| 134. The World of the Senses and the World of the Spirit: Lecture V
31 Dec 1911, Hanover Tr. Unknown Rudolf Steiner |
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| It repeats itself again and again in the same way, and that we as human beings, in so far as we have to carry out these activities, have thereby any special worth for eternity—well, I hardly think there is anyone who could even allow himself to dream such a thing. Gland secretion, too, has really fulfilled its task as soon as it has taken place. |
| 134. The World of the Senses and the World of the Spirit: Lecture V
31 Dec 1911, Hanover Tr. Unknown Rudolf Steiner |
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Yesterday's lecture achieved this result, that at the end of all our various complicated considerations we were able to obtain an idea of how we are to picture matter, the thought picture we are to make of matter and substance. We found that we must conceive of matter as broken spiritual forms—pulverised spiritual forms. And as we went on to speak of how we, as human beings, are yoked to material existence, of how the broken and scattered spiritual form has penetrated into us men of earth and filled out our being, we found ourselves inevitably led to give further consideration to this most essential fact of all material existence, a fact that has been beautifully represented as the expulsion from Paradise. We had to consider, that is to say, the process by which man is penetrated with earth matter. You will have formed the idea from what was said yesterday—that is, if you followed what was said not merely with conceptions of thought, but entering a little into its deeper meaning—you will have formed the idea that man is in reality a kind of double being. Let me remind you of what we pointed out the day before yesterday when we showed how it was through the Luciferic influence that what we may call our sense perceptions were inserted into our being, it was through Luciferic influence that we as men of earth received our various sense perceptions. We indicated, you will remember, that these sense perceptions, which belong essentially to earth, were, as a matter of fact, not predetermined for man from the beginning, but instead a kind of intimate living together with the ruling Will; and that the hearing we have to-day with the ear, the seeing with the eye and the perceiving with the other organs of sense, are processes which are directly due to Luciferic influence. Then we were able to go on to show how a more inward process, namely, what appears in our body as the processes of gland secretion, has come about through a further disarrangement in the members of man's organisation, which we described. And, finally, the quite normal organic activity of nourishment and of the digestion of substance in the human body—this we referred back to a kind of preponderance of activity in the astral body over the activity in the etheric body, which preponderance was again due to Luciferic influence. Such was the result of our study the day before yesterday. We saw, that is, how the coarse material processes in man—nourishment and digestion, gland secretion, sense perception—are all, as they occur in man, to be attributed to the influence of Lucifer. Yesterday we found from another aspect that what we call nerve substance is again due to Luciferic influence, and similarly muscle substance and bone substance. Let us consider a little further this double being in man. On the one hand we have seen that sense perception, glandular activity and the whole organic process of metabolism are due to Luciferic influence, and on the other hand that the very presence of nerves and of the human systems of muscle and bone are similarly due to the same Luciferic influence. What kind of relation is there between these two men—on the one hand the man of senses, glands and digestion, and on the other hand the man of nerves, muscle and bone? What cosmic task is set for these two, coupled closely together as they are in the nature of man? Now if you will think it over you will easily—even without any further occultism—come to the idea that all that is connected with the activity of senses and of gland, as well as all that is connected with the metabolic system, belongs to what is transitory and feeting. We need only look at it in a superficial way in order to see that when it has played itself out in man it passes away and is gone. It is something man leaves behind him. Let us make that fact quite clear and present to our minds. There is no lasting and eternal purpose to be fulfilled in the performance of these organic activities. You only need to look round a little and learn from what science and everyday life can teach in order to realise how terribly these processes enclose us in this life. We are in this aspect mere apparatus for nourishment and digestion, etc.; it is like a wheel that goes round and round perpetually in the same way. Unless we are prepared to reckon it as a particular step forward in human nature when man develops, in the course of years, as he has occasion, a refined taste for this or that special food or drink, we shall be obliged to say that we can find extraordinarily little progressive evolution in this perpetual treadmill of eating and digestion. It repeats itself again and again in the same way, and that we as human beings, in so far as we have to carry out these activities, have thereby any special worth for eternity—well, I hardly think there is anyone who could even allow himself to dream such a thing. Gland secretion, too, has really fulfilled its task as soon as it has taken place. It has, of course, its significance for the life of the organism as a whole, but it has no eternal value. Nor has sense perception as such, for sense impression comes and goes. Think how pale and dim, after even a few days, is what you have received in the way of sense impressions, how entirely and radically different memory is from sense perception. You will, I think, be ready to admit that though sense perceptions are often very beautiful and bring delight to the life of man in their immediate experience and observation, they have nevertheless no value for eternity. That is quite certain. For what has become of the value of the sense impressions you received, perhaps as a little child or as an older boy or girl? All the sights and sounds which penetrate then into your eye or your ear—where are they now. How pale are our memories! When you contemplate this thought—that man, in so far as he is a man of senses, of glands and of digestion, has by virtue of these activities no worth for eternity—then you will easily be able to unite it with the thought we expressed yesterday in a general way and that we can, unfortunately, only indicate very slightly in this short course of lectures—the thought, namely, of scattering form, of form that is breaking and scattering and dispersing. When form sprays into these activities, when shattered form, that is to say matter, is driven into the organism it brings about sense activity, gland secretion and metabolic activity. Hence it is evident that in these activities we have to do with breaking form, with a form that breaks to pieces. It is nothing more than special manifestations of the destruction process in form that meets us in sense activity, gland secretion and the activity of digestion. They are particular processes of what we can describe in general as the destruction process in form, or as the shooting of form into matter. When, however, we come to nerve activity, muscle activity and the strength and effective virtue of the bones in man, the case is altogether different. We were able to show yesterday that in the bony system we have Imagination that has become material, in the muscular system Inspiration that has become material and manifests in movement, and in the nervous system materialised Intuition. And now we have reached a point where we can go on from this and give a fuller description of a truth that can only be partially described in more general anthroposophical lectures. When man passes through the gate of death, gradually little by little through decay or combustion or however it may be, his bony system falls to pieces. But what remains when the bony system crumbles away in the material sense is the Imagination. The Imagination is not lost. It remains in those substances which we still have in us even when we have passed through the gate of death and enter Kamaloka or Devachan. We retain in us a picture form which the thoroughly experienced clairvoyant does not indeed find to be quite like the bony system of man; but when a less trained clairvoyant lets it work upon him he finds an outward similarity in the form to the bony system; and on this account is death, not without some justification, represented in the Imagination of the skeleton. The picture goes back to an untrained, but for all that, a not altogether mistaken clairvoyance. And combined with this Imagination is what remains from the muscles, when they decay in the physical sense. From the muscles remains the Inspiration, of which they are in reality only the expression; for the muscles are Inspirations steeped, soaked in matter. The Inspiration remains for us when we have passed through the gate of death. That is a most interesting fact. And so to from the system of nerves, when the nerves themselves have undergone their process of decay, we have left after death the Intuition. All these are actual constituent parts of our astral as well as our etheric body. You know that man does not lay aside his etheric body completely; an extract from the etheric body we take with us when we have passed through the gate of death. But this is not all. There is something else we have now to discover. Man carries his system of nerves continually through the world, and this system of nerves is nothing else than Intuition interspersed with matter. As man bears this system of nerves through the world it is really so that in the places where the nerves are situated in the human organism there is always Intuition, and this Intuition rays out a spirituality which man has perpetually around him like kind radiating aura. It is thus not only a question of what we take with us when we go through the gate of death; but we have also to consider the Intuition which we are sending out from us all the time, in proportion as the nerves decay. A process of decay is going on in you all the time, you need to be continually formed anew—even although in the case of the nerves there is a greater measure of durability that elsewhere. A constant steaming out takes place which can only be perceived by means of Intuition. So that we may say spiritual substance—a substance that is perceptible to Intuition—is perpetually raying out from man in proportion as his physical nerve system goes to pieces. So that you will see from this, inasmuch as man makes use of his physical system of nerves, inasmuch as he uses it up and brings it to destruction, he is not without significance for the world. He has, in fact, great significance. For it depends on the use man makes of his nerves, what kind of intuitively perceived substances stream Inspiration. And this outstreaming takes place in such a way that it is continually peopling the world with infinitely finely differentiated processes of movement. Inspired substances stream out from man into the world. (The words are not very happy but we have no others.) And from man's bones there streams out what we may call Imaginatively perceived substance. There you have the most extraordinarily interesting fact. Let me enlarge on it a little, not in order to overfeed you with results of clairvoyant research, but because it is really interesting. Through this radiating from the bones as they decay man literally leaves behind him, everywhere he goes, pictures; that is to say, spirit pictures perceptible by means of Imagination. Fine shadow pictures of us remain behind wherever we have been. After you have gone out of this hall a finer and well-trained clairvoyance could still perceive on the chairs fine shadow pictures. They would be perceptible for a time until they were received into the general world process—delicate shadow pictures of each individual which have been rayed out from his bony system. These Imaginations are the cause of that unpleasant feeling one has sometimes when one comes into a room that has been lived in before by an uncongenial person. The feeling is due, in the main, to the Imaginations he has left behind. One still meets him there in a kind of shadow picture. And in this connection a sensitive person is not far behind the clairvoyant, for he has an uncomfortable feeling about what another person has left behind him in a room. The clairvoyant has only this advantage, that he can make visible to himself in an Imaginative picture what the other only feels more instinctively. But now what happens to all that we let radiate out of us in this way? All that rays forth from us in this way, my dear friends—take it altogether and you have, in very deed and truth, the whole influence that is exerted by us on the world. For whatever you do, when you do it, you move, you bring your system of bones and muscles into movement. Not only so, but even when you only lie and think you are still raying forth from you substance that is perceptible to Intuition. In short, whatever activity you engage in you are sending out this spiritual substance into the world, it is perpetually passing over from you into the world. Now the fact is, if these processes were not taking place there would be nothing left of our earth when it came to the end of its evolution, nothing left of it but pulverised matter which would pass over like dust into universal space. But something is saved through man from the material process of the earth and lives in the general cosmos, in the universe; and it is what can arise through Inspiration, Intuition and Imagination. In this way man gives to the world that wherefrom the world builds itself up anew. Man, as it were, provides the building-stones. This it is that will continue to live as the soul and spirit of the whole earth when this earth's material substance is rent and shattered like a corpse; even as the individual soul and spirit nature of man lives on when man has passed through the gate of death. Man bears his individual soul through the gate of death; the earth bears over into the Jupiter-existence what has come of the Imaginations and Inspirations and Intuitions of man. There you have the great difference that exists between the two men in man. The man who perceives with his senses, who secretes in his glands, who digests and who nourishes himself—that is the man who is destined for what is cast off, he is of time and passes away. But that which is the result of the presence of nerves and muscle and bone—that is incorporated into the earth, in order that the earth may thereby continue to exist. And now we come to something which stands like a great mystery in our whole existence, and which, because it is in very truth a mystery, cannot be grasped by the intellect; rather is it for the soul to believe it and penetrate to its depths. It is, none the less, perfectly true. That which man lets stream out from him into his environment divides itself quite distinctly into two parts. There is, firstly, that part of the Inspiration, Intuition and Imagination upon which general cosmic existence, so to say, depends, the cosmos receives it, and drinks it in. But there is another part which cosmic existence does not receive but, on the contrary, rejects. Cosmic existence makes its attitude quite clear, as much as to say: “These Inspirations and Intuitions and Imaginations I can use, I absorb them in order that I may carry them over to the Jupiter existence.” But others cosmic existence rejects, it refuses to receive them; and the result is these other Intuitions, Inspirations and Imaginations, being nowhere received, remain as such for themselves; they remain—spiritually—in the cosmos, they cannot be disintegrated. Thus, what we ray forth from us falls into two parts, that which is gladly received by the cosmos and that which the cosmos rejects. The cosmos is not pleased with the latter and leaves it alone. It remains where it is. How long does it remain? It remains there until such time as the human being comes and himself destroys it by means of outstreamings, which are of a kind able to destroy it; and as a general rule no other man has the power to destroy outstreamings that are rejected by the cosmos than the one who himself sent them out. Here you have something of the technique of karma, here you have the reason why we must ourselves meet again in the course of our karma all those Imaginations, Inspirations and Intuitions which have been rejected by the cosmos. For we must ourselves destroy them and annihilate them; the cosmos receives only what is correct and right in thought, what is beautiful in feeling and what is morally good and sound. Everything else it rejects. That is the secret, that is the great mystery. And whatever is false in thought, whatever is ugly in feeling and whatever is morally evil—a man must himself erase from existence if it is to be no longer there; and he must do so through the necessary thoughts and feelings or will impulses or deeds. It will follow him all the time until he has erased it. And so you see it is not true to say that the cosmos consists only of neutral laws of nature or expresses itself only in neutral laws of nature. The cosmos that is all around us—of which we believe we can perceive with our senses and grasp with our intellect, has quite other forces in it as well. If we may put it in this way, the cosmos vigorously repels and repudiates the evil, the ugly and the false and is eager to receive into itself the good, the beautiful and the true. It is not merely at stated times that the powers of the cosmos sit in judgment, but this sitting in judgment is something that goes on throughout the whole of earth evolution. And now we can find an answer to the question: How does the evolution of man stand in relation to the higher spiritual Beings? We have seen how on the one hand the man of senses, glands and digestion has come into being through Luciferic influence. And the other man, too, we can in a sense attribute to Luciferic influence. But whereas the first man is a man doomed to destruction, destined solely for time, it is the part of the other man to save human nature for eternity, for duration, to carry over something human into a future existence. The man of nerves and muscle and bone has the task of carrying over what man experiences on earth. And so you see in reality man fell down from his spiritual height when he became the first man—the man of senses, glands and digestion—and is gradually working his way up into spiritual existence through having received as a counterpoise the second man—the man of nerve, muscle and bone. But now the strange thing is that this excretion of Intuitive, Inspirational and Imaginative substance could not take place in any other way than through the material processes, being processes of destruction. If our nerves and muscles and bones were not perpetually decaying, if instead they were to remain as they are, then we should not be able to send out from us this spiritual substance. For it is only the destruction and decay in material existence that can give occasion for the spiritual to light up and burst into flame. And thus if our nerves and muscles and bones could not decay and finally be destroyed in death, then we should be condemned to be chained to this existence on the earth and not be able to partake in the further evolution that goes on into the future. The present would become hardened into stone for us, and there would be for us no evolution on into the future. Like two balancing forces—each holding the other in equipoise—are the forces that play in the one and in the other man within us. And now, in between the two, as it were mediating between the two, we find a substance of which we have frequently spoken in our more general lectures but to which we have as yet made little allusion in this connection. Between the two stands the blood—which is in this connection also a “special fluid.” For as we have seen, all that we have learnt to know as nerve substance, etc., has only become so in those particular workings of force which were due to the action of the Luciferic influence. But in blood we have something which has directly undergone, as substance itself, the Luciferic influence. You will remember we saw how the manner in which physical body, etheric body and astral body work into one another would be different, had it not been for the Luciferic influence. But there we have to do in a certain respect with super-sensible things which only afterwards take up matter into themselves; which work upon matter with the Luciferic influence they had themselves first undergone, and make it what it is. The substance of nerve and muscle and bone owes its existence to the fact that certain bodies of man are irregularly put together. Upon the substances as such Lucifer has no influence; for these substances arise as the result of what he has done, they are there because he has displaced, disarranged, the bodies. Where Lucifer approached the human being he brought about a disarrangement as between the bodies. But upon the blood Lucifer works directly—upon the blood as matter, as substance. Blood is the one case—and therefore a “special fluid”—where in the material substance itself we have evidence that present-day man is not as he was really intended to be, is not as he would have been but for the Luciferic influence. For blood has become something quite different from what it should have been. Again, you will say, a rather grotesque idea! But it is true. Recall what we said yesterday about the whole origin of matter. We said that matter arises when spiritual form comes to a kind of boundary or limit and there breaks and scatters; this pulverised form then shows itself as matter. That is the actual earthly matter. It really only occurs directly in this way in the mineral world, for the other substances are changed and modified through being taken hold of by other things that intervene. The substance of blood, however, as such, is a unique substance.   Blood substance was originally also destined to come first of all to a certain limit. Suppose you have here (a) purely spiritual form-rays of the blood substance, and here (b) its force is exhausted. Now according to the tendencies originally inherent in it, blood substance was not meant to be dispersed and sprayed into space, but here at the boundary (b) it was to become just very slightly material and then spray back into itself, spray directly back again into the spiritual. That is how the blood ought to have been. To put it rather crudely, blood ought only to have come so far as to form as it were a skin of substance, fine and slight, it ought only to have come to the point of beginning to be material. It should be forever shooting out of the spiritual for a moment, becoming matter just to the extent of being materially perceptible, then again shooting back into the spiritual and being received up again into it. A perpetual surging forth from the spiritual and shooting back into it again—that is what blood should have been. Its inherent tendencies are directed to this end. Blood was designed to be a perpetual flashing up of light in the material. It was really intended to be something entirely spiritual. And it would have been so if men had at the beginning of earth evolution received their ego from the Spirits of Form alone; for then they would experience their ego through the resistance created by the momentary lighting up in the blood. In the lighting up in the blood man would experience the “I am”; it would be the organ for his ego perception. That would, however, be the one and only sense perception which man would have had at all; the others would not be there if everything had happened without the Luciferic influence. Man would have lived in union together with the ruling Will. The single sense perception that was designed for man was this—in the flash of blood substance and in the immediate rush back into the spiritual, to perceive his ego. Instead of beholding colours and hearing tones and perceiving tastes man ought really to live within the ruling Will; he ought to be, as it were, swimming in it. What was designed for him was that from out of the spiritual World-All, into which he would be placed as a pure Imagination, Inspiration and Intuition, he should gaze down upon a being on the earth or in the environs of the earth—not feeling to himself: “I am in that being,” but: “I gaze down there—it belongs to me—the spiritual blood becomes for one moment material, and in what flashes up to me I perceive my I.” The one and only sense perception which should have come is the perception of the I or ego, and the one and only substance which was intended for man in the material world is the blood in this form of momentary flashing up. So that if man had become like this, if he had remained the man of Paradise, he would look down from the World-All upon that which was destined to symbolise him on this earth and to give him the consciousness of I, namely, a purely spiritual being consisting of Imaginations, Inspirations and Intuitions, within which the I shoots up in the attempt to break through. And in this flash man would be able to say: “I am, for through me has come into being that which is of me down below.”  It is strange but it is a fact. Man was intended to live in the environment of the earth. Suppose a man were living here (a) in the environment of the earth, then it was intended he should him-self produce on the earth his reflection, and only through this reaction ray back again his ego, and then he would say: “There below is my sign.” It was not intended that man should carry round about with him his man of bones and his man of glands, etc.—still less that he should pronounce the grotesque verdict: “That is I.” It should have happened quite differently. Man should have lived in the environs of the earth planet, and sunk a sign and symbol into the earth in the flashing up of form in blood, and he should then have said to himself: “There I drive in my stake—my sign and my seal, which gives me the consciousness of my ego. For what I have become, in that I have passed through Saturn existence and through Sun and through Moon existence—with that I can hover here outside in the World-All. It is the ego I must now add; and the ego I perceive by inscribing myself in the earth below, so that I can always read in the flashing of the blood what I am.” We were, therefore, not originally intended to walk the earth in bodies of flesh and bone as we do, but to circle around the earth and make records, as it were, down below from which we might recognise and know that we are that—that we are an ego. Whoever overlooks this fact has no true knowledge of the nature of man. Then came Lucifer and brought it about for man that he should have not merely his ego for sense perception, but that he should feel his astral body, too, as his ego, all that he had acquired on the Moon as astral body—thinking, feeling and willing. The ego was thus no longer pure, something else was mixed with it; and this led to the necessity for man to fall down into matter. The expulsion from Paradise is the fall into matter. And immediately there followed the change in man's blood. For now instead of flashing up for a moment and then being received back again into spirituality, the blood becomes real blood substance; it drives right through and spurts up as blood substance. It receives the tendency to be as we know it to-day. And so this blood substance, which by rights should return into the spiritual in the very moment when it becomes material, now gushes up into the rest of man and fills his whole organisation, undergoing modification in accordance with the various forces in man. According, for example, as it penetrates into a preponderance of physical over etheric body or of etheric body over astral body, and so on, the blood turns into nerve substance, muscle substance, etc. Thus Lucifer compels blood to a greater materiality. Whereas blood has been designed to shoot up and immediately disappear again, Lucifer brought it into a coarse materiality. That is the one direct deed that Lucifer has performed in matter itself. He made blood into matter, whereas with other things he at least only brought disorder among them. Were it not for Lucifer blood would not be as it is at all, it would instead exist in a spirituality which comes only to the edge of materiality, only to the status nascendi, and then at once returns. Blood as matter is the creation of Lucifer, and since man has in blood a physical expression of the ego, man's ego is bound up here on earth with a creation of Lucifer.  And since again Ahriman is only able to approach man because Lucifer is there before him, we can say: Blood is what Lucifer has thrown down for Ahriman to catch. So that both have now an approach to man. Can we wonder that an ancient primal feeling makes Lucifer-Ahriman look upon blood as his earthly property? Can we wonder that he has his contracts written in blood, or that he attaches great value to Faust's signing the contract with his blood? For blood belongs entirely to Lucifer. Everything else holds in it something divine; with nothing else is he quite at home, even ink is for Lucifer more divine than blood; blood is precisely his element. We see, then, that man has these two beings in him, the man of senses, glands and digestion, and the man of nerve, muscle and bone. The corresponding forces of both are charged with a coarse materiality, and both are supplied with blood, in the form it has assumed through the action of the Luciferic influence. For it is quite obvious, is it not, even to external science, that man, in so far as he is a material being, is entirely a product of his blood. Everything in man that is material is nourished out of blood, it is really all transformed blood; from the point of view of matter, bones, nerves, muscles, glands are all of them nothing else than transformed blood. Man is actually blood, and as such he is a walking Lucifer-Ahriman. He carries Lucifer-Ahriman round with him all the time. It is by virtue of what is behind matter, and is poured into matter through the blood, that man belongs to the divine world and to a forward-moving evolution, not to an evolution that is a mere relic of the past. Lucifer—and Ahriman, too—came into our world through remaining behind at particular stages of evolution. Bearing in mind all we have said, we can see quite clearly how at the very beginning of earth evolution men had something in common, something that united them. They had from the first in their blood something that was common to them all. For if the blood had remained as it was designed to be for man it would have been a pure emanation of the Spirits of Form. In the blood the Spirits of Form would live in us. These Spirits of Form are, as most of you know, my dear friends, none other than the seven Elohim of the Bible. Remember all that was said in the Munich cycle of lectures on Genesis (The Biblical Secrets of Creation), and you will see that if man had kept his blood in the state it originally was to have had, he would feel in him the seven Elohim; that is to say, he would feel his ego in him as seven-membered. One of its members would be the chief and would correspond to Jahve or Jehovah, and the other six would, to begin with, be subordinate for man. This seven-foldness that man would feel in his ego, as it were, a surging up within him of each of the seven Elohim or Spirits of Form, would have produced originally and spontaneously in him the sevenfold nature that we now have to acquire with so great toil and trouble. Because his blood has been tainted by Lucifer, therefore man has to wait so long; he has to wait until he has sent forth sufficient outstreamings of Intuitive and Inspired and Imaginative substance from nerves, muscles and bones for him to be ripe to receive once again this sevenfold nature into himself. As yet we have only come so far as to count up in an abstract manner as follows: the nature of man as it plays into the ego from physical body, and from etheric body, as it plays in from astral body, and from the very self of man—Jahve or Jehovah—and from Manas or Spirit Self; the nature of man as it plays in from Budhi or Life Spirit, and from Atma or Spirit Man. But man would never have been able to effect this specific darkening of the six other members and this outstanding illumination of the one, the ego, had not authority been given to Lucifer to interfere in the course of evolution. The real cause why at the beginning of earth evolution the other members suffered a darkening, while the ego grew particularly bright and was made to shine with a light-filled ego-ness—was that the ego was hurried into dense matter, so that it was able to come to a clear consciousness of its individuality, of its particular single individuality, whereas it would otherwise all along have felt its sevenfoldness. Thus we see on the one hand that if man's blood had remained as it was he would have come to an ego that would from the outset have had a sevenfold character. Through Lucifer having been given him, man has come, however, to an ego that is single and unitary in character, he has come to feel and know his ego as the centre of his being. We can, therefore, understand how the blood in its originally intended form contains something that could work in a social direction, that could bring men together, so that they might feel themselves to be one common race of humanity. This would have been so if the seven Elohim had come to revelation in the human egos, as it was intended they should in the beginning. Lucifer's gift to man has meant that man feels himself as a particular individuality and cuts himself off in his self-dependence from the common race of mankind. The world process takes its course on earth in such a way that through the working of Lucifer man is inclined to become more and more independent, whilst through the working of the seven Elohim he is inclined more and more to feel himself a member and part of the whole of humanity. What result this has on morality and on the whole life of man in his evolution—of this we will speak tomorrow. |
| 151. Human and Cosmic Thought (1961): Lecture II
21 Jan 1914, Berlin Tr. Charles Davy Rudolf Steiner |
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| If I had here a bell, there would be many monads in it—as in a swarm of midges—but they would be monads that had never come even so far as to have sleep-consciousness, monads that are almost unconscious, but which nevertheless develop the dimmest of concepts within themselves. There are monads that dream; there are monads that develop waking ideas within themselves; in short, there are monads of the most varied grades.” |
| 151. Human and Cosmic Thought (1961): Lecture II
21 Jan 1914, Berlin Tr. Charles Davy Rudolf Steiner |
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The study of Spiritual Science should always go hand in hand with practical experience of how the mind works. It is impossible to get entirely clear about many things that we discussed in the last lecture unless one tries to get a kind of living grasp of what thinking involves in terms of actualities. For why is it that among the very persons whose profession it is to think about such questions, confusion reigns, for example, as to the relation between the general concept of the “triangle-in-general” and specific concepts of individual triangles? How is it that people puzzle for centuries over questions such as that of the hundred possible and the hundred real thalers cited by Kant? Why is it that people fail to pursue the very simple reflections that are necessary to see that there cannot really be any such thing as a “pragmatic” account of history, according to which the course of events always follows directly from preceding events? Why do people not reflect in such a way that they would be repelled by this impossible mode of regarding the history of man, so widely current nowadays? What is the cause of all these things? The reason is that far too little trouble is taken over learning to handle with precision the activities of thinking, even by people whose business this should be. Nowadays everyone wants to feel that he has a perfect claim to say: “Think? Well, one can obviously do that.” So they begin to think. Thus we have various conceptions of the world; there have been many philosophers—a great many. We find that one philosopher is after this and another is after that, and that many fairly clever people have drawn attention to many things. If someone comes upon contradictions in these findings, he does not ponder over them, but he is quite pleased with himself, fancying that now he can “think” indeed. He can think again what those other fellows have thought out, and feels quite sure that he will find the right answer himself. For no one nowadays must make any concession to authority! That would deny the dignity of human nature! Everyone must think for himself. That is the prevailing notion in the realm of thought. I do not know if people have reflected that this is not their attitude in other realms of life. No one feels committed to belief in authority or to a craving for authority when he has his coat made at the tailor's or his shoes at the shoemaker's. He does not say: “It would be beneath the dignity of man to let one's things be made by persons who are known to be thoroughly acquainted with their business.” He may perhaps even allow that it is necessary to learn these skills. But in practical life, with regard to thinking, it is not agreed that one must get one's conceptions of the world from quarters where thinking and much else has been learnt. Only rarely would this be conceded to-day. This is one tendency that dominates our life in the widest circles, and is the immediate reason why human thinking is not a very widespread product nowadays. I believe this can be quite easily grasped. For let us suppose that one day everybody were to say: “What!—learn to make boots? For a long time that has been unworthy of man; we can all make boots.” I don't know if only good boots would come from it. At all events, with regard to the coining of correct thoughts in their conception of the world, it is from this sort of reasoning that men mostly take their start at the present day. This is what gives its deeper meaning to my remark of yesterday—that although thought is something a man is completely within, so that he can contemplate it in its inner being, actual thinking is not as common as one might suppose. Besides this, there is to-day a quite special pretension which could gradually go so far as to throw a veil over all clear thinking. We must pay attention to this also; at least we must glance at it. Let us suppose the following. There was once in Görlitz a shoemaker named Jacob Boehme. He had learnt his craft well—how soles are cut, how the shoe is formed over the last, and how the nails are driven into the soles and leather. He knew all this down to the ground. Now supposing that this shoemaker, by name Jacob Boehme, had gone around and said: “I will now see how the world is constructed. I will suppose that there is a great last at the foundation of the world. Over this last the world-leather was once stretched; then the world-nails were added, and by means of them the world-sole was fastened to the world-upper. Then boot-blacking was brought into play, and the whole world-shoe was polished. In this way I can quite clearly explain to myself how in the morning it is bright, for then the shoe-polish of the world is shining, but in the evening it is soiled with all sorts of things; it shines no longer. Hence I imagine that every night someone has the duty of repolishing the world-boot. And thus arises the difference between day and night.” Let us suppose that Jacob Boehme had said this. Yes, you laugh, for of course Jacob Boehme did not say this; but still he made good shoes for the people of Görlitz, and for that he employed his knowledge of shoe-making. But he also developed his grand thoughts, through which he wanted to build up a conception of the world; and for that he resorted to something else. He said to himself: My shoe-making is not enough for that; I dare not apply to the structure of the world the thoughts I put into making shoes. And in due course he arrived at his sublime thoughts about the world. Thus there was no such Jacob Boehme as the hypothetical figure I first sketched, but there was another one who knew how to set about things. But the hypothetical “Jacob Boehmes”, like the one you laughed over—they exist everywhere to-day. For example, we find among them physicists and chemists who have learnt the laws governing the combination and separation of substances; there are zoologists who have learnt how one examines and describes animals; there are doctors who have learnt how to treat the physical human body, and what they themselves call the soul. What do they all do? They say: When a person wants to work out for himself a conception of the world, then he takes the laws that are learnt in chemistry, in physics, or in physiology—no others are admissible—and out of these he builds a conception of the world for himself. These people proceed exactly as the hypothetical shoemaker would have done if he had constructed the world-boot, only they do not notice that their world-conceptions come into existence by the very same method that produced the hypothetical world-boot. It does certainly seem rather grotesque if one imagines that the difference between day and night comes about through the soiling of shoe-leather and the repolishing of it in the night. But in terms of true logic it is in principle just the same if an attempt is made to build a world out of the laws of chemistry, physics, biology and physiology. Exactly the same principle! It is an immense presumption on the part of the physicist, the chemist, the physiologist, or the biologist, who do not wish to be anything else than physicist, chemist, physiologist, biologist, and yet want to have an opinion about the whole world. The point is that one should go to the root of things and not shirk the task of illuminating anything that is not so clear by tracing it back to its true place in the scheme of things. If you look at all this with method and logic, you will not need to be astonished that so many present-day conceptions of the world yield nothing but the “world-boot”. And this is something that can point us to the study of Spiritual Science and to the pursuit of practical trains of thought; something that can urge us to examine the question of how we must think in order to see where shortcomings exist in the world. There is something else I should like to mention in order to show where lies the root of countless misunderstandings with regard to the ideas people have about the world. When one concerns oneself with world-conceptions, does one not have over and over again the experience that someone thinks this and someone else that; one man upholds a certain view with many good reasons (one can find good reasons for everything), while another has equally good reasons for his view; the first man contradicts his opponent with just as good reasons as those with which the opponent contradicts him. Sects arise in the world not, in the first place, because one person or another is convinced about the right path by what is taught here or there. Only look at the paths which the disciples of great men have had to follow in order to come to this or that great man, and then you will see that herein lies something important for us with regard to karma. But if we examine the outlooks that exist in the world to-day, we must say that whether someone is a follower of Bergson, or of Haeckel, or of this or that (karma, as I have already said, does not recognise the current world-conception) depends on other things than on deep conviction. There is contention on all sides! Yesterday I said that once there were Nominalists, persons who maintained that general concepts had no reality, but were merely names. These Nominalists had opponents who were called Realists (the word had a different meaning then). The Realists maintained that general concepts are not mere words, but refer to quite definite realities. In the Middle Ages the question of Realism versus Nominalism was always a burning one, especially for theology, a sphere of thought with which present-day thinkers trouble themselves very little. For in the time when the question of Nominalism versus Realism arose (from the eleventh to the thirteenth centuries) there was something that belonged to the most important confessions of faith, the question about the three “Divine Persons”—Father, Son and Holy Ghost—who form One Divine Being, but are still Three real Persons. The Nominalists maintained that these three Divine Persons existed only individually, the “Father” for Himself, the “Son” for Himself, and the “Holy Ghost” for Himself; and if one spoke of a “Collective God” Who comprised these Three, that was only a name for the Three. Thus Nominalism did away with the unity of the Trinity. In opposition to the Realists, the Nominalists not only explained away the unity, but even regarded it as heretical to declare, as the Realists did, that the Three Persons formed not merely an imaginary unity, but an actual one. Thus Nominalism and Realism were opposites. And anyone who goes deeply into the literature of Realism and Nominalism during these centuries gets a deep insight into what human acumen can produce. For the most ingenious grounds were brought forward for Nominalism, just as much as for Realism. In those days it was more difficult to be reckoned as a thinker because there was no printing press, and it was not an easy thing to take part in such controversies as that between Nominalism and Realism. Anyone who ventured into this field had to be better prepared, according to the ideas of those times, than is required of people who engage in controversies nowadays. An immense amount of penetration was necessary in order to plead the cause of Realism, and it was equally so with Nominalism. How does this come about? It is grievous that things are so, and if one reflects more deeply on it, one is led to say: What use is it that you are so clever? You can be clever and plead the cause of Nominalism, and you can be just as clever and contradict Nominalism. One can get quite confused about the whole question of intelligence! It is distressing even to listen to what such characterisations are supposed to mean. Now, as a contrast to what we have been saying, we will bring forward something that is perhaps not nearly so discerning as much that has been advanced with regard to Nominalism or to Realism, but it has perhaps one merit—it goes straight to the point and indicates the direction in which one needs to think. Let us imagine the way in which one forms general concepts; the way in which one synthesizes a mass of details. We can do this in two ways: first as a man does in the course of his life through the world. He sees numerous examples of a certain kind of animal: they are silky or woolly, are of various colours, have whiskers, at certain times they go through movements that recall human “washing”, they eat mice, etc. One can call such creatures “cats”. Then one has formed a general concept. All these creatures have something to do with what we call “cats”. But now let us suppose that someone has had a long life, in the course of which he has encountered many cat-owners, men and women, and he has noticed that a great many of these people call their pets “Pussy”. Hence he classes all these creatures under the name of “Pussy”. Hence we now have the general concept “Cats” and the general concept “Pussy”, and a large number of individual creatures belonging in both cases to the general concept. And yet no one will maintain that the general concept “Pussy” has the same significance as the general concept “Cats”. Here the real difference comes out. In forming the general concept “Pussy” which is only a summary of names that must rank as individual names, we have taken the line, and rightly so, of Nominalism; and in forming the general concept “Cats” we have taken the line of Realism, and rightly so. In one case Nominalism is correct; in the other. Realism. Both are right. One must only apply these methods within their proper limits. And when both are right, it is not surprising that good reasons for both can be adduced. In taking the name “Pussy”, I have employed a somewhat grotesque example. But I can show you a much more significant example and I will do so at once. Within the scope of our objective experience there is a whole realm where Nominalism—the idea that the collective term is only a name—is fully justified. We have “one”, “two”, “three”, “four”, “five”, and so on, but it is impossible to find in the expression “number” anything that has a real existence. “Number” has no existence. “One”, “two”, “three”, “five”, “six”,—they exist. But what I said in the last lecture, that in order to find the general concept one must let that which corresponds to it pass over into movement—this cannot be done with the concept “Number”. One “one” does not pass over into “two”. It must always be taken as “one”. Not even in thought can we pass over into two, or from two into three. Only the individual numbers exist, not “number” in general. As applied to the nature of numbers, Nominalism is entirely correct; but when we come to the single animal in relation to its genus, Realism is entirely correct. For it is impossible for a deer to exist, and another deer, and yet another, without there being the genus “deer”. The figure “two” can exist for itself, “one”, “seven”, etc., can exist for themselves. But in so far as anything real appears in number, the number is a quality, and the concept “number” has no specific existence. External things are related to general concepts in two different ways: Nominalism is appropriate in one case, and Realism in the other. On these lines, if we simply give our thoughts the right direction, we begin to understand why there are so many disputes about conceptions of the world. People generally are not inclined, when they have grasped one standpoint, to grasp another as well. When in some realm of thought somebody has got hold of the idea “general concepts have no existence”, he proceeds to extend to it the whole make-up of the world. This sentence, “general concepts have no existence” is not false, for when applied to the particular realm which the person in question has considered, it is correct. It is only the universalising of it that is wrong. Thus it is essential, if one wants to form a correct idea of what thinking is, to understand clearly that the truth of a thought in the realm to which it belongs is no evidence for its general validity. Someone can offer me a perfectly correct proof of this or that and yet it will not hold good in a sphere to which it does not belong. Anyone, therefore, who intends to occupy himself seriously with the paths that lead to a conception of the world must recognise that the first essential is to avoid one-sidedness. That is what I specially want to bring out to-day. Now let us take a general look at some matters which will be explained in detail later on. There are people so constituted that it is not possible for them to find the way to the Sprit, and to give them any proof of the Spirit will always be hard. They stick to something they know about, in accordance with their nature. Let us say they stick at something that makes the crudest kind of impression on them—Materialism. We need not regard as foolish the arguments they advance as a defence or proof of Materialism, for an immense amount of ingenious writing has been devoted to the subject, and it holds good in the first place for material life, for the material world and its laws. Again, there are people who, owing to a certain inwardness, are naturally predisposed to see in all that is material only the revelation of the spiritual. Naturally, they know as well as the materialists do that, externally, the material world exists; but matter, they say, is only the revelation, the manifestation, of the underlying spiritual. Such persons may take no particular interest in the material world and its laws. As all their ideas of the spiritual come to them through their own inner activity, they may go through the world with the consciousness that the true, the lofty, in which one ought to interest oneself—all genuine reality—is found only in the Spirit; that matter is only illusion, only external phantasmagoria. This would be an extreme standpoint, but it can occur, and can lead to a complete denial of material life. We should have to say of such persons that they certainly do recognize what is most real, the Spirit, but they are one-sided; they deny the significance of the material world and its laws. Much acute thinking can be enlisted in support of the conception of the universe held by these persons. Let us call their conception of the universe: Spiritism. Can we say that the Spiritists are right? As regards the Spirit, their contentions could bring to light some exceptionally correct ideas, but concerning matter and its laws they might reveal very little of any significance. Can one say the Materialists are correct in what they maintain? Yes, concerning matter and its laws they may be able to discover some exceptionally useful and valuable facts; but in speaking of the Spirit they may utter nothing but foolishness. Hence we must say that both parties are correct in their respective spheres. There can also be persons who say: “Yes, but as to whether in truth the world contains only matter, or only spirit, I have no special knowledge; the powers of human cognition cannot cope with that. One thing is clear—there is a world spread out around us. Whether it is based upon what chemists and physicists, if they are materialists, call atoms, I know not. But I recognize the external world; that is something I see and can think about. I have no particular reason for supposing that it is or is not spiritual at root. I restrict myself to what I see around me.” From the explanations already given we can call such Realists, and their concept of the universe: Realism. Just as one can enlist endless ingenuity on behalf of Materialism or of Spiritism, and just as one can be clever about Spiritism and yet say the most foolish things on material matters, and vice versa, so one can advance the most ingenious reasons for Realism, which differs from both Spiritism and Materialism in the way I have just described. Again, there may be other persons who speak as follows. Around us are matter and the world of material phenomena. But this world of material phenomena is in itself devoid of meaning. It has no real meaning unless there is within it a progressive tendency; unless from this external world something can emerge towards which the human soul can direct itself, independently of the world. According to this outlook, there must be a realm of ideas and ideals within the world-process. Such people are not Realists, although they pay external life its due; their view is that life has meaning only if ideas work through it and give it purpose. It was under the influence of such a mood as this that Fichte once said: Our world is the sensualised material of our duty.2 The adherents of such a world-outlook as this, which takes everything as a vehicle for the ideas that permeate the world-process, may be called Idealists and their outlook: Idealism. Beautiful and grand and glorious things have been brought forward on behalf of this Idealism. And in this realm that I have just described—where the point is to show that the world would be purposeless and meaningless if ideas were only human inventions and were not rooted in the world-process—in this realm Idealism is fully justified. But by means of it one cannot, for example, explain external reality. Hence one can distinguish this Idealism from other world-outlooks:  We now have side by side four justifiable world-outlooks, each with significance for its particular domain. Between Materialism and Idealism there is a certain transition. The crudest kind of materialism—one can observe it specially well in our day, although it is already on the wane—will consist in this, that people carry to an extreme the saying of Kant—Kant did not do this himself!—that in the individual sciences there is only so much real science as there is mathematics. This means that from being a materialist one can become a ready-reckoner of the universe, taking nothing as valid except a world composed of material atoms. They collide and gyrate, and then one calculates how they inter-gyrate. By this means one obtains very fine results, which show that this way of looking at things is fully justified. Thus you can get the vibration-rates for blue, red, etc.; you take the whole world as a kind of mechanical apparatus, and can reckon it up accurately. But one can become rather confused in this field. One can say to oneself: “Yes, but however complicated the machine may be, one can never get out of it anything like the perception of blue, red, etc. Thus if the brain is only a complicated machine, it can never give rise to what we know as soul-experiences.” But then one can say, as du Bois-Reymond once said: If we want to explain the world in strictly mathematical terms, we shall not be able to explain the simplest perception, but if we go outside a mathematical explanation, we shall be unscientific. The most uncompromising materialist would say, “No, I do not even calculate, for that would presuppose a superstition—it would imply that I assume that things are ordered by measure and number.” And anyone who raises himself above this crude materialism will become a mathematical thinker, and will recognize as valid only whatever can be treated mathematically. From this results a conception of the universe that really admits nothing beyond mathematical formulae. This may be called Mathematism. Someone, however, might think this over, and after becoming a Mathematist he might say to himself: “It cannot be a superstition that the colour blue has so and so many vibrations. The world is ordered mathematically. If mathematical ideas are found to be real in the world, why should not other ideas have equal reality?” Such a person accepts this—that ideas are active in the world. But he grants validity only to those ideas that he discovers outside himself—not to any ideas that he might grasp from his inner self by some sort of intuition or inspiration, but only to those he reads from external things that are real to the senses. Such a person becomes a Rationalist, and his outlook on the world is that of Rationalism. If, in addition to the ideas that are found in this way, someone grants validity also to those gained from the moral and the intellectual realms, then he is already an Idealist. Thus a path leads from crude Materialism, by way of Mathematism and Rationalism, to Idealism. But now Idealism can be enhanced. In our age there are some men who are trying to do this. They find ideas at work in the world, and this implies that there must also be in the world some sort of beings in whom the ideas can live. Ideas cannot live just as they are in any external object, nor can they hang as it were in the air. In the nineteenth century the belief existed that ideas rule history. But this was a confusion, for ideas as such have no power to work. Hence one cannot speak of ideas in history. Anyone who understands that ideas, if they are there are all, are bound up with some being capable of having ideas, will no longer be a mere Idealist; he will move on to the supposition that ideas are connected with beings. He becomes a Psychist and his world-outlook is that Psychism. The Psychist, who in his turn can uphold his outlook with an immense amount of ingenuity, reaches it only through a kind of one-sidedness, of which he can eventually become aware.  Here I must add that there are adherents of all the world-outlooks above the horizontal stroke; for the most part they are stubborn folk who, owing to some fundamental element in themselves, take this or that world-outlook and abide by it, going no further. All the beliefs listed below the line have adherents who are more easily accessible to the knowledge that individual world-outlooks each have one special standpoint only, and they more easily reach the point where they pass from one world-outlook to another. When someone is a Psychist, and able as a thinking person to contemplate the world clearly, then he comes to the point of saying to himself that he must presuppose something actively psychic in the outside world. But directly he not only thinks, but feels sympathy for what is active and willing in man, then he says to himself: “It is not enough that there are beings who have ideas; these beings must also be active, they must be able also to do things.” But this is inconceivable unless these beings are individual beings. That is, a person of this type rises from accepting the ensoulment of the world to accepting the Spirit or the Spirits of the world. He is not yet clear whether he should accept one or a number of Spirits, but he advances from Psychism to Pneumatism to a doctrine of the Spirit.  If he has become in truth a Pneumatist, then he may well grasp what I have said in this lecture about number—that with regard to figures it is somewhat doubtful to speak of a “unity”. Then he comes to the point of saying to himself: It must therefore be a confusion to talk of one undivided Spirit, of one undivided Pneuma. And he gradually becomes able to form for himself an idea of the Spirits of the different Hierarchies. Then he becomes in the true sense a Spiritist, so that on this side there is a direct transition from Pneumatism to Spiritism. These world-outlooks are all justified in their own field. For there are fields where Psychism acts illuminatingly, and others where Pneumatism does the same. Certainly, anyone who wishes to deliberate about an explanation of the universe as thoroughly as we have tried to do must come to Spiritism, to the acceptance of the Spirits of the Hierarchies. For to stop short at Pneumatism would in this case mean the following. If we are Spiritists, then it may happen that people will say to us: “Why so many spirits? Why bring numbers into it? Let there be One Undivided Spirit!” Anyone who goes more deeply into the matter knows that this objection is like saying: “You tell me there are two hundred midges over there. I don't see two hundred; I see only a single swarm.” Exactly so would an adherent of Pneumatism stand with regard to a Spiritist. The Spiritist sees the universe filled with the Spirits of the Hierarchies; the Pneumatist sees only the one “swarm”—only the Universal Spirit. But that comes from an inexact view. Now there is still another possibility: someone may not take the path we have tried to follow to the activities of the spiritual Hierarchies, but may still come to an acceptance of certain spiritual beings. The celebrated German philosopher, Leibnitz, was a man of this kind. Leibnitz had got beyond the prejudice that anything merely material can exist in the world. He found the actual, he sought the actual. (I have treated this more precisely in my book, Riddles of Philosophy.) His view was that a being—as, for example, the human soul—can build up existence in itself. But he formed no further ideas on the subject. He only said to himself that there is such a being that can build up existence in itself, and force concepts outwards from within itself. For Leibnitz, this being is a “Monad”. And he said to himself: “There must be many Monads, and Monads of the most varied capabilities. If I had here a bell, there would be many monads in it—as in a swarm of midges—but they would be monads that had never come even so far as to have sleep-consciousness, monads that are almost unconscious, but which nevertheless develop the dimmest of concepts within themselves. There are monads that dream; there are monads that develop waking ideas within themselves; in short, there are monads of the most varied grades.” A person with this outlook does not come so far as to picture to himself the individual spiritual beings in concrete terms, as the Spiritist does, but he reflects in the world upon the spiritual element in the world, allowing it to remain indefinite. He calls it “Monad”—that is, he conceives of it only as though one were to say: “Yes, there is spirit in the world and there are spirits, but I describe them only by saying, ‘They are entities having varying powers of perception.’ I pick out from them an abstract characteristic. So I form for myself this one-sided world-outlook, on behalf of which as much as can be said has been said by the highly intelligent Leibnitz. In this way I develop Monadism.” Monadism is an abstract Spiritism. But there can be persons who do not rise to the level of the Monads; they cannot concede that existence is made up of beings with the most varied conceptual powers, but at the same time they are not content to allow reality only to external phenomena; they hold that “forces” are dominant everywhere. If, for example, a stone falls to the ground, they say, “That is gravitation!” When a magnet attracts bits of iron, they say: “That is magnetic force!” They are not content with saying simply, “There is the magnet,” but they say, “The magnet presupposes that supersensibly, invisibly, a magnetic force is present, extending in all directions.” A world-outlook of this kind—which looks everywhere for forces behind phenomena—can be called Dynamism.  Then one may say: “No, to believe in ‘forces’ is superstition”—an example of this is Fritz Mauthner's Critique of Language, where you find a detailed argument to this effect. It amounts to taking your stand on the reality of the things around us. Thus by the path of Spiritism we come through Monadism and Dynamism to Realism again. But now one can do something else still. One can say: “Certainly I believe in the world that is spread out around me, but I do not maintain any right to claim that this world is the real one. I can say of it only that it ‘appears’ to me. I have no right to say more about it.” There you have again a difference. One can say of the world that is spread out around us. “This is the real world,” but one can also say, “I am clear that there is a world which appears to me; I cannot speak of anything more. I am not saying that this world of colours and sounds, which arises only because certain processes in my eyes present themselves to me as colours, while processes in my ears present themselves to me as sounds—I am not saying that this world is the true world. It is a world of phenomena.” This is the outlook called Phenomenalism. We can go further, and can say: “The world of phenomena we certainly have around us, but all that we believe we have in these phenomena is what we have ourselves added to them, what we have thought into them. Our own sense-impressions are all we can rightly accept. Anyone who says this—mark it well!—is not an adherent of Phenomenalism. He peels off from the phenomena everything which he thinks comes only from the understanding and the reason, and he allows validity only to sense-impressions, regarding them as some kind of message from reality.” This outlook may be called Sensationalism. A critic of this outlook can then say: “You may reflect as much as you like on what the senses tell us and bring forward ever so ingenious reasons for your view—and ingenious reasons can be given—I take my stand on the point that nothing real exists except that which manifests itself through sense-impressions; this I accept as something material.” This is rather like an atomist saying: “I hold that only atoms exist, and that however small they are, they have the attributes which we recognize in the physical world”—anyone who says this is a materialist. Thus, by another path, we arrive back at Materialism.  All these conceptions of the world that I have described and written down for you really exist, and they can be maintained. And it is possible to bring forward the most ingenious reasons for each of them; it is possible to adopt any one of them and with ingenious reasons to refute the others. In between these conceptions of the world one can think out yet others, but they differ only in degree from the leading types I have described, and can be traced back to them. If one wishes to learn about the web and woof of the world, then one must know that the way to it is through these twelve points of entry. There is not merely one conception of the world that can be defended, or justified, but there are twelve. And one must admit that just as many good reasons can be adduced for each and all of them as for any particular one. The world cannot be rightly considered from the one-sided standpoint of one single conception, one single mode of thought; the world discloses itself only to someone who knows that one must look at it from all sides. Just as the sun—if we go by the Copernican conception of the universe—passes through the signs of the Zodiac in order to illuminate the earth from twelve different points, so we must not adopt one standpoint, the standpoint of Idealism, or Sensationalism, or Phenomenalism, or any other conception of the world with a name of this kind; we must be in a position to go all round the world and accustom ourselves to the twelve different standpoints from which it can be contemplated. In terms of thought, all twelve standpoints are fully justifiable. For a thinker who can penetrate into the nature of thought, there is not one single conception of the world, but twelve that can be equally justified—so far justified as to permit of equally good reasons being thought out for each of them. There are twelve such justified conceptions of the world. Tomorrow we will start from the points of view we have gained in this way, so that from the consideration of man in terms of thought we may rise to a consideration of the cosmic.
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