| 281. Poetry and the Art of Speech: Lecture IV
06 Apr 1921, Dornach Translated by Julia Wedgwood, Andrew Welburn Rudolf Steiner |
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| III Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams The blue Mediterranean, where he lay, Lulled by the coil of his crystalline streams, Beside a pumice isle in Baiae’s bay, And saw in sleep old palaces and towers Quivering within the wave’s intenser day, All overgrown with azure moss and flowers So sweet, the sense faints picturing them! |
| What lives in this feeling in a far-reaching way meets us again in an intimate mood when the handsome youth Hyacinth comes to the Temple of Isisafter long dream-wanderings through unknown regions, which are nonetheless familiar to him, though now appearing more splendid than he had once known. |
| 281. Poetry and the Art of Speech: Lecture IV
06 Apr 1921, Dornach Translated by Julia Wedgwood, Andrew Welburn Rudolf Steiner |
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The art of recitation and declamation, of which we are going to say something this evening, is not at present accorded its full status as an art-form. In our approach to this art we often give too little consideration to exactly what is presented by the poet and to the medium in which the reciter or declaimer has to be artistically active. This moves us to consider the essentials of the art of recitation and declamation – when, as you have seen demonstrated many times, it presents itself as an accompanying art to eurythmy. We then become deeply aware that recitation and declamation must go beyond the prose content of a poem, which is actually the poem’s thought-component. For to stress the prose content turns the recitation and declamation of the poem into something inartistic. When in reciting, as happens at the present day, importance is attached to a prosaic stress on the meaning, this is an indication of our having abandoned the domain of the truly artistic. Let us be clear that a poet – if he is a true poet – will certainly have had in his imagination (in the full sense of the word) something which ultimately becomes apparent in the recitation and declamation. A poet who only had in his soul the thought-content, or the word-for-word content of feeling, and not the inwardly heard sound- and word-movement of the poem, would simply not be a poet at all. But it must also be made clear that what is put before the reciter is, in the end, only a kind of score or music-script – and that the art of recitation and declamation must go beyond the script in the same way as a pianist or other practising musician has to do. The re-creation is a new creating and the new creation is a re-creating. A musician who composes a piano work will, of course, also have in his imagination the whole pattern of sound: and whoever wishes to re-create his composition must make himself familiar above all with the instrument itself and with its characteristic sound-pattern and tone – of the piano in this instance. He must comprehend the art of handling both the instrument and its medium. And likewise the reciter must understand the art of handling speech. His instrument is bound up much more closely with his own being than are the external instruments of the musician, and in deploying his particular instrument he will also have to develop his own special characteristics. But he will have to start with the handling of speech, the material by means of which he can give expression to what reaches him from the poet only as a sort of score. As regards the handling of speech, it will be just as necessary to begin with the fundamentals as in the art of piano-playing, though the study must in many respects be pursued more intensively than in the case of learning the piano. We must also take into consideration that we are now living in a time when much of what has hitherto lived instinctively within the soul of man must be raised into consciousness. There is still today in wide circles, and not least among artists, a certain fear of this consciousness when it is brought to bear on artistic, creative work. They think that by introducing this sort of consciousness they will injure instinctive, imaginative creation and cripple it; many believe, too, that by becoming conscious of what really goes on in the soul in artistic creation they will lose that spontaneity essential to the creation of art. There is certainly some truth in all this. But, on the other hand, we must realise that what we are striving for in the sphere of anthroposophical perception is a matter of exceptional importance for our time and our civilisation. The slow struggle toward the experience of what in our spiritual stream is called Imagination weaves and lives in an element quite other than the intellectual, so that artistic feeling need in no way be lost when it is confronted with Imaginative experience. Indeed, if we are dealing with genuine Imaginations it cannot be lost. For what is disclosed in an Imagination with a view to knowledge is objectively (not subjectively but objectively) different from the Imagination manifested when the soul gives it an artistic form. If I may refer for a moment to something personal: I would like to say that to me it was always extremely distasteful if someone or other came along and tried to interpret my Mystery Plays in a symbolic way and imported into them all sorts of intellectual notions. For what lives in these Mystery Plays is experienced Imaginatively – down to every single sound. The picture stands there as a picture and has always stood there as a picture. It would never have occurred to me to begin with an intellectual idea and then fashion it into a picture. In that way I was able to discover by experience how, when one is attempting to impart artistic form, the Imaginative comes to be something objectively quite different to the form assumed by an Imagination that is directed toward cognition. Hence this prejudice, that spontaneity and instinctive imagining will be impaired if one raises artistic activity into consciousness, will have to be overcome. Our times require that this prejudice should be overcome. We may then perhaps be guided to the true foundations of declamation and recitation, as it is in this direction that they will have to be developed in the near future. We cannot put recitation and declamation into practice unless we fathom the fundamental differences presented in poetry by, on the one side, lyric; on the second side, epic; and on the third, the dramatic. [Note 10] Today we shall only be able to present something of the lyric and the dramatic. We shall then continue with something that might be called a ‘prose-poem’. There were reasons for this choice. The epic will be considered separately later on – indeed the epic can perhaps best illustrate the art of recitation when once we have advanced beyond the elementary stages of the art. In order to penetrate to a real declamatory and recitative art involving the lyric, dramatic and epic, the following must be observed. Whoever aims at this kind of vocal production must, for instance, develop a distinct feeling for the connection between lyric and the constituents of speech – and this he will achieve through a living experience of the vowels. A feeling for the vowels, for the intimacy of the vowels, must be sought if the lyrical is to be embodied and brought to expression. For it is in the vowel sounds that man’s essentially inward experience is expressed. In the single vowel-sounds – when penetrated by a sensitive understanding, a discerning sensibility – lies the whole spectrum of human inner experience. In vocalisation (the sounding of the vowels) lives everything which we might describe as coming from musical experience and which is projected into the lyric. Lyrical experience can definitely be traced back to musical experience. But in musical experience we find inwardness being unfolded in the movement of sound. In the lyric, we find inwardness absorbed into the very substance of the vowel itself. Yet whoever wishes to approach recitation from this point of view must avoid a certain error – and no greater error in the art of recitation is conceivable. For when we are learning how to handle the materials and elements of speech, we might be tempted to commence by introducing an element of feeling, to put subjective feeling into the vowel; and this is just what would actually make it prosaic. This is the opposite approach to that of recitation. Anyone who wishes to recite lyrical poetry must have a sensitivity to the vowel itself. He must begin by experiencing the vowel as such. Just as Goethe, for instance, recognises different shades of feeling in the various shades of colour, so we shall not only experience in the vowels different shades of feeling, but utterly different conditions of soul, different soul-contents. We shall feel every gradation, from sorrow and bitterness to joy and jubilation, in our sensing of the vowels and experience of what might be termed the vowel-scale. It will be readily admitted that much of what I am saying is often felt instinctively by the reciter when he comes to apply his art in individual poems. But he will be able to enhance his art significantly if he brings such a feeling to conscious awareness. Through vocalisation something capable of further development will be disclosed to him: he will discover how a vowel sounding earlier on still sounds in the later vowels – or a later vowel-sound modifies the earlier ones, etc. However, these things must not be practised in the mechanical and materialistic way often adopted nowadays, when various postures are assumed, along with artificial breath-control. Everything the body has to learn in this domain must derive purely from what is learnt in working with speech itself. Just as a painter can learn most when, instructed by an accomplished artist, he paints directly onto the canvas and only touches his work up here and there, – so too will the reciter best learn to recite by acquiring his grasp of speech from speech itself: from actual speaking, from handling the speech-movement. Afterwards, his attention can be drawn to any particular detail relating to external, bodily control. It is a curious tendency of our materialistic times first to move away from the poem and adjust the instrument of speech and only then return to artistic speaking. This aberration might almost be called nonsense; it certainly does not derive from true artistic feeling. Furthermore, if it is with the help of the vowel-sounds that we come to experience the lyric it is through the consonants that we shall begin to get a feeling for the epic. Truly to enter into the consonants is to experience over again, within ourselves, what is going on outside us. And if we feel in the consonantal element this peculiar imitation within us of the outside world, we shall be led artistically from these elementary constituents to an inner re-experiencing of what is also to be found in the images of a far-ranging epos. I can only touch upon this today; at another opportunity it can be referred to again. In this way it will be possible to develop what ought to lie at the foundation of recitation and declamation into a true art-form, down to its handling of the constituents of speech. And it will necessarily become clear to us, if we see the essential feature of this art in the way it handles actual speech, that the nuances of the art will show up in its response to the different languages – each language having its own special recitative or declamatory requirements. A language which is essentially mimetic, one which takes its departure from the intellect and classification and has developed language in the sphere of the intellect, a language which has abstracted itself from what can be experienced in the outer world, – such a language will have to tackle recitation and declamation quite differently to one in which the sounds (vowels and consonants) themselves express their relationship to inwardness or to externality. Now, in the first part of what Frau Dr. Steiner is going to declaim, you will hear to begin with something lyrical. From this you should actually be able to hear how lyrical poems come to expression with varying nuances, depending on the language in which they are presented. That will be the first part of our programme – a performance of essentially lyrical poems.
Three poems of Goethe’s youth. BEHERZIGUNG
Ist es besser, ruhig bleiben? Klammernd fest sich anzuhangen? Ist es besser, sich zu treiben? Soll er sich ein Häuschen bauen? Soll er unter Zelten leben? Soll er auf die Felsen trauen? Selbst die festen Felsen beben.
Eines schickt sich nicht für alle! Sehe jeder wie er’s treibe, Sehe jeder wo er bleibe, Und wer steht, dass er nicht falle! MEERES STILLE Tiefe Stille herrscht im Wasser, Ohne Regung ruht das Meer, Und bekümmert sieht der Schiffer Glatte Fläche rings umher. Keine Luft von keiner Seite! Todesstille fürchterlich! In der ungeheuern Weite Reget keine Welle sich. MIT EINEM GEMALTEN BAND Kleine Blumen, kleine Blätter Streuen mir mit leichter Hand Gute junge Frühlingsgötter Tändelnd auf ein luftig Band.
Zephyr, nimm’s auf deine Flügel, Schling’s um meiner Liebsten Kleid! Und so tritt sie vor den Spiegel All in ihrer Munterkeit.
Sieht mit Rosen sich umgeben, Selbst wie eine Rose jung: Einen Blick, geliebtes Leben! Und ich bin belohnt genung.
Fühle, was dies Herz empfindet, Reiche frei mir deine Hand, Und das Band, das uns verbindet, Sei kein schwaches Rosenband!
A little English lyric: SONG April, April, Laugh thy girlish laughter; Then, the moment after, Weep thy girlish tears! April, that mine ears Like a lover greetest, If I tell thee, sweetest, All my hopes and fears, April, April, Laugh thy golden laughter, But, the moment after, Weep thy golden tears! William Watson (1858-1935). THE BELLS OF ST. PETERSBURGH Those evening bells! those evening bells! How many a tale their music tells, Of youth, and home, and that sweet time, When last I heard their soothing chime!
Those joyous hours are past away! And many a heart, that then was gay, Within the tomb now darkly dwells, And hears no more those evening bells!
And so ’twill be when I am gone; That tuneful peal will still ring on, While other bards shall walk these dells, And sing your praise, sweet evening bells!
Thomas Moore (1799-1852).
An example of Russian lyric: NILE DELTA Lucid gold and emerald, and black earth’s thick fecundity: landscape aloof, your wealth witheld from ease, in mute profundity…
Bosom laden with your fruit, – how many slumberous shapes repose secure in you, most lowly root, or fertile corpses decompose?
Yet not for all slow dissipation: not those that yearly upward flame, like ghosts at magic conjuration, and vernal life from death proclaim;
not Isis, crowned with flowers supernal, lush companions of the spring – the Touch-me-not, the Maid eternal, the Rainbow’s incandescent ring! Vladimir Soloviov (1853-1900). Trans. Neil Thompson and A.J.W. [Note 11] [Of considerable interest too is the beautiful German translation used in the original programme: NILDELTA Goldenglänzendes, smaragdenes, Tief schwarzerdenes Gefild, Deines Kraftens reicher Segen Aus der Scholle quillt.
Dieser Schoss, der keimetragende, Tote bergend in den Ton, Er litt stumm, der allergebene, Die jahrtausend lange Fron.
Doch nicht alles so Empfangene Trugst empor du jedes Jahr. Das vom alten Tod Gezeichnete Sieht des Lenzes sich noch bar.
Isis nicht, die Kronen tragende, Wird dir bringen jenen Kranz, Doch die unberührte, ewige Magd im Regenbogenglanz. Trans. Marie Steiner.] WANDRERS STURMLIED Wen du nicht verlässest, Genius, Nicht der Regen, nicht der Sturm Haucht ihm Schauer übers Herz. Wen du nicht verlässest, Genius, Wird dem Regengewölk, Wird dem Schlossensturm Entgegen singen, Wie die Lerche, Du da droben.
Den du nicht verlässest, Genius, Wirst ihn heben übern Schlammpfad Mit den Feuerflügeln; Wandeln wird er Wie mit Blumenfüssen Über Deukalions Flutschlamm, Python tötend, leicht, gross, Pythius Apollo.
Den du nicht verlässest, Genius, Wirst die wollnen Flügel unterspreiten, Wenn er auf dem Felsen schläft, Wirst mit Hüterfittichen ihn decken In des Haines Mitternacht.
Wen du nicht verlässest, Genius, Wirst im Schneegestöber Wärmumhüllen; Nach der Wärme ziehn sich Musen, Nach der Wärme Charitinnen.
Umschwebet mich ihr Musen, Ihr Charitinnen: Das ist Wasser, das ist Erde, Und der Sohn des Wassers und der Erde, Über den ich wandle Göttergleich.
Ihr seid rein, wie das Herz der Wasser, Ihr seid rein, wie das Mark der Erde, Ihr umschwebt mich und ich schwebe Über Wasser, über Erde, Göttergleich.
Soll der zurückkehren, Der kleine, schwarze, feurige Bauer? Soll der zurückkehren, erwartend Nur deine Gaben, Vater Bromius, Und helleuchtend umwärmend Feuer? Der kehren mutig? Und ich, den ihr begleitet, Musen und Charitinnen alle, Den alles erwartet, was ihr, Musen und Charitinnen, Umkränzende Seligkeit Rings ums Leben verherrlicht habt, Soll mutlos kehren?
Vater Bromius! Du bist Genius, Jahrhunderts Genius, Bist, was innre Glut Pindarn war, Was der Welt Phöbus Apoll ist.
Weh! Weh! Innre Wärme, Seelenwärme, Mittelpunkt: Glüh’ entgegen Phöb’ Apollen; Kalt wird sonst Sein Fürstenblick Über dich vorübergleiten, Neidgetroffen Auf der Ceder Kraft verweilen, Die zu grünen Sein nicht harrt.
Warum nennt mein Lied dich zuletzt? Dich, von dem es begann, Dich, in dem es endet, Dich, aus dem es quillt, Jupiter Pluvius! Dich, dich strömt mein Lied, Und kastalischer Quell Rinnt ein Nebenbach, Rinnet Müssigen, Sterblich Glücklichen Abseits von dir, Der du mich fassend deckst, Jupiter Pluvius!
Nicht am Ulmenbaum Hast du ihn besucht, Mit dem Taubenpaar In dem zärtlichen Arm, Tändelnden ihn, blumenglücklichen Anakreon, Sturmatmende Gottheit!
Nicht im Pappelwald An des Sybaris Strand, An des Gebirges Sonnebeglänzter Stirn nicht Fasstest du ihn, Den bienensingenden, Honig-lallenden, Freundlich winkenden Theokrit.
Wenn die Räder rasselten, Rad an Rad rasch ums Ziel weg, Hoch flog Siegdurchglühter Jünglinge Peitschenknall, Und sich Staub wälzt’, Wie vom Gebirg herab Kieselwetter ins Tal,— Glühte deine Seel’ Gefahren, Pindar Mut.—Glühte?—
Armes Herz! Dort auf dem Hügel, Himmlische Macht! Nur so viel Glut, Dort meine Hütte, Dorthin zu waten! Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. [For such lyrical intensity and power in English this famous ode remains unsurpassed: ODE TO THE WEST WIND I O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn’s being, Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,
Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red, Pestilence-stricken multitudes: O thou, Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed
The winged seeds, where they lie cold and low, Each like a corpse within its grave, until Thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow
Her clarion o’er the dreaming earth, and fill (Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air) With living hues and odours plain and hill:
Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere; Destroyer and preserver; hear, oh, hear! II Thou on whose stream, ’mid the steep sky’s commotion, Loose clouds like earth’s decaying leaves are shed, Shook from the tangled boughs of Heaven and Ocean,
Angels of rain and lightning: there are spread On the blue surface of thine aery surge, Like the bright hair uplifted from the head
Of some fierce Maenad, even from the dim verge Of the horizon to the zenith’s height, The locks of the approaching storm. Thou dirge
Of the dying year, to which this closing night Will be the dome of a vast sepulchre, Vaulted with all thy congregated might
Of vapours, from whose solid atmosphere Black rain, and fire, and hail will burst: oh, hear! III Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams The blue Mediterranean, where he lay, Lulled by the coil of his crystalline streams,
Beside a pumice isle in Baiae’s bay, And saw in sleep old palaces and towers Quivering within the wave’s intenser day,
All overgrown with azure moss and flowers So sweet, the sense faints picturing them! Thou For whose path the Atlantic’s level powers
Cleave themselves into chasms, while far below The sea-blooms and the oozy woods which wear The sapless foliage of the ocean, know
Thy voice, and suddenly grow gray with fear, And tremble and despoil themselves: oh, hear! IV If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear; If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee; A wave to pant beneath thy power, and spare
The impulse of thy strength, only less free Than thou, O uncontrollable! If even I were as in my boyhood, and could be
The comrade of thy wanderings over Heaven, As then, when to outstrip thy skiey speed Scarce seemed a vision; I would ne’er have striven
As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need. Oh, lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud! I fall upon the thorns of life: I bleed!
A heavy weight of hours has chained and bowed One too like thee: tameless, and swift, and proud. V Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is: What if my leaves are falling like its own! The tumult of thy mighty harmonies
Will take from both a deep, autumnal tone, Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce, My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!
Drive my dead thoughts over the universe Like withered leaves to quicken a new birth! And, by the incantation of this verse,
Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind! Be through my lips to unawakened earth
The trumpet of a prophecy! O, Wind, If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind? Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822).]
When studying poetry with a view to artistic declamation, it is of primary importance to lose nothing of what wells up in the words from the poet’s soul, or is contained in what is given to us by him. Recitation, as well as poetry itself, will only become artistic when everything that the soul expresses in the prose content is recast into form, into something formed. In the lyric it must go more into the musical. In the epic and particularly in the dramatic, more into imagery, into what has been given a definite form. The lyrical, as I said, inclines toward the vowel-sounds; but we must not forget that every consonant also has in it a vowel-element. In every consonant there lies a disposition toward a vowel and every vowel has a tendency toward a consonant. Consequently through art, just as in other spheres where something similar is effected, the opposition between subjective and objective will be completely overcome. The whole inner being of man will be able to live in the outer world and the outer world will be brought to expression in its full strength through the inner being of man. Speaking about the art of reciting in our course last autumn, I drew your attention to the universal, cosmic rhythm which is expressed in the rhythmic system of man. Furthermore, I showed how this comes to find expression in poetry – and thence, of course, in recitation as the manifestation of poetic art. We may say that an element with a more spiritual tendency (since the spirit manifests itself in everything physical) unfolds in the tempo of the human pulse-beat; while something more psychic, we may also say, something that takes its course in the soul, unfolds in the rhythm of breathing. A greater part of what is expressed in poetic form depends on the interplay between the rhythms of the pulse and breathing and the ratio of one to the other. And it is in the hexameter that the primary and most self-evident ratio between pulse-rhythm and breathing-rhythm is displayed. Fundamentally the hexameter involves two breaths, with four pulse-beats to each breath and this, of course, is the natural ratio between human breathing and the pulse. In this way, what wells up in poetry comes to actual corporeal utterance. And conversely, the poetic must come to expression through recitation and declamation out of the human being as a whole. It is as if the pulse-rhythm were playing upon the breathing-rhythm – rhythm on rhythm. And what lives in rhythm is expressed again in the musicality of speech, in lyrical poetry. All the prose content of a poem must be led back to this inner rhythmic treatment of metre and tempo. Everything that lies in the what of the content must also lie in the how of the performance, so that in discovering the one in the other there is really an experience of the whole. [Note 12] If, in poetry or reciting, we find ourselves having to exert our intellect to grasp the merely word-for-word content, then the artistic is at that point disrupted. This should really be ever-present in our mind when in any field of art we have to struggle through from inartistic content to genuine artistic form or to what has been permeated by the element of music. The latter is especially evident in reciting or declaiming a poem that is lyrical in origin. In the case of dramatic art, too, its own artistic forms must be represented when it is expressed in speech-formation. In fact we can say: Recitation as an independent art must take account of the way that it evolves the dramatic rather differently from how it is evolved in a fully staged production. Yet the essence of the stage-production must appear in the way the speech is handled – in the recitative-declamatory treatment of the drama. What do we actually have before us when we consider poetic drama? It is essentially something that only comes into existence through the characters on stage – or, if we do not see the drama with our eyes and hear it with our ears, through what our imagination has picked up from the poetic language and set in its totality before our souls. Everything must flow in moving form. But although the drama is only complete when presented on stage, we must realise all the same that everything standing before us, the persons on the stage, everything we hear, is fundamentally the expression of a soul-quality. The soul-quality which evolves as drama, in the separate characters and in their interaction – this is really the essential content of the drama. At this point it becomes necessary to take note of what actually goes on in the soul. What goes on there, especially in the re-creation of a drama, is something imaginative; and this is so even when it is only with the poetry that we are concerned. On the stage the presentation must be pictorial. But here, too, what is spoken is a pictorial representation of what lives in the poet’s soul. What is presented on the stage is effective, not through its reality, but through what derives from the ’fair seeming’: [Note 13] it is imaginative despite its reality. And when the dramatic forms come before our souls as images – that too is imaginative, albeit in a special sense. Imagination is not experienced in its true being, but as a projection into our souls in image-form. In the same way a shadow thrown onto the wall by a three-dimensional object is related to the object itself, though in no way containing what lives in the object; as a good two-dimensional portrayal contains everything its three-dimensional subject has: so what is represented in our imaginings contains the shadow thrown there by imagination. The stage presentation is fundamentally nothing but an external, corporeal representation of what lives in these images and for this reason we feel an aversion (if we have any healthy feeling for such things) whenever in the drama external reality is merely imitated naturalistically. Dramatic art can no more tolerate realistic imitation than can the other arts of speech – though these are less liable to such difficulties. And when, as in our times, the tendency toward realism has so often emerged in drama productions, and we have seen Schiller’s characters shown on stage with their hands in their pockets! When an attempt has been made to produce a realistic imitation of external, physical nature, this only shows that we have strayed from a genuinely aesthetic perception, and little by little in the general course of civilisation lost the truly artistic. It is possible to adopt a materialistic world-conception, and in a certain sense this is appropriate for the external organic world. In outer life it is possible to be realistic, but it is not so in art. For what we then produce is no longer in the domain of art at all – and this can be seen both in the drama itself and in the way speech is handled in these dramatic productions. It is really a matter of putting everything an artistic speech-formation can achieve into the treatment of the language. This comprises the most varied elements. I should only like to point out a few details – our limited time does not allow more. There may exist, for example, in what is presented through speech-formation, a sort of average tempo. We feel this and starting from this average tempo we can effect a transition to a quicker one, to a more rapid delivery of the words, or to a slower one. The first, the more rapid delivery, always expresses a kind of going-out of the human “I” – a going out from oneself and widely extending oneself. Naturally one can feel this in different ways: as a separation, for example, from some thing one longs to reach. A slowing-down of the words, notably in dramatic speech, will present a kind of being-within-oneself. Everything expressed in a self-collected contemplation, a resting within oneself, will be connected with a slowing-down of the tempo. Another formative principle lies in the raising or lowering of the pitch. The first is connected with the spiritualisation of an inner experience, with an ascending of the “I” above itself. Going out of oneself in wide extension is connected with the tempo: and ascending above oneself is associated with a rising in pitch. Everything in the content which strives toward spiritualisation (even if only a spiritualisation in which the human intellect is overpowered by the will, by ardour, by enthusiasm) will bring itself to formative expression in raising the pitch. And when a human being sinks below the level of his ordinary life, whether in sorrow or in inwardness, this will be connected with a fall in pitch. All this will find particular expression in dramatic art and everything dramatic speech-formation demands will have to flow into the element of form – so that everything must be grasped, not by the sheer power of intellect, but as an expression of this formative treatment of speech – and of course, if it is a matter of stage production, through the gestures. It will all flow into this special way of speaking, so that in the very speech we can feel what the content is. It will not be very easy to bring certain things in dramatic art to perfection, because (as Aristotle already knew) drama has to do with causal connections in life; and for this reason what may be called the dramatic score, in the sense we spoke of earlier as that which has to be realised, is very largely based on an implicit understanding and discernment. It must be transformed into something that can be attained through the speech-formation itself: through tempo, metre, rhythm, the rise and fall of the pitch, etc. It is from the speech-formation that the images which arise before the soul must flow. We must enter into such intimacies of human life if we wish to find the truly artistic. Dramatic art itself, because it is lifted out of physical experience through imagination (even if only a reflection, a shadowy image of true imagination) can only become effective if it shows itself in the style, in the handling of the speech. Hence in dramatic art, even down to the treatment of speech, it is for dramatic style that one will have to cultivate a special sense. Style, not realism, must be all-important. Hence we can say that what has been developed in the way of dramatic style in the French theatre and has been imitated in other languages, what culminated in the classical French presentation of tragedy can stand before us like a model from which to learn the formation of a dramatic style. From the style in which the French classics were, until quite recently, presented on the French stage (and after them the non-classical drama too), we shall be able to obtain a good idea of how a uniquely dramatic mode stands out against naturalistic speech, such as depends on intellectual understanding rather than the element of form. Two passages, taken from the German and the French, will exemplify what I have roughly tried to indicate as regards dramatic style and the dramatic treatment of speech. Recitation by Marie Steiner. From Schiller’s Wilhelm Tell, Act IV, Scene 5: TELL (enters with his crossbow): Durch diese hohle Gasse muss er kommen; Es führt kein andrer Weg nach Küssnacht – Hier Vollend’ ich’s. – Die Gelegenheit ist günstig. Dort der Holunderstrauch verbirgt mich ihm, Von dort herab kann ihn mein Pfeil erlangen; Des Weges Enge wehret den Verfolgern. Mach deine Rechnung mit dem Himmel, Vogt, Fort musst du, deine Uhr ist abgelaufen.
Ich lebte still und harmlos – Das Geschoss War auf des Waldes Tiere nur gerichtet, Meine Gedanken waren rein von Mord – Du hast aus meinem Frieden mich heraus Geschreckt, in gärend Drachengift hast du Die Milch der frommen Denkart mir verwandelt, Zum Ungeheuren hast du mich gewöhnt – Wer sich des Kindes Haupt zum Ziele setzte, Der kann auch treffen in das Herz des Feinds.
Die armen Kindlein, die unschuldigen, Das treue Weib muss ich vor deiner Wut Beschützen, Landvogt! – Da, als ich den Bogenstrang Anzog – als mir die Hand erzitterte – Als du mit grausam teufelischer Lust Mich zwangst, aufs Haupt des Kindes anzulegen – Als ich ohnmächtig flehend rang vor dir, Damals gelobt’ ich mir in meinem Innern Mit furchtbarm Eidschwur, den nur Gott gehört, Dass meines nächsten Schusses erstes Ziel Dein Herz sein sollte. – Was ich mir gelobt In jenes Augenblickes Höllenqualen, Ist eine heil’ge Schuld – ich will sie zahlen.
Du bist mein Herr und meines Kaisers Vogt; Doch nicht der Kaiser hätte sich erlaubt, Was du. – Er sandte dich in diese Lande, Um Hecht zu sprechen – strenges, denn er zürnet – Doch nicht um mit der mörderischen Lust Dich jedes Greuels straflos zu erfrechen; Es lebt ein Gott, zu strafen und zu rächen.
Komm du hervor, du Bringer bittrer Schmerzen, Mein teures Kleinod jetzt, mein höchster Schatz – Ein Ziel will ich dir geben, das bis jetzt Der frommen Bitte undurchdringlich war – Doch dir soll es nicht widerstehn. – Und du, Vertraute Bogensehne, die so oft Mir treu gedient hat in der Freude Spielen, Verlass mich nicht im fürchterlichen Ernst: Nur jetzt noch halte fest, du treuer Strang, Der mir so oft den herben Pfeil beflügelt – Entränn’ er jetzo kraftlos meinen Händen, Ich habe keinen zweiten zu versenden.
(Wanderers pass over the stage.)
Auf dieser Bank von Stein will ich mich setzen, Dem Wanderer zur kurzen Ruh bereitet – Denn hier ist keine Heimat. – Jeder treibt Sich an dem andern rasch und fremd vorüber Und fraget nicht nach seinem Schmerz. – Hier geht Der sorgenvolle Kaufmann und der leicht Geschürzte Pilger – der andächtige Mönch, Der düstre Räuber und der heitre Spielmann, Der Säumer mit dem schwerbeladnen Ross, Der ferne herkommt von der Menschen Ländern, Denn jede Strasse führt ans End’ der Welt. Sie alle ziehen ihres Weges fort An ihr Geschäft – und meines ist der Mord’. (Sits down)
– Sonst, wenn der Vater auszog, liebe Kinder, Da war ein Freuen, wenn er wiederkam; Denn niemals kehrt’ er heim, er bracht’ euch etwas, Warts eine schöne Alpenblume, war’s Ein seltner Vogel oder Ammonshorn, Wie es der Wandrer findet auf den Bergen – Jetzt geht er einem andern Weidwerk nach, Am wilden Weg sitzt er mit Mordgedanken; Des Feindes Leben ist’s, worauf er lauert. – Und doch an euch nur denkt er, liebe Kinder, Auch jetzt – euch zu verteidigen, eure holde Unschuld Zu schützen vor der Rache des Tyrannen, Will er zum Morde jetzt den Bogen spannen. (Stands up). Ich laure auf ein edles Wild. – Lässt sich’s Der Jäger nicht verdriessen, tagelang Umher zu streifen in des Winters Strenge, Von Fels zu Fels den Wagesprung zu tun, Hinan zu klimmen an den glatten Wänden, Wo er sich anleimt mit dem eignen Blut, – Um ein armselig Grattier zu erjagen. Hier gilt es einen köstlicheren Preis, Das Herz des Todfeinds, der mich will verderben. (Gay music in the distance coming nearer.)
Mein ganzes Lebelang hab’ ich den Bogen Gehandhabt, mich geübt nach Schützenregel; Ich habe oft geschossen in das Schwarze Und manchen schönen Preis mir heimgebracht Vom Freudenschiessen. – Aber heute will ich Den Meisterschuss tun und das beste mir Im ganzen Umkreis des Gebirgs gewinnen. Friedrich Schiller (1759-1805). [A speech from Dryden’s All for Love: or, The World Well Lost (his “imitation” of Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra) may stand here as a sample of the Neoclassical drama in England. It comprises Act I, Scene i, 237ff: ANTONY (having thrown himself down) : Lye there, thou shadow of an Emperor; The place thou pressest on thy Mother-earth Is all thy Empire now: now it contains thee; Some few days hence, and then ’twill be too large, When thou’rt contracted in thy narrow Urn, Shrunk to a few cold Ashes; then Octavia, (For Cleopatra will not live to see it) Octavia then will have thee all her own, And bear thee in her Widow’d hand to Caesar; Caesar will weep, the Crocodile will weep, To see his Rival of the Universe Lie still and peaceful there. I’le think no more on’t. Give me some Musick; look that it be sad: I’le sooth my Melancholy till I swell, And burst my self with sighing—Soft Musick ‘Tis somewhat to my humor. Stay, I fancy I’m now turn’d wild, a Commoner of Nature; Of all forsaken, and forsaking all; Live in a shady Forest’s Sylvan Scene, Stretch’d at my length beneath some blasted Oke; I lean my head upon the Mossy Bark, And look just of a piece, as I grew from it: My uncomb’d Locks, matted like Misleto, Hang o’re my hoary Face; a mirm’ring Brook Runs at my foot… The Herd come jumping by me, And fearless, quench their thirst, while I look on, And take me for their fellow-Citizen, More of this Image, more; it lulls my thoughts. (Soft Musick again) John Dryden (1631-1700).] From Le Cid, Act III, Scene 4:
CHIMÈNE: Ah! Rodrigue, il est vrai, quoique ton ennemie, Je ne puis te blâmer d’avoir fui l’infamie; Et, de quelque façon qu’éclatent mes douleurs, Je ne t’accuse point, je pleure mes malheurs. Je sais ce que l’honneur, aprés un tel outrage, Demandait à 1’ardeur d’un généreux courage: Tu n’as fait le devoir que d’un homme de bien; Mais aussi, le faisant, tu m’as appris le mien. Ta funeste valeur m’instruit par ta victoire; Elle a vengé ton père et soutenu ta gloire: Même soin me regarde, et j’ai, pour m’affliger, Ma gloire à soutenir, et mon père à venger. Hélas! ton intérêt ici me désespère: Si quelque autre malheur m’avait ravi mon père, Mon âme aurait trouvé dans le bien de te voir L’unique allégement qu’elle eût pu recevoir; Et contre ma douleur j’aurais senti des charmes Quand une main si chére eût essuyé mes larmes. Mais il me faut te perdre après l’avoir perdu; Cet effort sur ma flamme a mon honneur est dû; Et cet affreux devoir, dont l’ordre m’assassine, Me force à travailler moi-même à ta ruine. Car enfin n’attends pas de mon affection De lâches sentiments pour ta punition. De quoi qu’en ta faveur notre amour m’entretienne, Ma générosité doit répondre à la tienne: Tu t’es, en m’offensant, montré digne de moi; Je me dois, par ta mort, montrer digne de toi.
RODRIGUE: Ne diffère donc plus ce que l’honneur t’ordonne: demande ma tête, et je te l’abandonne; Fais-en un sacrifice a ce noble intérêt; Le coup m’en sera doux, aussi bien que l’arrêt. Attendre après mon crime une lente justice, C’est reculer ta gloire autant que mon supplice. Je mourrai trop heureux, mourant d’un coup si beau.
CHIMÈNE: Va, je suis ta partie, et non pas ton bourreau. Si tu m’offres ta tête, est-ce à moi de la prendre? Je la dois attaquer, mais tu dois la défendre: C’est d’un autre que toi qu’il me faut l’obtenir Et je dois te poursuivre, et non pas te punir.
RODRIGUE: De quoi qu’en ma faveur notre amour t’entretienne. Ta générosité doit répondre à la mienne; Et, pour venger un père, emprunter d’autres bras Ma Chimène, crois-moi, c’est n’y répondre pas. Ma main seule du mien a su venger l’offense, Ta main seule du tien doit prendre la vengeance.
CHIMÈNE: Cruel! à quel propos sur ce point t’obstiner? Tu t’es vengé sans aide, et tu m’en veux donner! Je suivrai ton exemple, et j’ai trop de courage Pour souffrir qu’avec toi ma gloire se partage. Mon père et mon honneur ne veulent rien devoir Aux traits de ton amour ni de ton désespoir.
RODRIGUE: Rigoureux point d’honneur. Hélas! quoi que je fasse. Ne pourrai-je à la fin obtenir cette grâce? Au nom d’un père mort, ou de notre amitié Punis-moi par vengeance, ou du moins par pitié. Ton malheureux amant aura bien moins de peine A mourir par ta main qu’à vivre avec ta haine.
CHIMÈNE: Va, je ne te hais point.
RODRIGUE: Tu le dois.
CHIMÈNE: Je ne puis. Pierre Corneille (1606-1684). We shall continue now with something about the prose-poem. Here it is a matter of something in the artist’s soul which he experiences as poetry, but which cannot be expressed in any of the art-forms generally employed. Although put into prose, it is nonetheless a genuinely poetic art that is brought to expression in this form. But anything cast in the form of a prose-poem will need special treatment when it is expressed in speech-formation. It is almost universally – though quite erroneously – assumed that the recitation or declamation of prose-poems is something easy to accomplish. In reality, the recitative-declamatory speaking of prose-poetry is the most difficult, as it represents the most intimate form of the art. Everything that comes to light in lyric, dramatic or epic speech-formation, whether of a more delicate or more profound nature, must form a synthesis whenever a prose-poem is to be presented in oral production. In recitation of this kind everything that is to be found in verse, or any form of poetic art, will sound forth – but with a more delicate shading. In this way, merely touching upon what otherwise appears in the recitation and declamation with stronger emphasis, with more marked contours – by giving this only gentle emphasis – the recital will become essentially suffused with soul. Suffused with soul! The artistic recital of prose-poetry must become much more soul-filled: it must occasion our going beyond the conceptual understanding of the words toward something imaginative. The energetic impetus that underlies logical inference, for example, leads toward an image-forming experience; [Note 14] and at the same time there sounds through softly, as something musical, the octave. The image-forming treatment of speech in a prose-poem, when presented in recitation or declamation, is like a continually flowing stream with its even waves. And, as if from the depths, other waves arise, bringing variation into its even flow – this is the delicate musical element which should become perceptible in this kind of recitation. In speaking a prose-poem with poetic sensibility, the more intimate features of a language will come to light and the raising of what looks like a prose production into a poetical work, into the realm of art and poetry, is something of a triumph which man can give to his language. What we may call the soul of a language finds a very adequate embodiment there. We will now take an example – from The Apprentices of Sais by Novalis. In this novel, which remained unfinished, there is a wonderful little passage of prose in which all that I have tried to indicate about the recitation and declamation of prose-poems comes into prominence. The essential thing is that everything which otherwise comes to light in the reciting of poetry is transformed, through acquiring a more intimate character, into a particular mood or feeling. Everything, on the other hand, that serves to differentiate the mood will be taken up into the totality of the mood as a whole. Something like this can be attempted in an outstanding piece of prose like the fairy-tale in Novalis’ The Apprentices of Sais. In this wonderful fairy-tale, as in so much that has come to us from Novalis, is revealed the whole depth of his soul. The handsome youth Hyacinth loves the maiden Rosepetal. It is a love cherished in secret – only the flowers and the animals of the forest know of the love of the handsome youth for the maiden Rosepetal. And then there appears a man with a long beard, who makes a wondrous impression and tells marvellous stories, in which the handsome youth Hyacinth becomes completely immersed. He is seized with a great longing for the veiled Virgin, for the veiled image of Truth. His soul trembles with longing, which also enlarges his vision so that he becomes estranged from his immediate surroundings, and his heart yearns for the image of the veiled Virgin. He forsakes Rosepetal, who remains behind weeping. He wanders through all sorts of unknown regions, and comes to know many things on his way; and at last he arrives at the Temple of Isis. Everything seems familiar to him, and yet different from what he had experienced before – it seems so much more splendid. And behold! he ventures to lift the veil! and Rosepetal falls into his arms. It would be hard to represent with more intimate feeling the expansion of the soul out of her subjectivity into the wide universe; it would be hard to represent more intimately the longing of man for truth – hard to link more closely what man can experience when he rises to the highest spheres of truth with what he lives through in his most direct, intimate day-to-day experiences. All that is needed is sufficient intimacy of soul. What is expressed in this prose fairy-tale can only be brought to light by a soul such as that of Novalis, who really felt everyday life in such a way that it was for him a direct expression of the eternal. Novalis, after his first love had died, was able in inward truth of soul to live with her and to feel the direct presence of one who was in the other world as if she were in this world. Novalis’ soul was truly able to experience the super-sensible in the sensible and so raise what belongs to the sense-world to assume the character of the super-sensible. Everything flowed together in Novalis: striving after truth, striving after beauty and religious ardour. Only if we understand his comprehensiveness do we understand Novalis. Hence there could arise the remarkable feeling which resounds through The Apprentices of Sais, and wrests itself from Novalis’s soul: man has felt that in the image of Isis truth is veiled; “I am the past, the present and the future, no mortal as yet has lifted my veil” – that is the pronouncement of the veiled Isis and Novalis was sensible of it. Confronted with “No mortal as yet has lifted my veil”, Novalis responded with “Then we must become immortal”. Novalis never despaired of the soul’s ability to lift the veil of truth: but the soul must first become immediately aware of her own immortality. A man who experiences his immortality in himself may, in the sense of Novalis, lift the veil of truth. It is a powerful saying – “Then we must become immortal”. What lives in this feeling in a far-reaching way meets us again in an intimate mood when the handsome youth Hyacinth comes to the Temple of Isisafter long dream-wanderings through unknown regions, which are nonetheless familiar to him, though now appearing more splendid than he had once known. He comes to the Temple of Isis, lifts the veil and what he knows and loves – Rosepetal – comes to meet him. Yet, as we can envisage and feel intimately in this prose fairy-tale, she has become through this experience of eternity much more splendid than she once was. Truly it is a prose-poem conceived in a mood where the highest to which man can aspire takes the form of the most intimate – one of the fairest flowers of poetic prose, demonstrating that, in what is apparently prose, true poetry can be expressed. From Die Lehrlinge zu Sais: DAS MÄRCHEN VON HYAZINTH UND ROSENBLÜTE Vor langen Zeiten lebte weit gegen Abend ein blutjunger Mensch. Er war sehr gut, aber auch über die Massen wunderlich. Er grämte sich unaufhorlich um nichts und wieder nichts, ging immer still für sich hin, setzte sich einsam, wenn die andern spielten und fröhlich waren, und hing seltsamen Dingen nach. Höhlen und Wälder waren sein liebster Aufenthalt, und dann sprach er immerfort mit Tieren und Vögeln, mit Bäumen und Felsen, natürlich kein vernünftiges Wort, lauter närrisches Zeug zum Totlachen. Er blieb aber immer mürrisch und ernsthaft, ungeachtet sich das Eichhörnchen, die Meerkatze, der Papagei und der Gimpel alle Mühe gaben, ihn zu zerstreuen und ihn auf den richtigen Weg zu weisen. Die Gans erzählte Märchen, der Bach klimperte eine Ballade dazwischen, ein grosser dicker Stein machte lächerliche Bockssprünge, die Rose schlich sich freundlich hinter ihm herum, kroch durch seine Locken, und der Efeu streichelte ihm die sorgenvolle Stirn.—Allein der Missmut und Ernst waren hartnäckig. Seine Eltern waren sehr betrübt, sie wussten nicht, was sie anfangen sollten. Er war gesund und ass, nie hatten sie ihn beleidigt, er war auch bis vor wenig Jahren fröhlich und lustig gewesen, wie keiner; bei allen Spielen voran, von allen Mädchen gern gesehn. Er war recht bildschön, sah aus wie gemalt, tanzte wie ein Schatz. Unter den Mädchen war eine, ein köstliches, bildschönes Kind, sah aus wie Wachs, Haare wie goldne Seide, kirschrote Lippen, wie ein Püppchen gewachsen, brandrabenschwarze Augen. Wer sie sah, hätte mögen vergehn, so lieblich war sie. Damals war Rosenblüte, so hiess sie, dem bildschönen Hyazinth, so hiess er, von Herzen gut, und er hatte sie lieb zum Sterben. Die andern Kinder wussten’s nicht. Ein Veilchen hatte es ihnen zuerst gesagt, die Hauskätzchen hatten es wohl gemerkt, die Häuser ihrer Eltern lagen nahe beisammen. Wenn nun Hyazinth die Nacht an seinem Fenster stand und Rosenblüte an ihrem, und die Kätzchen auf den Mäusefang da vorbeiliefen, da sahen sie die beiden stehn und lachten und kicherten oft so laut, dass sie es hörten und böse wurden. Das Veilchen hatte es der Erdbeere im Vertrauen gesagt, die sagte es ihrer Freundin, der Stachelbeere, die liess nun das Sticheln nicht, wenn Hyazinth gegangen kam; so erfuhr’s denn bald der ganze Garten und der Wald, und wenn Hyazinth ausging, so rief’s von allen Seiten: Rosenblütchen ist mein Schätzchen! Nun ärgerte sich Hyazinth und musste doch auch wieder aus Herzensgrunde lachen, wenn das Eidechschen geschlüpft kam, sich auf einen warmen Stein setzte, mit dem Schwänzchen wedelte und sang:
Rosenblütchen, das gute Kind, Ist geworden auf einmal blind, Denkt, die Mutter sei Hyazinth, Fällt ihm um den Hals geschwind; Merkt sie aber das fremde Gesicht, Denkt nur an, da erschrickt sie nicht, Fährt, als merkte sie kein Wort, Immer nur mit Küssen fort.
Ach! wie bald war die Herrlichkeit vorbei. Es kam ein Mann aus fremden Landen gegangen, der war erstaunlich weit gereist, hatte einen langen Bart, tiefe Augen, entsetzliche Augenbrauen, ein wunderliches Kleid mit vielen Falten und seltsamen Figuren hineingewebt. Er setzte sich vor das Haus, das Hyazinths Eltern gehörte. Nun war Hyazinth sehr neugierig und setzte sich zu ihm und holte ihm Brot und Wein. Da tat er seinen weissen Bart voneinander und erzählte bis tief in die Nacht, und Hyazinth wich und wankte nicht und wurde auch nicht müde zuzuhören. So viel man nachher vernahm, so hat er viel von fremden Ländern, unbekannten Gegenden, von erstaunlich wunderbaren Sachen erzählt und ist drei Tage dageblieben und mit Hyazinth in tiefe Schachten hinuntergekrochen. Rosenblütchen hat genug den alten Hexenmeister verwünscht, denn Hyazinth ist ganz versessen auf seine Gespräche gewesen und hat sich um nichts bekümmert; kaum dass er ein wenig Speise zu sich genommen. Endlich hat jener sich fortgemacht, doch dem Hyazinth ein Büchelchen dagelassen, das kein Mensch lesen konnte. Dieser hat ihm noch Früchte, Brot und Wein mitgegeben und ihn weit weg begleitet. Und dann ist er tiefsinnig zurückgekommen und hat einen ganz neuen Lebenswandel begonnen. Rosenblütchen hat recht zum Erbarmen um ihn getan, denn von der Zeit an hat er sich wenig aus ihr gemacht und ist immer für sich geblieben. Nun begab sich’s, dass er einmal nach Hause kam und war wie neu geboren. Er fiel seinen Eltern um den Hals und weinte. ‘Ich muss fort in fremde Lande’, sagte er, ‘die alte wunderliche Frau im Walde hat mir erzählt, wie ich gesund werden müsste, das Buch hat sie ins Feuer geworfen und hat mich getrieben, zu euch zu gehn und euch um euren Segen zu bitten. Vielleicht komme ich bald, vielleicht nie wieder. Grüsst Rosenblütchen. Ich hätte sie gern gesprochen, ich weiss nicht, wie mir ist, es drängt mich fort; wenn ich an die alten Zeiten zurückdenken will, so kommen gleich mächtigere Gedanken dazwischen, die Ruhe ist fort, Herz und Liebe mit, ich muss sie suchen gehn. Ich wollt euch gern sagen, wohin, ich weiss selbst nicht, dahin wo die Mutter der Dinge wohnt, die verschleierte Jungfrau. Nach der ist mein Gemüt entzundet. Lebt wohl.’ Er riss sich los und ging fort. Seine Eltern wehklagten und vergossen Tränen, Rosenblütchen blieb in ihrer Kammer und weinte bitterlich. Hyazinth lief nun, was er konnte, durch Täler und Wildnisse, über Berge und Ströme, dem geheimnisvollen Lande zu. Er fragte überall nach der heiligen Göttin, Menschen und Tiere, Felsen und Bäume. Manche lachten, manche schwiegen, nirgends erhielt er Bescheid. Im Anfange kam er durch rauhes, wildes Land, Nebel und Wolken warfen sich ihm in den Weg, es stürmte immerfort; dann fand er unabsehliche Sandwüsten, glühenden Staub, und wie er wandelte, so veränderte sich auch sein Gemüt, die Zeit wurde ihm lang, und die innre Unruhe legte sich, er wurde sanfter und das gewaltige Treiben in ihm allgemach zu einem leisen, aber starken Zuge, in den sein ganzes Gemüt sich auflöste. Es lag wie viele Jahre hinter ihm. Nun wurde die Gegend auch wieder reicher und mannigfaltiger, die Luft lau und blau, der Weg ebener, grüne Büsche lockten ihn mit anmutigen Schatten, aber er verstand ihre Sprache nicht, sie schienen auch nicht zu sprechen, und doch erfüllten sie auch sein Herz mit grünen Farben und kühlem, stillem Wesen. Immer höher wuchs jene süsse Sehnsucht in ihm, und immer breiter und saftiger wurden die Blätter, immer lauter und lustiger die Vögel und Tiere, balsamischer die Früchte, dunkler der Himmel, wärmer die Luft, und heisser seine Liebe, die Zeit ging immer schneller, als sähe sie sich nahe am Ziele. Eines Tages begegnete er einem kristallnen Quell und einer Menge Blumen, die kamen in ein Tal herunter zwischen schwarzen himmelhohen Säulen. Sie grüssten ihn freundlich mit bekannten Worten. ‘Liebe Landsleute’, sagte er, ‘wo find’ ich wohl den geheiligten Wohnsitz der Isis? Hier herum muss er sein, und ihr seid vielleicht hier bekannter als ich.’ ‘Wir gehn auch nur hier durch’, antworteten die Blumen; ‘eine Geisterfamilie ist auf der Reise, und wir bereiten ihr Weg und Quartier, indes sind wir vor kurzem durch eine Gegend gekommen, da hörten wir ihren Namen nennen. Gehe nur aufwärts, wo wir herkommen, so wirst du schon mehr erfahren.’ Die Blumen und die Quelle lächelten, wie sie das sagten, boten ihm einen frischen Trunk und gingen weiter. Hyazinth folgte ihrem Rat, frug und frug und kam endlich zu jener längst gesuchten Wohnung, die unter Palmen und andern köstlichen Gewächsen versteckt lag. Sein Herz klopfte in unendlicher Sehnsucht, und die süsseste Bangigkeit durchdrang ihn in dieser Behausung der ewigen Jahreszeiten. Unter himmlischen Wohlgedüften entschlummerte er, weil ihn nur der Traum in das Allerheiligste führen durfte. Wunderlich führte ihn der Traum durch unendliche Gemächer voll seltsamer Sachen auf lauter reizenden Klängen und in abwechselnden Akkorden. Es dünkte ihm alles so bekannt und doch in niegesehener Herrlichkeit, da schwand auch der letzte irdische Anflug, wie in Luft verzehrt, und er stand vor der himmlischen Jungfrau. Da hob er den leichten, glänzenden Schleier, und Rosenblütchen sank in seine Arme. Eine ferne Musik umgab die Geheimnisse des liebenden Wiedersehns, die Ergiessungen der Sehnsucht, und schloss alles Fremde von diesem entzückenden Orte aus. Hyazinth lebte nachher noch lange mit Rosenblütchen unter seinen frohen Eltern und Gespielen, und unzählige Enkel dankten der alten wunderlichen Frau für ihren Rat und ihr Feuer; denn damals bekamen die Menschen so viel Kinder, als sie wollten.— Novalis (1772-1801). [The prose-poem is a relatively rare beast in English literature; but one of its descendants is the lyrical novel, as practised by (among others) Joyce. [Note 15] This is one of the formal poetic “epiphanies” from his A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, ch. 4:
Her image had passed into his soul for ever and no word had broken the holy silence of his ecstasy. Her eyes had called him and his soul had leaped at the call. To live, to err, to fall, to triumph, to recreate life out of life: A wild angel had appeared to him, the angel of mortal youth and beauty, an envoy from the fair courts of life, to throw open before him in an instant of ecstasy the gates of all the ways of error and glory. On and on and on and on. He halted suddenly and heard his heart in the silence. How far had he walked? What hour was it? There was no human figure near him nor any sound borne to him over the air. But the tide was near the turn and already the day was on the wane. He turned landward and ran towards the shore and, running up the sloping beach, reckless of the sharp shingle, found a sandy nook amid a ring of tufted sandknolls and lay down there that the peace and silence of the evening might still the riot of his blood. He felt above him the vast indifferent dome and the calm processes of the heavenly bodies; and the earth beneath him, the earth that had borne him, had taken him to her breast. He closed his eyes in the languor of sleep. His eyelids trembled as if they felt the vast cyclic movement of the earth and her watcher, trembled as if they felt the strange light of some new world. His soul was swooning into some new world, fantastic, dim, uncertain as under sea, traversed by cloudy shapes and beings. A world, a glimmer or a flower? Glimmering and trembling, trembling and unfolding, a breaking light, an opening flower, it spread in endless succession to itself, breaking in full crimson and unfolding and fading to palest rose, leaf by leaf and wave of light by wave of light, flooding all the heavens with its soft flushes, every flush deeper than the other. Evening had fallen when he woke and the sand and arid grasses of his bed glowed no longer. He rose slowly and, recalling the rapture of his sleep, sighed at its joy. He climbed to the crest of the sandhill and gazed about him. Evening had fallen. A rim of the young moon cleft the pale waste of skyline, the rim of a silver hoop embedded in grey sand; and the tide was flowing in fast to the land with a low whisper of her waves, islanding a few last figures in distant pools. James Joyce (1882-1941).] |
| 18. The Riddles of Philosophy: Darwinism and World Conception
Translated by Fritz C. A. Koelln Rudolf Steiner |
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| [ 38 ] One must not confuse this mode of conception with one that dreams souls in a hazy mystical fashion into the entities of nature and then assumes that they are more or less similar to that of man. |
| 18. The Riddles of Philosophy: Darwinism and World Conception
Translated by Fritz C. A. Koelln Rudolf Steiner |
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[ 1 ] If the thought of the teleological structure of nature was to be reformed in the sense of a naturalistic world conception, the purpose-adjusted formation of the organic world had to be explained in the same fashion as the physicist or the chemist explains the lifeless processes. When a magnet attracts iron shavings, no physicist will assume that there is a force at work in the magnet that aims toward the purpose of the attraction. When hydrogen and oxygen form water as a compound, the chemist does not interpret this process as if something in both substances had been actively striving toward the purpose of forming water. An explanation of living beings that is guided by a similar naturalistic mode of thinking must conclude that organisms become purpose-adjusted without anything in nature planning this purpose-conformity. This conformity comes to pass without being anywhere intended. Such an explanation was given by Charles Darwin. He took the point of view that there is nothing in nature that plans the design. Nature is never in a position to consider whether its products are adequate to a purpose or not. It produces without choosing between what is adequate to a purpose and what is not. [ 2 ] What is the meaning of this distinction anyhow? When is a thing in conformity with a purpose? Is it not when it is so arranged that the external circumstances correspond to its needs, to its life conditions? A thing is inadequate to purpose when this is not the case. What will happen if, while a complete absence of plan in nature characterizes the situation, formations of all degrees of purpose-conformity, from the most to the least adequately adapted form, come into existence? Every being will attempt to adapt its existence to the given circumstances. A being well-adjusted to life will do so without much difficulty; one less adequately endowed will succeed only to a lesser degree. The fact must be added to this that nature is not a parsimonious housekeeper in regard to the production of living beings. The number of germs is prodigious. The abundant production of germs is backed up by inadequate means for the support of life. The effect of this will be that those beings that are better adapted to the acquisition of food will more easily succeed in their development. A well-adapted organic being will prevail in the strife for existence over a less adequately adjusted one. The latter must perish in this competition. The fit, that is to say, the one adapted to the purpose of life, survives; the unfit, that is, the one not so adapted, does not. This is the “struggle for life.” Thus, the forms adequate to the purpose of life are preserved even if nature itself produces, without choice, the inadequate side by side with the adequate. Through a law, then, that is as objective and as devoid of any wise purpose as any mathematical or mechanical law of nature can be, the course of nature's evolution receives a tendency toward a purpose-conformity that is not originally inherent in it. [ 3 ] Darwin was led to this thought through the work of the social economist Malthus entitled Essay on the Principle of Population (1798). In this essay the view is advanced that there is a perpetual competition going on in human society because the population grows at a much faster pace than the supply of food. This law that Malthus had stated as valid for the history of mankind, was generalized by Darwin into a comprehensive law of the whole world of life. [ 4 ] Darwin now set out to show how this struggle for existence becomes the creator of the various forms of living beings and that thereby the old principle of Linnaeus was overthrown, that “we have to count as many species in the animals and vegetable kingdoms as had been principally created.” The doubt against this principle was clearly formed in Darwin's mind when, in the years 1831–36, he was on a journey to South America and Australia. He tells how this doubt took shape in him.
The answer to this question is contained in the naturalistic conception of the evolution of the living organism. As the physicist subjects a substance to different conditions in order to study its properties, so Darwin, after his return, observed the phenomena that resulted in living beings under different circumstances. He made experiments in breeding pigeons, chickens, dogs, rabbits and plants. Through these experiments it was shown that the living forms continuously change in the course of their propagation. Under certain circumstances some living organisms change so much after a few generations that in comparing the newly bred forms with their ancestors, one could speak of two completely different species, each of which follows its own design of organization. Such a variability of forms is used by the breeder in order to develop organisms through cultivation that answer certain demands. A breeder can produce a species of sheep with an especially fine wool if he allows only those specimens of his flock to be propagated that have the finest wool. The quality of the wool is then improved in the course of the generations. After some time, a species of sheep is obtained which, in the formation of its wool, has progressed far beyond its ancestors. The same is true with other qualities of living organisms. Two conclusions can be drawn from this fact. The first is that nature has the tendency to change living beings; the second, that a quality that has begun to change in a certain direction increases in that direction, if in the process of propagation of organic beings those specimens that do not have this quality are excluded. The organic forms then assume other qualities in the course of time, and continue in the direction of their change once this process has begun. They change and transmit the changed qualities to their descendants. [ 5 ] The natural conclusion from this observation is that change and hereditary transmission are two driving principles in the evolution of organic beings. If it is to be assumed that in the natural course of events in the world, formations that are adapted to life come into being side by side with those not adapted as well as others, it must also be supposed that the struggle for life takes place in the most diversified forms. This struggle effects, without a plan, what the breeder does with the aid of a preconceived plan. As the breeder excludes the specimen from the process of propagation that would introduce undesired qualities into the development, so the struggle for life eliminates the unfit. Only the fit survive in evolution. The tendency for perpetual perfection enters thus into the evolutionary process like a mechanical law. After Darwin had seen this and after he had thereby laid a firm foundation to a naturalistic world conception, he could write the enthusiastic words at the end of his work, The Origin of Species, which introduced a new epoch of thought:
At the same time one can see from this sentence that Darwin does not derive his conception from any anti-religious sentiment but merely from the conclusions that for him follow from distinctly significant facts. It was not hostility against the needs of religious experience that persuaded him to a rational view of nature, for he tells us distinctly in his book how this newly acquired world of ideas appeals to his heart.
[ 6 ] Darwin showed in great detail how the organisms grow and spread, how, in the course of their development, they transmit their properties once they are acquired, how new organs are produced and change through use or through lack of use, how in this way the organic beings are adjusted to their conditions of existence and how finally through the struggle for life a natural selection takes place by means of which an ever increasing variety of more and more perfect forms come into being. [ 7 ] In this way an explanation of teleologically adjusted beings seems to be found that requires no other method for organic nature than that which is used in inorganic nature. As long as it was impossible to offer an explanation of this kind it had to be admitted, if one wanted to be consistent, that everywhere in nature where a purpose-adjusted being came into existence, the intervention of an extraneous power had to be assumed. In every such case one had to admit a miracle. [ 8 ] Those who for decades before the appearance of Darwin's work had endeavored to find a naturalistic world and life conception now felt most vividly that a new direction of thought had been given. This feeling is expressed by David Friedrich Strauss in his book, The Old and the New Faith (1872).
[ 9 ] Through Darwin's idea of fitness it is possible to think the concept of evolution really in the form of a natural law. The old doctrine of involution, which assumes that everything that comes into existence has been there in a hidden form before (compare pages in Part 1 Chapter IX), had been deprived of its last hope with this step. In the process of evolution as conceived by Darwin, the more perfect form is in no way contained in the less perfect one, for the perfection of a higher being comes into existence through processes that have nothing whatsoever to do with the ancestors of this being. Let us assume that a certain evolutionary series has arrived at the marsupials. The form of the marsupials contains nothing at all of a higher, more perfect form. It contains only the ability to change at random in the course of its propagation. Certain circumstances then come to pass that are independent of any “inner” latent tendency of development of the form of the marsupials but that are such that of all possible variations (mutations) the pro-simians survive. The forms of the marsupials contained that of the pro-simians no more than the direction of a rolling billiard ball contains the path it will take after it has been deflected from its original course by a second billiard ball. [ 10 ] Those accustomed to an idealistic mode of thinking had no easy time in comprehending this reformed conception of evolution. Friedrich Theodor Vischer, a man of extraordinary acumen and subtlety of spirit who had come from Hegel's school, writes as late as 1874 in an essay:
[ 11 ] In another passage in the same essay he says:
[ 12 ] If Vischer had been asked whether or not he imagined that hydrogen and oxygen contained within themselves in a latent form a picture of water to make it possible for the latter to develop from the former, he would undoubtedly have answered, “No, neither in oxygen nor in hydrogen is there anything contained of the water that is formed; the conditions for the formation of this substance are given only when hydrogen and oxygen are combined under certain circumstances.” Is the situation then necessarily different when, through the two factors of the marsupials and the external conditions, the pro-simians came into being? Why should the pro-simians be contained as a possibility, as a scheme, in the marsupials in order to be capable of being developed from them? What comes into being through evolution is generated as a new formation without having been in existence in any previous form. [ 13 ] Thoughtful naturalists felt the weight of the new teleological doctrine no less than Strauss. Hermann Helmholtz belongs, without doubt, among those who, in the eighteen-fifties and sixties, could be considered as representatives of such thoughtful naturalists. He stresses the fact that the wonderful purpose-conformity in the structure of living organisms, which becomes increasingly apparent as science progresses, challenges the comparison of all life processes to human actions. For human actions are the only series of phenomena that have a character that is similar to the organic ones. The fitness of the arrangements in the world of organisms does, according to our judgment, in most cases indeed far surpass what human intelligence is capable of creating. It therefore cannot surprise us that it has occurred to people to seek the origin of the structure and function of the world of living beings in an intelligence far superior to that of man. Helmholtz says:
[ 14 ] Helmholtz now is of the opinion that such a demarcation is given by the principle of natural selection in the struggle for existence. A scientist who, like Helmholtz, belongs to the most cautious naturalists of that time, J. Henle, said in a lecture, “If the experiences of artificial breeding were to be applied to the hypothesis of Oken and Lamarck, it would have to be shown how nature proceeds in order to supply the mechanism through which the experimental breeder obtains his result. This is the task Darwin set for himself and that he pursued with admirable industry and acumen.” [ 15 ] The materialists were the ones who felt the greatest enthusiasm of all from Darwin's accomplishment. They had long been convinced that sooner or later a man like him would have to come along who would throw a philosophical light on the vast field of accumulated facts that was so much in need of a leading thought. In their opinion, the world conception for which they had fought could not fail after Darwin's discovery. Darwin approached his task as a naturalist. At first he moved within the limits reserved to the natural scientist. That his thoughts were capable of throwing a light on the fundamental problems of world conception, on the question of man's relation to nature, was merely touched upon in his book:
For the materialists, this question of the origin of man became, in the words of Buechner, a matter of most intimate concern. In lectures he gave in Offenbach during the winter of 1866–67, he says:
[ 17 ] Natural science clearly taught that man could not be an exception. On the basis of exact anatomical investigations the English physiologist, T. H. Huxley, wrote in his book, Man's Place in Nature (1863):
Could there still be a doubt in the face of such facts that natural evolution had also produced man—the same evolution that had caused the series of organic beings as far as the monkey through growth, propagation, inheritance, transmutation of forms and the struggle for life? [ 18 ] During the course of the century this fundamental view penetrated more and more into the mainstream of natural science. Goethe, to be sure, had in his own way been convinced of this, and because of this conviction he had most energetically set out to correct the opinion of his contemporaries, which held that man lacked an intermaxillary bone in his upper jaw. All animals were supposed to have this bone; only man, so one thought, did not have it. In its absence one saw the proof that man was anatomically different from the animals, that the plan of his structure was to be thought along different lines. The naturalistic mode of Goethe's thinking inspired him to undertake elaborate anatomical studies to abolish this error. When he had achieved this goal he wrote in a letter to Herder, convinced that he had made a most important contribution to the knowledge of nature; “I compared the skulls of men and animals and I found the trail, and behold, there it is. Now I ask you not to tell, for it must be treated as a secret. But I want you to enjoy it with me, for it is like the finishing stone in the structure of man; now it is complete and nothing is lacking. Just see how it is!” [ 19 ] Under the influence of such conceptions the great question of philosophy of man's relation to himself and to the external world led to the task of showing by the method of natural science what actual process had led to the formation of man in the course of evolution. Thereby the viewpoint from which one attempted to explain the phenomena of nature changed. As long as one saw in every organism including man the realization of a purposeful design of structure, one had to consider this purpose also in the explanation of organic beings. One had to consider that in the embryo the later organism is potentially indicated. When this view was extended to the whole universe, it meant that an explanation of nature fulfilled its task best if it showed how the later stages of evolution with man as the climax are prepared in the earlier stages. [ 20 ] The modern idea of evolution rejected all attempts of science to recognize the potential later phases in the earlier stages. Accordingly, the later phase was in no way contained in the earlier one. Instead, what was gradually developed was the tendency to search in the later phases for traces of the earlier ones. This principle represented one of the laws of inheritance. One can actually speak of a reversal of the tendency of explanation. This reversal became important for ontogenesis, that is, for the formation of the ideas concerning the evolution of the individual being from the egg to maturity. Instead of showing the predisposition of the later organs in the embryo, one set out to compare the various stages that an organism goes through in the course of its individual evolution from the egg to maturity with those of other forms of organisms. Lorenz Oken was already moving in this direction. In the fourth volume of his General History of Nature for All Classes of Readers he wrote:
Oken compares the stages of transformation of the insects with the other animals and finds that the caterpillars have a great similarity with worms, and the cocoons with crustaceous animals. From such similarities this ingenious thinker draws the conclusion that “there is, therefore, no doubt that we are here confronted with a conspicuous similarity that justifies the idea that the evolutionary history in the egg is nothing but a repetition of the history of the creation of the animal classes.” It came as a natural gift to this brilliant man to apprehend a great idea for which he did not even need the evidence of supporting facts. But it also lies in the nature of such subtle ideas that they have no great effect on those who work in the field of science. Oken appears like a comet on the firmament of German philosophy. His thought supplies a flood of light. From a rich treasure of ideas he suggests leading concepts for the most divergent facts. His method of formulating factual connections, however, was somewhat forced. He was too much preoccupied with the point he wanted to make. This attitude also prevailed in his treatment of the law of the repetition of certain animal forms in the ontogeny of others mentioned above. [ 21 ] In contrast to Oken, Karl Ernst von Baer kept to the facts as firmly as possible when he spoke, in his History of the Evolution of Animals (1828), of the observations that had led Oken to his idea:
Such facts of embryological development excited the greatest interest of those thinkers who tended toward Darwinism. Darwin had proven the possibility of change in organic forms and, through transformation, the species now in existence might possibly be descended from a few original forms, or perhaps only one. Now it was shown that in their first phases of development the various living organisms are so similar to each other that they can scarcely be distinguished from one another, if at all. These two ideas, the facts of comparative embryology and the idea of descent, were organically combined in 1864 by Fritz Müller (1821–97) in his thoughtful essay, Facts and Arguments for Darwin. Müller is one of those high-minded personalities who needs a naturalistic world conception because they cannot breathe spiritually without it. Also, in regard to his own action, he would feel satisfaction only when he could feel that his motivation was as necessary as a force of nature. In 1852 Müller settled in Brazil. For twelve years he was a teacher at the gymnasium in Desterro on the island of Santa Catharina, not far from the coast of Brazil. In 1867 he had to give up this position. The man of the new world conception had to give way to the reaction that, under the influence of the Jesuits, took hold of his school. Ernst Haeckel has described the life and activity of Fritz Müller in the Jenaische Zeitschrift fur Naturwissenschaft (Vol. XXXI N.F. XXIV 1897). Darwin called Müller the “prince of observers,” and the small but significant booklet, Facts and Arguments for Darwin, is the result of a wealth of observations. It deals with a particular group of organic forms, the crustaceans, which are radically different from one another in their maturity but are perfectly similar at the time when they leave the egg. If one presupposes, in the sense of Darwin's theory of descent, that all crustacean forms have developed from one original type, and if one accepts the similarity in the early stages as an inherited element of the form of their common ancestor, one has thereby combined the ideas of Darwin with those of Oken pertaining to the repetition of the history of the creation of the animal species in the evolution of the individual animal form. This combination was accomplished by Fritz Müller. He thereby brought the earlier forms of an animal class into a certain law-determined connection with the later ones, which, through transformation, have formed out of them. The fact that at an earlier stage the ancestral form of a being now living has had a particular form caused its descendants at a later time to have another particular form. By studying the stages of the development of an organism one becomes acquainted with its ancestors whose nature has caused the characteristics of the embryonic forms. Phylogenesis and ontogenesis are, in Fritz Müller's book, connected as cause and effect. With this step a new element had entered the Darwinian trend of ideas. This fact retains its significance even though Müller's investigations of the crustaceans were modified by the later research of Arnold Lang. [ 22 ] Only four years had passed since the appearance of Darwin's Origin of the Species when Müller's book was published as its defense and confirmation. Müller had shown how, with one special class of animals, one should work in the spirit of the new ideas. Then, in 1866, seven years after the Origin of the Species, a book appeared that completely absorbed this new spirit. Using the ideas of Darwinism on a high level of scientific discussion, it threw a great deal of light on the problems of the interconnection of all life phenomena. This book was Ernst Haeckel's General Morphology of Organisms. Every page reflected his attempt to arrive at a comprehensive synopsis of the totality of the phenomena of nature with the help of new thoughts. Inspired by Darwinism, Haeckel was in search of a world conception. [ 23 ] Haeckel did his best in two ways to attempt a new world conception. First, he continually contributed to the accumulation of facts that throw light on the connection of the entities and energies of nature. Second, with unbending consistency he derived from these facts the ideas that were to satisfy the human need for explanation. He held the unshakable conviction that from these facts and ideas man can arrive at a fully satisfactory world explanation. Like Goethe, Haeckel was convinced in his own way that nature proceeds in its work “according to eternal, necessary and thereby divine laws, so that not even the deity could change it.” Because this was clear to him, he worshipped his deity in these eternal and necessary laws of nature and in the substances in which they worked. As the harmony of the natural laws, which are with necessity interconnected, satisfies reason, according to his view, so it also offers to the feeling heart, or to the soul that is ethically or religiously attuned, whatever it may thirst for. In the stone that falls to the ground attracted by gravity there is a manifestation of the same divine order that is expressed in the blossom of a plant and in the human spirit that created the drama of Wilhelm Tell. [ 24 ] How erroneous is the belief that the feeling for the wonderful beauty of nature is destroyed by the penetration of reason into laws of nature is vividly demonstrated in the work of Ernst Haeckel. A rational explanation of nature had been declared to be incapable of satisfying the needs of the soul. Wherever man is disturbed in his inner life through knowledge of nature, it is not the fault of knowledge but of man himself. His sentiments are developed in a wrong direction. As we follow a naturalist like Haeckel without prejudice on his path as an observer of nature, we feel our hearts beat faster. The anatomical analysis, the microscopic investigation does not detract from natural beauty but reveals a great deal more of it. There is no doubt that there is an antagonism between reason and imagination, between reflection and intuition, in our time. The brilliant essayist, Ellen Key, is without doubt right in considering this antagonism as one of the most important phenomena of our time (compare Ellen Key, Essays, S. Fischer Verlag, Berlin, 1899). Whoever, like Ernst Haeckel, digs deep into the treasure mine of facts, boldly emerges with the thoughts resulting from these facts and climbs to the heights of human knowledge, can see in the explanation of nature only an act of reconciliation between the two contesting forces of reflection and intuition that “alternate in forcing each other into submission” (Ellen Key). Almost simultaneously with the publication of the book in which Haeckel presented with unflinching intellectual honesty his world conception derived from natural science, that is, with the appearance of his Riddles of the Universe in 1899, he began a serial publication called Artforms of Nature. In it he gives pictures of the inexhaustible wealth of wonderful formations that nature produces and that surpass “by far all artistic forms created by man” in beauty and in variety. The same man who introduces our mind to the law-determined order of nature leads our imagination to the beauty of nature. [ 25 ] The need to bring the great problems of world conception into direct contact with scientific, specialized research led Haeckel to one of the facts concerning which Goethe said that they represent the significant points at which nature yields the fundamental ideas for its explanation of its own accord, meeting us halfway in our search. This was realized by Haeckel as he investigated how Oken's thesis, which Fritz Müller had applied to the crustaceans, could be fruitfully applied to the whole animal kingdom. In all animals except the Protista, which are one-celled organisms, a cup- or jug-shaped body, the gastrula, develops from the zygote with which the organism begins its ontogenesis. This gastrula is an animal form that is to be found in the first stages of development of all animals from the sponges to man. It consists merely of skin, mouth and stomach. There is a low class of zoophytes that possess only these organs during their lives and therefore resemble gastrulae. This fact is interpreted by Haeckel from the point of view of the theory of descent. The gastrula form is an inherited form that the animal owes to the form of its common ancestor. There had been, probably millions of years before, a species of animals, the gastrae, that was built in a way similar to that of the lower zoophytes still living today—the sponges, polyps, etc. From this animal species all the various forms living today, from the polyps, sponges, etc., to man, repeat this original form in the course of their ontogenies. [ 26 ] In this way an idea of gigantic scope had been obtained. The path leading from the simple to the complicated, to the perfect form in the world of organisms, was thereby indicated in its tentative outline. A simple animal form develops under certain circumstances. One or several individuals of this form change to another form according to the conditions of life to which they are exposed. What has come into existence through this transmutation is again transmitted to descendants. There are then two different forms, the old one that has retained the form of the first stage, and a new one. Both of these forms can develop in different directions and into different degrees of perfection. After long periods of time an abundant wealth of species comes into existence through the transmission of the earlier form and through new formations by means of the process of adaptation to the conditions of life. [ 27 ] In this manner Haeckel connects today's processes in the world of organisms with the events of primeval times. If we want to explain some organ of an animal of the present age, we look back to the ancestors that had developed this organ under the circumstances in which they lived. What has come into existence through natural causes in earlier times has been handed down to our time through the process of heredity. Through the history of the species the evolution of the individual receives its explanation. The phylogenesis, therefore, contains the causes for the ontogenesis. Haeckel expresses this fact in his fundamental law of biogenetics: “The short ontogenesis or development of the individual is a rapid and brief repetition, an abbreviated recapitulation of the long process of phylogenesis, the development of the species.” [ 28 ] Through this law every attempt at explanation through special purposes, all teleology in the old sense, has been eliminated. One no longer looks for the purpose of an organ; one looks for the causes through which it has developed. A given form does not point to a goal toward which it strives, but toward the origin from which it sprang. The method of explanation for the organic phenomena has become the same as that for the inorganic. Water is not considered the aim of oxygen, nor is man considered the purpose of creation. Scientific research is directed toward the origin of, and the actual cause for, living beings. The dualistic mode of conception, which declares that the organic and the inorganic has to be explained according to two different principles, gives way to a monistic mode of conception, to a monism that has only one uniform mode of explanation for the whole of nature. [ 29 ] Haeckel characteristically points out that through his discovery the method has been found through which every dualism in the above-mentioned sense must be overcome.
After Haeckel had absorbed Darwin's view of the origin of man he defended forcefully the conclusion that must be drawn from it. It was impossible for him just to hint hesitatingly, like Darwin, at this “problem of all problems.” Anatomically and physiologically man is not distinguishable from the higher animals. Therefore, the same origin must be attributed to him as to them. Haeckel boldly defended this opinion and the consequences that followed from it for the conception of the world. There was no doubt for him that in the future the highest manifestations of man's life, the activities of his spirit, were to be considered under the same viewpoint as the function of the simplest living organism. The observation of the lowest animals, the protozoa, infusoria, rhizopods, taught him that these organisms had a soul. In their motions, in the indications of the sensations they show, he recognized manifestations of life that only had to be increased and perfected in order to develop into man's complicated actions of reason and will. [ 30 ] Beginning with the gastraea, which lived millions of years ago, what steps does nature take to arrive at man? This was the comprehensive question as stated by Haeckel. He supplied the answer in his Anthropogenesis, which appeared in 1874. In its first part, this book deals with the history of the individual (ontogenesis), in the second part, with that of the species (phylogenesis). He showed point by point how the latter contains the causes of the former. Man's position in nature had thereby been determined according to the principles of the theory of descent. To works like Haeckel's Anthropogenesis, the statement that the great anatomist, Karl Gegenbaur, made in his Comparative Anatomy (1870) can be justly applied. He wrote that in exchange for the method of investigation Darwin gave to science with his theory he received in return clarity and firmness of purpose. In Haeckel's view, the method of Darwinism had also supplied science with the theory of the origin of man. [ 31 ] What actually was accomplished by this step can be appreciated in its full measure only if one looks at the opposition with which Haeckel's comprehensive application of the principles of Darwinism was received by the followers of idealistic world conceptions. It is not even necessary to quote those who, blindly believing in the traditional opinion, turned against the “monkey theory,” or those who believed that all finer, higher morality would be endangered if men were no longer convinced that they had a “purer, higher origin.” Other thinkers, although quite open-minded with regard to new truths, found it difficult to accept this new truth. They asked themselves the question, [ 32 ] “Do we not deny our own rational thinking if we no longer look for its origin in a general world reason over us, but in the animal kingdom below?” Mentalities of this sort eagerly attacked the points where Haeckel's view seemed to be without support of the facts. They had powerful allies in a number of natural scientists who, through a strange bias, used their factual knowledge to emphasize the points where actual experience was still insufficient to prove the conclusions drawn by Haeckel. The typical, and at the same time the most impressive, representative of this viewpoint of the naturalists was Rudolf Virchow (1821–1902). The opposition of Virchow and Haeckel can be characterized as follows. Haeckel puts his trust in the inner consistency of nature, concerning which Goethe is of the opinion that it is sufficient to make up for man's inconsistency. Haeckel, therefore, argues that if a principle of nature has been verified for certain cases, and if we still lack the experience to show its validity in other cases, we have no reason to hold the progress of our knowledge back. What experience denies us today, it may yield tomorrow. Virchow is of the opposite opinion. He wants to yield as little ground as possible to a comprehensive principle. He seems to believe that life for such a principle cannot be made hard enough. The antagonism between these two spirits was brought to a sharp point at the Fiftieth Congress of German naturalists and doctors in 1877. Haeckel read a paper there on the topic, The Theory of Evolution of Today in Its Relation to Science in General. [ 33 ] In 1894 Virchow felt that he had to state his view in the following way. “Through speculation one has arrived at the monkey theory; one could just as well have ended up with an elephant theory or a sheep theory.” What Virchow demanded was incontestable proof of this theory. As soon as something turned up that fitted as a link in the chain of the argumentation, Virchow attempted to invalidate it with all means at his disposal. [ 34 ] Such a link in the chain of proof was presented with the bone remnants that Eugen Dubois had found in Java in 1894. They consisted of a skull and thigh bone and several teeth. Concerning this find, an interesting discussion arose at the Congress of Zoologists at Leyden. Of twelve zoologists, three were of the opinion that these bones came from a monkey and three thought they came from a human being; six, however, believed they presented a transitional form between man and monkey. Dubois shows in a convincing manner in what relation the being whose bone remnants were under discussion stood to the present monkey, on the one hand, and to man of today, on the other. The theory of evolution of natural science must claim such intermediary forms. They fill the holes that exist between numerous forms of organisms. Every new intermediary form constitutes a new proof for the kinship of all living organisms. Virchow objected to the view that these bone remnants came from such an intermediary form. At first, he declared that it was the skull of a monkey and the thigh bone of a man. Expert paleontologists, however, firmly pronounced, according to the careful report, on the finding, that the remnants belonged together. Virchow attempted to support his view that the thigh bone could be only that of a human being with the statement that a certain growth in the bone proved that it must have had a disease that could only have been healed through careful human attention. The paleontologist, Marsch, [e.Ed: perhaps American paleontologist, Othniel Charles Marsh (1831–1899)] however, maintained that similar bone extuberances occurred in wild animals as well. A further statement of Virchow's, that the deep incision between the upper rim of the eye socket and the lower skull cover of the alleged intermediary form proved it to be the skull of a monkey was then contradicted by the naturalist Nehring, who claimed that the same formation was found in a human skull from Santos, Brazil. Virchow's objections came from the same turn of mind that also caused him to consider the famous skulls of Neanderthal, Spy, etc., as pathological formations, while Haeckel's followers regarded them as intermediary forms between monkey and man. [ 35 ] Haeckel did not allow any objections to deprive him of his confidence in his mode of conception. He continued his scientific work without swerving from the viewpoints at which he had arrived, and through popular presentations of his conception of nature, he influenced the public consciousness. In his book, Systematic Phylogenesis, Outline of a Natural System of Organisms on the Basis of the History of Species (1894–96), he attempted to demonstrate the natural kinship of organisms in a strictly scientific method. In his Natural History of Creation, which, from 1868–1908, appeared in eleven editions, he gave a popular explanation of his views. In 1899, in his popular studies on monistic philosophy entitled, The Riddles of the Universe, he gave a survey of his ideas in natural philosophy by demonstrating without reserve the many applications of his basic thoughts. Between all these works he published studies on the most diverse specialized researches, always paying attention at the same time to the philosophical principles and the scientific knowledge of details. [ 36 ] The light that shines out from the monistic world conception is, according to Haeckel's conviction, to “disperse the heavy clouds of ignorance and superstition that have heretofore spread an impenetrable darkness over the most important one of all problems of human knowledge, that is, the problem concerning man's origin, his true nature and his position in nature.” This is what he said in a speech given August 26, 1898 at the Fourth International Congress of Zoologists in Cambridge, On Our Present Knowledge Concerning the Origin of Man. In what respect his world conception forms a bond between religion and science, Haeckel has shown in an impressive way in his book, Monism as a Bond between Religion and Science, Credo of a Naturalist, which appeared in 1892. [ 37 ] If one compares Haeckel with Hegel, one can see distinctly the difference in the tendencies of world conception in the two halves of the nineteenth century. Hegel lives completely in the idea and accepts only as much as he needs from the world of facts for the illustration of his idealistic world picture. Haeckel is rooted with every fiber of his being in the world of facts, and he derives from this world only those ideas toward which these facts necessarily tend. Hegel always attempts to show that all beings tend to reach their climax of evolution in the human spirit; Haeckel continuously endeavors to prove that the most complicated human activities point back to the simplest origins of existence. Hegel explains nature from the spirit; Haeckel derives the spirit from nature. We can, therefore, speak of a reversal of the thought direction in the course of the century. Within German intellectual life, Strauss, Feuerbach and others began this process of reversal. In their materialism the new direction found a provisional extreme expression, and in Haeckel's thought world it found a strictly methodical-scientific one. For this is the significant thing in Haeckel, that all his activity as a research worker is permeated by a philosophical spirit. He does not at all work toward results that for some philosophical motivation or other are considered to be the aim of his world conception or of his philosophical thinking. What is philosophical about him is his method. For him, science itself has the character of a world conception. His very way of looking at things predestines him to be a monist. He looks upon spirit and nature with equal love. For this reason he could find spirit in the simplest organism. He goes even further than that. He looks for the traces of spirit in the inorganic particles of matter:
As he traces spirit down to the atom so he follows the purely material mechanism of events up to the most lofty accomplishments of the spirit:
[ 38 ] One must not confuse this mode of conception with one that dreams souls in a hazy mystical fashion into the entities of nature and then assumes that they are more or less similar to that of man. Haeckel is a strict opponent of a world conception that projects qualities and activities of man into the external world. He has repeatedly expressed his condemnation of the humanization of nature, of anthropomorphism, with a clarity that cannot be misunderstood. If he attributes animation to inorganic matter, or to the simplest organisms, he means by that nothing more than the sum of energy manifestations that we observe in them. He holds strictly to the facts. Sensation and will are for him no mystical soul energies but are nothing more than what we observe as attraction and repulsion. He does not mean to say that attraction and repulsion are really sensation and will. What he means is that attraction and repulsion are on the lowest stage what sensation and will are on a higher one. For evolution is for him not merely an unwrapping of the higher stages of the spiritual out of the lower forms in which they are already contained in a hidden fashion, but a real ascent to new formations, an intensification of attraction and repulsion into sensation and will (compare prior comments in this Chapter). This fundamental view of Haeckel agrees in a certain way with that of Goethe. He states in this connection that he had arrived at the fulfillment of his view of nature with his insight into the “two great springs of all nature,” namely, polarity and intensification (Polarität und Steigerung), polarity “belonging to matter insofar as we think of it materially, intensification insofar as we think of it spiritually. The former is engaged in the everlasting process of attraction and repulsion, the latter in a continual intensification. As matter can never be and act without spirit, however, nor spirit without matter, so matter can also be intensified and the spirit will never be without attraction and repulsion.” [ 39 ] A thinker who believes in such a world conception is satisfied to explain by other such things and processes, the things and processes that are actually in the world. The idealistic world conceptions need, for the derivation of a thing or process, entities that cannot be found within the realm of the factual. Haeckel derives the form of the gastrula that occurs in the course of animal evolution from an organism that he assumes really existed at some time. An idealist would look for ideal forces under the influence of which the developing germ becomes the gastrula. Haeckel's monism draws everything he needs for the explanation of the real world from the same real world. He looks around in the world of the real in order to recognize in which way the things and processes explain one another. His theories do not have the purpose for him, as do those of the idealist, to find a higher element in addition to the factual elements, but they merely serve to make the connection of the facts understandable. Fichte, the idealist, asked the question of man's destination. He meant by that something that cannot be completely presented in the form of the real, the factual; something that reason has to produce as an addition to the factually given existence, an element that is to make the real existence of man translucent by showing it in a higher light. Haeckel, the monistic contemplator of the world, asks for the origin of man, and he means by that the factual origin, the lower organism out of which man had developed through actual processes. [ 40 ] It is characteristic that Haeckel argues for the animation of the lower organisms. An idealist would have resorted to rational conclusions. He would present necessities of thought. Haeckel refers to what he has seen.
The idealist attributes spirit to matter because he cannot accept the thought that spirit can develop from mere matter. He believes that one would have to deny the spirit if one does not assume it to exist before its appearance in forms of existence without organs, without brains. For the monist, such thoughts are not possible. He does not speak of an existence that is not manifested externally as such. He does not attribute two kinds of properties to things: those that are real and manifested in them and those that in a hidden way are latent in them only to be revealed at a higher stage of development. For him, there is what he observes, nothing else, and if the object of observation continues its evolution and reaches a higher stage in the course of its development, then these later forms are there only in the moment when they become visible. [ 41 ] How easily Haeckel's monism can be misunderstood in this direction is shown by the objections that were made by the brilliant thinker, Bartholomaeus von Carneri (1821–1909), who made lasting contributions for the construction of an ethics of this world conception. In his book, Sensations and Consciousness, Doubts Concerning Monism (1893), he remarks that the principle, “No spirit without matter, but also no matter without spirit,” would justify our extending this question to the plant and even to the next rock we may stumble against, and to attribute spirit also to them. Without doubt such a conclusion would lead to a confusion of distinctions. It should not be overlooked that consciousness arises only through the cell activity in the cerebrum. “The conviction that there is no spirit without matter, that is to say, that all spiritual activity is bound to a material activity, the former terminating with the latter, is based on experience, while there is no experience for the statement that there is always spirit connected with matter.” Somebody who would want to attribute animation to matter that does not show any trace of spirit would be like one who attributed the function to indicate time not to the mechanism of a watch but to the metal out of which it is made. [ 42 ] Properly understood, Haeckel's view is not touched by Carneri's criticism. It is safe from this criticism because Haeckel holds himself strictly within the bounds of observation. In his Riddles of the Universe, he says, “I, myself, have never defended the theory of atom-consciousness. I have, on the contrary, expressly emphasized that I think the elementary psychic activities of sensation and will, which are attributed to the atoms, as unconscious.” What Haeckel wants is only that one should not allow a break in the explanation of natural phenomena. He insists that one should trace back the complicated mechanism by which spirit appears in the brain, to the simple process of attraction and repulsion of matter. Haeckel considers the discovery of the organs of thought by Paul Flechsig to be one of the most important accomplishments of modern times. Flechsig had pointed out that in the gray matter of the brain there are to be found the four seats of the central sense organs, or four “inner spheres of sensation,” the spheres of touch, smell, sight and hearing. “Between the sense centers lie thought centers, the ‘real organs of mental life.’ They are the highest organs of psychic activity that produce thought and consciousness. . . . These four thought centers, distinguished from the intermediate sense centers by a peculiar and highly elaborate nerve structure, are the true organs of thought, the only organs of our consciousness. Recently, Flechsig has proved that man has some especially complicated structures in some of these organs that cannot be found in the other mammals and that explain the superiority of human consciousness.” (Riddles of the Universe, Chapt. X.) [ 43 ] Passages like these show clearly enough that Haeckel does not intend to assume, like the idealistic philosophers, the spirit as implicitly contained in the lower stages of material existence in order to be able to find it again on the higher stages. What he wanted to do was to follow the simplest phenomena to the most complicated ones in his observation, in order to show how the activity of matter, which in the most primitive form is manifested in attraction and repulsion, is intensified in the higher mental operations. [ 44 ] Haeckel does not look for a general spiritual principle for lack of adequate general laws explaining the phenomena of nature and mind. So far as his need is concerned, his general law is indeed perfectly sufficient. The law that is manifested in the mental activities seems to him to be of the same kind as the one that is apparent in the attraction and repulsion of material particles. If he calls atoms animated, this has not the same meaning that it would have if a believer in an idealistic world conception did so. The latter would proceed from the spirit. He would take the conceptions derived from the contemplation of the spirit down into the simplest functions of the atoms when he thinks of them as animated. He would explain thereby the natural phenomena from entities that he had first projected into them. Haeckel proceeds from the contemplation of the simplest phenomena of nature and follows them up to the highest spiritual activities. This means that he explains the spiritual phenomena from laws that he has observed in the simplest natural phenomena. [ 45 ] Haeckel's world picture can take shape in a mind whose observation extends exclusively to natural processes and natural entities. A mind of this kind will want to understand the connection within the realm of these events and beings. His ideal would be to see what the processes and beings themselves reveal with respect to their development and interaction, and to reject rigorously everything that might be added in order to obtain an explanation of these processes and activities. For such an ideal one is to approach all nature as one would, for instance, proceed in explaining the mechanism of a watch. It is quite unnecessary to know anything about the watchmaker, about his skill and about his thoughts, if one gains an insight into the mechanical actions of its parts. In obtaining this insight one has, within certain limits, done everything that is admissible for the explanation of the operation of the watch. One ought to be clear about the fact that the watch itself cannot be explained if another method of explanation is admitted, as, for instance, if somebody thought of some special spiritual forces that move the hour and minute hands according to the course of the sun. Every suggestion of a special life force, or of a power that works toward a “purpose” within the organisms, appears to Haeckel as an invented force that is added to the natural processes. He is unwilling to think about the natural processes in any other way than by what they themselves disclose to observation. His thought structure is to be derived directly from nature. In observing the evolution of world conception, this thought structure strikes us, as it were, as the counter-gift from the side of natural science to the Hegelian world conception, which accepts in its thought picture nothing from nature but wants everything to originate from the soul. If Hegel's world conception said that the self-conscious ego finds itself in the experience of pure thought, Haeckel's view of nature could reply that the thought experience is a result of the nature processes, is, indeed, their highest product. If the Hegelian world conception would not be satisfied with such a reply, Haeckel's naturalistic view could demand to be shown some inner thought experience that does not appear as if it were a mirror reflection of events outside thought life. In answer to this demand, a philosophy would have to show how thought can come to life in the soul and can really produce a world that is not merely the intellectual shadow of the external world. A thought that is merely thought, merely the product of thinking, cannot be used as an effective objection to Haeckel's view. In the comparison mentioned above, he would maintain that the watch contains nothing in itself that allows a conclusion as to the personality, etc., of the watchmaker. Haeckel's naturalistic view tends to show that, as long as one is merely confronted with nature, one cannot make any statement concerning nature except what it records. In this respect this naturalistic conception is significant as it appears in the course of the development of world conception. It proves that philosophy must create a field for itself that lies in the realm of spontaneous creativity of thought life beyond the thoughts that are gained from nature. Philosophy must take the step beyond Hegel that was pointed out in a previous chapter. It cannot consist of a method that moves in the same field with natural science. Haeckel himself probably felt not the slightest need to pay any attention to such a step of philosophy. His world conception does bring thoughts to life in the soul, but only insofar as their life has been stimulated by the observation of natural processes. The world picture that thought can create when it comes to life in the soul without this stimulus represents the kind of higher world conception that would adequately complement Haeckel's picture of nature. One has to go beyond the facts that are directly contained in the watch if one wants to know, for instance, something about the form of the watchmaker's face. But, for this reason, one has no right to demand that Haeckel's naturalistic view itself should not speak as Haeckel does when he states what positive facts he has observed concerning natural processes and natural beings. |
| 21. The Riddles of the Soul: Max Dessoir on Anthroposophy
Translated by William Lindemann Rudolf Steiner |
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| To be sure, we must be careful not to confuse the body-free consciousness with dream-like clairvoyance or hypnotic processes. When our soul powers are enhanced, the "I" can experience itself above consciousness, in a kind of densification and individualization of the spirit, as it were; yes, the "I," in its perception of colors and sounds, can even exclude the mediation of the body from this experience. |
| 21. The Riddles of the Soul: Max Dessoir on Anthroposophy
Translated by William Lindemann Rudolf Steiner |
|---|
[ 1 ] The preceding essay shows how strongly and concretely the anthroposophist (spiritual scientist) can wish to come to terms with the anthropologist (natural scientist). One might think that a book with purposes like those of Max Dessoir would lend itself to just such a discussion. From the anthroposophical viewpoint, Dessoir's book is written in the anthropological mode. It bases itself upon the findings of sense observation; and wants to employ the kind of thinking and research usual to the natural-scientific approach. His book belongs to what we mean by anthropological science. [ 2 ] In that part of his book entitled “Anthroposophy,” Max Dessoir wants to deliver a critique of the anthroposophical views presented in my books.1 He tries to reproduce in his own way some of the material from these books and then adds his critical comments. This could show us, therefore, what each of the two realms of thought has to say about one or another aspect of human striving for knowledge. [ 3 ] Let me now present and discuss what Max Dessoir writes. Dessoir wishes to point to my support of the view that the human soul, through inner development, can attain the ability to use its spiritual organs, and through this can bring itself into the same kind of connection with the spiritual world that it has to the sense world through its physical sense organs. You can see from my first essay how I picture what must occur in the soul in order for it to arrive at perception of the spiritual life. Max Dessoir presents in his way what I have said about this in my books. He writes:
Dessoir then inserts the following footnote: "Refuting these assertions individually is not worth the while." So, Dessoir adds to my views about spiritual perception that T assert that in perceiving colors and sounds one can exclude the mediation of the body. Please look back at what I said in the preceding essay about the experiences of the soul through its spiritual organs, and how the soul arrives at expression of these experiences in color and sound pictures. You will see that, from the point of view of anthroposophy, I could not assert anything more absurd than that the soul, “in its perception of colors and sounds, can exclude the mediation of the body.” If I ever did make such a claim, it would then be correct to say that “refuting these assertions individually is not worth the while.” We are confronted here by a really strange fact. Max Dessoir asserts that I say something that, in accordance with my own presuppositions, I would have to label as absurd. It is of course impossible to come to terms with an objection raised by an opponent in this way. One can only recognize and show that a distorted picture was presented as though it were the actual view of the person one is opposing. [ 4 ] Now Dessoir might object to this by saying that he could not find in my earlier works any presentation as clear as that in the preceding essay on the conclusions to be drawn from my views on the point at issue here. I admit right away that on many points of anthroposophy my later presentations contain a more exact exposition of what I stated earlier, and that readers of my earlier works can perhaps arrive at an erroneous view here and there of what I myself consider to be the necessary conclusions to be drawn from my views on a certain point. I believe that any insightful person would find this obvious. For, anthroposophy represents a broad field of work, and books can only deal with individual parts of it. But in this case can Max Dessoir have recourse to my not having clarified in my earlier books the point at issue here? Dessoir's book was published in 1917. In chapter 6 of the fifth edition of my book Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and its Attainment, published in 1914, in the passage dealing with the pictorial manifestation of spiritual experiences in colors, I made the following statement:
I added this footnote not because I believed that a reader with true understanding could believe that I assert the possibility of seeing colors without eyes, but because I could imagine that a superficial reader here or there, through misunderstanding, could falsely attribute such an assertion to me if I did not expressly state the contrary. Three years later, after I had expressly warded off any such imputation, Max Dessoir comes along and declares that I am asserting something that I actually consider to be absurd. [ 5 ] But there is more. In the sixth edition of my book Theosophy, also published in 1914, the following statements are made on this subject:
[ 6 ] I will forgo quoting other passages from my books that present my true view on this particular subject. And as to an assessment of Max Dessoir's “version” of my statements, this I leave up to every reader who can still form an objective judgment about the facts even when anthroposophy is the topic. [ 7 ] The level of understanding that Dessoir brings to the descriptions I attempted of the consciousness attained through spiritual organs does not bode well for his further presentations on the relation of "Imaginative" pictures to the spiritual reality to which they correspond. He has heard that anthroposophy does not explain the evolution of mankind on earth only by the means employed by anthropology but rather, with its own means, sees this evolution to be dependent upon spiritual powers and beings. In my book Occult Science, an Outline, I attempted to make this evolutionary process visible by means of "Imaginative" pictures (and through other kinds of knowledge as well that go beyond Imaginative vision, but are not so relevant to our present topic). In that book I indicated how to anthroposophical observation a picture arises of states undergone by mankind in evolutionary forms that are already close to those of the present day; and I also pointed to even earlier evolutionary forms in which the human being appeared that are quite unlike those of today and that are described by me, not in the pictures that anthropology borrows from sense perception, but in Imaginative pictures. [ 8 ] Dessoir then informs his readers in the following way about what I have described as to the evolution of mankind. He says of my depiction of the evolutionary forms that are still close to those of the present-day human being that I designate a specific period of time in the past as the old Indian culture of mankind and then see other cultural periods succeeding it. As Dessoir puts it:
[ 9 ] What I say about a much earlier age of human evolution, in which mankind still appeared in forms quite unlike those of today, is reported by Dessoir like this:
I want here to totally disregard the fact that I could also see the entire “version” of my description as a mere distortion that could never give the reader a picture of what I mean. I only want to address one point of this “version.” Dessoir inspires in his reader the belief that I speak as though what is seen in the spirit is to be taken as symbolic, that old India, therefore, where I locate an ancient culture, is a “symbolic” land. Later, he blames me for locating a much older period of human evolution in Lemuria—between Australia and India—and in doing so contradict myself horribly, since one could notice from my presentation, after all, that I consider Lemuria to be an actual place and not a symbol. [ 10 ] One could only agree fully with the view that a reader of Dessoir's book who has read nothing of my work and only takes up Dessoir's version of it would have to conclude that my presentation is complete rubbish—thoughtless, confused, and self-contradictory. What really stands in my book about the region of the earth I refer to as old India? Read the pertinent passages and you will find that I express with full clarity that old India is not a symbol; it is the region of the earth that basically, if not quite exactly, corresponds with what we all call India. So, Dessoir reports to his reader, as though it were my view, something that it would never even enter my mind to imagine. And because he believes that, in describing old Lemuria, I speak, indeed, in a way that accords with my actual beliefs about old India—but not with the nonsense that he ascribes to me—he accuses me of contradiction. [ 11 ] One has to ask oneself how the unbelievable can occur that Dessoir has me assert that old India is to be understood in a symbolic way. Out of the whole context of his presentation, I come to the following explanation. Dessoir has read something about the processes in our soul life that I call the path to spiritual vision, whose first level is Imaginative cognition. I describe there how the soul, through calm devotion to certain thoughts, evolves from its own depths the ability to form Imaginative pictures. I say that to this end the soul does best to dwell upon symbolic pictures. No one, through my description, should fall into the error of thinking that these symbolic pictures are anything other than a means of arriving at Imaginative cognition. Now, Dessoir believes that, because one arrives at Imaginative picturing by means of symbols, this picturing also consists only in symbolic pictures; indeed, he ascribes to me the view that someone who uses his spiritual organs does not look through the Imaginative pictures at realities, but only at symbols. [ 12 ] With respect to my presentation, Dessoir's assertion that in cases like that of old India I am pointing at symbols, not realities, can only be compared with the following. Someone finds, from the condition of a certain stretch of ground, that in the region where he now is, it must have rained a short while ago. He communicates this to someone else. Naturally, he can only communicate his mental picture of the fact that it has rained. Therefore, a third person asserts that the first person is saying that the condition of the ground did not result from real rain, but only from a mental picture of rain. I am asserting neither that Imaginative pictures consist only of mere symbols, nor that they themselves are realities; I am saying that Imaginative pictures relate to a reality the way the mental pictures of ordinary consciousness do. And to impute to me that I am pointing only at symbolic realities is like asserting that the natural scientist does not see the reality to lie within the existence of that to which his mental picture relates, but rather within this picture itself. [ 13 ] When one presents the views one wants to combat the way Dessoir does, the battle is quite easy. And Max Dessoir does make it really easy for himself to sit upon the judge's seat in a lofty manner; but he achieves this only by first perverting my presentations into distorted pictures—often into complete foolishness, in fact—and then scolding his own creation. He states: “It is self-contradictory to say that from ‘envisioned’ and merely ‘symbolic’ circumstances, the actual facts of real existence are supposed to have evolved.” But you will not find any such self-contradictory way of picturing things in any of my work. Dessoir only imputes such an element to my work. And when he goes so far as to assert: “For the point is not whether one regards the spiritual as brain activity or not, but whether the spiritual is to be regarded in the form of a childish way of picturing things or as a realm with its own lawfulness,” then the response must be: I agree with him totally that everything he serves up to his readers as my view bears the mark of a childish way of picturing things; however, what he labels as childish has nothing to do with my real views, but refers totally to his own mental pictures, which he has created by distorting mine. [ 14 ] How is it even possible that a scholar could proceed in this way? In order to contribute toward an answer to this question I must take the reader for a little while into a realm that will perhaps not seem entertaining but that I must enter here in order to show how Max Dessoir reads the books that he appoints himself to judge. I must bring a little philology to bear upon Max Dessoir's presentations. [ 15 ] As already mentioned, Dessoir describes my picture of the evolution of human cultural periods within certain time frames as follows: "The Old Persian culture followed the Old Indian. Other periods of time succeeded them. We are now in the sixth period." Now it might seem quite petty to criticize someone for having me say that we are now in the sixth period whereas I actually show, with all possible clarity, that we are in the fifth period. But in this case the matter is not such an insignificant one. For, anyone who has penetrated into the whole spirit of my presentation of this subject would have to admit that someone to whom it would even occur to believe I was speaking of the sixth period as our present one must have misunderstood my whole presentation in the grossest manner. My designation of the present period as the fifth is intimately connected with my whole discussion of this topic. How did Dessoir arrive at his gross misunderstanding? One can form a picture of this if one compares my presentation of the matter with his “version” of it and, in doing so, tests it by the philological method. When, in my description of the cultural epoch, I arrive at the fourth period—which I see to begin in the eighth century BC and end in about the fourteenth or fifteenth century—I say the following:
Accordingly, my view is that, through processes occurring in the fourth, fifth, and sixth centuries, effects were prepared that needed several centuries more to ripen, in order then, in the fourteenth century, to make the transition into the fifth cultural epoch in which we are still living now. In his reading of the above passage, Max Dessoir seems to have brought it into the domain of his attention in such a way that he confused the sequence of the fourth, fifth, and sixth centuries with the sequence of the cultural epochs. When someone reads superficially and in addition has no understanding of what he is reading, such things can occur. [ 16 ] I would not advance this hypothesis about Max Dessoir's superficiality by itself if it were not supported by the following discoveries that one can make in his “version” of my presentations. In order to discuss the pertinent factors here, I must introduce mental pictures relative to anthroposophical knowledge that are hardly comprehensible if not viewed in connection with the presentations in my book Occult Science, an Outline that refer to them. I myself would never tear them out of all context and introduce them to a reader or listener the way Dessoir does. But since he bases his criticism on his “version” of views that in my presentations are in a broad context, I must address this “version” here. I must show what kind of “version” this is. To begin with I must note that the depiction of such matters presents such difficulties because the content of spiritual observation can only be elucidated to some extent when one strives for the most exact possible forms of expression. Therefore, when presenting such matters, I always try to spare myself no pains or time in struggling to attain the greatest possible exactitude in my form of verbal expression. Anyone who penetrates even a little way into the spirit of anthroposophy will understand what I have just said. In the light of this, let me now show how Max Dessoir proceeds in giving his "version" of my presentations.3 [ 17 ] With respect to the path that the soul takes in order to acquire the use of its soul organs, he presents my views in the following way:
Leaving aside the fact that this statement, tom out of context, must make a strange impression upon a reader, whereas this would hardly be the case if read at its proper place in my book, I must say that, if I read what Max Dessoir states in the above sentence as the opinion of some person, I would consider the whole matter as nonsense, or at least as nonsensically expressed. For, I could find no connection between the meanings of the two symbols, between “annihilated lower drives and passions” and “purified drives and passions.” I would, in fact, have to picture that a person is supposed to annihilate his lower drives and passions, and then, at the place where the annihilation occurred, purified drives and passions arise as though shooting forth out of nothingness. But why “purified,” since there is nothing there to “purify”; something new has arisen at the place of the annihilation? In no way could my thinking deal with such a statement. But read what I wrote in my book. I say: Picture a black cross to yourself. Let this be a symbol for the annihilated lower element of our drives and passions; and there, where the two arms cross, picture to yourself seven red, radiant roses in a circle. You can see that I do not say that the cross is a symbol for “annihilated lower drives," but for the “annihilated lower elements of our drives and passions.” So, the lower drives and passions are not “annihilated,” but rather “transformed,” in such a way that their lower element is cast off and they themselves manifest as purified. This is how Max Dessoir deals with something that he wants to critique. Then he can portray it as a childish way of picturing things. It is definitely pedantic to correct someone's formulations in this pedagogical manner. But I am not the instigator of this pedagogical act. It is Dessoir's distortions, which can only be caught by the pedagogical approach, that make it necessary. For these distortions amount to misrepresentations— which, as far as I am concerned, arose unconsciously or through superficiality—of my own actual formulations. And only with respect to these misrepresentations is Dessoir's critique possible. [ 18 ] Here is another example of Dessoir's “version” of what he reads. I speak—again, in a context that makes the matter appear completely different than when tom out of context in the Dessoirian manner—of certain earlier stages of the earth's evolution before it became a planet inhabitable by man in his present form of development. In Imaginative mental pictures I describe the first stage of this evolution. In order to elucidate these periods I have to speak of beings of a spiritual nature who were connected with the primal planetary form of the earth at that time. After Dessoir has me assert that through these spiritual beings “processes of nutrition and excretion develop” upon the planetary primal form of the earth, he continues: “A clairvoyant person still experiences these states today through a supersensible perception that is like smell, for these states are actually still present today.” What you will read in my book is that the relevant spiritual beings enter into interaction with "forces of taste that billow up and down" within the inner being of the primal planetary form. “As a result, its etheric or life body unfolds an activity of such a sort that one could call it a kind of metabolism.” Then I say that these beings bring life into the inner entity of this primal planetary form. “Processes of nutrition and excretion occur as a result.” It is obvious that sharpest rejection of such a description by present-day science is possible. But it should be just as obvious that a critic cannot go about his work the way Max Dessoir does. While awakening the belief that he is reproducing my description, he says that processes of nutrition and excretion develop through the beings referred to. The way I describe the matter, between my indication that beings arise and the indication that nutritional and excretory processes arise, there is an intermediary statement to the effect that an interaction develops and that through it an activity arises in the etheric or life body of these beings that now in its turn leads to the nutritional and excretory processes of the primal planetary form. What Dessoir accomplishes with my description can be compared with the following. Someone says: “A man enters a room in which a child and its father are present. The child treats the visitor in such a way that the father must punish him.” Another person now misrepresents this statement by asserting: “The punishment of the child arises from the visit of the stranger.” Now, from this assertion, could anyone know what the first person actually wanted to say? Nevertheless, Dessoir has me say in addition that the clairvoyant learns about certain conditions, arising in the primal planetary form, “through a perception that is like smelling.” But my formulation is that, in the relevant states, will forces manifest that communicate themselves “to clairvoyant perception through effects that can be compared with ‘odor.’” So, in my work, there is no trace of an assertion that the spiritual perception under discussion is “like smelling”; rather, the fact emerges quite clearly that this perception is not like smelling, but that what is perceived can be compared to odors. How such a comparison is to be understood in an anthroposophical sense is amply demonstrated at another place in this book. Nevertheless, through this misrepresentation of my formulation, Dessoir gives himself an opening for the following remark, which he probably considers clever: “I am surprised that the ‘odor of sanctity’ is not connected here with the ‘stench of the devil.’” [ 19 ] I could now present (and rectify) more examples like these of Dessoir's “versions” of my presentations, such as the way he has me explain the “going to sleep” of a leg “through separation of the etheric body from the physical body,” whereas I do not explain in that way the objective fact of a “leg going to sleep,” but rather state that the subjective “strange sensation that one feels” results “from the separation of the etheric body.” Only if one takes my formulations the way they are given, can one form an opinion as to the significance of my statements and recognize how they absolutely do not exclude the objective facts discovered by natural science, anymore than they need to be excluded by the adherent of anthropological views. Dessoir, however, wants to make his readers believe that my views should be excluded from scientific consideration. But I need not tire the reader any longer with such corrections. I only wanted to show the degree of superficiality with which Max Dessoir reads what he sets himself up to judge. [ 20 ] But I still want to show where that soul attitude can lead that sits in judgment with such superficiality. In my book The Spiritual Guidance of Man and Mankind, I try to show how the power to make mental pictures—which does not enter the consciousness of the child right away at birth but only at an older age—is already active before it emerges consciously, and how in its unconscious activity (in the upbuilding of the nervous system, for example, and in other ways), this power works in such a wisdom-filled way, that its later conscious working seems much less wise by comparison. For reasons too extensive to present here, I arrive at the view that our conscious life of mental picturing does indeed develop further the wisdom active in early childhood in certain formations of the human organism, but that this conscious life of mental pictures relates to that unconscious working of wisdom the way, for example, the structure of a tool stemming from conscious human wisdom relates to the marvelous structure of the human brain. The reader of the above-mentioned book can easily see from it that I do not express any such statement as the result of a sudden "inspiration," in an anthroposophical sense, even though I of course cannot present in every book the details of this path. In this respect I must ask that my books be considered as parts of one whole that mutually support and carry one another. But my concern now is not with presenting the validity of my statement about unconscious or conscious wisdom, but with something else that Dessoir does by retailoring the relevant passage of my book for his readers in the following way: “Our connection with the higher worlds— we read—is closest in our first three years of life, to which no memory extends. Especially a person who himself teaches wisdom—as Mr. Rudolf Steiner confesses—will say to himself: ‘As a child I worked upon myself through powers that worked in from the spiritual worlds, and what I can now give as my best must also work in from higher worlds; I must not regard it as belonging to my ordinary consciousness.’” One might well ask: what picture imprints itself in a reader of Dessoir's book whose eye falls upon these sentences? Hardly anything other than that, in this book, I gave myself occasion to speak of the connection of the spiritual world to the knowing human being, and present myself as an example. It is obviously not difficult to expose someone to ridicule whom one can reproach with such bad taste. But what is the actual state of affairs? My book states:
You can see that the issue for me is to grasp the Socratic "daimon" from the anthroposophical point of view. There are many views about this Socratic “daimon.” One can find grounds for opposing my view just as well as these other views. But what does Max Dessoir do? Where I speak of Socrates, he twists the matter to seem that I am speaking about myself by stating, “as Mr. Rudolf Steiner confesses” and even putting my name in italics. What are we dealing with here? With nothing less, in fact, than an objective untruth. I leave it up to any fair thinker to form a judgment about a critic who employs such means. [ 21 ] But the matter does not end there. For, after using my view of the Socratic “daimon” in the way just described, Dessoir writes further:
In the face of such “critique,” all possibility of serious discussion with the critic really ends. Just reflect what we have before us here. I speak of the “daimon” of Socrates, about which Socrates himself has spoken, according to historical references. Max Dessoir imputes to me the view that when one speaks of the demonic in this way, then "Hegel's objective spirit transforms itself into a group of demons ..." So Dessoir uses his strange deviation from the thoughts as they were truly meant, to instill in his reader the view that someone is justified in assuming about me that I see in Fegels objective spirit “a group of demons.” Just place beside this Dessoirian assertion all that I present in my book The Riddles of Philosophy to keep at a distance from Hegel's view of the “objective spirit” everything that could possibly stamp this spirit with the character of the demonic. Anyone who, with respect to what I have presented about Hegel, would say that the proponent of anthroposophy has mental pictures by which Hegel's “objective spirit” transforms itself into a group of demons, any such person would be asserting an objective untruth. For, he cannot even hide behind the excuse that: Yes, Steiner does in fact present it differently, but I can only imagine that the Steinerian anthroposophical presuppositions lead to the conclusions I have just drawn. To say this, in fact, would only show that he is not in a position to understand my presentations on Hegel's “objective spirit.” After making his jump from Socrates to Hegel, Max Dessoir judges on: "Out of an inability to understand in accordance with the facts there spring forth these fantasies that are not inhibited by any scientific scruples...” Whoever reads my books and then looks at Dessoir's representation of my views might perhaps feel, when confronted by such a statement, that I have some right to give it the following turn: From Max Dessoir, out of his inability to understand, in accordance with the facts, what I say in my books, there spring forth the most superficial, objectively untrue fantasies about the mental pictures of anthroposophy. [ 22 ] Max Dessoir shares with his readers the fact that besides my Occult Science, an Outline, he has also “used a long series of other writings.” From the way his manner of “expressing” himself has been characterized here, one can hardly ascertain what he means by “using a long series” of my writings. I looked into the chapter on anthroposophy in his book to see which of my books—besides Occult Science, an Outline—show traces of “use.” I can only discover that this “long series” consists of three small books: The Spiritual Guidance of Man and Mankind, consisting of 64 pages; Blood Is a Very Special Fluid, a reprint of a lecture that takes up all of 48 small pages; and the 46-page booklet Reincarnation and Karma. In addition he mentions The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity (1894) in a footnote. However much it might go against my grain to respond to this footnote with a few purely personal remarks, I must still do so, because even such incidental matters display Max Dessoir's own particular level of scientific exactitude. He states: “In Steiner's first work The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity (Berlin 1894), only germs of his actual teachings are to be found...” Max Dessoir calls The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity my “first” work (Erstling). The truth is that my literary activity began with my introductions to Goethe's natural-scientific writings, the list volume of which appeared in 1883, i.e., eleven years before the date set by Dessoir for my “first” work. Preceding this “first” work are the extensive introductions to three volumes of Goethe's natural-scientific works, my Science of Knowing (1886), my book Goethe As Father of a New Aesthetics (1889), and Truth and Science (1892), which lays the foundation for my whole world view. I would not have mentioned this further case of Dessoir's strange apprehension of what he writes about if the fact were not that all the basic views contained in The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity were already expressed in my earlier books and only represented them in a way that synthesized them and came to terms with the philosophical-epistemological views of the end of the nineteenth century. In The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity I wished to express, in a systematic, organic form, what I had written in the previous (almost entire) decade of extensive publications of epistemological groundwork and its ethical-philosophical implications for a view aiming at a grasp of the spiritual world. [ 23 ] After writing in this way about my “first” work, Max Dessoir continues to speak about it:
Look and see whether there is anything in The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity that could be synthesized into such monstrously trivial statements. In my book, after an extensive discussion of other philosophical directions, I tried to show that, for man, full reality is not present to sense observation, that the world picture given by the senses, therefore, is an incomplete reality. I made every effort to demonstrate that the human organization causes this incompleteness. Nature does not hide from man what is missing from the sense-perceptible picture as its essential being; rather man is so constituted that through this constitution, at the level of merely observational knowing, he hides from himself the spiritual side of his world picture. In active thinking then, the opening up of this spiritual side begins. In active thinking, according to my world view, something real (spiritual) is directly present that cannot yet be given to mere observation. That is precisely what characterizes my epistemological foundation for a spiritual science: that in intuition—insofar as it comes to expression in thinking—I do not see “merely the forms in which a thought content at first appears.” So Max Dessoir wishes to present his readers with the opposite of what is actually expressed in The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity. [ 24 ] In order to see this, you need only look at the following thoughts from that book:
So, I say here: I wish to use “intuition” as an expression for the form in which the spiritual reality anchored in the thought content at first appears in the human soul, before the soul has recognized that in this conceptual inner experience there is contained the side of reality that is not yet given in the perception. Therefore, I say that intuition “is for thinking what observation is for perceptions.” So even when Max Dessoir seemingly presents someone's thoughts verbatim, he is able to twist what the other person means into its opposite. Dessoir has me say “Intuition counts here merely as the form in which a thought content at first appears.” He leaves out the following sentence, which makes nonsense of his use of the word “merely.” For me, intuition counts not “merely” as the “form in which a thought content at first appears,” but as the revelation of a spiritual-real element, just as the perception is a revelation of a material-real element. If I say “My watch appears at first as the content of my vest pocket; it measures time for me,” someone else cannot assert that I said: “The watch is ‘merely’ the content of my vest pocket.” [ 25 ] In the context of what I have published, The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity lays the epistemological foundation for the anthroposophically oriented spiritual science advocated by me. I explained this in the last chapter of my book The Riddles of Philosophy. I showed there how, in my view, a path leads straight from Truth and Science and The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity to anthroposophy. But Max Dessoir, through his non-use of my two-volume book, The Riddles of Philosophy, creates for himself the possibility of telling his readers all kinds of easily misunderstood stories about the “long series” of my three small books The Spiritual Guidance of Man and Mankind, Blood Is a Very Special Fluid, and Reincarnation and Karma. In the first little book, I try to recognize how the powers of concrete spiritual beings are at work in the course of the spiritual development of mankind. I made it clear to my readers (at least I thought I did) that I am very conscious of how easily the content of precisely this book could be misunderstood. In the preface I state expressly that someone who picks up this book without having the prerequisite background would have to "regard it as the curious product of pure fantasy.” To be sure, in this preface I name only the content of Theosophy and Occult Science, An Outline as prerequisites. That was in 1911. In 1914 my book The Riddles of Philosophy was published as the second edition of my two-volume book Nineteenth-Century Views of Life and the World (1900 and 1901). In The Riddles of Philosophy I also described how the atomic theory arose and how researchers like Galileo (in my view) fit into the course of mankind's development; in this description, I did not refer to anything other than what is “clearly evident to everyone” relative to the origins of the atomic theory or Galileo's place in the history of science.4 My presentation, to be sure, is made in my own way; but in this presentation I refer to nothing other than is usual in any presentation of an outline of the history of philosophy. In my book The Spiritual Guidance of Man and Mankind the attempt I made was to show how that which I myself strove in another book to show as “evident to everyone” is the result of the powers of concrete spiritual beings at work in the course of human development. Taken out of its context in The Spiritual Guidance of Man and Mankind, the relevant thought (in my opinion) can only be rendered in the following way: In the spiritual history of mankind, besides the forces that ordinary historical methods have found to be “clearly evident to everyone,” there are other powers (supersensible beings) working as well that are accessible only to spiritual-scientific research. And the powers of these beings work in accordance with specific, knowable laws. In the way in which man's cognitive powers work in that developmental period of mankind which I call the Egypto-Chaldean (from the fourth to the first pre-Christian millennium), one can recognize the powers of those beings who arise again in the age in which the atomic theory originates, but in a different form of activity. In the arising and further development of atomism I see those powers of spiritual beings at work that were already at work in a different way in the mode of thinking during the Egypto-Chaldean age. Even someone who only goes into my books in a quite cursory way can find that through my anthroposophic viewpoint I do not assert the existence of spiritual powers at work in the course of man's development in order to obscure purely historical observations with all kinds of anthropomorphisms or analogies or in order to shift them into the twilight dimness of some false mysticism. Max Dessoir finds it possible, with respect to our topic here, to present his readers with these words:
Whoever reads The Riddles of Philosophy can see that what is evident to everyone is also presented by me in the way it is evident to everyone: and that—for those who are able to understand that what is evident to everyone contains something that is not evident to everyone—I am pointing to this something, which is accessible to spiritual vision. And I am not pointing to a “mysterious unknown,” but to something in fact that is known through the anthroposophical viewpoint.5 [ 26 ] I have shown that it is inadmissible for Max Dessoir to twist my reference to Socrates to mean that I was speaking of myself. But it is clear from the context that Max Dessoir is referring to none other than himself in his comment on page 34 of his book. In order to understand this comment, one must note that Dessoir distinguishes between two regions in the moment of consciousness: between a central field and a peripheral zone. He expounds on how the contents of consciousness move continuously from one of these regions to the other. It is only that these contents take on a particular appearance when they enter the peripheral zone. They lose sharpness, show fewer characteristics than usual, and become indistinct. The peripheral zone leads a marginal existence. But there are two ways that they attain independent activity. The first way does not pertain here. Dessoir expresses himself as follows about the second way:
In connection with this, Dessoir then states:
To be sure, if I draw the full implications of this passage, I would rather believe that they do not refer to Dessoir's own experience but rather to something that he noticed in other absent-minded lecturers, and that he is only using the words “me” and “I” stylistically as though he were putting himself in someone else's place. The context in which these sentences occur makes this explanation difficult, to be sure, and possible only if one assumes that a stylistic device got in under Dessoir's guard, which does happen to many writers in our hurried times. But however the case may be, the essential point is that a state of soul in which the “subconscious” plays a role like that just described in Dessoir's lecturer is the very first thing that must be overcome in the soul if a person wants to penetrate to an understanding of anthroposophical knowledge. The exact opposite—the thorough permeating of concepts with consciousness—is necessary if these concepts are to have a relation to the genuine spiritual world. In the sphere of anthroposophy a speaker who continues to speak when his “attention” is occupied “with other things” is an impossibility. For, someone who wants to grasp anthroposophy must have accustomed himself to not separating the direction of his attention from the direction of a train of thought that he is evoking. He will not go on speaking of things from which he has withdrawn his attention because he will no longer be thinking about these things. [ 27 ] But if I only look at the way Max Dessoir reports to his readers on my little book Blood is a Very Special Fluid, the thought does occur to me that he not only speaks on when his attention turns to “other things,” but in such a state actually writes on. In his report you will find the following. My statement is quoted that our “blood takes up the pictures of the outer world that our brain has inwardized,” and then Dessoir adds the comment:
But if one reads in context the sentences that Dessoir quotes and put beside them the comment on the same page—'T must speak in analogies if I want to present the complicated processes that pertain here"—then one will perhaps understand in fact what it means when someone reports the way Dessoir does. Picture what it would be like if I were writing about Max Dessoir's Beyond the Soul and told my readers: And now someone comes along and asserts that the blood "running in our veins" is “the blood of many millennia.” This is just as improvable as it is incomprehensible and has the same value as another assertion: “But beyond any doubt, behind the surface of our consciousness there is a dark, richly-filled space, whose changes also change the curvature of the surface.” These two sentences are in Dessoir's book, the second on page 1 and the first, about the “blood of millennia,” on page 12. Both sentences, of course, are fully justified because Max Dessoir is expressing himself “in analogies.” When I have to do the same and expressly state so, Dessoir forges for himself a critical weapon out of wooden iron to refute me. Dessoir states that my reference to spiritual being, “on the whole, characterizes itself as a materialistic coarsening of soul processes and as an anthropomorphic leveling of spiritual values.” With respect to the contents of my books, this assertion makes about as much sense as the following would make: “A thinker who is capable of saying that ‘to use an admittedly very imperfect analogy, one can call the present moment of consciousness a circle, whose circumference is black, whose center is white, and whose intermediary areas are gradations of gray,’ such a thinker's view characterizes itself ‘on the whole ... as a materialistic coarsening of soul processes.’ And the thinker who is doing this grotesque thing—comparing the present moment of consciousness with a circle and speaking of white, gray, and black—is Max Dessoir.” Now it would of course never occur to me to say such things, because I know that Max Dessoir in this case is not coarsening soul processes in a materialistic manner. But what he does to me is like what I have just hypothetically characterized. [ 28 ] You can see the total impossibility of discussing the meaning of the law of destiny from an anthroposophical viewpoint with a critic who bases himself on presuppositions like those of a Dessoir; I would have to cite whole chapters from my books here to show Dessoir's hair-raising distortions of my descriptions of human destiny when he says:
In 1887, in my introduction to the second volume of Goethe's natural-scientific work, I wrote:
It is perfectly clear what I mean: One cannot ask about the determining factors of a human action in the same way as with a process of nature. So there must be a difference. Therefore, my views about destiny connections, which are closely related to those about the sources of human will, cannot refer to the relation between cause and effect spoken of in natural science. For this reason, in my book Theosophy, I took every pain to make clear that I am far from thinking that the experiences of one life work over into subsequent ones the way cause and effect work in nature. Max Dessoir distorts my picture of destiny in the crudest way by weaving into his report of it the statement: “So causality does not pertain only to the phenomenal world as grasped by the intellect.” He creates for himself the possibility of adding this comment only by lifting out of my little book Reincarnation and Karma a statement that sums up a lengthier discussion. But only this discussion gives this statement its rightful meaning. The isolated form in which Dessoir presents this statement opens it to cheap criticism. The statement reads:
Anyone who goes so far as to read this statement in the context of the discussion that it sums up will find that I understand the working over of one form of life into the other in such a way that one cannot put it in the category of causality in the usual, purely natural-scientific sense. One can only use the abbreviated term “causality” in a broader sense if one explains exactly what one means by it or if one can safely assume that the reader already knows how the word is being used. What precedes my summing-up sen57 fence, however, will not allow this sentence to be understood in any other way than: Everything that I have the ability for and actually do in my present life is connected, as effect, with my soul's earlier forms of existence to the extent that the causes (lying in my present life) of my abilities and actions relate to the other forms of my life in a kind of connection that is not causality in the ordinary sense; and everything that I have the ability for and actually do is connected with my soul's later forms of existence to the extent that these abilities and deeds are the cause of effects in my present life that now in their turn relate to the content of later forms of my life in a kind of connection that again is not causality in the ordinary sense. Anyone who investigates my writings will see that I have never advocated a concept of karma that is incompatible with the picture of man's free being. Dessoir could have noticed this fact even if he had not “used” more of my writings than what stands in my Occult Science, An Outline: Anyone who believes that human freedom is not compatible with predetermination of the future configuration of things should reflect that man's free action in the future depends just as little upon how the predetermined things will be, as freedom depends upon the fact that/he plans in one year to live in the house whose blueprints he is drawing up now. For even if these statements do not relate directly to the circumstances of human earthly lives, still, someone could not write them who believes that the destinies of our earthly lives relate to each other in a way that corresponds to the law of causality in the natural-scientific sense. [ 29 ] Nowhere in Dessoir's book can one see that he made any effort to investigate the way I build the epistemological and general philosophical foundation—in accordance also with natural-scientific views—of the anthroposophy advocated by me. Instead, he makes assertions that do not have even distant reference points in my writings. For example, on page 296f. of his book, he writes:
But even if Max Dessoir's statements were just as correct as they are actually false they would still serve the purpose of lumping my anthroposophical viewpoint together with all kinds of dilettantish goings-on that manifest today as mysticism, theosophy, and the like. In reality, this assertion of Dessoir's—all by itself—proves fully that this critic approaches my anthroposophy without any understanding either for its philosophical foundation or its methods— or even, in fact, for the form of expression of its results. Basically, Dessoir's critique is no different than many other “responses” to which the anthroposophy advocated by me is prey. Coming to terms with them is unfruitful because they do not critique what they claim to be judging, but rather a caricature arbitrarily drawn by them that is then quite easy to attack. It seems quite impossible to me that anyone who sees what I value in anthroposophy could put it, as Dessoir does, together with a literary, unintended burlesque like the Faust books of J. A. Louvier, with the repulsive racial mysticism of Guido List, with Christian Science, or even with everything that Dessoir calls "NeoBuddhism." I leave it up to those who really want to learn to know my books to judge whether Max Dessoir is justified in saying of them:
Or what about a statement like: “Unsuspecting readers might be taken in by the examples sprinkled about or by the purported explanations of certain experiences ...” It can at best make me think that "unsuspecting readers" of Dessoir's book might be taken in by the quotations from my books that Dessoir sprinkles about and interprets nonsensically or by the nice trivializing of my thoughts. If, in spite of the fruitlessness to which a discussion with this critic is doomed from the beginning, I nevertheless undertake one here, it is because I had to show once again, with an example, the kind of judgment encountered by what I call anthroposophy; and because there are altogether too many “unsuspecting readers" who form judgments about such a spiritual striving from books like Dessoir's without acquainting themselves with what is being judged, and without even an inkling of the true nature of what is being caricatured for them. [ 30 ] I will also not judge, but leave it up to the readers of my books to judge, what significance it has when someone like Dessoir, who is far from understanding my goals and who reads the books he is judging the way he does, asserts "from on high" that I “care about certain connections with science,” but possess “no inner relation to the spirit of science.” [ 31 ] It would almost have been a miracle for Max Dessoir's whole approach for him not to have added to everything else the statement: “Indeed the bulk of his disciples renounce fully any work of their own in thinking.” How often do those people have to hear this (whom one likes to call my “disciples”)! Certainly there are “disciples” of dubious character in every spiritual endeavor. But the point is whether they and not others perhaps are characteristic of the endeavor. What does Max Dessoir know about my “disciples”? What does he know about the number of them who are not only far from renouncing any work of their own in thinking but who—after recognizing through their work in thinking the scientific inadequacy of world views of the stripe of Dessoir's—do not disdain to draw impulses from endeavors by which, as well as I can, I am seeking a methodical path by which to penetrate a little way into the spiritual world. Perhaps a time is also coming when one will judge more correctly those present-day people who can accomplish enough work in thinking not to belong to Max Dessoir's “unsuspecting readers.”8 9
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| 70b. Ways to a Knowledge of the Eternal Forces of the Human Soul: Ways of Knowing the Eternal Powers of the Human Soul
10 Jan 1916, Zürich Rudolf Steiner |
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| A very important spiritual and natural scientist has called certain states that occur, and even underlie the dream life, and in particular underlie hypnotism, all possible forms of clairvoyance, etc., “rigid states of consciousness”. |
| 70b. Ways to a Knowledge of the Eternal Forces of the Human Soul: Ways of Knowing the Eternal Powers of the Human Soul
10 Jan 1916, Zürich Rudolf Steiner |
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Dear attendees! What I have to present to you today about spiritual science, as it is meant here, cannot, of course, be anything that could be convincing from the outset. Only suggestions are to be given, more or less drawing attention to what is intended by this spiritual science, as it is meant here. Those who are grounded in this spiritual research know that many prerequisites are necessary to enter into those paths of spiritual contemplation and activity that make it possible to regard this research, the core of which I would say is no more than a vain fantasy, as a reverie. And it is almost self-evident that such views initially take hold when one hears the first suggestions from this scientific direction. The starting point of this spiritual research, dear attendees, is that it must hold the opinion that, through the impulses inherent in the development of mankind, similar conditions prevail in the realm of the soul's life today as they have for three to four centuries, since the dawn of the modern scientific world view of nature and its phenomena. In truth, this spiritual research wants to be nothing other than a genuine continuation of the scientific way of thinking. And it wants to gain knowledge about soul and spiritual facts from the same concepts of truth - yes, I would like to say, perhaps better say - from the same sense of truth, from the same sense of knowledge, as science gains knowledge about natural things and their interrelations. But for this, an understanding of something is necessary, for which one must acquire spiritual understanding. Those who are of the opinion – and I say explicitly – that the scientific methods, the basic views of nature, have gradually become something exemplary in terms of the way science is conducted, will all too easily to believe that all research, absolutely all research into reality, including research into the spiritual and soul life, must proceed exactly as research into nature and its results are sought. If, for this very reason, spiritual research must take different paths from those of external natural science, then this is certainly something that cannot be admitted directly from the outset. Now, after these introductory words, I do not want to beat about the bush in the abstract, but would like to get straight to the heart of the matter. The first point to be made is that spiritual research, as it is meant here, is based on observation, on the observation of facts; indeed, in a way that one can say: on the production of experiments, but only if all observation and experimentation takes place in the most intimate life of the soul itself. It is not the same as conducting experiments in a laboratory, not the same as conducting zoological, botanical or other observations with the outer senses and with the intellect [research] that is connected to the brain. The things that lead the spiritual researcher to insights into spiritual and psychological life are pure, inner experiences. And here it is difficult to see that pure inner knowledge can completely strip away the character of everything subjective, everything individual, and can become truly objective, that is, can become such that they can provide insights into facts. The scene of the research is therefore not something that can be pursued with the external senses; nor is it something that can be grasped in any way – or, rather, grasped – with the mind that is applied in ordinary science. Rather, the point is that spiritual research must first develop the powers and abilities in the human soul that lead to the pursuit and observation of spiritual facts in a way similar to that in which the external senses and the armed external senses lead to the observation of facts and to external experiments. Now, the first thing that needs to be developed is an inner ability of the soul, which is latent, one might say, in both ordinary everyday life and in the ordinary scientific method. In all ordinary life and in all scientific life, this first ability is not actually applied. And it can be characterized externally in such a way that one says: everything that one does in terms of external handling, external observation, thinking about external observation in everyday life, in ordinary science, leads to a certain result. It leads to one visualizing through concepts or ideas – or however one wants to call it – that which one believes to recognize as the laws of nature. And then, when you have arrived at results through the effort of the soul in the handling of observation of the experiment, of reflection, then you have reached a certain conclusion, so to speak an end, with regard to external life, with regard to ordinary science. What is considered the end, what is considered the conclusion with regard to outer development and outer life, is, for spiritual science as it is meant here, basically only the beginning. From there, all further development of inner soul forces must proceed. That means that the methods used in ordinary science, the results obtained, the peculiar mental experiences that one reaches, these are the preparers, they first prepare the human soul powers to become what they must become if one wants to look into the spiritual world. So that one must start at the end of ordinary science for the development of spiritual research. Now, in earlier lectures that I have been privileged to give in this city, I have already said a great deal about the principles of how the soul must train inwardly in order to reach the point where it can observe the spiritual world. But since there are a great many honored listeners here today who were not present at previous lectures, I must, at least very briefly, mention some of the principles of what the soul has to do in order to arrive at actual spiritual research. Of course, dear attendees, I can only mention the very most fundamental principles here; everything else can be found in my book “How to Know Higher Worlds” or in the second part of my so-called “Occult Science”. There you will find a detailed account of the soul's inner workings, the purely spiritual and soul-like workings that must be carried out in order to achieve what I will now only discuss in principle. First and foremost, it is a matter of a very specific development of the human being's ability to think. I do not say “of thinking”, but “of the ability to think”. And essentially one can say: What is at stake in such a development of the human being's ability to think is that this thinking is strengthened inwardly, inwardly strengthened, and so not only grows in intensity compared to ordinary thinking, but also, in that it is gradually strengthened, becomes in a certain sense of a different quality, of a different scientific nature, becomes a completely different ability. Technically, what the soul has to do with itself is called concentration, meditation. But I ask you to pay attention to the fact that in spiritual research, as it is meant here, these words do not completely coincide with what is otherwise understood by these words. I therefore ask you to pay attention to the fact that here only that which is to be expressed briefly now is meant by these words. The point is that while in ordinary life and in ordinary science, the spiritual faculties of man spread over a certain field, going from one to the other, also passing from one to the other over time, the point is that in order to prepare oneself for spiritual research, one must concentrate on a single point of presentation, I would like to say first. The life of the whole of our inner picturing and visualizing must, as it were, be strengthened and made more powerful by the constant exercise of our inner will, to which we must first train ourselves. I have shown in the books mentioned how this is to be done. I will first give only one of the principles by which this can be done. One should place – as I said, meant purely technically now – a certain idea at the center of one's mental life, in – as one could say – one's total consciousness. It is not necessary, and indeed it is better if the idea chosen has no external content of truth. It is not important that the idea means something in the external world, that it represents or expresses something. What matters is the activity of thinking, not knowledge of anything in the first instance. Therefore, it is best to use, let us say, allegorical, symbolic ideas. What truth value they have is not important. What matters is the strength that one develops in the inner application of the power of thought. I will give an example. Let us say that someone imagines: flooding light, and in the flooding light wisdom. Of course, it is not a concept that can initially be said to mean anything in terms of an external truth, an external truth to which one is accustomed. But that is not what really matters; what matters is that you now concentrate all your thinking power, all your imagination, on this one concept, and to persist in it, that is, to learn to send your whole soul in this one direction. Why it does not depend on the truth of the character, this follows from the following. I will make clear, dear attendees, by means of a comparison, what it actually depends on. Let us assume that we perform an external task, some manipulation, a manipulation that is part of our trade, our business, through which we want to get ahead in the world. We often perform the same task - now, tomorrow, the day after tomorrow. Every person knows that not only what we produce through our handling happens here, but that our skill grows, that we can do the thing better and better, that our activity, our ability increases. That is a side effect. For the expressions of ordinary life, one knows very well that this is a side effect. What matters is this accompanying phenomenon in thinking. You can completely disregard what you think in preparation. For spiritual research, it is important to learn to gradually focus on this inner mind, on this inner development of the ability to think. So I say explicitly: what matters is not the thoughtfulness or ingenuity of ordinary logic; if one is predisposed to it, one has it as if from the outset. What matters is to become aware of this increase in inner thinking power, to learn to grasp it as something real in its workings. Such exercises, honored attendees, are by no means effective if done only temporarily. Certainly some people believe that if they have devoted some time to such exercises, they must achieve a result. It also takes different lengths of time for different people to achieve a result: for some it takes months, for some years. You don't need to spend much time on it in detail. We will see in a moment why you don't need to. In fact, spending a lot of time every day on such exercises is not always beneficial. But the point is that such exercises are repeated over and over again, even to the extent that the same meditation content appears again and again in the soul, so that the meditation content gradually becomes completely irrelevant and the activity for the purpose of strengthening the inner strength of thinking becomes particularly prominent. Now, honored attendees, if you have been doing such exercises for a while, have seriously done them daily, and have mustered that energy - which you will already be convinced is necessary when doing such exercises - you will, after some time, come to notice that thinking actually becomes something quite different. Above all, the power that works in thinking is experienced as something much more real inwardly than that which lives in the ordinary physical [world] or in ordinary outer research. Admittedly, one has strange experiences at first; experiences that can be discouraging. And inner courage is necessary to continue to progress in the appropriate way. This discouragement consists, for example, in the fact that, precisely by doing such exercises, one notices how, little by little, one becomes more and more - one can already say - a slave to those thoughts that one has once conceived. Reminiscences of the soul life, memories of the soul life, they gradually come up more and more. And one also feels that by looking at these reminiscences of the soul life, one lives with one's soul in the midst of an army of thoughts of nothing but reminiscences. The point is that you continue anyway; because you gradually arrive at a certain point - only experience can actually provide the appropriate explanation for these things - you arrive at a very specific point. You arrive more and more at having an overview of life - the life you have lived since you began to think consciously. Really, endless details emerge. Details that you didn't even notice before! You learn something very strange: you learn how much you actually go through in life without your consciousness being seized so intensely that you pay attention to it. Much of what has remained unconscious and subconscious now comes to the fore; but you don't recognize it as such. To go into details would be going too far. But the experience is that one not only learns to recognize one's conscious soul life that one has gone through, but really also a lot, and finally, as in a view, everything that prevails in one's subconscious soul life. One learns to see through oneself, so to speak. But one makes the discovery that, especially in one direction, the whole power of thinking changes, and that for the activity that now emerges from thinking like a new birth of a certain inner power, one loses completely — or actually never had — what one calls memory for ordinary thinking and for ordinary scientific thinking. This is an experience that one must have. The experiences that crowd in like this then pass before the soul; but one knows: they pass like fleeting experiences, which have the particular character that they do not imprint themselves on the memory in the same way as the experiences made through the senses or ordinary imagination. They sweep by and could not be had a second time if something else did not occur. And I ask you to pay close attention. What occurs is something that was not known before. We know that memory retains thoughts – I do not want to discuss the inner process of memory now – memory retains thoughts. And something that was previously there as a thought experience enters consciousness again at a later time – I would say – from the deep underground of the soul life, over the threshold, into consciousness. This is not the case with these experiences, which one cannot have in this way; but it is somewhat different, in that what one experiences - the imaginative experience - cannot be evoked again at all; but the activity, the inner soul activity, that one has performed when the experience was present, can be evoked. One can only return to one's own activity. One can relive what one did inwardly in one's soul when one had the experience. And one knows this quite precisely. And that is what matters: instead of memory, which one now recognizes as an ability for the external physical life, one acquires a completely different ability: the ability of an inner tendency to evoke performances again; and that through the evocation of these inner performances the experience again presents itself to the soul – now not just like any other memory, but like something that again approaches us anew. One would like to be led out of the ordinary life of the soul perhaps into this very different life of the soul, ladies and gentlemen. And so let me – actually only comparatively, not to prove anything, but only to explain something – let me cite something that is not yet what is meant here, but which has, so to speak, prompted what is meant here. The poet Grillparzer had already worked out the idea and also the details of his poem “The Golden Fleece”; he had it completely in his soul; but he had forgotten it. - It is a well-known phenomenon; a phenomenon that is familiar to anyone who is familiar with the biography of Grillparzer. He had forgotten, and he really could no longer remember what he had come up with as his poetic treatment of the “Golden Fleece”. And lo and behold, when he played some piano pieces again that he had played at the time, as it turned out when he was formulating the concepts for this “Golden Fleece”, the content of the “Golden Fleece” came to his mind again. That is to say, when he performed the same activity that had taken place in his soul at the time when he conceived the “Golden Fleece,” that which had been in his soul at that time emerged again. It was therefore the activity that actually emerged again within him. And so it is in a heightened sense with what is meant here. So it is not a memory that one is dealing with, but a re-evocation of the activity and a new experience. That is the first change in the inner soul forces when such exercises are undertaken. The second thing that should be said about this point, dear audience, is that one now experiences how what otherwise happens in the life of thought becomes something completely different. One now really gets to know a soul experience that one did not know before. When one is confronted with one's thought life, one is aware that these thoughts must be something that is merely figurative. If the thoughts we have about the external world were not of an imagistic nature, then they would not really help us, because we do not want to gain anything from them that is added to the external world - even if it is in an epistemological sense, but that is not the point now, I do not want to talk about that now - but rather, what this external world faithfully reproduces. Thoughts must be as little as possible something new compared to the external world. That is the meaning of the newer truth research, that one treats thoughts critically so that they do not add anything to external reality. So that one has the feeling: in one's thought life, as in a passive way, to have the external world as an image. But this ceases as soon as the forces are experienced, which - as I said - emerge from the thought life through a kind of consciousness, in the way it is meant here. It must be said: one lives oneself, by experiencing these new inner soul abilities, into a world that differs from the thought life precisely in that one experiences it as a reality, as a flooding, living reality. And that is also – I would say – the harrowing thing that the soul life has to go through. When describing these things, it really seems as if one were describing mere fantasy. But anyone who is compelled to describe otherwise unknown facts must not be deterred by what seems incredible. If one imagines that the thoughts that one otherwise has passively present in consciousness begin to live inwardly, to have a life, then one has approximately what the spiritual researcher comes to in the point that has now been indicated. Now, dear attendees, I have described to you – I would like to say – in simple words something that is extremely meaningful to go through in the soul, because it is really connected step by step with inner shocks, with inner experiences that bring something new and surprising again and again. We can know that we have come to a certain conclusion in the direction that has been described so far: when we have a very specific experience, an experience that has actually been assigned a certain word for thousands of years, a word that can only be fully understood by someone who knows something about this experience. You see, spiritual science, as it is meant here, is only now able to emerge; just as, let us say, Galileo's view of nature, the Copernican view, first emerged, but out of different soul forces in the human epoch, where the souls had to work differently. It is always something that led certain people who were prepared for it to look into the spiritual world. And such people, of whom little is known in external science, in external history, such people already knew how to describe the point until one arrives when one proceeds on the path meant here. And they describe this point with the word: Man arrives – but I emphasize here expressly: only with the inner soul life he arrives first there – man arrives at the gate of death. And this experience, which is referred to as “arriving at the gate of death”, is a harrowing experience, because one now gets to know it as an inner experience. And from the time one arrives at this point, one knows through inner experience what it means to carry out an activity that is no longer carried out through the instrument, through the tool of the physical body. One knows from that moment on that one can weave and live with spiritual experiences in something that has separated from the physical body, which basically proves to be detached from the physical body of the person. What it is called – since names usually cause the most contradiction, we want to refrain from using them altogether – what it is called, that is unimportant. But if one perceives from a certain moment on that in the person who is given to external science, that is, to external sensory observation [...] that in this physical person there is another, finer human body inside - 'body' is perhaps used a little improperly ; one can only apply 'body' to the physical. There is a finer organization within, and the measures that have now been taken in the soul life have led to the detachment of this inner organization from the coarser, physical organization. However, one now stands in relation to the outer physical body as one otherwise stands in relation to an outer object or an outer event that one observes with the senses, and in relation to which one is the one who has it in his hand. Now you are facing your own physical organization. Now you know: This is you, you who have emerged from your physical body and survey your physical body. Everything that has happened before takes place in it. We will see shortly that this is very important. And because one has an inner life that is independent of the outer body, one experiences this as approaching the gates of death – although in theory it is meant as an experience – one knows what it means to live outside the body. One learns to recognize the phenomenon of dying. You learn to recognize that something lives in a person when their physical body is being returned to the element of the earth, in inner experience, in inner experience. But first of all, if the exercises that have been characterized would lead to nothing else than what I have explained, then a significant inner grievance would arise, yes, a danger, not in the physical sense, but a danger in relation to error and truth, if something else did not take place in the soul parallel to what I have described. But if one does the exercises exactly as described in my book 'How to Attain Knowledge of Higher Worlds', then the way in which these exercises are carried out prevents one from arriving in this one-sided way, as I have described it, at what is called with a weighty word: arriving at the gate of death. Because if the exercises were to reach this point in the way I have indicated, and if nothing else were to happen in parallel, it would be the case that one could not maintain oneself in this inner experience. It would be like being consumed from the outset; one would feel how it would slip away, be forgotten. One would feel this as long as one lives in one's physical body: [The physical body is always willing, always able to draw in life, and yet it cannot let it arise.] In short, attempts to experience the spiritual world would be continually unsuccessful. Dear attendees, meditation and concentration should not only lead to a strengthening, to a revitalization of thinking, but it must also go hand in hand with a strengthening of the will and feeling, of the soul's power of mind. That which lives in the will must also change in the course of the exercises. And if the exercises given in the book mentioned are done correctly, this will already happen. I would like to explain again how the soul's state of will, its mood of will, must change. I would say that, just as we experience the will in ordinary life, the expression is imprecise, but that does not matter in this case for our consideration, I would say that, just as we experience the will in ordinary life, the expression is imprecise, but that does not matter in this case for our consideration, I would say that, just as we experience the will in ordinary life, the expression is imprecise, but that does not matter in this case for our consideration, I would say that, just as we experience the will in ordinary life, the expression is imprecise, but that does not matter in this case for our consideration, I would say that, just as we experience the will in ordinary life, the expression is imprecise, but that does not matter in this case for our consideration, I would say that, just as we experience the will in ordinary life, the expression is imprecise, but that does not matter in this case for our consideration, I would say that, just Philosophers know this very well, otherwise they would not discuss the will so much. The contemplation of the will always slips into action. One presents that which the will accomplishes. But one cannot actually follow the will as it runs into action. As I said, this is only briefly expressed, a very important, a very significant fact of the inner life of the soul, which could be philosophically examined in all its breadth, if time were not too short for it, if time were sufficient for it, as I said. Now the point is to get this will, this constantly eluding will, into the soul's view, to really learn to look at the will, to really learn to have it before you – mentally speaking: to have it before you. This can be achieved by now also undertaking exercises, esteemed attendees, whereby the inner processes of our soul life are viewed in the same way that natural processes are otherwise viewed. [Just consider, for example, how different what we might call self-observation of nature is from the ordinary external observation of nature. We see nature in its processes; for we are always inclined to separate from the observation of natural processes everything that moves us only subjectively. There we are always inclined, compelled by objectivity, to come to a certain kind of objectivity ourselves. If one now practices observing not only natural processes objectively, but – it is strange that this is necessary, but it is necessary – but also what one might otherwise call theoretical, cold, in the observation of nature, [that one now] intensifies it with heartfelt concern, with deep inner concern, to the point of heartfelt love for natural processes [...]; so that [one now, although you are objectively immersed in the laws of nature – including the laws of mineral processes, plant growth and animal behavior – by immersing yourself in them, you also develop an inner sense of involvement, a step-by-step approach to what is taking place as a lawful process, in the same way that you would otherwise only do so with regard to a world being. If one learns to observe the natural event with the utmost interest, without allowing one's objectivity to be clouded, if one remains as objective as only the external natural scientist can remain, and yet can accompany this sober natural research with an inner experience, I would even say an inner merging with what one is investigating, then one acquires the ability to take up a completely different position in relation to the will than in ordinary life and in ordinary science. But, as I said, this is a slow practice. You have to cultivate in your innermost soul life what is actually meant here. And from that you can acquire a very definite ability in this way. At a certain stage, at a point that one attains there, one notices the following. I must start from an occurrence in everyday life to illustrate what one notices in oneself. In everyday life, we fall asleep and wake up. Our daily life follows this rhythm. When we fall asleep – I do not need to show the individual phenomena of falling asleep, the individual phenomena of waking up, but everyone knows what happens in their life when they transition from conscious daily life to subconscious or unconscious sleep – what happens in them, that happens without their will, at least at first. In everyday life, arbitrariness has only a very small part in [this rhythm]. When practiced in this way, as I have described it, one is able to voluntarily induce this transition, which otherwise always occurs involuntarily, between sleep and waking life, waking and sleeping life. That is to say, to be able to command oneself to bring about that standstill of all sensory activity, of all expressions during the course of the day, of all intellectual and imaginative perceptions; to command the faculties that are otherwise present to stand still, and yet not to pass into a state of unconsciousness, as is the case during sleep, but fully consciously to leave one's physical body again and enter into a state that would be there. Again, it is strange when it is described, but it must be described because it is a reality. One attains a state that would be there if one were to wake up fully consciously, but one does not wake up by being in one's body again , and through the eyes and ears sees and hears the external reality, but that you would keep your body out of yourself and remain in what you are in - you now realize that during sleep you have gone out in essence - wake up out of the body in what you are in between falling asleep and waking up, but consciously in it. Through this arbitrariness, one has gained the ability to strengthen the will to such an extent that one is consciously aware of one's being, in which one is otherwise unconscious between falling asleep and waking up, by attaining this parallel guidance of the soul forces through meditation, through concentration. The first ability that one has acquired is formed [by having obtained something new from the power of thought and something new from the will]. And only now does one live outside the body, with the ability to truly perceive the spiritual world around oneself, which is always there, which is there for everyone, for whose beholding one must first educate oneself, educate oneself inwardly, must practice. In turn, it is a harrowing subjective experience that forms the transition in the inner experience to this culture of the will. If one has first learned – I would say – in theory, but in an experienced theory, what dying must mean, then one now gets to know something by the will moving over to an out-of-the-body inner experience. One now learns to recognize what, on the basis of all being and all becoming, is pain and suffering. One becomes acquainted in an unexpected, harrowing way with the pain that runs through all existence. One learns to recognize how unwise it is to ask why all existence is based on pain. Existence – if you observe it and have a heart and a mind for existence – dear attendees, it is beautiful and great and sublime here and there, and it would not be in the full sense of the word to be “human” if you had no sense of the greatness and beauty of existence. But just as a flower emerges from the root of a plant, so everything that is beautiful and great in life must arise from the foundation of pain and suffering. And as the most beautiful things must arise from the soil of pain and suffering, one becomes familiar with this. One experiences an inner world process consistently. One also learns to recognize that the one who, for example, wanted to criticize that a wise providence did not do as well as he thinks in his [own] wisdom, even without the basis of pain, [to be able to evoke the corresponding , one recognizes that this demand is about the same as if someone wanted to demand of the mathematician that he should work towards the fact that one should not look for 180 degrees in a triangle in its three angles. This is connected with a law, with inner laws. But these laws are now being learned. And so, by acquiring a new research of the inner soul life from the ideas about pain and death, one has brought out of thinking and will those entities of the soul which, by living in them now, show one how one is in the spiritual world, what is beyond birth - or let us say conception - and death in man. Now the idea that we were something before we were born – or conceived – ceases to be a mere theory. The idea that we will still be something when we have passed through the gate of death ceases to be a mere theory as well. And in the same way, another idea will be fulfilled by very concrete content. There is nothing speculative about these ideas anymore. Instead, the soul has developed powers within itself to experience what could be called its immortality in a living way – to experience that within itself, the powers, the essences, that goes through birth and death. But something else is experienced as well. What is experienced, dear honored attendees, is that by learning to observe the will – by learning to recognize something in the will in an intimate way – yes, what one learns to recognize when one characterizes it in this way, it looks as if one were merely dissecting a picture, a sum, something fictitious; but it is not like that. If you really succeed in having the will within you as I have indicated, then you realize: In this will lives a core essence of the human being; a second person lives in it, but a conscious second person, a person with a very different consciousness that we carry within us. As I said, this is not an image; but it is also not a reality that we have within us in the same way that we have a physical heart within us. However, it is as true as it is that there is an inner person active in our inner will who is conscious. we now externalize, an external observer, a spectator; but such a spectator from whom we recognize that we can only unite his consciousness with our consciousness when we get to know that power of thinking, which is gotten to know in the only characterized way. Thus, in what one finds in the will, one gets to know a second person; but a person – it is revealed by looking at it, by experience, by inner living – one gets to know a person who lives in the human being in a spiritual-soul way, just as the plant germ lives physically in the plant and blossom, as it lives in the plant as a germ, and one knows: in this plant germ there is something that, depending on the external conditions, can become a new plant. This is in the nature of the germ! So, dear attendees, through the direct experience of inner observation, we know that this observer, whom we have found to be a reality within us, is what the individual human beings carry through the gateway of death, what is carried through the spiritual world, and what must be carried again into a new earthly life. For this is formed in it, as the new plant is formed in the germ of the plant. And while the germ of the plant can perish through external conditions, one knows, one has found this core: in the spiritual world there are no such external obstacles; the human being returns again, will live in the outer world. And one also learns to recognize that this life, which one is now investigating here, is the consequence of earlier lives on earth. What Lessing and other geniuses sensed as a necessary consequence of the presentation of the newer spiritual life becomes a strictly inwardly researchable, inner fact: repeated earthly lives! But one must realize, when one is living in the spiritual world, that one perceives differently than one perceives in the external world. In the external world, one perceives through the fact that things stand before one, and one faces the things themselves and looks at them. Those who, starting from the trivial concepts of everyday life, want to form a picture of what this new thing is that has been spoken of here today, who think that the spiritual world is only a finer ethereal repetition of the ordinary sense world, and they imagine that the beings in the spiritual world come towards one out of mist or finer things. No, it is not so, esteemed attendees; but everything that comes towards one, when it is properly investigated, comes towards one in such a way that one suddenly moves in the investigation as in the spiritual world among nothing but spirit beings. The developed will shows spirit beings that fill the world – how whole multitudes of spirit beings fill the world. So here it can be a matter of perceiving an abundance of concrete spiritual beings in the spiritual world – they perceive! Let us assume that a soul that has passed through the gate of death lives in the spiritual world. At first you perceive this in such a way that you really know: it now enters, as it were, into your own sphere of will; it unites with the consciousness that you discover in your own consciousness; and you experience that your own consciousness melts together with the consciousness of the other being. Through consciousness, through this new consciousness discovered through the sphere of will, you enter into the world of spiritual beings. Although what I have already stated is, I might say, eccentric enough, I do not want to be deterred from presenting, as I might say, further compromising evidence in this field. Then, of course, one must come to the experience itself. And it is neither out of immodesty nor for any other reason that an external experience is presented. It is, for example, the case that I really only want to mention a very simple one from the wide range of experiences that could be cited. It was about the fact that I had to deal with certain artistic tasks that required me to invent something, I might say. Now, the point is that a long time ago a personality died whose soul was full of intentions, of tendencies towards such artistic creation. She had passed through the gate of death. Just as, dear readers, in the ordinary physical life one learns to distinguish between the flower one sees outside and the flower one's own eye creates, so too in this spiritual realm one learns to distinguish between what is objective and what is subjective. And so I knew that I had to do certain artistic things - and for those things something like an inspiration was necessary - that what came from this deceased soul entered into my consciousness. That is to say, one can observe the interaction with these deceased souls in the same way as one can observe the interaction with external beings. Of course, in this case vanity would have it that it is all the result of one's own powers of invention! But one comes to quite different views about the spiritual world when this spiritual world can be gradually seen through the exercises of the soul powers. Now, dear readers, precisely in view of the misunderstandings that are brought to this spiritual research, as it is meant here, some things must be mentioned. Anyone who approaches spiritual research with a scientific worldview will, of course, have a great deal to say in favor of the fact that everything I have described so far is basically nothing more than a collection of illusions, hallucinations, and so on. If the scientifically minded person now believes that someone grounded in spiritual science will come and tell them they are wrong and start arguing with them, they are completely mistaken! The spiritual researcher is fundamentally full of appreciation for what the natural scientist has to say, right up to the exploration of the borderlands between the soul and the purely external natural realm. Not even does the spiritual researcher need to reject anything that has been achieved on the basis of experimental psychology, for example. But I do not want to go into this any further now. But anyone who, starting from a natural scientific world view, objects from the outset – I will now point out the most common objections –: Yes, look, from a certain point of view one believes one can prove the immortal life of the soul ; then one turns to the present way in which thinking, feeling and willing proceed; one believes that one can fathom something through ordinary logic; one perhaps believes that one can achieve something through some mystical process that points to the immortality of the soul. But now natural science shows – and as I said, the spiritual researcher is completely on the ground of natural science here, even more so than the natural scientist himself – natural science shows that man develops from childhood on. Just as the external organs and organ systems gradually develop, so do the spiritual faculties. And again, when the external organs become paralyzed in old age, the mental and spiritual faculties decline. Yes, it can be shown how some part of the mental system, the central nervous system, is paralyzed, how very specific mental and spiritual functions suffer. Doesn't the natural scientist ask the spiritual researcher, don't you see how closely the spiritual and mental life is bound to the organic functions and to the organic tools? All these things are certainly convincing. But just when the spiritual researcher has arrived at the point that I have described, when I stated the cultivation of the life of thought, the inner education of the life of thought, the inner exercise of the life of thought, then he describes how all thinking, feeling and willing in ordinary life is connected to the bodily organs; what occurs as thinking, feeling and willing in the physical world between birth and death cannot, however, occur without the bodily organs. That is precisely what spiritual research shows. [And it is based on the fact that you cannot gain anything about the immortal soul through speculative theory or mysticism. It is precisely the progress in the field of natural science that will show that what is present as thinking, feeling and willing in ordinary life is a transposition of activities that only have a meaning between birth and death because they are bound to the external organs in their appearance, just as they occur in consciousness. But within thinking, feeling and willing, the spiritual researcher discovers something that is not bound to the organs, which he can only discover in such a way that he knows: this is present in every human being – only one must first become aware of what is still bound to the organs – as if it were something else, something that enters through the gate of death, something that is connected to it. That which is not bound to the organs must first be sought out! Therefore, the spiritual researcher completely agrees with the natural scientist – and it is a fundamental error to repeatedly state some kind of contradiction between natural science and true spiritual research. True spiritual research stands precisely in relation to the interpretation of ordinary thinking, feeling and willing on the ground of ordinary natural science. Even if what underlies this natural science is still often an ideal, something is present; and the natural scientist can today, from his world view, indicate certain abnormal conditions in human life. A very important spiritual and natural scientist has called certain states that occur, and even underlie the dream life, and in particular underlie hypnotism, all possible forms of clairvoyance, etc., “rigid states of consciousness”. But we must not think that the spiritual researcher can in any way confuse what he is aiming at with what is described from this side as abnormal states of soul development! The important thing is that in true spiritual research, as it is meant here, the soul life that develops as another, as an extra-corporeal soul life, as it has been described, that this soul life proceeds in such a way that it is not a transformation of the ordinary soul life, but that it places itself alongside the ordinary soul life. And the healthier this Hellerscher vision is to look at, the healthier it is when the person who develops it develops this vision in such a way that everything else — thinking, feeling and willing, all the other so-called social soul life — continues alongside it! Only that he normally overlooks it in the moment when he is in vision. Take any of the conditions that occur in the pathological life of the soul: how do they appear? They occur in such a way that the so-called normal life of the soul ceases, and even if only for a short time, passes over into the morbid life of the soul. The person afflicted with any kind of disease of the soul — if I may use this expression, which of course is itself imprecise — is characterized precisely by the fact that he cannot look at his healthy soul life in the disease, otherwise he would not be ill! What is essential now is that the one who becomes a genuine spiritual researcher does not, as it might appear, enter into the soul life of another person from his own healthy soul life, but that the two soul lives are juxtaposed clearly and with full consciousness. The spiritual researcher passes through the spiritual world, observing it with developed vision. And for ordinary life, for all the tasks of ordinary life, he thinks and feels and acts as other rational people do. This overview is the essential thing. Therefore, it is not particularly good for beginners in spiritual research, dear attendees, as it happens out of certain conveniences of life – one might say – and also out of certain enthusiasms of life ] when they get involved in some kind of spiritual science with all kinds of enthusiasm, and so, as it were, convert from one religion to another, they enter into a completely different soul life and simply forget the first one. On the contrary, it is particularly beneficial for beginners in the right state of mind if everything that a person was before, how he thought and lived before, is continued as much as possible, and if the other way is added alongside, so that he can see the first one in its entirety. Special institutions, which are used, for example, to cultivate spiritual research, which one takes out of the ordinary social life into all kinds of colleges, so that they enrich one's life with it as much as possible, actually lead to nonsense in the end. [At least something that is particularly beneficial for the health of the spiritual life of the spiritual researcher is ignored!] Of course one could think of preparing a certain number of people for spiritual research and, so to speak, bringing them into colleges where they can particularly oversleep the outer life they have led so far; but then those concerned would have to become so unfree in a certain sense that what they have been accustomed to so far would now be transformed into a new life that is not geared to the outer world. This has its dangers. The best thing is when a person remains as sensible for their ordinary life as they were before, and spiritual research is only added, so to speak. But this is also the fundamental difference between all morbid mental life. And if someone who is equipped with a proper scientific attitude would only survey with full understanding what, for example, the exercises of the soul powers according to the direction indicated in “How to Know Higher Worlds” stand, he would see that precisely those who want to engage in true spiritual research and spiritual research methods are made aware and are aware of what could lead, in one direction or another, not only to mental illness but even to nebulous soul aberrations. Indeed, many misunderstandings arise against spiritual science. Not only are they theoretical misunderstandings on the part of those who, for example, stand on the ground of natural science, on the ground of a natural scientific world view; but they arise - I would say practically, in that people want to enter the spiritual world in a much different way, a much more comfortable way, than has been described world, and then, instead of a science of the supersensible, which could be attained in the way I have described, they actually attain a science of the subsensible, that is, they attain something of what is so often called clairvoyance or the like in the ordinary sense. This clairvoyance, what is usually called that, is actually diametrically opposed to spiritual research. It is something that arises from the fact that the human being is bound even more closely to his personality than he is bound in ordinary social life. I need only point out - although this is of course only said comparatively, by way of explanation - that when we teach ourselves any kind of intervention, we feel the place with our consciousness, especially when something in us is pathologically organized in the stomach. If we have organized something in our nervous system or somewhere in our body in this way, then our consciousness turns to it in a morbid, abnormal way. But then all kinds of things can be 'seen' as a result. What one can call hallucinations, illusions and so on with a certain justification from the point of view of natural science can arise. This arises precisely from the opposite occurring to what occurs for true spiritual research, which has been described today. There is a strong attachment to the body. And in what is referred to in trivial life or also in a fraudulent way as “clairvoyance”, dear honored attendees, one has something that has much less eternal or spiritual value than that what can be observed in the normal life of the soul, where the soul is present with all its corporeality, whereas in pathological clairvoyance or in the pathological state of hypnosis or suggestion or the like, one is only dealing with a part. In these states, one comes into contact with the sub-sensible, with that which has less reality value than what one sees in ordinary life. Whereas the real, true clairvoyance consists in becoming independent of all corporeality and looking back at corporeality, observing how it has remained normal in relation to the external physical world and transcending corporeality, [so that one] arrives at the supersensible, not at the subsensible. Once, dear honored attendees, this difference between the supersensible and the subsensible is grasped, once it is recognized that what the pathological clairvoyant does is something that has much less significance for man than that which, let us say, lives from birth to death and which can be grasped by the normal life of the senses, and that only a developed life of the soul, which has freed itself from the body, will lead into the supersensible world, then the misunderstandings that are brought by the opposing side to spiritual research will disappear! And another area of these misunderstandings is that which is brought to spiritual research by the various religions. It must be said that we are dealing here, Ladies and Gentlemen, with an area where the religious element must be distinguished from the scientific element for a healthy consideration. Spiritual science, scientifically developed, will have to explore the spiritual and soul realm, up to the immortality of the soul, and the perception of spiritual and supersensible worlds. But it will get just as little in the way of religion if it is only properly understood as the external natural science has gotten in the way of religion. I must say that a sentence that a priest used when he took up the post of rector at the university in the 1890s is always beautifully present before me. He gave a speech about Galileo – the theologian about Galileo – and he said at the time: Certainly, in the time when Galileo lived, the Church persecuted Galileo; but now the time has come when it can be known that what Galileo said about the structure of the worlds only leads to greater glory of the divine worshipped and adored by religion. Just as people only wanted to find a contradiction with religious life out of misunderstanding in the time when the newer scientific world view emerged, and also introduced it into practical life, so it is based on a misunderstanding if one believes that spiritual research - which for today must be something similar [to the natural research of Galileo, Kepler and so on for their time] - that this could somehow interfere with religious life. This spiritual science, and it wants to be, is really, honored attendees, a continuation of the natural scientific way of thinking for the spiritual realm. But it is understandable. Especially when one has a good grasp of the history of science, it is understandable that today there are still few people who have a sense for what is at the core of this spiritual research. But anyone who has lovingly tried to explore the course of truth through human development knows that truth will make its way through human development through the thinnest crevices of even the hardest rocks that human prejudices pile up. And not to engage in propaganda, truly not, but only to mention that there is already at least a small circle of friends of the spiritual-scientific direction, as it is meant here, I would like to point to the building erected in Dornach, near Basle, through the sacrifice of a number of those who profess our spiritual science, or, I might say, of the disciples of our spiritual science, as a kind of School of Spiritual Science. But this building, too, has been misunderstood. In conclusion, just a few words to point out how misunderstandings about spiritual science itself are encountered in the most diverse ways, and this building is no exception. There are even people who say that this building has something fantastic about it, that when you enter it you see all kinds of symbols, all kinds of magical signs; there is even a sequence of seven columns inside, for example. Now, anyone who tries to understand the whole structure inwardly, esteemed attendees, can believe that those who have seen what is being built in Dornach and then speak in such a way that they have hardly seen can hardly see, but only believe, that if something arises in some area that they do not yet know, it must be something magical, something magical, magical; out of this belief they characterize. You see, dear ones, let us take something that is tempted, I would say, in the column sequences on the left and right of the building. People think: these are superstitious people, they have constructed a column order out of the number seven because they have seven columns on each side! Yes, such a statement is just as much as if someone were to assume that there is something symbolic or magical about the fact that on a violin there are exactly the E string, the A string and so on. The inner nature of the thing demanded it! Just as light is divided into seven colors, appearing in the seven colors of the rainbow, just as tones open up in the seven-part structure of the scale and the octave is the repetition of the fundamental tone, so the fact that there was a break with the usual architectural styles – a totality of art had to arise from our artistic conviction, only because there was a break with the fact that one chapter is like the other when you have columns. But when you have a column and a chapter, the next one is different, the third is different again. But it followed from the purely artistic principle that there was a conclusion with the seventh – just as there is a conclusion with the seventh note in the musical scale, and just as there is a repetition of the fundamental note in the octave – it followed quite naturally, with the same necessity as the seven colors in the rainbow necessarily follow. And so it is with everything in this structure. There is no attempt at any kind of symbolic formation. Everything should be poured out purely artistically into the sculptural, the architectural and the pictorial. Therefore, one will never be able to achieve an art that is in line with spiritual science by painting or sculpting what one has recognized through spiritual science. This was not even attempted with our building in Dornach. There are many aptitudes in the human being that remain hidden in ordinary life, and all the aptitudes of humanity have not yet emerged in the course of the past epochs of human development. But spiritual science, because it leads to a living understanding of the living world, is a stimulant, not of an idea – not what it finds as science, should somehow be symbolically embodied in art – that would be an inartistic way – but it must stimulate artistic ability. And in this way, because spiritual science itself introduces something new into humanity, a new form of art, a new principle of art, is also created. Of course, this is just as surprising and misleading as the new aspect of spiritual science itself is misleading and surprising. For example, an attempt has been made in the most eminent sense to express in the form of architecture something that shows in the frame, in the inner shell of a room, what is going on in the room, what the room holds. But not symbolically, but by trying to grasp the inner life. For example, an attempt was made to continue it in the shaping, in the sculptural shaping of the walls [...]. [In old architecture, for example – and I want to emphasize this detail – when you grasp it artistically, the walls are such that they close through what they are in their forms.] Our walls in Dornach are such that they do not close, but in the moderation of their forms evoke the feeling that they are permeable. And when you look at them, you get such artistic insights that you actually have to practise letting your gaze wander into the infinite of the world's existence. That is precisely the difference compared to an earlier artistic conception. But differences were bound to arise as we progressed from ancient art, from antiquity to the Gothic and so on. I would, of course, have much to say if I were to address the misunderstandings that arise – I would like to say – in this still quite incomprehensible aspect of the Dornach building, if I were to talk at length about these misunderstandings. I would not like to leave unmentioned the fact that I myself, in particular, dearest attendees, have no illusions that the Dornach building is anything other than a very first beginning, a very imperfect beginning. But perhaps something of a new artistic creative power lives in these primitive initial forms, which are perhaps still completely missed in some respects. And that should be the case. For if spiritual science is to be something that can intervene in human life in a living way, that it can intervene in all areas of human life – and I would like to say that only external circumstances have made it possible for it to have initially penetrated artistic creation in this way – then it must develop the special talents of humanity that are associated with this spiritual science today. As I said, I do not wish to propagandize for what has been mentioned, but only to draw attention to the way in which spiritual science is also expressed artistically. But, esteemed attendees, I would still like to say that just as one does not need to be a chemist to absorb into our world view what is coming into it through chemical research, nor does one need to be an astronomer or a physicist to the results of astronomy and physics, just as little as one needs to be a spiritual researcher oneself - although, as the book 'How to Know Higher Worlds' shows you, today, to a certain extent, every person can become a spiritual researcher, every person can develop the abilities of their nature, but one does not need to be one. Spiritual science can also present its results to humanity, and because it is based on truth and not on error, it can convince. If one grasps the insights in the right way, one is led to conviction, to absorbing the spiritual-scientific results into the soul's sense of truth, into that which ultimately unites into an overall conviction about world and soul and world and spirit. But that this spiritual research is still met with misunderstandings: one can understand it, honored attendees. One need only remember, for example, that when the newer world view, the newer natural science, had to be brought to mankind, did not I want to say that a view had to be brought to mankind that was the opposite of what people had thought until then? A view that even contradicted what the senses saw? Throughout the Middle Ages, certain circles of humanity believed that the blue firmament was up there and that the stars revolved around the earth. That changed! The earth, which had been stationary for consciousness, had to be imagined as rushing through space; and the blue firmament – one had to recognize that it is not up there at all, you create it yourself from your own view. And you only imagined this blue firmament because you had previously meant it! That was the great turning point, to which, for example, Giordano Bruno pointed out that one has to see nothing in this blue firmament but what is made out of the human way of looking at things; that what extends into the vast infinities of the world is the spatial universe. What happened in the past can be said to be happening again: it is a different firmament that humanity is looking at today; but only through its own way of thinking. If, on the one hand, a person looks as far as birth, and on the other hand as far as death – or, to put it another way, if they look as far as conception on the one hand and as far as death on the other – it is like the firmament: there is no limit. If we now work our way outwards, what happened for the natural scientist in the past can happen for the spiritual life: that the boundary between birth and death - or conception and death - is drawn by the human soul life itself. Then we shall look out into the temporal and eternal, in which our repeated lives on earth and those lives that we spend between death and birth in a purely spiritual world are embedded. And the spiritual world will open up for people as surely as the spatial world opened up beyond the non-existent firmament. Those who are currently at this level of spiritual science will not be at all surprised if what he has said is still regarded as fantasy, reverie, perhaps even today. But anyone who is familiar with the path that truth takes through human development, through human history - and in our time, the spiritual researcher must familiarize himself with this - knows what I have already said: that truth finds its way through the finest cracks crevices that extend like cracks in rocks into the rocks of prejudice, and which human development - I do not say it critically, I do not say it reproachfully - can not only take up, but must take up. For life needs just as much - as it has its judgments about how life can be lived - its processes, which must accumulate for a certain time. Life must run its course in rhythm with the world, and for a time the scientific view had to drown out everything else. Only now can the other wave, the other pole, so to speak, come, which now also drives that sense of thought and truth into the spiritual world.Finally, I would like to summarize what I have attempted, as something that cannot a priori evoke conviction but can only give new impetus, as if in a great intuition: Those who try to get to the bottom of spiritual science know that it can be suppressed no more, nor eliminated from the world, than the scientific worldview that emerged at the dawn of modern times three to four centuries ago could be eliminated from the world, despite all opposing ideas. For he knows that one can hate the truth; but the one who has become so familiar with its character also knows that the one who hates the truth cannot so easily displace it. And even if it is not yet time, esteemed listeners, for this way of looking at the spiritual world, which has been spoken of here today, to penetrate into wider circles, that time will come. The fact that the truth is hated for a time – that is a humanly understandable phenomenon – but it can never prevent this truth from recurring again and again, as it has also happened with the scientific worldview. Truth can also be reviled; but the words of revile ultimately fall back on those who utter them. And those who know the Being, which one can see, I would say, as embodied in the truth, know that it has so much self-awareness that it can know how it is effective in the world even against all abuse. One can want to suppress the truth, but one can never want to destroy it! These are the feelings that inspire anyone who, through the nature of spiritual research, has today attained a certain relationship to this spiritual research. And he must think about the truth that precisely because it is grounded in the innermost being of the human soul, one need only delve into this human soul, honestly apply the developed thoughts to this soul itself and say to oneself: What one has as will, thinking and feeling in ordinary life can be further developed; then that which was truth for the finite world also leads to a power of truth for the infinite world, for the primeval eternal power, for the eternal powers of mankind, which go through births and deaths. This truth will bring about its recognition. The one who has fully come to know the inner character and quality of spiritual science expresses it as a belief, as a conviction; he believes that the truth he thinks he recognizes is as deeply rooted in the human soul as love is deeply rooted from one sister to another sister when there is a right relationship. Yes, the human soul and truth are sisters! And no matter what misunderstandings may arise between them, in the end there must be complete understanding between the one and the other sister: between the human soul and truth; they must remember a common origin, which is in the , which always and ever reigns and moves behind mere sensuous phenomena, as the inner ground, as their creative power, the spirituality that pervades and moves them, and what can be found precisely through supersensible research. |
| 73. Anthoposophy Has Something to Add to Modern Science: The spiritual scientific make-up of psychology
10 Oct 1918, Zürich Rudolf Steiner |
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| 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. |
| 73. Anthoposophy Has Something to Add to Modern Science: The spiritual scientific make-up of psychology
10 Oct 1918, Zürich Rudolf Steiner |
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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.
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| 75. The Relationship between Anthroposophy and the Natural Sciences: Anthroposophy and Science
02 Nov 1921, Basel Rudolf Steiner |
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| For in comparison with everything that can ever flow into hallucinations, dreams, and everything that arises subjectively only from the human being's organization, in comparison with that, that is, where the person lives without objective orientation, where he is completely devoted only to his inner being, in comparison with that, an imaginative life is developed that is modeled on the outer sense life with its objectivity. |
| 75. The Relationship between Anthroposophy and the Natural Sciences: Anthroposophy and Science
02 Nov 1921, Basel Rudolf Steiner |
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Dear attendees! Anthroposophy, as it is to be cultivated at the Goetheanum in Dornach, still finds the most diverse opponents today - opponents who stand on the ground of church theology with their views, even from the artistic side many opponents have shown up, especially opponents who do not always start from thoroughly objective points of departure and come from the most diverse party directions and from the most diverse areas of social life. I will not deal with all these adversaries today, my dear audience, but what I would like to do today is to deal with the misunderstandings and antagonism that anthroposophical research has encountered from the scientific community. For it is my conviction that, although it seems absolutely necessary to oppose the various other opponents, these will gradually disappear of their own accord once the debate between anthroposophy and science has been brought into the necessary forms so that present-day official science and anthroposophy can really understand each other. At the moment, the situation is such that it is precisely from the scientific side that anthroposophical research is met with the greatest misunderstandings. But first of all, I would like to emphasize that the anthroposophical research method that I represent – for that is how I would actually like to call it – definitely wants to stand on scientific ground and that it would like to set up all its arguments in such a way that this scientific ground becomes possible, excluding any kind of dilettantism and so on. The starting point for the anthroposophical research method is such that the scientific requirements and the whole scientific attitude of modern times have been taken into account. Anthroposophy does not place itself in opposition to modern science. On the contrary, it seeks to take up what has emerged over the course of the more recent development of civilization in the way of scientific conscientiousness and exact scientific methods, especially in the field of natural science, over the last three to four hundred years, but particularly in the nineteenth century and up to the present. Although it must go beyond the results and also the field of actual natural science, as it is usually understood today, it would like to include what underlies it as scientific discipline, as scientific methods, in the inner education for the anthroposophical method. Today I will not be able to give a fundamental lecture, but will only touch on certain points, in order to then be able to draw some connecting lines to the scientifically recognized fields of today. What is initially claimed by anthroposophy are special methods of knowledge - methods of knowledge that differ from what is generally considered to be the usual methods of knowledge today, but which nevertheless grow out of them quite organically. Today, it is generally assumed that one can only conduct scientific research if one is grounded in knowledge as it arises in ordinary life, after having undergone a normal school education and then approaching the various fields of external natural existence, including that of man, by experimenting, observing and thinking in a materialistic sense. Anthroposophy cannot be based on this, but rather it assumes that it is possible, that just as one first develops one's mental abilities from early childhood to what today is called a normal state of mind or what is regarded as such, further cognitive abilities can be developed by taking one's soul life, if I may use the expression, freely and independently, starting from this so-called normal state of mind. And through these cognitive abilities, one is then able to gain deeper insights into the nature and human existence, into world phenomena, than is possible without such particularly developed abilities. These abilities are not developed by an arbitrary handling of the soul life, but they are developed in a very systematic way, only that one is not dealing with the training of certain external manipulations, with the application of the laws of thought recognized by ordinary logic, but with the development of the intimate soul life itself. I can only hint at the methods used to develop such supersensible soul faculties. In my various books, especially in my book “How to Know Higher Worlds” and in the second part of my “Occult Science”, I have given detailed descriptions of how a person can proceed in order to soul-life to such abilities by means of which one can — if I may express myself trivially — see more than one can explore with ordinary intellectual thinking, with experimentation and observation. I have already mentioned imaginative cognition as the first step towards such knowledge. This imaginative cognition does not mean that one should develop the ability to cultivate illusions or phantasms in the soul, but rather that it is a pictorial cognition, as opposed to ordinary abstract cognition, which is simply needed to explore the real secrets of existence. This pictorial knowledge is acquired, as I said, by way of long soul-searching. It depends on individual ability: one person needs a long time, another only a short time, to try to apply a meditative life to the point of enhancing one's inner soul abilities. This meditative life consists, for example, as already mentioned, and described in more detail in the books mentioned, of easily comprehensible ideas, that is, ideas that one either forms in the moment, so that one can grasp them in all their details, or that you can have them given to you by someone who is knowledgeable in such matters, that you can have such ideas present with all your strength in your ordinary consciousness, that you can, so to speak, concentrate all of your soul abilities on such easily comprehensible ideas. What is achieved by this? Well, I would like to express what is achieved by this through a comparison. If someone uses the muscles of his arm continually, especially if he uses them in a very definite, systematic way, then he will grow in strength for these muscles. If someone applies the soul abilities in such a way that he concentrates them on a self-appointed goal, on a self-appointed inner soul content, then the soul powers as such will grow stronger, will gain strength. And by doing so, one can achieve – as I said, it takes a long time to do these exercises – one can achieve, inwardly, without paying attention to external sense impressions, a strength of soul that is otherwise only applied to the external sense impressions themselves. The outer sense impressions are concrete, pictorial. Everyone who has a certain self-contemplation knows that he develops a greater intensity of his soul life when he lives in the outer sense impressions than when he lives in abstract ideas or in memories, when he lives in that which remains for him when he turns his perceptive abilities away from the outer sensory life and limits himself only to his soul as such, as it arises, I might say, as an echo, as an after-effect, through the lively, saturated outer sensory impressions. What is important, ladies and gentlemen, is that the inner life of the soul is so strengthened that one can have something in this inner strengthening that one can otherwise only have in the present human life between birth and death when one is given over to the strength of the external sense impressions. One arrives at a pictorial imagining, an imagining that actually differs from the usual abstract imagining – let us say, if we want to speak scientifically, from that imagining by which one visualizes natural laws on the basis of observation and experiment. One comes to develop such inner strength that one has not only the kind of thinking, the kind of inner soul life that is present, for example, in grasping the laws of nature, but also the kind of inner soul life that is present in grasping outer pictorialness. One attains an inner pictorialness of thinking. One comes to live, not merely in thoughts of an abstract kind, but in inner pictures. In the moment when one characterizes such a developed inner vision, it is immediately asserted: Yes, anthroposophy wants to develop something that is actually known as subordinate soul abilities, as soul abilities that play over half or completely - as one now wants to take it - into the pathological. And further one says: Those who strengthen their inner vision to such an extent that they develop the ability to see inner images without taking these images from the external sense world are surrendering themselves to an ability that is the same as the hallucinatory ability, to the ability to imagine all kinds of pathological phantasms and the like. And indeed, representatives of today's science have repeatedly objected that what anthroposophy claims as its inner vision in images must be traced back to suppressed nervous forces, which then, at the appropriate moment, arise from the inner being through the intensified inner life, so that one actually has nothing other than a suppressed nervous life in these images. Those representatives of science who confuse anthroposophical vision with hallucinations, as they are called in the trivial life, have simply not thoroughly studied what anthroposophical vision really is. Firstly, one could counter such objections by pointing out that anthroposophy insists that it proceeds in exactly the same strict way as the external natural sciences with regard to what the natural sciences deal with, and that it takes recognized scientific methods as its most important preparation and that it rises only from these, so that one should not really speak of the fact that someone who stands on the true ground of anthroposophy would show signs of indulging in a vision like some random medium or some random fantasist. We will not see any medium or fantasist placing themselves firmly on the ground of scientific research and taking this as their starting point, and then wanting to let what is to become a vision emerge from these strict scientific methods. But I do not want to talk about that at all. Instead, I would like to point out that anthroposophy demands a more thorough and exact method of thinking than is usually evident or applied in such objections. The main point here is that, above all, such objections do not yet arise from a truly thorough knowledge of the soul or psychology. Our knowledge of the soul still leaves much to be desired today. It is by no means commensurate with the exact methods of external natural science. In many respects, it is actually a chaos of ideas handed down from ancient times and extracted to the point of mere words, and all kinds of abstractions. It is not based on real observation of the life of the soul, on exact empiricism of the life of the soul. Above all, such exact psychological empiricism must ask itself the question: What is the actual state of our sensory perception? What actually works in our sensory perception? In our overall soul life, there is imagination, feeling and will. But our soul life is not such that we can separate imagination, feeling and will from one another other than in abstraction; rather, imagination, feeling and will are involved in everything that our soul is capable of in some way. We can only say that when we are in the life of imagination, feeling and willing play a part in it. When we form an affirmative or negative judgment within the life of imagination, our soul life is oriented outwards, but the affirmation or negation is carried out by an impulse of the will. This impulse of the will plays a definite part in our life of imagination. And only he can get an exact idea of the soul life and its various expressions who is clear everywhere about what is the part of feeling in willing, or, conversely, of imagining in willing, and so on. Now it is relatively easy to see that the will plays a role in our imaginative life. I have just drawn attention to the process of judging, and anyone who really studies judging will see how the will plays a role in imagining. But also – and this is important, dear readers – the will plays a role in our sensory perception. And here I must draw attention to something that is usually not even known in today's psychology, or at least not sufficiently characterized. Will most certainly plays a part in our sensory perception, in all our seeing, hearing and other sensory perceptions. What actually takes place in sensory perception? In the act of perceiving, we are inwardly active in every act of the soul, even in those in which we appear to be passively confronting the outside world. In what we bring to the outer world through inner activity, that is, expose ourselves to some kind of sensory perception, the will certainly lives – albeit, I would say, diluted and filtered – but the will lives in it. And the essence of sensory perception is that this will – I could go on for hours explaining this in detail, but here I can only hint at it – that this will, which we expose from the inside out, so to speak, is repulsed by the various agents. And we shall only comprehend the nature of the stimulus, the nature of the total sensory perception, when we can visualize this play of the will from the inside out and the counter-strike of the natural agents from the outside in. become aware of how in every act of sensory perception there is a reaction of the will and how everything that remains of sensory perception in memories or other forms of perception is actually a withdrawn will impulse. And so we can distinguish, by exposing ourselves sensually, that which plays in such a way from the will, from that which, starting from the whole act and following on from it, then continues in the life of imagination. In the life of the imagination, as I have already indicated, the will also lives, but it lives in such a way that the inner man has a much greater share in this unfolding of the will into the life of the imagination than in the unfolding of the will into the life of the senses. First of all, our will remains much more active, much more subjective, much more personal in imagining than in sensing. You see, dear Reader, everything I have described in my book “How to Know Higher Worlds” for the development of supersensible knowledge, aims to raise to full consciousness the will that plays into sensory perception and that must therefore be applied, even in the most exact natural research. And now one must organize one's inner life of imagination in such a way that in this life of imagination not the subjective arbitrary will - if I may express it in this way - lives, as it otherwise lives in imagining, but the same objective will that lives in sensory perception. Anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, as I understand it, does not aim to bring up all sorts of things from the depths of the soul in a nebulous, mystical way, in order to force a subjective will into the life of ideas. This subjective will is already present in ordinary life, but it must be released from the life of imagination precisely through the exercises for attaining higher knowledge, and the will that one carefully trains oneself to see through, and that lives precisely in sensory perception - and only in sensory perception - must discipline and permeate the life of imagination. If I may express it in this way, something tremendous has been achieved. The entire life of the imagination has acquired the character that otherwise only sense perception has. This is something that each individual must make as his personal discovery. Man knows, he can imagine all sorts of things; the will can play a part in this by turning the judgment one way or the other. What a wealth of life there is in the imagination! But when a person uses his senses, the external world imposes the discipline of the will on him – in the way that the will can be applied to sensory perception – and then it is impossible to bring inner subjectivity into play in an arbitrary way. I would remind you that anthropological psychology has already shown how the will comes to life in sensory perception – I need only remind you of Lotze's local signs and so on. But only when one comes to bring this will, which leaps into objectivity, into the life of the imagination, does one shape the life of the imagination in such a way that it becomes imaginative cognition, that it participates in objectivity in the same way that sense perception otherwise participates in objectivity. You see, dear ladies and gentlemen, in the face of what I have only been able to hint at in a few strokes, in the face of what is meant in the most exact sense, but which is not meant in such a way that one indulges in all kinds of fantastic ideas about the development of the soul – as is also the case with clear-headed mystics – all the objections, even those raised today by official science, are basically extremely amateurish for anyone who is familiar with the subject. For in comparison with everything that can ever flow into hallucinations, dreams, and everything that arises subjectively only from the human being's organization, in comparison with that, that is, where the person lives without objective orientation, where he is completely devoted only to his inner being, in comparison with that, an imaginative life is developed that is modeled on the outer sense life with its objectivity. In a sense, then, the objectivity of sensory perception is extended inwardly through the life of imagination. In all that is present in mediumship, in all that is somehow present in pathological clairvoyance, on the other hand, what leads to pictorialness, to hallucinatory life, is brought up from within the human being. But that is not at all the case with those methods that are used for anthroposophical research. Here one does not proceed from the inside outwards, as basically every mysticism has done so far, but one proceeds from the outside inwards. Here one does not learn from one's inner mystical feeling, but one learns precisely from external sensory perception how to relate objectively to the world. And then you discover that by learning in this way through sensory perception, you are able to shape the life of imagination in a way that is just as concrete and just as internally saturated as you would otherwise only have with sensory perception. And when one comes to such an inwardly saturated imagination, which now, just as sensory perception, flows into something objective – that is, it is not merely subjectively oriented – only then is one in a position to ascend from a certain stage of knowledge of nature to another stage, which I will characterize in a moment. But first of all, I would like to say that the anthroposophical spiritual science, as I understand it, has made a sincere effort to create clarity on all sides regarding the position of such imaginative knowledge. And allow me, ladies and gentlemen, to make a brief personal statement, which is not meant to be personal at all, but is entirely objective and related to to how I myself came to not only develop such anthroposophical methods, but also to truly believe in such anthroposophical methods, to see in them a right to knowledge. For do not believe, ladies and gentlemen, that anyone who takes these things seriously is uncritical, that he does not want to thoroughly examine the most thorough and exact methods of critical knowledge of the present day. As I said, allow me to make a personal remark. I was about thirteen years old when I came across a treatise that – as was particularly prevalent in the 1770s – was primarily concerned with the exact mathematical investigation of external natural phenomena and actually only accepted as natural laws what could be calculated. This essay endeavored to expel even the last mystical concepts from the knowledge of nature. This essay viewed the force of gravitation, the force of attraction in the sense of Newton, as one such mystical concept. This essay was called “The Force of Attraction Considered as an Effect of Movement”. And the mystical concept of attraction was not to be used, in which two material bodies somehow attract each other through space, but an attempt was made to explain attraction in an extraordinarily exact mathematical way: Ponderable matter is in a world gas, and thus a certain number of impacts between, say, neighboring material bodies can be calculated. If you now compare the number of impacts coming from the inside with the number of impacts coming from the outside, you arrive at a pure, mysticism-free explanation of gravitation. I mention this for the reason that, as I said, this treatise fell into my thirteenth year. In order to understand this treatise - you can imagine that this is not exactly easy for a thirteen-year-old boy - I had to make an effort to master differential and integral calculus at the age of thirteen, because only by doing so can one really master these ideas. And in doing so, I had the opportunity to gain a starting point for everything that followed, which is actually needed to come to terms with such ideas, which have always lived in me with an indeterminate certainty, in a critical way. You really have to get an idea of how you actually use mathematical laws or laws of phoronomy in all your sensory observation, how you actually proceed, what you bring of yourself to the outside world, and so on. In short, for me that was the starting point for exploring how far this strange inner realm of the soul, which we call mathematics, can actually govern external reality. Heinrich Schramm, the author of this essay - I still consider it extremely important today - was thoroughly convinced that you can go anywhere with mathematics, that you simply have to assume matter, space, motion and that you can then go anywhere with mathematics. He was convinced that the most diverse properties of natural phenomena in ordinary mechanics, in thermodynamics, in optics, in the field of magnetism and electricity, that one can grasp all these different phenomena with mathematics, that one can correctly arrive at all these different phenomena if one only applies mathematics correctly. So, if you apply this mathematical research to a hypothetical material process, the magnetic application springs to mind; if you apply it to a different process, the electrical application springs to mind. In short, all natural phenomena are explained as an effect of motion. One becomes quite free of mysticism; one limits oneself to the concrete, which one can grasp in purely mathematical presentation. This struggle, one must have gone through it once, this struggle with a knowledge that proceeds mathematically in relation to the external world and now wants to grasp the sense perceptions mathematically, because the external world must be grasped somehow, no matter how mathematically one proceeds. But now another one presented itself to me in this way. I immersed myself in what is called the probability problem in mathematics, where you try to calculate the probability that - let's say, for example - you get a certain throw with two dice, where one, two, and so on, is on top, so you calculate probabilities. This mathematical field, this probability calculation, plays a very important role in the insurance business. There, probability calculation has a very real application. From the number of deaths within a larger number of people, one calculates the probability that any given person, let's say a thirty-year-old, will still be alive at the age of sixty, and then one determines their ability to take out insurance and also their insurance premium. So here we are calculating something, and in doing so we are using calculation to place ourselves in reality in a very strange way. You can see from the fact that, in theory, anyone can calculate their lifespan in such a way that it is fully sufficient for the insurance industry that calculation places us in reality. For example, I could have decided to insure my life at the age of thirty. It would have been perfectly possible to calculate how long my probable lifespan would be and therefore how much I would have had to pay. But no one will believe that they really have to die when this probable lifespan has expired. We have here a field in which mathematics is valid for what it wants, but where the individual life as such does not fit into the mathematical formula, where life as such is not included in the mathematical formula. In this way, in certain areas of natural science, we have an inner satisfaction of knowledge when we start from the assumption that what has been mathematically understood is adequate to what appears externally in the sense world. But precisely in those areas where probability theory plays a role, there is something where we have to say to ourselves: Mathematics is sufficient for the outer life, for what takes place in outer observation, but one can never be convinced that the inner life is mastered by it. I would have to tell a great deal more about the intermediate links if I were now to show how, starting from such ideas, I came to the chapter in my “Philosophy of Freedom” (the first edition of which appeared in 1893) on the value of life, on the value of human life. There I was dealing, above all, with a fight against pessimism as such. At that time, this pessimism dominated the philosophical outlook of certain circles much more than was the case later. This pessimism originated in principle with Schopenhauer, but it was systematically founded by Eduard von Hartmann. Eduard von Hartmann now started from the point of view of calculation with reference to the sphere of ethical life, of socioethical life. If you look up his calculations today, they are extremely interesting. He tries to calculate how, on the one hand, everything that brings people pleasure and joy, happiness and so on in life can be positively assessed, and how, on the other hand, everything that brings people suffering, pain, misfortune and so on can be negatively assessed. And he subtracts and actually comes up with a plausible conclusion that for most people the unhappy things, the painful things predominate, that the negative positions predominate. You can think what you like about such philosophical “trifles”; for those who want to get to the very foundations of knowledge, these are not trifles, and they must not remain so if we want to escape from the misery of today's knowledge. This became a very important problem for me, because I said to myself, a person does not feel it the way it is calculated here. That is nonsense — you can see that the moment you ask people: If you were to add up your happiness and unhappiness, you would come out with a larger number on the negative side. Would you therefore consider your life a lost one? Would you therefore consider yourself ripe for suicide, as Eduard von Hartmann suggests, that every person should actually do so if they were reasonable? For Eduard von Hartmann, the calculation says yes, but life never says yes. Why not? Now, in my “Philosophy of Freedom” I have shown that this subtraction, which Eduard von Hartmann carried out, simply cannot be carried out. if one wants to apply an arithmetic operation at all, one must apply a completely different one. you have to use a fraction or a division: the numerator or dividend contains everything that is fortunate, pleasurable, everything that brings satisfaction, and the denominator or divisor contains everything that brings suffering, unhappiness, pain and so on. If you apply the division calculation, then you would have to have an infinite denominator if you want to get a number that means zero as a life conclusion. If you can only divide a finite number of suffering and pain through it, then you will never get a life conclusion that is zero. The human being does not commit suicide as a result of subtraction. And when I showed that here one cannot just subtract, but instead divide, or that a fractional approach must be taken, I was also able to show that for mathematics in a certain case one is obliged to start from life, that one must therefore gain access to life, gain an immediate insight into life, before making a mathematical approach. Here I have the three points together: on the one hand, in natural science, the mathematical approach, which in probability theory can adequately describe the external facts, but which is nevertheless insufficient when it comes to reality. Then there is reality itself, as it is grasped in its real individual form, and finally there is reality itself, which is directly observed as the master of the mathematical approach. There we have the limit of what is mathematically possible, insofar as we start from mathematics itself. And when one recognizes in this way that it is necessary to go beyond the mathematical when wrestling with this problem, then, on the other hand, when one has gained that conception of which I have spoken today, one finds that one has now made this leap in reality, where one has gone beyond the abstract thinking that we encounter most purely in mathematics and entered into direct reality. And only from there did the possibility arise – one might say in an epistemological way, which Goethe himself could not yet have given – to grasp Goethean morphology in the first place and, secondly, to deepen and expand it. For now, once you have gained that imaginative conception, you begin to grasp what Goethe actually meant when he developed his primal plant, that is, an inwardly and spiritually conceived form that underlies all the various outwardly diverse plant forms. Once you have grasped this archetypal plant, he said, you can theoretically invent plants in the most diverse ways with the possibility of growth, that is, you can inwardly recreate the natural process. We have an inner soul process by which we can, anticipating the natural process, allow the most diverse plant forms to emerge from the one primal plant, to recreate them inwardly, just as nature creates the most diverse plant forms from the one typical primal plant. There Goethe has already made the transition from pure abstract thinking to what I would now like to call 'thinking in forms'. That is why Goethe arrived at a true morphology. This thinking in forms – perhaps I may still characterize it that way. What do we actually do in geometry? There we are dealing with forms, especially in plane geometry as well as in stereometry. But actually we are trying to master the forms through numbers, because measurement can, after all, be traced back to something numerical. So we try to force the forms into the abstraction of numbers. But the mathematical, as I have just explained, is limited. We have to leave it if we want to get out into reality. And we can also find the transition from merely reducing the geometric forms to numbers to directly grasping the geometric form. Once we have taken this serious approach to an inner grasp of geometry, we can also find the transition to other forms – to those forms that Goethe meant when he spoke of the primal plant, which then develops inwardly in the most diverse ways into the most varied plant forms. Just as a triangle can have one angle greater and the other smaller, thus creating the various special triangles, so too the most diverse plant forms arise from the primal plant once its law has been grasped. I would like to say that Goethe arrived at his morphology in a subjective way and only developed it to a certain degree. But that which one develops in a systematic way, by driving the will, which otherwise only lives in sensory perception, into the life of thinking, what one develops there as imaginative thinking, that is thinking in forms. And we come to the point where we can now survey the stage of knowledge of nature where we have natural laws that can be grasped in abstract thoughts - we can apply this thinking to the inorganic, to the inanimate world. At the moment we want to ascend into the organic world of plants, we need thinking in forms. Dearly beloved, let no one rail against this thinking in forms; let no one say that real science can only progress in a discursive way, can only advance from one thought to another, that is, according to the method that is recognized today as the logical method; let no one say that only this is true science. Yes, one may decree for a long time that this is true science – if nature does not yield to this science, if nature, for example the plant world, does not allow itself to be molded into this science, then we need a different science. If purely discursive thinking, purely abstract thinking, is not enough, then we need thinking in forms, in inner pictorialness. And this thinking in inner pictorialness makes the plant world understandable to us on the outside, and makes the unity of our entire life between birth and death understandable to us on the inside. I have often stated in my books and lectures that in those moments when one has truly developed this imaginative thinking, it turns out that life from the time one has learned to say “I” to oneself, when the ability to remember begins, to the present moment shows itself as if unfolding in a single tableau. Just as one normally regards one's external physical body as belonging to oneself and looks at it at any given moment, so one also has one's previous life on earth in the course of time before one, as in a panorama of images. This is the first achievement of truly anthroposophical science: to survey one's inner life as a tableau right up to one's birth, so that one now really has an overview of this time organism. What is called the etheric body of man or the body of formative forces in my various books - what is that other than what is achieved through imaginative visualization? We come to survey our life between birth and the present moment, presenting itself as a unity in the immediate present, at the same time as the impulses that carry us beyond the present moment into our further life on earth. And when we have achieved this, the second step of supersensible knowledge presents itself: it is difficult even today to find a name for this step; inwardly, as a method I have called it inspired knowledge. Do not let the term bother you. It does not refer to anything handed down by tradition, but only to what I have just hinted at in my books and what I will also hint at here in principle. I have said that imaginative visualization is achieved by placing certain easily comprehensible ideas at the center of our consciousness and that this strengthens that consciousness. Just as we, in a sense, recreate memory when we place such ideas at the center of our consciousness, we must now also develop forgetting as an act of the will in our lives. Just as we can concentrate all the powers of our soul on certain ideas, which we place in our consciousness in the way I have characterized, we must also be able to drive these ideas out of our consciousness whenever we want, through inner arbitrariness. We must therefore also reproduce forgetting just as we artificially reproduce, if I may express it this way, remembering. If we do these exercises, we will see that such an idea, which we bring into the center of our consciousness in this way, initially attracts all kinds of other ideas – like bees, they come in from all sides, these other ideas. We must learn to exclude them; in fact, we must learn to exclude all imagining. We must learn, so to speak, after we have developed such images, to be able to make the consciousness empty without falling asleep in the process. Just try to imagine what that means! This must be practiced, because as soon as a person, with only the usual strength of consciousness, tries to empty his consciousness - especially after he has first concentrated on a particular idea - he inevitably falls asleep. But that is precisely what must be avoided: empty consciousness after imaginative ideas, that is, initially without subjective content. And at that moment, when this has been achieved, the spiritual world streams into the soul life thus prepared. At this moment one is able to see a world that is not there for external sensory perception, but which is the world that we now see not only as part of our earthly life, as in imaginative knowledge, where we see up to birth, but we see the world that contained us as beings before we descended into earthly life. There we get to know ourselves as spiritual beings in a purely spiritual world. There we get to know that within us that has created this organism that lives here in the earthly world. There we get to know through knowledge the immortal part of the human being. And from there it is then - I just want to mention this - one step to intuitive knowledge, to also gain the insight that the earthly lives of human beings repeat themselves. But you will have gathered from what I have only been able to hint at that it is a matter of using strict systematic schooling of the inner being to prepare the consciousness, not to create any world out of the inner being, but on the contrary, to free the consciousness after prior imagination for the contemplation of the spiritual world. Just as we encounter the outer world with our outer senses, in that the will lives in these outer senses and enters into a relationship with objectivity, so, after we have completely freed our inner soul life from the physical, we prepare the soul to see the spiritual world as it sees the physical world through the senses. There we get the opportunity to see what being has built us, in that we are built out of individuality, not out of the cosmos, and how this being lived in the spiritual world as a pre-existent being before we accepted the physical body through the hereditary stream through generations. And then we learn to recognize that which, in turn, passes through the gate of death and enters the spiritual world when we discard this physical body. We learn to recognize what builds up this physical body, what undergoes a certain transformation in this physical body through birth, what is rekindled through the experiences of life and then, through death, enters the spiritual-soul world again. So we are not striving for a fantasy, not for philosophizing, not for speculating about the immortality of man, but we are striving for a real insight into what lives in us as immortal. And when we deepen our spiritual life in this way, then we are standing in a spiritual objectivity, and it cannot be said that this standing in a spiritual objectivity can in any way be compared with hallucinations arising from the mere inner life or with any subjective fantastic creations. Now I would like to show – albeit more comparatively – how one can arrive at not only an anthropology, but also a cosmology, in this way. Time is pressing, so I can only hint at it. How does our ordinary life between birth and death unfold? We see, my dear attendees, how we have external experiences through our sensory experiences, how these sensory experiences trigger and develop ideas, and how, after the ideas have been developed, these ideas can in turn be evoked by the powers of memory. So we see, when we survey our soul life, that in what we carry within us we have, so to speak, the images of what we have experienced in the outside world. I am seeking a particular mental image from the very depths of my soul life. This mental image brings something to my mind in the present moment that I may have experienced fifteen years ago: an objective event experienced completely subjectively. But if my entire inner soul life is healthy, if what I am imagining as a memory is in a healthy connection with the rest of my soul life and, in particular, if I am able to orient myself properly through the senses at all times , then I am also able to tell myself what the external objective experience was like fifteen years ago from what I currently have in front of me – by drawing on everything with which it is related. Between birth and death, we initially carry the world of our experiences within us in our soul. But, esteemed attendees, we also carry other things within us. If we only look at our lives as we usually survey them in our soul life, we are only aware of what I have just mentioned. But we carry other things within us, and through what I have described to you as supersensible knowledge, we look deeper into ourselves - not through nebulous mysticism, but through exact methods related to mathematics. We carry organs within us, the organs of our inner being. They are built out of our pre-existent being; they are built out of the spiritual world. Those who, with the help of such exact anthroposophy as I have described, not only survey their soul life, which they have gathered together between birth and the present moment, but who learn to recognize the nature of the forces that prevail in the inner organs, he comes to know the world in its development through his organs, which he spiritually understands. And it is not, my dear audience, some reminiscence of some old superstition, of some old star belief or the like, when today anthroposophy speaks of a world development, but it is based on an insight into the human being that recognizes the inner human being in such a way that the mere life of the soul is recognized as an image of the events experienced since birth that are connected with us. In this way we experience a connection with the whole world. Just as our memories are inner images of our experiences since birth, so our whole inner being - when we learn to understand it - is an image of the whole development of the world. This is what it means to “read the Akasha Chronicle” - not all the confused ideas that are held against anthroposophy. It means that we can gain knowledge of the world from true knowledge of the human being. However, we must not simplify matters, as is often the case today, when we believe that we can grasp something that is contained in a precise process of knowledge with a few concepts that have been pinned up. Nobody today would dare to grasp or even criticize the system of mathematics with a few pinned-up concepts. On the other hand, what is acquired in a much more complicated way, but with true striving, is today casually tried to be characterized with a few concepts. He who takes care to use all inner precautions in order not to fall into subjectivity but to completely immerse himself in objectivity — that is, to first shape the consciousness so that it can immerse itself in spiritual objectivity — is, I might say, slandered in such a way that it is claimed that only suppressed nervous energy is brought up at the appropriate moment and that all kinds of hallucinations arise from this. can immerse itself in spiritual objectivity – is, I might say, slandered in that it is claimed that only suppressed nervous energy is brought up at the appropriate moment and that all kinds of hallucinatory images are developed. Now, ladies and gentlemen, without wishing to lapse into a counter-criticism, I will merely characterize how it is currently being done, and at the end I will show you this by means of a small example. A pamphlet appeared recently in which the author seeks to show that what the anthroposophist finds can, to a certain extent, be readily admitted, for the simple reason that today's science also finds that the strangest experiences of the soul can arise from the subconscious. And so, as the author of this work believes, it is quite possible to admit to the anthroposophist that he experiences all kinds of things as they are experienced by mediums, as they are experienced when people are put under hypnosis or taught suggestions, or even when they create suggestions for themselves. In particular, what is most essential about anthroposophy is traced back to self-suggestion. And now something very worthy is being done. It is shown how the most wonderful effects are possible from the soul, how one can develop remarkably extensive healing processes for tuberculosis, metritis, fibroids and so on from the soul life, how even tuberculous deformations of the spine can be balanced out by the soul life: Why should it not be possible to admit that an anthroposophist also draws all kinds of things from his soul life, especially when he first puts himself into self-suggestion? And now it is shown that such subjective life exists, and such subjective life, especially of autosuggestion, of self-suggestion, the anthroposoph should also be devoted. And there is, for example, the following claim:
- that is, by means of the spiritual and soul development as I have described it ... self-aware action, that is, self-reflection in a trance, is made possible. Now, dear attendees, I had not spoken of trance. I had only told you that consciousness comes to clearer, brighter levels, not that it is led back into darkness and gloom as in trance!
So, here it is claimed that I said in a lecture in Bern on July 8 that to attain higher knowledge, one must force the will into the imagination. Now, first of all, something that shows how curiously exactly today's scientific papers are written! For example, on the same page it is said how such suggestions can actually be carried out, how something can be suggested to someone so that an idea is taught to him, and how he then becomes completely absorbed in this idea and even creates all sorts of things out of himself as a result of this absorption in this idea. And now the author says:
– “ideo-dynamic” is in brackets, this is very important! –
So, we are dealing with an ideodynamic force that is independent of the will. Nevertheless, this ideodynamic force, which is independent of the will, is to be utilized by me, by saying that one must drive one's will into the imagination. Now, let us take the sentence first of all as the author claims I said it in Bern: One must force one's will into the imagination. Today I also spoke about how one must develop the will, which one first gets to know through sensory perception, into the life of the imagination. In this way one fights precisely those influences that are merely suggestive. In this way one works in precisely the opposite sense. This application of the will is precisely what destroys all suggestive possibilities of influence. What I have described takes place in the opposite direction to suggestive influence. This is actually already evident from the fact that these suggestive influences are called “ideo-dynamic impulses”, i.e. not impulses of the will, but ideo-dynamic impulses. And yet, the author has a presentiment that he is not yet able to express properly: One must indeed summon up one's willpower when one wants to introduce subjective ideas into the ideas, but this happens without the person to whom it happens, who experiences the suggestion, applying his own will. Everywhere I have described that the person who wants to become an anthroposophical researcher applies his will, thus standing out from the possibilities of suggestion. Therefore, I could not say - I read this in this brochure and said to myself: Did I really let my tongue be paralyzed in Bern on July 8, 1920, did I really say that in order to gain higher knowledge, one must force one's will into one's ideas? For anyone can do that, for suggestion can also happen without any activity on the part of the one to whom something is being suggested. Now I have taken the trouble to look at the shorthand notes of my Bern lecture on July 8, 1920, which I fortunately found today. And now see what I really said in Bern at the time. Everywhere I tried to show how the opposite approach to suggestion should be taken. And then I said:
That is something else. You can only drive ideas into the images. When one speaks of driving the will into the life of the images, it means precisely not allowing the images to be influenced by suggestions, but taking control of the free life of the images and the nature of the images, which is ruled by the will. You see, it is quoted in quotation marks, and the opposite of what I really said is said in quotation marks. But this is only one example, ladies and gentlemen, of the way in which anthroposophy is often discussed today, especially from a scientific point of view, and how it is misunderstood. This is extremely characteristic, and the whole brochure actually has this tendency. My dear audience, as for what mediumistic phenomena are, what hallucinations are, what kind of visions arise from within – I have always strictly excluded them from the field of anthroposophical life and explained that I consider all of this to be pathological, that it goes below the level of the sense life, not above it. And I have done this everywhere, in many places in detail, as what Anthroposophy wants, what Anthroposophy gives as descriptions of spiritual-soul worlds, arises from completely different foundations than what is asserted here. And now there is a strange tendency for precisely that which I reject, that which I regard as morbid, pathological, to be seen as the justified thing about anthroposophy! That is, they reverse the facts. They make people believe that I am describing something that is hallucinations or the like. Well, they do exist, he says, so we will readily admit that to the anthroposophist, he is entitled to that. But he must not talk about higher worlds, for there he enters a philosophical realm that is to be valued only as theosophical doctrine, as imagination conditioned by theosophical doctrine. But something highly characteristic, my dear audience: the man who crystallizes out here first of all, who wants from anthroposophy - although it is the opposite of what anthroposophy really gives - says: What I concede to anthroposophy, we know today; telepathy, clairvoyance, teleplasty and so on are known. But all that belongs to the pathological field, perhaps also to the therapeutic field – the things are connected, after all. I would have to go into what I have repeatedly said in medical courses: how a pathology and a therapy can certainly be derived from anthroposophy that legitimately go beyond what today's merely materialistic view can give. But by first distorting what anthroposophy can give, and then by acknowledging this distortion, it is said: Yes, you can suggest all kinds of things to people, but you have never experienced people experiencing something like astral or mental fairy-tale lands in a trance. But that is precisely the point! He calls it fairy-tale land because he passes it off as fantasies. That, he says, cannot be experienced by suggestion. Yet it is experienced. A strange polemic! First, what one believes one can understand is selected from the anthroposophical results, although one does not understand it at all. This is then categorized as hallucination and so on; that is accepted. But the other part is dismissed as fairyland, yet it is said that it cannot be suggested. It cannot be suggested either, but must be conquered by exact inner methods as inner knowledge. Now, ladies and gentlemen, I do not blame anyone for misunderstanding in such a grotesque way what anthroposophy can give. I do not blame this respected (and rightly so) collection of scientific, medical and other essays, published in Munich and Wiesbaden by J. F. Bergmann, for including such grotesque criticism of anthroposophy, because the whole booklet by Albert Sichler is actually well-intentioned. He wants to do justice to the matter. He cannot do so because, for the time being, there is still an abyss between what is recognized as official science today and what is needed to really make progress, because ultimately there is an inner connection in spiritual life, between our entire civilized life and the scientific life in modern times. And the bridge must be built over to ethics, to social life. This cannot be done by a science that gets stuck only in the material or at most makes hypotheses about the non-material. This can only be done by a science that truly penetrates into the spiritual, because it is in the social that the spiritual is active, and social laws can only be found by someone who also finds laws, forms, transformations of the spiritual in nature. Now, in the short time available to me today, I have only been able to give a few points of view, my dear audience. I wanted to show you how anthroposophy strives to work in the spirit of true science, how it takes its scientific and epistemological seriousness very seriously indeed in its quest to arrive at a method modelled on mathematics. On the other hand, however, it still faces many prejudices today, even though it is actually needed by our civilization as something tremendously necessary, because it alone is capable of providing man with a real, satisfying elucidation of his own nature in terms of knowledge. Now, dear ladies and gentlemen, as I said, I believe that the antagonisms will disappear once an objective basis is gained for creating harmony and mutual understanding between today's science and the anthroposophical research method. We must wait for that. Until this is achieved, opponents will come from all sides, from political parties or from religion, theology or other fields, who will operate on purely subjective ground. But anyone who is familiar with this anthroposophy, anyone who is serious about it, serious about everything that has its source in Dornach, will say to himself, because he knows how seriously research is conducted within this anthroposophical field, ic field, he says to himself: however great the misunderstandings may be, a balance, a harmony must ultimately be found from the seriousness of modern scientific methods and attitudes. And this is a consciousness that one can have when one is on one's own ground, that in everything one seeks in anthroposophy, one first presents the conscientious demands for examination that are otherwise applied in science today. And that is what makes one expect the external balance. If one proceeds seriously, one can be convinced that from today's science and from what anthroposophy has so far endeavored to achieve - at least for those who know both, contemporary science and anthroposophy - the balance, the harmony can certainly be found today. And this awareness gives confidence that the scientific understanding will come about. And then the other antagonisms against Anthroposophy will disappear by themselves. There are no requests to speak. Rudolf Steiner: My dearest attendees! It is of course only possible to consider a few guidelines in a lecture, especially one that is intended as an introductory lecture to a whole series of lectures on Anthroposophy. And so I was unable to consider one thing in particular that would have been very close to my heart: to show the bridge that leads from the cognitive side of anthroposophy to the social, practical-ethical and religious side of it. And about that - we only have time until 10 o'clock - allow me to say a few words. If we consider the scientific world view – I am not saying the natural science, but the scientific world view – as it is widely held today, especially among laypeople, but also among people who do not believe they are laypeople, but who, as members of various monist and other associations, today embrace the scientific ideas of thirty years ago as a religious confession, if one considers what has emerged as a kind of worldview that is more or less materialistic. There is no bridge from what many people today consider to be the only possible way of researching to the reality of ethical ideals and social ideals. Today, seeing all that science gives us, we are faced with the necessity of forming ideas for a worldview, for example, about the beginning and end of the earth. I can only hint at these things as well. We have the Kant-Laplace theory of the earth's beginning from the primeval nebula, which is presented according to the laws of aerodynamics and aeromechanics. One imagines how the planetary solar system formed out of a primeval nebula, how the earth split off. The question of how living beings could have come into being is, however, continuously critically treated – whereby one will reach the limits of knowledge – and then it is treated how organic life now also sprouts from what was initially only present in the primeval nebula, how man then emerged from this and how he experiences himself today in the self-confident ego. Now I have met people – and basically life is the greatest teacher, if you only know how to take it correctly – I have met people who took this scientific worldview seriously. I remember one person in particular who is typical of many others. The others often do not realize it, but they set up an altar of faith, an altar of knowledge. Those who take the scientific ideas seriously cannot do this; they come to such hypothetical ideas about the beginning and end of the earth, for example from thermodynamics and entropy theory, which leads to imagining how everything finally merges into a heat death. One meets only few people who have the inner courage to admit from a fully human point of view, in which situation man is placed with his inner being today, if he takes these things seriously as the only ones that apply. Herman Grimm, for example, says – forgive the somewhat drastic saying that I am quoting – from his feeling, by realizing what is to develop on earth between the Kant-Laplacean primeval nebula and the state to which the theory of entropy is supposed to lead us: A carrion bone round which a hungry dog circles is a more appetizing piece than this world picture, which is already presented to people in schools today. And future ages will struggle to explain how a particularly pathological age once came to form such ideas about the beginning and end of the earth. It will be impossible to understand how something like this could be taken seriously. Well, my dear audience, the science that stands before us today as natural science – as I said, anthroposophy does not in the least find fault with it – fully recognizes it in its field. Anthroposophy is based on a scientific attitude, because scientifically conscientious methodology and inner discipline, as they have developed, must be recognized as a model, only they must be further developed in the sense that I have characterized today. But this also leads to a true knowledge of man. This knowledge of man is not as easy to gain as the one we gain today from physiological and biological views. This knowledge of man finally shows us how man is actually a being that is organized quite differently internally according to the head and the metabolic-limb system - these are the two poles of the human being. What I am now briefly hinting at, I have explained in great detail in a series of lectures. But I want to show right away how wrong it is to say, for example, that our thinking arises from processes in our brain. That would be just as if a car were to move along a road that has become soft and were to make its impressions there: you can follow the path of the impressions of the car in the road that has become soft. But consider, someone comes and says: You should explain these impressions by forces that are down there in the earth; you must explain these configurations from these underground forces! — It is the same with the methods used today to explain the brain convolutions, the nerve structure, from the forces of the organs. The nerve structure can be explained by the effects of the spiritual and soul, just as the furrows in a softened road can be explained by the car driving over them. It is only an image. But in a perfectly exact scientific way, anthroposophy leads us to recognize how thinking and imagining is a spiritual and soul process that only has the brain as a basis. And it has the brain as a substrate because it is not based on the brain's growth processes, on organic processes, but precisely on the brain's slow dying processes. The nervous system does not actually have a life, but rather the opposite of a life, a decline in life. Space must first be made for thought. The nerve centers must die away, and a continuous dying, a constant clearing out of the material processes, must occur so that the spiritual-soul processes can take hold. This must always be compensated for by the limb metabolism system during sleep or other processes. What arises in this way, the consciousness-paralyzing processes, those processes of which physiology speaks today, do indeed abolish imagining, extinguish it. Precisely when these processes are toned down, passing over into a kind of partial dying, then imagining, thinking arises, so that we continually carry life and dying, being born and dying within us. And the moment of dying, it is only, I would like to say, the integral of the differentials that make up life, of the differentials of a continuous dying that make up human existence. If we continue this train of thought, we come to recognize something that is virtually denied in today's accepted science, but which lies in the real continuation of this science: that the human being has real processes of decomposition and continuous processes of dying within him. The ethical ideals develop in the context of these dying processes, so that these ethical ideals are not dependent on the continuation of organic processes, but on suppressed, regressing organic processes. But this in turn leads to the following: When our Earth reaches a state, whatever its mineral-biological state, when the Earth - for my sake, let's take the hypothesis as valid, it is not quite, but in a certain sense it is - when it reaches heat death - when no other processes are possible because everything has formed according to the second law of the mechanical theory of heat as the remnants that are always there when heat is released into the environment, when heat is converted, when this state has occurred, then what has lived in man as ethical ideals has come to its greatest expression of power. And that carries earthly existence out to new planetary formation. We discover in our moral ideals the germs for later worlds, for later worlds based on our present-day morals. This gives our ideals a real value. Contemporary philosophy is obliged to speak of mere values. But what is there for a possibility when one speaks of values that arise in man as mere ideas, but which are not the germs of future realities, what is there for another prospect than to say to oneself: We come from the Kant-Laplacean world nebula, and somehow the moral ideals emerge in our self-awareness, but these moral ideals live in us only like haze and fog. That was the personality I was talking about earlier, who accepted the modern scientific development as a law and said to himself: Man is cheated in the world. Natural scientific development has brought him this far, then the moral ideals arise as foam, dissolve again, and everything enters into the heat death, into the great cemetery, because the moral ideals are indeed experienced, but have no possibility of becoming reality. By following the regressive processes in which moral ideals have been at work, anthroposophy shows us that these moral ideals have only an ideal existence in us, but that, as they develop in the human being, they are seeds for the future. Just as we see in the germ of the plant that will develop in the next year, so anthroposophy allows us to see in moral ideals the germs of future worlds. And we see the idealities of the past as the seeds of the present world, behind the Kant-Laplacean primeval fog. The present world is the realization, the actualization of what was once only thought, just as the present plant is the realization of last year's seed. And what is currently experienced only as moral value is the real seed of future worlds. We are not only part of the cosmos through our natural organic processes, we are also part of the cosmos through what we experience as moral and social values within us. We are acquiring a cosmology that does not only include natural processes and laws as its agents, we are acquiring a cosmology in which our entire moral world is also a reality. Anthroposophy builds the bridge from the natural to the ethical and religious world. This is what I wanted to mention in a brief closing word, because it was no longer possible in the lecture. |
| 65. From Central European Intellectual Life: Faust's World Wandering and His Rebirth in German Intellectual Life
03 Feb 1916, Berlin Rudolf Steiner |
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| 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. |
| 65. From Central European Intellectual Life: Faust's World Wandering and His Rebirth in German Intellectual Life
03 Feb 1916, Berlin Rudolf Steiner |
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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:
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:
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”:
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?
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:
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. |
| 35. Philosophy and Anthroposophy
17 Aug 1908, Stuttgart Rudolf Steiner |
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| With due experience of Natural Science and the Mysticism confined to ordinary consciousness, Anthroposophy presses forward to the perception that a new consciousness must be developed, issuing from ordinary consciousness as, for instance, waking from the dull dream consciousness. Thus the cognitional process becomes for Anthroposophy a real inner occurrence extending beyond ordinary consciousness, whereas Natural Science is nothing but logical judgment and inference within the confines of ordinary consciousness, on the basis of outwardly given material reality, and Mysticism only a deepened inner life which, however, remains within the pale of ordinary consciousness. |
| 35. Philosophy and Anthroposophy
17 Aug 1908, Stuttgart Rudolf Steiner |
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PREFATORY NOTE
PHILOSOPHY AND ANTHROPOSOPHYThe human soul, under normal conditions of life and development, is liable to encounter two obstacles which must be overcome if the soul would avoid being swept like a rudderless ship on the waves of life. A drifting of this nature produces, in time and by degrees, an inner insecurity eventually culminating in some form of distress, or it may rob a man of the power of rightly disposing himself in the order of the world according to the true laws governing life, thus causing him to disturb and not promote this order. Knowledge in respect of the human self—that is, self-knowledge—is one of the means of ensuring inner security and our true alignment in the order of life's development. The impulse to self-knowledge is found in every soul; it may be more or less unconscious, but it is always present. It may vent itself in quite indefinite feelings which, welling up from the depths of the soul, create an impression of dissatisfaction with life. Such feelings are often wrongly explained, and their alleviation sought in the outer circumstances of life. Though we are often unconscious of its nature, fear of these feelings obsesses us. If we could overcome this anxiety we should realize that no external measures, but only a thorough knowledge of the human being, can prove helpful. But this thorough knowledge requires that we should really feel the resistance of the two obstacles which human knowledge is liable to encounter when it would enter more deeply into the knowledge of the human being. They consist of two illusions, towering as two cliffs, between which we cannot advance in our pursuit of knowledge until we have experienced their true nature. These two obstacles are: Natural Science and Mysticism. Both these forms of knowledge appear in a natural way upon the path of human life. But they must be inwardly experienced if they are to prove helpful. Whether or not we can acquire a knowledge of humanity depends upon our developing the strength to reach, indeed, both obstacles, but not to remain stationary before them. When confronted by them, we must still retain sufficient detachment to be able to say to ourselves: neither method can lead our soul whither we would go. But this insight can only result from a true inner experience of their cognitive value. We must not shrink from really experiencing their nature; in order to realize thereby that we endow them with their true value by first advancing beyond them. We must seek access to both methods of knowledge; once we have found them, the way of escape from them becomes apparent. The belief that true reality is grasped by Natural Science is revealed, to an unprejudiced insight, to be an illusion. A normal feeling of our own human reality produces quite a definite experience. The latter is intensified the more we tend to apply Natural Science to the comprehension of our own human self. Man as a natural product consists of a sum of natural operations. It may become an ideal of knowledge to comprehend man in the light of the operative forces observed in the realm of Nature. With genuine Natural Science this ideal is justifiable. It may also be admitted that an incalculably distant future will reveal the method of development according to natural law of the miraculous human organization. Efforts in this direction must be accepted as the rightful ideal of Natural Science. Yet it is essential that we should, in the face of this rightful ideal, press forward to an insight promoted by a sound feeling of reality. We must inwardly experience how the results offered us by Natural Science become increasingly foreign to all our inner experience of reality. The more perfect the results, the more foreign are they felt to be to our inner life, with its thirst for knowledge. True to its ideal, Natural Science is bound to offer us material substances; yet, if inwardly unbiased, we cannot avoid finally encountering the difficulty experienced by Du Bois-Reymond, when he asserted, in his famous lecture on the “Boundaries of Natural Science,” that human knowledge would never grapple with the phenomenon haunting space in the guise of matter. To devote all suitable faculties to the pursuit of Natural Science is a sound experience, but we should at the same time feel that the distance between ourselves and reality is not thereby lessened, but increased. The results of Natural Science should give us occasion to make this experience. We must observe that they do not result from comprehension or feeling, and we shall reach the point of admitting that we do not, in truth, devote ourselves to Natural Science in order to draw nearer to reality; we believe this to be the case in our conscious self, but the unconscious origin of our efforts must have an altogether different significance—a significance for human life, into which we must inquire. Knowledge of true reality does not coincide with knowledge of Nature. This insight can prove a turning point in the life of our soul. The knowledge is brought home to us through inner experience that we were bound to follow the course of Natural Science, but that we were disappointed in the expectations raised by our diligent pursuit. This recognition is the final result of genuine experience and insight into the natural processes. We then abandon the belief that Natural Science, however perfect its future development, can supply us with the knowledge of the human being. Not to have reached this standpoint and still to cherish the hope that ideal natural scientific knowledge can enlighten us concerning our own being, is a sign that we have not sufficiently advanced in the experiences that are possible within the scope of Natural Science itself. This is the first obstacle against which we strike in our effort to attain knowledge of the human being. Many a thinker has felt the thrust on this side, and has faced about towards Mysticism and mystical immersion in the inner self. A certain progress can also be made in this direction, in the belief that actual reality, or something in the nature of unity with the primordial fount of all Being, can be inwardly experienced. If, however, we press on far enough to destroy the force of illusion, we become aware that however deep the immersion in the inner self, this experience leaves us helpless in the face of reality. With however powerful a grip we may be induced to feel that we have seized primal being, this inner experience finally proves to be some effect of an unknown being; we remain incapable of laying hold on true reality and retaining it. The mystic pursuing this path discovers that he has inwardly abandoned the true reality which he seeks and cannot draw near it again. The natural scientist reaches an outer world which illudes his inner life. The mystic, while seeking to grasp an outer world reaches an inner life which sinks into the void. Our experiences, on the one hand with Natural Science and on the other with Mysticism, proved to be no fulfillment of our efforts to find reality, but merely the starting-point of our path, for we are shown the chasm that yawns between material occurrence and the inner life of the soul; we are led to see this chasm and to gain the insight that, in respect of true and genuine knowledge, neither Natural Science nor mere Mysticism is capable of bridging it. The perception of this chasm leads us to seek an insight into reality by filling the gap with cognitional experiences which are not yet forthcoming in ordinary consciousness, but must be developed. With true experience of Natural Science and Mysticism, we must admit that another form of knowledge must be sought in addition to these—a knowledge that brings the material outer world nearer to our inner life, and at the same time immerses our inner life more deeply into the real world than this can be the case with Mysticism. A cognitional method of this nature can be called anthroposophical, and the knowledge of reality thereby attained, Anthroposophy; for at the outset, true and genuine Man (anthropos) is held to be concealed behind the “man” revealed by Natural Science and the inner life of everyday consciousness. This true and genuine Man makes his presence felt in dim feelings, in the more unconscious life of the soul. Anthroposophical research raises him into consciousness. Anthroposophy does not lead away from reality to an unreal imaginary world; it embodies the search for a cognitional method in response to which the real world will reveal itself. With due experience of Natural Science and the Mysticism confined to ordinary consciousness, Anthroposophy presses forward to the perception that a new consciousness must be developed, issuing from ordinary consciousness as, for instance, waking from the dull dream consciousness. Thus the cognitional process becomes for Anthroposophy a real inner occurrence extending beyond ordinary consciousness, whereas Natural Science is nothing but logical judgment and inference within the confines of ordinary consciousness, on the basis of outwardly given material reality, and Mysticism only a deepened inner life which, however, remains within the pale of ordinary consciousness. In calling attention, at the present day, to the fact that an inwardly real cognitional process and an anthroposophical knowledge exist, habits of thought are encountered whose origin is due, on the one hand, to Natural Science with its wonderful achievements and great expansion, and to certain mystical prejudices on the other. Thus Anthroposophy is repudiated upon the one side for supposedly not doing justice to Natural Science, while upon the other it appears superfluous to the mystically inclined, who believe they can themselves take their stand upon true reality. Others, who aim at keeping “genuine” knowledge free from everything that extends beyond ordinary consciousness, hold that Anthroposophy disowns the true scientific character which philosophy, for instance, and its knowledge of the world should retain, and therefore lapses into dilettantism. The following exposition will prove how little this reproach of dilettantism (especially at the hands of philosophy) is justified. A short sketch of its development will show how often philosophy has estranged itself from true reality, through not perceiving the very two cognitional obstacles alluded to above, and how an unconscious impulse is at the root of all philosophical effort to steer between these obstacles and strive for Anthroposophy. (I have dealt at greater length with this tendency of all philosophy towards Anthroposophy in my book Die Rätsel der Philosophie. Philosophy is generally regarded by those concerned therewith as something absolute, and not as something which was bound to come into existence, under particular conditions, in the course of the development of mankind, and be subject to transformation. Many an erroneous view of its true nature is current. It is however precisely when dealing with philosophy that we are in a position to name the period when it originated (and must have originated) in the course of human development—not merely through inner experience, but also on the basis of external historical documents. Most exponents of the history of philosophy, especially of the older school, have estimated this period fairly correctly. In all such presentations we find that a beginning is made with Thales, and the course of philosophy traced from him onwards in continuity down to our times. Some modern writers on the history of philosophy, aiming at unusual comprehensiveness and perspicacity, have placed the beginning of philosophy in still earlier times, drawing upon the various teachings of ancient wisdom. This, however, is only due to a particular form of dilettantism wholly ignorant of the fact that all the teachings of Indian, Egyptian, and Chaldean wisdom were entirely different, both in respect of method and origin, from purely philosophical thought with its leaning towards the speculative. The latter developed in the world of Greece, and there the first thinker to be considered in this sense is, in fact, Thales. We need not describe at length the characteristics of the various Greek philosophers, beginning with Thales; we need not dwell on Anaxagoras, Heraclitus, Anaximenes, or yet on Socrates and Plato. We may begin at once with that personality who appears as the very first philosopher in the narrowest sense, the philosopher par excellence—Aristotle. All other philosophies were in reality but abstractions inspired by the wisdom of the Mysteries; in the case of Thales and Heraclitus, for instance, this could easily be shown.1 Neither Plato nor Pythagoras is a philosopher in the real sense of the word, seership being the source from which both of them draw. The chief interest in a characterization of philosophy as such does not centre round the fact that someone or other expresses himself in ideas, but round the question where the sources from which he draws are to be found. Pythagoras drew from the wisdom of the Mysteries, which he translated into concepts and ideas. He was a seer, only he expressed his experiences as seer in philosophic form; and the same was the case with Plato. But the essential characteristic of the philosopher, manifested for the first time in Aristotle, is the fact that he necessarily rejects all other sources (or has no access to them), and works exclusively with the technique of ideas. And since this may be said for the first time of Aristotle, it is not without good historical reason that it should be precisely this philosopher who founded logic and the science, of thought. All other efforts in this direction had been of a precursory nature only. The way and the manner in which concepts and judgments are formed and conclusions drawn this entire range of mental activity was discovered by Aristotle as a kind of natural history of subjective thought, and everything we meet within him is closely connected with this inauguration of the technique of thought. As we shall revert to certain points in connection with Aristotle which are of fundamental importance for all later aspects of the subject, this short historical indication will suffice to characterize in a few words the point from which we depart. Aristotle remains the representative philosopher for later times also. His achievements were not only embodied in the post-Aristotelian period of antiquity, up to the founding of Christianity, but he was regarded most especially in the first Christian period and onward into the Middle Ages as that philosopher in whom direction was to be sought in all efforts to formulate a conception of the universe. By this we do not mean that men had Aristotle's philosophy before them as a system, as a collection of dogmas—especially in the Middle Ages, when the original texts were not obtainable; but thinkers had become familiar with the process of applying the technique of pure thought and thereby ascending step by step to knowledge, up to the point where thought encompasses the fundamental problems of life. Aristotle became to an increasing extent the Master of Logic. The medieval thinkers would say to themselves: whatever be the source of the knowledge of positive facts, be it due to man's investigation of the outer world by means of his senses, or be it due to revelation by means of divine Grace, as through Christ Jesus, these things have simply to be accepted, on the one hand as the deposition of the senses, and on the other as revelation. But if any matter, however given, is to be substantiated by a purely conceptual process, this must be done with that technique of thinking which Aristotle discovered. And, in fact, the inauguration of the technique of thinking was achieved by Aristotle in so signal a fashion that Kant was but right in declaring that, since Aristotle, logic had not advanced by so much as a single sentence.2 Indeed, this statement is in all essentials true of the present day; the fundamental teachings embodying a logical system of thought will be found today almost unaltered, if compared with what Aristotle set down. The additions made today are due to a somewhat mistaken attitude, prevalent even in philosophical circles, towards the conception of logic. Now it was not merely the study, of Aristotle, but above all the assimilation of his technique of thinking, that became the standard of the central period of the Middle Ages, or the early Scholastic period, when Scholasticism was at its prime—a period which came to a close with St. Thomas Aquinas in the thirteenth century. When mention is made of this early Scholasticism, it should be clearly understood that no philosophical judgment is possible at the present time in this connection, unless we are unhampered by all authority and dogmatic belief. It is indeed almost more difficult nowadays to speak of these things purely objectively, than disparagingly; for if we speak of Scholasticism with disparagement, we run no risk of being charged with heresy by the so-called freethinkers; but if we speak purely objectively, it is highly probable we shall be misunderstood, because a positive and most intolerant ecclesiastical movement of the present day often bases—its appeal upon totally misunderstood Thomism. There is no question of discussing here what is accepted by orthodox Catholic philosophy; neither should we be intimidated by the possible reproach of being concerned with what is professed and determined in dogmatic quarters. Let us rather be undisturbed by what may be asserted on the right and on the left, and simply seek to characterize what Scholasticism in its prime felt of science, the technique of thinking and supernatural revelation. Early Scholasticism does not bear the character attributed to it in a ready-made modern definition. Far from being dualistic in nature, as many imagine, it is pure Monism. It sees the world's primal source as an undoubted unity; only the Scholastic has a particular feeling with regard to the perception of this primal being. He says: there exists a certain fund of supersensible truth, a store of wisdom which was revealed to mankind; human thought with all its technique falls short of penetrating, of itself, into those regions which embody the content of the highest revealed wisdom. The early Scholastic appealed to a certain fund of wisdom which transcends the technique of thinking; that is, it is only in so far attainable as thought is capable of elucidating the wisdom which has been revealed. This portion of the Wisdom must be accepted by the thinkers as revelation, and the technique of thinking merely applied for its elucidation. What man can evolve from his inner self has its being only in certain subordinate regions of reality, and here the Scholastic applies active thought for the personal investigation of man. He presses forward up to a certain boundary where revealed wisdom meets him. Thus the content of personal research and revelation becomes united in an objective, unified, and monistic conception of the universe. That a kind of dualism, owing to human limitations, is associated with the matter is only of secondary importance; this is a dualism in cognition and not a dualism in the world whole. The Scholastic, therefore, pronounces the technique of thinking to be suitable for the rational elaboration of the material gathered by empirical science in sense-observation; further, it may press forward a stage, even up to spiritual truth. Here the Scholastic, in all humility, presents a portion of wisdom as Revelation, which he cannot himself discover, but which he is called upon to accept. Now this special technique of thinking, as applied by the Scholastics, sprang entirely from the soil of Aristotelian logic. There was, in fact, a twofold necessity for the early Scholastics (whose period drew to its close in the thirteenth century) to concern themselves with Aristotle. The first necessity was provided by historical evolution. Aristotelianism had become a permanency. The second arose from the fact that, as time went on, an enemy to Christianity sprang up in another quarter. The teachings of Aristotle did not expand to Western countries only, but also to the East; and everything that had been brought by the Arabs into Europe by way of Spain was, in respect of thought technique, saturated with Aristotelianism. It was a certain form of philosophy, in particular of Natural Science, extending into Medicine, which had been brought over, and which was eminently saturated with Aristotelian technique of thinking. Now the belief had grown in that quarter that nothing but a kind of Pantheism could be the consistent outcome of Aristotelianism—a Pantheism which, particularly in philosophy, had evolved from a very vague Mysticism. There was, therefore, in addition to the fact that Aristotle's influence was still paramount in the technique of thinking, yet another reason for men to concern themselves with his teachings, for in the interpretation placed upon him by the Arabs, Aristotle is made to appear as the opponent and foe of Christianity. It had to be admitted that if the Arabian interpretation of Aristotelianism were true, the latter could provide a scientific basis adapted for the refutation of Christianity. Now let us imagine what the Scholastics felt in this extremity. Upon the one side they adhered firmly to the truth of Christianity, yet upon the other they were bound by all their traditions to acknowledge that the logic and the thought technique of Aristotle were alone right and true. Placed in this dilemma, the Scholastics were faced by the task of proving that Aristotle's logic could be applied and his philosophy professed, and that it was exactly he, Aristotle, who provided the very instrument by means of which Christianity would be really conceived and understood. It was a task imposed by the trend of historical development. Aristotelianism had to be handled in such a way as to make it evident that the teaching brought by the Arabs was not Aristotle's, but only a mistaken conception thereof; that, in short, one had but to interpret Aristotle correctly in order to find in his teaching a basis for the conception of Christianity. This was the task Scholasticism set itself, to the achievement of which the writings of St. Thomas Aquinas were largely devoted. Now, however, something else happened. When the day of Scholasticism had drawn to its close, there occurred in course of time a complete rupture along the whole line of logical and philosophical thought-evolution. No criticism is here intended of this fact; we do not wish even to suggest that it could have happened otherwise; the actual course taken was necessarily such as it was, and we merely put the case hypothetically when we say that the most natural thing would have been to have increasingly expanded the technique of thinking, so that ever higher and higher portions of the supersensible world should have been grasped by thought. But the next development was not of this nature. The fundamental conceptions, which, with St. Thomas Aquinas for instance, were applicable to the highest regions, and which could have received such development that the boundaries restricting human research would have receded ever farther and upwards into the supersensible regions—this body of thought was robbed of its power and possibility, and survived only in the conviction that the highest spiritual truths transcend altogether the activity of human thought and are beyond elaboration by concepts which man can evolve from himself. By such means a break in man's spiritual life occurred. Supersensible knowledge was pronounced to be entirely beyond the compass of human thought and to be unattainable by subjective cognitional nets; it must have its roots in faith. There had always been a tendency in this direction, but it ran to extremes towards the close of the Middle Ages. Pains were taken to accentuate the breach between faith on the one hand, which must be attained by objective conviction, and, on the other hand, whatever logical activity can elaborate as the basis of a sound judgment. Once this chasm was opened, it was only natural that knowledge and faith should be increasingly thrust asunder and that Aristotle and his technique of thinking should also become the victims of this breach occasioned by historical development. This was more especially the case at the beginning of the modern era. It was maintained on the scientific side (and we may consider many of the statements as well founded) that no progress could be made in the search for empirical truth by merely spinning out what Aristotle had placed on record. Furthermore, the trend of historical events was such that it became inadvisable to make common cause with the Aristotelians; and as the era of Kepler and Galileo drew near, mistaken Aristotelianism had become the very bane of knowledge. It repeatedly happens that the adherents and followers of some particular philosophy of the universe corrupt an uncommon amount of the teaching which the founders themselves presented in the right way. Instead of looking to Nature herself, instead of exercising the faculty of observation, it was found easier at the end of the Middle Ages to have recourse to the old books of Aristotle and base all academic dissertations on his written word. It was characteristic of the epoch that when an orthodox Aristotelian was invited to convince himself by inspecting a dead body, that the nerves do not proceed from the heart, as he had mistakenly gathered from Aristotle, but that the nervous system has its centre in the brain the Aristotelian replied: “Observation certainly shows me that this is actually the case, but Aristotle states the reverse, and I have greater faith in him.” The followers of Aristotle had, in fact, become a grievance; empirical science was bound to make a clearance of this false Aristotelianism, basing its authority on pure experience, and we find a particularly strong impulse in the direction given by the great Galileo. On the other side we see an entirely different development. An aversion to the technique of thinking was felt by those who, so to speak, sought to save their faith from this invasion of independent thought. They were of the opinion that this technique of thinking was powerless when faced by the fund of wisdom acquired through revelation. When the worldly empirics invoked the book of Aristotle, their opponents confronted them with arguments gathered from a different but equally misunderstood book—namely, the Bible. This was more particularly the case at the beginning of the modern era, as we may gather from Luther's hard words; “Reason is deaf and purblind fool” that should have naught to do with spiritual truths, adding further that pure faith by conviction can never be kindled by reason in a thought founded upon Aristotle, whom he calls “hypocrite, sycophant, and stinking goat.” These are, indeed, hard words; but when considered from the standpoint of the new era, they may be better understood. A deep chasm had opened between reason and its technique of thinking on the one hand, and supersensible truth on the other. A final expression of this break is found in a philosopher through whose influence the nineteenth century has become entangled in a web from which it can only with difficulty extricate itself. This philosopher is Kant. He is, virtually, the last representative thinker whose methods can be traced to that division which occurred in the Middle Ages. He differentiates sharply between faith and that knowledge which man may claim to attain. Externally the Critique of Pure Reason is associated with the Critique of Practical Reason, and Practical Reason seeks to handle the problem of Knowledge from the standpoint of rational faith. On the other hand Kant asserts most emphatically of Theoretical Reason that it is incapable of comprehending the Actual, the “thing-in-itself.” Man receives impressions from the thing-in-itself, but he is circumscribed by his own ideas and conceptions. We could not describe Kant's fundamental error without going deeply into the nature of his philosophy and its history; but this would lead too far from the present subject, moreover the reader will find the question adequately treated in my Truth and Science. What is of far greater interest to us at the present moment is this web in the meshes of which the philosophical thought of the nineteenth century has become entangled. Let us examine how this came about. Kant was especially alive to the necessity of demonstrating to what extent something absolute was given us in thought, something in which there could be no uncertainty, as against the uncertainty, according to him, of everything which proceeds from experience. Our judgment can only derive certainty from the fact that a portion of knowledge does not originate with external things, but with ourselves. In the Kantian sense, we see external things as through a coloured glass; we receive them into ourselves, grouping them according to lawful connections which we ourselves evolve. Our cognition has certain forms—the forms of space, time, the categories of cause and effect, and so on. These are immaterial for the thing-in-itself, at least we cannot know whether the thing-in-itself has any existence in space, time, or causality. The latter are forms created by the subjective mind of man and imposed upon the thing-in-itself the moment of its appearing; the thing-in-itself remains unknown. Thus when man finds the thing-in-itself before him, he endows it with the forms of space and time, and finds an apparent association of cause and effect, thus enveloping the thing-in-itself with a self-made network of concepts and forms. For this reason man may claim a certain security of knowledge, since, as long as he is as he is, time, space, and causality possess actual significance for him. And whatever man thrusts into the things he must also extract from them. Of the thing-in-itself, however, he can have no knowledge, for he remains ever a captive of the forms of his own mind. This view was finally expressed by Schopenhauer in his classical formula; “The world is my conception.” Now this entire process of reasoning has been transmitted to almost the entire thought of the nineteenth century; not only to the theory of knowledge, but also, for instance, to the theoretical principles of Physiology. Here philosophical speculation was amplified by certain experiences. If we consider the doctrine of the specific energies of the senses, there would seem to be a corroboration of the Kantian theory. At all events that is how the matter was recorded during the nineteenth century. “The eye perceives the light”; yet, if the eye be affected by some other means, say by pressure or by electric current, a perception of light is also recorded. Hence it was said: the perception of the light is generated by the specific energy of the eye and transferred to the thing-in-itself. It was Helmholtz in particular who laid this down in the crudest manner as a physiological-philosophical axiom, declaring that not even a pictorial resemblance can be claimed between our perceptions and the objects exterior to ourselves. A picture resembles its prototype, but in so called sense-perception the resemblance to the original cannot be so close as even in a picture. The only designation, therefore, we can find for the experience within ourselves is “symbol” of the thing-in-itself, for a symbol need have no resemblance to the thing it expresses. Thus the philosophical thought of the nineteenth century, until the present day, became thoroughly impregnated with elements which had long been in preparation, so that the relation of human cognition to reality could not be conceived except in the sense of the ideas given above. I often recall a conversation I had the privilege of having years ago with a highly esteemed philosophical thinker of the nineteenth century, with whose views, however, on the theory of knowledge I could by no means agree. To qualify human conceived thought as purely subjective was, I urged, a cognitional assertion which should not be assumed a priori. He replied that one need only bear in mind the definition of the word “conception,” which pronounces the latter to exist only in the soul; but since reality is only given us by means of conceptions, it follows that we have no reality in the act of cognition, but only a conception thereof. This truly ingenious thinker had allowed a preconceived opinion to condense to a definition (which, for him, was indisputable), to the effect that conceptual thought reaches only as far as the boundary of the thing-in-itself, and is, therefore, subjective. This habit of thought has become so predominant in the course of time that all writers on the theory of cognition who pride themselves on understanding Kant, consider every man a dullard who will not agree with their definition of conceptual thought and the subjective nature of apprehension. All this has resulted from the split which I have described as occurring in the spiritual development of mankind. Now a real understanding of Aristotle enables us to find that an entirely different principle and theory of cognition might have resulted from a direct, that is, from an undistorted, development of his teaching. In the matter of the theory of knowledge, Aristotle already admitted ideas to which man today can but slowly and gradually ascend through the intellectualistic undergrowth which is the outcome of Kant's influence. We must, above all things, realize that Aristotle, by means of his technique of thinking, was able to elaborate true concepts capable of transcending those limits which were imposed upon knowledge in the way described above. We need only concern ourselves with a few of Aristotle's fundamental conceptions in order to recognize this. It is entirely in conformity with him to say: Our initial knowledge of the things which we apprehend around us is provided by our sense-perception. Sense presents to us the individual thing. When we, however, begin to think, the things group themselves; we gather diverse things into a unit of thought. Here Aristotle finds the right connection between this unity of thought and an objective reality (which, leads to the thing-in-itself), in showing that if we think consistently we must conceive the world of experience around us as composed of “matter” and what he terms “form”—two concepts which he genuinely differentiates in the only true and possible sense. It would entail a lengthy exposition to treat exhaustively of these concepts and all they involve; some elementary notions, however, in this connection will help us to understand Aristotle's teaching of “matter” and “form” as differentiated by him. He clearly realizes that, in respect of our cognition, it is essential that we should grasp the “form” of all things which constitute our world of experience, since it is the form which is the vital principle of things, and not matter. There are even in our day personalities endowed with a true comprehension of Aristotle. Vincent Knauer, who in the 'eighties was lecturer at the University of Vienna, was in the habit of explaining to his hearers the difference between form and matter by means of an illustration which may, perhaps, appear grotesque, but is none the less pertinent. “Think,” he said, “how a wolf, after eating nothing but lambs for a part of his life, consists, strictly speaking, of nothing but lamb—and yet this wolf never becomes a lamb!” This argument, if only rightly followed up, gives the difference between matter and form. Is the wolf a wolf by reason of matter? No! His being is given him by his form, and we find this “wolf-form” not only in this particular wolf, but in all wolves. Thus we find form by means of a concept expressing a universal, in contradistinction to the thing grasped by the senses, which is always particular and single. Our thought moves altogether along Aristotelian lines, if we, like the Scholastics, exert ourselves to conceive the nature of form by dividing the universal into three kinds. The universal, as essence of the form, is conceived by the Scholastics, firstly as pre-existent to all operation and life of the form in the single thing; secondly as permeating the single thing with life and activity; thirdly, they found that the human soul, by observing the things inwardly, endows the universal form with life in a manner consistent with its (the soul's) nature. The philosophers, accordingly, differentiated the universal that lives in the thing and comes to expression in human cognition, in the following way: 1. Universalia ante rem: the essence of the form before its incorporation in the single thing. 2. Universalia in re: the essential forms existent in the things. 3. Universalia post rem: these essential forms abstracted from the things and appearing in cognition as an inner experience of the soul, through the reciprocal relation of the soul to the things. Until we approach this threefold difference, no genuine insight is possible, in this connection, into what is here of importance. For only consider for a moment what is involved. The insight is involved that man, in so far as he remains within the universalia post rem, is confined to a subjective element. Further (and this is especially important), that the concept in the soul is a “representation” of universally existent real forms (Entelechies). The latter (universalia in re) have incorporated themselves in the things, thanks to their having previously existed as universalia ante rem. A purely spiritual form of existence must be attributed to the universal essences before their incorporation in the single things. The conception of such essential universalia ante rem will naturally appear as a fanciful abstraction in the eyes of those for whom only the world of sensible objects is real. But it is of essential importance that an inner experience should induce us to accept this conception. That experience is meant, thanks to which the general concept “wolf” is not merely regarded as a condensation, effected by the intellect, of all the various single wolves, but is perceived as a spiritual reality extending beyond the single thing. This spiritual reality enables us to recognize difference between animal and man in a genuinely spiritual sense. What is inherent in the species “wolf” does not find its realization in the single wolf, but in the totality of these single wolves. In man, an entity of soul and spirit is immediately revealed in the individual, whereas, in animals, only through the species, in the totality of the individuals. Or, in Aristotelian terminology with individual man the “form” finds its immediate expression in the physical human being; in the animal world the “form,” as such, remains in a supersensible region and extends itself along the line of development comprising all the individuals of the same “form.” It is permissible, in the sense of Aristotelianism, to speak of “group-souls” (the souls of kind or species) in the case of animals, and of individual souls in the case of man. If we succeed in acquiring an inner experience in the light of which the above distinction becomes equivalent to a perceived reality, we have advanced one step farther on the path of knowledge, along which Aristotelianism and Scholasticism had only progressed as far as the technique of concepts and ideas. Anthroposophical Spiritual Science seeks to prove that the above experience can be acquired. The “forms” are then not merely the outcome of conceptual differentiation, but the object of supersensible vision. The group-souls of the animals and the individual souls of men are perceived as beings of similar kind. This entire process is perceived as physical reality is perceived by the senses. The method by which Anthroposophical Spiritual Science seeks to acquire this experience will be indicated in the course of this treatise. At this point the writer's intention was to show how ideas within the range of Aristotelian doctrine can be found to corroborate Anthroposophy. There is, however, in addition to all that we have met with in Aristotle, something which finds less and less favour in modern times. We are required to exert ourselves to think in concise, finely chiseled concepts, in concepts which we have first carefully prepared. It is necessary that we should have the patience to advance from concept to concept, and above all things cultivate clarity and keenness of thought; that we should be aware of what we are speaking when we frame a conception. If, for instance, we speak, in the Scholastic sense, of the relation of a concept to that which it represents, we are required in the first place to work our way through lengthy definitions in the Scholastic writings. We must understand what is meant when we find it stated that the concept is grounded “formally” in the subject and “fundamentally” in the object; the particular form of the concept is derived from the subject and its content from the object. That is but a small, quite a small, example. The study of Scholastic works involves labouring through massive volumes of definitions most unpleasant task for the scientist of today; for this reason he looks upon the Scholastics as learned pedants and condemns them downright. He is totally unaware that true Scholasticism is naught but the detailed elaboration of the art of thinking, in order that thought may provide a foundation for the genuine comprehension of reality. It is of course far easier to bring a few ready-made conceptions to bear upon everything that confronts us in the nature of higher reality—far easier than to construct a firm foundation in the sphere of thought. But what are the consequent results? Philosophic books of the present day leave one with a dubious impression: men no longer understand each other on higher questions; they are not clear in their own minds as to the nature and scope of their conceptions. This could not have happened in the days of the Scholastics, for thinkers of that period were necessarily acquainted with the aspect of every concept they used. A way of penetrating to the depths of a genuine thought-method was clearly in existence, and, had this path been duly pursued, no entanglement in the web of Kant's “thing-in-itself,” and the (supposedly subjective) conception thereof, would have been possible. On the contrary, two results would have been attained. In the first place, man would have achieved an inwardly sound theory of knowledge; secondly (and this is of great importance), the great philosophers who lived and worked after Kant would not have been so completely misunderstood in accepted philosophical circles. Kant was succeeded by Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel; what are they to the man of today? They are held to be philosophers who sought to fashion a world from purely abstract concepts. This was never their intention.3 But Kant's principles of thought were the dominating influence and prevented the greatest philosopher in the world being understood. People will only by degrees ripen an understanding of all that Hegel has given to the world; only when they have east off this hampering web of theories and cognitional phantoms. Yet this would be so simple! No more is necessary than the effort to think naturally and without constraint, rejecting the set habits of thought which have developed under the questionable influence of the Kantian school. The question must clearly be settled whether man (as proceeding from the subject) encompasses the object with a conception which he himself constructs within that subject. But does it necessarily follow that man is unable to penetrate into the “thing-in-itself?” Let me give a simple example. Imagine, for instance, that you have a seal bearing the name of Miller. Now press the seal on some sealing-wax and again remove it. There can be no doubt, I take it, that the seal being, let us say, of brass, no property of the brass will pass over into the wax. Were the sealing-wax to exercise the function of cognition in the Kantian sense, it would say: “I am entirely wax; no brass passes over into me, there is therefore no connection whereby I may learn the nature of that which has approached me.” And yet the point in question has in this case been entirely neglected—namely, the fact that the name “Miller” remains objectively imprinted upon the sealing-wax, without any portion of the brass having adhered to it. So long as people cling to the materialistic principle of thought that no connection is possible unless matter passes over from one to the other, they will in theory maintain: “I am sealing-wax and the other is brass-in-itself, and since none of the brass-in-itself can enter me, therefore the name of Miller can be no more than a sign. But the thing-in-itself which was in the seal and which has impressed itself upon me so that I can read it, this thing-in-itself remains forever unknown to me.” With this final formula the argument is clenched. Continuing the illustration, we might say: “Man is all wax (conception). The thing-in-itself is all seal (that which is exterior to the conception). Now since I, being wax (the subject conceiving), can but attain to the outer surface of the seal (the thing-in-itself), I remain within myself and nothing passes into me from the thing-in-itself.” So long as Materialism is allowed to encroach upon the theory of knowledge, no understanding is possible of what is here of importance.4 It is true that we are limited by our own conception, but the element that reaches us from outer reality is of purely spiritual nature, and is not dependent upon the transmission of material atoms. What passes over into the subject is not of material but of spiritual nature, as truly as the name Miller passes into the wax. This must be the starting-point of a sound theory and investigation of knowledge, and it will soon become apparent to what extent Materialism has gained a footing even in philosophical thought. An unbiased review of the state of affairs leaves us no alternative but to conclude that Kant could only conceive the “thing-in-itself” as matter, however grotesque this may seem at first sight. For the sake of a complete survey of the subject we must new touch upon another point. We have explained how Aristotle distinguished between “form” and “matter” in all things within our range of experience. Now if the process of cognition allows us to approach the “form” in the manner indicated above, the question arises to what extent is a similar approach possible in the direction of “matter.” It must be noted that, for Aristotle, matter was not synonymous with material substance, but comprised the spiritual element underlying the world, of physical reality. It is therefore possible not only to comprehend the spiritual element that reaches us from external things,* but also to seek immediate access to the things and identify ourselves with matter. This question is also of importance for the theory of knowledge, and can be answered only by one who has gone deeply into the nature of thought, that is, of pure thought. The concept of “pure thought” is one which we must be at pains to acquire. Following Aristotle, we may look upon pure thought as an actual process. It is pure form and, in its initial mode of existence, void of content as far as the single, individual things of the external physical world are concerned. Why? Let us make it clear how pure conception comes into being in contradistinction to perception through the senses. Let us imagine we wish to form the conception of a circle. We can, for this purpose, put out to sea until we see nothing but water around: this perception can provide the conception of a circle. There is another way, however, of arriving at the conception of a circle without appealing to the senses. I can construct, in thought, the sum of all places which are equidistant from one particular spot. No appeal to the senses is necessary for this exclusively internal thought-process; it is unquestionably pure thought in the Aristotelian sense; pure actuality. And now a further significant fact presents itself. Pure thought thus conceived harmonizes with experience; it is indispensable for the comprehension of experience. Imagine Kepler evolving, by means of pure constructive thought, a system in which the elliptical courses of the planets are shown, with the sun in the focus, and then observation, by means of the telescope, subsequently confirming an effort of pure thought conceived in advance of experience. Pure thought is thus shown to possess significance for reality—for it harmonizes therewith. Kepler's method affords a practical illustration of the theories which Aristotelianism founded upon the science of knowledge. The universalia post rem are grasped, and, upon nearer approach, it is found that they became united with the things in a previous form, as universalia ante rem. Now if these universals are not perverted in the sense of a false theory of knowledge, if they are not made to appear as subjective notions, but are found to exist objectively in the things, it follows that they must first have become united with that “form” conceived by Aristotle as the underlying foundation of the world. Thus the discovery is made that the apparently most subjective activity (when something is determined independently of all experience) provides the very means for attaining reality in the most objective manner possible. Now what is the reason why human thought, in so far as it is subjective, cannot at first find free access to the world? The reason is that it finds its way obstructed by the “thing-in-itself.” When we construct a circle we live in the process itself, if only formally to begin with. Now the next question is: To what extent can subjective thought lead to the attainment of any permanent reality? As we have pointed out, subjective thought is, in the first place, expressly constructed by ourselves; it is of merely formal nature and, as far as the objective world is concerned, has the appearance of an extraneous addition. We are indeed justified in claiming that it is a matter of complete indifference to any existing circle or sphere whether our thought concerns itself therewith or not. My thought is brought externally to bear upon reality, and is of no concern to the world of experience around me. The latter exists in its own accord irrespective of my thought. It can therefore follow that our thought may possess objectivity for ourselves, yet be of no moment for the things. What is the solution of this apparent contradiction? Where is the other pole to which we must now have recourse? Can a way be found, within pure thought to create not only form, but together with form its material reality? As soon as the possibility is given of a simultaneous creation of form and matter a point of security is reached upon which the theory of knowledge may build. When we, for instance, construct the circle, we may claim that whatever we assert concerning this circle is objectively true; but the question whether our assertions are applicable to the things will depend upon the things themselves eventually showing us to what extent they are subject to the laws which we construct and apply to them. When the totality of forms resolves itself in pure thought, some residue (Aristotle's “matter”) must remain, where it is not possible by the process of pure thought to reach reality. Fichte may at this point supplement Aristotle. A formula along Aristotelian lines may be reached to the effect that everything about us, including all things belonging to the invisible worlds, necessarily call for a material reality to correspond with form-reality. To Aristotle the idea of God is a pure actuality, a pure act, that is, an act in which actuality (the formative element) possesses the power to produce its own reality; it does not stand apart from matter, but by reason of its own activity fully and immediately coincides with reality. The image of this pure actuality is found in man himself, when by the process of pure thought he attains to the idea of the “I.” Upon this level (in the “I”) he is within the sphere of what Fichte calls “deed-act.” He has inwardly arrived at something which not only lives in actuality, but together with this actuality produces its own “matter.” When we grasp the “I” in pure thought we are in a centre where pure thought produces its own essential “matter.” When we apprehend the “I” in thought, a threefold “I” is at hand; a pure “I” belonging to the universalia ante rem; an “I” wherein we ourselves are, belonging to the universalia in re; and an “I” which we comprehend and which belongs to the universalia post rem. But here we must especially note that, in this case, when we rise to a true apprehension of the “I,” the threefold “I” becomes merged into one. The “I” lives within itself; it produces its own concept and lives therein as a reality. The activity of pure thought is not immaterial to the “I,” for pure thought is the creator of the “I.” Here the “creative” and the “material” coincide, and we must but acknowledge that, whereas in other processes of cognition we strike against a boundary, this is not the case with the “I” which we embrace in its inmost being when we enfold it in pure thought. The following fundamental axiom may therefore be formulated in the sense of the theory of cognition: “In pure thought a particular point is attainable wherein the complete convergence of the 'real' and the 'subjective' is achieved, and man experiences reality.” If we now set to work at this point, if we cultivate our thought so that it shall bear fruit and issue from itself—we then grasp the things of the world from within. In the “I,” therefore, grasped in pure thought and thereby also created, something is given whereby we may break down the barrier which, in the case of all other things, must be placed between “form” and “matter.” A well-founded and thoroughgoing theory of cognition may thus advance to the point of indicating a way into reality by means of pure thought. If this path be pursued, it will be found that it must eventually lead to Anthroposophy. Very few philosophers, however, have any understanding of this path. They are mostly entangled in their self-made web of notions; arid since they cannot but regard the concept as something merely abstract, they are incapable of grasping the one and only point where it is a creative archetype, and equally incapable of finding a bond of union with the “thing-in-itself.” For a knowledge of the “I” as an instrument whereby the human soul's immersion in the fullest reality may be clearly perceived, we are required to distinguish most carefully between the real “I” and the “I” of ordinary consciousness. A confusion of these might lead us to assert, with the philosopher Descartes: “I think, therefore I am”; in this case, however, reality would refute us during every sleep, when we “are” though we do not “think.” Thought does not vouch for the reality of the “I.” On the other hand, it is equally true that an experience of the true “I” is not possible except by means of pure thought. As far as ordinary human consciousness is concerned, the true “I” extends into pure thought, and into pure thought alone. Mere thinking only leads us to a thought (conception) of the “I”; experience of all that may be experienced within pure thought provides our consciousness with a content of reality in which “form” and “matter” coincide. Apart from this “I,” ordinary consciousness can know of nothing which carries both “'form” and “matter” into thought. All other thoughts do not image full reality. Yet by acquiring experience of the true “I” in pure thought we become acquainted with full reality; moreover, we may advance from this experience to other regions of true reality. Anthroposophy attempts this advance. It does not remain stationary on the level of the experiences of ordinary consciousness, but strives to achieve an investigation of reality through the agency of a transformed consciousness. With the exception of the “I” experienced in pure thought, ordinary consciousness is excluded for the purpose of this investigation. A new consciousness takes its place, whose activity in its widest range is commensurate with the activity of ordinary consciousness at such moments when the latter can rise to the experience of the “I” in pure thought. To achieve this purpose, our soul most acquire the strength to withdraw from the apprehension of all external things and from all conceptions with which we are inwardly so familiar that we can recall them in our memory. Most seekers after the knowledge of reality deny the possibility of the above; they deny it without trial. Indeed, the only method of trial is the accomplishment of those inner processes which lead to the above-mentioned transformation of consciousness. (A detailed description of these processes will be found in my book, among others, Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment.) An attitude of denial in this matter effectively hinders the attainment of true reality. Only the main points in connection with these processes can here be given; the subject is treated in detail in the author's above-mentioned and other books. The soul forces which in ordinary life and science are devoted to the perception of things and to the activity of such thought as can be recalled in memory—these forces can be applied to the perception and experience of a supersensible world. Our initial experience in this way is the perception of our supersensible being. The reason why we cannot attain this supersensible being if we remain within the limits of ordinary consciousness becomes conspicuous to us. (Though we attain it at that one point of the true “I,” as explained above, we are unable immediately to recognize it in its state of isolation.) Ordinary consciousness is produced when man's physical, bodily nature, as it were, engulfs his spiritual being and acts in its place. In the ordinary apprehension of the physical world we have an activity of the human organism which is maintained by the transformation of man's supersensible being into a sensible (physical) being. The activity of ordinary thought originates in the same way, with the difference that apprehension is ensured by the reciprocal relation of the human organism to the outer world, whereas thought evolves within the organism itself. An insight into these facts is conditional to all true knowledge of reality. The seeker after knowledge must make the attainment of this insight the object of inner, spiritual exertion. The habits of thought prevalent in our day tend to a confusion of this spiritual exercise with all manner of nebulous, mystical amateurishness. Nothing can be more irrelevant. The effort is entirely in the direction of the fullest clarity of soul. Strictly logical thought is both the point of departure and the standard of exercise, to the exclusion of all experiences deficient in such inner clarity. But this purely logical thought is related to the inner exercise in question, as a shadow to the object which casts it. The exercise of the inner faculties strengthens the soul to such an extent that the struggle towards knowledge becomes fraught with more than the experience of mere abstract thought; the experience of spiritual realities is achieved. Knowledge is kindled in the soul, of which a non-transformed consciousness can have no conception. This development of consciousness has nothing to do with any form of visionary or other diseased condition of soul. These are inseparable from a debasement of the soul below the sphere in which clear, logical thought is active; anthroposophical research, however, transcends this sphere and leads into the spiritual. In the above-mentioned conditions of soul the physical body is always implicated; anthroposophical research strengthens the soul to such an extent that activity in the spiritual sphere is possible independently of the physical body. The attainment of this strengthened condition of soul requires, to begin with, exercise in “pictorial thought.” Consciousness is made to centre upon such clear and pregnant conceptions as are otherwise only formed under the influence of external apprehension. An inner activity is thus experienced of such intensity as only external tone or colour or another sense-perception can otherwise evoke. In this case, however, the activity is purely the result of strong inner effort. It is of the nature of thought; not such thought as accompanies sense-perception with abstract concepts, but thought which becomes intensified to the point of (inner) visibility such as ordinarily is only evident in the imagery of sense-perception. The importance does not lie in “what” we think but in the consciousness of an activity not undertaken in ordinary consciousness. We thus learn to experience ourselves in the supersensible being of our “I” which, in ordinary life, is concealed by the manifestations of the physical, bodily organization. A consciousness thus transformed becomes the instrument for the perception of supersensible reality. For this purpose, however, further exercise in respect of feeling and willing is necessary, in addition to the above-mentioned exercise, which is only concerned with the transformed faculties of perceiving and conceiving. In ordinary life, feeling and willing are associated with beings or processes external to the soul. To bring supersensible reality within the range of cognition, the soul must give vent to the same activity which, in the case of feeling and willing, is outwardly directed; this activity, however, must now apprehend the inner life itself. For the purpose of and during supersensible investigation, feeling and will must be entirely diverted from the outer world; they must solely grasp what the transformed faculties of perceiving and conceiving create within the soul. We “feel,” and we permeate with “will” solely what we inwardly experience as consciousness transformed through thought intensified to the point of inner visibility. (A more detailed account of this transformation of feeling and willing will be found in the books mentioned above.) The life of the soul thus becomes completely transformed. It becomes the life of a spiritual being (our own) experienced in a real supersensible, spiritual world—as man, within ordinary consciousness, experiences his “self” in a sensible, physical world through his senses and the faculty of conceptual thought connected therewith. The knowledge of true reality is the goal of human effort, and the first step towards its realization consists of the insight that neither Natural Science nor ordinary mystical experience can provide this knowledge; for between them there yawns an abyss (as was shown at the outset) which must be bridged. This is effected through the transformation of consciousness as outlined in these pages. The knowledge of true reality can never be attained unless we first realize that the usual instruments of knowledge are inadequate for this purpose, and that the requisite instrument must first be developed. Man feels that something more is slumbering within him than his own consciousness can encompass in ordinary life and with ordinary science. He instinctively yearns for a knowledge which is unattainable for this consciousness. For the purpose of attaining this knowledge he must not shrink from transforming the faculties which in ordinary consciousness are directed towards the physical world, so that they shall apprehend a supersensible world. Before true reality can be apprehended, a condition of soul appropriate for the spiritual world must first be established! The range of ordinary consciousness is dependent upon the human organization, which is dissolved by death. Hence it is conceivable that the knowledge resulting from this consciousness falls short of being knowledge of the spiritual and eternal in man. Only the transformation of this consciousness ensures a perception of that world in which man lives as a supersensible being, that is, as a being which remains unaffected by the dissolution of the physical organism. The acceptance of this transmutability of consciousness and, hence, of a possible investigation of reality, is alien to the habits of thought of the present day. More so, perhaps, than the physical system of Copernicus to the men of his time. But as this system, in spite of all obstacles, found its way to the human soul—so, too, anthroposophical Spiritual Science will find its way. An understanding of anthroposophy is also difficult for contemporary philosophy, for the latter derives its origin from a mode of thought which failed to fructify the germs of an unprejudiced technique of thought which were implanted in Aristotelianism. This shortcoming, as was shown above, was followed by the seclusion of thought and investigation, through an artificial web of concepts, from true reality, which became a “thing-in-itself.” Owing to this fundamental tendency, contemporary philosophy cannot but refuse to accept anthroposophy. In the light of the philosophical conception of scientific method, anthroposophy cannot but appear as dilettantism, and this reproach is easily conceivable if the essentials of the question are kept in view. The origin of this reproach has here been explained. These pages will possibly have made clear what must necessarily occur before the philosophers can undertake to agree that anthroposophy is no dilettantism. It is necessary that philosophy, with its conceptual system, should work its way to an unprejudiced recognition of its own fundamental basis. It is not the case that anthroposophy is at variance with sound philosophy, but that a modern theory of knowledge, accepted by science, is itself at variance with the deeper foundation of true philosophy. This theory of knowledge is wandering in false tracks and must relinquish these if it would develop an understanding of anthroposophical world-comprehension.
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| 161. The Problem of Death: Lecture III
07 Feb 1915, Dornach Translator Unknown Rudolf Steiner |
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| What is most opposed of all to real progress in the spiritual world is the longing to dream, the longing to form illusions about outer reality, because in this way we make our will continually weaker and weaker. |
| 161. The Problem of Death: Lecture III
07 Feb 1915, Dornach Translator Unknown Rudolf Steiner |
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In connection with many painful events that have recently happened we have been considering the Problem of Death. I should like to call your attention today first to something of a more general character which is connected with the problem and which can be discovered through the means given us by Initiation Science. One must picture to oneself that when the human being passes through the gate of death he comes into a world which is quite different for him from what is often imagined. It is a tendency in human nature which may very well be understood, to picture the realm on the other side of death, the spiritual kingdom into which we enter through the Gate of Death, as being similar to the kingdom of the mind and senses in which we live between birth and death. I say it is an understandable tendency to picture this kingdom on the other side of death somewhat as a kind of continuation of the kingdom here. But one is then in error. For it is difficult to find words from the treasures of our speech which make it possible to characterise the experiences between death and a new birth, words which are even in a slight degree adequate. I have, as you know, often mentioned that our speech is calculated for the physical world and we must, as it were, adjust our relation inwardly to the words if we wish to make them words capable of expressing that which lies on the other side of death. Moreover the mode in which these words come forth from the soul when the soul must characterise something which lies on the other side of death is quite different from the mode in which words come forth from us in the world of the mind and senses. This mode of expressing oneself about the spiritual world, its beings and its phenomena is much more a self-surrender to this spiritual world and a letting oneself be bestowed upon the words. Such words as I have communicated to you in respect of persons who have died were not formed as one forms words when one wants to bring something to expression in the outer physical world, but they were so formed as if they poured into one's soul from the being in question. So that the being gives them, pours them in, and we now have the feeling that—we are expressing something or other that we see through these words, but we have throughout the feeling: through us something is expressing itself, something that uses us to a certain extent, as its organ, in order to express itself, in order to objectify itself in spiritual speech. So it is quite a different proceeding, it is a self-surrender with one's soul to the being with whom one is concerned, and such a self-surrender that the being finds the possibility of expressing with our instruments its own inner nature and its own inner experiences. When one frames the word it is not like the adapting of oneself to something external, but like a surrender of the word to the being in question, like a placing of the word at this being's disposal, so that the being can then itself make use of our words. Thus it is quite a different method of placing oneself in objectiveness, from the method here in the world of the mind and senses. One of the very first conditions, therefore, of gaining a right relation to the spiritual world, is a certain mobility of the inner nature, a certain adaptability to the most varied individuals, a continuous possibility of going out from oneself and betaking oneself into other individuals. If one really wants to express with a certain surety of aim—if I may put it thus—that which is in the supersensible world and lives therein, as is the case with one who has gone through the gate of death, one must first and foremost be healed of what can be called the earthly ego-delusion. One must have succeeded in thinking of oneself as little as possible, in setting oneself as little as possible in the central point of the universe. One must, if one has a strong predilection for speaking a good deal about oneself, for brooding a good deal over oneself, conquer this tendency; since this much speaking of oneself, much brooding over oneself, is actually the very worst path to self-knowledge. If one has the tendency to speak much of oneself, to judge everything so that first of all one is mindful of how one is oneself placed in the world, and what one signifies to the world, if one has this tendency, then one is badly fitted for finding oneself rightly in the spiritual world or for bringing anything at all of the spiritual to expression. One is most occupied with oneself in the spiritual sense when in the earthly sense one is least so occupied, thinks about oneself least, for what in the earthly sense is the most interesting of all to us, the connection of the world with our own person, is for the spiritual world the most devoid of importance. So we shall always find that the way into the true spiritual reality becomes very difficult when at every opportunity we must find occasions, according to our inner nature, to speak of ourselves, to speak of what we could be worth to the world, if need be, and so forth—less or more. If we employ these methods in ordinary life, which is also ruled inwardly by spiritual forces and impulses, we do not get on well. Here one can find the most remarkable connections. I have met with people who for instance greatly lamented that they found it extraordinarily difficult to get up, that the decision to lift themselves up was very difficult. I have even made the acquaintance of people who have calmly acknowledged that if there were no external circumstance compelling them to rise, on the whole they would prefer not to get up at all. One can always find an inner connection between the whole being of man and such a predilection. These people as a rule would be those who tell one much, very much about themselves, who have a great deal to say about what is sympathetic or antipathetic to them, what they have come across in this or that place, to their benefit or detriment ... and similar things. One who desires to prepare himself properly for a really objective grasp of the spiritual world must pay attention to such connections. For we must observe life if we wish to enter into reality. And you may be quite sure of this: as human beings, through our natural predisposition, there is nothing as a rule to which we are less disposed, than to take life objectively. We are to nothing so much inclined as to take ourselves in too much earnest and to observe outer life with too little earnestness. One only struggles through quite gradually to words which can then become really true guiding lines of life, and with great geniuses one can often see how they go through a great deal, in order then to impress their whole life-wisdom into a single word. Then this signifies something quite different from what it would when spoken by just anyone in the ordinary daily course. I once drew attention—it was in connection with the lectures which I held in Norrköping—to how easily one can utter the great, the impressive words of the aged John: “Children, love one another.” But it means something quite different if a foolish person, some youngster says it, or if John says it at the end of a full life in which much, very much had been undergone here upon earth. It is not only a matter of whether the saying is true, but also from what background of the soul it is spoken, from what background it arises. Goethe, too, from a rich, full life, wrestled through to a beautiful saying, the deep meaning of which one must fathom, though it cannot be understood as people imagine, using it in every situation of life. To understand it thus is—I should like to use the paradoxical term—far too simple, for to understand it thus is possible for every child. But as it must be understood, as Goethe understood it upon the foundation of a rich, and over rich life-experience—I refer to the words, “Know thyself and live in peace with the world”—is not possible to every child. But the linking together of these two sentences shows us that there is no self-knowledge which does not really lead to the sentence “Live in peace with the world.” I really wanted to review all these things as much as possible in detail since they are far more important than you at first believe. But I must indicate them and leave much to your own meditation. I should like only to point out that, according to the statements of many persons there is a lack of material for meditation. put there is really no lack of it, if one only has the goodwill to let the meditation material be found in life, offer itself as such from life. Now he who passes through the portal of death is directly, through this fact, removed from all the illusory relationships in which he lives, in which he is ensnared here, so long as he dwells in the physical body. He is removed from them for they were forced upon him as we know through the fact of his being incorporated in the physical body. He is above all removed from many functions which had become sympathetic to him in the life between birth and death, and which naturally, since he lacks the physical body, he can no longer carry out after death. The whole mode of living, of the relation to the universe, becomes a completely different one, and you can get an idea when you meditate upon the Vienna cycle “Life between Death and a New Birth”, of the quite different manner in which one must place oneself to the world if one desires to make concepts about this life between death and a new birth. One must only try, falteringly to coin the words which were sought for there, to experience them quite intimately. In such matters this is imperatively necessary. I have already pointed out recently that the moment of death is really not to be compared with the moment of birth into physical human life except superficially. In the ordinary course of life, if one is not supported by clairvoyant knowledge, one does not remember back to the physical birth in the physical body. Through the capacities given us by the earth we remember no further back than the fact of being born—not even so far. If there are people today who believe that they know everything through the senses, they do not reflect that they cannot know the very origin of their earth-life through sense-impressions. They can only know it by being informed about their birth or by being told on the foundation of an often not consciously but in fact unconsciously accepted inference. There are only these two methods of knowing that one has been born if one has not the aid of clairvoyant forces;—to have it related to one, or to make a deduction, an inference—other men were born, I am similar to other men, therefore at some time I too was born. A correct deduction. And any other method of arriving at the fact of one's own birth with earthly forces, except to be told about it, or to make this inference by analogy, any other method than these two does not exist for the faculties of earth, so already by the effort to come to a knowledge of our own birth we discover that it is not possible to find a foundation for the truth of it in mere experience of the senses. The moment of death is utterly dissimilar from the moment of birth, for one can always behold the moment of death, whereas one cannot with ordinary earthly faculties in the physical body behold the moment of birth. In the spiritual world in the time between death and new birth one can always behold the moment of death from the instant when one has brought it for the first time to one's consciousness. There it stands although not perhaps as we see it with its terror, from this side of life, but it stands there a wonderfully beautiful event of life, as a coming forth of the soul and spirit nature of the human being from the physical-sensible sheath, it stands there as the liberation of the Willing and Feeling impulses from the fleeting, the objective fleeting Thought-being. That directly after death a person is not in a position to behold this moment of death immediately, is connected with the fact that we have, not too little consciousness, after death, after the entrance of death, but on the contrary, that we have too much consciousness. Only remember what is said in the Vienna lectures, that we find ourselves not in too little wisdom but in too much wisdom, in an unending, overflowing wisdom pressing upon us from all sides. To be without wisdom is impossible to us after death. This comes over us like a light, flooding us from every direction, and we must first succeed in circumscribing ourselves, in orientating ourselves, where to begin with if we are not orientated. Thus through this circumscribing of the whole highly-pitched consciousness down to the degree of self-consciousness which we can bear in accordance with our earthly preparation for death, we come to that which we call “the awakening” after death. We awake directly after death too vividly, and we must first diminish this awakening to the degree corresponding to the faculties which we have prepared for ourselves through our experiences in our various earth-incarnations. So it is a struggle to stand our ground in the consciousness breaking in upon us from all sides. And now comes something in which we must all—both after death and also if we would rightly enter Initiation—first cure ourselves, as it were, of the habits of the physical-sensible life. In order to be thoroughly understood I should like to link this on to something. When we began in Berlin to carry on our movement of Spiritual Science in quite a small circle, we were at first joined by various people. We were at that time a very small circle. One day not long after we had begun to work, a member of this circle came and explained that he must withdraw again. He had seen that we were not on the right path, for it was not a matter of seeking all the things that we sought, but of seeking Unity. That was an idee fixe with this person. In a long conversation he developed the fixed idea of Unity and then left us in order to seek unity. He thought to arrive at the supersensible just through this seeking for Unity, through this idee fixe of Unity. But the idea of oneness or unity is something only resulting from the last abstractions of the outer physical life. This striving after oneness is in fact the most material towards which one can strive. It is precisely of this oneness-striving that one must be cured if one wishes to stand correctly in the spiritual world. Here in the sense world it is so easy to say: we must seek oneness everywhere, we must seek unity in the plurality, in the multiplicity. But that is something which only has significance for the physical sense world here. For when we pass through the gate of death then we do not have multiplicity, but something which comes before our soul as an overwhelming consciousness. When we have passed through the portal of death we have nothing but oneness around us, continuous oneness. It is then a matter of rightly finding plurality, multiplicity. We must strive there for nothing else than to come out of oneness into multiplicity. Now I should like to give you a correctly formed idea of how a person comes into multiplicity out of oneness. Let us suppose that one passes through the portal of death, enters into this world of surging spiritual life of wisdom. One enters first into this world, which to begin with stupefies us when we awaken there. We do not distinguish ourselves within it at all. So much is it oneness that we do not distinguish ourselves in it, we do not make a differentiation between ourselves and the universe, but rather we belong completely to the universe; all is one. But now let us answer the question, and I pray you to ponder not a little but very much upon the answer that I will give. Now we reply to a question: What actually is this oneness into which we are there received? Remember all the beings of the higher hierarchies of which nine are known to you, or ten if we count mankind. In each hierarchy is a whole host of beings. These all think. It is not man alone who thinks. All the beings of these higher hierarchies think. Consider therefore this whole host of beings in whom we are received when we have stepped through the portal of death. They are around us, for in stepping through the portal of death we are received by the complete fullness of being. At first we do not perceive them. We are within them, but we do not perceive them. That which surges around us at first is just this oneness. But what is this oneness? It is the thoughts of all the hierarchies merging into one another. What all the hierarchies think together; this thought-world of the hierarchies indistinguished as to what one hierarch, what the other hierarch thinks;—this is the Light-Being of Thought that surges round us, this oneness. Therefore we live in the thoughts of the hierarchies flowing together to a oneness. Therein we live. And now what is the further course of our life after death? Our concern is to gain a relation to the separate beings, to lift ourselves out of the ocean of thought where all the thoughts of the hierarchies flow together, and to gain a relation to the single beings, to the multiplicity. After death we must not only gain a relation to the commingled unity of the surging Thought-essence of the hierarchies—for that is given to us, but we must work through so that we gain a relationship to the single beings of the hierarchies. How do we gain this? Now at first we are flooded with this ocean of the thoughts of the hierarchies merging and flowing together. Through what we have acquired for ourselves in our physical body there condenses at the gate of death to which we look back, our own inner being lifting itself out of the material coverings. That gives us strength of will. That gives a will-impulse of a feeling nature, and a feeling-impulse of a will-nature. These we inwardly become aware of in beholding the being which ascends from the body which we are after death. Through this we are in the position to some extent of attracting our “will-rays.” And when we place such a will-ray somewhere, which we create out of the force of death, which is born with death, then we obliterate at another place, and at a third place, etc. at various places through the strength of our will-impulse we obliterate the thought-world surging around us. And inasmuch as we obliterate it there comes to meet us in the hollow space of the surging ocean of thought, if I may say so, the thought of a hierarch, the being that lives within it in the spiritual world. Whereas here in the physical world we exert ourselves to find a thought for the thing which we see, in the spiritual world, where, as I have pointed out, thought stands in profusion at one's beck and call, we must obliterate the thought, drive it away. Then the beings approach us. We must be master of the thoughts, then the beings approach us. And the strength to become master of the thought, to cast the thought out of our field of sight, as it were, whereby the being approaches us in the sea of the surging thought-world, this strength we receive through the fact that as a beautiful beginning of our spiritual life after death the vision of dying, of death itself, comes to meet us, and becomes our teacher in the obliterating. For death becomes to us after death the teacher of obliterating, the stimulator of that will force wherewith we must obliterate the thoughts in the surging sea of light. Herewith is indicated the entirely different manner in which the human being stands to his surroundings after death and before; how he must proceed in the world of the senses by establishing himself there, having the atmosphere around him and then being obliged to wait until something comes into the atmosphere. On the other hand, after death he must so proceed that he has the Light-sphere of Thought around him and within it he must then himself obliterate the thoughts that lie before him in his field of vision, in which the beings concerned then appear to him. For here one has to do with beings, as I have indicated in my book, “The Threshold of the Spiritual World.” Thus one comes out of unity into multiplicity. Monism in the sense understood by many people is only a world-concept for the Gate of Death. For there in the most marked degree an urgent necessity arises for seeking multiplicity. To seek oneness is a last fetter, a theoretical fetter of life as understood by the senses. But what is it then that we actually accomplish there? Well, it is an activity by which we make room for the hierarchies to approach us. Our being, as you know, is then spread over the whole universe (I have repeatedly spoken of this,) and we make room by creating these hollow places, as it were, so that what is objective to us after death, can appear. Never can what is objective in the spiritual world appear to us if we take our own being into the spiritual world; we can only discern the other in the spiritual world if on the spot where the other is to appear we obliterate our own being; and that happens in this way. This is an inner characterization of the process which is also necessary if we wish to reach the dead in the manner I described to you at the beginning of the lecture, where one has to acquire the power of letting the dead speak, of letting the dead express themselves. One must then try to drive away one's thinking and feeling from where the dead is, to drive away oneself, and where one has driven that away, impulses come forth from the depth of being which, without our will, place the words in our mouth which must come to us if we wish to express the objective being of one who is not incorporated in the physical body. You see, that which here in the physical world is in a way the weakest in man, willing and feeling, (they are the weakest parts of the human soul and the most unclear), over which we are least master, gains a special significance if we are to perceive in the spiritual world. On the other hand, that which here in the physical world is the strongest of all, thought-concepts—we prefer to live, as you know, in illusion and concepts, since there we can be most dominant—is the weakest in the spiritual world. One cannot make much beginning there with illusions, for illusions still disguise for us this overflowing oneness of thought-essence. Our concern is not an exercising of the life of thought, but a development of our life of will and feeling, and this too is the essential in meditation. In meditation it does not matter so much what we picture, but, as I have emphasised repeatedly, to picture with inner strength. it is a matter of inner energy, of feeling and sensation while we meditate, that is, of a will element which we develop in meditation, and which we develop more strongly if we have so to exert ourselves as in meditation we ought to exert ourselves, spiritually exert ourselves. What is most opposed of all to real progress in the spiritual world is the longing to dream, the longing to form illusions about outer reality, because in this way we make our will continually weaker and weaker. One makes the will weakest of all if one cultivates the parasites of the life of idea, if one makes illusions for oneself over all sorts of external things. Above all, the way into the spiritual world does not draw near to us by our holding life at a distance, but by understanding that not an impoverishment of the outer life, but only an enrichment, can lead into the spiritual world. People would like so much to grow into the spiritual world through weakness and not through strength. One grows into the spiritual world by weakness if the outer world, the world of life, does not interest one, when one cannot fulfill the Goethe maxim “Know thyself, and live in peace with the world.” I should like to point out before I go further in these studies of death, that in all human activity of an artistic nature there must lie as foundation a “playing in” of that activity of the human soul which is necessary for this human soul after death. As regards artistic activity it is precisely the will-element which must be impregnated into the artist from the spiritual world, not so much the element of observation. In our age of the decay of art and especially of artistic labour, the opposite is taking place. In our age of degeneration that element is being elaborated even in the artistic world, which makes the conceptual life more sophisticated. Therefore in our age, artists are becoming more and more dependent on models and copies. They can do extremely little if they have no models or copies. Hence in our age it will come about more and more that the artist will isolate himself in his art. But it can never reach real art if one isolates oneself in art. That is the opposite of what ought to be. What happens, then, if someone is creating a human being through art, in painting or sculpture, and he does not occupy himself with the inner forces which build up this human being, with the dynamic forces, but merely goes out and gets a model and uses the model as one uses things in looking at them? He is then departing from the real principle of artistic creation. Artistic creation begins when one creates an inwardly willed picture of how the nose stands out here, of how the forehead is vaulted there; one does not see the things outwardly, but can penetrate into them inwardly. That is what matters. And so in a special way it is also the case with nature. In nature it is a matter of really living within the activities of nature. And here I will call your attention to something which the human being immediately experiences when he has passed through the portal of death, which here, in the physical world, however, remains more or less unknown to him. When we paint, we paint preferably that which is spread, one might say, over the surface of things. We paint light and shade. We paint colours. Now outer nature is furnished with light and colour from the fact that she does not accept them, but throws them back. Over there is the object and it throws us back light and colour. That is between us and the object. Mineral things are, for instance, minerals, because they cannot receive light and colour, within, because they reflect them externally. There within the colour, man lives with his soul. After death he withdraws into it at once; there he knows himself in light and colour, but here he does not know himself within them. When he comes before the landscape as landscape painter, he must have something of what is between him and the landscape, he must be able to rise into it, he must, as it were, bring something into the physical world which only actually becomes reality when the human being has passed through the gate of death. This gives the similarity between artistic creation and the standing within the spiritual world, although the artist is for the most part unaware that the spiritual world pulsates and flows through him, nor is he conscious of the necessity of being pulsated through by the spiritual world. Precisely on this account the design of our building has been made as it has been made, because we must pay attention as I have often said, just to what is not there, not to what is there. Just the hollow forms which have been left free have to be considered, not what is actually there. In so far, through carrying our stream of Spiritual Science into the practical domain, a beginning has been made which had to be made in our present epoch of culture. You see, such inter-penetrations of the spiritual world into human life as through, let us say, the Death Spectrum, were by no means so unusual in times lying not so very far behind us. Today it is something unusual, and as a natural gift it will become more and more unusual. It will occur less and less as a natural gift. But the less the human being here in the physical world can form some kind of connection with the spiritual manifoldness, the more he will be fettered when he has passed through the gate of death. The possibility of creating those hollow forms would entirely cease if mankind should quite lose connection with the spiritual world, as must necessarily happen in the mere external progress of world events. We know that the old clairvoyance must become entirely lost. but if that inner relation to the spiritual world were not to be re-established through Spiritual Science, a man would gradually lose the possibility, after death, of actually living in the spiritual world, of having a real, actual existence. Through the backward-survey of his life, which always remains for him, where the beholding of death is something quite actual, he would be spell-bound, almost as if confined in a prison. Therefore in the case of those who, if I may say so, go through the gate of death strengthened by Spiritual Science, it is to be seen that comparatively quickly after death they gain freedom, free activity in the spiritual world. Hence the point is for a man to replace by the strengthening of Spiritual Science what was earlier given to him by natural aptitude—the gaining of a relation to the super-sensible, to spiritual phenomena. If from a natural aptitude one can see something like a Death Spectrum (and people in earlier times which do not lie so far behind us used always to see the death-spectrum—only it is a lost faculty)—one sees this death-spectrum through the separation from the body. This enables one to see the single, individual phenomena. These single phenomena are carved out of the oneness ... and that is the important thing ... this carving out of the oneness ... to learn how to do this. But the possibility of learning how to do it is entirely lost with the loss of the natural, atavistic clairvoyance, and it must be replaced by growing into Spiritual science. It will be this strengthening given by Spiritual Science, through which the necessary faculty for artistic creation in every sphere will be called forth in the future. The sculptor, the painter, the poet, will not be able to create if they do not strengthen themselves through Spiritual Science. Today people are still afraid of this. But the fear which comes to expression when a musician, a painter, a poet, says: ‘Since I have to engage in and struggle with all manner of things this kills the original artistic creative power in me’—can be heard everywhere. This is only a fear of the strength that is necessary if the domain of human art is really to last into the future. Men are still afraid today of what in their inner being must come forth precisely as the strongest force. Times will come in human evolution where artistic faculties must ripen through the strengthening acquired through Spiritual Science. Then, at all events, there will be less of the scandalous thing that is prevalent today, namely, that in very early youth and out of nothingness, people vaunt themselves artists and are, in their own opinions, artists. When this kind of art does not succeed, they think it is entirely due to lack of appreciation on the part of the world. This nonsensical state of things will gradually cease. The art of the future will be an art of maturity and it will not be until a comparatively late age in life that a man will feel inwardly mature enough to engage in art. it will no longer be believed that in later life it is impossible for a man to have the forces requisite for artistic creation—forces of youth as they are often called; far rather will it be found that only by the deepening and strengthening acquired through Spiritual Science can the forces that will lead to artistic creation in the future be liberated from the inner being. But people are still afraid of these forces today. They are afraid of what has to be attained. Many artists have a holy terror of this emergence of the inner depths of their being, and when they hear that it is not the external, earthly man, but the higher man within them who should be the creative artist, they are thrown into the most utter confusion. It is difficult to imagine more complete confusion than that of a certain modern artist when he realised that it is the Genius in the inner man, the being who belongs to the spiritual world, who is really the creator in the artist. An artist of modern times expressed his holy terror of the spiritual world in approximately the following words: “Genius is a terrible disease. In the heart of every writer there is a monster who devours his feelings directly they have been born. Who will be victorious—the disease over the man or the man over the disease? A man must be great indeed if he is to hold the balance between his character and his genius. If a poet is not a giant, if he does not possess the strength of a Hercules, he must either forfeit his heart or his talent.” The very flesh of one's soul, so to speak, creeps when such words are uttered. For they are simply an expression of the holy terror which exists in the human being in regard to things that are connected with the spiritual world. Moreover the last sentence is quite consistent, although the author is unaware of how consistent it is ... The fact that he speaks of giants, of Hercules, is very characteristic. It is very significant that precisely these words come into his mouth—or rather into his pen. So the view may actually be held that the human being must be victorious by virtue of what he is in earthly life ... for this is contained in the words, whereas true knowledge will reveal that the healthy genius within a man will penetrate and take hold of him, will make him into its instrument. Another modern writer refers and adds to the sentences I have just read, in strange, extremely strange words. He says: “Let us picture the tragic destruction of Laocoön as described in the Aenead. With natural horror and repugnance the citizens of Troy witness the gigantic snakes strangling Laocoön and his sons. The spectators feel fear, compassion and certainly wish to save the victims; however different their conditions of soul may be, nevertheless the moment of will undoubtedly plays a very important part ... but just imagine a sculptor in the midst of this shocked and excited crowd, a sculptor who sees the terrible catastrophe taking place before his eyes as the subject of a future work of art. Amid the general excitement of these shouting, frenzied, praying people, he remains the unruffled observer. All moral instincts in him are at this moment suppressed by the desire for aesthetic experience.” This, forsooth, is supposed to be necessary for the creation of a work of art: A crowd of people who are not artists stand there with deep compassion, unable to help, and together with them, a simpleton, a dunderhead, who has no inkling of the pain caused by it all. And this dunderhead is supposed to be the true artist who is capable of portraying the scene; he stands there in his stupidity merely as an observer: Things have come to such a pass at the present time that people dare to demand of the artist that he shall be a dunderhead when faced with life's phenomena, in order that he may be “objective.” He must tear compassion and sympathy out of his heart; he must become a dull-headed simpleton and only then, according to what is said here, will he be able to depict something capable of interesting other human beings. When people have it in them to evolve such a view of art, they cannot help being seized by the most terrible of all Ahrimanic forces. Such a view denotes the decadence of art that is produced by the fear and dread of spiritual reality. People do not know that if a man wants to be an artist he must feel events with still deeper sympathy, still deeper compassion and must be able, at a later moment to look at the same events objectively out of this deep sympathy, making us love them as we may love a being who is strange to us. Out of this still deeper quality of sympathy we must be capable of art that is creative. The perversion of outlook has reached such a point today that the opposite of truth is trumpeted forth to the world as consummate wisdom. And I am convinced that there are infinite numbers of people who consider this dullness very clever and who regard this laudation of insensitive stupidity in the artist as the final discovery of what art really is. Such is the present day and it is for us to seek in Spiritual Science that support and strengthening which enable us to realise that we ourselves are living in the world into which the human being also enters, in the natural course of events, when he passes through the Gate of Death. For us, art is related to death; it is related to the higher life: to be related to death means to be related to higher life. In order to enter the spiritual world we must in many respects be capable of ideas and mental pictures quite different from those which must fill us for the purpose of understanding the world we experience between birth and death. We must pierce through Maya not only in such a way that we take this Maya to be the same everywhere, thinking that when we have broken through it at one point we are already in the spiritual world. The density of Maya is different at different places in life. This we shall find when we confront diverse spheres of life.—Maya is woven out of different materials. Although it is Maya, it is woven out of different materials at different places in life. Suppose we get to know a child in its physical existence; we form ideas about the being of the child, ideas built up from our experiences of meeting the child in the physical body. There could be no greater error than to carry this picture into the spiritual world for the purpose of really getting to know this being when it has passed through the Gate of Death. In the death of Theo Faiss, a terribly touching karmic event has happened among us recently. It would be a false picture of him if we were merely to enlarge the idea we formed of this child as we met him in the physical world, if we were simply to project this picture into the spiritual world. In just such a being the very greatest maturity can be observed soon after death. We can find the forces which brought the child into the physical world through birth—and which have not been allowed by karma to live themselves out in the physical world—we can find these forces interwoven in the cosmic forces and we gradually realise that a mature soul has struggles through death to cosmic existence, is growing little by little towards the heavenly spheres. And when such a soul was a child in the last incarnation we can perceive that this soul is able, comparatively quickly, to develop to the point where it directs the forces that are now merging into the cosmos. Then we learn to know the human being as he is after death; it is as though with his own being he were directing the forces which were contained in his death spectrum and are now weaving themselves into the cosmos. Thus the human being grows into that creative activity which we may call the heavenly creative activity. Then his feeling that is coloured by will, and the element of will that is coloured by feeling, grow together with the universe outside him. Just as when we, as children in the physical body, gradually adapt ourselves with our sense-organs to the external world, just as we then grow into the faculty of vision, so do we grow, after death, into the essential realities we grow into the unfolding of will. If we allowed these things to work upon us in the sense of Spiritual Science, we should observe, little by little, how the Maya of external life is woven with different strengths at different places. Maya is difficult to pierce in cases like the death of a little child, because most of the external manifestations disturb what must replace them if we are to have a true picture of what the human being is after death. But there are also human beings with whom it is comparatively easy to pierce through the warp and woof of Maya; it is easy because the truth of their being has been able to connect itself deeply even with the Maya existing in them in the physical world between birth and death. There are such men, men who bring down treasures of inner, spiritual richness at their birth into the physical world and who are able to weave into their being and life what they have brought down from the spiritual world. They are those human beings whom we needs must love because of what the Creators in their love have made of them; often we do not ask why we love them; love for them is a matter of course. Such human beings are like living witnesses to the spiritual world, because even here in the physical world they are extraordinarily like their own spiritual being, and because the web of Maya only through the existence of love, of course, but through this very love—can very soon be dispersed, enabling us to gaze into the depths of the soul. Our attitude to such human beings must have a certain delicacy, a certain intimate delicacy because they have brought down a very, very great deal from the spiritual world into physical existence and because then, after death, they stand like living witnesses to the profound truth that the impulses of the spiritual world live on in all the manifestations of this physical world. If we behold such human beings after their death, it is as though they were wanting to say to us: Thus were we before and the fact that we lived in such deep, and inward truth is now confirmed when we have passed through the Gate of Death.—Thus do they stand as apostles of faith after death too, as apostles of the faith which allows us to have belief in the life we spend here in the physical world. Since the death of our friend Sybil Colaxxa, she too stands there like an apostle of the faith that the world in which we live is permeated with spirituality. And here it is necessary to explain why the strange thing happened in her case that the sight of her spiritual being confirmed what she revealed through the sheaths of external life in the physical world to everyone who knew and learned to love her. Hence the different tone in the words that had to be spoken out of her soul; it was because her essential quality as an individual was precisely that quality of which I have just spoken:
Mark well that the presentation of the past, the use of the imperfect tense, passes over into the present, the present tense, because observation of the life in the body harmonised with the vision of the life after death. This is expressed in the words themselves. Words that are coined out of the spiritual world contain their own necessity. Thus the words had to be: This Being filled with soul they voice, a voice which, eloquent more through the quality of the words than the words themselves, revealed what lay hidden within that soul, and is working on, existing. “... Existing” therefore, not “existed.”
(verkundet—the present tense—can also be used. Here the two periods of time flow together.) Now let us think of a soul like Fritz Mitscher, a friend who, to our great pain, has died so recently. The nature of this soul can best be described by those who knew him in words which may sound abstract and dry, but which really do express it: he was an objective human being. Fritz Mitscher was an absolutely objective human being. There can hardly have been any occasion when he spoke about himself. Even if he ever did, it only seemed that he was speaking of himself in describing his relations to something or other in the external world. His “I” was practically never even on the horizon ... let alone at the centre of what he said. It is natural for an elder person when he is speaking with a younger one about all kinds of things in life to bring the conversation back to himself, but it was characteristic of Fritz Mitscher that when opportunity was there for him to speak of himself, he avoided it, and diverted the conversation from himself to what he had experienced round about him, describing it with the art he had acquired from Spiritual Science. In the true sense of the word he was an objective human being. He did not think about what he signified to the world, about the position of his own “I” in the world. His interests were all purely objective, interests which express themselves so characteristically when a man is little concerned about the position he gains in the world. Fritz Mitscher was one of those men who, from the very beginning, was passionately eager, even in passing conversation, to convey to others with absolute objectivity the truths he held most sacred; this eagerness was always present because he was one of those who are interested in the cause itself and not in the person and the position of the individual personality in the world. And when he spoke before an audience he entered into the subject with the greatest purity, never losing his way in the psychical impurity of speaking about himself. It was this that was so characteristic of him. And it was this that made him so eminently capable of grasping the world in such a way that through the medium of the idea, the thought, the mental picture, he really entered into the world; he did not become remote from the world but really entered into it. And so through thought, through idea, he lived right into world-connections, lived together with the world, lived in his “I”—because he spoke so little of himself—and not only in his skin, but right into the heart of things. it is really only human beings of this kind who truly understand ideals in the world, life in ideas and in morals. To live in ideas and ideals is not merely to have ideas and ideals; ideas and ideals are easily come by, they can be picked as easily as blackberries. What matters is not that a man has ideas and ideals, but that he has them in the purity of the life of thought, and human beings without number shirk this purity. They flee from thought in hosts. My dear friends, we need only call up the Imagination, the real imagination of pure thinking, of the life in pure thought, in sense-free thoughts and ideas; we need only picture this pure wellspring of soul-existence and then try to place the specters of human beings around it, and we shall find that in whole hosts they flee from this pure spring of the sense-free world of thought. They say: “But this is barren, dry, it is something that tears love out of one's heart, it is cold, icy.” And they flee in hosts; only a few stand steadfast in purity of soul. These few are the true philosopher-souls, the men who are really gifted for philosophy. And such men as Fritz Mitscher belong to them. That is why it is almost a matter of course for such souls to grow into their connections in the most natural possible way—or, better said, for their karma to bring them into these connections. In the case of Fritz Mitscher this was so in a high degree. It could never be noticed in him that he sought any position out of an intention formed in physical life. He always allowed himself to be led to his tasks by the flow of karma. Here again you have those truly philosophical natures who will always have to be led to their tasks rather than that they will press forward to some task out of egotistical will. For these truly philosophical natures know all too well in their deep feelings and in their impulses too, that a man is, in reality, never ripe for a task, that only immeasurable vanity can give rise to the belief that he is mature, and he always anticipates in advance something that can only be achieved later on. when a man has only a little of this attitude, he feels in his life something of an inner calling. And the life then will be filled, as it were, with the: “Know thyself!” Knowledge of the self is best attained when a man speaks and thinks little of his “I”. his work and labours in life will then be permeated by the: “Know thyself, live with the world in peace!” Such was Fritz Mitscher's motto. A life like this continues in the spiritual world and remains what it was, save that in the spiritual world the fruit grows from the seed. In such cases we must abandon the point of view—for it would be unreal—which would make us ask: “What would have come out of such a being if he had been able to stay longer in the physical world?” This is an unreal point of view. The real point of view leads us to the greatness, the wonder of such a soul being taken up into the spiritual worlds. What this soul is now called upon to achieve in the spiritual worlds is related to the experiences between birth and death as the fruit of the plant to the seed, so that the life here is actually revealed as a seed for the spiritual life after death. And so when a being who has lived in objectivity is seen after death, words which characterise this objectivity of outlook in life inevitably sink into the soul, but they are words which also characterise the relationship to the surrounding world, how the whole being stood right within the world. It was necessary to speak of Fritz Mitscher in this way. The characteristic element in these words was precisely this difference between the seed here and the plant which develops in yonder world. This is how I explain to myself the words being as they were
Fritz Mitscher was an individuality who became, in an outstanding degree, what many of our dead friends have actually become since they entered into the spiritual world. They become our most effective co-workers in the field of the spiritual life we have to cultivate; they become those to whom we look upwards with special gratitude when we have to think of the tasks of the present and future spiritual evolution, tasks that can be fulfilled only slowly and with difficulty within earth-existence with the forces that are incarnated in physical bodies. In thinking of friends who have passed through the Gate of Death, including our friend Morgenstern, it always seems to me to be right to ask that they will remain among us in order that through their forces much will be able to be done in our spiritual movement that it is impossible to do with earthly forces alone. It is this that must be sent as a last greeting from the Earth to such individualities, and it must be expressed clearly and emphatically in connection with Fritz Mitscher, a dear friend who with his youthful forces will be our strong helper, a true consolation when consolation is needed. And it is often needed. Especially during the most recent period of our work, creative activities and striving, so many things have made us realise how great are the hindrances of the physical plane—truly they are not imagined hindrances—how stubbornly the prejudices of human beings oppose what must be achieved among us, and how violent the opposition often is. We need only take one such example.—People outside our stream of Spiritual Science write pamphlets ... Truly I am not saying these things for personal reasons, because I feel myself to be only a feeble instrument of the spiritual movement that has to bear us ... Pamphlet after pamphlet is written with the object of declaring that our adherents accept everything without putting it to the test, accept it in faith and belief and confidence; it is suggested that nothing exists among us except blind faith. Our movement is described by the outside world as if all our adherents were credulous simpletons, simply running after the confidence they feel. So it is in the outside world. But within the precincts, this confidence—if we mean a confidence that exists in the deep foundations of souls and does not merely lie in words—this confidence is often by no means so conspicuous. There is a great contradiction between what we are accused of in pamphlets and what ought to exist in such rich abundance within the precincts of our society. There is yawning contradiction! I say what I have to say here without criticism and above all without bitterness, without in the least wanting to hit at any single personality—but concerning many things I said here in the autumn, it has been stated in writings that Dr. Steiner hawks about his occult researches into such matters—meaning matters about which I have spoken ... he hawks about his occult powers in connection with the things that were spoken about. If it has been possible for such a thing to have been written, then it is a clear proof of the fact that the element of which we are accused in the world is by no means so firmly rooted in the deeper forces of the souls among us, although in many ways it may exist in the upper maya of consciousness. Let it be said once and for always that the teaching presented here is based upon no principle of authority whatever, and belief in it as dogma is never demanded. It is given in order that it may be tested in all details. But for anyone to set himself up as a kind of judge as to what I myself should include in my occult investigations and exclude from them—this is a spiritual tyranny which most certainly is not born of the element that must be present in the Society, although up to a certain point it need not be present for the purpose of taking in spiritual Science; this is a spiritual tyranny emanating from unconscious lack of confidence. Confidence is not needed for the purpose of receiving teachings; but confidence is needed for the realization that it is not for the spiritual investigator to be told what he has to bring from the spiritual world but that it must be Presumed that the representative of Spiritual Science knows himself what he has to do; he has himself to decide what falls within the field of his investigations. Confidence is needed here; this kind of confidence can never be unprofitable to the movement, because it does not transcend the limits of the personal and does not touch the teaching. But a fact like this denotes—as many similar facts denote—that great obstacles and hindrances do exist and that within our spiritual movement we must carry out as a duty—far removed from anything that looks like desire in our work—what leads from insight into inner necessity. This duty will always be done, however sourly, it is done (‘sourly’ according to the ordinary meaning of the word.) But precisely when we realise that we may give to our dear Dead a kind of personal charge to be together with our forces, then there arises for our movement a feeling of security which the physical world could never afford. And so, in thinking of our beloved Dead, there flows into our movement and into its impulses, something that is supersensible, not springing from what we have here, something that could never, in the physical world itself, give wings to our work. It is possible for supersensible impulses to flow into the Maya of our society-activities, for us to feel secure—because what we do, contains not merely the forces of the physical plane but supersensible forces too. Our beloved Dead have remained with us, although not in physical existence, and we therefore feel security in work which feels itself to be within the flow of spiritual evolution:
So do we speak with reality of our beloved Dead as companions, co-workers, as those who are invisibly among us. Thus concretely do we seize the invisible being, giving the hand physically for the last time to the friend in the visible world and then receiving this hand spiritually, after death from the supersensible world. In this exchange of hand-clasps we have the symbol for work within a Society that is not intended to be a mouthpiece for the physical world but is to call the supersensible worlds too, into its activities. For such work, for such activities, we want to build a centre on this hill. May there be a home here for this work! |
| 251. The History of the Anthroposophical Society 1913–1922: Disciplining the Disciples of Humanity
17 Jun 1917, Bremen Rudolf Steiner |
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| But even so, it was the case in this ancient Persian epoch that, especially in a state of sleep, in a state similar to a sleep interspersed with real dreams, people felt when they reached their forties: Yes, this soul that dwells in me, it belongs to the spiritual world, it lives in the spiritual world within me; when it has passed through the gate of death, it enters into this spiritual world. |
| 251. The History of the Anthroposophical Society 1913–1922: Disciplining the Disciples of Humanity
17 Jun 1917, Bremen Rudolf Steiner |
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My dear friends, We first commemorate those who are in the fields of the difficult confusions of the present and turn to their protecting spirits:
And while we turn to the protecting spirits of those who, as a result of these events, have already passed through the gate of death:
And the spirit we seek through our spiritual science, the spirit that wanted to go to the salvation of the earth, to the freedom and progress of humanity through the Mystery of Golgotha, be with you and your difficult duties! My dear friends! In our present time - and I mean present in the broadest sense, so that it encompasses the centuries in which we live, the centuries of our fifth cultural period, which began in 1413 and we now stand in this our present – we find few such people who live life to the full like the now less well-known but once quite sensational philosopher Schelling, who died in 1856. Let us take a brief look at the nature of this philosopher Schelling. It is something that people of the present day find extremely difficult to understand. As early as the 1790s, the philosopher Schelling appeared in Jena, exerting a powerful influence at the university through the power of his speech, captivating everyone with the spirituality of his entire being. What he presented at the time was a kind of worldview, one might say, which attempted to grasp and depict reality from two points of view. He presented a natural philosophy and a spiritual philosophy. He wanted to grasp reality from these two sides – from the side of natural existence and from the side of spiritual existence. It was in fact one of the high points of German intellectual life. For at that time one could, as it were, learn - you can read about it in my book 'Vom Menschenrätsel' - one could learn from a personality such as Schelling's, from the way the spirit speaks through the human being. Then came the time when Schelling had, as it were, taken a further step, when he presented what he had presented earlier in a different form. It was the time when he wanted to present more, not the world from one side, the side of its natural existence and from the other side, that of its spiritual existence, but rather that which underlies nature and spirit in common. And again he spoke, as it were, captivatingly, fervently, magnificently, but as if from a different key, presenting the same thing. Then came the time when he lectured less and devoted himself more to writing, when he immersed himself in Jakob Böhme's profound worldview. He then presented what he had previously presented as natural and spiritual philosophy from a different point of view, in very different words, in a very different way. And only by delving into this in such a way, by absorbing what he, one might say, was able to grasp more in abstract thoughts in his work with Johann Gottlieb Fichte, and by deepening this through the great, powerful insights of Jakob Böhme, was he able to present something like something like “The Mysteries of the Deities of Samothrace”, where he really brought to life again from certain spiritual depths what these strange mysteries of the first period of the fourth post-Atlantic period, the last period of the third post-Atlantic period, held in their bosom. Then came Schelling's theosophical period, as it is called, the time in which he tried to penetrate to the deepest sources of being, in which he tried to depict human development from a unified world source. So his theosophical period. And finally came the time – it was the time when he was called to Berlin by Frederick William IV – of his so-called positive philosophy, which has been preserved in his two-volume significant work “Philosophy of Mythology” and in his other two-volume work “On the Philosophy of Revelation”. There he attempts to present what has flowed into human development in the ancient mysteries and through the mystery of Golgotha. He was not well understood. He spoke, after all, about things for which our time has little time, and one can say, if one wants to compare someone with Schelling, not in terms of the intensity, comprehensiveness and artistry of his work, but in terms of his individual humanistic approach, then in modern times it could only be Goethe. What is the significance of a personality like Schelling? Schelling, who in his old age, with his eyes enlivened by the spirit, made an enormous impression on those who still got to know him – what was it that was most remarkable about Schelling? Yes, my dear friends, what was remarkable about Schelling was the peculiarity that he, more than other people, was able to work independently, even though he was not fully aware of this activity, to work in his etheric body, not just, as is usually the case with modern people, in his physical body. The possibility of thinking and feeling in a healthy, relaxed etheric body was something that Schelling had. And there was something else connected with this. It was connected with something that modern philistinism can understand so little: Schelling remained capable of development to a certain degree well into his old age; he remained capable of development well into his fifties. The modern person does not remain capable of development. The modern person concludes his ability to develop - we will have more to say about this later - at a relatively young age. And he is indeed proud of having concluded his capacity for development at a young age. Even today, one rarely encounters people who, let us say, at the end of their twenties or the beginning of their thirties, have the right sense to listen to fairy tales; indeed, even have the right sense to take in Goethe's Iphigenia or Schiller's William Tell with soulful vividness. That is what children absorb when they are young; adults do not concern themselves with it. My dear friends, compare the extent of the difference in today's people between development in young years and later development. In young years, people are still completely connected with physical-bodily development in their spiritual-soul development. As we know, the child develops physically and bodily, but it is connected with this physical and bodily development, with the consolidation of the nervous system, with the strengthening of the muscular system and so on, with the inner configuration of all organs, that the child's spiritual and psychological development goes hand in hand with physical and bodily development. And how dependent people are on their physical body in their 14th to 17th year! This changes later. Then the spiritual-soul development goes its own way, and for most people today it does not go any way at all. They retain the same way of judging, the same way of relating to the world, and so on. If someone like Schelling appears in the present day, then, yes, then one finds that he has undergone transformations in his life, as they say; that in his forties he spoke from a different key than in his twenties. Of course, he spoke from the same source of truth, but in a different key. And when Schelling presented his “Positive Philosophy” in Berlin in the 1840s, people could not understand how the man who had presented natural philosophy in his youth could now speak of positive Christianity in such a way. In modern times, Schelling was one of those exceptions who remained capable of development as a personality throughout their life, who were truly able to transform the stiffness and stuffiness of the original philistine that is found in people today, and remain agile in spirit. Now there is something else about Schelling: the fact that modern man, if he does not undergo an inner spiritual development in the sense of our modern spiritual science, then he has an extraordinarily difficult time, if he does not remain as capable of transformation as Schelling, to also come to inner, positive, spiritual experiences. That is why it came about that what Schelling then called “positive philosophy”, as “philosophy of mythology”, in which he treated the mysteries, as philosophy of revelation, in which he treated the mystery of Golgotha - that is why he really spoke in quite abstract terms in this part of his later age. In terms that not only repelled people who said to themselves: Now what does he want, he used to speak of natural philosophy, now he suddenly speaks of the mystery of Golgotha? Not only did he repel people who could not understand such a thing, but also those who wanted something, one could say, more real. When he spoke of potency a 1, potency a 2, of being before creating and after creating, and so on, these were abstractions that were alive for him, but he did not understand how to make them come alive. Where did it come from? Yes, you see, in a personality like Schelling's, you find something, let's say, like an atavistic retardation. Schelling was actually a transferred Indian rishi. Schelling was capable of development to the highest age, but so were all the people of the primeval Indian time. They remained as today only children are capable of development. They remained so dependent in their spiritual and soul life on the physical and bodily to the highest age - as children today are in their youth. But these people of the primeval Indian times, just the first time after the great Atlantic catastrophe, they did not feel as Schelling did, who was, so to speak, an atavistic latecomer. They remained capable of development well into their fifties; then they felt the spiritual radiating and flaming up within them in a special way. When our children today show the dependence of the soul-spiritual on the physical-bodily, it is in the time when the physical-bodily is growing, becoming more perfect, is in ascending development. The consequence of this is that during this time children primarily feel how their etheric body promotes growth, blossoming and flourishing; how their etheric body works in the physical body. Between the ages of seven and fourteen, a person could already receive tremendous revelations, but they cannot do so today because the etheric body is busy with something else, because the etheric body is busy helping the physical body to grow and flourish. And if a person were to have significant experiences in the etheric body – in their forties or even fifties – then they are no longer capable of development today, the etheric body is no longer suitable for doing more than just store our memories of youth better than those of later experiences. We then say: memory decreases; but the memories of our youth then come to the fore. But there is another way in which we notice this downward development, which begins at the age of 25 and becomes particularly pronounced in these later years. We mineralize ourselves, one could say radically, we sclerotize ourselves. And with the hardening, the compaction of the physical body was connected in these ancient times, in the first period after the Atlantic catastrophe, in the primeval Indian times, that the human being did not now notice his etheric body being used for the physical body. The physical body collapsed, but the etheric body was particularly receptive to really receiving the spiritual world within itself. And the consequence of this was that in this first epoch after the Atlantic catastrophe, people remained capable of development until the age of fifty, until the age of fifty-six; then later until the age of fifty-five, fifty-four, fifty-three, fifty-two, fifty-one, fifty, forty-nine ; that these people could wait, so to speak, their whole lives for this great event, which then occurred according to the experiences of others; that the body collapsed, and the soul, so to speak, already here, still bound to the physical body, felt at home in the same spirituality into which it passed when it went through the gate of death. In this first, primeval Indian age, the transition into the spiritual world when passing through the gate of death was therefore not as significant as for a modern human being, because the human being was already inside, so to speak. He had become independent of the physical body at an advanced age. Today we are also becoming independent, but we do not notice it because we do not remain capable of development until this time. You see, this is a peculiar and significant phenomenon, which, for certain reasons that we will discuss later, is particularly important for the present to be considered. The development in the old days, in the first days after the Atlantic catastrophe, was such that people remained capable of development without being stimulated from within, without them doing anything special; so immediately after the Atlantic catastrophe was over, they remained capable of development until the age of 56, then less and less, and finally until the age of 49. This, my dear friends, gives us the approximate age of the human race as a whole. We could say that at that time, humanity was declining from the 56th to the 49th year. The individual human being begins with the year one, two, three, and is getting older and older. Humanity as a whole began its age after the Atlantic catastrophe at the age of 56 and is getting younger and younger. And when the first post-Atlantean period, the primeval Indian period, was over, human beings only remained viable until the 49th year, then until the 48th year, and so on. They could not gain experiences of the spirit in such an intensive way as in earlier times. Imagine what a completely different impact that had on social life at that time than our kind of human development has on our present social life. Every person in those days knew in their youth that the patriarchs are those who are suffused and aglow with wisdom. And people looked up to these patriarchs as the leaders of humanity. This gave the social life of that time its character. Today, every young badger in his twenties already feels finished, wants to be elected to parliament and pass judgment like the oldest person. That is the big difference between that time and today, when people listened to those who had matured not only in their ascending physical life but also in their descent. And while the ascending physical life is such that it actually hides the spirit, the descending physical life, where we, as it were, mineralize, is such that – while the body declines – if one remains capable of development – people today no longer do – it is precisely then that the spirit blossoms in the soul. In the second post-Atlantean cultural period, things had already changed. People only remained capable of development until the age of 48, then until the age of 47, 46, 45, 44, 43, 42. So the whole human race is declining in age, and the human being is entering. That was the time when there were still people who, so to speak, remained capable of development even as their physical bodies were declining, who had direct experiences from the spiritual world. But these experiences were no longer as strong as in the older times. This is because in this period people could no longer use the etheric body to the same extent as in the older times. That is the peculiarity of the ancient Indian cultural period, that people were able to use their etheric body in a quite extraordinary way, in a quite independent way, and therefore to experience in the etheric body that which a person then goes through when he has passed through the gate of death and discarded the etheric body. But with the etheric body, one can experience this to a certain extent if one remains capable of development in the way that was still the case in the primeval Indian period. The time when people only experienced things in the sentient body, as was the case in the ancient Persian epoch, was already more divorced from the spirit. But even so, it was the case in this ancient Persian epoch that, especially in a state of sleep, in a state similar to a sleep interspersed with real dreams, people felt when they reached their forties: Yes, this soul that dwells in me, it belongs to the spiritual world, it lives in the spiritual world within me; when it has passed through the gate of death, it enters into this spiritual world. Those who died young at that time were not excluded from the feeling of happiness that consisted in being able to say: One grows old and then wise, spiritually mature; for those who died young knew at the time that there are repeated earthly lives – but they also knew that when someone dies young, they are used for something else in the spiritual world, that they have a good task there, that the gods need this soul, which has not fully lived out its earthly lifetime. On the whole, however, social life was particularly meaningful because of this atmosphere, so that one knew: if you live to be so old, you will reach your forties, then you will experience that you know, your soul belongs to the spiritual world. Only when you are fully awake during the day does your body prevent you from seeing it. That is why it was called the “dark world”, in which only the body sees physically; and the other was the “world of light”, in which one was in such exceptional states. This is the origin of the teaching that came to mankind, somewhat coarsened, as the Ormuzd and Ahriman teaching, as the teaching of light and darkness. On the whole, however, it can be said that in these two oldest periods, in the first and second post-Atlantean periods, people still truly perceived the spirituality of nature around them. Air was not just air to them. Nor was the air just air for these people back then, as it is now when I pick up a living being, which is just matter. It is matter that has been lived through and ensouled. So at that time the air was not just air, the flame of fire not just a flame of fire and water not just water. Rather, people knew that spiritual life was in all these elements. Therefore, they were in a certain way dependent on the air that they took in with their breathing, dependent on the water that they absorbed and that lives in the human being from the environment, dependent on the warmth of the environment. What do people today know about these elements in which we live? They know in a pinch: Well, now the air is inside me, then it is outside. The fact that the air is sometimes inside and sometimes outside still gives people today a thought about their dependence on the world of elements, but it is a feeling of a purely physical dependence. That spiritual things enter me through air and warmth is something that people today no longer know, and they know even less about the significance of this. That, for example, what is called the national soul lives in these elements was still something that people of the first and second cultural periods experienced as perception; something that was as certain to them as anything that we perceive physically and sensually today. What does a Frenchman know, for example, when he drinks wine from his country, when he drinks water, that his national soul is in these elements? As truly as the soul of our individual human being manifests itself through our flesh and blood, so truly does the national soul manifest itself in French wine and water, that is, in that which is connected with the national element, the national soul. This is the body of the national soul. Likewise, the Italian national soul lives in all that is air and permeates the air. The Russian national soul lives in all that flows into the earth as warmth, into the soil and then rises up from the soil. The Russian national soul lives in the warmth, but not in the warmth directly, but in the warmth absorbed by the earth and flowing back again. And so we can point this out about every single nation. Some just do not allow it because then they would call us names and say: we are being arrogant about them. But these are truths. The truths that are drawn from spiritual science are not always convenient, but they are the truths that one must know if one wants to stand in reality today. What lives in the elements in this way was known in the first post-Atlantic periods; people felt it. But this went back further in time, when people in the third post-Atlantic cultural period, in the Egyptian-Chaldean epoch, could only use this sentient soul. There, people were only capable of development in the beginning up to the age of 42, then up to the age of 41, 40, 39 and so on, until the age of 35. Then they entered the period of non-developability. From then on, they only remained capable of development if they took in spiritual life through the mysteries. It came less and less from within. The spiritual life united with the human being less and less by itself. This was also connected with the fact that people no longer felt their belonging to what lived as elements on the particular stretches of the earth. That the same does not happen from above over Indian soil as over Persian soil or even Greek soil was as clear to people in the first period after the Atlantic catastrophe as we know today that the nose cannot be in place of the ear and the ear cannot be in place of the nose. What developed as Indian culture had to well up at this particular point on the Earth. What developed as Greek culture could only well up at a certain point on the Earth. This gave the whole Earth a physiognomy. But there was not the same discrepancy within as there is today in our experience. Just think what people today know about how they are spiritually connected to their piece of Earth! What do they know about it? They also do not think about why the nose is at the place where it is, and why the ear is at its place. And so we can experience that today people have no idea about the most important things. Many people of the white race emigrated to America. That they become quite different people in America than in old Europe, that is not realized today. And again, they do not realize that they are different people in eastern America than in western America. In eastern America, the gaze will be quite different, the human hands will be much larger than in Europe! The skin color will be different. That turns out. The people resemble the old population of America in some ways. This is not the case in California, but it is the case in the east. Reality is there, but people do not live in that reality. They live in abstract concepts. That was precisely the difference between the ages when people remained capable of development well into old age, that they felt dependent on what they belonged to; that they also felt it spiritually. You see, humanity is getting younger and younger. The older person grows into a certain age, and humanity is getting younger. Now we come to the fourth cultural period, the Greco-Latin epoch. Yes, humanity remains capable of development only up to the age of 35, at the beginning. The Greco-Latin cultural period begins in the year 747 before the Mystery of Golgotha and ends in the year 1413 after the Mystery of Golgotha. In the early days, humanity was capable of development until the 35th year, then until the 34th year, into the 33rd, 32nd, 31st year. When the year 1413 approached, they were only capable of development up to the age of 29. Beyond that, people could only remain capable of development by kindling spiritual life in their souls. Nothing comes to people by itself anymore; that is the important thing. But still, in this fourth cultural period, people were still capable of development until the time when, at the age of 35, man reaches the height of his life. During the ascent, they were capable of development. 35 is the middle of life, then the descent begins. That is why the Greeks still felt to the utmost: in everything that lives physically, the soul lives. The Greeks, for example, could not imagine that one walks without the soul moving the legs; that one moves the hands, the arms, without the soul doing so. Only: They could only experience the soul as being connected to the body - no longer as in ancient times, when it went downhill from the age of 35 onwards, that the soul was experienced as being active in the spiritual world. Therefore, something peculiar occurred to those who were not initiated into the mysteries. For them, it was different, of course; those who were initiated into the mysteries learned there how the soul lives in the spiritual world after passing through the gate of death. But those who were not initiated into the mysteries could become very wise in Greece, as Aristotle was very wise. But from what could be achieved by mere human knowledge, people without mystery wisdom could not achieve anything other than a knowledge of how the soul animates the body. But they could not learn that the soul lives without the body after death. That is why Aristotle's idea of immortality is that if I cut off one arm, he is no longer a complete human being; if I cut off two arms, even less so; if I take his whole body, then he is no longer a complete human being at all. Aristotle, therefore, clings to his wisdom even after death, but the person who has passed through the gate of death is an incomplete human being. For the Greeks, a complete human being was one who consisted of both body and soul. The independent life of the soul in the realm of spirits could only be achieved through the mysteries. Aristotle, who was only a supreme sage, but who certainly stood at the highest level of historical wisdom, regarded the dead person as an incomplete person because he lacks the body that belongs to the complete person. You see, it was under such conditions that the time came when great changes had occurred in the linear development of ancient humanity, which alone made possible that peculiar human condition that we then find in the Greco-Latin age of Romanism. This Romanism is quite different from Greek culture. Greeks really experienced in the most eminent sense what had become of humanity, they experienced in the most eminent sense the 35th, 34th, 33rd year of life. The Greeks experienced it as I have described it. The Romans did not want to experience it that way. The Romans were either striving to gain power. They extended their power over the whole earth known to them at that time. Or they endeavored to use this power to gain easy access to the soul, if possible. That is why, when Romanism was dominated by Caesarianism, the mysteries were misused in this way, and the Roman Caesars forced themselves to be initiated. The first Caesar was already an initiate. As a powerful man, he was of course able to force the initiation. What had been kept secret in earlier times was forced by the Roman Caesars. “Caligula” - the word would mean something like “little soldier's boots”, “little conscript boots” in our language - he was initiated into the mysteries. And it is no fable when we are told that Caligula was able to commune with the spirits of the moon's existence during the night. He was able to do so because he had been initiated into the mysteries. And Nero was an initiate. And what did people like Caligula, who knew Nero from the initiation? What did they know? They knew that the development of humanity had now reached a stage where physical experience no longer yields the spirit. The Roman Caesars and their friends, the initiates, knew the secrets of existence so well that physical existence on earth no longer yields the secrets of the spirit. Nero, who added the necessary madness to the initiation, therefore made the decision: Since the world no longer provides the spiritual anyway, the whole world should perish. Thus the fire of Rome was ignited, from which the whole known world should perish. He wanted to ignite the world fire! He was convinced that people had become so depraved, because people only remain capable of development until they are about 30 years old, that they were no longer worthy of continuing to exist. He wanted to convert the entire life of the soul into the spiritual, but he wanted to do it his way: through the destruction of the earthly. Now, something else is happening. We have seen that humanity is regressing in terms of spiritual experience. In the first post-Atlantic cultural epoch, this experience lasted until the 56th year. Then it lasted until the 55th year, the 54th, 53rd, and so on. Humanity as a whole became younger and younger. And when the human race in the fourth post-Atlantic cultural epoch had only reached 35, then 34, then 33 years of age, when the ability to develop had declined to the age of 33, it happened in history that in the body of Jesus of Nazareth the Christ lived until the 33rd year of the humanity living backwards from above after the 33rd year. So that the 33rd year of Christ Jesus, when he died, coincides with the declining age of humanity. Think about what that means! Christ Jesus grew towards humanity, which was getting younger and younger, humanity, which first reached the age of 56 in the primeval Indian epoch, then reached the age of 55 and so on backwards. When it had descended to the age of 33, the Christ developed in the body of Jesus of Nazareth in order to live here on Earth for 33 years and then to bring humanity that which we have called the assimilation of the Christ impulse into earthly existence, to bring that which humanity could no longer attain. For Aristotle, the deceased human being was already an imperfect human being. Through the Mystery of Golgotha, it was possible to grasp immortality again, to absorb impulses again in order to recognize the connection between man and the spiritual world. When the development of humanity had regressed to the age of 33, humanity would have perished without the Mystery of Golgotha, without the ignorance of the spiritual world, had Christ Jesus, who had become 33 years old, not come to meet humanity, having become 33 years old himself, and poured out his love upon humanity. This is a profoundly significant truth that spiritual science reveals to us about the connection between the Mystery of Golgotha and the entire development of life of humanity on Earth. And it really is one of the most harrowing truths that can come to us from spiritual science when we feel such a colossal connection between the development of humanity up to the 33rd year, the growing towards of Christ Jesus to this humanity, and their meeting. It is one of the greatest insights that can be gained by people in their earthly existence. From it they can see how short-sighted and obtuse are the people who claim today that spiritual science detracts from Christianity; whereas it supports it in the most decisive way by deepening it, by knowing how to make such great and powerful things out of the historical truths and will do more and more. The anti-Christian people are truly not the intellectuals, but those who want to be within the positive denominations, and who thereby exclude the real insights that humanity needs today from Christianity. That is the terrible thing, that today we see people at work who join one or the other denomination as pious people, and who actually fight Christianity with the words of Christ Himself, by not letting arise what is in the Christ-word:
But not for the reason that people can lie on the lazy bed and say: We no longer want to strive, the Christ will make us happy. Rather, Christ Jesus is on earth so that we can accept him into our souls and develop our knowledge more and more, develop it more and more. But you can see that we are now living in a crisis in the fifth post-Atlantic period, which you will recognize from what I have discussed. Because the human race is declining, it declined until 1413 to the age of 29, then to 28. And now we live in the age where people only remain capable of development until the age of 27. Then, if a person wants to remain capable of development, he must absorb an independent soul impulse through the study of spiritual science or something similar. Otherwise, a person who only wants to absorb what human development itself provides will always remain 27 years old, even if he lives to be a hundred. This, my dear friends, is something that makes so much understandable to us in the present time, when we are surrounded by so many riddles. We cannot solve these riddles, at least not to the extent that we need to solve them, with the concepts and ideas that humanity has today, which know nothing of spiritual science. Only by looking at the bigger picture of existence, only by learning to recognize that humanity has regressed to the age of 27, can the riddles that surround us today be resolved. And today it is really the case that we see people who want to rule life with their ideas, but who do not grasp life because they do not want to take up an independent spiritual development, but stop at the age of 27. There the ideals have not yet been permeated by reality. There the ideals have not yet been permeated by reality. Oh, it is so difficult for people today, so very difficult, to grasp the difference between ideas that are related to reality and mere euphonious ideals, which, if I may put it trivially, make one lick one's chops with spiritual and mental voluptuousness. But they are not capable of intervening in reality. In the realm of world observation, people do not want to profess ideas that are akin to reality. They look at a clock, which is a real thing, it is an object that is there. Fine. That is what it is. They also look at a flower that they put in front of them, just as much as a real object as the clock. But that is not what it is. The clock is something complete, it can exist in itself as it is. I have to cut the flower, there has to be a root. If there is no root, it is not real. If I imagine a flower without a root, then I have an unreal thought. Mankind will have to learn this again, that a thought must not only be logical, but that it must also be real. Today, mankind has forgotten this because it does not develop beyond the age of 27; because people stop at words that merely sound beautiful. What use is it, my dear friends, when someone declaims: We are entering, through the great trials of this war, into an age in which people will think and feel differently, in which every person must be placed in their rightful place, and in which each person's abilities must be recognized in that place. You can't object to fine words. A right word – but must it [then] also be a word of reality? If the person concerned is then convinced that his nephew is just the most capable person for a place, then the whole tirade, the whole phrase of “the most capable in the right place” is of no use. If only people could grasp the difference between ideals that are close to reality and those that are abstract ideals! It is not so bad, relatively speaking, when we mistake a flower for something real. But it is bad when we want to introduce and incorporate unrealistic concepts into social life, into state life. This is how it has come about that we have the most unrealistic concepts in science. Because what is being peddled today as economics, and especially what is being peddled as political science, is not just not a science, but it is a completely unrealistic talk; because people do not even know how to form real concepts about state connections. Let us put this to the test: there is a person who is actually an excellent person, who is even sympathetic to my aspirations, the Swede Kjellén, who has now published the book “The State as a Way of Life”. Study this book from beginning to end. One can say: If someone today were to want to build something in the natural sciences with similar dilettantish, abstract concepts, as Kjellén did with the state as a form of life, they would simply be laughed out of the room. If someone were to talk about a botanical question the way Kjellén talks about the state as a form of life today, it would be so ridiculous that even someone with only a primary school education would laugh. The concepts are so unrealistic. But that is not apparent today. It is stated in the book: the individual human being relates to the state as the cell relates to the human organism. The individual human being is therefore the cell. Yes, my dear friends, that is the most ridiculous thing you can imagine in the face of reality. If anything can be compared, then it can only be the whole development of the earth, and only individual deeds can be compared with the earth. The comparison would be valid. But to regard the individual human being as a cell in relation to the state as an organism – that is mere talk. You see, this is what is so little understood today, this growing together with reality, which must come through inner spiritual development. That is why we live today in a time that is so infinitely full of trials for man. Man must go through this crisis, this estrangement from reality, but one must learn to understand it. Rather than mention a nearby example, which would be difficult for the audience to understand, let us take a more distant example. I can choose this example because I characterized this personality long before the war, so that one need not believe that the jingoism generated by the war is evoking this characteristic. I was looking for a typical person who is no older than 27. Yes, but because this person is in the most important position, one could even say in the very first position today, a great deal depends on whether the ideas of a twenty-seven-year-old are poured out over the world or those of a person who has undergone spiritual development. Today, one has to grow into it through spiritual development. A typical personality, who, even if he lived to be 100, would still be no older than 27, is Woodrow Wilson, the President of the United States of America. He is truly a typical personality. And, one might say, the cross of the present, the immediate present, hangs on it. Hence those intoxicating ideas that this man sends around the world in his rallies, all of which are so alien to reality – so alien that he sends a proclamation of peace around the world and then, in a few weeks, has a war in his own country. So little does what this man is able to say engage with reality. His ideas are fine: freedom for all peoples, and so on. The ideas are fine as such. In Germany there are outstanding writers who call these ideas profound. But it is not a matter of liking ideas. What matters is not that one should feel, as it were, a sensual pleasure in ideas, but that ideas are capable of sustaining reality, of immersing themselves in reality. But when people who do not live past the age of twenty-seven come across ideas that are full of reality, they consider them to be unrealistic. So, my dear friends, it is with the human being of the present time that he, as it were, removes himself from reality. Since spirit is also present in reality, one simply, one might say automatically, removes oneself from reality when one removes oneself from the spirit. But one cannot place oneself in reality if one remains capable of development only up to the age of 27. Now, this is also connected with what we feel to be such a depressing mystery in our time. People are moving away from reality. As a result, they are also losing their sense of proportion to a high degree, the sense of simply grasping the facts correctly. Because this sense of fact is diminishing to an enormous degree. And these things are connected with what we feel to be such terrible, earth-shattering events. But it was difficult, before these times, to even talk about these things. Read what has been said about the social development of humanity in the cycle that was given in Vienna about life between death and a new birth, where there is even talk of cancer in a social context. These things have not been taken with full seriousness and full importance. Do you remember an answer that was given often? Even during public lectures, people kept asking: How does the increase in the Earth's population correspond to repeated Earthly lives? I gave the various reasons that suggest that things are quite compatible. However, I never forgot – you will remember – to add: But the time may come very soon when people will be horrified to realize that humanity can also decrease. Of course, one could not speak directly of the serious misfortune that awaited humanity. But that is connected, my dear friends, with this distance from reality. And when we face this difficult time today, we must realize that it is above all important to live through it in real wakefulness, in genuine wakefulness. You will recall that in earlier times, up until 1914, I mentioned a variety of people, including Herman Grimm, who died at the beginning of the 20th century. Certainly, if we now follow the soul of such a person in the spiritual world, it relates itself in a certain way to the momentous events of the present. But one can also have the thought of asking oneself how a spirit like Herman Grimm, who expressed great and meaningful things, who spoke in a very penetrating way from the point of view of the nineteenth century, can think about world events. You see, Herman Grimm, for example, coined the beautiful word in the last days of his life: 'mankind's reckoning is at hand'. But how did he imagine this reckoning? He indicates it in his collected essays, called “Fragments”, in the volume that he himself published. A reckoning of the time is at hand, he says, great figures that today history cites as great figures will disappear into the nullity; others that today humanity pays little attention to will be highlighted. And when the year 2000 has come, people will talk about a completely different story. And Herman Grimm expressed many other profound things in a similar way. So that one can ask: He did not have spiritual science, he also rejected it, but one could always imagine: He stands beside me as a spirit of the nineteenth century. But since 1914, I can no longer think that he is standing beside me when I mention him. Since the summer of 1914, he appears as if he had lived centuries before and had become a stranger to what he loved on earth in his last life on earth; he stands there like a mythical figure. For we have really lived through more in these three years than we otherwise would have in decades, if we have lived through what has been compressed into these years. And what has gone before seems, one might say, to have become as alien as what one has taken on from the history of past centuries; even those personalities with whom one has lived, with whom one has exchanged words and thoughts. And one would like to see an awakening of humanity. But this awakening can only come about through spiritual science penetrating much deeper into the human soul. As you can see, spiritual science does not come as something arbitrary. Because humanity has declined in age, because it only ages 27 years by itself, that which makes people capable of development must come from within. The soul must be made capable of development independently of the body. But this can only be done in a spiritual way. Those who do not want to know anything about the spiritual will always remain 27 years old, even if they live to be a hundred. Therefore, today one would really like to be able to enliven what one has to say, what is necessary to awaken humanity; one would like to be able to enliven it in a different way than through words; for words themselves have already taken on something of abstractness. What words were in earlier times! When people said “doubt,” they felt that the “dou” and “two” were in it; that, so to speak, the idea was split into two; they still felt the connection between “two,” “dou,” “conflict,” “although.” All of that has become abstract; people have turned away from reality itself in language. Or who today feels a reality pulsating through language in a deeper sense? We say “human being” today. Then we open the dictionary and find the Latin “homo”, also human, and we believe it is the same. We find the Greek dictionary and find the word “anthropos”, human; we believe it is the same. We have become “lexical”, that is, unreal in such matters. But “human being” is related to “Manas”, to the Sanskrit word “Manas”. But that means: the “spiritual self” in man. And the one who uses the word “human” as a word for that which walks and acts on two legs, which has hands and thinks and so on, who uses this word “human”, which is the adaptation of the oriental word “Manas”, he looks at the spiritual in man and describes man above all as spirit. The one who, like the Greeks, says “anthropos”, refers to the “speaking of the soul from the eyes”. The “shining eyes” are called “anthropos”, the soul that speaks from the eyes, from the face. We can already see that this is something different from when we use the word “homo” or the French word “homme”. In this case, French points to its origin. So you see how people from different nations describe the human being itself, this gives the language special nuances of reality. Who has a feeling for this today? Isn't this feeling lost when we open the dictionary and read one for the other? We no longer even have a feeling for it. When we say, for example, “pretty good,” we mean “almost” or “nearly” good today. While the word “pretty” is related to “befitting,” “befitting,” “befitting.” So that you can actually only use the word if you want to imply: It is completely good, pleasantly good, befittingly good; so good, as befits. But we feel how the unreal sense of the present extends even into the words. One would like to have something other than words today, because the words themselves have already become unreal, if one wants to speak through what, as spiritual science, wants to come into humanity again, so that the human soul may become related to reality again. It is therefore not surprising that unfortunately what we have just spoken about is also evident in our field. A friend who had heard from me about this 27th anniversary of humanity, a friend who is involved in the political struggle of our time, said to me: Yes, that is a ray of light that finally illuminates much for me that is now passing away around us. One would like people to try to understand with this ray of hope what is so enigmatic in reality. Then one cannot be surprised that even within our small section of reality, what we are seeing now is happening. I know very well, my dear friends, that in this society there are always people who do not want to see this because they see it as something ordinary that is spoken of in such terms; they would like to withdraw gracefully because, as they say, they want to promote peace. But this has finally led to the emergence of an attitude in our society that the person who is attacked is actually a bad guy, and that we should feel as much compassion as possible for those who attack. But this can only lead to disaster; as has become quite clear to date. Therefore, because we have to talk about the necessary measures to be taken, I have to mention a few things here that are truly not “personal”. Because by trying to push things into the personal sphere, they are trying to eliminate spiritual science, which is already becoming uncomfortable; they know that this would not be possible with a decent polemic. They try something else, and I must say: our members must keep their eyes open for this, and they must know how this society actually had to be founded so that things are possible that are actually only possible here, that would not be possible outside. They will come, but today they are not yet possible to the extent. Let us assume that I have discussed the case often, but it should have been discussed much more often; it should not have been kept secret in such a distinguished way. There we have it, a man being pushed into the Society by members. He comes to the lectures, takes part in everything, gets hold of everything that can be read, and copies down everything he can get hold of from other members in private transcriptions and so on. You may ask: Why is such a person accepted? Yes, you see, that's a dilemma. You can't say to him, because of something a person will do in the future, “You're a bastard – excuse me – and that's why I'm not accepting you!” Even though you know full well that the man shouldn't be accepted – he has to be accepted. Well, this man, after he had obtained everything he could, went to America. Before he left, he solemnly swore that he would behave decently. He would publish a book, he was still discussing the title because it was so difficult to translate; I myself had given him the instruction to say “world conception”. It's not really a word that the English appreciate, but [gap in transcript]... Well, he went over there. He wrote down everything he had heard here in his book, but he also wrote down everything he had received from private transcripts and notes that had not yet been published. But he did it like this: he wrote a preface to the first edition in which he says that he had heard a lot from Steiner, but that it did not give him the final conclusion. This conclusion was brought to him when he was called to a master in the Transylvanian Alps; he gave him the final touch, the last truth. And now look: what he had received as the final polish, as the final truth in the Alps from a master: these are the things that he had copied here from the unpublished lectures. Now you can say: that's American! Fine. One says to oneself: something like that can happen when one knows American ways. But that's not all. Here in Germany, a bookstore was found, a book publisher who had the book translated, and a translator who translated the whole book. So we have the outrage of things migrating to America and being brought back again, of the publishing house of Hugo Vollrath having the book printed in German, and saying: Yes, the things would have had to be brought from the impure air into a purer air, which the other had copied from the one who had lied about the Transylvanian master. You see, for something like this to be possible in literary life, this society had to be founded, because if something like that were done outside, one would immediately have the right judgment about such an outrage, about such disgrace, which is also done to the publishing industry. I have mentioned this more than once, nothing has happened except that these “lesson letters” — as such he publishes the book — are sold everywhere. That was a great outrage. But these things happen. We have no way of intervening unless discernment sets in, unless the members stop regarding everyone who is a little twisted as a “high initiate”; unless they stop regarding everyone who rants about everything as a victim, but rather start making their own judgment. For we are indeed experiencing in the worst possible way how people are distancing themselves from reality. Along comes a magazine called “The Invisible Temple”! Yes, that's very nice, you have to find something deeply mystical: “The Invisible Temple”! It is a magazine published by an association that is tremendously “significant”. In one of the issues of this magazine, it says: the philosophers – and I am also called a philosopher – claimed that only they themselves had wisdom; all others had only a sham and false wisdom. “So to read with Haeckel and with Dr. Steiner. Now I ask you: Where does it say that what I said can only be found in me, that all others have only a sham and an after-wisdom? Or where is there even something similar? Yes, do you dare to call such things by their right name today, no matter whether the tirade maker Horneffer calls his magazine “Invisible Temple” or something else? One should not be misled by the mystical verbiage on the title page, but call a lie a lie – because it is a lie. One should really strive towards the truth, because it is important that we seek the truth, that we develop a sense of fact, not mystical fantasies, but a sense of truth. For with a sense of truth, we must also enter the spiritual world; otherwise we will not find it. You see, a man from a town in central Germany once wrote to Dr. Steiner saying that he had now reached a turning point in his spiritual life and did not know what to do. Should he [marry into a business] or should he devote himself to Theosophy? How understandable, Doctor Steiner told him, that it was not her job to help him marry into a family and so on. After some time, he appeared in the then Theosophical Society. Those who were present at the general assembly could hear how he, without a trace of recitation talent or skill, poured Schiller's “Cassandra” over the unfortunate audience. Then he decided not to become a painter, but to be a painter. We really did everything possible to give him the opportunity to learn in Munich. But he didn't want to learn anything, he wanted to be a painter, not become a painter. However, we couldn't declare him a painter overnight. We could have declared him, but not made him a painter. So he was so disappointed that he now wrote all kinds of foolish things, for example that he got bruises from exercises and so on. In short, a person who approaches us with such questions as to whether he should marry into [a business] and who behaves as this man did should be looked at with a critical eye, that's what matters. And then we had a member, a man whom many knew as a loyal member who even wrote articles advocating anthroposophically oriented spiritual science. He wanted to publish a book through our publishing house one day: “Who Was Christ?” Until then, he was a follower who grumbled here and there, especially when he knew that it could not come directly to our ears – but some people do that. But you see, this writing is only a small-scale edition of what the Heindel writing is. Grasshoff called himself Heindel in America, here he was Grasshoff and copied. In America, he published what he had copied here as Heindel, as the master's emissary in the Transylvanian Alps. That is in Transylvania. People always pointed to such areas where there are castles that you don't usually go to because not even small trains go there, right, where the mountains form a triangle. However, a man from Budapest once said to me: “Mrs. Besant has pointed us to a master who lives deep in Hungary in a certain castle.” We went there and found a castle, but nothing that reminded us of a master. We found that the castle belonged to the Hungarian treasury. Everything Mrs. Besant said was wrong, but: “You have to believe her!” Well, you see, in the book “Who was Christ?” that the person in question wanted to publish, there were things in it that simply could not be published by the Philosophical-Anthroposophical Publishing House because they were partly borrowed from cycles; but in particular it was a certain audacity - at least it made such an impression on Dr. Steiner - that he said: Dr. Steiner has indeed made allusions, but these allusions must now be further explained. Well, that could not exactly suit the manager of the publishing house, that the person concerned brought the explanations that not only came from cycles and lectures that were not published. To a certain extent, it is a Heindel case again. But this member has now become an enemy! A real enemy. As far as I am concerned, people should write about “contradictions”. [gap in the transcript] Well. “Mysticism”, for example, is not the same for everyone. If you talk about mysticism in two places, you have to characterize it in this way and in that way; everyone can find contradictions there. But you don't attract a dog with such “contradictions”. Therefore Seiling would not have made an impression - because that is his name, who was previously seen as a loyal supporter. It is very telling that the man simply becomes an enemy after his writing is rejected. No one would want to claim that there is no causal connection here. Talking about contradictions - factual articles - can never harm the humanities, even if such articles are incomprehensible and foolish. Or the Dessoirs and others. I make a strict distinction between what is factually possible, even if it is disapproved of, and what is indecent and impossible. You see, the good, dear Deinhard, who died last week, is one of those who has done the most for what I call anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, and he has come to us from the position of opposition. And he must be considered one of the most meritorious people in our field. When I started going to Munich to give lectures at the beginning of the century, the following announcement appeared: under the influence of Deinhards, the announcement “The traveling salesman for Theosophy from Berlin is here again”. I did not consider that to be something bad, but rather something quite possible. Someone can express his opinion in crude words that I am concerned with peddling Theosophy on my travels. There is nothing wrong with such a judgment. Or when Meyrink wrote an article in “Simplizissmus” in which he describes “Doctor Schmuser” – or something like that – with which he means me and those who are friends with me, it is extremely amusing, but it does no harm. But Seiling is not about anything like that. He started off by writing an article about the silly arguments about the contradictions, embellishing them with what I supposedly said at the meeting. But he then told objective untruths. I never said that I felt offended by the part about contradictions, but I told him that the doctor would have been annoyed by it. It came down to the fact that vanity was at play [gap in the transcript] So he spun a very nice yarn. Or he went further in a sophisticated way to the fact that he wrote an article “in defense”, in which he speaks of the most harmless thing there is – because there is nothing more harmless than our marriage; but other women have made a scandal. How does he use this scandal that others have made? By cleverly weaving his sentences so that he says: Our marriage led to an incredible scandal. But it wasn't meant to; because it was no one else's business. But others made a scandal. This is an addiction to vilification! An addiction to vilification taken to the point of vulgarity that one can hardly imagine being increased any more. And when these things were discussed in Munich, it was said that the worst case, the case of Goesch, was yet to come. This Goesch, who has concocted handshakes and other absurdities, whose entire attacks consist of nothing but a smorgasbord of absurdities and spite. But there are editors who print such things. Things will get worse, because people today, when they are sexually aroused, consciously sexually aroused, see it in others. That is one of the secrets of our time. That is why it could happen that a member – she had been a member for a long time – who actually always had to be turned away, who was never given serious exercises, and with whom I have not spoken since 1911, except [a gap in the transcript] an information about her mother - that she wrote an article that above all also vilified Dr. Steiner, an article of such nonsense, such hatred and such foolishness that nothing like it had ever been written before. This personality is capable of writing: Dr. Steiner spoke of the Lazarus miracle, where the human being is transformed. He apparently wanted to perform this miracle with me. Therefore, when I was in a sanatorium, he sent chocolate to thicken my blood and so on and so on. So this sending of chocolate is a particularly magical act. And think: such a personality finds paper and printing ink at his disposal and the editor even makes the comment
So, if Frau Doktor had gone to a fruit shop, she would have probably taken oranges with her; instead, she went to a pastry shop and bought chocolate – because she was supposed to perform the Lazarus miracle on my behalf! Yes, it cannot be said. For example, there is a note that Dr. Steiner sent sculptures or the like to the person in question. I would have stepped in from behind and performed magical acts. The whole thing refers to the fact that once group photos came from Norway. The personality in question brought something she wanted to give up. I had not yet seen the picture and looked at Frau Doktor over my shoulder. That was the whole thing. It is stamped as a magical operation. But that comes from the fact that such chatter has arisen and been particularly cultivated in certain circles. Therefore, such a judgment must be suggested from time to time. And so I am compelled to speak of it because such things have occurred in society, because, for example, a person like Seiling has the audacity to say: There are mistakes in my cycles, but I have not checked them because I supposedly have no time; but I would have time if I did not spend so much time in private conversations with members! - Seiling was one of those who repeatedly sought private conversations, though when he still felt like a friend and supporter. So he knows better than to say such a thing. He knows the facts. That is the / gap in the transcript]. Now, the one who has to speak particularly esoterically today before a number of people, he knows because he has to express things that are connected with the [gap in the transcript] Today, speaking things that are meant to move people again, is something that humanity cannot bear. Therefore, the one who has to speak about such things in front of 120 people knows that among these 120 people there are 70 possible enemies; but those who can become enemies. With 120 listeners, 70 possible enemies! It is only a question of whether these enemies will then be decent or indecent. All in all, it is a necessity today, and it is as difficult for me as it can be for those who will be affected by it. It is difficult for me, but two measures must be taken. Two measures. And it would be untrue to mention one without the other. The first is that all private conversations must cease from now on. Because of what has been made of these private conversations, by “Seiling and Co.” for example, and also by others - that is what is likely to lead to slander in the hands of dishonest editors who find it much too inconvenient to attack spiritual science directly - then they would have to study it. So they attack it by involving it in scandals, defamations and so on, up to the last article that is so foolish as to talk about Dr. Steiner having given exercises to that personality. When the personality was asked: How dare you say that you were given exercises? “Yes,” she said, ”Dr. Steiner showed me some forms in a eurythmy lesson; for the other people, the lines meant what is written in the letters and lines, but for her they were instructions for exercises that Dr. Steiner gave her on my behalf. Now Dr. Steiner had done nothing but recite poems. Nothing at all was said about that. But then it is claimed: And if Dr. Steiner did not mean the exercises, then she is simply the involuntary medium of Dr. Steiner. So, it is imperative that the private conversations be completely avoided for the time being. I will make sure — you just have to be patient for a while — that a replacement is created. But private conversations cannot continue if such things are made of them. They must stop in the near future. Not because of the content of the slanderings - I have often said that such things must come - but so that people finally see how serious things are. One must not say, as it has been said in Munich: Because of a few people, we must now all suffer! One must turn to those few people, one will find them, and one will also find the right way to find them – not to those who, under the compulsion of an iron necessity, have to take such measures. The second thing is that I authorize everyone to tell everything, as far as they want, that has been said in private conversations with me. What I have said to any member must never be shunned from the light of day. [Gap in the transcript] is not considered to be objectively untrue, as Seiling [Gap in the transcript] But it will be proven if such a measure is taken: Without exception, anyone can tell the truth about what has been discussed in private conversations with me. These two measures belong together. It is sad that these measures have to be taken, but, as I said, especially those who are serious will understand that these measures are good in this day and age, when people are driven into scandals and slander. These measures, my dear friends, must be taken. These things are also connected with the crisis through which humanity is passing. Here, too, knowledge must lead us forward. And it will lead us forward. Humanity has become extremely frivolous. Finally, let me read you a sentence from a person who also sought the spirit, who sought it on the path through Catholicism: [von] Barres, [von] Maurice Barres.
There is the church, let's go inside, even though we say: the afterlife may not even exist! Imagine the cynicism! This is the attitude that Maurice Barrös, a truly characteristic person of the present day, has expressed; this is how one seeks the spirit in Catholicism. He has no desire to become Catholic, but: Catholicism has deigned to interpret the Gospels in such a way that [gap in the transcript], where the Savior is only taken as he suits modern humanity. Humanity must pass through this test. But we must know that the realization of the spirit is to be sought from the impulses of the spirit. If we familiarize ourselves with it, we will find the way that is to be sought for humanity today. |