiet our revolted sense of justice. For, when one unacquainted with the noble doctrine looks around him and observes the inequalities of birth and fortune, of intellect and capacities; when one sees honour paid to fools and profligates, on whom fortune has heaped her favours by mere privilege of birth, and their nearest neighbour, with all his intellect and noble virtues — far more deserving in every way — perishing for want and for lack of sympathy — when one sees all this and has to turn away, helpless to relieve the undeserved suffering, one's ears ringing and heart aching with the cries of pain around him — that blessed knowledge of Karma alone prevents him from cursing life and men as well as their supposed Creator. . . . . This law, whether conscious or unconscious, predestines nothing and no one. It exists from and in eternity truly, for it is eternity itself; and as such, since no act can be coequal with eternity, it cannot be said to act, for it is action itself. It is not the wave which drowns the man, but the personal action of the wretch who goes deliberately and places himself under the impersonal action of the laws that govern the ocean's motion. Karma creates nothing, nor does it design. It is man who plants and creates causes, and Karmic law adjusts the effects, which adjustment is not an act but universal harmony, tending ever to resume its original position, like a bough, which, bent down too forcibly, rebounds with corresponding vigour. If it happen to dislocate the arm that tried to bend it out of its natural position, shall we say it is the bough which broke our arm or that our own folly has brought us to grief? Karma has never sought to destroy intellectual and individual liberty, like the god invented by the Monotheists. It has not involved its decrees in darkness purposely to perplex man, nor shall it punish him who dares to scrutinize its mysteries. On the contrary, he who unveils through study and meditation its intricate paths, and throws light on those dark ways, in the windings of which so many men perish owing to their ignorance of the labyrinth of life, is working for the good of his fellow-men. Karma is an absolute and eternal law in the world of manifestation; and as there can only be one Absolute, as one Eternal, ever-present Cause, believers in Karma cannot be regarded as atheists or materialists, still less as fatalists, for Karma is one with the Unknowable, of which it is an aspect, in its effects in the phenomenal world."

Another able Theosophic writer says (Purpose of Theosophy, by Mrs. P. Sinnett): —

"Every individual is making Karma either good or bad in each action and thought of his daily round, and is at the same time working out in this life the Karma brought about by the acts and desires of the last. When we see people afflicted by congenital ailments it may be safely assumed that these ailments are the inevitable results of causes started by themselves in a previous birth. It may be argued that, as these afflictions are hereditary, they can have nothing to do with a past incarnation; but it must be remembered that the Ego, the real man, the individuality, has no spiritual origin in the parentage by which it is re-embodied, but it is drawn by the affinities which its previous mode of life attracted round it into the current that carries it, when the time comes for re-birth, to the home best fitted for the development of those tendencies. . . . . This doctrine of Karma, when properly understood, is well calculated to guide and assist those who realize its truth to a higher and better mode of life, for it must not be forgotten that not only our actions but our thoughts also are most assuredly followed by a crowd of circumstances that will influence for good or for evil our own future, and, what is still more important, the future of many of our fellow-creatures. If sins of omission and commission could in any case be only self-regarding, the fact on the sinner's Karma would be a matter of minor consequence. The effect that every thought and act through life carries with it for good or evil a corresponding influence on other members of the human family renders a strict sense of justice, morality, and unselfishness so necessary to future happiness or progress. A crime once committed, an evil thought sent out from the mind, are past recall — no amount of repentance can wipe out their results in the future. Repentance, if sincere, will deter a man from repeating errors; it cannot save him or others from the effects of those already produced, which will most unerringly overtake him either in this life or in the next re-birth."

Mr. J. H. Conelly proceeds —

"The believers in a religion based upon such doctrine are willing it should be compared with one in which man's destiny for eternity is determined by the accidents of a single, brief earthly existence, during which he is cheered by the promise that 'as the tree falls so shall it lie'; in which his brightest hope, when he wakes up to a knowledge of his wickedness, is the doctrine of vicarious atonement, and in which even that is handicapped, according to the Presbyterian Confession of Faith.

"By the decree of God, for the manifestation of his glory, some men and angels are predestinated unto everlasting life and others foreordained to everlasting death.

"These angels and men thus predestinated and foreordained are particularly and unchangeably designed; and their number is so certain and definite that it cannot be either increased or diminished. . . . As God hath appointed the elect unto glory. . . . . Neither are any other redeemed by Christ effectually called, justified, adopted, sanctified, and saved, but the elect only.

"The rest of mankind God was pleased, according to the unsearchable counsel of his own will, whereby he extendeth or withholdeth mercy as he pleaseth, for the glory of his sovereign power over his creatures, to pass by and to ordain them to dishonour and wrath for their sin to the praise of his glorious justice."

This is what the able defender says. Nor can we do any better than wind up the subject as he does, by a quotation from a magnificent poem. As he says: —

"The exquisite beauty of Edwin Arnold's exposition of Karma in 'The Light of Asia' tempts to its reproduction here, but it is too long for quotation in full. Here is a portion of it: —

Karma — all that total of a soul
Which is the things it did, the thoughts it had,
The 'self' it wove with woof of viewless time
Crossed on the warp invisible of acts.
* * * * *
Before beginning and without an end,
As space eternal and as surety sure,
Is fixed a Power divine which moves to good,
Only its laws endure.
It will not be contemned of anyone;
Who thwarts it loses, and who serves it gains;
The hidden good it pays with peace and bliss,
The hidden ill with pains.
It seeth everywhere and marketh all;
Do right — it recompenseth! Do one wrong —
The equal retribution must be made,
Though Dharma tarry long.
It knows not wrath nor pardon; utter-true,
Its measures mete, its faultless balance weighs;
Times are as naught, to-morrow it will judge
Or after many days.
* * * * *
Such is the law which moves to righteousness,
Which none at last can turn aside or stay;
The heart of it is love, the end of it
Is peace and consummation sweet. Obey."

And now I advise you to compare our Theosophic views upon Karma, the law of Retribution, and say whether they are not both more philosophical and just than this cruel and idiotic dogma which makes of "God" a senseless fiend; the tenet, namely, that the "elect only" will be saved, and the rest doomed to eternal perdition!

Enq. Yes, I see what you mean generally; but I wish you could give some concrete example of the action of Karma?

Theo. That I cannot do. We can only feel sure, as I said before, that our present lives and circumstances are the direct results of our own deeds and thoughts in lives that are past. But we, who are not Seers or Initiates, cannot know anything about the details of the working of the law of Karma.

Enq. Can anyone, even an Adept or Seer, follow out this Karmic process of re-adjustment in detail?

Theo. Certainly: "Those who know"can do so by the exercise of powers which are latent even in all men.

Who Are Those Who Know?

Enq. Does this hold equally of ourselves as of others?

Theo. Equally. As just said, the same limited vision exists for all, save those who have reached in the present incarnation the acme of spiritual vision and clairvoyance. We can only perceive that, if things with us ought to have been different, they would have been different; that we are what we have made ourselves, and have only what we have earned for ourselves.

Enq. I am afraid such a conception would only embitter us.

Theo. I believe it is precisely the reverse. It is disbelief in the just law of retribution that is more likely to awaken every combative feeling in man. A child, as much as a man, resents a punishment, or even a reproof he believes to be unmerited, far more than he does a severer punishment, if he feels that it is merited. Belief in Karma is the highest reason for reconcilement to one's lot in this life, and the very strongest incentive towards effort to better the succeeding re-birth. Both of these, indeed, would be destroyed if we supposed that our lot was the result of anything but strict Law, or that destiny was in any other hands than our own.

Enq. You have just asserted that this system of Re-incarnation under Karmic law commended itself to reason, justice, and the moral sense. But, if so, is it not at some sacrifice of the gentler qualities of sympathy and pity, and thus a hardening of the finer instincts of human nature?

Theo. Only apparently, not really. No man can receive more or less than his deserts without a corresponding injustice or partiality to others; and a law which could be averted through compassion would bring about more misery than it saved, more irritation and curses than thanks. Remember also, that we do not administer the law, if we do create causes for its effects; it administers itself; and again, that the most copious provision for the manifestation of provision for the manifestation of just compassion and mercy is shown in the state of Devachan.

Enq. You speak of Adepts as being an exception to the rule of our general ignorance. Do they really know more than we do of Re-incarnation and after states?

Theo. They do, indeed. By the training of faculties we all possess, but which they alone have developed to perfection, they have entered in spirit these various planes and states we have been discussing. For long ages, one generation of Adepts after another has studied the mysteries of being, of life, death, and re-birth, and all have taught in their turn some of the facts so learned.

Enq. And is the production of Adepts the aim of Theosophy?

Theo. Theosophy considers humanity as an emanation from divinity on its return path thereto. At an advanced point upon the path, Adeptship is reached by those who have devoted several incarnations to its achievement. For, remember well, no man has ever reached Adeptship in the Secret Sciences in one life; but many incarnations are necessary for it after the formation of a conscious purpose and the beginning of the needful training. Many may be the men and women in the very midst of our Society who have begun this uphill work toward illumination several incarnations ago, and who yet, owing to the personal illusions of the present life, are either ignorant of the fact, or on the road to losing every chance in this existence of progressing any farther. They feel an irresistible attraction toward occultism and the Higher Life, and yet are too personal and self-opinionated, too much in love with the deceptive allurements of mundane life and the world's ephemeral pleasures, to give them up; and so lose their chance in their present birth. But, for ordinary men, for the practical duties of daily life, such a far-off result is inappropriate as an aim and quite ineffective as a motive.

Enq. What, then, may be their object or distinct purpose in joining the Theosophical Society?

Theo. Many are interested in our doctrines and feel instinctively that they are truer than those of any dogmatic religion. Others have formed a fixed resolve to attain the highest ideal of man's duty.

The Difference Between Faith and Knowledge; Or, Blind And Reasoned Faith

Enq. You say that they accept and believe in the doctrines of Theosophy. But, as they do not belong to those Adepts you have just mentioned, then they must accept your teachings on blind faith. In what does this differ from that of conventional religions?

Theo. As it differs on almost all the other points, so it differs on this one. What you call "faith," and that which is blind faith, in reality, and with regard to the dogmas of the Christian religions, becomes with us "knowledge," the logical sequence of things we know, about facts in nature. Your Doctrines are based upon interpretation, therefore, upon the second-hand testimony of Seers; ours upon the invariable and unvarying testimony of Seers. The ordinary Christian theology, for instance, holds that man is a creature of God, of three component parts — body, soul, and spirit — all essential to his integrity, and all, either in the gross form of physical earthly existence or in the etherealized form of post-resurrection experience, needed to so constitute him for ever, each man having thus a permanent existence separate from other men, and from the Divine. Theosophy, on the other hand, holds that man, being an emanation from the Unknown, yet ever present and infinite Divine Essence, his body and everything else is impermanent, hence an illusion; Spirit alone in him being the one enduring substance, and even that losing its separated individuality at the moment of its complete re-union with the Universal Spirit.

Enq. If we lose even our individuality, then it becomes simply annihilation.

Theo. I say it does not, since I speak of separate, not of universal individuality. The latter becomes as a part transformed into the whole; the dewdrop is not evaporated, but becomes the sea. Is physical man annihilated, when from a foetus he becomes an old man? What kind of Satanic pride must be ours if we place our infinitesimally small consciousness and individuality higher than the universal and infinite consciousness!

Enq. It follows, then, that there is, de facto, no man, but all is Spirit?

Theo. You are mistaken. It thus follows that the union of Spirit with matter is but temporary; or, to put it more clearly, since Spirit and matter are one, being the two opposite poles of the universal manifested substance — that Spirit loses its right to the name so long as the smallest particle and atom of its manifesting substance still clings to any form, the result of differentiation. To believe otherwise is blind faith.

Enq. Thus it is on knowledge, not on faith, that you assert that the permanent principle, the Spirit, simply makes a transit through matter?

Theo. I would put it otherwise and say — we assert that the appearance of the permanent and one principle, Spirit, as matter is transient, and, therefore, no better than an illusion.

Enq. Very well; and this, given out on knowledge not faith?

Theo. Just so. But as I see very well what you are driving at, I may just as well tell you that we hold faith, such as you advocate, to be a mental disease, and real faith, i.e., the pistis of the Greeks, as "belief based on knowledge," whether supplied by the evidence of physical or spiritual senses.

Enq. What do you mean?

Theo. I mean, if it is the difference between the two that you want to know, then I can tell you that between faith on authority and faith on one's spiritual intuition, there is a very great difference.

Enq. What is it?

Theo. One is human credulity and superstition, the other human belief and intuition. As Professor Alexander Wilder says in his "Introduction to the Eleusinian Mysteries," "It is ignorance which leads to profanation. Men ridicule what they do not properly understand. . . . The undercurrent of this world is set towards one goal; and inside of human credulity . . is a power almost infinite, a holy faith capable of apprehending the supremest truths of all existence." Those who limit that "credulity" to human authoritative dogmas alone, will never fathom that power nor even perceive it in their natures. It is stuck fast to the external plane and is unable to bring forth into play the essence that rules it; for to do this they have to claim their right of private judgment, and this they never dare to do.

Enq. And is it that "intuition" which forces you to reject God as a personal Father, Ruler and Governor of the Universe?

Theo. Precisely. We believe in an ever unknowable Principle, because blind aberration alone can make one maintain that the Universe, thinking man, and all the marvels contained even in the world of matter, could have grown without some intelligent powers to bring about the extraordinarily wise arrangement of all its parts. Nature may err, and often does, in its details and the external manifestations of its materials, never in its inner causes and results. Ancient pagans held on this question far more philosophical views than modern philosophers, whether Agnostics, Materialists or Christians; and no pagan writer has ever yet advanced the proposition that cruelty and mercy are not finite feelings, and can therefore be made the attributes of an infinite god. Their gods, therefore, were all finite. The Siamese author of the Wheel of the Law, expresses the same idea about your personal god as we do; he says (p. 25) —

"A Buddhist might believe in the existence of a god, sublime above all human qualities and attributes — a perfect god, above love, and hatred, and jealousy, calmly resting in a quietude that nothing could disturb, and of such a god he would speak no disparagement, not from a desire to please him or fear to offend him, but from natural veneration; but he cannot understand a god with the attributes and qualities of men, a god who loves and hates, and shows anger; a Deity who, whether described as by Christian Missionaries or by Mahometans or Brahmins,* or Jews, falls below his standard of even an ordinary good man."

*Sectarian Brahmins are here meant. The Parabrahm of the Vedantins is the Deity we accept and believe in.

Enq. Faith for faith, is not the faith of the Christian who believes, in his human helplessness and humility, that there is a merciful Father in Heaven who will protect him from temptation, help him in life, and forgive him his transgressions, better than the cold and proud, almost fatalistic faith of the Buddhists, Vedantins, and Theosophists?

Theo. Persist in calling our belief "faith" if you will. But once we are again on this ever-recurring question, I ask in my turn: faith for faith, is not the one based on strict logic and reason better than the one which is based simply on human authority or — hero-worship? Our "faith" has all the logical force of the arithmetical truism that 2 and 2 will produce 4. Your faith is like the logic of some emotional women, of whom Tourgenyeff said that for them 2 and 2 were generally 5, and a tallow candle into the bargain. Yours is a faith, moreover, which clashes not only with every conceivable view of justice and logic, but which, if analysed, leads man to his moral perdition, checks the progress of mankind, and positively making of might, right — transforms every second man into a Cain to his brother Abel.

Enq. What do you allude to?

HAS GOD THE RIGHT TO FORGIVE?

Theo. To the Doctrine of Atonement; I allude to that dangerous dogma in which you believe, and which teaches us that no matter how enormous our crimes against the laws of God and of man, we have but to believe in the self-sacrifice of Jesus for the salvation of mankind, and his blood will wash out every stain. It is twenty years that I preach against it, and I may now draw your attention to a paragraph from Isis Unveiled, written in 1875. This is what Christianity teaches, and what we combat: —

"God's mercy is boundless and unfathomable. It is impossible to conceive of a human sin so damnable that the price paid in advance for the redemption of the sinner would not wipe it out if a thousandfold worse. And furthermore, it is never too late to repent. Though the offender wait until the last minute of the last hour of the last day of his mortal life, before his blanched lips utter the confession of faith, he may go to Paradise; the dying thief did it, and so may all others as vile. These are the assumptions of the Church, and of the Clergy; assumptions banged at the heads of your countrymen by England's favourite preachers, right in the 'light of the XIXth century,'" this most paradoxical age of all. Now to what does it lead?

Enq. Does it not make the Christian happier than the Buddhist or Brahmin?

Theo. No; not the educated man, at any rate, since the majority of these have long since virtually lost all belief in this cruel dogma. But it leads those who still believe in it more easily to the threshold of every conceivable crime, than any other I know of. Let me quote to you from Isis once more (vide Vol. II. pp. 542 and 543) —

"If we step outside the little circle of creed and consider the universe as a whole balanced by the exquisite adjustment of parts, how all sound logic, how the faintest glimmering sense of justice, revolts against this Vicarious Atonement! If the criminal sinned only against himself, and wronged no one but himself; if by sincere repentance he could cause the obliteration of past events, not only from the memory of man, but also from that imperishable record, which no deity — not even the Supremest of the Supreme — can cause to disappear, then this dogma might not be incomprehensible. But to maintain that one may wrong his fellow-man, kill, disturb the equilibrium of society and the natural order of things, and then — through cowardice, hope, or compulsion, it matters not — be forgiven by believing that the spilling of one blood washes out the other blood spilt — this is preposterous! Can the results of a crime be obliterated even though the crime itself should be pardoned? The effects of a cause are never limited to the boundaries of the cause, nor can the results of crime be confined to the offender and his victim. Every good as well as evil action has its effects, as palpably as the stone flung into calm water. The simile is trite, but it is the best ever conceived, so let us use it. The eddying circles are greater and swifter as the disturbing object is greater or smaller, but the smallest pebble, nay, the tiniest speck, makes its ripples. And this disturbance is not alone visible and on the surface. Below, unseen, in every direction — outward and downward — drop pushes drop until the sides and bottom are touched by the force. More, the air above the water is agitated, and this disturbance passes, as the physicists tell us, from stratum to stratum out into space forever and ever; an impulse has been given to matter, and that is never lost, can never be recalled! . . .

"So with crime, and so with its opposite. The action may be instantaneous, the effects are eternal. When, after the stone is once flung into the pond, we can recall it to the hand, roll back the ripples, obliterate the force expended, restore the etheric waves to their previous state of non-being, and wipe out every trace of the act of throwing the missile, so that Time's record shall not show that it ever happened, then, then we may patiently hear Christians argue for the efficacy of this Atonement,"

and — cease to believe in Karmic Law. As it now stands, we call upon the whole world to decide, which of our two doctrines is the most appreciative of deific justice, and which is more reasonable, even on simple human evidence and logic.

Enq. Yet millions believe in the Christian dogma and are happy.

Theo. Pure sentimentalism overpowering their thinking faculties, which no true philanthropist or Altruist will ever accept. It is not even a dream of selfishness, but a nightmare of the human intellect. Look where it leads to, and tell me the name of that pagan country where crimes are more easily committed or more numerous than in Christian lands. Look at the long and ghastly annual records of crimes committed in European countries; and behold Protestant and Biblical America. There, conversions effected in prisons are more numerous than those made by public revivals and preaching. See how the ledger-balance of Christian justice (!) stands: Red-handed murderers, urged on by the demons of lust, revenge, cupidity, fanaticism, or mere brutal thirst for blood, who kill their victims, in most cases, without giving them time to repent or call on Jesus. These, perhaps, died sinful, and, of course — consistently with theological logic — met the reward of their greater or lesser offences. But the murderer, overtaken by human justice, is imprisoned, wept over by sentimentalists, prayed with and at, pronounces the charmed words of conversion, and goes to the scaffold a redeemed child of Jesus! Except for the murder, he would not have been prayed with, redeemed, pardoned. Clearly this man did well to murder, for thus he gained eternal happiness! And how about the victim, and his, or her family, relatives, dependents, social relations; has justice no recompense for them? Must they suffer in this world and the next, while he who wronged them sits beside the "holy thief" of Calvary, and is for ever blessed? On this question the clergy keep a prudent silence. (Isis Unveiled.) And now you know why Theosophists — whose fundamental belief and hope is justice for all, in Heaven as on earth, and in Karma — reject this dogma.

Enq. The ultimate destiny of man, then, is not a Heaven presided over by God, but the gradual transformation of matter into its primordial element, Spirit?

Theo. It is to that final goal to which all tends in nature.

Enq. Do not some of you regard this association or "fall of spirit into matter" as evil, and re-birth as a sorrow?

Theo. Some do, and therefore strive to shorten their period of probation on earth. It is not an unmixed evil, however, since it ensures the experience upon which we mount to knowledge and wisdom. I mean that experience which teaches that the needs of our spiritual nature can never be met by other than spiritual happiness. As long as we are in the body, we are subjected to pain, suffering and all the disappointing incidents occurring during life. Therefore, and to palliate this, we finally acquire knowledge which alone can afford us relief and hope of a better future.

Although I already touched on Goethe's “Faust” in this space this winter, in a consideration of Goethe's world view in the context of German idealism, I will take the liberty today of coming back to you with a consideration of Goethe's “Faust” as a kind of introduction to the six lectures I have announced. I believe that in connection with Goethe's Faust, the world view that I am representing here yields so many insights that some light will fall on the following, which will be spoken here in the near future. Of course, today I will only be able to make aphoristic remarks about the topic I have set myself, because this topic is so extensive in itself that one can never get further than highlighting this or that point of view from a wealth of points of view. And of course it also follows that one must be one-sided with each such consideration of Goethe's “Faust”. But that is a risk one must be willing to take.

After a consideration of Goethe's “Faust” that lasted more than half a century, my old friend and teacher Karl Julius Schröer completed the third edition of his “Faust” edition 1892 with a preface in which the words are found: “Only the German way of thinking was able to solve the Faust problem.” And it is essentially on these words that I would like to base my reflections today.

According to a certainly justified opinion of Herman Grimm, who was so deeply involved in all that Goethe had striven for and experienced, the Faust problem will be the starting point for recurring reflections on Goethe's “Faust” through the centuries, even millennia, which will certainly differ considerably from one another in the succession of times. In this regard, Herman Grimm already spoke a very significant word in the 1870s, which I would now also like to mention in my introduction. Herman Grimm said at the time: “We are still too deeply immersed in the world that Goethe wanted to depict allegorically and symbolically in the second part of the play; here, too, only later times will gain the right point of view.” It may be said that the standpoint which Herman Grimm assumes here is as modest as it is lofty, for he speaks from a deep consciousness of all that has been poured into this Faustic poetry, which was given to the world through Goethe. And Herman Grimm continues: “We would do an injustice to Goethe's Faust if we took it only for what his many-colored experiences make it appear, and the time will yet come when the interpreters of this poem will occupy themselves more with what lies in it than with what merely clings to it.”

Of course, such statements must still apply in many respects today. Nevertheless, decades have passed since Herman Grimm wrote these words, and today, we may perhaps already entertain the hope, from the many insights that spiritual life has experienced, that we can get more into what lies in Faust than what hangs on Faust, as Herman Grimm puts it.

And so today I would like to draw your attention to how the world wandering that Faust undertakes from his study to the world, in which people more or less live, came about, and how through this world wandering, he gradually rises to the point of view of a worldview in the broadest sense of the word, which represents a kind of rebirth of Faust out of German intellectual life, insofar as Goethe himself participated in this German intellectual life. I believe that we shall only be able to arrive at a full understanding of the figure of Faust and its significance for life if we seek from the outset to delve into what is actually living in Faust's soul at that moment when we have him before us as a poetic figure at the beginning of the Faustic poetry, as it has now been completed by Goethe. What lives in Faust, as expressed in the opening monologue, “Have now, alas, philosophy...” and so on, speaks in a deeply significant way. But a kind of light must also be cast on what lives in Faust's soul at the moment that the poetry presents to us at its beginning, from a deepening into all that takes place later in the course of the events that the Faust epic represents. Faust stands there in opposition to the sciences that he lists as the sciences of the four faculties, and we see quite clearly from what he expresses how unsatisfied he is with the sciences that have affected his soul. We may ask: What does Faust really want? And perhaps this question can only be answered adequately if we bear in mind in the further course of the first monologue that Faust, despite having absorbed the sciences of the four faculties, has devoted himself to magic, that is, to what he has been able to learn as traditional, conventional historical magic from the various writings about this magic.

I would like to point out right away that a misunderstanding of the first Faust monologue can easily arise from the fact that one might believe that the moment in which Faust surrenders to magic coincides with the moment in which he speaks this monologue, and that Faust had not yet surrendered to magic before those feelings that live in this monologue go through his soul. That would be a misunderstanding and would make understanding the whole state of Faust's soul extremely difficult. Rather, we must assume that Faust, at the very moment when he expresses his feelings in that monologue, is already deeply immersed in what he addresses as magic; that he has done a great deal of study on this magic. And we can prove this from the Faustian legend itself. When the poodle that accompanies Faust on his Easter walk later takes on different forms and Faust does not know what is in this poodle, Faust reaches for a magical-occult book and now knows exactly, at least in his opinion, how he can use all sorts of incantations from these books to get to the bottom of the secret of this poodle and how he should behave towards this spiritual manifestation that he believes he has before him. We must therefore assume that Faust has already, to a certain extent, familiarized himself with these things.

Now we learn that Faust takes a book of magic and that he wants to assuage his dissatisfaction by first turning to the spirit of the great world, to the spirit of the macrocosm, as he puts it. What does he actually want? Perhaps we shall only be able to see what he wants if we delve a little into Goethe's soul itself, which indeed placed its feelings in the Faust character, at least during the time when the first Faust monologue and the first parts of “Faust” were created.

What world and worldview did Goethe actually face? Goethe was confronted with a worldview that could be built on the basis of what had been recognized about natural and spiritual life. He was in the midst of a worldview that fully took into account the scientific revelations made by Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler and so on. Goethe was confronted with what, in the spirit of Kant, could be called the world view of the Enlightenment, the penetration into the secrets of nature by means of the mind, which synthesizes the experiences of the senses and the experiences of history. What presents itself to the human soul in the way of ideas, which, as we would say today, are grasped in a healthy way by the normal mind and which arise above and beyond what can be investigated by the normal experience of the outer senses, it was such a world view that surrounded Goethe. How could he and his needs live into the world view that could give such a world view? He could not completely live himself into such a world view; for what Goethe constantly wanted, and what he now lets his Faust want, is a direct growing together of the innermost soul with what weaves and lives through the world outside, a growing together of the soul itself with the world secrets present in the world, with the deeper revelations and the revealing powers and entities of the world.

Now Goethe's Faust faced the view of the Enlightenment of nature and the spirit of the world in such a way that what could result in the way just characterized a world view seemed far removed from being able to grasp the entities that pervade the world and that he wanted to grasp with the innermost powers of the soul, with which he wanted to live together. For what this world view, based on the science of the time, could give him, at most it gave him knowledge, something that filled his head, his mind, but which could not identify so closely with human inner experience that one could really have entered with this inner experience into the forces that live and weave in nature and the spirit world. “Thus must I seek,” says Goethe's Faust, ”to get at the inmost powers and entities of the world in such wise that, by grasping them, my soul may be partaking in the spiritual-natural weaving and living of the world. But if I grasp only that which can be grasped from the present standpoint of a scientific world-view, then I grasp only in a dry, sober way with the knowledge these mysterious connections of the world, that which moves the world in its inmost being. And this knowledge can never give me that fullness which lies in grasping that which lets me live together with the secrets of the world.

And so Goethe's Faust wants to delve into what permeates and gives life to the world, into the world of nature and the spirit, in a different way. And since Goethe was certainly never of the opinion held by many people today and in the past, that what is current and has been achieved in their own time is necessarily right — in contrast to which one can say how gloriously far we have come — Goethe wants to tie in with what has gone before, from which the present has developed. And so he also lets his Faust tie in with the world view from which the world picture surrounding him has developed, with a world view that certainly had the belief that with what it gained, it entered into an experience of the secrets of existence. What kind of world view was that?

Well, you only need to pick up something like the works of Agrippa von Nettesheim or some other similar medieval philosopher, and you will be able to gain an insight into what Goethe's Faust actually means when it invokes the spirit of the macrocosm. Such concepts, such ideas, as surrounded Faust in the philosophy of the Enlightenment — I am referring to Goethe's Faust, not the sixteenth-century Faust — did not yet exist at the time when Agrippa von Nettesheim wrote. At that time, people did not yet form a picture of the world in such abstract terms as in the Age of Enlightenment. Instead, by developing philosophical worldviews, they lived, I would say, in images, in imaginations. But one also lived in the belief that one could bring about something through which nature and the spiritual world would express themselves intimately about what they actually are. And what one now got as a world view was at the same time interwoven with the feelings and perceptions of the soul, was in a certain way the same as what the soul experienced within itself. Today one would say: it was very anthropomorphic. That is certainly true; it was the case that in what he abstracted from the world, man felt forces that were related to the forces of his own soul. One spoke of sympathies and antipathies of things and similar forces in the natural world, as one experienced them in one's own soul existence. But further: In the time in which Agrippa von Nettesheim wrote, little was believed that could be attained by man through himself, that man could simply achieve by developing the powers of his soul life, by developing those powers of cognition in order to give them a higher form than that which man has by nature. They did not believe in the power of research of the human soul itself; they rather believed that through all kinds of external activities, these or those experiments — but not experiments in our present sense — they would, so to speak, give the spiritual that lives in nature the opportunity to show how it lives in natural facts. Through all kinds of events, it was thought that the secrets of nature could be discovered. It was not believed that consciousness can directly penetrate nature through the powers it acquires. It was believed that one had to perform certain actions or events in order to, as it were, by means of magic, make nature speak and express its spirit. Man's consciousness itself was to seek this separately. They wanted to do something in the external world that would cause nature to reveal its secrets and finally express how the forces in nature are arranged, from which man himself then builds himself out of nature and the spiritual world. So they wanted just what Goethe's Faust craves: to live together with the weaving and essence of nature itself; and they believed they could achieve it.

What stood before man as nature and spiritual world had been thoroughly permeated by spirit. And the development necessitated by the world had to set in place an outer image of nature, precisely the image of nature of a Copernicus, a Kepler, a Galileo, or what has come from that, an image of nature from which precisely that which these medieval philosophers wanted to seek out of nature has been removed. In this world view of Copernicus, Kepler and Galileo, and in what has been created from it, it was precisely these ideas that were the decisive, the decisive, the justified ones, which Goethe's Faust did not perceive closely enough, were not inwardly full enough to face the world with them in such a way that one can fully experience this world in one's own soul.

And so, in the moment in which the first monologue transports us, there lives in Faust's soul the urge to experience the secrets of the world through that ancient magic, to connect the laws and essence of the world with the experiences of his own soul. And he believed that he could achieve this by devoting himself to the formulas and images that were supposed to represent the macrocosm from the book he picked up.

But Faust – I emphasize this expressly – Goethe's Faust, not the sixteenth-century one – is precisely the human being, the personality of his time. Humanity advances precisely in its organization, even if it is not visible to a rough observation. In this time, one could no longer get behind the secrets of existence in the same way as Agrippa von Nettesheim, for example. One could no longer indulge in the belief that what one attains, whether through imagination or external influence, through magical experimentation, really has something to do with the innermost workings of the world. And so Faust is finally faced with the realization: Yes, I try it the way these ancients did, to connect with the spiritual, with the natural forces of existence - but what does it give me? Does it really lead me into what lives and moves in nature and the spiritual world? No, it gives me a spectacle - what a spectacle! But alas, only a spectacle!

And in this sense, Goethe's Faust is truly representative of the Goethean period. It has become impossible to reach the sources of existence in this way, to grasp infinite nature, not merely to penetrate it with ideas or with laws of nature, but to experience it. He cannot succeed because the time when one could believe that real knowledge of nature and the spiritual world could be attained in this way is past. What a spectacle! And he turns away from what the contemplation of the signs of the macrocosm can give him. He turns to the microcosm, to the earth spirit.

What is this earth spirit? Well, if you take the whole of what is presented in Goethe's “Faust” in connection with the appearance of the earth spirit, you find that this earth spirit is the representative of everything that, in the course of historical development, flows over the earth in the broadest sense flows over the earth, which works in such a way that what lies in our deepest drives, what, as it were, orbits the earth and places us human beings with our innermost selves into its currents, comes out of it into our soul, into our heart, into our very innermost being. In a sketch that he later made for his 'Faust', Goethe himself summarized the idea of this earth spirit, as it were, as a world and deed genius. This reminds us that what Goethe actually addresses in his poetry as the earth spirit is something that lives in the course of historical development, that has an effect on our soul, insofar as we are children of a particular age, insofar as certain impulses live in us, a certain form of that which can be achieved in existence in one way or another lives in us. But this depends on how we are placed in a particular epoch in relation to what flows out of the earth spirit that has been ruling over the earth throughout the ages. So this earth spirit, as it is written in Faust, may say:

... in the storm of action
I surge up and down,
Woe to and fro!
Birth and grave,
An eternal sea,
A changing weaving,
A glowing life,
So I create at the whirring loom of time
And work the living garment of the Godhead.

Now, I would like to say, a word is uttered in “Faust” that is often misleading when given a slightly exaggerated explanation. I do not want to fall into the trap that many all too easily fall into, of reading all kinds of things into a poem like the Faust poem. And I know very well that almost every explanation that one can dream up fits, if one twists it skillfully, almost everything. I would like to try to derive everything I have to say from the Faust legend itself. I now mean at this moment the word:

Two souls, alas! dwell in my breast,
The one seeks separation from the other...

One of these characterizes Faust as if it lived in all the impulses of this earthly life. He explicitly says of the other soul that it wants to rise from the dust of earthly life to the realms of the high ancestors. Now, I think it is an oversimplified explanation when one simply says that this is the lower and that the higher nature of man. Of course, with such abstractions one always comes close to the truth. One cannot go wrong, because the more abstract one is, the more correctly one will express oneself as a rule. But with a work of fiction such as Faust, it is important to accurately and specifically capture the feelings that are embodied in the work of fiction. And it seems to me, in fact, when Faust speaks of his two souls, that one soul is the one that experiences, above all, what the human inner being is, that experiences the influx of the forces, the impulses of the earth spirit, the one soul that perceives how impulses rise up from the deep foundations of human existence of the individual human individuality and fill the soul life. The other soul seems to me to be the one that has been active in striving for what the spirit of the macrocosm is to reveal, that wants to rise from the mere dust of earthly existence to the realms of high ancestors, that is, to all the spiritual that lives in the natural and spiritual world and from which the human being not only as a historical being, but from which he has emerged as a complete, as a whole being, as a natural and historical being, to the universe as it has gradually developed over the centuries, millennia, millions of years, into which the spirits of the centuries, millennia and millions of years have laid their impulses. It is to this universe, then, to the spiritual ancestors from whom this human being on earth has developed, that this soul wants to rise. Of course, as soon as one expresses such things in such sharply defined words as I have just done, one again makes the meaning somewhat one-sided. That too should certainly not be denied. But nevertheless, I believe that the two directions of feeling that live in Faust's soul and that he describes as his two souls are these: one of them goes out into the macrocosm, into the universe, and encompasses spiritual beings, as a whole, as a great thing, and nature at the same time, the whole cosmos, insofar as man is grounded in this cosmos as a microcosm. And in the other direction of feeling, I believe I must recognize that which flows from the current of historical becoming into the human soul and makes man a member, a child of a very specific time; so that we are Earth Spirit, as the opposite of the spirit of the great world, we are led to that which stirs in our own soul as the striving to embrace the full human being, in contrast to the individual expressions, which must always remain in the individual human life. Faust believes he can feel at one with this spirit, which makes man a whole human being, and indeed now as a historical being, by confronting the Earth Spirit. But the Earth Spirit rejects him. He refers him to the spirit that he understands. And at the same time he makes it clear to him how he, Faust, is not the same as the Earth Spirit itself. What is the underlying reason for this?

Now, we can perhaps recognize what is at the root of this if we consider the further progress of Goethe's Faustian poetry. Where does Faust feel he is placed immediately after he is rejected by the Earth Spirit? Wagner is the one he feels himself confronted with! And one may look for so much of the most noble humor in Goethe's world literature that one can, to a certain extent, be of the opinion: By the Earth Spirit rejecting Faust and pointing to the spirit that he understands, he is actually pointing him in a certain respect to the spirit of Wagner, whom Faust will face in the very next moment. Thus the Earth Spirit is actually saying to Faust: First become aware of how similar what lives in your inner being, what you have been given out of the spirit of the earth, is to the whole formation of Wagner's soul! And what emerges from this Wagnerian soul in the course of Goethe's poem? Yes, we see how Wagner lives on in the poem up to a certain point in time, which is precisely indicated to us in the second part of Goethe's “Faust” in the classical Walpurgis Night, where that which Wagner has brought forth out of his world view, the homunculus, must dissolve in the weaving and ruling of the whole world, as Goethe characterizes it in the various figures of the classical Walpurgis Night. And so we are led, I would say, to the ideal, to the ultimate goal of Wagner's striving. We may well call this the creation of the homunculus.

What then is this homunculus? Certainly, Goethe's Faustian poetry - and this is the incomparably great thing about it - presents in a magnificent, dramatic way these things that are otherwise often only the subject of abstract philosophical consideration. But that is precisely the great thing, that for once in the world it has been possible to bring that which other people can only approach in philosophical ideas to a truly poetic, genuinely artistic form. What then is this homunculus, this homunculus idea, when we present Goethe's world view, interwoven with his artistic sensibilities? Wagner is steeped in the world view that had developed by the time the young Goethe felt he was stepping into it, a world view that, so to speak, only takes into account the mechanistic view of nature and history, which emerged as the first product of what Copernicus, Galileo and Kepler - certainly out of necessity - had to make of the old world view. In place of the living, organic element, which in the pre-Copernican world view was interwoven into the human world view, into the world view of the philosophers, there now arises a world view that is more and more interwoven only with concepts and ideas that represent the world as a mechanical one. And so Wagner was still able to cling to the habit of deriving an understanding of the human being from the world as a whole, from the cosmos as a whole. Thus he was able to come to the view that man, too, could be created through a correspondingly complicated mechanistic juxtaposition of the mechanical laws that permeate and animate the world. And this creation of man, which brings only that into the image, into the conception of man, into that which one can feel and prove and experience about man, which flows from the mechanistic world view, we see this in what the ideal of Wagner represents, in the Homunculus.

Thus, the Earth Spirit clearly shows Faust the direction in which he would actually end up if he remained at the level of the world view at which he is currently standing. He points the way clearly, and one is tempted to say: Don't we see, when we want to dig deeper into the feelings and emotions that underlie the Faustian legend, that if Faust stops where he is before his world wandering, he would come to where Wagner comes: to grasp the human being as a mechanism that is only capable of life, even as an idea, if it can merge with what the world itself lives through and surges through, and where Faust's soul in particular wants to pour out into a higher, experienced knowledge, in contrast to the knowledge that Wagner can achieve, who is completely immersed in the world view of the Enlightenment.

Now we have to look a little into Goethe's soul itself if we want to discover what the role of Homunculus actually is in the whole of “Faust”. We know, if we have explored Goethe's world view a little, how Goethe sought knowledge in his own way, how he wanted to get behind the appearances of nature. Over many years, I have tried to show how Goethe worked in this direction in the introductions to my edition of Goethe's scientific writings and also in my book “Goethe's World View”. Goethe tried to find out for himself what lives in the processes and beings of external nature. And in a certain contrast to what surrounded him as science, he developed his metamorphosis doctrine, his ideas of the primal plant, the primal animal, of the primal phenomenon. What did he actually want with that? What he wanted with it is closely related to what he wanted to pour into his Faust, and what really shows how Goethe strove from a completely different attitude to knowledge than the science around him. In a passage in which Goethe seeks to describe what became clear to him during his travels through Italy, his idea of the archetypal plant, the mental image he sought to see in every plant and which would explain all plant life and every individual plant , he says: If you have this original plant, if you have truly grasped what this original plant should be, then you have something from which you can even invent individual plant forms that could live quite well. This goes to the very heart of Goethe's scientific endeavour. Through his scientific endeavour, Goethe did not want to arrive at ideas such as the world view of the Enlightenment around him. Goethe wanted to arrive at ideas that, so to speak, only represent in the soul, but activate the same forces that we have outside in plants, in animals, in all of nature itself. Goethe wanted to unite what grows and happens in the plant, and he did not want to have an idea that appears as an abstraction compared to what lives and weaves out there in nature; he wanted to have an idea that one can say lives in the imagination as something that is of the same nature as what lives out there in the plant. Goethe did not want to gain ideas that could be said to represent what is out there in the world, but in reality what is out there in the world is quite different. Goethe wanted to gain ideas through which what lives outside in a natural way would come to life in the soul in a way that is appropriate to the soul. That was his whole endeavour. Goethe wanted a kind of knowledge that can be described as living knowledge, as living together with nature. That is to say, he wanted to be able to walk through nature and its formations with the ideas he had in such a way that these ideas relate to the inner life of nature and its formation. As the forms of nature change, so should what lives in the soul change. There should be nothing living in the soul that the soul has merely abstracted from nature, but the soul should have merged with nature, lived together with it. Goethe strove for a knowledge that he really presents in a wonderful and artistic way in the fate of the homunculus in the classical Walpurgis Night. Homunculus is an idea derived from the human being, which must therefore remain with mere mechanism, with mere abstraction. Just as Goethe's ideas, Goethe's metamorphosic ideas, are not supposed to be such ideas, but rather represent the forces and living essence of nature itself, so this homunculus, instructed by a view of nature , which was even closer to nature than that which surrounded Goethe, taught by the natural philosophy of the ancient Greek philosophers, Thales, Anaxagoras, but also taught by the transformative being Proteus, must dissolve. Just as Goethe's metamorphic ideas should unite with nature itself, so should the homunculus unite with world events. He cannot live as he has emerged from Wagner's views. He is a mere idea, a mere thought. He must connect with existence. When the homunculus is seized by the living, the role of Wagner is played out.

Faust must begin a world wandering that takes him beyond what he could have achieved, but which must play out in this way, as the role of Wagner played out with the creation of the homunculus. And to this end, Goethe shows us how Faust now develops not those powers as his powers of knowledge that lead him to the macrocosm in the sense in which the macrocosm can only be grasped in the Copernican, Keplerian, Galilean way; but Goethe shows us how Faust now wills just that which the Earth Spirit can give out of the realm of the innermost, one might also say, the lowest forces of soul existence. With the forces that can come from this, Faust is to begin his journey through the world. And now we see Faust going through this journey through the events that are first presented in the first part of Goethe's “Faust”. There we see how Mephistopheles confronts Faust. I do not want to get involved here in all possible explanations of what this Mephistopheles actually is; but I want to go into what necessity shows us, that Goethe must go beyond what is presented in the first part of “Faust”. According to what we have just considered, Goethe has, to a certain extent, initially presented Faust as powerless in the face of the spirit of the macrocosm. But he does not immediately present him as powerless in the same way in relation to the spirit of the earth. But Faust – and this must certainly be emphasized – initially still stands by what a bygone age, from which humanity had in turn come to a more developed world view, still regarded as something right or at least as something possible. I will not go into what Mephistopheles becomes in his relationship with Faust in terms of the soul, nor into how Mephistopheles is more or less a realistic, more or less a mythological figure. I just want to draw attention to what happens to Faust under the influence of Mephistopheles.

On the one hand, in ancient times, magic, imagination or external actions were used to uncover the secrets of nature. Faust cannot be associated with this, as we will see. On the other hand, however, there was something else connected with the search for the secrets of the world in ancient times, something that has been preserved to our times: the belief that something could be learned about the secrets that prevail in man by, as it were, — we shall speak about this healthy power of the soul in particular tomorrow in connection with spiritual research — and that one exposes something in man that is less than this healthy power of the soul, which one can perhaps call, improperly but with a word that is understandable to us at this moment, the normal power of the soul. We need only recall words such as hypnotism, somnambulism, all the forms of superstitious clairvoyance, and we have the whole wide area into which we are led, perhaps in a not immediately transparent way, by the events of the first part of Goethe's Faust. And Mephistopheles is simply, I might say, such an emissary of the Earth Spirit, who for a while brings Faust to become really similar to the medieval Faust, be it the real historical Faust, who received his doctorate in Heidelberg in 1509, who is really an historical personality, be it the Faust of the folk book or one of the other numerous figures, or the Faust of the puppet show that Goethe got to know. This Faust of the puppet theater, this Faust of the sixteenth century, as he then continued to live on through the centuries, cannot be understood without taking into account unhealthy, morbid forces of the human soul, as we must call them today, forces of the human soul that are achieved by a damping down, a paralyzing of the human consciousness, as it is present in normal life. Whether one reads the life story of Faust — the Faust who received his doctorate in Heidelberg in 1509 — or delves into the book Faust, which appeared in 1589, one encounters on the one hand a real personality on the one hand and on the other a poetic personality, who is to the highest degree what today, with a more or less apt word, is called “medial”, “medial” with all the morbid, abnormal phenomena associated with it.

Now it is not immediately apparent that Goethe wanted to show Faust, for example, the mediality of the appearance of the earth spirit until the end of the first part of his “Faust”, but what happens really leads us into this realm. And one would like to describe Mephistopheles as the spirit who, in Faust's nature, evokes such a world view that people can believe that it solves deeper secrets of existence, namely, people who do not really trust in human full consciousness and therefore believe that one must first paralyze and cloud this consciousness in order to get behind the secrets of existence. In a book that is certainly one-sided but by no means undeserving, Kiesewetter has portrayed Mephistopheles as a kind of second ego of Faust, not as a higher ego, but as the ego that one recognizes if one disregards the part that expresses itself in a person's normal higher mental life and descends into the regions of the soul, where the instinctive nature, where, I might say, the sub-sensible — by no means the supersensible! — comes to expression. In a way that is not immediately apparent, but which becomes quite clear to anyone who follows the events in the first part of “Faust” with understanding, it now becomes apparent that Faust, in his wanderings through the world, really can be believed to be attained by the path of such an abnormal, subdued, somnambulant consciousness, or in the ordinary, trivial sense, by one who is not clear-minded. But something else is also made clear to us, something that is extraordinarily important for understanding both the human soul and the “Faust” poem. While Faust is becoming familiarized with everything that can be recognized with deeper, but only sub-sensuous, driving forces, which then expresses itself in the witches' kitchen, in Walpurgis Night and so on, he is at the same time becoming familiarized, we may say, with tragic-moral aberrations, with the rule of impetuous drives. Of course, what we encounter, for example, in the “Gretchen” poem is one of the perfect flowers of world literature. But it is perhaps one of the perfect flowers of world literature precisely because the poet has succeeded in depicting the tragedy that flows from human drives that are not clarified by what one can call higher human nature in the true sense of the word. And Mephisto throws together for Faust a certain world knowledge, a satisfaction of knowledge, with this emergence of blind instinct from the depths of the soul, where man abandons himself to his nature without accompanying his life with a moral judgment of the world. This is portrayed in Goethe's poetry in a grandiose and tragically manner. But at the same time it shows us how everything that is realized in the field of what is so often referred to as clairvoyance - we will talk about these things again in more detail tomorrow - what could be called somnambulistic clairvoyance, which arises from the consciousness being , that in addition to the powers of cognition, the corporeality of the human being is altered and used in this, even if it is a subtle change; how all that is achieved in this area is on exactly the same level of human nature as the blind nature of drives and passions. This result, which for many people is a terrible one, emerges from the way in which Goethe presents the aforementioned clairvoyance, somnambulism, as arising when one transforms into powers of knowledge what lives in the drives of the human being, in those instincts that have not yet been clarified into normal human cognitive ability, in the blind, unconscious instincts that follow impulses, but impulses not interwoven with the realm of moral judgment. And Goethe wants to show that such a view of the world, as expressed in the witches' kitchen on Walpurgis Night, is only the opposite of the blind rule of the drives, where man rules with his morbid soul life. This intimate connection between the lower human instinctual life and what is often seen as clairvoyance and which is believed to lead to higher knowledge of human nature, because one has no trust in normal human nature, is dramatically characterized in the first part of Faust. And it is stated with sufficient clarity that the person who attains such clairvoyance does not rise above normal people, but sinks below what are ordinary scientific powers of knowledge, into the same regions of human existence where blind drives prevail. If one wishes to study the physiology of blind instincts in greater detail, one can delve into the revelations of somnambulists, hypnotized subjects, and mediums. But if one wants to penetrate to the real higher secrets of existence (and we will talk about this in more detail tomorrow), one must realize that with such clairvoyance one does not rise above normal people, but sinks below them human being, — a clairvoyance that Goethe, not preaching morality but artistically depicting, dramatically interweaves into the aberrations of the human subconscious being. This is what Faust had to go through during that world wandering, which is presented to us in the first part.

And now we see how Goethe, in a remarkable way, at the very beginning of the second part, has Faust face both natural and spiritual life. He interprets this very clearly, I might say magnificently clearly, not, of course, with philosophically abstract words, but through the power of creation. We shall not concern ourselves today with the question, which has also been raised by some commentators on Faust, as to whether a personality such as Faust can really recover from the serious crimes he has committed in the events depicted in the first part when, as has been said, he goes out into the wide expanse of nature and experiences what is depicted at the beginning of the second part. To what extent the guilt that he has incurred continues to prevail in Faust's soul is not something we want to dwell on today. It can continue to prevail. What Goethe wants to show, however, is how Faust rises out of his entanglement in the sub-sensible humanity. And there we see Faust at the beginning of the second part, I might say, placed in the healthiest way in nature and see the spiritual world working on him in the healthiest way. For what Goethe presents by having the chorus of spirits act on Faust is really only an external dramatic representation of a process that can be described, more or less accurately, as an internal process that takes place in exactly the same way as it does when the genius seizes the poet, when it is not something in the external sense that has a magical effect on the person, when it is not human consciousness is dulled, as in some kind of somnambulistic vision, but rather where something flows into human consciousness, which is indeed a spiritual influence, but which does not flow into a consciousness that is tuned down, into a consciousness that is dulled, but into the consciousness that is most healthily immersed in the natural and historical life of humanity. And has Faust progressed on his journey through the world since he beheld the sign of the Macrocosm and addressed the world as a spectacle? Yes, Faust is further along, quite considerably further! And Goethe wants to show that Faust's healthy nature has withstood the temptations that Mephistopheles has brought upon him so far, and which have consisted in his wanting to push him down into the sub-sensible, into that which lives in man when instinctive forces and not elevated powers of knowledge are brought to some world-view. At the moment depicted at the beginning of Part One, Faust has opened the book of Nostradamus. The sign of the macrocosm appears before his soul. He tries to put himself in the place of that which can be represented to him through the words and signs of this macrocosm. “What a spectacle! But alas! Only a spectacle!” At this moment, one might say, Faust aspires to a kind of morbid mental life, in which he then also remains, although the word “morbid” should not be understood here in a philistine sense.

Now that Faust has been placed in the midst of a healthy experience of nature and spirit, and the spirit has had its effect on his normal consciousness, he utters another word, a parallel word, I would say, to the word “What a spectacle! But alas! Only a spectacle!” Faust confronts the phenomena caused by the sunshine; but he turns away and turns to the waterfall, which reflects in colors what the sun can do. “So let the sun remain behind me,” says Faust. He wants to look at the reflection of what the sun causes. ‘We have life in the colored reflection’ – a wonderful intensification compared to the first word: ”What a spectacle! But alas! Only a spectacle!” Now Faust can grasp how what appears to him as nature is truly spiritual, because he knows how to relate to what lives in nature in the sense of the word with which the second part of Faust concludes: “All that is transitory is but a parable” - grasping in the parable what lives spiritually in nature. And so we see how, at the beginning of the second part of Faust, through an effect of the spiritual world on normal consciousness, Faust is brought to a healthy position in relation to the world; how he is now really no longer, I would like to say, in the belief that one can achieve something by going back to the old magic, and how he has now also learned that one can achieve nothing with all that is false clairvoyance, that is somnambulism. Now he faces the world as a healthy person. He can nevertheless attain life in a colorful reflection, that is, attain what lies behind the world of nature and history.

And truly, we now see how Faust develops more and more into what Goethe himself wanted to develop into. Of course, when we look at Goethe's development of world view, everything appears to us, I might say, more in an abstract, philosophical form. But that is precisely, as I said, the great thing that Goethe has succeeded in doing, to shape it dramatically on the outside, which other people can only rise to in philosophy. And so we see that Faust is now able to place himself in the world of historical development, that he is able to find the eternal-meaningful, the spiritual-real in this historical development. But for this it is necessary that Faust now really experiences in his soul an increase of his powers of knowledge. Through what he has experienced with Mephistopheles, he has not experienced an increase, but a damping down of his power of knowledge; he is not seeing, he has been blinded. Now, out of historical becoming, he longs to have a figure like Helen of Troy brought to life before him again. How can he achieve this? Precisely by developing something within himself, which is so beautifully and profoundly portrayed in the scene that represents the “walk to the mothers”. Goethe himself confessed to Eckermann that he got the inspiration to include this mother scene in the second part of “Faust” from reading Plutarch, where it is described how a personality of ancient times, who went around in a difficult situation as if he were insane and spoke of the “mothers,” of those mothers who were referred to as goddesses, who were deeply revered in the secrecy of ancient mysteries. Why should Faust descend to these mothers? Goethe speaks to Eckermann in a strangely mysterious way. He says that with regard to this scene, he betrayed himself the least. We may well assume that Goethe did not express this in full, clear, abstract terms, but that which really lived in his soul as his path to the mothers in full, clear realization. I have often spoken about this path to the mothers, but today I would just like to hint: When we immerse ourselves in the ancient world view into which Goethe places Faust, into the classical age of Greek civilization, into which he has already placed us when he encounters Helen, when we immerse ourselves in this ancient world, into which Faust is now also supposed to plunge, we find that this ancient world brought forth something out of itself with the powers that were still peculiar to ancient man: powers of knowledge that, one might say, penetrate more deeply into the workings of the world because they were even more deeply connected to the nature of existence than the powers of knowledge of the souls of the time in which Goethe lived, which had already become more separated from the direct life with the natural existence and had to find the way back into the natural existence. But it has already been indicated that when man delves into the life of his soul, he can find something that is not the same as what was indicated earlier as the sub-sensible driving forces, as those impulses that leave a person blind, but still work as impulses; but that a person can dive down into the depths of their soul life with full consciousness, with nothing other than their normal consciousness, which only dives deeper into their soul. Then, through this immersion in his deeper soul powers, he attains something quite different from the sub-sensible soul powers of somnambulism or hypnotism or similar phenomena of human life, as just described. He has the possibility of descending so deeply into his soul that he really brings up powers that are just as conscious and that he masters just as much as the powers of normal consciousness, to which he is not a slave as in somnambulism or in ordinary mediumship. And that Faust descends to the mothers, after he has recovered as far as it has been indicated, that is precisely the dramatic representation of this descent to those powers of the soul, which, when we grasp them in our soul, bring an inner higher man to the outer world, so that we can also see more in the outer world than what the mere senses or the mind bound to the senses see.

And now we see how Faust can continue his journey through the world by consciously descending into the depths of the soul; and how, in contrast to this, Wagner is presented with his Homunculus , who only arrives at the abstract idea of humanity, which must merge with life, which cannot sustain itself, which, before an insight, if it merely remains mechanistic, is scattered. This is contrasted with what Faust achieves in the ascent of his world wanderings. But there is something else! We are also clearly shown how Mephistopheles really brought those forces to Faust that are below the senses, in that Mephistopheles, one might say, morally ends, if the word may be applied here in the classical Walpurgis Night, when he unites with the Phorcys, with those entities that are born out of the darkness and the abyss, out of that abyss that represents the lower human nature. If we really go into what Goethe, in his own words, has incorporated into 'Faust', it is presented to us quite clearly and distinctly. The forces that Mephistopheles now feels are with him on the classical Walpurgis Night are not superhuman, they are subhuman. One cannot arrive at a different view of the world with those powers of perception that go beyond the ordinary powers of perception, except by enhancing and enriching what one has in the ordinary powers of perception. But with the supersensible powers of perception, one arrives at something that is fundamentally poorer than normal human life. And it cannot be emphasized often enough that it was also said in Faust that the life that is attained through a dimming of human consciousness, whether through somnambulism or mediumship, is poorer than what man attains with his normal consciousness of the world. When man looks at the world with his normal consciousness, he has his two eyes through which he looks out into the world. This is a certain richness in the sensory world. Where Mephistopheles is with the spirits of darkness, they have only one eye between them and have to pass it from one to the other. They are poorer. Mephistopheles belongs to a world — at least he feels a kinship with this world — that is poorer than the normal human world. This world has nothing more to offer Faust, now that he has begun the descent to the mothers, that is, to the deeper forces of the human soul, to which Mephistopheles can still pass the key, but to which Mephistopheles himself cannot lead him.

And now we see how Goethe, at a higher level of his world wanderings, is able to place Faust in the right way in relation to the real, truly surviving spirit of the past. Indeed, Goethe has the following written next to the title of the third act of the second part: Classical-Romantic Phantasmagoria. This is not presented as reality, but he has life “in a colorful reflection”. He grasps it with the deeper but conscious powers of the human soul and then strips it away again, as we are shown in the fourth act of part two. And so, if time allowed, we could still teach many more things that would make it clear to us how Goethe lets his Faust undergo a world journey, out of the aberrations that arise when one has no faith in normal human consciousness. The old magic that Faust first falls prey to and surrenders to has no trust in what consciousness is able to give, and separates the events that are supposed to take place magically out there in all kinds of ceremonies from consciousness. What takes place in the weaving and working of the spirits outside of full consciousness is supposed to reveal the spiritual world; but not what takes place in normal consciousness, but what takes place in the subconscious, in the dark drives, is supposed to explain what flows through the world as a secret. From this Goethe had to lead his Faust to that which can be recognized as the spiritual world without any impairment of normal consciousness, through a further development of normal consciousness. This is, it seems to me, very clear, if not as an idea - Goethe himself said this - but as an impulse that is shaped entirely artistically, in Goethe's “Faust” among many others, it is also embodied. From this point of view, if I may use the trivial word, it really appears to be entirely in the role of Goethe's Faust when, after he has found the deepening of normal consciousness, he has really come to has really come to the point of rejecting all false seeking along false, magical, somnambulistic paths, and wants to face the world as a human being who seeks to know the higher only through an elevation of the soul forces.

Thus we read in the second part of “Faust”:

Unhappy phantoms! Thus you treat
The human race a thousand times over;
Even indifferent days you transform
Into hideous confusion of web-enmeshed torments.
Demons, I know, are hard to get rid of,
The spiritual bond cannot be severed...

And further: I have not yet fought my way into the open.
If I could remove magic from my path,
Unlearn the spells altogether,
I would be a man alone in front of you,
Then it would be worth the effort to be human.

Faust wants to be a person who, through neither outer magic nor inner clouding of consciousness, faces the world of the spirit and is also able to introduce this world of the spiritual from this consciousness into social human life, into the life of 'deed'. And this is portrayed towards the end of the second part of 'Faust' in such a wonderful, in such a grandiose way. So Goethe has tried in his own way to show how man, through a development of the powers within him, can truly penetrate to the secrets of existence, by also clearly and dramatically portraying the aberrations that stand in man's way.

One would like to say that the human being who wants to come out of human forces themselves to a coexistence with the spiritual world really stood in a Faustian form - not by being called Faust, but really in a Faustian form - already opposite Augustine, who indeed attributes to the Manichean bishop Faustus the possibility of coming close to the secrets of the world through an inner elevation of human powers of knowledge. Goethe, in allowing the medieval Faust to have an effect on him, found himself in a world that had already passed judgment on this kind of Faust. The judgment was that a person who wanted to come to the secrets of existence out of his own powers in such a way must fall away from the stream of humanity as an evil element. Goethe could not agree with this view. Goethe was clear about the fact that a human being can only be a complete human being when he is capable of realizing the striving of Faust, even if not in the old way in which the Faust of the folk tale or that of the sixteenth century wanted to realize it. And Goethe was able to arrive at this view because he was deeply imbued with what, as I have often said here, can be called idealism, world-view idealism in the development of German thought.

In these lectures, I have tried to present figures such as Fichte, Schelling and Hegel in their - albeit only philosophical - striving to grasp the spiritual world. I have also sufficiently emphasized that one need not be a dogmatic adherent of any one of the Fichtean, Schellingian, or Hegelian schools in order to be truly impressed by the greatness of these figures, who stand at the center of German idealism. One should take them as seekers of knowledge, as human beings with a certain kind of inner life. Disregarding the details of their specific world-view, But they do stand there in a striving for a world-picture that is closely akin to Goethe's striving for a world-picture and that, when it is seen in its deeper inter-connections, shows itself to be fundamentally the same as the striving for a world-picture in Germany at the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century. This striving is destined to continue to work within the process of German evolution.

We know that Kant developed a world view that was not related to Goethe's. I have often pointed this out. It cannot be justified here, I just want to mention it. Kant came to the view that, fundamentally, man cannot see into the deeper sources of nature and spirit. And he stated that if man really wanted to delve into the workings of the world with his ideas, he would need a completely different faculty of perception than he actually has. Then, not only concepts and ideas that depict things would have to flow into his knowledge, but the living stream of existence itself. We can see that Goethe felt this, for example, in his idea of metamorphosis with the primal plant, the primal animal, which Kant excluded from human cognition. And Kant said: “The one who wanted to embrace faith – I am quoting inaccurately, but it roughly corresponds to the wording – that he really looks into the sources of existence, would have to embark on an adventure of reason, to a kind of contemplative judgment; he would have to not only comprehend, but inwardly experience and contemplatively experience the stream of world existence itself.

In the beautiful little essay on “Contemplative Judgment,” Goethe expounds on this Kantian idea, and explicitly says: If one can rise to a higher region with regard to the ideas of freedom and immortality, why should one not also dare to take on the adventure of reason with what the human soul can otherwise experience in nature, in itself? What does Goethe actually want? That means nothing other than: Goethe wants to stir up such knowledge in himself that makes it possible for him, with what he has in his soul, to truly immerse himself in the living world, not just to know the world, but to experience it. Goethe himself strove for such knowledge and for such a position in relation to world phenomena, as he dramatically embodies them in his “Faust”. And Goethe had developed within himself the conviction that man can not only acquire knowledge that reflects a world outside of him, but that he can also awaken within himself a world of ideas that experiences the stream of the existence of the world; but that this is possible only by undertaking what Kant still calls an adventure of reason: to draw up from the depths of the soul the powers that can cognize more than the senses and the understanding limited to the senses. And that is the great thing, that Goethe, who regarded what he did as the nerve of his own cognitive faculty, at the same time understood as a vital impulse, that he felt compelled to solve the problem of knowledge not only philosophically, but as a living man; that for him the question of what can be known of the world and how one can work within the world of deeds, what one can hold in one's soul as the content of knowledge and as an impulse for action in the world of deeds, becomes a life problem. That is the great and significant thing, that for him the happiness and ruin of man depends on it; that for him the satisfaction of a longing depends on it, which concerns the whole person. But it is through this that the problem of knowledge could become for Goethe an artistic, a dramatic, a vital problem in the widest sense of the word. And because Goethe conceived knowledge as something that really leads to life, Faust, in his presentation, was truly satisfied in what he sought by growing together, as it were, with Goethe's world-view itself. For has not his soul, from the very beginning, sought to live in communion with what is spread out spiritually in nature? In Faust it is a quest from the very beginning. In order to realize it to some extent within himself, he needed his wanderings in the world. While he is still in his world, in the “cursed, dull wall-hole,” what kind of longing does he have there?

Oh, would you, full of moonlight,
For the last time on my pain,
Which I so many a midnight
At this desk herangewacht:
Then, over books and paper,
Trübsel'ger friend, you appeared to me!
Ah! could I but on mountain heights
In thy dear light go,
Around mountain caves with spirits hover,
On meadows in thy dawn weave,
From all knowledge smoke unburden,
In thy dew healthy me bathe!

He wants to get out with his soul, to unite with what lives in nature. He has come there, he has been reborn after his world wandering in that which Goethe has imbued with his soul and lives through as what can be called: the highest, most beautiful flowering of German intellectual life.

Therefore, it can be said that Goethe really did incorporate into his “Faust” what he had gained for himself in a struggling life of knowledge and the world throughout his entire life, for “Faust” accompanied him throughout his entire life. Many secrets are still contained in this “Faust”. But it also contains the fact that Faust's journey through the world has brought him to the point where, through the experiences of his own life, he has matured to take in what Goethe had acquired for himself, not as an adventure of reason, but as something that can be attained by descending to the 'Mothers', that is, by attempting in a healthy way to develop the normal spiritual powers already present in one's soul. In this way one finds not something below the soul nor something outside of it, but something truly super-sensuous. And the fact that within the development of the German soul a work like Faust has become possible characterizes the whole of this development, and determines the position which it must hold in the evolution of the world.

There was always an awareness that more is given with “Faust” than merely that which lived in Goethe. Of course, there were always Mephistopheles-like natures in the outer world as well; they cannot comprehend anything like that which lives in Goethe's Faust. And finally, I would like to point out to you just such an external Mephistophelean nature. I would like to read a critique of Goethe's “Faust” that was written in 1822, from which you can see that “Faust” was also judged differently from the way it is judged by those who try to immerse themselves in it selflessly. One would like to say, a criticism that comforts one that so very often the Mephisto natures in the world confront that which honestly and convincingly seeks the sources and reasons for existence. For such natures as that which wrote on Faust in 1822 are not so rare in the present day either. Now that I have tried to lead you on a journey through Faust's experiences, let us also hear something of the echo that Faust has found in a Mephistophelean nature. I shall omit those passages that are not suitable for a public lecture because they are too cynical. The prologue in heaven, where the Lord discusses Faust's nature with Mephisto, shows this man, after he has established “that Mr. von Goethe is a very bad versifier,” the following:

“This prologue is a true model of how one should not write in verse.”

And now the critic continues – in 1822, ladies and gentlemen! –:

"The ages that have passed have nothing to show that could be compared to this prologue in terms of presumptuous wretchedness... But I must be brief because I have taken on a long and unfortunately also boring piece of work. I shall show the reader that the infamous Faust enjoys an usurped and undeserved celebrity only due to the corruptive collective mind of an associatio obscurorum vivorum... I am not motivated by any rivalry for fame to pour out the lye of strict criticism on Mr. von Goethe's Faust. I do not walk in his footsteps to Parnassus and would be glad if he had enriched our German language with a masterpiece... Among the crowd of bravos, my voice may indeed fade away, but it is enough for me to have done my best; and if I manage to convert even one reader and bring him back from worship of this monster, then my thankless effort will not be regretted... Poor Faust speaks a completely incomprehensible gibberish, in the worst rhyming nonsense ever written in Quinta by any student. My preceptor would have beaten me if I had made verses as bad as the following:

Oh, full moon, thou that dost sow
On me my punishment,
For many a midnight
At this desk I have watched.

I will not dwell on the inferiority of the diction or the wretchedness of the versification; the reader has enough evidence from what he has seen that the author cannot compete with the mediocre poets of the old school when it comes to verse construction.

Mephistopheles himself recognizes that Faust was already possessed by a devil before the contract. But we believe that he does not belong in hell, but in the madhouse, with all that is his, namely hands and feet, head and so on. Many poets have given us examples of sublime gibberish, nonsense in grandiose words, but I would call Goethe's gallimathias a genre nouveau of popular gallimathias, because it is presented in the most vulgar and bad language...

The more I think about this long litany of nonsense, the more likely it seems to me that it is a bet that if a famous man comes up with the shallowest, most boring nonsense, , there will still be a legion of silly writers and gullible readers who will find and exegize profound wisdom and great beauties in this flat-footed nonsense.

And so it goes on. Finally, he says:

"In short, a miserable devil who could learn from Marinelli in Lessing. After him, I, in the name of common sense, reverse the judgment of Mrs. von Staël in favor of the aforementioned Faust and do not condemn him to hell, which could cool this frosty product, since even the devil feels wintery inside, but to be hurled into Cloaca Paranassus. By rights.

The world ignores such judgments. And the world sees in Faust one of the deepest attempts of the human spirit, not only in a philosophical way, but in a dramatic, very lively way, to present the problem of knowledge and humanity in the broadest sense to people, to fathom it at all. And there was always an awareness that Goethe succeeded not only in expressing the Goethean world view and Goethean sentiments in his Faust, but, as Herman Grimm says so beautifully, the entire world view of the entire century. And Herman Grimm was right to use this word. “We have,” he says, “a literature of our own, the purpose of which is not only to prove Goethe's credo, but also the credo of his entire century in Faust.”

I could also point out how deeply rooted the rebirth of Faust is in the entire German intellectual life after his world wandering. The depth to which this German spiritual life itself has sunk is shown by the fact that the whole wealth of this spiritual striving could find expression in a work such as Goethe's Faust, and Herman Grimm's words will certainly prove true: not only Goethe's Weltanschhauung, but the Weltanschhauung of the whole century. And a Weltanschhauung such as will live on in the coming centuries in the very broadest sense has been expressed in Goethe's Faust. That German intellectual life was able to produce this work will be a fact for all future times, which, despite all prejudices about German intellectual life, will be recognized by those who can grasp this German intellectual life impartially and objectively. By expressing the deepest striving of the German spirit through Goethe in Faust in such a great way, this German spirit has spoken for all time to all people of the development of the earth an imperishable word of knowledge of human life in being and in free will and in work, a word that will remain, just as will remain that which is the true, deep fruits of German spiritual life. Among these deepest, truest, most imperishable fruits will be found what we can find in Faust. And so we may say: by immersing ourselves in Goethe's Faust, we become acquainted with a part of the imperishable nature of the German spirit itself. And this German spirit has spoken to the whole world by being able to express such things as are hidden in an obvious secret in Faust, to use another of Goethe's words – obvious if one only seeks it. In the face of Faust, we may apply Goethe's own saying: “All that is transitory is but a parable.” But we may also expand on this saying: in works that, out of the transitory, incline towards the eternal, as Goethe's Faust does, the immortal speaks at the same time in an eternal way to the eternity of human existence.

Today we are going to talk about the Mystery of Golgotha. At the same time we'll be looking at Easter in the light of spiritual science. A week ago, I said that the Mystery of Golgotha had not only been significant in the evolution of human history but that it is of the most profound significance for the whole of earth evolution, and we do, of course, include the human being in this earth evolution. At the time I drew your attention to the way an observer of our globe, someone who had been able to look at our planet from a distant planet for millennia before our present calendar started, would have perceived the way the planet changed. Such an observer looking down from a distant planet would indeed have seen the appearance of the earth change through those millennia. And if the eye had been clairvoyant, able to observe not only the physical events on our planet but also the non-physical changes, it would have seen that the whole spiritual atmosphere of the earth changed, became different, when Christ Jesus came to the earth.

Just as the human being has a physical body, ether body and astral body, so does the earth, too, have a physical body, ether body and astral body. We are all of us surrounded not merely by air, but also by the ether body and the astral body of the earth. Such a clairvoyant observer would see this ether and astral body of the earth. It would have had a specific colour and a specific way of moving up to the time of the coming of Christ Jesus. Then, however, it changed, assuming new colours and new movement. This event has such a profound effect on our earth and on human evolution that the whole spiritual content of the earth then changed.

You should not think that this happened suddenly as the Christ was born, suffered and died. It had been in preparation for centuries in the spiritual content of our planet and has not reached completion to this day. With clairvoyant vision one would be able to see how the new spiritual element that came to the earth at that time is still in the process of condensing and consolidating. It will be a long time yet before all the fruits that were produced at the coming of Christ Jesus have been received into the earth.

To understand what this is about we must once more let the whole of earth evolution go through our minds. We have to go back to the time in earth evolution when man's present form was only evolving, developing. We call this the Lemurian age. We reach it by going back through the different historical periods of our present age.

Today we live in the fifth sub-period of the fifth main era of the earth. Going back to the time of the Graeco-Latin peoples, to a time when that wonderful art developed which really only came into existence in the Greek period, a time when the Romans developed their legal way of thinking, we would be in the fourth sub-age of our era. Going even further back we would come to a time when the Egyptian, Babylonian and Chaldean civilization was at its height. Beyond this we should find the time when there came the first beginnings of a life in the spirit, with Zarathustra bringing the first culture of the mind. That would have been the second sub-age. Even further back we'd come to the most ancient Indian peoples, not the culture of which the Vedas and the Bhagavad Gita speak, but the preVedic peoples who were taught by the holy Rishis themselves. That was a marvellous ancient civilization, and clairvoyants are still able to see the whole of it. It was the first period of development, immediately preceded by the flooding of the earth in which the Atlantean continent that used to be between Europe and America was washed away.

Our ancestors lived in Atlantis, the people of the fourth main era. They did not yet have a social order, for there were no rules, no laws. Nor did they have logical thinking or the ability to do sums. Elements of counting only come up towards the end of the Atlantean age. Memory gradually came to be the highest inner power. Man then lived in marvellous interaction with nature. We only have the right idea of Atlantean culture, however, if we realize that physical conditions on earth were very different from those that developed later. Central European legends still hold memories of those early Atlantean times in Niflheim (land of mists), which was full of dense, heavy mists. All life forms then lived in such dense, heavy mists, and because of this conditions were also very different in the life of soul and spirit. It would take too long to go into more detail about the Atlantean age. I just wanted to, and had to, mention it briefly, so that we may move on to the time when human beings assumed their present form. For this we would have to go back not only to a flood but to tremendous upheavals caused by powers of fire. These fiery upheavals destroyed the land which in theosophical literature is known as Lemuria. It lay far down to the south, extending from the north of Africa to southern Australia. This was the region where man first appeared in his present form.

Going far back into Lemurian times we would see people walk about on the earth who were very different from people today, figures we should not yet call human, for they did not yet have the seed of the human soul in them which alone would enable them to rise to higher levels of development. We would find people there who only had the bodies that envelop the soul, people who had only a physical body, ether body and astral body. And their astral bodies had a depression, a kind of bay, in them—figuratively speaking—for the reception of self awareness. Essentially the four parts of the enveloping human form were already there, but the principle you call 'I' today, a principle that lives in you, was still in the keeping of the godhead then.

Figures were thus walking about on this earth. To describe those human figures that were ready to receive the core of essential human nature, we have to say they were completely different from today's human beings. You would think them to be utterly grotesque, going to the very limits of ugliness. Where today's human beings have air all around them, those human 'casings' were surrounded by a spiritual atmosphere. They were surrounded by a spiritual sphere of air in which they were alive and active.

To give you a diagram of the human beings of that time, I'd have to draw them like vessels, as it were, vessels ready to receive the higher soul quality into themselves (Fig. 20). The inner space is meant to be a hollow made in the astral body and this is ready to receive a higher soul quality into itself. That higher soul element was still in the surrounding atmosphere, the layer of spiritual air. Something which today is inside you was not yet inside human beings at that time, but moved around them. You have to understand, of course, that the spirit can assume different forms and that the element which was then your spirit did not need a physical body. Further development actually consisted in the human spirit coming to dwell in a physical body where it developed further inwardly as soul. Something which today lives in you was then living outside you, in the spiritual atmosphere that was around you. At that time, the individual souls which today live in separate bodies were not yet separate and individual.

Let us think of this glass of water containing thousands of droplets, all connected with each other. All the souls which were later to be distributed among human beings were like this, soul drops in this spiritual atmosphere, but as though dissolved to make a uniform, fluid element. And you may go on and image this: if I were to take a thousand tiny sponges and let them absorb a thousand drops, those thousand drops would then be distributed among the thousand tiny sponges. That is how you should think of the way the spiritual principle was distributed in Lemurian times. Having been all around on the outside before, this principle then came down into the bodies and separate entities were created. Just as the thousand droplets of water would be individualized in the thousand tiny sponges, so was the communal spiritual substance individualized in the separate human forms in Lemuria. At the beginning of the Lemurian age, every human form did not immediately receive the soul fully into itself. To show the way the soul content was received in my diagram, I'd have to do it like this (Fig. 20). I'd also have to show, however, that much of it remained outside the body, in the surrounding area. The body was thus surrounded by a spiritual content that was of the same kind as the part that was already inside the human form.

Evolution for the Lemurian and Atlantean periods and into our time meant that the element that was outside the physical body was gradually drawn into the body. This happened throughout the Lemurian and the whole of the Atlantean age. You have to imagine that human beings were in a permanent state of being half asleep and half awake, though they also had a kind of clairvoyance. If someone whose inner eye had been opened could have looked at the human beings of Atlantean times, these would have looked the way someone who is asleep does today. When a human being lies asleep, the physical and etheric body lies in bed, and the higher spiritual content is spread around it. It is exactly because it is outside that the individual falls asleep. You would see an Atlantean in such a permanent state of sleep; yet this would be full of lively dreams.

One individual approaching another in those times would not have seen the other the way we do today, sharply defined; instead, a colour form would arise in the first individual's soul. This colour form was such that if the other individual was congenial, it would indicate sympathy; with someone uncongenial it would show unsympathetic colour nuances. In those times human beings would perceive the world around them in a more clairvoyant way. The more the spiritual substance entered into them, the more did their state of consciousness become like the one we know in full daytime awareness today.

The process in which the soul came down into the physical body also had its physical aspect, a secondary physical fact. In the Old Testament this is significantly referred to in the words: 'And the Lord God ... breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.'¹⁰⁹ Truth is, it was not only air that was breathed into man at the time but the spiritual human being that filled him with life. You have to understand that the matter which lives all around us is not simply physical matter or substance. With every breath you inhale not only physical air but also spirit. It is perfectly true that when the physical air was inhaled at that time, in the way in which it is done by people in their present-day form, everything I have drawn here came down into the physical form. This is what the passage in the Old Testament refers to. And if you were to ask: ‘What was the human body at that time, when the soul came down from being in the keeping of the godhead?’ The body was the air, and today you still breathe the element which at that time came down into the body of human beings. For the principle we call the spirit is in the air. The air is merely the body, the substance, of the spirit.

You also have to understand that something else was connected with this way of breathing air, with the spirit coming down into the human form. It was closely bound up with what we call the warm blood of man, or rather blood that was warmer than the surroundings. Before this moment in time had come in earth evolution, there were no warm-blooded life forms. Warm-blooded animals only came into existence at a later stage. This breathing was therefore connected with warm-bloodedness, and this meant that something else also happened then. A certain quantity, a certain amount of warmth entered into the human being, the blood warmth you still have today. This is a higher kind of warmth than the warmth in the world around you. In those days, at the time that preceded this actual time when man came into being, something was present in the environment of our ancestors that was very different from the spirit embodied in the air.

You can get an idea of what was also present in the earth's atmosphere if you consider the following—not literally, a bit figuratively, yet also real—if you consider the warmth present in the different human beings who lived on earth, [if you consider] the warmth that lives in your blood, and then the warmth that has flowed out into your surroundings, and all this warmth enveloping the earth, all the blood warmth, therefore, all warmth that comes from the blood and flows within us—is the warmth that used to be around us on the outside in the past. Just as it is true that the spirit which used to be outside you is now inside you, so it is true that the warmth which was outside you is now inside you.

We would thus reach the time when the whole earth was enveloped in an atmosphere of heat. Another spirit was embodied in this warmth atmosphere, a spirit that was like the spirits who had been on the Sun—meaning one of the three planets that had preceded the earth. These had reached perfection at the time when the Sun was still a planet. The spirit embodied in this heat had reached a level of completion, perfection, which otherwise has been reached only by the spirits who achieved completion on the Sun planet at that time and dwell in the sun today. It is a fact that at the time when this warmth enveloped the earth there was in it the bearer of a unique spirit for the whole of humanity. And for a long time after this, the warmth that surrounded the earth was the bearer of one particular spirituality for all humanity, a spirituality which is no other but that of the spirit of the earth itself.

Just as every human being has his own spirit, is filled with his own spirituality, so for someone who is able to perceive these things, every plant and every material thing is at the same time also an expression of a spiritual entity. And our earth is the body or spiritual expression of the earth spirit. The blood warmth enables the earth spirit to enter into the human being. In the blood warmth which lives in the human being, and in pre-Lemurian times lived outside the human being, we have the medium by which the spirit of the earth enters into the human being himself.

You have to imagine, therefore, that at the time when actual human development began in Lemurian times, the spirit which belonged to the air came down upon human beings, and then the higher spirit began to come down which is in the warmth of the blood, the actual earth spirit. The relationship between these two spirits is such that we may say: ‘The spirit which has the air for its body is the one that has made it possible for human beings to gain speech.’ For the configuration of the human organism which makes the present-day breathing process possible, also makes speech possible. Speech developed in Atlantean times, and came to its highest expression in the ability to utter the word ‘I’ towards the end of the Atlantean period.

The process began in Lemurian times and gradually reached perfection towards the end of Atlantean times. The Bible says: 'And the Lord God ... breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.' This was gradually perfected until it became the word ‘I’, until the spirit began to speak out of the inner human being and began to call itself, out of the inner human being: ‘Y-a-h-w-e-h’. That is at the same time the eternal core and essence of every individual human being: ‘I am the one I am, the one I was and the one who shall be. ‘I am’ is the deepest inmost core. It came into man at that time and will remain for all eternity as the human being’s individual spirit.

This was the first outpouring of the godhead. It is called the outpouring of the spirit, or of Yahweh. In the mythologies of religious peoples, which are always more intelligent than scientific treatises, this outpouring of the spirit or of Yahweh is described as a breath in the air, something that moves over the earth in the air. Ancient German legend, and also Jewish, Hebrew legend, where Yahweh is the god of the tempest or the wind, shows that this is a divinity which has its outer body in the flow of the air and has poured into the human being.

Because of its essential nature this divinity did indeed play a role in human beings becoming individual when it entered into them. The uniform, fluid element which prior to the Flood had been all around humanity on a magnificent scale, was divided up among individual human beings, like the water being absorbed into tiny sponges. But this could not make the human being wholly individual. Human beings had to find the transition to complete individualization. They were not ordained to be complete individuals right away. Initially they formed groups. We have mentioned before that people lived in small tribal groups. They did not as yet feel themselves to be separate individuals. The human individual felt himself to be entirely part of such a tribal group or family, just as a hand is part of the body. Modern people with their very different way of thinking cannot really imagine what it is like to belong to a tribe, feeling oneself part of the tribal body. But that is how it was, and the more the small tribes spread, and the family came to be the tribe, the more individual did people become.

You have to think of this as a process of singling out, of progressively becoming more individual, as bound to the human being's blood. You can understand it if I tell you one thing, and I would ask you to remember it. The pouring out of the spirit in Lemurian times was not uniform. You would have been able to see many spirits coming down on to the earth from the spiritual surroundings of the earth. Many individual spirits were coming down. Speaking of Yahweh, we are not speaking of a single divinity but the spirits of many nations. The Jews know that it was one of many divinities. Nations were split up into tribes because many such souls of nations—please note that these were something real—were coming down. And the more they developed, the more did they live in families, in tribes, which then came together in large tribal nations. One thing that was not possible at that time was for all to come together in a great universal brotherhood. It will only gradually be possible for all of humanity on earth to come together, because apart from this sending out of the spirit and ensouling human beings with this spirit, which has come down into many souls of nations, there is also something that lived in the warmth of the earth, not in the air, and this more universal principle has also entered into human beings. In Christian esoteric terms, the element which came first is also called the Holy Spirit. Speaking of the old spirits that have come down, we should really refer to many holy spirits, many Yahwehs. When we speak of the spirit that has all warmth in it, we can only refer to a single one. In Christian esoteric terms this is called the Logos, the Christ, the universal spirit of the human race on earth.

Just consider that everything which lives in the spirit self, everything we call manas, came down in a multiplicity, and that everything we call budhi poured itself out over humanity as a spiritual oneness, and you have the difference. You'll then understand that humanity needed to be prepared first by the outpouring of the spirit before the outpouring of the Christos, of the budhi, the life spirit. Up to the time when Christ Jesus appeared on earth, everything there was of the Christ spirit was a oneness. It was a uniform sphere surrounding the whole earth, the solid earth being its skeletal system, as it were. If you take the solid earth with everything that is in it, and add to this the warmth that surrounds the earth, you more or less have the body of the Christ spirit, as it is called. Hence the beautiful words in the Gospel of John, where Christ Jesus refers to himself as the spirit of the earth: 'He who eats my bread has lifted his heel against me.'¹¹⁰ What do we eat when we eat? Bread. We eat the bread which is the body of the Christ. And in walking on the earth we do the other thing—we lift our heel against the Christ. This must be taken quite literally.

Just as in Lemurian times the Yahweh spirit poured something of the element of the spirit into separate individuals, so during the ages that preceded Christ Jesus and in those that followed, the Christ spirit gradually poured in, the Christ spirit which has its body in the blood warmth. When the whole of the Christ spirit has been poured out into individual human beings, the Christian spirit, the great brotherhood of humanity, will have conquered the earth. Then there simply will no longer be any thought of cliques and small groupings, but only awareness of humanity as a brotherhood. There will be the greatest degree of individualization, yet each will be drawn to the other. The small tribal and national communities will have given way to the community of the life spirit, the budhi, the community of the Christ.

The eye of a soul looking down clairvoyantly on our planet would then see this. It would be able to follow the way in which the Christ spirit had been wholly in the sphere surrounding the earth and had then poured into individual human beings. It would see the earth changing more and more. Other colours and moods would appear. An element that had been in the sphere surrounding the earth would then have to be looked for in the inmost being of individual human beings. This is what the coming of Christ Jesus means; it is the cosmic significance of this event.

Anything else you may find in the spiritual development of our earth has been preparation. The coming of the Christ was in preparation for centuries. The preparation for this event which was so important for the whole of cosmic earth evolution was such that the Christ showed human beings how to overcome the narrow limits of tribal relationships. You know Mercury, Hermes Trismegistos, the Persian Zarathustra, the Indians Krishna and Buddha and the Greek Pythagoras. The Christos spirit, which until then had been in the earth's surroundings, began to enter into human beings. Then came a band of time when religions were founded; there we can see the process of transformation advancing more and more, and we can get to know the nature of the Christian spirit.

The outpouring of the spirit—what effect was it able to have? It was able to bring it about that love was tied to the blood. In those early times when tribal communities had not yet developed, people loved one another no less than they do today. In fact, they loved one another more, but it was in the way a mother loves her child and the child his mother. Love was therefore more due to nature. Blood felt drawn to blood, and people felt they belonged together because of this. But the people drawn to such blood-based communities progressed further in their development and this meant that their sympathies became more individual. This led to smaller groupings, families and communities, which then became part of larger communities. Individual people were, however, getting more egoistical and self-seeking. The situation thus was the following. On the one hand humanity was getting more selfish, and on the other hand the influence of the Christ made people one. On the one hand we have individualization, with the individual progressively more independent, and on the other the unifying nature of the Christian spirit. These two streams must come fully into their own before it will be possible to have a condition on earth where everyone is independent and on the other hand also connected with everyone else, for each will be filled with the 'Christ spirit', as it is called.

We must clearly understand that all this is connected with the blood, and that originally something came to expression in human blood that brought to light feeling and inner responsiveness. These would come into play within the blood relationship, but they brought about blood-based love. We must also understand that feelings then became more egoistical. Self-seeking came to be increasingly more present in the blood. That is the secret of human evolution, that the blood gained more and more of the quality of self-seeking. This blood which had grown egoistical had to be overcome.

The principle which was excessive egoism in the human blood ran from the wounds of Christ Jesus on the cross in real mysticism; it became an offering. If this blood had not flowed, self-seeking would have grown more and more in human blood as evolution progressed. The cleansing of the blood from self-seeking—this is what the Mystery of Golgotha achieved. By this deed of love, human blood was saved from its self-seeking.

It is impossible to perceive the cosmic significance of the event on Golgotha if one only sees a human being hanging on a cross, bleeding from a wound made by a lance. The profound mystical significance of this event is that vicariously this is the blood which humanity had to lose in order to be redeemed. We shall never understand the Christian spirit if we take these things in a materialistic sense only, knowing only the material event and not also the spiritual principle which lies behind it This spiritual principle is the regenerative power of the redeemer's blood that flowed on the cross. We shall only understand the further evolution of the human race if we perceive how crucial this fact is, realizing that the most tremendous and complete change in humanity's spiritual evolution on earth is connected with this fact.

If we consider this evolution on earth, we find that in early times, before the Christos principle entered into human souls, the mysteries of the spirit were profound centres of teaching and ritual The more the Christ came into the world, the more did the Mysteries of the Son unfold; and in future the Mysteries of the Father will be important. We are told of them in the Book of Revelation.

Let us go back to the Mysteries of the Spirit. They were initially established in a place that would have been between Europe and America and has long since vanished. The nursery of the great adepts was founded there, inaugurating the Mysteries of the Spirit that have continued into our age. People who had given evidence of having achieved maturity could be initiated in the Mysteries of the Spirit. The mystery centres would accept people who had been adequately instructed and purified. There they would receive the teachings, the theosophy, that is the basis of all religions, teachings we receive today through the science of the spirit. They would have purified their instinctive drives, trained to bring order into their thinking, and then have learned not only to love people who were blood-related but to embrace the whole of humanity in love. They had become 'homeless people'. The process which occurs at the highest levels of human development is one that points to the future.

Initiation at the ancient mystery temples continued on into the last pre-Christian centuries. We see evidence of this in the Egyptian pyramids. There the disciple who had come so far that he was able to love the whole of humanity would be put to sleep for three days. His physical body would be as if dead, in total lethargy. The initiator would be able to draw his spirit forth from him the way your spirit is drawn from your body every night when you're asleep. Just as it is true that this spirit is unconscious in ordinary sleep, so it is true that it would be conscious in disciples who had been frilly prepared. The interference that comes from the physical body would no longer be there. But in those three days the disciples would be able to remember everything they had learned before; they were able to take this into their body.

Because the candidate had been learning, taking in the necessary concepts and feelings, the initiator was now able to let him experience as a spiritual reality everything he had previously worked for and taken in by way of inner feelings. The soul would wander through the astral and devachanic world during the three days when it was out of the body. It would encounter the reality of what it had previously learned, and the individual thus came to know, to be initiated. The theosophical teachings ceased to be mere theory; now they were something in which he himself had been, as though in a living element. When he woke again in his body and looked at his physical surroundings, a sound would come to his lips that must wrest itself from the soul of its own accord when after wandering through the world of the spirit for three and a half days the soul found itself back in the physical world again. The soul was then aware that the I had become a citizen of higher worlds, that it had been in those worlds and could now speak to people about its experience in those worlds. Speaking of the world of the spirit from experience, he had become a herald of the spirit in the physical world, a missionary of the spirit. And this comes to expression in the words: 'Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani!'¹¹¹ which means: 'Oh God, my God, you have indeed glorified me!' These were the words one would have been able to hear from every individual who had been initiated in this way.

If you had examined such an individual with regard to his whole essential nature, you would have found that someone who was initiated in the mysteries of the spirit became a herald of something which in Christ Jesus was given for the whole of humanity. The budhi had, however, only awoken inwardly, in the 'ether body', as it is called, of such an initiate. Initiates in the spirit, in whom the Son, the Christos, had inwardly awakened, existed throughout antiquity in pre-Christian times. This Christos had not penetrated as far as the physical body, but he had been awakened in the ether body. Those initiates had become immortal as ether human beings.

The great step forward for humanity came because what applied to the great initiates in the spirit also applied to Christ Jesus coming to the earth. But in the case of the individual who died on the cross, this applied right down to the physical body. Everything which in the ancient mysteries could be experienced when out of the body could be seen on the physical plane in this one case, because of the event on Golgotha. It became visible even for those who had only physical eyes. In earlier times, initiates who were able to progress that far would be able to see it. They would feel at one with God because, being the chosen, they experienced inwardly how life must conquer death. Now, however, this was no longer necessary. With the event on Golgotha it had taken place in front of human eyes. There it happened that life overcame death. And through the connection with this unique event, through the bond that connects every individual with it, like a family bond, something was given that replaced the things which had been given to individuals in the Mysteries of the Spirit.

There is one great, significant image from the Mysteries of the Spirit which I must describe to you if you are to understand the Mysteries of the Son. I had to describe how the individual who lay in his sleep for three and a half days was surrounded by twelve human forms, as though he were sitting around a table with them. And how should they appear to someone who had had experiences of the higher worlds as an initiate? Twelve of his incarnations would appear to him, twelve of the bodies he had gone through before. Those twelve bodies were nothing more or less than what he bore within himself as the elements of his body. In occult terms, the human body is divided into twelve parts, and these are a recapitulation of twelve incarnations in which the individual human being is gradually purified and taken to a higher level of perfection. The individual would thus feel himself to be surrounded by the forms or figures which he himself had gone through in earlier times, and he would say to himself: The one form you had before lives in one part of you; the second form lives in another, the third in again another, the fourth, and so on.’ They are thus around you like the guests sitting at a meal with their host.

This image would appear before the soul of every individual entering into the Mysteries of the Spirit. It was the Son of Man who brought this to an end, no longer the son of a family, a tribe, a nation, but the son of the whole of humanity. It was really the thirteenth who had the greatest perfection among the twelve. Being outside his earthly self, he saw himself as the thirteenth.

Let us now consider how the experiences every candidate would have in the higher world came to be repeated in Christ Jesus. It is covered with a kind of veil, the way everything given outwardly, exoterically, is veiled. The Easter feast celebrated by the Christ and the twelve was not to be an ordinary feast. It was to be something else—a recapitulation on the physical plane of the experience which the initiates in the spirit had had a number of times on the higher plane.

In Luke's gospel, chapter 22, verses 7-12, we read: ‘When the day of unleavened bread came, ... they said to him, “Where do you wish us to prepare it?” And he told them, “Now when you enter the city, a man will meet you who is carrying a jar of water. Follow him into the house where he is going. Then speak to the master of the house, saying, The teacher says to you, Where is the guest room so that I may eat the Passover there with my disciples? And he will show you a large upper room which has been set out ready; prepare for us there.”’

During the feast he explained once again that the bread was his body, that the blood flowing in his body was like the sap in the body of a plant. It was right for him to say, with reference to the plant sap, the wine: ‘This is my blood,’ and it was right for him to say this because he is the spirit of the earth. It is right for him to say of all substance: ‘This is my body,’ and of all juices: ‘This is my blood.’

Then comes the scene where Christ Jesus developed the Mysteries of the Spirit further into the Mysteries of the Son, and ultimately into the Mysteries of the Father. Again you must consider the twelve apostles sitting around him to be an embodiment of the twelve parts of his own body. If you really contemplate this, using inner delicacy and discretion as you approach a passage which unveils—or rather veils—the deepest truth of the Christian spirit, you will be able to encompass in your mind the transition from the Mysteries of the Spirit to those of the Son.

Consider once again what had to happen as the Mysteries of the Son were approaching. People had to become aware that the blood had to give up its connection with blood bonds. One day blood bonds would mean less to people than their egoism. Looking to the future mission of the Christian spirit, Christ Jesus realized that this could only be achieved by his sacrifice. It had to be thus. For times would come when people grew more and more egoistical in order to gain their freedom. The excess of egoistical blood therefore had to be sacrificed in a cosmic deed, so that human beings, however independent, might one day be able to unite in one great brotherhood. The egoistical element exists particularly because of the human race; it has grown more and more, and it needs to be made spiritual, to be ennobled, by the Christian spirit. Human beings are thus getting more and irore independent. Let us take a look, however, at something which has since come to girdle the earth—our forms of transport. What are they but arrangements to satisfy our egoism? Everything thought up by using the rational mind and common sense has only been thought up to satisfy our egoism, even if only in a roundabout way. Humanity was less egoistical when grain was still ground by using two stones. Humanity had to grow independent, however, and therefore also had to go through egoism, with the whole of our civilization providing the material basis for this.

Someone initiated in the Mysteries of the Spirit thus sees his own incarnations, with himself at the head, as the part which is now the most perfect, just as the Son of Man saw the group of disciples around him as versions of himself. Someone who looks into the future will see the configurations humanity will need to go through. Anyone who lives through the Mysteries of the Son sees into the future, to the end of earth evolution, when the earth state changes into a new star state. Christ Jesus was therefore able to say of the former state: 'You who are sitting around me represent different degrees of perfection, and when I look into the future, you, as you are sitting around me here, represent the twelve stations. These must be overcome, however. I must guide them through myself to the Father. I must guide you to the Father as though through myself, so that the earth may achieve a higher degree of perfection.' All sensuality, all drives, passions and affects attaching to human beings must be overcome. This can be seen in symbolic form in what happened with the twelve.

The age that followed is represented in Judas Iscariot. The representative of low sensuality is closely connected with the representative of the greatest moral and ethical qualities. It is Judas Iscariot who really betrayed the Christian spirit immediately afterwards. Oh, a time will come when it will look as though what happened on Golgotha is also happening all over the earth! It will look as if egoism was to bring death for the Christ, the budhi. It will be the time of the Antichrist. It is law that everything that happened around the cross will also have to happen on the physical plane. What happened on Golgotha does at the same time also have profoundly symbolic significance. Judas' betrayal signifies the lower drives gaining the upper hand. All things sensual must, however, become spiritual.

We thus have reference made here to the future evolution of humanity within the earth. I have spoken of this on several occasions. Everything of a lower nature will drop away from human beings. The future human being is already preparing in the human race. They will not be creative then the way they are today. They will not be working out of their lower passions. Today they produce the word, which can embody the most sublime, and they will become more and more creative through the word. They have grown more egoistical because of their sexuality, and they will be selfless again once that sexuality drops away.

Today the word is produced on a stream of air coming from the larynx; in humanity's future the word will be productive again. Boys' voices break at puberty. It will be the voice which will be productive. And in becoming productive, this word will at the same time—in the future, for the whole situation will be turned around—give expression to human control over the air. It means that the principle which originally breathed through man will cause a transformation in something which is even more deeply connected with essential human nature. The word will be creative with regard to the preparation of the blood. Even the blood of man will be transformed. It will only be able to produce pure, selfless feelings. A human race will arise that is creative through the word. Selflessness will be transformed into a quality of the blood, and the thinking organ will be transformed to be in the heart. This is one of the two evolutions that will follow Christianity. The age when egoism rules is represented by Judas Iscariot. Anyone taking an unbiased look at world events can see how sexuality is capable of betraying man as spirit, to kill him. But human beings who today can produce the word as something higher in themselves will one day be creative through the word. This will be when the heart is the organ of their mind and spirit.

I would now ask you to apply this to the gospel and note a passage which puts what I have just been saying in a truly wonderful way, with magnificent symbolism. Consider what will follow when Christianity has grown selfless and brotherly; how Judas Iscariot embodies everything that makes people egoistical; and consider also the direction in which humanity will develop through the twelve stations—to the form which Christ Jesus himself assumed. Everything rises upwards towards the heart.

The way the transformation occurs is such that creative power pushes upwards from the lap to the heart. This has to come to expression in the one who represents the highest form and is closest to Jesus. Now read this: ‘One of the disciples, the one whom Jesus loved, lay in Jesus' lap at the table. Simon Peter beckoned to him, indicating he should ask which one it was. He then leaned against the breast of Jesus and said to him: “Lord, which one is it?”’¹¹² The passage tells us how the lowest power of production in man moves up into the breast, shown here by Christ Jesus' closest disciple. The Mystery of the Son, of Jesus, is suggested in the most delicate way. One cannot think of a more magnificent way. You will see that it is meant to be a mystery if you read what the initiated disciple himself writes at the end of this whole scene, having had living experience of how he would be transformed and come to the Father through the Son. What was he then able to say? At a higher level, he was able to say what initiates are able to say: ‘Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani.’ Those are his words. Read it for yourselves in John's gospel: ‘And Jesus said: Now the Son of Man is glorified, and God is glorified in him.’¹¹³

This Easter feast was the preparation for what then happened on the physical plane. In contemplating Christ's death we learn of death being overcome on the physical plane, and egoistical blood being overcome as the blood flowed from his wounds. We also come to perceive the great prospect that lies ahead as the words are once again heard coming from the cross, out of an awareness of what the future holds: The earth will have reached the goal of a great brotherliness, of becoming spiritual, overcoming everything that could drag the human spirit down.'

Those who have gone through this with the Christ will be able to gather around him once they leave earth evolution behind and rise to a higher form of evolution. And perceiving that the perfecting of the earth has been accomplished, Christ Jesus will once again be able to call out words he once called out on the cross: 'Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani!' that is ‘ My Lord, my Lord, how you have glorified the I in humanity, making it spiritual.' That is the meaning of these words. There is a later translation which is wrong, taking up the lines from the psalm.¹¹⁴ But the proper translation of the words is the one you have now heard. Those are the words that express the Mystery of Golgotha: ‘My God, my God, how greatly you have glorified me, made me spiritual.'

These words reveal to us how the spirit wrests itself free of the body. The Mystery of the Son reveals to us how at that time, the inner visionary eye of the world's redeemer looked ahead to the end of the earth's perfecting and put the great goal of humanity in words, speaking of overcoming all differences and the founding of utter human love. This goal will only be reached if people learn to enter more and more in a spiritual way into the world of the spirit. For it is in the spirit that humanity comes to be at one. Once human beings were at one as they stepped forth out of the spirit, out of that oneness, out of the way where everything merges into one in the divine. They became individualized as they entered into individual human bodies—the way water is individualized when droplets of it are absorbed into small sponges. And human beings, now become individual, will be at one again when they enter into the great bond of brotherhood, still maintaining their individual nature. They will thus prepare themselves to be deified creators, just as they were gods, creators, before they came to earth as human beings.

Human evolution took its origin in a divine spirit and it is going back to a divine spirit. The different ‘I’s will be individual, yet at the same time they will be a oneness, being united in the bond of brotherhood. This oneness will give birth to a new star, the new star which in the Book of Revelation is called 'the new Jerusalem'.¹¹⁵ The human ‘I’s will be born in their I-nature, and then the harmonies of the spheres will create the echo for the words in which the Mystery of Golgotha came together, the words: 'My God, my God, how you have glorified me!'

Those words were spoken then, in the past. They will be repeated when human beings ascend to the highest levels, to ever greater heights, when they will have gone through the Son to the Father. The Son guides humanity to the end of earth evolution; then human beings will be taken up into the cosmos again, retaining their I-nature. The earth will go back to the Father. 'No one comes to the Father except through me.'¹¹⁶

The inner eye is able to see a long, long way if human beings are prepared to seek insight into the profound secret of Golgotha. But festivals like the great seasonal festivals exist as important points where people should abandon their everyday routine, when they should let their inner eye go out to the great milestones in evolution, when they should survey not only centuries but millennia. We should consider humanity in a vision that comes to the conscious mind. If we let the distant goal of the future come alive in our hearts, as the great teachers of the human race have taught us, if we let this distant goal come alive in us, a goal that is so far away, yet can be so close if it becomes a power in our hearts—then alone shall we reach it.

Let us resolve never to let such festivals pass by without inscribing in our souls those great future prospects and goals for humanity. People have time for everyday things in their everyday lives, but when the bells ring on holy days, they do well to remember that they are children not just of their age, but in their spirit, also children of eternity.

• 109. Genesis 2: 7
• 110. John 13: 18.
• 111. Matth. 27: 46; Mark 15: 34. sabachthani generally translated as 'abandoned'. A similar sounding term, shevachthani means 'elevated' or 'glorified'. See Steiner R. The Gospel of St Matthew (GA 123), 12th lecture. Tr. D. Osmond, M. Kirkcaldy. New York: Anthroposophic Press 1985.
• 112. John 13: 23-25. The translation of the Greek ἐν τῷ κόλπῳ tends to be a problem. A kolpos was the space, a kind of pouch, created above the belt in a loose Greek-style tunic. It was the place where men in those times would keep things that were valuable to them. Translations vary between ‘bosom’ and ‘lap’ (in Abraham's bosom, in the lap of the gods). Verse 23 says kolchos, whilst verse 25 has στῆθος, stethos, meaning ‘breast’.
• 113. John 13:31.
• 114. Psalm 22:2.
• 115. Rev. 3: 12; 21:2.
• 116. John 14: 6.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Answering questions

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Question: What is the difference between monocotyledons and dicotyledons?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

There is a very witty man who has made a remarkable statement about all human philosophizing. He said in a recently published work, which discusses at length the impossibility and futility of all human philosophizing: Man has no more philosophy than an animal and differs from the animal only in that he makes frantic attempts to arrive at a philosophy and must finally admit to himself that he has to resign, must end in not knowing. — There is much in this book, which is otherwise very readable, that basically brings together everything that can be said against philosophy. The person in question has become a professor of philosophy at a university for this reason. I will quote a saying of this man, which deals with the human view of nature. The saying is quite radical. The gentleman in question says that nature is mysterious on all sides, and that if man really feels the mysteriousness of nature on all sides, he cannot help but realize the infinite smallness of his own being. Nature expands immeasurably in its eternity, and we should actually feel that we stand there with our notions and ideas about nature, holding our tongues! I quote, and it can be said that the saying is not entirely inaccurate, that when we look at nature, we as human beings do indeed feel how little what we can grasp in our thoughts, even when we are engaged in the most brilliant natural science, actually corresponds to the great, immeasurable secrets of nature. And if we did not feel that the thought — which nature itself cannot bring forth, but which can only be generated in the human mind — stands face to face with nature, if we did not know that this thought corresponds to a human need, if we did not feel that in the something of our entire human destiny and human development lies in the reign of thought over nature, we need it as the seed needs the plant, we would actually not know, with careful inner self-knowledge, why we reflect on nature. We reflect on nature for our own sake and know that when we are confronted with nature, we are actually quite far from it with our thoughts. So one feels when contemplating nature.

If one feels towards the spiritual life, the supersensible life, then one must say differently. No matter how insignificant, childlike this supersensible life may be when it presents itself in us, one feels an inner necessity to also express what the spirit reveals to one in the soul. And although one must feel the most intense responsibility towards everything one expresses in the spirit, everything one can speak out of the supersensible, everything one can bring to light in the soul, one feels that one must follow this, that one must express it out of an inner necessity, just as one grows as a child or as one learns to speak itself. Thus, one feels oneself to be in a very different position with regard to the sensual and the supersensible.

A third thing is what one can call: reflection or expression about art. When one wants to express oneself about art, one feels neither the sense of being on the sidelines, which one always feels when pondering nature, nor does one feel that sense of necessity that overcomes one when faced with the inner revelations of the supersensible. Rather, when one tries to express oneself about art, one has the feeling that one is actually constantly interfering with the thought one is developing. In terms of artistic enjoyment, thought is actually a real troublemaker. And when it comes to anything related to art, you always want to stop thinking and talking and enjoy the art in silence. If, for whatever reason, you do want to talk about art, you don't want to do it from the perspective of an aesthetics professor or, even worse, an art critic. Not from the point of view of an art critic, because it seems superfluous to lecture on why you liked a particular dish after having eaten a series of dishes. You just want to say what you yourself can experience in art, in terms of joy, edification and so on, just as you feel the need to talk about what you have experienced with a dear friend. Out of a certain abundance of the heart, not out of a critical sense, one wants to talk about art, and one does not want to claim that what one has to say somehow expresses something lawful or universally valid, but basically just a kind of subjective confession. But that seems to me to be a constant feeling when talking about art, that the thought actually bothers you, and this, in turn, seems to me to point to what art is essentially about.

Since we as human beings live primarily in the world of the senses, we can ask: What is the relationship between art and the sensual? — Or, since we as human beings can only perceive the world of the senses exhaustively if we have a relationship to the supernatural, we could also ask: What is the relationship between art and the supernatural? — Well, it seems to me that anyone who develops an elementary feeling for artistic creation must very soon come to the conclusion that art is not capable of representing the sensual as it directly surrounds us, nor is it capable of expressing thought.

In the face of sensuality, anyone with a sense of nature will always have the feeling that if one wants to depict it and create a kind of image of it, one cannot achieve nature as such, that nature is always more beautiful and more perfect than any image. In the face of the spiritual – world-view poetry or the like bears witness to this – one will have the feeling that, if one wants to represent it, one describes something straw-like and superfluous. World-view poetry has a pedantic, scholastic character under all circumstances; the allegorical-symbolic will always actually reject any true artistic feeling.

And so the question of the relationship between art and the sensual and the supersensual can seem like a vital question for art. Therefore, the question arises: Is there anything else, besides the sensual and the supersensual, that has something to do with the essential tasks of artistic creation and enjoyment? This question can only be answered by really delving into the soul process of artistic creation and enjoyment: how it cannot be described by legitimate aesthetics, but can only be experienced. When we face the world in our ordinary, sober, and at first glance inartistic lives, we are dealing, on the one hand, with sensory perception and, on the other, with what is produced in our own soul through sensory perception, with thought. To demand from nature such perception as it offers us, such as the depiction of a human being through art, seems to me, for the reasons given, to be something quite impossible and therefore superfluous. The desire to represent through art what direct perception of nature offers is actually always rooted in certain aberrations of art. On the other hand, however, it seems as if – perhaps this is a little strange, but one does experience it, as I have already indicated in relation to talking about art – in the actual process of artistic creation and enjoyment, one strives to eliminate thought as far as possible, to prevent it from arising in any way. This seems to me to be based on the fact that processes are constantly taking place in the human soul that can either flourish to their end or break off at some point. One can only follow these processes if, through spiritual observation of the soul life, one really descends into the depths of the soul life that, for ordinary consciousness, remain in the subconscious or unconscious.

Those who observe the soul life of a person will find — leaving aside observation of the outer world for the moment — that this soul life, insofar as it develops freely in meditation and inner feeling, always has a tendency that cannot be described other than as follows: What swells and surges in the soul-life as feeling, as restrained impulses of the will, as feelings and the like, that wants to emerge, and it wants — basically also in the healthy soul-life — to form itself into what one can call a kind of vision. In the depths of our soul, we are always striving to shape our surging, flowing soul life into a vision. However, in a healthy soul life, the vision must not be allowed to emerge. It must be replaced, it must be stopped in its tracks as it arises, otherwise a diseased soul life will result. But in every soul there are efforts to shape itself into a vision, and basically we go through life continually stopping visions in the subconscious, by allowing them to fade to the point of thought. Then the outer image helps us. When we face the outer world with our seething soul life, and the outer world with its impressions affects us, then this outer world blunts that which wants to become a vision, and the vision fades to a healthy thought. I said: we actually go through the world constantly striving for visions, only we do not always become properly aware of the corresponding perceptions. But anyone who tries to realize what only quietly echoes between the lines of life in what one experiences daily, anyone who is able to observe this, will see that all kinds of things do emerge. I must say: if, for example, I happened to enter someone's dining room and found a party eating inside, and the plates and bowls were painted red, I would instinctively believe through an elementary sensation: there sits around the table a party of gourmets who want to immerse themselves in the dishes and courses. If, on the other hand, I saw that there were plates and bowls painted blue on the tables, I would believe that these were not gourmets, but that they were eating because they were hungry. Of course, one could feel the same thing somewhat differently; that does not matter. What matters is that one is actually always tempted, by what one encounters in life, to trigger an aesthetic sensation and to bring it in a certain way to a fading vision. It is, of course, entirely possible to succumb to strong illusions in this area. That does no harm. But if it is not true at all that a society that eats out of red bowls must be told that they are gourmets: aesthetically, the matter remains correct. Likewise, one could say: If someone receives me in a red room and constantly lets me speak, and I am a very boring gentleman, then I say: he is lying to me. Because in a red room, I expect a person who has something to say to me, and I feel it is a lie if he always lets me do the talking.

So, actually, as we go through life, we are always inclined to reduce what we experience to a suspended vision that then fades under the external impressions of life. Artistic enjoyment and creation always go one step further. Artistic enjoyment and creation cannot allow what simmers and boils in the soul to emerge subconsciously to the mere thought. That would be something that would simply permeate us with thoughts, but would not lead us to anything artistic. But when we, as artists, or because an artist comes to meet us, are able to give expression to something that wants to come up in the soul, I just want to say a color scheme, and when we feel that this combination of colors gives us something we need, so that the corresponding vision that arises, but which must not become a vision, has an external complement, then we have something decidedly artistic before us. I can imagine that someone would simply use artistic means to express moods and feelings by combining colors that may not correspond to any external object at all – perhaps the less they correspond to it, the better – but which are, so to speak, the counter-image of what wants to come to vision in his soul life. In the somewhat abundant discussions in recent times about all kinds of artistic matters, people have also become more aware of such phenomena and, when someone creates something that has nothing to do with the external, that has the sole task that I have just described, they speak of expressionist art. It is still frowned upon today to assume that what is preparing itself in man as a yearning and striving towards a goal corresponds precisely to a basic trait of humanity: to arrive at a sensualization of that which can only reveal itself spiritually in the soul. However, if one were to express a thought, something that has already come from the stage of vision to the pale thought, through some sensual means, one would be unartistic. If one avoids the thought and directly confronts the sensory form, one has established the connection between the human being and what has been artistically created, whereby the thought is eliminated. And one may say: That is precisely the essential thing, that art represents neither the sensual nor the supersensible, but the sensual-supersensible, something in which the sensual is directly mirrored by a supersensible experience. Neither the sensual nor the supersensible, but only the sensual-supersensible can be realized through art.

On the other hand, one may ask: if it is not acceptable for what we have encountered in sober life as perception to simply be reproduced in art, how is it possible to relate to nature artistically at all? If nature contained nothing but what it presents to our external perception and what this perception inspires in us, then there would be no necessity for art. We can only speak of the necessity of artistic creation if there is more to nature than what appears in the finished natural products for the imagination, for the thought that, in the artistic, must not provide the bridge between personality and external nature. Now, of course, we have to say that nature has within it that immensity, has within it also the intense infinity that we cannot grasp directly through thought. Nature has within it, even in the sensory, the supersensible. We can grasp the basis of the sensory-supersensible of external nature itself by looking at nature in such a way that we try to gain an insight into what is present in it beyond the sensory impression. Now, let me give you an example: When you are standing in front of a person, you can focus your attention on the human form, on the fact that the incarnate reveals itself through the human form, on the fact that the soul manifests itself through the outer form in the physiognomy, in facial expressions; you can follow how life permeates what is external form. Of course you can do that. But even if one wanted to reproduce everything about a person, one could not, as I said, achieve nature, because there is something unartistic about simply wanting to reproduce external natural objects. Anyone who asks whether a work of art should resemble a natural object is, from the outset, certifying that they do not want to see a work of art, but an illustration. But another is at hand. It must be said that when one pursues what is expressed in the human form, what actually appears as form is actually killed by everything else that lives in it – by the hue that comes from direct life, by the soul content. And that is the secret of nature: this nature is so infinite in its details that every detail can be killed by something higher. But if you have the sense for it, you can awaken the dead from its own essence to a new life; you can revive that which is dead in the form of the human being through the higher life, through the spiritual penetration, in the form, so that the form itself now becomes a living being, without it containing life and spiritual content. A sculptor, for example, who works with materials, can give form to what he must take; he comes to realize that nature is so intensely infinite that it contains infinitely more in each of its details than what it represents. When it presents a form to us, it deadens the inner life of the form, the life is enchanted in it, and one can disenchant it. When we encounter something in nature that is colored, it is quite certain that the color itself is deadened by something else in the object. If I take the mere color, I am able to awaken something out of the color itself that has nothing to do with what the color is on the object. I create life out of the color that lies enchanted only in the color when the color appears on the surface of the natural object. In this way it is possible to disenchant enchanted life from everything that nature presents us with. It is possible to release what lies within nature and its intense infinity from this nature everywhere and nowhere to create an imitation of nature, but to disenchant what is found in nature through some higher power.

When talking about these things, one is tempted to speak in paradoxes; but I believe that this does no harm, because one can see from the extreme, radical cases how things actually are in the less radical cases. On the one hand, I can imagine that when the artistic works from within through the held vision and I create a counter-image from forms and lines and colors, these lines and colors can be put together in such a way that they reflect nothing other than the restrained vision. On the other hand, I can say: It seems possible to me that I can create something alive out of something natural, let's say a human being in whom life itself has died, who has become a corpse, purely artistically, by bringing something out of the general universe that can artistically revive the corpse. There is no need for such extreme cases. But the possibility exists, as a borderline case, that when nature has already killed a being, a new creation of even the corpse comes about, in that something is brought up that is now, as something quite different from what man himself is with his soul nature, ensouls this form. I could imagine that a captivating work of art could come about through a new life sprouting in a corpse, which reflects the secrets that exist in relation to man, and which are only hidden because man has his own soul within him until his death. One need not be offended by such a borderline case. It is just that: a borderline case. From this it can be seen that artistic creation can be effective in relation to external nature, because artistic creation and enjoyment actually proceed continually in this way, even if not pushed to the borderline case. Art is a continuous release of mysterious life that cannot exist in nature itself, that must be brought out. I am then confronted with a natural product in human form, which is dead, but I try to awaken the life of this form and, from within the form, despite it being only a dead form, to awaken the whole person again.

Genesis says that man was created by the breath of God, that a human soul was breathed into him. This could lead one to see something else in the air besides the combination of oxygen and nitrogen. It could seduce one to see in the air something that awakens the human soul from it, something soul-like; it could seduce one to believe that this air basically longs to become a soul when inhaled by humans. One could see in the air the counter-image of the human soul, thus more than something merely inanimate: a yearning for the human being. Now it is very difficult to arrive at such a feeling in connection with air, because air and fire inspire little in the way of artistic creation. Nobody would want to paint fire, or lightning, and one would not want to draw air either. So it is not easy to arrive at this feeling in direct contact with air; but it seems to me that one can arrive at a true artistic feeling for this sensation in contact with the world of light and color. In the world of light and color, one can truly have the feeling that every color, or at least the color relationships, have the longing to become either a whole human being or a piece of a human being. In the human being, they find expression either as an inner expression of his being or in the way the light illuminates him and is reflected back. But one can say: If one lives in the light itself, one lives with the longing of the air to shape itself into the human face, for example. One can have the feeling that red and yellow want to achieve something; they want to shape themselves into something human, they have a language that lies within themselves. Then one will not try to simply reproduce the human being in a sober way. The liberation from the model must become an ideal of artistic creation in general. He who has not overcome the model at the moment he begins to create, who does not regard it as something that gives him the instruction to eavesdrop on nature's secrets, will remain dependent on the model and create illustrations. On the other hand, he who has artistic feeling will be tempted to shape the human being or some other being or some natural form out of color. For such a person, the world of color will be able to take on an inner, differentiated life. One will find that red and yellow colors are such that they tempt one to use them wherever one wants something to express itself, to speak through itself. What confronts one in red and yellow will express itself, will, through its own power, produce the ideal of art, excluding thought. It is different when one is confronted with blue, with violet. There one will have much more the feeling that with blue, with violet, one comes close to thought, at least on one side. One will have the feeling that with blue, with violet, one cannot represent something that expresses itself, but rather, something else, more easily. One will be tempted to represent the blue of one's inwardness by showing it in motion. And you will find that it is difficult to create an inner movement of the object by evoking some lines in the red. Rather, lines, shading, I would even say physiognomy, will arise in the red. The red will speak for itself. The blue, when transformed into lines, will betray its inner nature, will lead us more under the surface of the color than lead us out of it. When something expresses itself as color, one has the feeling that the color repels one. The blue leads us under the surface of the color; one believes that in what is expressed through the blue, movement, the development of will, is possible. A purely sensual-supersensible being, that is, a supersensible being that one wants to place in the sensory world, to paint blue and to express its inner mobility through the nuances of the blue, will be able to be fruitful.

In this way, one can disenchant whatever one encounters in nature as a part, whatever is killed in nature by higher life. One can find the sensual and the supersensual in nature itself; one can give life to mere form. One will find that it can never make a truly satisfying impression if one simply reproduces the human form as it is in a sculptural work of art. Many years ago, I once had a strange experience with a friend who became a sculptor. He said to me at the time – we were both quite young –: Yes, you see, you would actually have to produce the right plastic work of art by exactly imitating every single twist of the surface. – I must confess that I was almost furious at this expression, because it seemed to me that in this way the most abominable thing of an artistic performance could come out. Because, in any case, if you want to carve out of stone or wood what has form in man, what is killed by the higher things in life, without this inner life, then you have to bring it to life for yourself, you have to call upon the surface to say what it can never say on the outer man of nature.

For example, one finds that if one bends a surface and then bends it twice more, so that the bend is bent again, one has the simplest archetypal phenomenon of inner life. A surface bent in such a way that the bend is bent again can be used in the most diverse ways, and it will — of course this needs to be further developed — the inner life of the surface will emerge from the surface itself. These things testify to the fact that there is a relationship between outer nature and the human soul, which in truth has the character of the sensual-supersensible. We come to form thoughts precisely through our encounter with outer nature, in that outer nature kills off through a higher power that which otherwise exists as members in nature and keeps a higher spiritual life enchanted. This compels us to grasp this deadened life through the sober thought. If we avoid this pale thought and seek to grasp that which lies enchanted in the parts of nature and to which we ourselves carry out the process of putting it together, of giving it the higher life, then we undergo the process of artistic creation or that of artistic enjoyment. The two are related only in that what is later in the first is earlier in the second, and what is later in the second is earlier in the first. If we follow this approach, which is directed towards the intense infinity of nature and the possibility of demystifying the secrets of nature, in terms of what it represents in the soul life of man, then we have to say that it does not evoke the pale world of thoughts. What is demystified is lighter than what mere thought can grasp. But it does establish a connection between the external object and the human soul, in which thought is excluded, and in which a spiritual relationship between the human being and the object is nevertheless sought.

This can of course be taken further and we arrive at what may still appear quite absurd and terrible to many people today. It can be understood, but what at first seemed terrible to people was always something that they took for granted after they had become accustomed to it for some time. If you look at a person – you only need to look at their skeletal structure – then even with a very superficial observation you will be able to see that the skeleton clearly consists of two very different parts – we will not consider the other one today –: the head skeleton, which is, so to speak, only attached, and the rest of the skeleton. For those who have a sense of form, it now becomes clear – not through some anatomical observation, but through a sensory observation of the head and body skeleton – that one is the metamorphosis of the other, that one can think of the main bones in such a way that wherever there is a hump, it can also grow, and wherever there is an outgrowth, it can recede. By mere transformation, one can actually — by changing the form — make the main skeleton emerge from the rest of the skeleton and, to a high degree, the rest of the skeleton emerge from the main skeleton. So that one can say: the whole human being is enchanted in the head. Even when one is confronted with a skeleton without a head, one will be tempted, if one does not want to get stuck with the sensory perception, to supplement the head to this skeleton in a sensory-supersensory way; one will be tempted to let the vision of the head arise from the skeleton. There are people who cannot imagine this. But it is impossible for a human trunk skeleton to arise in nature without a head skeleton. For those who, in their imagination, do not merely confront nature as an abstraction, but in such a way that they carry the essence of nature in their own perception and cannot perceive the natural object other than as it must be, it is self-evident that the head skeleton will also appear to them out of the body skeleton like a vision. But for him who sees through these things, it is the case that if he has only the head and now completes the whole person out of it as if from a vision, this person is different from when he completes the other the other way round. It is similar and yet different. So that one can also say here: In nature outside, a wholeness is created in man, which consists in the dissection into head and remaining organism; but each individual wants to be a whole man. In a higher whole, life, which is enchanted in each individual as a whole man, is killed. If you exclude the thought that arises when you encounter a human being, then you see yourself forced to recreate from your own inner being that which you take from the human being by analyzing him. And in this way, you rebuild nature, like nature itself. One creates this infinitely intense, significant process of unifying what must first be killed in its members in order to reappear at a higher level. And it will naturally be different if one recreates it in spirit.

I believe that this already evokes a certain horror in the imagination. We have made an attempt in our building in Dornach – one can make attempts in all fields, it can never be a matter of wanting to restrict art by means of any dogmas – in a group that is to be executed in wood – it is important that it is to be executed in wood – it cannot be done in stone – to first reunite in a central figure at a higher level that which is also united in the human being, but united through nature, where in turn the sexual organs are killed by something higher. Every human being is asymmetrical. But what wants something completely different in the left side than in the right, you can feel it: then two people stand before us, the left-handed person and the right-handed person. That which is specialized in the left- and right-handed person is united in nature to a higher unity, in that the self-will of the limbs is slain. In artistic contemplation, which confronts the will of nature, arises, I would say, the complete figure of the left-handed and right-handed man. Both basically want something different, and the artist must — this can remain very much in the subconscious — relive the process that nature carries out on another level by killing the left-handed and right-handed man and balancing them in the whole human being. If one now artistically creates a figure in which the form suggests that the human being is an asymmetrical being, then something else must be added. The sensual-supersensory, perceived, brings one into the necessity of really bringing about what is necessary as other limbs. Therefore, we were compelled to create other figures. We were obliged to compensate for the disintegration and subsequent reassembling of the left- and right-handed man by hinting at the other two opposites. What lives in man as a vision when one imagines the torso of the human body as a visionary complement to the whole human being? One would have alive in the outer form what rises from the trunk to the head as drives, as instincts, what one could call the Luciferic. One will want to shape this Luciferic in a different way than nature has done: For example, one will reshape the shoulder blades into wings; then one will be tempted to bring together what nature constricts, these wings, with the shape of the ear and head. Something different will come out of these sensual-supernatural human limbs than an ordinary natural man, but it will represent a certain side of man that one should not be allowed to represent individually. It would be dreadful if someone were to present something like this as a figure in itself, but together with the human being and in the right composition to the human being, it can be composed in such a way that one imitates the compositional power of nature. Conversely, what wants to become a whole human being in the human head must also be recreated. What wants to become a whole human being in the human head, becomes ossified, hardened, when it is developed into a whole human being. This is what we must continually overcome in ourselves, what we actually overcome by adding to the impulses that we carry in us through our head those that keep this hardening fresh from the rest of the organism. We must overcome what comes from the head with what comes from the blood of the heart organism. The human being's sensible-supersensible nature makes it possible to recreate in separate forms what is hidden in the individual human form and was composed by nature herself at a different level.

What might be called the process of re-creation actually takes place in the human soul; it is a process in the life of the soul, something that is not just an external and abstract imitation of nature, but rather a continuation of nature's evolution in the human being himself. This presupposes that the artist and the person who is artistically gifted actually face nature and themselves in a very complicated way – which remains only in the subconscious, since the thought is eliminated –. That is understandable. It must be said that, emotionally, we are in a complicated process with regard to what is to become artistic. If someone simply wanted to reproduce a beautiful woman by imitating what nature provides, he would inwardly kill this woman. He would depict her dead. She would not come to life in his work, even if he reproduced her very faithfully. You have to be able to transform her into a corpse first, but then, through what is genuine, true humor, recreate her beauty from a completely different element. Without figuratively speaking, figuratively speaking, you have to kill a beautiful woman - you have to beat her up or something like that, first transform her into something dead - you can't paint her properly. Its beauty is present in nature in a completely different way than it must be present in the finished work of art. One must first discover with humor what is to be recreated and what must be killed. One can say: when one sits opposite a serious scholar, the reproduction of this is initially actually a comedy; one might be tempted to laugh at his serious expression. But one is only artistically finished with the serious scholar's countenance when one has humorously revived it with something else. One must make it amiable again and then one can understand it from a completely different perspective.

The aim is therefore to resurrect that which has been killed in nature through one's own subjective life, to disenchant it, to redeem it. If I observe a dashing young farmer walking on the mountain pasture and simply imitate him, I will probably create something very dead; but if I make an effort to, as it were, first kill him and, through certain lines, bring about a harmony between him and the surrounding nature, I will be able to create something artistic. Hodler has attempted such things, and we can see that in the subconscious similar efforts are being made everywhere, which has also led to artistic discussion about what might be called, on the one hand, the creation of the counter-image for the unfinished vision, and on the other hand, the creation of the subjective counter-image through what enchants in nature and is always killed by a higher life. In this way the sensible and the super-sensible approach man from two sides, and through art man can endeavour to bring them to a higher, new existence.

In my earlier lecture on the same theme I endeavoured to connect the thoughts which I have developed here before you to certain thoughts of Goethe's in order to show how the sensible and the super-sensible can be realized through art. I was criticized for this, and I now realize that it worked just as well without the reference to Goethe. People reproach you for many things, especially when you refer to Goethe, because those who think they come particularly close to Goethe when they repeat something of his that they do not understand, and are able to judge those who have made an effort to penetrate into the matter. These things can be understood; it is a natural process in human life, and one must sometimes be quite pleased when what one says is judged in this way. One can even think: if it had received a different, more approving judgment, one would have to say something quite superfluous or foolish. So I will at least present what I could avoid at the end. I do believe that anyone who approaches Goethe with understanding will find in his broad-minded and perceptive view of art, even if it is expressed in a different way, what has been asserted today as the sensual-supernatural element in art. I even borrowed the expression from Goethe. And I believe, although I am quite of the opinion that in a certain sense it is correct that the one to whom art reveals its secrets has a rather pronounced antipathy to art or to enter into an aesthetic-scientific consideration, I believe that art can only be discussed from the standpoint of life, that the most correct way to discuss art is to listen to the artists themselves. However, sometimes one comes to strange experiences. As a rule, artists complain terribly about what other artists produce, and if you enjoy their works, you sometimes do not enjoy what artists say about their works, because they sometimes live in illusions about their own works. But the artist must create out of illusions, and precisely that could be right, giving the right impulse for his artistic creation. Even if I fully admit all this, and even if I understand from a certain point of view that the artist is always quite reserved about anything approaching ingratiation from the side of aesthetic science or other considerations, I still do not believe that it is completely unnecessary to have intuitive ideas about art. I believe that art must always advance with the general progress of the soul's life. I believe that it is precisely through the contemplation of the sensual-supernatural, as it unfolds through the held vision, as it confronts us from the outer nature, when we disenchant what is enchanted in it, that art solves the riddle of nature in a sensual-supernatural way. So that in the end I want to quote this beautiful, worldly saying of Goethe's as a summary of today's reflection: “When nature begins to reveal its manifest secret to someone, that person feels an irresistible longing for its most worthy interpreter, art.”

My dear Friends,

You will have seen from what was given in yesterday's lecture that when we are considering how we shall form our speech for recitation, we have to make a clear distinction between lyric, epic and drama. For we were able to observe that the vowel element in speech has a special relation to lyrical poetry, and the consonantal to narrative and drama. At the same time we must, as I said, not allow ourselves to forget that every consonant has in it something of the vowel element. It is, in fact, impossible to utter a consonant by itself; there must always be a vowel sounding with it to give it tone, and each consonant has its own individual inclination in this respect. The converse is moreover also true, that in every vowel an accompanying consonantal element may be heard. This will be familiar ground to you; we have spoken of it already.

I want now to draw your attention to an important fact concerning our present-day speech. It is a fact that you will need to keep well in mind if the practical demonstration that Frau Dr. Steiner will presently give is to be really helpful to you in connection with what I shall have to say in the lectures. I mean the following.

We belong, do we not, to the civilised peoples of mankind, and are moreover living in a highly advanced epoch of civilisation. But in this highly advanced epoch of ours, speech has lost connection with its beginnings, with its true origin. The languages of Europe today—with the possible exception of Russian and a few languages less widely spoken, which have not as yet come quite so far away as the rest—the European languages generally are by this time very far removed from their origin, and they are spoken in such a way that the words and even the intonation of the sounds have become nothing more than an external sign for the experiences that originally gave rise to them. I say expressly: a mere external sign. People are not, as a matter of fact, conscious of the ‘sign’ character of their speaking, for they have no idea that speech can ever be anything else than it is in the ordinary speaking of the modern European languages. But if an understanding is to arise again for speech as an art, if the artistic is to be once again alive and active in speech, there must first be the conscious realisation that speech has come away from its true character and nature and needs to be restored to it.

And this it is that I have endeavoured to achieve in my Mystery Plays. In certain passages at any rate, the immediate human experience that is finding its expression in speech has been brought back again into the sounds. The ordinary speaking of today has no longer any connection with the experience to which the speaking refers. But in parts of my Mystery Plays, the attempt has been made to lead back into sound the rhythmic, musical, plastic qualities which are generally found today only in the thought.

There are naturally many different ways in which this can be done; it depends on the task one has in hand. But I would like you now to listen to a part of the Seventh Scene in my first Mystery Play, where the scene is laid in the realm of the spirit. For I have tried there to bring right into the sound what has to be expressed, so that the very sound, if one goes no further, can direct one to the spiritual, can reveal the spiritual. And that is how it was with the old original languages.

The first thing to be borne in mind in regard to this scene was that one had here to do with happenings that are remote from the physical world and reach out towards the realm of the spirit. Hence the keynote of the scene suggests inwardness, takes us to the purely spiritual; this meant that the language had to be vocalic in character. And then there are the clearly marked transitions between the three soul forces,

Philia, Astrid and Luna; these transitions had to be given their place in the treatment of the scene. Philia lives purely in the vocalic-spiritual element; the consonantal appears in her only so far as to remind us that we are concerned with speech and not with song. Astrid builds the bridge between Philia and Luna. In Luna we encounter weight; we feel in her the direction towards the physical plane. Luna's language therefore, while still vocalic, begins to be consonantal.

We have then in this scene a good subject for artistic treatment. A hint of the consonantal element has had to be introduced, but the whole scene lives pre-eminently in the vocalic which leads one away from the physical world and takes one into the realm of the spirit. A situation of this kind can be most valuable for one who wants to find his way to a true forming of speech.

(Frau Dr. Steiner then read from the Seventh Scene of Die Pforte der Einweihung.)

(Das Gebiet des Geistes)

MARIA

Ihr, meine Schwestern, die ihr
So oft mir Helferinnen wart,
Seid mir es auch in dieser Stunde,
Dass ich den Weltenäther
In sich erbeben lasse.
Er soll harmonisch klingen
Und klingend eine Seele
Durchdringen mit Erkenntnis.
Ich kann die Zeichen schauen,
Die uns zur Arbeit lenken.
Es soll sich euer Werk
Mit meinem Werke einen.
Johannes, der Strebende,
Er soll durch unser Schaffen
Zum wahren Sein erhoben werden.
Die Brüder in dem Tempel
Sie hielten Rat,
Wie sie ihn aus den Tiefen
In lichte Höhen führen sollen.
Von uns erwarten sie,
Dass wir in seiner Seele heben
Die Kraft zum Höhenfluge.
Du, meine Philia, so sauge
Des Lichtes klares Wesen
Aus Raumesweiten,
Erfülle dich mit Klangesreiz
Aus schaffender Seelenmacht,
Dass du mir reichen kannst
Die Gaben, die du sammelst
Aus Geistesgründen.
Ich kann sie weben dann
In den erregenden Sphärenreigen.
Und du auch Astrid, meines Geistes
Geliebtes Spiegelbild,
Erzeuge Dunkelkraft
Im fliessenden Licht,
Dass es in Farben scheine.—
Und gliedre Klangeswesenheit;
Dass webender Weltenstoff
Ertönend lebe.
So kann ich Geistesfühlen
Vertrauen suchendem Menschensinn.
Und du, o starke Luna,
Die du befestigt im Innern bist,
Dem Lebensmarke gleich,
Das in des Baumes Mitte wächst,
Vereine mit der Schwestern Gaben
Das Abbild deiner Eigenheit,
Dass Wissens Sicherheit
Dem Seelensucher werde.

PHILIA

Ich will erfüllen mich
Mit klarstemLichtessein
Aus Weltenweiten.
Ich will eratmen mir
Belebenden Klangesstoff
Aus Aetherfernen,
Dass dir, geliebte Schwester,
Das Werk gelingen kann.

ASTRID

Ich will verweben
Erstrahlend Licht
Mit dämpfender Finsternis,
Ich will verdichten
Das Klangesleben.
Es soll erglitzernd klingen
Es soll erklingend glitzern,
Dass du, geliebte Schwester,
Die Seelenstrahlen lenken kannst.

LUNA

Ich will erwärmen Seelenstoff
Und will erhärten Lebensäther.
Sie sollen sich verdichten,
Sie sollen sich erfühlen,
Und in sich selber seiend
Sich schaffend halten,
Dass du, geliebte Schwester,
Der suchenden Menschenseele
Des Wissens Sicherheit erzeugen kannst.

MARIA

Aus Philia's Bereichen
Soll strömen Freudesinn;
Und Nixen Wechselkräfte,
Sie mögen öffnen
Der Seele Reizbarkeit,
Dass der Erweckte
Erleben kann
Der Welten Lust,
Der Welten Weh.—
Aus Astrids Weben
Soll werden Liebelust;
Der Sylphen wehend Leben,
Es soll erregen
Der Seele Opfertrieb,
Dass der Geweihte
Erquicken kann
Die Leidbeladenen,
Die Glück Erflehenden.—
Aus Lunas Kraft
Soll strömen Festigkeit.
Der Feuerwesen Macht,
Sie kann erschaffen
Der Seele Sicherheit;
Auf dass der Wissende
Sich finden kann
Im Seelenweben,
Im Weltenleben.

PHILIA

Ich will erbitten von Weltengeistern,
Dass ihres Wesens Licht
Entzücke Seelensinn,
Und ihrer Worte Klang
Beglücke Geistgehör;
Auf dass sich hebe Der
zu Erweckende Auf Seelenwegen
In Himmelshöhen.

ASTRID

Ich will die Liebesströme,
Die Welt erwarmenden,
Zu Herzen leiten
Dem Geweihten;
Auf dass er bringen
kann Des Himmels Güte
Dem Erdenwirken,
Und Weihestimmung
Den Menschenkindern.

LUNA

Ich will von Urgewalten
Erflehen Mut und Kraft,
Und sie dem Suchenden
In Herzenstiefen legen;
Auf dass Vertrauen
Zum eignen Selbst
Ihn durch das Leben
Geleiten kann.
Er soll sich sicher
In sich dann selber fühlen.
Er soll von Augenblicken
Die reifen Früchte pflücken,
Und Saaten ihnen entlocken
Für Ewigkeiten.

MARIA

Mit euch, ihr Schwestern,
Vereint zu edlem Werk,
Wird mir gelingen,
Was ich ersehne.
Es dringt der Ruf
Des schwer Geprüften
In unsre Lichteswelt.

THE PORTAL OF INITIATION
Seventh Scene
(In the Spirit Realm.)

MARIA

My sisters, who to me
so oft have helpers been,
now at this hour be so once again;
that I may move the cosmic ether
to tremble inwardly,
that it shall music make
and let its harmonies ring forth
to fill a human soul
with knowledge.
I can discern the signs
that point us to the task.
Your work shall now with mine
unite.
Johannes, the earnest seeker,
shall by our deed
be lifted to true being.
The Brothers in the Temple
have counsel held
how they shall bring him
out of the depths
and lead him to the heights.
And they await from us
that we call up within his soul
the power to soar aloft.

Do thou, my Philia, drink in
from widths of space
the essence clear of light.
Fill thee with music's stirring harmonies,
out of the soul's creative power born,
and so reach out to me
the gifts that thou dost gather
from spirit-depths.
These then can I enweave
into the rhythm of the dancing Spheres.

And thou too, Astrid,
of my spirit
beloved reflex,—
in flowing light
let darkness be engendered,
that colours may shine forth.
And member thou the being of sound,
that so the woven texture of the worlds
may become living tones.
Then can I grant
unto the seeking human mind
that he shall feel the spirit.

And thou, strong Luna,
sure and firm within,
as the vigour of life itself,
as the pith in the heart of the tree,—
join to thy sisters’ gifts
the stamp of thine own being,
that certainty of knowledge
may accrue to the seeking soul.

PHILIA

From the wide spaces of the worlds
I will enfill me
with purest being of light.
From ether distances
I will inbreathe
the life-giving power of sound;
that so thy work, dear sister,
may be fulfilled.

ASTRID

The radiant light
will I enweave
with darkening shade.
The flowing life of sound
will I congeal,
till its music flash and sparkle
as the play of glancing light;
that thou, beloved sister,
the rays of soul mayst guide.

LUNA

Soul-substance will I warm.
Life-ether will I forge.
They shall grow fast and firm
and, inly all aware,
be poised in silent being
to work creatively;
that thou, beloved sister,
beget in the seeking soul
the certainty of knowledge.

MARIA

From Philia's realm
shall pour a stream of joy;
the changing play of water-sprites
shall stir the soul
of the awakened one;
that it be quick to feel
the joy of worlds,
the woe of worlds.

From Astrid's weaving shall
the bliss of love be born.
The wafting life of sylphs
shall waken in the soul
the urge to sacrifice;
that, being dedicate,
he quicken may to life
those who are sorrow-laden
and yearning for relief.

Strong Luna's power
firm steadfastness shall give.
The might of fire-beings—
it can beget
assurance in the soul;
that, having knowledge,
he may find himself
in the weaving of human souls,
in the life of worlds.

PHILIA

I will entreat the Spirits of the World
that the light of their being
rejoice the seeing soul,
that the music of their Words
gladden the listening spirit;
that so the awakened one
may rise on paths of soul
to heavenly heights.

ASTRID

The rivers of love
that warm the world,
will I lead to the heart
of the dedicated one;
that he may bring
the bounty of heaven
to earth activity,
the mood of dedication
to the children of men.

LUNA

From ancient Powers primeval
courage and strength will I crave,
and plant them deep in the heart
of the seeking soul;
that self-reliance
his guide may be through life.
From moments of time shall he pluck
the ripened fruits,
and draw from them seeds
for all eternity.

MARIA

United, my sisters, with you
in the noble work,
I shall achieve
my heart's desire.
Into our world of light
resounds e'en now the call
of him who trials severe
hath undergone.¹

(Dr. Steiner): If we want to form speech in such a way that it can be plastic and at the same time also musical, then the first thing necessary is to know how to bring gesture into speech. In the actual voice itself slight indications of gesture can still be heard, but gesture as such has disappeared from speech in more modern times. In dramatic speaking we still use it, but there alone; you will at the most be able to observe little hints of it in other kinds of speaking. There is in fact today quite a chaos of uncertainty regarding the relation of word to gesture. We shall receive striking evidence of this when we pass on from our study of speech formation, and come to consider the art of the stage.

It will help you to a better understanding of this question of gesture if you recall what I said about the gymnastics of the Greeks, at the end of yesterday's lecture. I showed you how their five main gymnastic exercises—Running, Leaping, Wrestling, Discus-throwing, Spear-throwing—are founded upon the connection of man with the cosmos. Starting from this relationship he has to the cosmos, man is in these exercises perpetually forming as it were another relationship, a relationship of gesture; and in gesture the force, the dynamic of the human being himself is present.

Now we shall find that in the fundamental mime movements of the stage we have faint reflections of what came to revelation in these exercises. If therefore we set out to study these reflections of the five exercises of Greek gymnastics, we shall be on the right path for discovering how gesture can come to the help of the word in dramatic art; for there is, in fact, no justifiable gesture for the stage that is not a kind of shadow-picture of some one of the five exercises of Greek gymnastics. That is, however, the other pole. The one pole is speech itself, the forming of speech.

The very word ‘forming’ takes us at once to the plastic quality of speech. The actual visible form has of course disappeared from view, we can no longer see it in the word. It should nevertheless still be there, it should be present in the word intensively. We must therefore begin with the word. And our first question will be: What can speech do? What should it be able to do, when it is raised to the level of art, when it is ‘formed’ ?

Now, there are certain definite capacities, certain definite faculties that speech can and should have. Beginning from the most external aspect of the matter, speech can be effective. We do not as a rule speak merely for the purpose of opening our mouth and emitting a sound; we speak in order that our speaking may accomplish something. Thus we have for our first capacity of speech: it can produce some result, it can be effective.

Then there is also the fact that in sound and word and sentence inner processes of the soul can find their revelation. And so we have what I may call the thoughtful aspect of speech. Besides being effective, speech can be thoughtful, reflective.

1. Effective²
2. Thoughtful

It is easy enough today to study the effectiveness of speech. You have only to go to a political meeting, and you will find people making capital, quite instinctively, out of the effectiveness of speech. On the other hand, the study of thoughtfulness in speech presents considerable difficulty, since for the most part people talk for the sake of talking, not in order to express thoughts at all. It's the proper thing to do; of course we must talk! We are even brought up to regard this kind of talking as part of our equipment for social life. It is nevertheless essential, if you want to develop a right forming of speech, to recognise that speech can be thoughtful,—I should rather say, can reveal the thoughtful in man.

A further thing that speech can express is what we might call placing oneself tentatively into connection with the external world—proving, feeling, touching. It comes to expression in the question,—sometimes also in the wish. We lead our soul out into the world that is around us, but are all the time a little uncertain how we are going to enter it. This is a mood that can manifest in speech; one could call it a feeling forward, a cautious groping forward in face of whatever hindrances may be in the way.

3. A cautious feeling forward in face of hindrances.

The fourth thing to be observed is that speech can reveal antipathy to that which is approaching us. We experience a relation of antipathy to what is confronting us, and we bring the resultant feeling to expression in speech, either for the simple purpose of showing our antipathy, or with intent to criticise, or even perhaps in order to make a scene. And that gives a special nuance to the forming of our speech. So I will call the fourth capacity of speech: giving vent to antipathy.

4. Giving vent to antipathy.

Again, speech can declare or affirm sympathy, the opposite of the fourth.

5. Expressing sympathy.

And there is still a sixth thing that speech can reveal—namely, that we are drawing back into ourselves, withdrawing from our environment.

6. Drawing back on to one's own ground.

These are the six revelations of speech, which were known in the Greek Mysteries as the six shades or variations in the forming of speech, and were in those times the basis of all instruction in speech. Besides these, there are no others. Everything man can reveal in speech can be classed under e of these six. And if we want to raise our speaking to consciousness, we should try to study how these shades of feeling come to expression in speech.

It will, however, answer our purpose best if we do not at once proceed to a study of the spoken word, but first prepare the ground by a study of gesture, and then afterwards link the word on to the gesture. Proceeding in this way, we shall acquire a right feeling for the forming of speech, whereas by the reverse method, conclusions of an arbitrary nature would be constantly suggesting themselves—supposing, I mean, we were to start with the word (where the gesture has only now disappeared from view), with the idea of passing on thence to gesture. If, however, having recognised that the genius of speech works in these six ways, we then go on to study this genius of speech in gesture, we shall find that the way lies clear before us to go back afterwards to the word.

Suppose now we want to feel the ‘effective’ word in its right nuance. We can best express the feeling with a gesture of pointing. We have thus, first of all, the pointing gesture.

1. Effective: Pointing.

An interesting study can be made of the pointing gesture, by observing its use among the different peoples. England will be no place for such a study, for there no one cares to use gesture—not this gesture anyway; in England people speak with their hands in their pockets. Italy is the very best place in all Europe to study the pointing gesture in its connection with the word.

The ‘thoughtful’ quality in speech will find expression in e gesture or other of holding on to oneself, touching oneself. A man who is engaged in deep concentration will, for example, do this (finger on forehead), or perhaps this (finger on nose). Any such gesture will belong to a speaking that reveals thoughtfulness or reflection. You will even sometimes find this position (arms akimbo), and in some countries—I have come across it before now—when a person is contemplating giving another fellow a box on the ear, he will hold firmly on to himself like this (arms pressed against the side). And so we may say: Holding on to oneself is here the corresponding gesture.³

2. Thoughtful: Holding on to oneself.

The ‘feeling forward in face of hindrances’ is something that can be experienced at once in gesture. You have only to ask yourself: What do I find myself doing, when I want to feel my way amid hindrances? I grope forward with my arms and hands in a sort of wavy, rolling movement.

3. Cautiously feeling one's way in face of hindrances: A rolling movement forward with arms and hands.

‘Antipathy’—no difficulty in feeling at once the gesture for this: a movement of rejection, flinging something away, ‘shaking the dust off one's feet’. If one is already a half-civilised human being, one makes the gesture so (slight movement of rejection with the hand); if one is uncivilised, then so (powerful movement with hand and foot).

4. Antipathy: Flinging out a limb.

To express ‘sympathy’ we make, or at least begin to make, a gesture that intimates we would like to touch or gently stroke the object of our sympathy. A hint of this at any rate must be implicit in the gesture. Thus, to assure another person of our sympathy, we reach out with our arm to touch him.

5. Sympathy: Putting out a hand or arm to touch the object of our sympathy.

And now for the ‘drawing back on to one's own ground', the withdrawal into oneself. This comes to expression in gesture when, for instance, we hold our arm first close to our body, and then thrust it out a little,—not quite in a horizontal direction, but slanting a little forward.

6. Drawing back on to one's own ground: Slanting a limb away from the body.

You will find it a good exercise to take what I have written here in the first column (see page 60), and feel each separate attribute of speech in the corresponding gesture that is given in the second column. For there is a natural and elementary connection between them. And to feel these connections is far more important for a right forming of speech than to undertake a systematic study of the holding of the breath, the position of the diaphragm, nasal resonance, and so on; that will all come of itself if we but live in the speech, beginning our study of it with a study of gesture in all its variations. If you once see clearly for yourselves that any particular one of these gestures in the second column has inherent within it the corresponding capacity of speech in the first column, then you will be rightly prepared for passing on to the artistic forming of the word, or of the sentence. And so now, having studied in each gesture the special nuance of soul that comes to expression in it, we must go on to consider how gesture can be led back again to the word.

If we have experienced how the gesture of ‘pointing’ reveals a condition of consciously directed activity in the soul, then that leads us on to perceive the connection between this pointing gesture and what I may call the incisive word, the forcible, decided way of speaking, of which we are aware that it is being powerfully impelled forward into the outgoing breath and the speaker's inner force is being driven into penetrating the word with a kind of metallic quality.

1. Incisive.

If, on the other hand, our word is to express what is inherent in the gesture of ‘holding on to oneself’, touching oneself, the gesture that reveals thoughtfulness, then it will have to be spoken with full tone. No question here of the word being thrust out and given a sharp, metallic ring! Rather shall we have to give to each vowel and each consonant the fullest tone of which it is capable: Und es wallet and woget and brauset and zischt.⁴ There you have in each single vowel and consonant just as much tone as it can receive. When the sounds are uttered in this way to the full, then that always imbues the speaking with a reflective, thoughtful quality, giving it a mood that can be studied in all its variety in the gesture of holding on to oneself.

2. Full-toned.

The ‘cautious feeling forward in face of hindrances’, that is inherent in the gesture of a rolling, undulating movement with arms and hands—especially so (with the hands raised, palm-upwards)—comes to expression in speech when the voice trembles, or vibrates. It is helpful for the speaker if the poet uses here words that have as many r sounds as possible; for with r, the voice does naturally tremble.

So we have now three ways of forming speech: we can form it so that it becomes sharp, decided, or we can give fulness of tone to the sounds, or we can form it so that the sounds vibrate.

3. Trembling, or vibrating.

‘You tell me, I must reach that goal. But can I do it ?’ (the ‘can’ vibrating a little). ‘Can I do it ?’ You will feel the connection at once.

And now, when we come to antipathy, repudiation, where the gesture consists in flinging out the limbs, the word has to become hard. We must be able to feel its hardness. ‘I am busy. I don't want you here. Go away!’ There you have the word that is hard, spoken also in immediate connection with the flinging out of the hand.

4. Hard.

On account of this intimate connection between word and gesture, it is an excellent plan, if one wants to prepare oneself for recitation or for dramatic speaking, to begin by making a study of the whole scene in gesture alone, going right through it silently, while it is recited by someone else.

And now for the gesture of reaching out to touch the person or object. This gesture need not always be a declaration of sympathy; we can use it on the stage when we are describing something and are anxious to picture it accurately to the other person. It is thus also the gesture for description. And with this gesture, even if no human relationship is concerned, but all the more if a human relationship does enter in, the voice becomes soft and gentle. ‘And so you are bringing me this little child! I am always glad to see him. Come

5. Gentle.

Lastly, ‘drawing back on to one's own ground’, with the gesture of thrusting an arm or leg away from the body. If this gesture becomes real to us, we see at once that the corresponding word will be abrupt. ‘You think I ought to do my work; I want to go for a walk.’

6. Abrupt.

In the time of the ancient Mysteries, when men could still discern what was of real importance in life, this division of speech into its six modes or capacities was recognised. Later, when in every sphere of life people looked more to externalities, a further one was inserted after the second. The addition was somewhat arbitrary, for it was not altogether new, being really already contained in the ‘thoughtfulness’. We might describe it as the expression of a kind of ‘inability to come to a decision’—a particular nuance, as you see, of thoughtfulness or reflection. The gesture is that of holding the limbs quite still. And the corresponding formation of the word is that the words are spoken slowly. ‘Things have come to a bad pass; what am I to do?’—the ‘what am I to do?’ pronounced deliberately, with the words long drawn out. That gives the right nuance.

What I am anxious to impress upon you particularly is that if we are setting out to study the forming of words and sentences, we must take our start from gesture, and then go back to speech and see what qualities—fulness, vibration, and so forth—rightly belong to the speaking of word and sentence.

For it is essential that we should get to know speech objectively, that we should make ourselves acquainted with the activity of the genius of speech. We can only do this by looking first at gesture and then following gesture right into the intoning of the single sounds; but this will come more easily if we have accustomed ourselves first to following up gesture into the intonation of the words, in the way I have been showing you. The manner of intoning the word must of necessity be found in the moment of speaking; the intoning of single sounds has to become a matter of habit. When, for example, a pupil is preparing a particular scene in a play, he should not really have to concern himself with the single sounds. The intoning of sounds must be taken as a separate study by itself. And one can literally follow the gesture and see it slip into the sound and disappear within.

Think of the musical intoning that is produced by wind instruments. Say you blow a trumpet. The air is set moving and you feel quite clearly : There is gesture in that moving air! You have only to imagine that the moving air inside the trumpet were to freeze a little, first becoming fluid and then solid, and you would see a beautiful gesture drawn there for you in the frozen air. Wonderful gestures would come to view. When we are listening to wind instruments, we are hearing gestures; we hear them quite plainly. In other words, we perceive how the gesture slips into the blowing of the instrument.

But now we have among our consonants some that can most decidedly be described as ‘blown’ or ‘breath’ sounds, which goes to show that the human voice is in principle a trumpet, although Nature has mercifully mitigated its force a little,—for when the human organ emits a deep sound like a trumpet, it begins to be rather unpleasant. We have nevertheless sounds which point unmistakably to the trumpet ature, the wind instrument nature, of the human voice. These are the sounds: h, ch (as in ‘loch'), j (as y ‘yacht'), sch (sh), s, f, w (v). And they are all of them sounds in which, as one listens to them, one can still hear the gesture.

On the other hand, there are sounds where the gesture disappears into the tone in such a way that one feels a need, not merely to hear but to see what the sound would convey. A good example is d, where you want also to see that the finger is there, pointing.⁵ These are the ‘impact’ or ‘thrust’ sounds; and with them you want, as it were, to get away from hearing, and fancy that you can see the sound. Well-defined sounds of impact are: d, t, b, p, g, k, m, n.

Then we have a sound where we can hardly say the gesture has ‘disappeared’ in the sound, for it is still perceptible. I mean r, the vibrating sound.

Again, we have a sound which gives you the feeling: how lovely it would be to become that sound! This is l, the wave sound. You swim in the element of life when you have the true, genuine feeling of l.

The disappearance of the gesture into these sounds is a thing that can definitely be felt. Take first the ‘blown' sounds. The experience one has with these is essentially an experience of tone. Listen to them. The gesture has completely disappeared within the sound, but you can hear it; yes, you hear the gesture. With the sounds of impact, one would somehow like to fancy one can see them. And in a sense that is so; in one's imagination one sees these sounds.

The vibrating sound r is felt; and a keenly sensitive person will feel the r in his arms and hands. If, while someone is pronouncing r and giving it its full value, you are obliged to hold your hands and arms quite still, it will be enough to make them itch. An itching of this kind is nothing else than the normal reaction of a sensitive person to the utterance—and especially to the frequently repeated utterance—of the sound r. R, then, is felt, in arms and hands.

L on the other hand will normally be felt in the legs. It is an actual fact that when someone is saying l, you feel it in your legs. Thus, l too is felt, but now in legs and feet.

Blown Sounds: h, ch, j, sch, s, f, w: We hear the intoning of the sound.
Impact Sounds: d, t, b, p, g, k, m, n: We see the sound. Vibrating Sound: r: We feel the sound in arms and hands
Wave Sound: l: We feel the sound in legs and feet.

As we saw, in the case of the ‘blown’ sounds, which more than any others become objective for man, the gesture has so completely disappeared within, that we want only to hear the sound. Test this for yourselves with some poet who has a fine feeling for sound. When he wants to express something that is entirely detached from man, you will find these sounds constantly occurring; quite instinctively, he makes:use of blown or breath sounds. But suppose he wants to describe how man is taking part in it all—butting in, perhaps defending himself, beating, laying about him. Then you will find the sounds of impact frequently turning up. Or again, if some passage in the poem is intended to stir your feelings, if in the very hearing of it you are to be deeply moved, then at the appropriate place you will find r or l. Thus, in the case of all sounds other than blown sounds we are referred perforce to man and his gestures. With the blown sounds there is no need for your attention to be drawn to man as he is in gesture, since the gesture has here completely disappeared into the sound, it is there within. Studying in this way the various kinds of sounds, we see again how gesture disappears into speech.

We have all this time been approaching a profound truth that we can receive from the Mysteries concerning speech, and that we shall do well to inscribe in our hearts. It has not been handed down as a tradition, for it was never explicitly stated; it comes to us none the less as a heritage from the time of the Mysteries. It is a truth upon which we should meditate deeply and often, if we are seriously wanting to practise the art of speech,—and then meditate also upon all that will reveal itself further as a result of the meditation. In gesture lives the human being; there, in the gesture, is man himself. The gesture disappears into the speaking. When the word is intoned, then in the word man appears again, gesture-making man. When man speaks, we find in his speaking the whole human being—that is, if he knows how to form his speaking. Let us then receive, as a heritage from those times when speech was still part of the content of the Mysteries, this truth: Man who has disappeared in the gesture, rises again in the spoken word.

The art of the stage, that employs gesture, does not let man altogether disappear from the gesture. Neither does it let him wholly ‘rise again’ in the word. And this is what makes a dramatic performance so fascinating. For since man does not altogether disappear in the gesture (for the actor stands there before you as man in the gesture), nor yet fully rise again in the word, a possibility is created for the onlooker to take a share in the experience. He has to add in his fancy, in his own enjoyment of the drama, what is not yet fully present in the word that is spoken on the stage. So there you have—as it were, ready to hand—a situation that constitutes an essential element in the art of drama.

To-morrow, at the same hour, we will continue.

• 1. An apology is perhaps due for giving here a new rendering instead of that in the published translation. In cases where translation presents peculiar difficulties, alternative renderings may sometimes be helpful. The student will realise from what is said in the lecture that the advice given in the Translator's Note in regard to German Readings applies here a fortiori.
• 2. Where words are indented in this way in the center of the page, it is to indicate that they were written by the lecturer on the blackboard.
• 3. ‘I sat me down on a stone, put knee over knee and set my elbow thereon. Chin and cheek I nestled in my palm and narrowly I considered in what wise a man should live in this world.’ From Songs and Sayings of Walther von der Vogelweide, Minnesaenger, englished by Frank Betts.
• 4. Dr. Steiner explains elsewhere that when using this line from Schiller's Der Taucher with a therapeutic or educational end in view, he purposely changes ‘siedet’ into ‘woget’.
• 5. See Lectures II and III in Eurhythmy as Visible Speech.

From the foundations of psychology to the vital questions concerning the boundaries of human existence

It is understandable that in this scientific age people want to turn to a scientific psychology, especially with regard to the major riddles of life and the world, the riddles of the soul. However, if one is able to sum up the present situation in scientific psychology it has to be said that it is going through a kind of death, for its traditions come from ancient times and whilst it is meant to be in many ways a science, without bias, people are in fact working with those traditions.

Speaking about the scientific basis of higher insight here the day before yesterday I mentioned the name of a present-day philosopher, Richard Wahle. ¹⁰⁰ He is not very widely known. Yet his views are extraordinarily significant, especially what he says about modern scientific psychology in his books. I would say that the approach used by this philosopher is of symptomatic importance especially for those who are able to think scientifically today. I won’t say that he is someone likely to have much of an influence, nor that he has actually had much influence, but his approach is important from the symptomatic point of view. In many respects it could tell us the way in which we have to think today to be in accord with the demands generally made in science. I am therefore able to say that on the one hand the spiritual science of which we are speaking here can agree with what such a philosopher says with regard to psychology, although on the other hand, as we shall see today, it has to be the absolute opposite of such ideas. This philosopher is well versed in the way of thinking and the attitude to research which people can have now if they are highly educated in today’s scientific way. That is why anyone who tries to approach the life of the psyche with the ideas that are current in science today will of necessity come to realize that the psychology which is generally on offer is dying.

In external terms this is evident from the fact that this philosophical psychology is gradually disappearing again from professorial chairs at universities, whilst at the same time there is a growing desire to put people who think in natural scientific ways, from physiology or another natural science, on the chairs previously held by philosophers. It is hoped by many that the enigmas of the psyche, which earlier on were to be investigated by a specific psychology, may be solved by considering the physiology of the brain, the physiology of nerve structures and the like.

If we really go into all justifiable natural science to be found in psychology, we realize that in the usual psychology people speak of many things that really can no longer be said to be valid ideas today. They speak of forming ideas, of thinking as such, of feeling, of will impulses, memory, attention, and so on. And if we try in all honesty to go into the things this psychology offers in this respect, to meet the needs of the human soul, the vitality the human soul needs, all we have in the end are really just words. And we have to say that if we consider the historical evolution of human cultural life we can say to ourselves—I can only mention it here, for today’s lecture would be too long if I were to give the proof—that in earlier times, when those concepts of thinking, of memory, attention and so on were first created, people had very different ideas about natural phenomena, ideas that would indeed serve to understand the inner life in a way adequate to those earlier times. But things that were established then and have become like spectres that still haunt psychology, turn into mere word shell, mere word, in the light of the scientific thinking which all human beings have today, albeit subconsciously, if they have made any effort at all in culture and academic learning.

Something else also comes into this. For centuries, we may reasonably say, psychology has developed in the academic caste, and within this academic caste has assumed the form we get today in the usual lectures or publications on psychology.

Someone wanting to learn something out of the fullness of life about these most important existential questions which after all culminate in questions as to the divine nature of the cosmic order and as to immortality—someone seeking information concerning these questions in modern psychology will be disappointed. Franz Brentano,¹⁰¹ a serious and profound investigator of the psyche who died here in Zurich last year, made great efforts to gain insight in psychology, but remained caught up in the old ideas about the psyche that have become mere words. He said a very important thing: If we look at modern psychology it will be found that psychologists think they can try and establish insights concerning the development of ideas, concerning feelings and will impulses, and also concerning attention, love and hate; yet if they seek to stick to natural science they will not go beyond this circle. Franz Brentano went on to say that however much one might say about these elementary aspects of the inner life, none of it could replace the great question which Plato and Aristotle put long ago: whether it is possible to discover something about the part of our inner life that remains when the mortal bodies which hold that inner life pass away in death. This is what an acknowledged expert in modern psychology said.

In the science of the spirit which takes its orientation from anthroposophy, the aim is to achieve a renewal of psychology on the basis of what I said here the day before yesterday. The aim is to go beyond mere word shells and investigate the reality of the inner life. The way this is done does, of course, still have to take fully into account today the objections and opposition that may come from conventional psychologists. One must be able to wrestle with everything that exists in the recognized approach to psychology. On the other hand the conditions I have outlined for the renewal of psychology should lead to knowledge of the psyche, a view of the psyche that can now truly feed the souls of striving humanity in a much wider sense and can—to use a commonplace term—be popular in the best and highest sense of the word.

Psychology must be taken out of the academic caste where, to put it metaphorically, it has become guilty of falling into abstractions. These may be brilliant, but they cannot in any way provide psychologists with insights into the boundary issues of human existence which justifiably are of burning interest in the inner life of man.

Human thinking has changed completely compared to earlier times, when the ideas used in psychology which have now become words originated. Because of this, the new psychology must also let go of the starting points people wanted to use in their desire to continue further and further into the realm of the psyche. There must be new starting points. These are such that having come to them we can only base ourselves on premises like those of which I spoke the day before yesterday, and that means remaining true to the way of thinking that has been trained in the natural sciences. We cannot simply ask: What is an idea? We cannot simply want to observe what ideas are, what thinking or will are, or what memory is, and so on. Just as modern natural science in laboratory and clinical practice starts from entirely different premises than the natural science of earlier times, so psychology must relate to the realities of life which, however, must first be distilled out, I would say, from the wholeness of human life.

Initially there are two moments in human life where the newer psychology should come in. From there it can then go back again to concepts of idea, will and so on, so that they in turn will gain full soul value. These two starting points or moments are, however, most difficult to observe, truly no easier to observe than many a process in nature that will only reveal itself when one uses carefully prepared methods and experiments. These moments flit past in human life, and their nature is such, in a way, that it is impossible to take hold of them in conscious awareness. We must first train our minds, as it were, so that we can catch hold of them. They are the moments of going to sleep and waking up.

Going to sleep and waking up are the moments in human life when the whole state of consciousness changes and the human being moves from one state of soul into another that is radically opposite. I need not say much to show that these brief moments are difficult to observe. For when we go to sleep our conscious awareness goes, and we therefore do not observe the moment of going to sleep. When we wake up, we can sense that we are tearing ourselves away from some kind of life in progress; but anyone who tries to pick up experiences he had in sleep with the conscious mind will very soon and very easily discover that he fails in this.

Here we can only train soul observation, using the means I briefly referred to the day before yesterday and about which I am now going to say more, to observe the moments of going to sleep and waking up. This training must involve a degree of strengthening, greater power given first of all to the life of ideas itself, and then also to the life of will. But the inner processes, subtle processes in the psyche, that will give such strength and power to the life of will, do differ quite considerably from anything we are used to in our everyday inner life.

The other day I called the process which strengthens the life of ideas meditation. If you use methods given in my Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and also in my Occult Science and other books to let ideas and conscious awareness be present in the mind, thinking not just in the usual sense but resting on your thinking, doing so more and more, you let your thinking enter into the soul and your soul into your thinking in a completely different way than you usually do. You then strengthen the life of ideas to such effect—as I said, details of the methods are given in my books—that you can form ideas in a way that is as lively and active as you normally know only when your mind is involved with sensory perceptions of the outside world.

Goethe had an inkling, even if initially it was only an inkling, of this way of forming ideas—having taken up something Johann Christian Heinroth¹⁰² had said, for Goethe considered his own thinking too be too object-bound. He was able to say that he believed he was gradually able to think in such a living way that the inner strength and inner intensity of this thinking was equivalent to the mental activity which otherwise only exists when we consider the natural world outside us with our eyes, use our ears to follow events in the natural world, and so on.

It is possible to strengthen the life of ideas so much and be so intensive in this that we may say: This life of ideas itself becomes a form of direct vision; the activity is like that of direct vision; and the life of the senses is taken into the sphere of ideas in such a way that the senses are not involved although the vitality of their life is retained.

This is one aspect—strengthening the life of ideas. As you progress further and further in this a power of observation will indeed develop which is unknown in our ordinary state of mind. We need this if we are to investigate the moment of going to sleep and that of waking up in the way in which we investigate objects and events in everyday life using the methods of natural science.

It will also be necessary to train the will in a certain way. This can only be done by self control as we pay attention to something in life that is usually little regarded. In ordinary life we go along, accompanying anything we perceive in the world outside with our inner life experience. Now it is necessary to go beyond this to something else. We must turn our attention to the fact that our inner life is changing, being transformed, developing year by year, month by month and indeed day by day and hour by hour. We do not normally bring this development process in the life of the psyche into the sphere of the will. We let it flow on. With a little bit of self education we do take care to get rid of habitual faults and acquire certain virtues, abilities and so on. Something very different will have to come into our life, however, if we are to gain the self control of the will of which I am speaking. People must be able to gain the inner insight that there is something in them which they can bring into the will, I might say, bringing it into the will in such a way that self cultivation, self control will look very difficult to them, yet at the same time also appear as desirable as only the acts of will relating to wholly inevitable drives in human life normally are.

Let us look at this from another point of view. There are today particularly many people who consider themselves capable—well, maybe I am putting this in somewhat radical terms, but you’ll find such a radical view justifiable if you think more deeply about our present time—of reforming the whole world. They have ideas, as it were, as to what should happen so that people could live together happily, the social order in life was right, and so on. An enormous number of programmes exist in this area. In reality more or less everyone is a kind of reformer in his mind as soon as he begins to think about the outside world; it is just that the world does not give them the opportunity to bring their reforms or perhaps also their revolutionary ideas to realization.

Here indeed the will impulse, the desire extends to the world outside. We must know, however, that there is something in the human being to which intentions and impulses may be directed just as well that will take the individual from one period of life to another, and indeed just from one week to the other. We must know that in no way do things get going on their own in the human being, the way he mostly wills it, but that human beings are able to use their will to follow their development in time. And when the will comes in with such method in that area, the way I have described it in the books I have mentioned, you get that inner strength, the inner vision, a direct vision of the will element which we will never gain in our relationship to the outside world. You get the direct vision of the will which has to be added to the strengthening in the life of ideas I have just mentioned if you are to be able to observe the moments of going to sleep and waking up.

However, before you come to investigate those moments of going to sleep and waking up, having strengthened your inner life, you come to realize that the concepts humanity has today, and these cannot be the concepts of the old way of looking at nature, will only give you a view of the life of ideas that leads human beings to non-reality, their feeling life into confusion and their life of will to incomprehensibility.

Essentially what we have to say has also been said by the philosopher I mentioned when he spoke of philosophy having come to an end, of philosophy dissolving, handing over to physiology, and the like. He already had a feeling, though it was not entirely clear, about the concepts we are able to have today, concepts that are infinitely useful in the study of the natural world around us and for introducing to human life what is really the most essential content of a new civilization. He felt that these concepts, useful as they are when applied to outside things, do not answer the question, when we want to study the soul: What are the ideas we have of things? But it is because of them that in the life of ideas we can directly come to the ‘I think, therefore I am not,’¹⁰³ and discover the non-reality of the inner life.

We come to realize that the more we enter into the life of ideas, the less are we able to say what the soul is if we consider the life of ideas merely the way it is in ordinary life and not in the way of which I have been speaking. We come to realize that the life of feelings we know in the ordinary life of the psyche is confused, and that the life of the will is wholly incomprehensible. Hence the interesting phenomenon that it is exactly people who think in the natural scientific way as they write works on psychology that are highly significant today believe they are able to say something about the life of ideas when they are in fact considering the physiology of the brain. They then reach a point, however, where they say to themselves that the physiology of the brain does not determine anything. Read the relevant chapters in Theodor Ziehen’s book on physiological psychology¹⁰⁴ and you’ll find that what I have been saying is true for a renowned natural philosopher of our time.

We have to say, therefore, that this natural scientific way of thinking more or less shows what Schopenhauer also did not perceive, or only half perceived, though he had an inkling of it. This is that the will is something we cannot reach with the ideas of recent times, and that it is something incomprehensible.

It is a good preparation for the newer kind of psychology if we understand this non-reality of the soul in the life of ideas, this confusion in our life of feeling, this incomprehensibility of acts of will. Having gained clarity in this way—paradoxical though this may sound, but we have after all gained clarity about one thing—we can penetrate further. We can then use the thinking which has been made more acute, stronger, through meditation, and the life of the will that has subjected itself to self control to pay real attention to the moment, let us say, first of all of waking up. The moment of waking up can then enter into the field of observation in the soul in a quite specific way. We will experience something when considering the waking-up process that cannot be experienced in an untrained inner life. If we have gained the necessary calm by training in the way I have mentioned, we will be able to establish immediately after waking up that the whole of the inner life which was there in the unconscious on waking up has gone away. Only it does not have one quality, this life which the soul has in the time from going to sleep to waking up—it does not evoke memory of itself. You realize this when a significant moment arises: All the time you were asleep you let the soul flow in the same life in which is also flows when you are awake; but this flow of the soul in sleep does not become imprinted into your power of memory. It is therefore forgotten as you wake up. This is the essential point.

Memory is important in everyday life—as I said the day before yesterday. Forgetting is equally important, with the soul’s experience such that it can also forget what it has lived through. It is important for the development of the soul principle, for its continued flow between birth and death, and so on. Indeed, it is only if we are able to observe the moment of waking-up in this way that we get an idea of the significance which sleep really has in the life of the human soul. We come to realize that our life could not continue if it were wholly filled with things that become memories and that the memory principle loses its power to let our life flow on. We need to fall asleep in order that we may forget what we live through in the time when we are asleep. Our ordinary, everyday inner life will feed the soul and give it life if it is forgotten, not if it is remembered. Remembering things depletes the soul. Forgetting restores the vital energies of the soul.

This is how you get a definite insight into the vital process which is reflected in our waking up. And with this you perceive the inner life, though it really takes the form of a review in reverse. But now the ordinary conscious awareness was there between going to sleep and waking up is not poured out over it. You gain tremendously much in thus being able to perceive the inner life of the soul, for it will give you the basis for a level of understanding.

No one can truly grasp what it means to say: I form an idea, and what it means to say: I develop a thought in my soul, unless he is actually able to observe the moment of waking. For when we progress from merely being awake, merely living our life in the waking state, to active thinking, to developing an idea of a thought, this is qualitatively, though to a lesser degree, exactly the same inner process as waking up. You need to strengthen the transition from the sleeping to the waking state in order to know the waking up, and you have then created a basis for yourself for the principle that will answer the question: What actually happens in my psyche when I form an idea? The power we develop in the soul when we form an idea is the same as the power we must develop, though much more powerfully so, when we wake up. When we wake up, it is the unconscious mind which does it. And what the unconscious does as we wake up comes to conscious awareness if we make the inner effort that lets us think and form ideas in conscious awareness and with a will.

Here we get a quite specific view concerning the way in which ideas are formed. The mere shells of words that have come from an earlier psychology are given real content again. We realize that forming ideas is a weaker form of waking up that comes whilst we are in the waking state. This is an important insight. If we connect this insight into the nature of ideation with the nature of the waking-up process, it becomes possible to make the ideation in our everyday life, which otherwise really takes us into the non-reality of inner life, into something that is real. By connecting ideation with waking up, it becomes possible to relate to a factual element that does not depend on us.

Having made the connection with this waking-up process and thus got to know the nature of ideation, let us turn to the moment of going to sleep. Just as meditation is a special help in exploring the moment of waking up, so self control over the will is a special help in exploring the moment of going to sleep. Control of the will makes it possible to enter into the process, observing our going to sleep, truly observing how something happens as we enter into sleep that is similar to the forgetting that comes on waking up, becoming aware that memory of the inner life is extinguished during sleep. Otherwise we may always be in dispute, saying that somehow the body is always involved in what the soul experiences in sleep. If we are able to grasp the moment of going to sleep consciously, by controlling the will, we find that we enter into the same inner life which we leave when we wake up, but that we enter into it in such a way that all possibility of perceiving things through the senses comes to an end. We then come to realize what it means to say that on going to sleep we enter into a realm that lies beyond the senses. We come to know this because we find that on thus entering into the other realm we experience something that cannot come to conscious awareness in the kind of conscious awareness we usually have in our inner life. This is bound to the organization, dependent on the organization, between birth and death. We find that we become independent on the organization, something about which illustrious people may be in dispute for ever. The matter needs to be observed; we then find that on going to sleep we enter into the realm that lies beyond the senses.

And we then see the difference which exists between the inner life when we leave it on waking up and the inner life into which we enter on going to sleep. They are the same in so far as they are supersensible by nature; but by means of the observation I have characterized we note an essential difference. An analogy will help you to see this.

The difference is like the way a child differs from an old person. Both are human beings, but they are at different stages of life, different age levels. In the same way both forms of inner life are supersensible by nature—the inner life from which we rise on waking up and the inner life into which we enter on going to sleep. However, the inner life into which we enter on going to sleep is the ‘child’, and the inner life from which we waken is the one which has grown ‘older’. We follow a road from going to sleep to waking up. The inner life changes so that—no analogy is ever perfect—the element into which we enter is similar to the one from which we wake the way a child is similar to a very old person, both being human. This is a subtle difference that has to be noted. It provides something of a basis on which we can come closer to an important element in our investigation of the inner life, and that is the life of feelings.

The life of feelings, a mere collection of words in our customary psychology today, can only be truly understood if we study it on the basis of which I have been speaking, that is after we have come to perceive the supersensible inner life by observing the moments of waking up and going to sleep. There is one other important aspect of going to sleep which we must consider before we come to the life of feelings. We have to ask: What is it, really, that changes in a specific way in the inner life as we go to sleep? What is the effect of leaving the reality perceptible to the senses on going to sleep and entering into supersensible reality? It is the transformation of the will. And the process which is a more powerful one when I go to sleep also happens to a lesser degree when I resolve something in my will. We cannot grasp the will unless we do so on the basis of the going-to-sleep process.

The reality of the will in the depth of our inner life is wholly beyond comprehension in our life of ideas, just like anything that happens during sleep. This is why you do not find anything about the will in natural scientific works on psychology. It cannot be grasped because the life of ideas does not go that far. But if we know the process of going to sleep, we know that our ordinary inner life becomes submerged in an act of will, though to a lesser degree than it does when we go to sleep. Every resolution is a lesser form of going to sleep that happens when we are fully awake.

If we keep apart these two realities—waking up and going to sleep—one of which becomes explicable in relation to the life of ideas, the other with reference to the life of the will, which becomes explicable if we consider the process of going to sleep, we can begin to take a real look at the enigma presented by our life of feeling. A possibility arises of bringing clarity into the confusion which we usually see in the life of feelings. How do we bring clarity into something? By means of perceptive insight. There is nothing else. I could bring detailed epistemological proof, but that would take us too far today. With perceptive insight, clarity is brought into something if there is a clear and real distinction between the one who perceives, the one who is gaining insight, and the object perceived.

This is what makes the life of feelings always confusing for our ordinary life in the psyche. In everyday life we do not need to distinguish between two things unless we wish to gain perceptive insight into the ordinary life of feelings. These are two things of intrinsic value and they are opposite to one another, just as we are opposite to the world we perceive outside through the senses—world perceived through the senses there, human being there. In the same sense two things are opposites in the life of feelings. Which are they?

We can only perceive them, subject and object, if we are able to investigate them on the basis of ideas gained in the way I have been describing. We then come to perceive who it is who actually feels, and we discover what can actually be perceived in the life of feelings. The remarkable fact emerges that the one who feels is always the one—and this does seem a paradox—whom we have not yet lived through. If we feel something now, at this moment, it is the human being in us whom we are only now beginning to live and will continue to live tomorrow, the day after tomorrow, next year, and until we die. When we feel, the subject, which is otherwise unknown, is our life, which is in us from the moment when we have the feeling to our death. And we perceive the life we have lived through from birth to the moment when we feel—a vast prospect in investigation, that the life of feeling lies in this starting point.

You can do a number of things—I would not talk about these things in this way if I had not done these investigations in many different fields; a large number of investigations and challenges lie in this field—you can do a number of things to prove what I have just been saying in a wholly natural-scientific way. You only need to take sensibly written biographies and relate them to the requirement I have just mentioned. Take a sensible biography of Goethe. Consider Goethe in 1790; study him the way he was from 1790 until his death in 1832. Try and get a clear picture of the specific things Goethe went through from 1790 until his death, and consider the way in which it would have been perceptible in Goethe’s life of feelings in 1790. Then consider his life, his inner life, the way the outside world touched him, from his birth in 1749 to 1790. And in getting a clear idea of how the Goethe from 1790 to 1832, who was already there, inwardly perceived during one moment in 1790 what he had lived through earlier—every feeling. Every feeling we have is such that our future essential nature perceives our past essential nature.

You can also do other things. You might try and develop an eye for people whom you saw die, where you had the opportunity to share their life, perhaps for a short time, from a certain point in time until their death. Try and bring this clearly to mind—how they lived then and what their human nature was. And then try and get a clear picture—you’ll always be surprised by the result—for instance of the situation being one where death was approaching, the actual character, of how the essential nature was poured out over the life of feelings.

These are two possible ways. Other things become apparent in a genuinely natural-scientific way, though this comes close to the most profound and inward interests of human nature when you investigate what I have so briefly referred to as the life of feelings. The life of feelings, the essential nature of feeling, will then not be the empty shell of words which we have in ordinary scientific psychology today. If you want to simply inwardly observe feeling in all its confusion, you cannot in fact observe anything. Just as you cannot scientifically observe water unless you separate it into hydrogen and oxygen, so you cannot observe the life of feelings in a scientific way unless you are able to separate it into what the human being was before he had the feeling and in what comes afterwards, unless you know the active principle which lies deep down in there like a seed, just as the seed is active in this year’s plant for the plant that will grow next year.

Studying the life of feelings in this way you will find that your ideas come to be filled with real strength. And you will gain a psychology for the life of feelings which is alive from the very beginning, which we live everywhere, and which we fill with life ourselves. And if we know that anything we feel in a moment does not exist in isolation, then the moments in our inner life will also be connected with the whole process of our development from birth to death. Future and past in our development on earth will then come together in every single feeling, even the least of them. In the same way, though it is best to do so only after investigating the life of feelings, you can, under the conditions I have given, turn to the life of ideas. The results will be even more surprising, the reason being that people will consider them paradoxical because it is something they do not know, neither according to the ideas which arise in the ordinary way in our inner life nor according to the ideas held in modern science.

If you discover that every forming of an idea, of a thought, is a attenuated form of waking up, and if in your inner observation you bring together the active element in the forming of ideas and the waking-up process, then connecting a mental image with waking up, which is a true activity, you enter into a current in your vision that carries you along, showing you that waking up, too, is an attenuated form of something more powerful. This other, more powerful element which you then perceive just as if, having seen the image of a person, you then meet the real person, is the insight that the forming of an idea and every waking up is a recapitulation, attenuated to become an image, of something we may call entering into life on earth through conception and birth.

The thread you have thus spun simply widens out as an inner connection has been made in your perception between waking up and forming an idea. The power gained in this way widens out, so that you do not observe the two in isolation but in their whole context. It widens out because you realize that in forming ideas as such we do not live in reality but have an image. Yet the very insight that we have an image, something that is not real, gives us the strength to come to something that is real, and we find that every time the forming of an idea or waking up is a process of entering into the physical world, a process attenuating reality to image, going through the process of putting on a physical body, of going through conception and birth.

You then realize where something comes from that has occupied the minds of serious investigators for a very long time. If you make the effort to consider what has occupied human minds from the time of Locke, Hume and Bacon, you will find that these investigators were never in a position to form adequate ideas about the way the life of ideas relates to the real world outside which we perceive through the senses. They were unable to find an answer to the question as to how, when we observe the reality outside, using the senses, the idea which is supposed to correspond to that reality enters into the human mind.

If one has the preconditions of which I have spoken, you’ll realize that there is a problem about this question as a question. I might characterize this as follows. Let us assume someone makes the observation that carbon dioxide is exhaled by human beings. If he then assumes that the carbon dioxide comes from the lung and has therefore been produced there, he has the wrong idea. It is equally wrong if a superficial view, which is of course quite natural for our ordinary inner life, leads to the thought that the power to form ideas comes from the body. It certainly does not come from the body!

Whatever may be active there in the body, in the inner life, it is only image attenuated to image on entering into the life of the senses. And the power we have in us when we form ideas is the same power—this is what you will discover—that was active before you ever came in contact with the world perceived through the senses at your conception. It is the power which shines across through time, from the period before birth and indeed conception. This is thinking in us, and not we ourselves in the here and now. This is why scientists were unable to discover how the forming of ideas comes to human beings. Because of this we also find that the forming of ideas is something unreal. From birth, or conception, the forming of ideas has transformed its reality into bodily life. The spiritual, supersensible principle active in us which can only show itself as we wake up and as we go to sleep, when we are not in our bodies, now lives powerfully in the forming of ideas. Gaining insight into the way ideas are formed we are taken to life before birth, to life outside the body. This is done in a wholly scientific way which we have learned to use in modern natural science.

There is no need to malign the more recent science of the spirit with its anthroposophical orientation by saying that it rehashes old ideas taken from Buddhism and the like. It does not do so. Instead, inner strength is gained in the life of the psyche by consistently adhering to the natural scientific way of thinking. However, being thus consistent it takes us beyond what natural science itself can give. When we truly grasp the process of forming ideas, we see it to be image, an attenuated image of what we lived through before we were in a physical body, when we were in the world that lies beyond the physical before we were born or conceived.

From the world of ideas a tangible bridge is created to the ability to grasp the supersensible and immortal human being. The boundary questions in our existence are found if we grasp the elementary phenomena of the inner life in the right way. It is this which truly matters.

We can then also observe the following in more detail. How is it, really, with this pre-birth life that has faded to become ideation? We may ask ourselves: What would happen if what is not real but mere image in ideation were truly to enter into the life of the body, not as image but as reality?

Now we come to something that is highly significant. Taken out of its spiritual scientific context it will of course seem rather odd at first, and I’ll therefore first look at something that is closer to hand. If we make the life of ideas into immediate reality we get something that is particularly common in natural scientific research, except that people doing such work do not see it in its whole cognitive context. For when we do experiments we are not looking at the natural world, we are looking at something the human mind has put together. However, whenever we force nature into our experiment we actually have to kill its living reality. We really have a nature before us that we have killed when we do an experiment; for the experiment is entirely made up according to the non-real methods the human mind uses in forming ideas. If we take this further, of course, it will help us to realize what would actually happen to us if the forming of ideas did not enter into our lives in an attenuated form, remaining merely an image of the pre-birth existence we had before conception, but if it were to be reality, the kind of reality we have in the field we perceive through the senses in life, it would immediately kill us.

That is the situation in life. Something we live through in an image or an idea and which is an echo with image character, if I may put it like this, of our non-physical life before conception, would kill us if it were to become as real as the living human body. It would be a poison in us, penetrating us as we would be penetrated if we were to produce an artificial human being and force him through our blood and through our muscles. We see that in the natural context the non-physical enters into us as a reflection of itself in image form.

We may then move on to consider the will, complementing the thought which is thus stimulated from the one side.

We investigate the will by considering it in connection with going to sleep. We find that when we are awake during the day an attenuated going-to-sleep process is present in every act of will, so that we go down into the non-physical world. When we have established this link between the act of will and the process of going to sleep, we have again gained the power in our investigation to continue the steps we took in observing the psyche with regard to going to sleep. What we had so far gained in taking those steps then widens out, for our observation will extend not only to going to sleep but to death. And we come to perceive what dying means for the human being.

In science, things like these are often taken the easy way today. Concepts like death or dying are more or less treated in a way that would be like saying: A knife is a knife. And they give you a razor to cut up your meat. A knife may be a cutting tool, but a razor has to be used and handled differently from a table knife.

Death is today seen as something people want to investigate as such. The approach used in the science of the spirit is less easygoing, for here one aims for reality and does not seek to shape reality according to preconceived concepts and ideas. Here one must ask specifically: What is death in the plant world? What is death in the animal world? What is death in the human world? For death does not equal death, just as knife does not equal knife. People like to denigrate the science of the spirit by saying that its concepts are confused, dark and nebulous. Its distinguishing characteristic is, however, that one always seeks to enter into the most open fairway, and this science demands clarity, succinctness and unbiased observation as preconditions for human ideas. People who say that in the science of the spirit one works with confused ideas are merely bringing their own confused ideas into the science of the spirit.

Once the bridge has been built between the act of will and the process of going to sleep, looking at sensory perception takes you forward across this bridge to see what death is in the human being. You then find that the powers that take the human being out of the world perceived through the senses at the moment of death also take effect in the human act of will, though not in the fully developed but rather in a more embryonic form. Every time we will something, making our intentions come true in actions, we configure something that relates to dying the way the child relates to the old man in terms of being human.

This also builds a bridge between the principle which in form of elementary soul phenomena dies in the will in our everyday conscious awareness, with this will an attenuated dying process just as forming ideas is an attenuated process of getting born and being conceived through the soul. It is merely that forming ideas has image quality, whilst will intent is embryonic. Will intent is a reality; it is not image but reality. But it is an act that is not as yet completed. If it were to be complete, if the act of will were to be fully grown, it would always be a process of dying. What makes the will into will is that whatever evolves in will intent remains embryonic and does not enter into existence in reality. For if it were to develop further from the embryonic state of will intent and gain full strength, it would always be a dying process. In our will intent we are potentially dying all the time. We bear the powers of death in us. And for someone able to penetrate the soul as an investigator, every act of will is an attenuated dying process that has remained embryonic.

In the genuine observation of the psyche which has developed more recently, an elementary act of soul thus also makes the connection with the great boundary riddles of human existence. We then come to perceive not only the triad of being born, waking up and developing a thought but also the triad of will intent, going to sleep and dying. We can actually gain our orientation from the going-to-sleep process by investigating this process, where we enter into the sphere beyond the senses, withdrawing from the senses; here we have the process of dying in embryo. And we perceive dying to be a transition from the world perceived through the senses to the world that is beyond the senses. Will intent can only be perceived in its embryonic state because we have previously realized that on going to sleep it is the young life of the soul which the soul perceives. Otherwise we would never be able to bring the embryonic nature of will intent before the inner eye in any way whatsoever.

You see that thinking, feeling and will intent are understood on the basis of facts. By becoming facts in the anthroposophically orientated psychology that must evolve, they take us at the same time to the great boundary issues of human soul life. No one is fantasizing about some kind of immortality but an investigation is made into the nature of ideation. This will in one respect take us to immortality, to life before birth. The will is investigated. It takes us to immortality after birth. And when these are taken together we come to immortality as a whole, the eternal quality of human nature which has its roots in the world beyond that perceived by the senses.

Through meditative life—I can refer to it only briefly—we thus come to perceive more and more how unreal the ordinary I is, for it has wholly and entirely given over its existence to the body. And in pursuing this non-reality in a way similar to the way in which we have pursued the other elements that come into the inner life, we also gain insight into repeated lives on earth, an aspect which seems so incomprehensible to people today—the repeated lives on earth through which the human being goes, with lives in the world of the spirit coming in between.

This general outline which, as I said, does still sound strange today, need not necessarily be taken to be the logical conclusion. For someone who takes the route of genuine study of the psyche which has been characterized today, the insights that take him through the forming of ideas and through the will and bring the non-physical to such immediate, factual reality out of the moments of going to sleep and waking up, lead to the realization that we go through repeated lives on earth.

Having shown you how the connection can be made from a psychology that once again is concerned with realities to the great boundary issues of human existence, I still have to point out to you that the state of soul on which this is based and which must enter into scientific research again if we are to have a true psychology, must indeed evoke a quite specific constitution of the inner life for specific elements or moments in doing research, but not for the whole of everyday life. For to gain true insight in the way I have been describing today we must be able to attach special significance in life to our waking up and going to sleep. It means we should not merely live the inner life as something that happens by the way, which is how we live through it in the ordinary way. We must strengthen our thinking in the way I have described and gain self control in the will so that we live the inner life to a higher degree than we live our ordinary lives. The precondition for this investigation of the soul is a state of soul which is little known in everyday life. It will be easiest for me to characterize it in the following way.

If you are really active in ordinary life and not a lazy person, you will after a certain number of hours during which you have been awake feel the need to sleep, to be at rest and sleep. Just as you live through this physical existence in your ordinary waking life, so you need to be able to live in such a natural, matter-of-course way through the inner life as an investigator of the psyche, an inner life that comes with strengthened thinking and self control in the will.

Then it must also be possible for certain phenomena to occur. For example the kind of thinking which we are accustomed to in ordinary life can really go on and on without hindrance. Sometimes it might really give one the horrors, especially when one hears people gossiping over their tea cups or other things, to think of the ways in which people can go on thinking all the time, accompanying external life with their thoughts. This is something you cannot do with the inner life that takes you into the soul’s reality in the way I have described. When an investigator of the psyche works the way he is meant to do in anthroposophy, so that he will truly obtain the kind of results I have spoken of today, he will very soon feel—in the way he is working, for example, with regard to anything he seeks to elicit from the element or moment of going to sleep and waking up, so that he may then develop it further with greater acuity of thinking and to support the will—he will very soon feel, with as much necessity as we otherwise feel when we have done hard physical work with our muscles, hands and arms, that he cannot go on working. That is the inner feeling one gets after doing investigations in the way I meant today for just a short time. You can’t go on, you need to relax. And you find this relaxation in everyday life. Care is thus taken to see that the true psychologist does not turn into a dreamer or solitary visionary, an eccentric. If he investigates the soul in the right way, which I have described, he will speak of getting tired in the soul just as the physical body grows tired if we labour long and hard in the ordinary sense. And just as you need rest and sleep for this, so you need here to change to everyday life, the absolutely cheerful, hard-working and quite ordinary everyday life. We need this in a healthy way, not in the way of an eccentric. The investigator of soul and spirit needs this as much as we need sleep in ordinary life.

Someone who does not dream up all kinds of fantastic and unreal things about the life of the psyche but enters into the true nature of it in the kind of serious way I have described, with simple phenomena taking us to the most sublime questions of immortality and indeed to accepting the truth of immortality, will never be someone who is useless in ordinary life. Entering into the world beyond that perceived through the senses demands that he stands firmly, robustly in waking life, taking it fully and soundly, just as sound waking life calls for a change in the form of sleep. This is the one thing, There are other things as well, which I must leave aside today. But I wanted to speak of these difficulties to show the kind of inner condition one has to develop if one wants to be a true psychologist in the newer, anthroposophical sense.

I would have liked to have seen a possibility to speak directly about natural science, social science, about religion and history, which would complement this quite appropriately. But it is not to be, though there is a suggestion that further lectures may follow.

You will have seen—this is what I'd like to say in conclusion—that with psychology, too, even if it is based on anthroposophy, it truly is not a matter of somehow just talking and talking, using confused ideas, but that even where we consider the question of immortality, it must be a matter of proceeding in a serious and properly trained way in the psychology that takes its orientation from anthroposophy. However, it will be possible for this serious, specially trained approach—where we still have to struggle today to come to terms with ordinary psychology and therefore use the kind of expressions I have been using today—gradually to take us closer and closer to the popular way of thinking. For this psychology will take matters of the soul out of the scholar’s study. It will be possible to offer the results of its investigations to every human heart and every human soul. We’ll not face the danger of really only counting on abstract, prepared questions such as What is the forming of ideas? What is will, memory, attentiveness? What is love and hate? Instead it will build a bridge from the ordinary everyday phenomena of forming ideas, feeling and doing things out of the will to life before birth and after death, to the life that exists beyond sensory perception, if I may put it like this, and human immortality.

Such a psychology will be able to meet the hopes—as the psychiatrist Brentano¹⁰⁵ called them, though he himself did not find them fulfilled—the hopes of Plato and Aristotle that psychology will help us to know something about the best part of our essential nature, something which remains when the mortal earthly body decays. Brentano, a great mind, attempted to develop such a psychology on the basis of scientific thinking. He did not want to move on to genuine investigation in the fields that go beyond sensory perception. Since he was however honest enough to go only as far as he was able to go, this led to the remarkable result that this scientist wrote the first volume of his psychology in 1873, promising his publisher—the first volume appeared in the spring—that the second would follow in the autumn, and then the third and the fourth. Those further volumes never appeared. To anyone who knows Brentano’s story—I described it in my obituary, which is the third chapter in my book Von Seelenrätseln—this was not only for external reasons but the fact that Brentano felt a need to approach phenomena of the psyche with concepts that were not the traditional ones. Yet for the reasons I discussed the day before yesterday, which still live in the subconscious of people today, he shrank back from making the transition to investigative work in the sphere beyond anything perceived by the senses. When this transition can be made, we shall have a psychology that will interest not only academics but can be grasped by the whole of humanity. It can be the basis for a truly healthy human life, for it will not stop at things that can only be made interesting in artificial ways in a scholar’s study but will pour forth on everything that wells up in every healthy human heart, the soul of every healthy human being as a need to gain insight in the spirit. The psychology of which I am speaking, a psychology that goes into spheres beyond those perceived by the senses will be a popular psychology for everyone as the basis for a healthy religious life.

Anyone who knows psychology and its present situation will be able to say to himself—and I would like to conclude with this as something that throws a light, as it were, on our time and into the future—anyone who knows what can be gained with supersensible investigation in psychology will say that a psychology—and perhaps today’s attempt to characterize it has been very inadequate as yet—a psychology that truly takes us to the question of the soul’s immortality, to the most sublime phenomena of the soul, must be the psychology for the future. For as we have seen exactly from our look at psychology as it is current today, either it will have no future at all, as philosophers like Richard Wahle say, who are perfectly right about this, or this future will be the way it will have to be if it arises from the anthroposophical view of the world.

Questions and answers

Following the lecture given in Zurich on 10 October 1918

Question. How do feelings relate to bodily life, seen from the spiritual scientific point of view?

This is the very question, and it is a most interesting one, which I have tried to consider in the appendix to my book Von Seelenrätseln. There I also said that in the science of the spirit, such questions must have highly significant preconditions. You can only talk in the right way about such issues—spiritual science is strongly connected with our personal life—by speaking of your own investigations. I may say that I have indeed been working with questions that go in this direction for more than 30 years, and that 1 considered these things from many different points of view before I dared to talk about them in public the way I did after 30 years in that book, just touching on the subject. For questions like this only find an answer if you go back to them again and again in your investigations—questions as to the essence of the whole life of the psyche, as to the way the whole life of the psyche relates to the bodily sphere.

And I found—time is short; permit me therefore to give just a brief indication—that conventional science is altogether not investigating these relationships in an adequate way. The way people usually talk when they want to investigate these relationships is to put the soul on one side and bodily life on the other. But this causes total confusion. You don’t get anywhere at all. You will only get results—you’ll discover this if you carry out a serious investigation—if you place the life of the psyche on one side, that you truly differentiate it into living in one’s thinking, living in one’s feelings, living in one’s will intent. Once you have differentiated the life of the psyche so that you have a proper overview, you can relate it to bodily life. And you will find that every element in this life of the psyche has quite specific relationships to life in the body.

First of all you have to consider the life of forming ideas, of thinking. This relates to life in the nerves if we understand it rightly in a scientific way. The mistake people usually make is to relate the whole life of the psyche to life in the nerves. Of course it is still quite unacceptable today to hear the truth on this subject. It will, however, soon be known. Today, people relate the whole life of the psyche, including feeling and will intent, to life in the nerves. But we should only relate thinking life to life in the nerves.

This will also make it clear that there truly is a real connection—like the real connection between someone standing in front of a mirror and the mirror itself—between thinking and the life of ideas on the one hand and life in the nerves on the other. For someone who seeks the truth and not preconceived notions, it will be apparent that the life of feelings relates to something quite different, compared to the way in which thinking life relates to life in the nerves. The life of feeling demonstrably relates to life in the body in such a way that everything rhythmical in the life of the body corresponds to it—the whole life of rhythms, blood rhythm, respiration, and altogether everything that moves in rhythms. This is a direct connection, not one first mediated by the nerves. It is immediate.

One should not presuppose that confused notions are used in spiritual science. Instead one is working towards much more sustainable ideas than those used in conventional science, where confusion often reigns. We need only to be factual, investigating such real things as an impression gained in music, for instance. The spiritual investigator knows all the objections that may be raised; he raises them himself and does not even need to hear them from people who want to raise them, for he has sufficient practice in raising them himself. People will say that we hear musical notes with our ears, and the experience therefore arises with an impression made on the senses. No. The matter is not as simple as that but rather completely different. The situation is that there is indeed a relationship between the actual musical experience, which we have in our feelings, and everything that is rhythmical in our bodies.

You need only think of a hidden rhythm. Specific movements arise in the diaphragm, for instance, when we breathe in. As a result, the cerebrospinal fluid continually surges up and down in the head. This is a rhythmical inner process that corresponds to an experience of music in the soul. Because this rhythmical element, this rhythmical experience impacts on sensory impression, the experience of music arises in the harmony between the human bodily rhythm and the impression gained through the sense of hearing.

The important point is, however, that an impression on the sense of hearing only becomes the experience of music if it comes up against the inner rhythm in the human soul. A psychological study of the experience of music is enormously interesting. It merely substantiates what I am saying, which is that the life of feeling relates to the life in rhythmic movement inside the human being.

And the life of will—strange though it may also seem—relates to metabolism, metabolism in the widest sense. It appears to be most materialistic of all, although the life of will is actually the most supersensible of all. Energies enter into the life of matter. One day, when natural science sees itself in the right light, scientists will be able to take further—not actually generate, but take further—what I have said with regard to the life of will. They will find—the beginnings are already there—that with every act of will specific poisons arise out of the human organization itself, and that ‘in terms of the physical body’ what happens in the will process is really a toxic process. This will build a bridge between the act of will, which really is death in embryo being a toxic process, a kind of poisoning, and death itself, which is merely an act of will on a larger scale. I have thus shown how these three—will, feeling and thinking—relate to bodily experience. I could only do it briefly, so that I may now move on to the other question which exactly because of this last question is to some degree connected with what I have just been saying.

Question. How does the science of the spirit relate to psychopathology’, that is, to diagnosing mental diseases and so on?

There cannot be real diseases of the mind or soul—I can only say this briefly—and diseases of the psyche are really always in some way diseases of the organism. The organism cannot be used as an instrument in the right way. And just as we cannot perform the necessary function if the instrument is useless, so the organism, in living out the life of the psyche, cannot do so in the right way. This does not lead to materialism but actually to proper insight into the supersensible. One thing is particularly interesting here. It is interesting that insight gained in the science of nature, where we are more and more compelled to do experiments abstracted from nature, does indeed help us to gain the scientific insights that provide the basis for technology. But the more we experiment, I would say, the more do we come to the scientifically established conviction of which Goethe had an inkling when he said that all experimenting done with tools, external tools, really takes us away from the world of nature.¹⁰⁶

Goethe also had the right feeling for the other thing, the opposite. This is most interesting. Whilst experimentation does not tell us anything worthwhile about the natural world at a deeper level but only about the most superficial connections in it, abnormal developments given in nature itself take us into those deeper backgrounds. An experiment pushes us out of those backgrounds, as it were; abnormal developments take us deeper into nature.

Oddly enough, experimentation is singularly unfruitful in the psychology which seeks to base itself on physiology—not in all areas, but certainly in the areas that matter most. Something which is extraordinarily fruitful is observation of brain traumas and of other disorders in the organism which also make the life of the psyche appear abnormal. We are able to say that whilst experimentation separates us from the world of nature, observing the sick organism bring us together with it. Again a paradox, but we should not be afraid of reality, should not be afraid, even unconsciously so, when wanting to enter into the real world. The condition of the brain, also in the case of criminals, for example, takes us deeply into the secrets of nature. This branch of natural science is not fruitless, but it is connected with what the science of the spirit is able to establish—that everything connected with the will—and the will, though an independent entity, influences all else, including our thinking—is in a sense, in a certain respect, connected with the development of toxic states, abnormalities in the human organism.

And if the misfortune should happen and the human organism grow abnormal, then because of the very fact that the supersensible is driven out of the abnormal organism—for it only fits rightly in a normal organism; if the brain is injured, therefore, the supersensible is driven out—then it is because of this that the person, who may otherwise continue to be connected with the supersensible, is unable to gain his orientation, he loses it. Things that are often considered to be pathological in the psyche are therefore due to a physical abnormality.

We are thus able to say that we must really study the will in order to perceive why the study of abnormalities in the brain and so on gives such deep insight into certain conditions of the psyche. Just as we take everything supersensible out of the body on going to sleep and enter into the life of the psyche, but in a healthy way, so does an organism which has become abnormal push the supersensible out when there is pathology. We then enter into that life in a disoriented way, whilst we enter in a healthy way, which helps us to cope with the situation, when we enter into healthy sleep.

• 100. Wahle, Richard (1857–1935) Das Ganze der Philosophie und ihr Ende. Ihre Vermächtnisse an die Theologie, Physiologie, Aesthetik und Staatspädagogik, Vienna and Leipzig 1894. Ueber den Mechanismus des geistigen Lebens, Vienna and Leipzig 1906.
• 101. See note 18.
• 102. Goethe’s essay ‘Bedeutende Foerdemis durch ein einziges geistreiches Wort’ (1823). See note 10. Goethe received Johann Christian Heinroth’s Lehrbuch der Anthropologie (Leipzig 1822) on 29 October 1822. In his Annals for the year he wrote: ‘Heinroth’s anthropology gave me insights into my approach to the study of nature just when I was endeavouring to produce my natural scientific journal.’
• 103. See Rudolf Steiner on the subject in the lecture given on 8 October 1918 (in this volume).
• 104. See note 72.
• 105. Brentano, Franz. Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkt 1. Band. Leipzig 1874.
• 106. Goethe’s actual words were: ‘The human being as such, in so far as he uses his sound senses, is the greatest and most accurate physical apparatus there can be, and it is indeed the greatest evil in modern physics that experiments have been separated off from the human being, as it were, and the aim is to gain insight into nature only from what artificial instruments show, thus limiting it and providing proof.’ Sprüche in Prosa, see note 10.