The Rudolf Steiner Archive

It has already been mentioned here that in the group meetings this winter we want to gather together all the threads as it were that will eventually link up to form a deeper understanding of the being of man and various other things connected with man's whole life and evolution that will lead us deeper and deeper into the secrets of the world. Today I would like to remind you of the group lecture the time before last (21st December 1908) and take our start from there. You will remember that we spoke of a certain rhythm existing in the four members of man's being. We want to start there today and find an answer to the question: How can a knowledge of these things help us understand in a deeper way both the necessity and the object of the anthroposophical movement?

Today we shall have to link up two things apparently very far removed from one another. You will remember that there are certain relationships between man's ego, astral body, etheric body and physical body. What there is to say about the fourth member, the ego, is best seen if we bear in mind the two alternating states of consciousness experienced by the ego in the course of the twenty-four hours of the day. One day with its twenty-four hours, during which the ego experiences day and night, sleeping and waking, will be seen as a kind of unity. So when we say that what the ego goes through in a day is based on the number one, we shall have to say that the number that corresponds in a similar way to our astral body is the number seven. Whereas the ego as it is today comes back as it were to its starting-point in twenty-four hours or a day, our astral body does the same thing in seven days. Let us go into this in greater detail.

Think of waking up in the morning; that is, you rise up out of the darkness of unconsciousness, as people say incorrectly in ordinary life, and the objects of the physical sense world appear round you again. You experience this in the morning and again twenty-four hours later, with the occasional exception. This is the regular course of events, and we can say that our ego returns to its starting-point after a day of twenty-four hours. If we look in the same way for the astral body's corresponding rhythm, we have to say that if the ordered regularity of the astral body is really there, then the astral body returns to the same point after seven days. So whilst the ego goes through its cycle in a day, the astral body goes considerably slower, and carries out its cycle in seven days. The cycle of the etheric body, on the other hand, takes four times seven days; after four times seven days it returns to the same point. And now please bear in mind what was said the time before last. With the physical body it is not as regular as with the astral and the etheric bodies. We can, however, establish a rough figure, and say that it goes through its cycle in about ten times twenty-eight days, and then returns to its starting-point. You know of course that a great difference exists and that the female etheric body is male and the male etheric body female. From this we can see that in a certain respect an irregularity is bound to occur in the rhythm of the etheric bodies. But on the whole the numbers 1:7:(4 x 7):(10 x 7 x 4) are the proportional figures that so to say specify the ‘speeds of rotation’ for the four members of man's being. This is of course speaking figuratively, for they are not really rotations but repetitions of the same conditions; rhythm ratios. A fortnight ago I had to point out that phenomena of daily life are comprehensible only when we know things like this that lie behind the sense perceptible world. And in a public lecture I also indicated a remarkable fact which cannot be denied by even the most materialistic scientist or doctor or be ranked among the ‘spectres of superstition’, because it is an indisputable fact. It is something that really ought to make people think, namely that in pneumonia a special phenomena occurs on the seventh day. A crisis arises, and the patient has to be pulled through this seventh day. The temperature suddenly falls, and if the patient cannot be brought through this crisis then in certain circumstances there is no recovery. This fact is known by most people, but as a rule the starting-point of the illness is not always correctly ascertained, and if you do not know which the first day is then as a rule you do not know which the seventh day is either. But the fact remains, so we have to ask why the temperature drops with pneumonia on the seventh day. Why does a special phenomenon occur at all on the seventh day?

Only a person who sees behind the scenes of existence, behind the physical sense phenomena into the spiritual world, knows of these rhythms, and why phenomena like a temperature arise. What actually is a temperature? Why does it occur? The temperature is not the illness. On the contrary, the temperature is something that the organism calls up to fight against the actual process of the illness. The temperature is the organism's defence against the illness. There is some damage in the organism, in the lungs, say. When the human being is healthy and all his inner activities are working harmoniously, these inner activities are bound to fall into disorder if one particular organ of the human body is upset. Then the whole organism attempts to pull itself together and develop the forces within itself to counterbalance the local upset. There is really a revolution going on in the whole organism, otherwise the organism would not need to gather its forces because there is no enemy to fight. The expressing of this massing of forces in the organism is the temperature.

Now the person who looks behind the scenes of existence knows that the various organs of the human body came into existence and developed at very different periods of human evolution. What from the spiritual scientific point of view is called ‘the study of the human body’ is the most complicated matter imaginable, for the human organism is extremely complex and its individual organs came into existence at quite different times. The rudimentary beginnings of these organs were developed further at a later stage of evolution. Everything in the physical organism is an expression or outcome of man's higher members, so that each physical organ expresses the higher Organisation of the higher members. What we call the lungs today have their origins in the astral body and are to a certain extent connected with it. We will eventually come to talk about what the lungs have to do with the astral body, how the very first, archetype basis of the lungs came into man on the predecessor of our Earth, ancient Moon, and how at that time the astral body was as it were planted into man by higher spiritual beings. But today I want you to look at the fact of the lungs being an expression of the astral body. The actual expression of the astral body is of course the nervous system. But man is complicated, and the development of the various parts always runs parallel. The construction of the lungs began at the same time as the development of the astral body and the incorporation of the present-day nervous system. This in a way includes the lungs in the rhythm of the astral body, that rhythm that is governed by the number seven. The phenomenon of a rising temperature is connected with certain functions of the etheric body. Something must be happening in the etheric body if a temperature runs a certain course. The temperature, then, is somehow within the rhythm of the etheric body. Whenever you have a temperature it has this rhythm, but in what way? We shall have to be clear about the following:

The etheric body, which completes its cycle in four times seven days, moves considerably slower than the astral body with its seven day rhythm. So if we relate the rhythmic course of the etheric body to that of the astral body, we can compare them with the hands of a clock. The clock's hour hand goes round once whilst the minute hand, in the same span of time, goes round twelve times. There you have the relationship of 1:12. Now suppose you look at the clock at noon, when the minute hand lies on top of the hour hand. The two hands coincide. Then the minute hand goes round one, and when it returns to the twelve it can no longer coincide with the hour hand, for this has meanwhile moved on to one. It will be roughly another five minutes before the two hands can coincide, so the minute hand does not point to the same place as the hour hand an hour later but after an hour and just over five minutes later. Now you have a similar relationship between the movement of the astral body and the movement of the etheric body. Imagine that your astral body, that is connected the whole time with the etheric body, were to be in a certain position in relation to the etheric body. Now the astral body begins to rotate. When after seven days it returns to its original position, it does not coincide again with the etheric body, for, after seven days, the etheric body has moved round a quarter of its cycle. So seven days later the position of the astral body does not coincide with the same position of the etheric body but with a position that is a quarter of the cycle behind the original one. Now imagine you have a case of the illness in question. A definite position of the astral body is connected with a definite position of the etheric body. And at this moment, with the co-operation of these two positions working together, the temperature appears, as a summons to fight the enemy. Seven days later the astral body covers an entirely different part of the etheric body. Now in the etheric body there must be not only the power to produce a temperature, for in that case, once it had really got going, it would never drop again; so seven days later this point of the etheric body that is now covered by the part of the astral body that produced the temperature seven days previously has the tendency to counteract the temperature and bring it down. If the patient's disorder has been overcome in seven days, then all is well. But if the disorder has not been overcome, and the astral body has not got the tendency now to push the illness out, the patient comes into the unfortunate position in which the etheric body has the tendency to bring the temperature down. It is important to pay good heed to these two points of coincidence. We could discover points like this for all kinds of phenomena in human life. And just through these rhythms, these mysterious inner workings, man's whole being could be understood. The etheric body really has a tendency that expresses itself in four times seven. In the case of other illnesses you will notice that the fourteenth day is of special importance; that is, two times seven. And we can definitely say that with certain phenomena the paroxysm has to be especially strong after four times seven; The point being that if the trouble decreases then, you can definitely hope for recovery. All these things are connected with rhythms of the kind we touched on three weeks ago and have dealt with in greater detail today. With such things as these, which appear difficult but which can nevertheless be understood, we can begin to penetrate a little way beneath the surface of the physical sense world. And we must penetrate further and further. Now let us enquire into the origin of such rhythms.

We have to look once again to the great cosmic relationships to find the origin of such rhythms. We have often drawn your attention to the fact that what we call the four members of man, physical body, etheric body, astral body and ego have evolved through Saturn, Sun, Moon and Earth existence. If we look back to our old Moon we find that it also separated itself from the sun for a certain length of time, though a large part of what is the moon today was then part of the earth. But outside there was a sun, and when such heavenly bodies belong together then their forces, which are the expression of their beings, always have an influence on regulating the life of their creatures. The orbiting of a planet around its sun or of a satellite around its planet is by no means mere chance, nor is it unconnected with life, on the contrary it is regulated by those beings we have learnt about in the hierarchies of spirits. We have seen that it is absolutely untrue that the heavenly bodies rotate by themselves through mere lifeless forces. We have pointed out how grotesquely the modern physicist explains the Kant-Laplace theory by means of his experiment with the blob of fat. A cardboard disc is inserted through the floating blob of farm the direction of the equator and a needle stuck through it from above, and then the whole thing is rotated, whereupon small droplets break off from the large drop and rotate as well. Thus the experimenter shows how a planetary system in miniature arises, and physicists generally draw the conclusion that this is how the large planetary system must have arisen. Although it is usually good to forget yourself, in this particular case it is not. For the good man usually forgets that the miniature planetary system could not arise if he did not turn the handle. It is perfectly permissible to do such experiments, and they are very useful, but you should not forget the most important part. What an infinite number of people fall victim to such suggestions! They overlook the fact that the professor was doing it. There is no gigantic professor out yonder of course, it is the hierarchies of spiritual beings who regulate the rhythms of the heavenly bodies and actually bring about all the ordering of matter in the cosmos, so that the individual planetary bodies revolve around one another. And if we could go into the movements of the planetary spheres that form a correlated system—and a time will come for this—we should recognise the rhythms of our own human members. For the time being, however, we need only point to one thing.

Modern man, with his materialistic mode of thought, laughs at the idea that in earlier times certain conditions in man's life were organised in connection with the four quarters of the moon. Now just with the moon in particular there is in a wonderful way a cosmic reflection of the relationship existing between the astral and the etheric body. The moon moves round its cycle in four times seven days. Those are the positions of the etheric body, and these four times seven positions of the etheric body are exactly mirrored in the four quarters of the moon. It is by no means nonsense to look for a connection between the phenomenon of the rising temperature we described and just these quarters of the moon. Just think, there really is a different quarter of the moon at the end of seven days, just as there is another quarter of the etheric body and the astral body covers a different quarter of the etheric body. Originally the relationship of the human astral body to the etheric body was indeed regulated by spiritual beings bringing the moon into a corresponding orbiting of the earth. And you can see how the things are to a certain extent connected, in that even modern medicine reckons with an ancient heritage of rhythmic knowledge. As the rhythm of the body is ten times twenty-eight and the physical body is as it were back at the same point ten times twenty-eight days later, there are about ten times twenty-eight days between the conception of a human being and his birth, ten lunar months. All these things are connected with the regulating of the great cosmic relationships. Man as microcosm is a true image of the great world relationships, for he is created out of them.

Today we want to turn our thoughts to evolution in the middle of Atlantean times. That was a very important point for earth evolution. Before that time we can distinguish three races in human evolution; the Polarian, the Hyperborean and the Lemurian race. Then comes the Atlantean race. We are now in the fifth race and two races will follow us, so the Atlantean epoch lies right in the middle. The middle of Atlantean times is the most important point in earth evolution. If we were to go back before this time, even then we should have found an exact reflection of cosmic relationships in the relationships of external human life. It would have had a very bad effect on man if he had done the kind of things then that he does now. Nowadays man does not adjust himself very much to the cosmic situation. In town life things often have to be arranged in such a way that people are awake when they would otherwise be asleep and asleep when they ought to be awake. If anything like being awake at night or sleeping in the daytime had occurred in Lemurian times, and man had paid so little attention to the external phenomena that belong to certain inner processes, he would not have survived. Of course such a thing was quite impossible then, because it was a matter of course that man in his inner rhythm conformed with outer rhythm. Man lived as it were with the cycles of the sun and the moon and modeled the rhythm of his astral and etheric bodies on the cycle of sun and moon.

Let us come back to the clock. In a certain respect this also conforms to the great cosmic cycle, when the hour and minute hands coincide at twelve o'clock, that is because there is a certain constellation of the sun and stars. We set our clocks according to this and a clock is unreliable if the two hands do not coincide the following day as soon as this constellation of stars occurs again. In Berlin the clocks are set daily by electricity from the Enckeplatz observatory. So we may say that the movements or rhythms of the clock hands are set every day according to the rhythm of the cosmos. Our clock is correct if it synchronises with the central clock which, in its turn, synchronises with the cosmos. In ancient times man had no need of a clock, for he himself was a clock. His life's course, which he could clearly feel, absolutely conformed to cosmic relationships. Man really was a clock. And if he had not conformed to the cosmic situation, exactly the same thing would have happened to him as happens to a clock if its movement does not correspond to the outer situation: it goes wrong, and he would have gone wrong too. The inner rhythm had to correspond to the outer. And the essential part of man's evolution on earth is that since the middle of Atlantean times the outer situation does not absolutely coincide with the inner one. Something else has come about. Just imagine someone fancying that he could not bear the two hands of his watch coinciding at noon. Supposing he alters them to three o'clock, then when it is one o'clock for other people he makes it four p.m., at two o'clock he makes it 5 p.m., and so on. The inner working of his clock will not have changed, it will only have become displaced compared with the outer situation. Twenty-four hours later he will make it three o'clock again; that it, his clock's movement will not coincide with the cosmic situation but its inner rhythm will still agree with it, for it has only been displaced. Man's rhythm has also been displaced. Man would never have become an independent being if all his activity had remained in cosmic leading strings. The basis of his freedom lies in his having preserved his inner rhythm while severing himself from external rhythm. He has become like a clock that at the nodal points no longer coincides with cosmic occurrences yet is inwardly in harmony with them. Thus in the far distant past a human being could be conceived in one particular stellar constellation only and be born ten lunar months later. This coinciding of conception with a cosmic situation has ceased but the rhythm has remained, just as a clock keeps to its rhythm even though at midday you set it at three o'clock. Of course it is not man's circumstances only though, that have become displaced, the times have become displaced as well. Even if we disregard the last-mentioned cosmic displacement, something very special has occurred in man's inner life, in that he has lifted himself as it were out of the cosmic situation and is no longer a ‘clock’ in the proper sense of the word. He is more or less like a man who has put his clock forward three hours and then, forgetting how much he has put it forward, cannot sort himself out any more. This is what happened to man in earthly evolution once he was free of the situation in which he was like a clock in the cosmos. In certain respects he brought his astral body into disorder. The more the conditions of human life were regulated by the physical, the more the old rhythm was preserved; but the more his life conditions became influenced by thought, the greater the disorder that came into them. I would like to clarify this from another angle.

Men are not the only beings we know of, we also know of beings that are superior to present-day earth man. We know of the sons of life or the angels, and we know that they went through their human stage on ancient Moon. We know of the spirits of fire or the archangels, that went through their human stage on the old Sun condition of the earth, and we also know of the primeval forces, who went through their human stage on ancient Saturn. These beings are in advance of man in their cosmic evolution. If we were to study them today we would find that they are beings of a much more spiritual nature than man. Therefore they live in higher-worlds. But in regard to the particular things we have been mentioning today, their situation is totally different from man's. In spiritual matters they conform absolutely to the cosmic rhythm. An angel would not think in such a disordered way as man, for the simple reason that his thought process is regulated by the cosmic powers which guide him. It is right out of the question for a being like an angel not to think in harmony with the great spiritual processes of the cosmos. The laws of logic for the angels are written in the universal harmony. They need no textbooks. Man needs textbooks because he has brought his inner thought processes into disorder. He no longer knows how to take guidance from the great script of the stars. Angels know the course of the cosmos, and the course of their thought corresponds with the ordered rhythm. When man came on to the earth in his present form he fell out of this rhythm, hence the lack of order in his life of thought and feeling. Regularity still holds sway in the things man has less influence on in his astral and etheric bodies, but in the parts that have been given into man's hands, that is, his sentient soul, intellectual soul and consciousness soul disorder and lack of rhythm have entered in. It is one of the least important matters that in our cities man turns night into day. It is of far greater significance that in his inner life of thought man has torn himself away from the great universal rhythm. The way man thinks all day long is in a certain respect in contradiction to the life of the great universe.

Do not imagine though, that all this is being said to encourage a world conception that will bring man back into this kind of rhythm again. Man had to get away from the old rhythm; his progress depends on this: When certain prophets go around today preaching ‘Back to Nature’, they want to bring life into reverse instead of helping it forward. All this chatter about returning to nature contains no understanding of real evolution. When a movement today recommends people to eat certain foods only at certain times of the year because nature herself indicates this by making foods grow only at certain times, this is the abstract talk of the amateur. The essential thing about evolution is that man grows more and more independent of outer rhythm. But we must not lose the ground from under our feet. It is not the best thing for man's progress and salvation to return to the old rhythm and ask himself how he should live in harmony with the four quarters of the moon. For it was essential in olden times for man to be like an impress of the cosmos. But it is important too that man should not believe he can live without rhythm. Just as his inner life was formed from outside inwards he must now create rhythm from inside outwards. That is the essential thing. His inner life must become rhythmic. Just as rhythm created the cosmos, man has to permeate himself with a new rhythm if he wants to share in the creating of a new cosmos. It is characteristic of our age that it has lost the old, external rhythm and has not yet attained a new inner one. Man has outgrown nature—if we call the outer expression of spirit ‘nature’—but has not yet grown into the spirit. He is still floundering today between nature and spirit. This is just what is characteristic of our time. This floundering between nature and spirit reached its climax in the second third of the nineteenth century. Consequently the beings who know and interpret the signs of the times had to ask themselves at that time: What can be done so that man does not lose all trace of rhythm but acquires an inner rhythm?

What you can see today as the characteristic of mental life is its chaotic nature. Today, when you see something that has been thought out, the first thing that is bound to strike you is its chaotic nature, its inner lack of order. This is the case in almost every sphere. Only the spheres that still possess good old traditions have something of the old order left. In new spheres man has first of all to create a new order. That is why men can see facts today, like the fall in temperature on the seventh day of pneumonia, but their explanation of them is an absolute chaos of thoughts. When the human being thinks about it, then—because he does not think in an ordered way—he piles up a medley of thoughts around the fact. All our sciences take an external fact of the world and stir up a mass of thoughts about it with no inner order, because man has gone astray in a kind of mental abyss. He has no guiding principles of thought today, no inner thought rhythm, and humanity would become completely decadent were they not to acquire an inner rhythm. Look at spiritual science from this point of view.

You will see the element you are in when you begin to study spiritual science. To begin with you hear—and gradually understand—that man has four members of his being: physical body, etheric body, astral body and ego. And then you hear that work is done by the ego, and the astral body is changed into manas or spirit-self, the etheric body into buddhi or life-spirit and the principle of physical man into spirit-man or atma. Now just think how much ground we have covered with this basic formula of spiritual science. Think of the many themes that were really fundamental themes, and how we had to build up our whole thought structure time and again out of this basic scheme: physical body, etheric body, astral body and ego. You know, some people actually get tired of hearing these basic facts over and over again in certain public lectures. But this is and remains a reliable thread on which to string our thoughts: these four members of man's being and their inter-working; and then on a higher level, the transformation of the three lower members: the third into the fifth, the second into the sixth and the first into the seventh member of our being. If you count all the members of man's being that we know of physical body, etheric body, astral body, ego, spirit-self, life-spirit and spirit-man, you have seven. And if you count those that form the foundation of these, namely the physical body, etheric body, astral body and ego, you have four. And you are reproducing in thought the macrocosmic rhythm of 7:4 and 4:7 when you follow this train of thought. You are producing the outer, macrocosmic rhythm again from out of yourself You are repeating the rhythm that was once there macrocosmically in the universe and bringing it to birth again. You are laying down the plan or basis for your system of thought, as once the gods laid down the plan for the wisdom of the world. When we bring the inner rhythm of number to life in us again in this way, then out of the chaos of thought life a cosmos of thought is developed out of the innermost being of the soul. Men have freed themselves from external rhythm. By means of what is truly a science of the spirit we return to rhythm again, creating a cosmic structure from within outwards that is inwardly rhythmic. And if we turn to the cosmos and look at the earth's past, at Saturn, Sun, Moon and Earth, we find four, then the Moon in spiritualised form at the fifth stage as Jupiter, the Sun at the sixth stage as Venus, and ancient Saturn at the seventh stage as Vulcan. Thus in Saturn, Sun, Moon, Earth, Jupiter, Venus, Vulcan our evolutionary phases add up to seven. Our physical body as it is today, has developed through the number four, through Saturn, Sun, Moon and Earth. In the future it will gradually become completely transformed and spiritualised. So that here too, when we look at the past we have the number four, and when we look to the future the number three: again there is 4:3, or if we include the past in the whole of evolution, 4:7.

We are still only at the beginning of our spiritual scientific activity, even if we have been working at it for many years. Today we could only point out what men meant by the ‘inner number’ at the root of all phenomena. And we see that in order to gain freedom man had to fall away from the original rhythm. But he has to rediscover within himself the laws with which to regulate the ‘clock’, his astral body. And the great regulator is spiritual science, because it is in harmony with the great laws of the cosmos beheld by the seer. The future as created by man will have the same great numerical relationships as the cosmos had in the past, but on a higher level. Therefore men have to bring the future to birth out of number, like the gods created the cosmos out of number.

We can see how spiritual science is connected with the course of the macrocosm. When we grasp what is there in the spiritual world behind man, the number four and the number seven, we shall understand why we must look to the spiritual world to find the impulse to carry forward what we know to be the evolutionary course of humanity. And we shall understand why just in an age when men have reached the greatest chaos in their inner life of thought, feeling and will those individualities who have to interpret the signs of the times had to draw attention to the kind of wisdom that enables man to create his soul life in a regulated way from within outwards. We shall learn to think with inner rhythm in a way that is necessary for the future, when we think in accordance with these basic relationships. And man will take into himself more and more from the world of his origins. At present he is acquiring what we can see to be the ground plan of the cosmos. He will go further and feel himself filled with certain fundamental forces and ultimately with fundamental beings.

All this is just in its beginnings today. And we appreciate the importance and world significance of the anthroposophical mission when we regard it not as an arbitrary act of this or that individual, but rather set about understanding it with all the inner force of our very existence. Then we can reach the point of being able to say that it is not a matter of choice whether we take up the anthroposophical mission or not, for if we want to understand our times we must recognise and fill ourselves with the thoughts of the divine-spiritual worlds which are the basis of anthroposophy. And then we must let them flow out of us again into the world, so that our actions and our being acquire, in place of chaos, the stature of a cosmos, like the cosmos out of which we were born.

A lecture delivered by Rudolf Steiner at Dornach on the 5th of August, 1921. From stenographic notes, unrevised by the lecturer. Lecture 4 of 11 from the volume: Human Evolution, Cosmic Soul, Cosmic Spirit – II The volume of the Complete Edition of the works of Rudolf Steiner containing the original text of the this lecture, among eleven others, is entitled: Menschenwerden, Weltenseele und Wetlgeist. Zweiter Teil. Der Mensch als geistiges Wesen im historischen Werdegang. Der Mensch in seinem Zusammenhang mit dem Kosmos. (No. 206 in the Bibliographical Survey, 1961). Published in Anthroposophic News Sheet 1939, Supplement No. 1

During my recent lectures I have brought forward a few things with the view of explaining the modern life of the spirit and its possibilities of development for the future. I have said that we should observe the events which have taken place in the course of human evolution, events that have led up to a soul-constitution which characterises the modern life of the spirit.

Let us once more bear in mind a few things which characterise this modern life of the spirit. By departing from various standpoints, we have gradually struggled through to the conclusion that the fundamental note of this modern life of the spirit is intellectualism, the intellectual, understanding attitude towards the world and man. This does not contradict the fact that in our times the essential character of a world-conception is sought in the observation and elaboration of external phenomena which can be observed through the senses. This, in particular, will be unfolded in the next few days. We may say that intellectualism, as such, has made its first appearance in the course of human evolution during the time comprised within the 300 years prior to the Mystery of Golgotha, and then it has gradually developed to a height which has not been surpassed during the three centuries subsequent to the Mystery of Golgotha. We may say that in the course of about six centuries, humanity has been trained to take up intellectualism. Intellectualism developed from out a spiritual world-conception, which began to ebb at that time, in the course of those six centuries. External documents (I have already called attention to this fact) hardly enable us to study the ebb of this world-conception, because the spreading of Christianity did its utmost to destroy, with but a few exceptions, every gnostic document.

Within the evolution of human world-conceptions, these gnostic documents represent that particular element which has, on the one hand, taken up something from older traditions, from what existed in Asia, Africa and southern Europe in the form of an ancient wisdom, from what could still be reached in these later times, in accordance with the faculties of human beings who were no longer able to rise to great heights of super-sensible vision. This older form of wisdom, the last echoes of which may still be found in the pre-Socratic philosophers and which contains last, pale gleams of Plato's arguments, this world-conception did not work with intellectual forces; essentially speaking, its contents were obtained through super-sensible vision, even if this was instinctive. At the same time, this super-sensible vision supplied what may be designated as an inner logical system. If we have within us the contents of super-sensible vision, no intellectual elaboration is needed, for the human being already possesses a logical structure through his own nature. Thus we may say that in the course of human evolution intellectualism has, in a certain respect, risen out of Gnosticism. It has risen out of super-sensible, spiritual contents. The spiritual contents have dried up and the intellectual element has remained.

A man with a preeminently leading spirit, who at that time already made use of the intellect (in Plato, this was not evident as yet) and who clearly evinced that the older form of spirituality had ceased to exist and that the human being now sought to gain a world-conception through inner intellectual work, this preeminently leading spirit was Aristotle. Aristotle is, as it were, the first man in human evolution who works in a truly intellectual way. In Aristotle, we continually come across statements showing that the recollection of an old wisdom, gained through super-sensible means, is still alive in a traditional form. Aristotle is aware of this older form of wisdom; he alludes to it whenever he speaks of his predecessors, but he can no longer connect his statements with any contents which are really his own inner experience.

Aristotle evinces in a high degree that things which were vividly experienced in the past, have now become mere words for him. But on the other hand, he is eminently intellectual in his way of working.

Owing to the special configuration of Greek culture, Aristotle is not a Gnostic. The gnosis of that time, with its still ample store of wisdom, which continued to exist even in the post-Christian centuries, had an intellectual way of grasping the old spiritual contents. These can no longer be experienced. What the Gnostics set forth, contains, as it were, a shadow-outline of the old spiritual wisdom. We can see that humanity gradually loses altogether the possibility of connecting a meaning with what had once been given to man in a super-sensible form. This stage, of not being able to connect any meaning with the old spiritual wisdom, reaches its climax in the fourth century of our era. Particularly a man like Augustine clearly reveals the struggle after a world-conception from out the very depths of the human soul, but it is impossible for him to reach a world-conception which is based on spirituality, so that he finally accepts what the Catholic Church presents to him in the form of dogmas.

The spiritual life of the Occident (and this is, to begin with, our present subject of study) obtained its contents above all during the centuries which followed the first four hundred years after the Mystery of Golgotha. It obtained its contents through what had been handed down traditionally from a Christian direction and had gradually acquired the form of dogmas, that is to say, of intellectual forms of thought. Nevertheless these dogmas were connected with contents which had once been experienced in super-sensible vision and which now existed merely in the form of memories. It was no longer possible to gain an insight into man's connections with these super-sensible contents; that is to say, it was not in any way possible to convey to the human beings the significance of these super-sensible contents. For this reason, the education of humanity took on an essentially intellectual character in the following centuries, up to the fifteenth century.

The spiritual life of the fourth and fifth centuries of our era, up to the fifteenth century, with all the experiences connected with that time—starting with the first Fathers of the Church up to Duns Scotus and then Thomas Aquinas and Albertus Magnus—the spiritual life of those centuries and all the experiences connected with that time, arouse our interest not so much in view of the contents which have been transmitted to us, as in view of the thoroughly significant training through which the human beings had to pass, so that their soul-constitution was directed towards intellectualism. In regard to intellectual matters, in regard to the elaboration of conceptual matters, the Christian philosophers have reached the very climax. We may say, on the one hand, that intellectualism was fully born at the end of the fourth century of our era, but we may also say that intellectualism, as a technique, as a technical method of thinking, evolved up to the fifteenth century. That human beings were at all able to grasp this intellectual element, is a fact which took place in the fourth century. But to begin with, intellectualism had to be elaborated inwardly, and what was achieved in this direction, up to the time of high Scholasticism, is truly admirable.

Modern thinkers could really learn a great deal in this connection, if they would train their capacity of forming concepts by studying the conceptual technique which was unfolded by the scholastic thinkers of the Catholic Church. If we observe the disorderly way of thinking which is customary in modern science, if we observe how certain ideas which are indispensable for the attainment of a world-conception (for instance, the idea of subsistence in connection with existence) have altogether disappeared, particularly in regard to their inner character, if we observe how concepts such as “hypothesis” have acquired an entirely indistinct character, whereas for the scholastics it was a conceptual form with clearly defined outlines, if we observe many other things which could be adduced in this direction, we shall realise that the ordinary modern life of the spirit does not possess a real technique of thinking. How many things could be learnt if we would once more become acquainted with what has been developed up to the fifteenth century as a technique of thinking, that is to say, as a technique of intellectualism! Thinkers who have had a training in this sphere are so superior to the modern philosophers because they have taken up within them the scholastic element.

Indeed, after the disorderly thoughts contained in modern scientific writings, it does one good to take hold of a book such as Willmann's “History of Idealism”. Of course, at the present time we cannot agree with the contents of Willmann's book, for it contains things which we cannot accept, nevertheless it reveals a thinking activity which gives us, as such, a feeling of well-being, in comparison with what has just been characterised. Otto Willmann's “History of Idealism” should also be read by those who adopt an entirely different standpoint. The way in which he deals with the problems from the time of Plato onwards, his complete mastery of the scholastic activity of thought, can, to say the least, exercise an extraordinary influence upon modern human beings and discipline their thoughts.

Essentially speaking, the task of the time which lies between the fourth and the fifteenth century was, therefore, the development of a technique of thinking. This thinking activity has now adopted a definite attitude in regard to man's cognitive faculty towards the contents of the world. We may say: Spirits such as Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas have set forth the position of man's thinking activity towards the contents of the world in a manner which was, at that time, quite incontestable.

How do their descriptions appear to us?

Thinkers such as Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas had dogmatically preserved truths which originated from old traditions, but their meaning could no longer be grasped. To begin with, these truths had to be protected as contents of a supernatural revelation, which at that time was more or less equivalent to a super-sensible revelation. The Church preserved these revelations through its authority and teachings, and people thought that the dogmas of the Church contained the revelations connected with the super-sensible worlds. They were to accept what was offered in these dogmas, they were to accept it as a revelation which could not be touched by human reason, that is to say, by the human intellect.

In the Middle Ages it was, on the one hand, quite natural to apply the intellectual technique, which had reached such a high degree of development, but on the other hand, it was evident that the intellect was not allowed to determine anything in connection with the contents of these dogmas. The highest truths required by the human beings were sought within the dogmas. They had to be presented by theology, which was supernatural, and contained the essence of everything relating to the higher destinies of man's soul-life. The conceptions of that time were, on the other hand. permeated by the idea that Nature could be grasped and explained by the unfolding intellect, and that ratio, that is to say, the intellect, enabled one to grasp in a certain abstract manner the beginning and the end of the world, that it enabled one to grasp even the existence of God, etc. etc. These things were altogether considered as forming part—although in a certain abstract manner—of the truths which could still be reached through the intellectual technique. Human cognition was thus divided into two spheres: The sphere of the super-sensible, which could only become accessible to man through revelation and was preserved within the Christian dogmas, and the other sphere, which contained a knowledge of Nature, to the extent in which this was possible at that time, and which could only be reached, in its whole extent through an intellectual technique.

If we wish to grasp the spiritual development of our modern times, we must penetrate into this dual character of cognition during the Middle Ages. New spheres of knowledge slowly begin to appear from the fifteenth century onwards, and then more and more quickly; new spheres of knowledge, which then became the contents of the modern scientific world-conception. Up to the fifteenth century, the intellect, as such, had developed, its technique had gradually unfolded, but throughout that time it had not enriched itself with contents of a natural-scientific character. The knowledge of Nature which existed up to that time, was an old traditional knowledge which could no longer be grasped to its full extent: the intellect had. as it were, not been tested by contents of an immediate and elemental kind.

This only took place when the deeds of Galilei, Copernicus and so forth, began to penetrate into the modern development of science, and it occurred at a time when the intellect did not merely unfold its technique, but when it began to tackle the external world. Particularly in a man such as Galilei we can see that he uses his highly developed technique of thinking in order to approach with it the contents of a world which appears to the external observation through the senses. In the centuries which followed, up to the nineteenth century, those who were striving after knowledge were occupied above all with this: their intellect was grappling with Nature, it was seeking to gain a knowledge of Nature.

What lived in this struggle of the intellect that was seeking to gain a knowledge of Nature? In order to grasp this, we should not follow preconceived ideas, but psychological and historical facts.

We should clearly realise that humanity does not only carry over theories from one epoch to the other, and that the Christian development of philosophy has produced in an extraordinarily strong way the tendency to apply the intellectual faculties merely to the world of the senses, without touching the super-sensible world. If those who were striving after knowledge had touched the super-sensible sphere with their intellectual forces, this would have been considered a sin. Such an attitude gave rise to certain habits, and these habits continued. Even if the human beings are no longer fully conscious of them, they nevertheless act under the influence of these habits. In the centuries which preceded the nineteenth century, one of these habits, that is to say, a habit which arose under the influence of Christian dogmatism, produced the tendency to use the intellectual faculties merely for an external observation through the senses. In the same way in which the universities were, generally speaking, the continuation of schools which had been founded by the Church, so the sciences which were taught at these universities in connection with a knowledge of Nature were fundamentally a continuation of what the Church acknowledged to be right in the sphere of natural science. The tendency to include in knowledge nothing but an empiricism based on the observation through the senses is, in every respect, the echo of a soul-habit which has risen out of Christian dogmatism.

This way of directing the intellect towards the external world of the senses was more and more accompanied by the fact that the forces which the soul itself directed towards the contents of super-sensible dogmas gradually paled and died. The possibility of an independent investigation had once more arisen, and although the contents which the intellect thus obtained were of a purely sensory kind, they were nevertheless the contents of knowledge.

The dogmatic contents gradually paled under the influence of contents which were gained through a knowledge of the sensory world. This knowledge was acquiring a more and more positive character. It was no longer possible to adopt towards these super-sensible contents a soul-attitude which still existed after the fourth century of our era as a recollection of something which humanity had experienced in very ancient times. What was connected with the super-sensible worlds gradually disappeared completely, and what lies before us in the spiritual development of the last three or four centuries merely represents an artificial way of preserving these super-sensible contents.

The contents which have been taken from the world of the senses and which have been elaborated by the intellect grow more and more abundant. They permeate the human soul. The habit of calling attention to the super-sensible contents gradually pales and disappears. Also this fact is unquestionably a result of the Christian dogmatic development.

Then came the nineteenth century; the human soul had completely lost its elementary connection with what was contained in the super-sensible world, and it became more and more necessary for the human beings to convince themselves, one might say, artificially, that it is, after all, significant to accept the existence of a super-sensible world. So we may see, particularly in the nineteenth century, the development of a doctrine which had been well prepared in advance, the doctrine of the two paths of cognition: the path of knowledge and the path of faith. A cognition of faith, based upon an entirely subjective conviction, was still supposed to uphold what had been preserved traditionally from the old dogmas. In addition to this fact, the human beings were more and more overcome, I might say, by the knowledge which the world of the senses offered to them. Fundamentally speaking, just about the middle of, the nineteenth century, the evolution of the spiritual world of Europe had reached the following point: An abundant knowledge flowed out of the world of the senses, whereas the attitude towards the super-sensible world was problematic. When the human beings investigated the sensory world, they always felt that they had a firm ground under their feet and the facts resulting from an external observation could always be pointed out and summed up in a kind of world-picture, which naturally contained nothing but sensory facts, but which grew more and more perfect in regard to these sensory contents. On the other hand, they were striving in an almost cramped and desperate manner to maintain a survey of the super-sensible world through faith. Particularly significant in this connection is the development of theology, especially of Christology, for it shows us how the super-sensible contents of the Christ-idea were gradually lost, so that finally nothing remained of this idea except the existence of Jesus of Nazareth within the world of the senses; he was, therefore, looked upon as a member of human evolution within the ordinary and intellectual life of the senses. [See Rudolf Steiner's, “Et incarnatus est ...”.] Attempts were made to uphold Christianity even in the face of the enlightened and scientific mentality of modern times, but it was submitted to criticism and dissolved through this critical examination; the contents of the gospels were sieved and thus a definition was construed, as it were, which justified to a certain extent at least the right to point out that the super-sensible world must be the subject of faith, of belief.

It is strange to see the form which this development took on just about the middle of the nineteenth century. Those who study modern spiritual science should not overlook this stage in the development of human knowledge. Men who have spoken extensively of the spirit and of the spiritual life of the present, have treated in an amateurish way what has arisen as materialism in the middle of the nineteenth century within the evolution of mankind. Of course, it would be superficial to remain by this materialism. But it is far more superficial to take up an amateurish attitude towards materialism. It is comparatively easy to acquire a few concepts which are connected with the spirit and with spiritual life, and then to pass sentence over what has arisen through the materialism of the nineteenth century; but we should observe this from a different standpoint.

It is, for instance, a fact that a thinker such as Heinrich Czolbe, and he is perhaps one of the most significant materialistic thinkers, has given a real definition of sensualism in his book, “An Outline of Sensualism”, which was published in 1855. He states that sensualism implies a cognitive striving which excludes the super-sensible from the very beginning. Czolbe's system of sensualism gives us something which seeks to explain, the world and man only with the aid of what may be obtained through sensory observation.

We might say that this system of sensualism is, on the one hand, superficial, but, on the other hand, it is extraordinarily sharp. For it really attempts to observe everything, from perception to politics, in the light of sensualism and to describe it in such a way that an explanation can only be given through what the senses are able to observe and the intellect is able to combine through these sensory observations. This book was published in 1855, when a clearly defined Darwinism did not as yet exist, for Darwin's first epoch-making book only appeared in 1858.

Generally speaking, the year 1858 was very trenchant in the more recent spiritual evolution. Darwin's “Origin of the Species” appeared at that time. Spectral analysis also arose at that time within the evolution of humanity, and this has given rise to the conception that the universe consists of the same material substances as those of terrestrial existence. In that year the first attempt was made to deal with the aesthetic sphere in an external, empiric manner, a subject which in the past had always been treated in a spiritual-intellectual manner. Gustav Theodor Fechner's “Introduction to Aesthetics” was published in 1858. Finally, the attempt was made to apply this manner of thinking, which is contained in all the above examples, to social life. The first more important economic book of Carl Marx also appeared in that year. This fourth phenomenon of the modern materialistic life of the spirit thus appears not only in the same period, but in the same year of that period. As stated, certain things have preceded all this, for instance, Czolbe's “Sensualism”.

Afterwards, the attempt was made to permeate with materialistic world-conceptions the many facts which were discovered at that time in regard to the external life of the senses and we may say: The materialistic world-conception has not been created by Darwinism, or by spectral analysis, but the facts which Darwin had so carefully collected, the facts which could be detected to a certain extent in spectral analysis, and all that could be discovered in connection with certain things which were once investigated in an entirely different manner (this may be seen, for instance, in Fechner's “Introduction to Aesthetics”), all this was immersed in the already extant conception of sensualism. Fundamentally speaking, materialism already existed; it had its origin in the propagation of that habit of thinking which was, in reality, an offspring of the scholastic manner of thinking. We do not grasp the modern development of the spirit, we do not grasp materialism, unless we realise that it is nothing but the continuation of medieval thinking, with the omission of the idea that it is necessary to rise from thinking to the super-sensible with the aid, not of human reason and human observation, but with the aid of the revelations contained in the dogmas.

This second element has simply been omitted. But the fundamental conviction relating to one side of cognition, to that side which refers to the world of the senses, this fundamental conviction has been maintained. What had thus developed in the course of the nineteenth century, then changed in such a way that it appeared, for instance, in the famous Ignorabimus of du Bois-Reymond, in the early seventies. The scholastic thinkers used to say: Human cognition, which is permeated by the intellect, is only connected with the external world of the senses, and everything that the human being is supposed to know in regard to the super-sensible world must be given through the revelation which is preserved in the dogmas.—The revelation which the dogmas have preserved has paled, but the other fundamental conviction has been retained. This is what du Bois-Reymond states incisively, in a modern garment, to be sure. du Bois-Reymond applied what Scholasticism used to voice in the manner which I have just described, in such a way that he said: It is only possible to gain a knowledge of sensory things; we should only gain a knowledge of sensory things, for a knowledge of the super-sensible world does not exist.

Fundamentally speaking, there is no difference whatever between one of the two spheres of knowledge in Scholasticism and what has arisen, in a modern garment, among the modern natural scientists, and du Bois-Reymond was undoubtedly one of the most modern scientists. It is really very important to contemplate earnestly and carefully how the modern conception of Nature has risen out of Scholasticism, for it is generally believed that modern natural science has arisen in contrast to Scholasticism. Just as the modern universities cannot deny that in their structure they originate from the Christian schools of the Middle Ages, so the structure of modern scientific thought cannot deny its origin from Scholasticism, except that it has stripped off, as I have explained before, the scholastic elaboration of concepts and the scholastic technique of thinking, which are worthy of the greatest respect and appreciation.

This technique of thinking has also been lost; and for this reason certain questions, which are evident and which do not satisfy a real thinker, have simply been overlooked with elegance in the modern scientific manner of considering things. The spirit and the meaning contained within this modern science of Nature, are, however, the very offspring of Scholasticism.

But the human beings acquired the habit of restricting themselves to the world of the senses. This habit, to be sure, also produced excellent things, for the human beings acquired the tendency to become thoroughly absorbed in the facts of the sensory world. It suffices to consider that spiritual science, the spiritual science which is orientated towards Anthroposophy, sees in the sensory world an image of the super-sensible world; what we encounter in the sensory world really contains the images of the super-sensible world. If we consider this, we shall be able to appreciate fully the importance of penetrating into the sensory material world. We must emphasize again and again and we should continually lay stress upon the fact that the other form of materialism which has come to the fore in spiritism, which seeks to cognise the spirit in a materialistic manner, is unfruitful, because the spirit can, of course, never be seen through the senses. and the whole method of spiritism is, therefore, a humbug. On the other hand, we should realise that what we observe through our ordinary, normal senses and what we elaborate from out this sensory observation, with the aid of the intellect which has developed in the course of human evolution, is in every way an image of the super-sensible world, and consequently the study of this image can, in a certain way, lead us into the super-sensible world far better than, for instance, spiritism. In earlier times, I have often expressed this by saying: Some people are sitting around a table in order to “summon spirits”; yet, they completely overlook the fact that there are so and so many spirits sitting around the table! They should be conscious of their own spirit. Undoubtedly this spirit sets forth what they should seek; but owing to the fact that they forget their own spirit, that they are unwilling to grasp their own spirit, they seek the spirit in a materialistic, external manner, in spiritistic experiments which ape and imitate the experiments made in laboratories. Materialism, which works within the images of the super-sensible world, without being aware of the fact that it is dealing with images of the super-sensible world, this materialism has, after all, achieved great things through its methods of investigation, it has achieved great and mighty things.

Of course, and in Czolbe we may see this quite clearly, the real sensualists and materialists have never sought a connection between that which they obtained through their senses and the super-sensible; they merely sought to recognise the sensory world as such, its structure and its laws. This forms part of what has been achieved from 1840 onwards. When Darwinism brought forward its great standpoint, Darwinism, which had brought about the circumstance that through Darwin's person a wealth of facts had been collected from certain standpoints, when Darwinism made its appearance, it presented, to begin with, a principle of research, a method of investigation.

The nineteenth century had a few accurate natural scientists, such as Gegenbauer. Gegenbauer never became a Darwinist in Haeckel's meaning. Gegenbauer, who continued Goethe's work in connection with the metamorphosis of the vertebrae and the cranium, particularly emphasized this: No matter how the truth, the absolute truth of Darwinism may stand, it has given rise to a method which has enabled us to align phenomena and to compare them in such a manner that we have actually noticed things which we would not have noticed without this method, without the existence of Darwinism.

Gegenbauer meant to say more or less the following: Even though everything which is contained in the Darwin Theory were to disappear, the fact would remain that the Darwin Theory has given rise to a definite way of handling research, so that facts could be discovered which would otherwise not have been found. It was, to be sure, a certain “practical application of the ‘as-if principle’.” But this practical application of the “as-if principle” is not so stupid as the philosophical establishment of the “as-if principle”, in the form which it took on in a later epoch.

Thus it came about that a peculiar structure of spiritual life arose in the second half of the nineteenth century. In more recent times, and these do not lie so far back, philosophy has, after all, always developed out of a theological element. Those who fail to see the theological element in Hume and in Kant are simply unable to have an insight into such things. Philosophical thought has arisen altogether out of theological thought and, in a certain way, it has elaborated certain things in the form of intellectual concepts and these things had almost a super-sensible colouring. In view of the fact that the things which were dealt with in philosophy always had a super-sensible colouring, natural science began to oppose it more and more, ever since the middle of the nineteenth century, for the tendency towards these super-sensible contents of human knowledge had gradually disappeared. Natural science contained something, and it compelled one to have confidence in it, because the contents of natural science were substantial. The philosophical development was powerless in the face of what was flowing into natural science more and more abundantly, developing as far as Oken's problems, which were grasped philosophically. It is interesting to see that the most penetrative philosophy of the second half of the nineteenth century calls attention to the unconscious, and no longer to the conscious. Eduard von Hartmann's philosophy was discarded by the intellect, because it insisted upon its right of existence as a philosophy. The more the nineteenth century drew towards its close, the more we watch the strange spectacle of a philosophy which is gradually losing its contents and is gradually adopting the attitude of having to justify its existence. The most acute philosophers, such as Otto Liebmann, strive, above all, to justify the existence of philosophy.

There is a real relationship between a philosopher of Otto Liebmann's stamp, who still tries to justify the existence of philosophy, and a philosopher such as Richard Wahle, who wrote the book, “Philosophy as a Whole and Its End”. Richard Wahle very incisively set himself the task of demonstrating that philosophy cannot exist, and thereupon obtained a chair of philosophy at an Austrian university, for a branch of knowledge which, according to his demonstrations, could not exist!

In the nineties of the nineteenth century we may then observe a strange stage in these results of the modern development of thought-cognition. On the one hand, we have the natural-scientific efforts of advancing to an encompassing world-conception and of rejecting everything connected with revelation and the super-sensible world, and on the other hand, we have a powerless philosophy.

This came to the fore, one might say, particularly clearly in the nineties of the nineteenth century, but it appears as a necessary result of the preceding course of development. To-morrow we shall continue to examine the course of this development. I would only like you to hold fast in particular, that modern materialism should be considered from the following standpoint. The things which appear in material life are an image of the super-sensible. Man himself, in the form in which he appears between birth and death, is an image of what he has experienced supersensibly between his last death and his birth. These who seek the soul within material existence, seek it in the wrong direction.

The fundamental problem in the face of the materialism of the nineteenth century, if we wish to grasp it historically, is: To what extent was it justified? We grasp its historical evolution, not by opposing it, but by trying to understand what it lacked, indeed, but what it had to lack, owing to the fact that, during the time which immediately preceded it, the soul-spiritual element was sought in the wrong place. People believed that they could find the soul-spiritual by seeking it in the ordinary way within the sensory world, through reflections of one or the other kind, and so forth. But this is not possible. It can only be found if we go beyond the world of the senses. Sensualism and materialism were neither willing nor able to go beyond the world of the senses. They remained at a standstill by the image, they thought that this image was the reality. This is the essence, of materialism.

So far we have attempted to see the human being in relation to the universe as regards form and as regards life. We found that human beings relate in different ways to the universe at the head end and at the limb end. All these things essentially hold true for the period of human evolution in which we are today, i.e. the post-Atlantean period, and it has to be understood that anything we are able to say about the phenomena of this world always applies only for specific periods, for the world is in a process of evolution and changes radically from one stage of evolution to the next.

We saw that human beings tear themselves away, as it were, from the relationship to the zodiac. Unlike the animal head, which lies within the zodiac, the human head has been lifted out of it, going through an angle of about 90 degrees. The head end of the human being is fully in a way of life that inclines towards inorganic, lifeless nature. Here life is more or less in decline; it is dying. Both form and life tear themselves away from their connection with the cosmos, and because of this enter into a kind of frozen state, the beginning of lifelessness.

Essentially we are the outcome of previous development in this area. Think of the individual aspect of the human being and the fact that the human head is the metamorphosis of the other person who lived on earth before, and you will recall that the head points to the past, whilst the limbs point to the future.

The head part of the human being also points to the cosmic expanses of the past in another way. As you know, the head is the principal bearer of the sense organs and these had their origin on ancient Saturn. The most highly developed senses—other senses developed on ancient sun and moon—go back to the earliest stages of cosmic earth evolution. Everything connected with the human head therefore points to the past and in some respects it would be right to say: The mineral world evolved in the course of earth existence, and the human head, being the oldest part, is more than any other part involved in this process of mineralization.

Tearing themselves away from the cosmos, human beings keep the form that is no longer connected with the cosmos during their life between birth and death, and they also keep the life that is dying and becoming mineralized. We may also say that if human beings had kept the animal form, that is, if their heads had maintained the orientation given by the zodiac and therefore the weightier life that is to be found in the animal head, they would be entirely the outcome of earlier times in their heads. The head would have something that would immediately make it apparent that it has arisen out of the whole past cosmic evolution. By tearing the head away from this, human beings are in a way destroying their cosmic past.

It is tremendously important that we consider the things that were presented yesterday and the day before and realize that in the development of the head human beings essentially destroy their cosmic past. In fact, they go beyond the actual mineralization process, entering into a process in which matter is finely dispersed to an extraordinary degree. Organic forms are of course also to be found in the head, and embedded in the organic element is a process in which matter is reduced to dust to a degree that actually goes beyond the mineral level. Fig. 18.

If we look at the human head in the right way we have to say it is the focus of a process in which matter as such is reduced to nothing and it is this which makes it the bearer of a distinct inner life. The generally accepted materialistic view is entirely wrong when it comes to the form of the human head. Thanks to the head being part of the organism, human beings have a life of thoughts and ideas. This becomes possible because the material life is reduced to dust in a strange process which you may be able to picture as follows.

Imagine—as I said, it is a picture, but it will give you some idea of the extremely subtle process involved—imagine, then, a painting, Raphael’s Sistine Madonna, for example. For the painting to exist in this world, it is necessary for it to have physical substance. Imagine that the physical substance falls to dust, but a fine etheric tissue would remain. So now the Sistine Madonna has turned into dust, but everything that was painted by using physical paints, including the nuances of colour, continues to exist in etheric form and someone with etheric perception would be able to perceive the etheric form that remains.

That is what the thinking process is like, the process of forming ideas. When we become conscious of a thought or an idea, this is due to the fact that because the head has been taken out of the wholeness of the cosmos, as we have seen yesterday and the day before, matter loses all significance and human beings face the constant need to let their heads come alive again because they are always disintegrating, and dying in every detail. The etheric aspect of their heads lifts out of it in the process (Fig. 18, red line on the outside) and thoughts evolve. Matter turns to dust and falls away, as it were, and the etheric remains and that is how people become aware of their ideas.

You’ll remember me saying that in the senses we already have something of a physical apparatus. The eye is a physical apparatus, except that the human ether body is active in it. There it already is the way I am now also going to describe for the rest of the head, for nerve tissue. Please take careful note of what I am going to say now. In the senses, and especially in the senses connected with the head, a separate etheric principle is active in the process of perception. In the sphere of the senses, therefore, we have a kind of independent etheric process.

Take the eye. It is a physical apparatus, but the etheric is active in it. Independent etheric life is to be found in an organ that is all the time tending to disintegrate and is really a mechanical, if not sub-mechanical, object. This is the situation in the sphere of the senses.

In the sphere of the nerves, which is an inward continuation of the sphere of the senses, the situation is such that the ether body is more closely bound up with the physical substance, but the whole of our life of the nerves wants all the time to become life of the senses. Imagine, therefore, that you are seeing a coloured surface. The ether body moves independently in this process of sensory perception. If you now leave this process aside and give yourself up to the life of the nerves, the whole sphere of the nerves becomes sphere of the senses and you have a idea of the coloured surface in your mind. We may say that in so far as human beings are nerve human beings, they become entirely sphere of the senses in their mental images or ideas.

Now comes the reaction. The senses are geared towards the physical and are able to take things in continually. The organism of the nerves takes in what the senses present to it. It changes into sphere of the senses and in doing so it partly dies. It seeks to become all eye, or all ear, for instance. To prevent this happening, the vital principle, the principle of life, enters from the rest of the organism and pervades it and the human individual lets the idea go, as it were.

To sum up, we may say that towards the head end, human beings destroy their past. They thus become human beings with nerves and senses that hold images and they have a living experience of images that moves in the etheric realm. You see if we base ourselves on the spiritual science of anthroposophy it is perfectly possible to describe the life of ideas that arises in the conscious mind.

As human beings develop their head end with regard to form, they do so in a way that in the present age exposes them to the influence of forces that evolve in the cosmos when the sun is in the Fishes, the Ram, the Bull, and so on, but they lift their heads out of this, as far as the form is concerned. The result is that the head does not become an animal head but assumes what we may call the “human vertical”, whilst the animal remains within the zodiac.

With regard to life we are able to say that towards the head end, life evolves under the influence of the outer planets Saturn and Jupiter, as we saw yesterday. But human beings lift their life out of this, and thus the following happens: If those planets were never blocked out by the sun, the whole life of the nerves would increasingly become life of the senses. People would perceive with their eyes, or their ears, but this would continue on into the life of nerves. The life of the twelve senses would be in total, inorganic chaos in their life of nerves. Due to the fact that those outermost planets are blocked out, the life of nerves is torn out of the life of senses, and human beings are able to be conscious and act with deliberation in the life of ideas—entering into sensory function and leaving it again by deliberately suppressing ideas, and so on.

Thus an independent etheric principle is active in the senses during sensory perception and a reduced life of senses that is bound to the physical body is active in the nerve organism.

The whole has image quality because by going into the vertical human beings destroy the principle that would give them not image quality but the quality of physical substance. Animals remain within the zodiac and have only dream images and not the conscious images that human beings have. Dream images grow out of the vital principle of the organism; conscious images are lifted up into an etheric life that has become independent of the physical body. It is important to realize that human beings develop an independent etheric life towards the head end because they raise that part out of both the zodiac and the movements of the planets. Then the astral body and the I enter into the independent etheric life and are able to take part in the thought and idea activity of the ether body.

We thus see that the nature of the soul principle can be understood if we know that human thought life has soul quality, that is, it does not take part in material life.

We have seen how human beings develop with regard to both form and life at the other extreme. The day before yesterday we saw that human beings become active in the world through their limbs; going back to ancient Greek times we saw how they became hunters, animal breeders, tillers of the soil and traders who sailed the oceans. Human beings continue in these activities by withdrawing from the influence of the relevant images in the zodiac. Animals remain fully under the influence of Archer, Goat, Water Carrier and Fishes and therefore develop forms that relate to the earth. A study of the zodiac will show why animal limbs have developed in a particular way. Human beings develop their system of limbs in such a way that they relate it to the earth when those zodiacal images are beneath the earth, when the earth is at that point in the zodiac in the northern hemisphere for a time. This is also why the geography of the earth offers different living conditions. Human beings are however able to transfer something they have developed in one place to another. I am speaking of things that apply to earlier times; today the different human forms mingle on the globe and the study of geography will no longer give a real idea of the way human beings relate to the macrocosm.

Here, then, human beings tear themselves away from the line of the zodiac in a different way, entering into the “human vertical” in the opposite direction. They remain fully exposed to the constellations of the zodiac with regard to form and to the outer planets with regard to the head, but withdraw from both influences by standing on the earth and letting the earth cover up the other side. Saturn and Jupiter influence human beings by letting their light shine on the earth. Living in images in their heads, human beings also receive the images of those starry worlds, just as they receive images of the planetary movements by developing the principle of life towards the head end. Images from the cosmos, the macrocosm, are taken up into the life of images that human beings develop.

At the other end, images are taken up and thus the forms develop that I showed you the day before yesterday—the limbs, forms that are the opposite of those seen in the head. Human beings also develop activities that are beyond the influence of the macrocosm, that do not allow those influences to enter.

At the head end, therefore, human beings destroy their past. The opposite is the case at the limb end. If we stood on a transparent earth so that both zodiac and planetary movements could influence us from the other side as well, we would not be able to act freely and independently but only under the influence of the life of the planets and fixed stars. Freedom of action is only possible because the earth blocks out the life of the planets and fixed stars. Furthermore, if we were fully exposed to them, then in view of the special nature of the human life span, with repeated earth lives, the life of our limbs would grow wooden, it would harden in itself. We would be unable to let matter fall to dust, and our organic substance would become cornified (horn-like) before it matured. Human limbs would be cornified in a way that is utterly different from the hoofs of horses or cows—almost all the way up. We are protected from this horny development because as human beings we are lifted out of the zodiac.

The process which results from this is the opposite of the process of reducing to dust in the head, where the past is destroyed and matter turns to dust. Development of the limb end is such that matter is not allowed to reach full cosmic maturity. It is held back. We have fingers and toes because we do not allow our limbs to reach their full growth potential. If they did, we would not just have nails but our arms and legs would be completely stiffened and cornified. By holding our limbs back we are able to develop the will in them, and this provides the basis for future lives on earth. If we allowed the limb person to reach full maturity, life would consist of one life on earth only. We preserve the basis for our future by not letting the limb person grow to maturity.

Thus we have a complete contrast: When it goes in the direction of thought, our inner life becomes a life in images; when it goes in the direction of our limbs, life becomes material, it is flesh and organic matter—“young”, I’d say. It does not cornify and grow old and because of this it is possible for the flesh to fall away and the image of youth to go through death and into the next life on earth.

There (Fig. 19) the will is able to develop, and we may say that the “will-end” of the human being is organic development not taken to its conclusion. At the head end we were able to speak of image quality, and here we must speak of something else. Organic development not taken to its conclusion remains germinal, an embryo capable of further development. At the head end we have something like an oyster shell, pure matter that has been secreted out. At the limb end we have something that is embryonic.

Here (above) we can say we have living inner experience of a purely etheric principle—the image. Here (below) we live not in the image but in germinal life and we know ourselves to be bound up with matter, which is also why we are able to move our limbs. We do not have much physical movement in the head, except in so far as our senses are transformed into limbs, so that in the head, too, we are human beings with limbs. One thing is also always to be found in the other, that is a basic principle. In a sense our eyes are also hands, in so far as they are able to move. Nevertheless, the head is largely immobile, and the lobes of the brain and similar structures in particular are incapable of voluntary movement. Even the outside of the head does not show much mobility; it is quite rare even for people to be able to move certain ear muscles; if they can, it provides them with an excellent opportunity for showing off.

Life experienced in organic substance does not allow conscious awareness to arise and this makes it possible for us to develop the will. (Up) here, then, we destroy physical matter, and (down) here we retain, in embryo, the powers for our next life on earth when physical substance falls away from us at death.

Between the two lie the life of breathing and the life of circulation, as we called them yesterday. We also saw that with regard to form this area relates to the constellations of the zodiac that lie between the upper and the lower ones.

If we consider the present-day fixed stars to be Ram, Bull, Twins, Crab, Lion, Virgin, Scales, Scorpion, Archer, Goat, Water Carrier and Fishes, we need to relate these four (Fishes, Ram, Bull, Twins) to the head. Under their influence and in accord with the planetary movements that are above the earth, the head is given a dying life that offers experience of life in images, an inner life of ideas. The four opposite constellations—it would have been slightly different in ancient Greece—would be Virgin, Scales, Scorpion and Archer. The constellations that lie between the upper and lower ones would relate to the rhythmical aspect of the human being, just as in planetary life Mars and Mercury hold a middle position. Here, we may say, the human being swings to and fro between image and embryo. The life of breathing and of the blood illustrates this quite beautifully. We take in oxygen which gives life and is connected with the limb organism and with everything that is mobile in us. We combine the oxygen with carbon, a substance that initially has a stimulant effect on the life of the nerves and senses, bringing in an element of death, and is then cast out as a dying element. Here we have in physical, material terms the continuous contrast of extreme life in oxygen and extreme death in carbon: dying and enlivening, dying and enlivening. Life swings to and fro between these extremes.

At the level of soul life it is like this: we have inward experience of something that on the one hand is still purely etheric, like the life of thoughts; but the ether body takes hold of certain glandular structures and these glands secrete matter. At the physical level, therefore, the ether body acts on the glands. Glands do not make a connection with etheric life, the way muscles do—which are essentially part of the limb organism but secrete matter when etheric life takes hold of them. Etheric life and physical, material life therefore do not fuse completely, and we have a stage of transition. Matter is taken hold of but it also resists and is secreted out. If you study muscles and bones, the elements of the limb system, you find that matter is rigorously taken hold of by the human ether body, most of all in the bones. Nothing falls to dust and is dispersed, everything stays fresh and alive. In the head, none of the matter is taken hold of, but as the head develops, matter falls to dust. Unbound, etheric activity develops to become the life of thought. When the ether body takes hold of the glands, it unites with them but they resist. Muscle tolerates the ether body and take it into itself. Glands do not tolerate it; they immediately secrete matter and drive out the ether. At the soul level this is the life of feeling.

We can now get a real idea of the life of thought. Matter is not put to use, it only goes as far as the etheric, and conscious awareness lives in this etheric element. In the life of feeling, the ether body takes hold of glandular life, which does not tolerate it. Yet for the time that the ether body vanishes into glandular life, before secretion actually comes into effect, human beings are without their ether body, which has vanished into the glands. At that point they find themselves only in their I and astral body, and that is how it is when we feel.

idea—ether body, astral body, I
realm of feeling—astral body, I
life of will—I

If we take the ideas that come in the life of thought—the life of the physical body is cast off; human beings experience themselves in ether body, astral body and I. In the human head the I is active in the astral and the ether bodies and rejects the physical element; the I is thus able, with the aid of the astral body, to experience thoughts, thinking, in the ether body. In the realm of feeling human beings have the ether body taken away from them when it takes hold of glandular life; it is withdrawn from them until the gland has taken the secretory activity to its conclusion. The ether body is therefore in the physical body and human beings have only the astral body and I available for conscious inner life. Experience is at the level of feelings and dream-like in quality, because we enter into the physical body.

In their life of will, human beings enter completely into organic matter with the ether body. When we are awake, the ether body takes the astral body with it, and this enables us to move our limbs. The astral body is also taken into matter and is therefore withdrawn from us so that we have conscious awareness only of the I.

Thus we find that the inner life and the physical life are related at every level. Basing ourselves on the science of the spirit we merely need to have a clear picture of the way in which I, astral body and ether body are involved in the physical body and we perceive the difference between the inner life of thought, the inner life of feeling and the inner life of will. We find that the inner life of thought is in the dying part of the organism which has torn itself away from the upper part of the world of the fixed stars and the upper world of the planets, and become a life in images by reducing the past to dust. We find that in the middle, or rhythmical region we are able to share in life relating to the past and therefore also to the macrocosm, which has evolved out of the past; yet we also react to this because there is a continuous rhythmical element—on the one hand the rhythm of oxygen combining with carbon, and on the other that of glands being taken hold of and responding with secretion. When the macrocosmic life in us is taken hold of and takes hold, the microcosm, that is, the individual human being, reacts. We live in rhythm not only inside ourselves but with the world; we open up to the cosmos and take it back into ourselves. We are half-way individual beings and move rhythmically to and fro between macrocosm and microcosm, and this is where we are alive and active in our feelings. Here we can see exactly how the physical, material aspect of the organism interacts with the element of soul and spirit. In the life of the will, physical matter is most strongly taken hold of and this is where we are most of all mere microcosm, withdrawing entirely from macrocosmic activity in becoming active ourselves.

Living in the northern hemisphere, we withdraw from the other fixed stars and planets in our own way; people living in the southern hemisphere do the same in a similar way, and the whole does, of course, rotate. In our limbs we are therefore entirely microcosm between birth and death, in a world of our own which therefore is also able to take itself forward into a future. We are today developing the will as the youngest element in the inner life. This is still entirely dependent on the physical body for support; it allows only the I to find to itself, with the astral body and the ether body caught up in the physical body.

We shall never understand the inner life unless we are able to differentiate between I, astral body and ether body. Anyone who does not have a real, inner grasp of these will never be able to understand the life of thought, the life of feeling and the life of will. What happens when people refuse to grasp this reality today?

What happens is that people who carry some authority stand there and tell people that it is not really possible to know anything about the inner life, though certain phenomena suggest that something exists that has soul quality, which they call “psychoid”. Giving an explanation of the way Descartes¹⁵ and Spinoza¹⁶ endeavoured to discover the nature of this interaction, they are unable to be anything but abstract—the body on one side, the soul on the other. It will never be possible to get at the truth in this way, because the relationship between soul and body is different in the life of thought, the life of feeling and the life of will. People will not get to the truth if they insist on making one big muddle of the whole inner life and talk of a “psychoid” element rather than giving real consideration to the way the I, astral body and ether body are related in real life. It is as if someone were to refuse to look at the real human being and talk about an “anthropoid” in order to avoid speaking of the anthropos¹⁷ That kind of science is anthropoid-sophy rather than anthroposophy; it is psychoidology.

If we give real consideration to the life of soul and spirit, we can give full detail of the “interactions” and so on, as people call them. There will be no need to cut out bits of the liver, or the brain, and present them neatly as abstract tissues, the way anatomists do. Instead we must know that the relationship of the human being to the cosmos is different at the head end and the limb end. At the head end we reduce it to dust, destroying the past. At the limb end we do not allow growth to reach its full potential but remain embryonic.

The worst thing is when people leave truth aside and speculate on the nature of the physical body as well as of soul and spirit. Using worn-out old words and making them into -oids, they fail to grasp the real truth. There are people nowadays who have no notion of how to get from a word to a concept. Someone called Arthur Drews¹⁸ has been giving lectures to non-conformist religious and monist congregations in Germany today, both of which live on the dregs of the materialistic science that goes back to the 1860s and 70s. He has studied Hartmann’s philosophy¹⁹—as a young man he would always dance attendance on him—but he really only took in the words, which roll about in his head like the balls in a pin-ball machine, and he has no idea of how to get from word to concept. And he uses these words from Hartmann’s philosophy, words that whizz around in his head as if in a pinball machine, to criticize anthroposophy!

Those are the fruits of education in our modern civilization, where people refuse to give serious consideration to the methods available for gaining real insight into the relationship between human being and cosmos. These enable us to describe the human form and human life on the basis of the cosmos and to understand that because human beings are specifically torn away from the cosmos they have dying life at one end, which enables them to develop an inner life of ideas based on images, and a life that remains embryonic at the other extreme, which allows the will element to develop.

These things sound incomprehensible to the people involved in the official science of today, and as a rule—not always but as a rule—we cannot expect them to gain access to them, for essentially they have lost all real understanding with their kaleidoscope of words. For anyone who knows the real situation, those lectures about psychoids are essentially no more than word kaleidoscopes; the things said about Descartes, Spinoza and so on, right up to Fechner,²⁰ have no inner connection and are kaleidoscopes of words. The scraps of words that whirl around in confusion can only gain inner meaning through insight into I, astral body, ether body, and so on. It seems a pity that one has to talk about the present time like this; but when it comes to the “intellectual life”, as it is called, we have to speak about the present age like this. The philosophers have no longer been able to get their bearings because decades ago their words have lost all meaning.

The latest thing is to appoint modern scientists as professors of philosophy. They are asked to hand down philosophy. It started with Mach,²¹ and today Driesch²² is one of the main representatives of the species. Scientists are being appointed as professors of philosophy because the philosophers no longer have anything meaningful to say, whilst scientists at least still have the faculty of external observation. What they say about philosophy is, of course, even more empty of meaning than the things said by philosophers, who at least still had the words. This really has been a strange development. We have seen philosophy, which still had meaningful content in the first half of the 19th century, evaporate completely in the wordy works of someone like Kuno Fischer,²³ for instance. But in his day the chairs of philosophy were still held by philosophers, even if their philosophy no longer had inner meaning.

It is absolutely necessary that we realize this clearly and that there are at least a few people in the world who see through all the glitter of those “psychoids” and know that we are deeply in decadence, particularly in the field of academics. You can’t know this strongly enough, and I think it will be good for you to enter deeply into the things I have tried to put before you in these three lectures.

We have seen that on the one hand man appeared to be connected with the universe in outer form and in the way of life, but that he has renounced the universe at the head end and at the limb end, so that we are only wholly given up to the rhythm of the universe in so far as we are rhythmical human beings; renounced in order to develop the life of thoughts as life in images, that is, independent of physical matter, at one end, and at the other end to develop the life of will by keeping matter at an embryonic level, not letting it assume the rigid form that the macrocosm is able to impose. The limb end is thus kept mobile and has the potential to evolve and progress from earth to existence on Jupiter, Venus and Vulcan.

Hold on to these things and you can see that the insight gained in anthroposophy really wants to take hold first of all of our sense of truth, secondly of our sense of aesthetics—when you study the human form as it arises out of the macrocosm—and thirdly also in the direction of what is good and of religious life. These three lectures are particularly able to show the profound justification of the statement that has been made so many times here, in courses and also on other occasions, that we must look for a synthesis, bringing together in harmony religion, art and science. This cannot be achieved unless we come to a genuine cosmology which clearly shows the reality of the human form and of human life.

Something else we need is a theory of independent activity in the inner life, a theory that shows us the true nature of man, who has torn himself away from the cosmos at either end. And we also need to know the qualities which human beings develop independently, relating to future worlds which will take the place of the earth within the macrocosm. This will lead to deeply religious inner responses and feelings.

If human civilization is to show true progress we need a cosmology that includes the human being and does not leave humanity aside the way our present-day cosmology does. We also need a theory of independent activity and we need ethics that are able to show that the potential for good which they hold is the seed for worlds. We need ethics that have reality, their values not abstract but having the power in them to come to realization. Cosmology, a theory of independent activity and ethics—these are the things humanity will need to be able to rise to something higher.

• 15. René, Descartes (1596–1650), French philosopher and mathematician.
• 16. Baruch Spinoza (1632–77), Dutch-Jewish philosopher and theologian.
• 17. Anthropos, Greek for “human being”.
• 18. Arthur Drews (1865–1935), a professor of philosophy who gave a number of lectures against anthroposophy in the autumn of 1921. See his Metaphysik und Anthroposophie, Berlin 1922, esp. the chapter on perception of the supersensible.
• 19. Eduard von Hartmann (1842–1906), German philosopher
• 20. Gustav Theodor Fechner (1801–87), German philosopher and psychologist.
• 21. Ernst Mach (1839–1916) Austrian physicist and philosopher.
• 22. Hans Driesch (1867–1914), German zoologist and philosopher.
• 23. Ernst Kuno Fischer (1824–1907), German philosopher who wrote a major history of modern philosophy, books on logic and metaphysics and on Kant, Descartes, Goethe, Lessing and Schiller.

The subject that we shall discuss now is a very wide one, and today it will not be possible to deal with it as extensively as I should have liked. But we shall continue these considerations later on. In these considerations, I should like to give you a basis for the understanding of freedom and necessity, so that you may obtain a picture of what must be considered from an occult point of view, in order to understand the course of the social, historical and ethical-moral life of man.

We emphasized that, as far as the life between birth and death is concerned, we only experience in a waking condition what we perceive through the senses, what reaches us through our sense-impressions and what we experience in our thoughts. Man dreams through everything contained as living reality in his feelings, and he sleeps through everything contained as deeper necessity, in the impulses of his will, everything existing as the deeper reality. In the life of our feelings and of our will we live in the same spheres which we inhabit with the so-called dead.

Let us first form a conception of what is really contained in the life of our senses from an exterior aspect. We can picture the sense-impressions as if they were spread out before us—I might say, like a carpet. Of course, we must imagine that this carpet contains also the impressions of our hearing, the impressions of the twelve senses, such as we know them through Anthroposophy. You know that in reality there are twelve senses. This carpet of the sense impressions covers, as it were, a reality “lying behind”—if I may use this expression (but I am speaking in comparisons). This reality lying behind the sense perceptions must not be imagined as the scientist imagines the world of the atoms, or as a certain philosophical direction imagines the “thing in itself.” In my public lectures I have emphasized that when we look for the “thing in itself,” as it is done in modern philosophy and in the Kant-philosophy, this implies more or less the same as breaking the mirror to see what is behind it, in order to find the reality of beings that we see in a mirror. I do not speak in this sense of something behind the sense perceptions; what I mean is something spiritual behind the sense-perceptions, something spiritual in which we ourselves are embedded, but which cannot reach the usual consciousness of man between birth and death. If we could solve the riddle contained in the carpet of sense perceptions as a first step toward the attainment of the spiritual reality, so that we would see more than the manifold impressions of our sense-impulses—what would we see, in this first stage of solving the riddle, of solving spiritually the riddle of the carpet woven by our senses? Let us look into this question.

It will surprise us what we must describe as that which first appears to us. What we first see is a number of forces; all aim at permeating with impulses our entire life from our birth—or let us say, from our conception—to our death. When trying to solve the riddle of this carpet of the senses, we would not see our life in its single events, but we would see its entire organization. At first it would not strike us as something so strange; for, on this first stage of penetrating into the secret of the sense-perceptions, we would find ourselves, not such as we are now, in this moment, but such as we are throughout our entire life between birth and death. This life, that does not extend as far as our physical body, and that cannot be perceived, therefore, with the physical senses, permeates our etheric body, our body of formative forces. And our body of formatives forces is, essentially, the expression of this life that could be perceived if we could eliminate the senses, or the sense-impressions. If the carpet of the senses could be torn, as it were (and we tear it when we ascend to a spiritual vision) man finds his own self, the self as it is organized for this incarnation on earth, in which he makes this observation. But, as stated, the senses cannot perceive this.

With what can we perceive this? Man already possesses the instrument needed for such a perception, but on a stage of evolution that still renders a real perception impossible. What we would thus perceive cannot reach the eye, nor the ear—cannot enter any sense organ. Instead—please grasp this well—it is breathed in, it is sucked in with the breath. The etheric foundation of our lung (the physical lung is out of the question, for, such as it is, the lung is not a real perceptive organ) that which lies etherically at the foundation of our lung, is really an organ of perception, but between birth and death the human being cannot use it as an organ of perception for what he breathes in. The air we breathe, every breath of air and the way in which it enters the whole rhythm of our life, really contains our deeper reality between birth and death. But things are arranged in such a way that here on the physical plane the foundation of our entire lung-system is in an unfinished condition, and has not advanced as far as the capacity of perceiving. If we were to investigate what constitutes its etheric foundation, we would find, on investigating this and on grasping it rightly, that it is, in reality, exactly the same thing as our brain and sense organs from a physical aspect, here in the physical world. At the foundation of our lung-system we find a brain in an earlier stage of evolution; we might say, in an infantile stage of evolution. Also in this connection we bear within us, as it were (I say purposely, “as it were”), a second human being. It will not be wrong if you imagine that you also possess an etheric head—except that this etheric head cannot yet be used as an organ of perception in our everyday life. But it has the possibility of perceptive capacity for that which lies behind the body of formative forces, as that which builds up this body of formative forces. However, that which lies behind the etheric body as creative force is the element into which we enter when we pass through the portal of death. Then we lay aside the etheric body. But we enter into that which is active and productive in this body of formatives forces. Perhaps it may be difficult to imagine this; but it will be good if you try to think this out to the end.

Let us imagine the physical organization of the head and the physical organization of the lung; from the universe come cosmic impulses that express themselves rhythmically in the movements of the lungs. Through our lungs we are related with the entire universe, and the entire universe works at our etheric body. When we pass through the portal of death, we lay aside the etheric body. We enter that which is active in our lung-system, and this is connected with the entire universe. This accounts for the surprising consonance to be found in the rhythm of human life and the rhythm of breathing. I have already explained that when we calculate the number of breaths we draw in one day, we obtain 25,920 breaths a day, by taking as the basis 18 breaths a minute (hence 18 x 60 x 24). Man breathes in and breathes out; this constitutes his rhythm, his smallest rhythm to start with. Then there is another rhythm in life, as I have already explained before—namely, that every morning when we awake we breathe into our physical system, as it were, our soul being, the astral body and the ego, and we breathe them out again when we fall asleep. We do this during our whole life. Let us take an average length of life—then we can make the following calculation:—We breathe in and breathe out our own being 365 times a year; if we take 71 years as the average length of human life, we obtain 25,915. you see, more or less the same number. (Life differs according to the single human being.) We find that in the life between birth and death we breathe in and out 25,920 times what we call our real self. Thus we may say;—There is the same relationship between ourselves and the world to which we belong as there is between the breath we draw in and the elements around. During our life we live in the same rhythm in which we live during our day through our breathing. Again, if we take our life—let us say, approximately 71 years, and if we consider this life as a cosmic day (we will call a human life a cosmic day), we obtain a cosmic year by multiplying this by 365. The result is 25,920 (again, approximately one year). In this length of time, in 25,920 years, the sun returns to the same constellation of the Zodiac. If the sun is in Aries in a certain year, it will rise again in Aries after 25,920 years. In the course of 25,920 years the sun moves around the entire Zodiac. Thus, when an entire human life is breathed out into the cosmos, this is a cosmic breath, which is in exactly the same relationship with the cosmic course of the sun around the Zodiac as one breath in one day in life. Here we have deep inner order of laws! Everything is built up on rhythm. We breathe in a threefold way, or at least we are placed into the breathing process in a threefold way. First, we breathe through our lungs in the elementary region; this rhythm is contained in the number 25,920. Then we breathe within the entire solar system, by taking sunrise and sunset as parallel to our falling asleep and awaking; through our life we breathe in a rhythm that is again contained in the number 25,920. Finally, the cosmos breathes us in and out, again in a rhythm determined by the number 25,920—the sun's course around the Zodiac.

Thus we stand within the whole visible universe; at its foundation lies the invisible universe. When we pass through the portal of death we enter this invisible universe. Rhythmical life is the life that lies at the foundation of our feelings. We enter the rhythmical life of the universe in the time between death and a new birth. This rhythmical life lies behind the carpet woven by our senses, as the life that determines our etheric life. If we would have a clairvoyant consciousness, we would see this cosmic rhythm that is, as it were, a rhythmical, surging cosmic ocean of an astral kind. In this rhythmically surging astral ocean we find the so-called dead, the beings of the higher hierarchies and what belongs to us, but beneath the threshold. There arise the feelings that we dream away, and the impulses of the will that we sleep away, in their true reality.

We may ask, in a comparison, as it were, and without becoming theological: Why has a wise cosmic guidance arranged matters so that man—such as he is between birth and death—cannot perceive the rhythmical life behind the carpet of the senses? Why is the human head, the hidden head that corresponds to the lung-system, not suitable for an adequate perception? This leads us to a truth which was kept secret, one might say, right into our days, by the occult schools in question, because other secrets are connected with it; these must not be revealed—or should not have been revealed so far. But our period is one in which such things must reach the consciousness of mankind.

The occult schools that were inaugurated here and there keep such things secret for reasons that will not be explained today. They still keep them secret, although today these things must be brought to the consciousness of mankind. Since the last third of the nineteenth century, means and ways were given whereby that which occult schools have kept back (in an unjustified way, in many cases) becomes obsolete. This is connected with the event that I mentioned to you—the event which took place in the autumn of 1879. Now we can only lift the outer veil of this mystery; but even this outer veil is one of the most important pieces of knowledge concerning man. It is indeed a head that we bear within us as the head of a second man; it is a head, but also a body belongs to this head, and this body is, at first, the body of an animal. Thus we bear within us a second human being. This second human being possesses a properly formed head, but attached to it, the body of an animal—a real centaur. The centaur is a truth, an etheric truth.

It is important to bear in mind that a relatively great wisdom is active in this being—a wisdom connected with the entire cosmic rhythm. The head belonging to this centaur sees the cosmic rhythm in which it is embedded, also during the existence between death and a new birth. It is the cosmic rhythm that has been shown in a threefold way, also in numbers—the rhythm on which many secrets of the universe are based. This head is much wiser than our physical head. All human beings bear within them another far wiser being—the centaur. But in spite of his wisdom, this centaur is equipped with all the wild instincts of the animals.

Now you will understand the wisdom of the guiding forces of the universe. Man could not be given a consciousness which is, on the one hand, strong and able to see through the cosmic rhythm, and on the other hand, uncontrolled and full of wild instincts. But the centaur's animal nature—please connect this with what I have told you in other lectures dealing with this subject from another point of view—is tamed and conquered in the next incarnation, during his passage through the world of cosmic rhythms between death and a new birth. The foundation of our lung-system in the present incarnation appears as our physical head, although this is dulled down to an understanding limited to the senses, and what lies at the basis of our lung-system appears as an entire human being whose wild instincts are tamed in the next incarnation. The centaur of this incarnation is, in the next incarnation, the human being endowed with sense perception.

Now you will be able to grasp something else:—You will understand why I said that, during man' s existence between death and a new birth, the animal realm is his lowest realm and that he must conquer its forces. What must he do? In what work must he be engaged between two incarnations? He must fulfill the task of transforming the centaur, the animal in him, into a human form for the next incarnation. This work requires a real knowledge embracing the impulses of the whole animal realm; in the age of Chiron, men possessed this knowledge atavistically, in a weaker form. Although the knowledge of Chiron is a knowledge weakened by this incarnation, it is of the same kind. Now you see the connection. You see why man needs this lower realm between death and a new birth; he must master it; he needs it because he must transform the centaur into a human being.

What Anthroposophy sets forth has been attained only in single flashes outside the occult schools. There have always been a few men who discovered these things, as if in flashes. Especially in the nineteenth century a few scattered spirits had an inkling, as it were, that something resembling the taming of wild instincts can be found in man. Some writers speak of this. And the way in which they speak of these things shows how this knowledge frightens them. High spiritual truths cannot be gained with the same ease as scientific truths, which can be digested so comfortably by the mind. These high truths often have this quality; their reality scares us. In the nineteenth century some spirits were scared and tremendously moved when they discovered what speaks out of the human eye that can look round so wildly at times, or out of other things in man. One of the writers of the nineteenth century expressed himself in an extreme manner by saying that every man really bears within him a murderer. He meant this centaur, of whom he was dimly conscious.

It must be emphasized again and again that human nature contains enigmas which must be solved gradually. These things must be borne in mind courageously and calmly. But they must not become trivial, because they make human consciousness approach the great earnestness of life. In this age it is our task to see the earnest aspect of life, to see the serious things that are approaching and that announce themselves in such terrible signs.

This is one aspect, preparing the way for certain considerations that I shall continue very soon. The other aspect is as follows:—Man passes through the portal of death. Last time I mentioned the great change in man's entire way of experiencing things, by showing you how a connection with the dead is established—what we tell him seems to come out of the depths of our own being. In the intercourse with the dead the reciprocal relationships are reversed. When you associate with a human being here on earth, you can hear yourself speaking to him—you hear what you tell him, and you hear from him what he tells you. When you are in communication with the dead, his words rise out of your own soul, and what you tell him reaches you like an echo coming from the dead. You cannot hear what you tell him as something coming from yourself; you hear this as something coming from him. I wished to give you an example of the great difference between the physical world in which we live between birth and death, and the world in which we live between death and a new birth.

We look into this world when we contemplate it from a certain standpoint. When we look through the carpet woven by our senses, we look into the rhythm of the world—but this rhythm has two aspects. I will show you these two aspects of the rhythm in a diagram, by drawing here, let us say, a number of stars—planets if you like [The drawing can not be rendered.]. Here are a number of stars or planets—the planetary system, if you like, belonging to our Earth. Man passes through this planetary system in the time between death and a new birth. (A printed cycle of lectures contains details on these things.) Man passes through the planetary system. But in passing through the world which is still the invisible world, he also reaches—between death and a new birth—the world which is no longer visible, and is not even spatial. These things are difficult to describe, because when we imagine anything in the physical world we are used to imagine it spatially. But beyond the world that can be perceived through the senses lies a world which is no longer spatial. In a diagram I must illustrate this spatially. The ancients said:--Beyond the planets lies the sphere of the fixed stars (this is expressed wrongly, but this does not matter now), and beyond this lies the super-sensible world. The ancients pictured it spatially, but this is merely a picture of this world.

When man has entered this super-sensible world, in the time between death and a new birth, one can say (although this is also rendered in a picture):—Man is then beyond the stars, and the stars themselves are used by man, between death and a new birth, for a kind of reading. Between death and a new birth, the stars are used by man for a kind of reading. Let us realize this clearly. How do we read here on earth? When we read here on earth we have approximately twelve consonants and seven vowels with various variations; we arrange these letters in many ways into words; we mix these letters together. Think how a typographer throws together the letters in order to form words. All the words consist of the limited number of letters that we possess. For the dead, the fixed stars of the Zodiac and the planets are what the letters—approximately twelve consonants and seven vowels—are for us, here on the physical plane. The fixed stars of the Zodiac correspond to the consonants; the planets are the vowels. Beyond the starry heaven, the outlook is peripheral. (Between birth and death, man's outlook is from a center; here on the earth he has his eye, and from there his gaze rays out to the various points.) It is most difficult of all to imagine that things are reversed after death so that we see peripherally. We are really in the circumference, and we see the Zodiac-starsthe consonants and the planets—the vowels, from outside. Thus we look from outside at the events taking place on earth. According to the part of our being which we imbue with life, we look down on the earth through the Taurus and Mars, or we look through the Taurus, in between Mars and Jupiter. (You must not picture this from the earthly standpoint, but reversed—for you are looking down on the earth.) When you are dead and circle round the earth, you read with the help of the starry system. But you must picture this kind of reading differently. We could read in another way, but it would be more difficult, from a technical aspect, than our present reading system. It is possible to read differently—we could read in such a way that we have a sequence of letters—a, b, c, d, e, f, g, etc.—or arranged according to another system and instead of arranging them in the type-case, we could read in the following way:—If the word “he” is to be read, a ray of light falls on h and e; if “goes” is to be read, a ray falls on g, o, e, s. The sequence of the letters could be there, and they could be illuminated as required. It would not be arranged so comfortably, from a technical aspect—but you can picture an earthly life in which reading is arranged in this way—an alphabet is there, and then there would be some arrangement which always illuminates one letter at a time; then we can read the sequence of the illuminated letters, and obtain as a result, Goethe's Faust for instance.

This cannot be imagined so easily; yet it is possible to imagine this, is it not?

The dead reads in this way, with the aid of the starry system: the fixed stars remain immobile, but he moves—for he is in movement—the fixed stars remain still and he moves round. If he must read the Lion above Jupiter, he moves round in such a way that the Lion stands above Jupiter. He connects the stars, just as we connect h and e in order to read “he.” This reading of the earthly conditions from the cosmos—and the visible cosmos belongs to this—consists in this—The dead can read that which lies spiritually at the foundation of the stars. Except that the entire system is based on immobility—the entire godly system of reading from out the universe is based on immobility.

What does this mean? This means that according to the intentions of certain beings of the higher hierarchies, the planets should be immobile, they should have an immobile aspect; then the being outside engaged in reading would be the only one moving about. The events on the earth could be read rightly from out the universe if the planets would not move, if the planets had an immobile position.

But they are not immobile! Why not? They would be so, if the world's creation had proceeded in such a way that the Spirits of Form, or the Exusiai alone, had created the world.

But the luciferic spirits participated in this work, and interfered—as you already know. Luciferic spirits brought to the earth what used to be law during the Moon-period of the Earth, where several things were governed by the Spirits of Form; luciferic spirits brought this system of movement to the Earth from the Moon-period. They caused the planets' movement. A luciferic element in the cosmic spaces brought the planets into movement. In a certain respect this disturbs the order created by the Elohim; a luciferic element enters the cosmos. It is that luciferic element which man must learn to know between death and a new birth; he must learn to know it by deducting, as it were, in what he reads, that which comes from the movement of the planets, or the moving stars. He must deduct this—then he will obtain the right result.

Indeed, between death and a new birth we learn a great deal concerning the sway and activity of the luciferic element in the universe. Such a thing, like the course of the planets, is connected with the luciferic.

This is the other side that I wished to point out. But from this you will see the connection between the other life between death and new birth, and the present life. We might say that the world has two aspects; here, between birth and death we see one aspect, through our senses. Between death and a new birth we see it from the reversed side, with the soul's eye. And between death and a new birth, we learn to read the conditions here on earth in relationship with the spiritual world. Try to realize this, try to imagine these conditions. Then you will have to confess that it is, indeed, deeply significant to say that the world which we first learn to know through our senses and our understanding is an illusion, a Maya. As soon as we approach the real world, we find that the world that we know is related to this real world in the same way in which the reflection in the mirror is related to the living reality before the mirror, which is reflected in it. If you have a mirror, with several shapes reflected in it, this shows that there are shapes outside the mirror, which are reflected by the mirror. Suppose that you look into the mirror as a disinterested spectator. The three figures which I have drawn here [diagram not available] fight against each other; in the mirror you see them fighting. This shows that the mirrored figures do something, but you cannot say that the figure A, there in the mirror, beats the figure B in the mirror! What you see in the mirror is the image of the fight, because the figures outside the mirror are doing something.

If you believe that A, there in the mirror, or the reflected image of A, does something to B, there in the mirror, you are quite mistaken. You cannot set up comparisons and connections between the reflected images, but you can only say:—What is reflected in the mirrored images points to something in the world of reality, which is reflected. But the world given to man is a mirror, a Maya, and in this world man sees causes and effects. When you speak of this world of causes and effects, it is just as if you were to believe that the mirrored image A beats the mirrored image B. Something happens among the real beings reflected by the mirror, but the impulses leading to the fight are not to be found in the mirrored A and in the mirrored B. Investigate nature and its laws; you will find, at first, that such as it appears to your senses it is a Maya, a reflection or a mirrored picture. The reality lies beneath the threshold which I have indicated to you, the threshold between the life of thought and the life of feelings. Even your own reality is not contained at all in your waking consciousness; your own reality is contained in the spiritual reality; it is dipped into the dreaming and sleeping worlds of feeling and of will. Thus it is nonsense to speak of a causing necessity in the world of Maya—and it is also nonsense to speak of cause and effect in the course of history! It is real nonsense! To this I should like to add that it is nonsense to say that the events of 1914 are the result of events in 1913, 1912, etc. This is just as clever as saying:—This A in the mirror is a bad fellow; he beats the poor B, there in the mirror! What matters is to find the true reality. And this lies beneath the threshold, which must be crossed by going down into the world of feeling and of will—and does not enter our usual waking consciousness.

You see, we must interpret in another way the idea that “something had to happen” or “something was needed;” we cannot interpret it as the ordinary historians or scientists do this. We must ask:--Who are the real beings that produced the events of a later period, which followed an earlier one? The preceding historical events are merely the mirrored reflections—they cannot be the cause of what took place subsequently.

This, again, is one side of the question. The other side will be clear to you if you realize that only a Maya is contained in the waking reality embraced by our thoughts and by our sense perceptions. This Maya cannot be the cause of anything. It cannot be a real cause. But pure thoughts can determine man's actions. This is a fact taught by experience, if man is not led to deeds by passions, desires and instincts, but by clear thoughts. This is possible and can take place—pure ideals can be the impulses of human actions. But ideals alone cannot effect anything. I can carry out an action under the influence of a pure idea; but the idea cannot effect anything.

In order to understand this, compare once more the idea with the mirrored image. The reflection in the mirror cannot cause you to run away. If you run away it displeases you, or something is there which has nothing to do with the reflection in the mirror. The reflection in the mirror cannot take a whip and cause you to run away. This image cannot be the cause of anything. When a human being fulfills actions under the influence of his reflected image, i.e., his thoughts, he fulfills them out of the Maya; he carries out his actions out of the cosmic mirror. It is he who carries out the actions, and for this reason he acts freely. But when he is led by his passions, his actions are not free; he is not free, even if he is led by his feelings. He is free when he is led by his thoughts, that are mere reflections, or mirrored images. For this reason I have explained in my The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity that man can act freely and independently if he is guided by pure thoughts, pure thinking, because pure thoughts cannot cause or produce anything, so that the causing force must come from somewhere else. I have used the same image again in my book The Riddle of Man. We are free human beings because we carry out actions under the influence of Maya, and because this Maya, or the world immediately around us, cannot bring about or cause anything. Our freedom is based on the fact that the world that we perceive is Maya. The human being united himself in wedlock with Maya, and thus becomes a free being. If the world that we perceive were a reality, this reality would compel us, and we would not be free. We are free beings just because the world which we perceive is not a reality and for this reason it cannot force us to do anything, in the same way in which a mirrored reflection cannot force us to run away. The secret of the free human being consists in this—to realize the connection of the world perceived as Maya—the mere reflection of a reality—and the impulses coming from man himself The impulses must come from man himself, when he is not induced to an action by something that influences him.

Freedom can be proved quite clearly if the proofs are sought on this basis:—That the world given to us as a perception is a mirrored reflection and not a reality.

These are thoughts that pave the way. I wish to speak to you about things that lie at the foundation of human nature—that part of human nature that can perceive reality and has not attained the required maturity in one incarnation, but must be weakened in order to become man in the next incarnation. The centaur, of whom I spoke to you, who is to be found beneath the threshold of consciousness, would be able to perceive truth and reality, but the centaur cannot as yet perceive. What we perceive is not a reality! But man can let himself be determined by that part of his being which is no longer, or is not yet, a centaur; then his actions will be those of a free being. The secret of our freedom is intimately connected with the taming of our centaur-nature. This centaur-nature is contained in us in such a way that it is chained and fettered, so that we may not perceive the reality of the centaur, but only the Maya. If we let ourselves be impelled by Maya, we are free.

This is looked upon from one side. From the other side we learn to know the world between death and a new birth. That which otherwise surrounds us as the universe shrivels up, and enables us to read in the cosmos; the physical letters are a reflection of this. The fact that languages contain today a larger number of letters (the Finnish languages has still only twelve consonants) is due to the different shadings; but, essentially, there are twelve consonants and seven differently shaded vowels. The various shadings in the vowels were added by the luciferic element; what causes the vowels to move corresponds to the movement of the planets.

Thus you see the connection of that which exists in human life on a small scale; the connection between the reading of the letters that are here on the paper, and that which lives outside, in the cosmos. Man is born out of the cosmos, and is not only the result of what preceded him in the line of heredity.

These are some of the foundations that will enable us gradually to reach the real conceptions of freedom and necessity in the historical, social and ethical-moral course of events.

Distinguished attendees! When speaking of human knowledge, one initially has two things in mind. One is the knowledge that the individual human soul, the human mind, acquires for its own sake; the other is the knowledge that is a means of progress for the life of all humanity. One has only to think of knowledge that deals with the observation of natural phenomena and that is concerned with putting the forces of nature at the service of humanity to realize that what is called knowledge in this field not only gives satisfaction to the individual human soul, but that this knowledge wants to be a selfless servant to all humanity. It is easy to see that knowledge of the forces of nature serves the aims of humanity to a large extent. We see the knowledge gained through the thinking of researchers and inventors applied in practical life, and anyone who reflects on its value will easily see that the knowledge gained from the study of matter is intended to serve all of humanity.

But beyond this knowledge there is still another knowledge, which by its very nature does not allow for such practical application. This knowledge must exist for its own sake. Humanity needs it and could not live without it. But with this knowledge, too, we may ask whether it is really something that the human soul seeks only for its own satisfaction, or whether this knowledge, too, which we often say exists for its own sake, is not also in the service of human progress. If one tries to explore why the human soul thirsts and hungers, as it were, for such knowledge for its own sake, why it strives for an examination of the secrets of the world in order to recognize the significance of knowledge in the service of humanity, then one must delve into the essence and the [primordial] reasons of the human soul itself.

Now the branch of human research that is called spiritual science or theosophy seeks to recognize the essence of the human soul by pursuing this human soul into its deepest depths and trying to find the essence of the human soul on the basis of knowledge that goes beyond what the senses offer and what the mind, which is tied to the brain, can achieve. Spiritual science believes that, on the basis of its research, it can say something about the human soul that is of particular importance to this striving human soul. However, it must approach all that the intellectual culture of the last centuries has produced in an independent way. In no way does spiritual science take a position against the great achievements of human culture, especially of natural science; but in our time it must undertake exactly the same thing that natural science has undertaken many times over the last few centuries - it must test all the prejudices, all the beliefs of people today in the light of its insights. Spiritual science looks at something that is one of the most important things for knowledge in our time – at something that has only been instilled in science relatively recently.

People are very forgetful. Many truths that are generally recognized today were only conquered by the human mind in the 17th century, because until the 17th century, for example, both laymen and learned naturalists believed that earthworms, fish and other lower animals could develop from river mud. There are books from this time that discuss how living things develop from carcasses, for example. It was only in this 17th century that Francesco Redi first uttered the sentence that living beings could only come from germs of living beings of the same kind. That living beings can only come from living beings was a great heresy in the 17th century compared to the science of the time, and only with great difficulty did Francesco Redi escape the fate of Giordano Bruno.

The situation for the spiritual researcher today is similar when, for example, he focuses his attention on the properties of a human soul that comes into existence through birth. Today, when looking at the different properties of children, it is easy to say that these properties are inherited from the father and mother. Today it is believed that the structure of the human soul is composed of what comes from the physical environment, just as it was believed in the 17th century that living beings would consist only of what came from the physical environment. But the spiritual researcher must say: spiritual-soul can only come from spiritual-soul. He observes the miracle of how a human germ, which comes into existence through birth, develops in the course of its life from stage to stage, and he is clear about the fact that the human essence, which develops so mysteriously, can only come from its own kind. He knows that in order to understand what is developing, one must go back to another spiritual-soul realm. As we ascend from the animal to the human, we have to distinguish between the generic and the individual. We cannot ascribe to the human core of being the same thing that we address as generic in the animal. We have to say: what develops in the child over time does not lead back to a generic, but to an individual that comes into existence through birth. And when this thought is followed to its logical conclusion, this spiritual research into the origin of the soul and spirit leads the spiritual researcher to the idea of re-embodiment, to the idea of repeated lives on earth for human beings. For anyone who looks impartially at all the facts of life, repeated lives on earth are a reality, however much the feelings of people today may still rebel against it. Of course, it is no longer customary to burn heretics, but such things, which are heresies according to today's consciousness of people, are ridiculed. But this truth will be treated the same way as other truths and laws that humanity has acquired in the course of its development; after some time, it will no longer be possible to understand how there could have been people who could not believe that spirit comes from spirit.

Goethe pointed to what his essence had drawn from his environment. He could say:

From my father I got the stature,
the serious conduct of life,
from my mother the cheerful nature
and the desire to tell stories.

And then, after pointing out what he had attracted from his environment through inheritance, he modestly asks:

What, then, of the whole figure
can be called original?

Anyone who, like me, has studied everything related to Goethe has certainly acquired the respect due to Goethe's parents. But try to put together all their qualities – you will try in vain to bring to light what is original about the “little fellow”. Precisely that which we cannot find in the heritage of father and mother, precisely that is the Goethe whom we know and who he will always be in our culture. It is the most appealing task for an educator to assume that in the education of a child, a mysterious core of being struggles into existence that lies beyond all laws of inheritance, and that in every young human being this riddle must be solved anew. If we really apply this truth of repeated earthly lives to a child, it will no longer be out of keeping with us to look at the child's outer form in such a way that it appears to us as shaped, formed out of a soul-spiritual core of being. We observe the indeterminate features of this human countenance in the first days of the child's life; we see that they become more and more definite and, little by little, the child's entire body shows an ever more definite form of its own. We can see how the soul, which has come over from a previous existence, transforms these vague features into ever more distinct ones. It becomes visible how the inner core of the human being works on the forming physical shell.

If we consider this carefully, we will not find it difficult to recognize an ascending and a descending line of human life. We see how indeterminate forces work their way from the inner being to the surface, and at a certain point in time we see how everything that is inherent in the human being is revealed in the skills and abilities that he acquires. Then it happens that a person makes one side of his nature the dominant one. We see a kind of confrontation with his environment through the absorption of knowledge and wisdom, and we can say: This is something that is added to what was brought from previous embodiments. Then a descending current sets in in life, where we can no longer transform anything of what we have become externally and physically in our abilities - we can no longer even absorb anything into our memory.

We will only understand this actual work of the individual core of our being on the human being if we consider the whole of human life. This work on the human being can be divided into two clearly distinguishable states. The human being alternates between two states of consciousness: waking life and sleeping life. To consider life as a whole, we must ask ourselves: What do we owe to sleeping life and what do we owe to waking life? From sleep the soul must draw the strength for new work, and it is shown that invigorating forces accrue to the soul from sleep. An example of this: people who, by reason of their occupation, are obliged to learn much by heart, can experience that they do not progress well with their memorizing if they do not have a good amount of sleep between their work. Today, scientific observation also recognizes the importance of sleep for the removal of fatigue. In scientific circles, the prevailing view is that people get tired because the muscles, nerves, etc. are worn out and need to be supplied with new strength. However, this does not take into account the fact that muscles can also work without showing signs of fatigue. The heart muscles, for example, work without tiring. Why is that?

Asking this question is of tremendous importance for a healthy view of life. On closer observation, it becomes clear that fatigue only occurs under certain conditions. The heart does not tire, but the smallest muscles in the fingers can tire to such an extent that cramp-like pains occur, as can be seen, for example, in writer's cramp. When you research these things, you come to realize that fatigue and our waking daily activity are related. We come to see that fatigue occurs when we do not leave parts of our body to themselves, but instead permeate them with the effectiveness of the external work we do. The laws of the universe are implanted in our body; they are effective in it, and under their effectiveness the body does not tire. Fatigue does not occur when - unconsciously to the person - the laws of the universe work in his body. Fatigue occurs only when the human consciousness permeates the organism with its nature.

The naturalist Thomson asserts the independence of the soul life in relation to the bodily life. He says that the soul life is as separate from the body as the rider is from his horse. It is admitted that there is something in man that stands in the same relationship to his body as the rider to his horse. We tire our body, says Thomson, just as the rider tires his horse, because we are outside the horse and use the horse. Does the old image not emerge from a distant time in human development, in which people looked into a spiritual world by natural gift? There they saw the centaur, the man connected with the horse. It is true that “wise” natural science says today that the people of that time were childlike people, that they saw wild barbarians sitting on their steeds and coming out of the fog from the north, and that in the fog they could not distinguish where man and where steed was; from this these childlike people would have formed the image of the centaur. But in fact the centaur is a reality that shows, from a clairvoyant perspective, the relationship that arises between soul and body, and that is like that between rider and horse.

Thus the fact of fatigue compels us to recognize a certain independence of soul from body. That the course of certain processes in the human body does not result in fatigue is due to the fact that a universal law is at work, but the human being is not present with his consciousness. The human being tires because he is present with his consciousness in the processes of his body. But in the state of sleep, the human being is surrendered to the universal law. The human being needs this immersion in a different element, as it happens every night during sleep, and we will ascribe the right effect to sleep if we follow the essence of the human being as he lives in the world into which he enters when he falls asleep.

Then I have to speak of the experiences of the spiritual researcher. Spiritual research does not mean that one can gain knowledge of the secrets of the existence of the world at any level, but that we awaken dormant, germinal powers of knowledge within us. When these dormant powers of knowledge awaken, they give us eyes and ears of the spirit, so that we find ourselves in a situation like that of a blind person who regains his sight through an operation. We can only recognize how many worlds are around us if we have the organs to perceive them. We can only experience the world of light and color if we have eyes to see them and the world of sounds if we have ears to hear them. The spiritual researcher becomes a spiritual researcher by awakening the powers of knowledge that lie dormant in him, by opening spiritual eyes and ears. He carries out a certain training of the soul, that is, certain exercises through which the soul acquires organs with which it can see and experience new worlds. When a person becomes a spiritual researcher in this way, the perception of the spiritual world is not speculation, but reality.

When a person begins to look into these spiritual worlds, he makes new experiences, and I would like to emphasize one such experience that can shed light on the nature of sleeping and waking. It is the task of the spiritual researcher to investigate certain tasks of ordinary life and then to illuminate them with the light of the spirit. For example, you may reflect on a certain task in life and cannot solve it; the tool of thinking proves blunt. Then the spiritual researcher really feels separated as a thinking and knowing being from his physical body. He feels his physicality as one feels a hammer or another tool or instrument outside of one's being. Just as one can feel a hammer as too heavy, one can feel the failure of the individual parts of the brain: One feels that one cannot intervene in the brain.

The separation of body and spirit can be felt by the spiritual researcher in every one of his activities. But when the spiritual researcher wakes up from a state of sleep, perhaps a very short sleep, which he can induce at will through his developed will, it is as if he woke up from a very specific world in which he has done something, so that when he wakes up, activities that he performed immediately before waking up linger, and these have a very specific configuration. When he wakes up, the activities he performed before waking up could be painted by him in very specific figures and colors. But there is a difference between this mental activity and the usual daily activities. The usual daily activities are such that you think them through beforehand, so you work as if according to a model and are bound to the lines of a template.

The [spiritual] activity, on the other hand, [that a person performs while sleeping] proceeds as if we were following a line from our spirit that arises from the inner laws of our own soul. During sleep, the spiritual researcher feels this as an intervention of his soul activity in his physical body, in his brain. And he feels this activity, to which he has devoted himself in sleep, flowing into his body like warmth, so that this body has grown to meet the demands of the day. He experiences: You have worn out your instrument, and this activity is a repair of the instrument for the daytime work of the physical body. Like an architect, we work on our own physical body during sleep, and the spiritual researcher does this consciously. During the day, the physical body is constantly worn out, and we bring with us from another world the forces we need to build up our physical body. We do this unconsciously during sleep. If we consciously consider what we do unconsciously in our sleep, then we will find it credible that during sleep our soul dwells in a world other than the physical one. From the moment we fall asleep until we wake up, the soul really does enter a spiritual world, and that is the world from which man comes. Every night we have to dive into this sea of spirituality to draw from it the strength we need for our physical body and which alone makes it possible for us to survive between birth and death.

So our life goes, in that we appeal again and again to our spiritual existence, and we see this spiritual essence of man emerging anew from the spiritual world every day, as in a small re-embodiment. We find only one difference between re-embodiment and waking up: when we wake up in the morning, we always encounter the same body that we have built up since our birth. When we re-embody ourselves for a new life, however, we must first build up our corporeality anew.

When we consider the course of life, we see many, varied things approaching us that we can take in with our soul, but which we cannot implement in the life of our body. We develop by repeatedly drawing new strength from our sleep, but there is a certain limit to the incorporation of these forces into our physical being. For example, the soul can only receive musical impressions if there is a musical ear. The soul encounters a limit in the physical. Much of what is in our soul, what it wants to process, it cannot incorporate into the outer physical body. This gives rise to a certain disharmony, which is more than the usual tiredness that forces us to sleep. This gradual mismatch of the body to what our soul is becomes more and more pronounced the more a person develops a richer soul life. The soul life becomes increasingly unadapted to the life of the outer body. And here we must ask ourselves: where do we get this body from? When we see this body developing out of indeterminacy into a definite form in physiognomy and gestures, we regard the body we have in a particular life as a result of previous lives. We use this body as an instrument. We enrich our soul in the course of our life, and we find that what we have acquired in this life reaches the limits of our physical body, and that finally bursts this body.

So we have the descending line of life. We should be grateful to be separated from this body again, to be heading towards death, to have a soul with richly developed content that bursts the bounds of the body, right up to death. Those who look more deeply into these things will understand that a richly developed soul must go beyond the body and that we should not be surprised that in old age, especially in people with a richly developed soul, the brain can no longer serve the soul's life. Kant, for example, became weak-minded in old age, despite his rich mind. The outer tools of the body are no longer suitable for the soul; it withdraws with the content it has gained in this life, and it finally breaks the body. What we call death is different in humans than in animals. The ever-enriching soul of the human being breaks the corporeality and passes through death. Then this soul builds itself up according to the abilities and contents it has acquired during life, the body for a new incarnation.

Now one could say that we do not remember our past life. This objection would have the same justification as if someone wanted to say: A four-year-old child cannot calculate, so no human being can calculate at all. - We want to try to see through the following consideration that it is possible to acquire the ability to remember earlier lives. To make this clear to us, I must mention that there is also a time for the ordinary human life when the person cannot remember. These are the first years of childhood, which a person does not remember, even though he was already there at that time. The point in time up to which memory reaches is connected with another point in time. You know, of course, that in the very earliest period of his life, a person has no sense of self. At a certain point in time, the sense of self arises in the child, and the beginning of remembering coincides with this. What lies before this point in time is not remembered. Why is that? Spiritual research shows that in his normal mental life today, through the development of this self-awareness, through which man attains the highest of this life, man erects something like a boundary around himself. A person's memory goes back to the point where self-awareness occurs. That is the boundary. At this boundary, self-awareness stops and withdraws from observation what happened before.

We can learn to see beyond this boundary if we apply the exercises that the spiritual student has to do to look into the spiritual world to our soul. There comes a moment when the person succeeds in leading this I one step beyond himself. That is the moment when one comes to switch off the ordinary I-consciousness that forms the boundary for memory. Then the person enters the spiritual world. He only has to learn to switch off the ordinary I-consciousness. The sense of self is brought about by the impact with the body. When a person overcomes this, as it is otherwise overcome in sleep, and when he learns to consciously enter the world in which he unconsciously dwells in sleep, the possibility of looking back on past lives begins.

This can only be achieved if man consciously turns his gaze to this other side of life, to the side that lies beyond the gate of death. We must uproot from the soul all fear and dread of what comes to man from the future. How afraid and anxious man is today of all that lies in the future and especially of the hour of death. Man must acquire composure in relation to all feelings and sensations towards the future, look forward with absolute equanimity to all that may come, and only think that whatever may come to us through the wisdom-filled guidance of the world. This must be brought before the soul again and again. This leads us to receive the retrospective powers for past earth lives as a gift.

In this way we can educate our soul until we attain the consciousness that past earth lives are not hypotheses and dreams, but that they stand before the soul as fact, as something that the soul can learn to observe. Our contemporaries do not want to admit that there is a possibility of awakening dormant powers in the soul, so that new worlds, hitherto hidden in the infinite bosom of existence, may be added to what the soul can experience. But we are on the verge of a time when people will gradually develop more and more of a relationship with what can be explored from the dark depths of the past and the future. We are heading towards a future where more and more people will have the urge to know, to recognize what the human soul and its destiny are all about. Thus, we are looking at an expansion of the ability to know, which enters into an alliance with the spiritual world.

All higher knowledge, says Goethe, is an extension of ordinary knowledge. Such extended, such higher knowledge is not abstract reflection on things. Such higher knowledge is a connecting of what is the essence of our soul with the spiritual and soul-like around us. Plato cites as proof of the immortality of the soul the possibility of the human soul's connection with the eternal, with that which is eternal outside of space and time, while things in space and time arise and pass away. If such higher knowledge is taken seriously, it contradicts everything that otherwise occurs as fatigue. Fatigue occurs in the knowledge that strives to explore the things around us. But when man allows the knowledge he has gained about things to take effect in his soul, when he has moments in life when what he has gained through his eyes becomes ideas and he can let these ideas work in him, when he can transform the lofty realm of sounds into ideas and let them continue to resound in his soul, then he learns to be awake in a state that can be compared to the state of sleep. Knowledge is given to us in the same measure as the consciousness of our ordinary ego begins to fade. The arbitrariness of this ordinary ego consciousness shatters, and man experiences true knowledge by feeling that he must fit into the laws of the spiritual world with his true ego.

While man is limited to a small space in the outer world by his physical body, which he repeatedly tires through the work of the day, and he must always compensate for this wear and tear of the body through sleep, he feels when the soul is truly “with itself” that it can also draw forces from the spiritual world while awake. He gets the feeling that a source is opening up for the soul, through which healing potions flow to us from the spiritual world, so that he can become master of the body. He feels that we can consciously enter the spiritual world, as we unconsciously do every night while sleeping. He feels that we can then consciously enter the realm of eternity when our knowledge becomes life. Then it will become something completely new, something that it cannot be for the ordinary consciousness of today's man. Plato said that in ancient times people developed the highest knowledge out of enthusiasm. Even if this ability of enthusiasm may have been lost to today's people, what has not been lost to them is that the knowledge of the world of ideas can become a life force in them, that they can feel how they connect with the root of existence and eternity by penetrating into things with their spiritual self through knowledge.

In this way we come to know knowledge as a living thing, as a healing process that extends into the physical body. It takes a long time before we get to know this knowledge, that is, this source of life in our soul. And we also get to know the connection with a very different factor of our culture. All our knowledge must be incorporated into what we can call being imbued with the living Christ. What is this living Christ in the human soul? It is nothing other than what we can experience when knowledge and truth come to life in us, as has just been explained, when we can feel our personality as if it were being filled by a second personality, by something that is truth itself. This is the living Christ, who is truth and life in the human soul. When one grasps the Christ in this way, He is not an abstract idea, but He is the living Entity Who at a certain point in time intervened in the evolution of humanity, an Entity Who fulfilled the Mystery of Golgotha and thereby entered into the life of human souls.

In the past of human evolution, the way people recognized each other was different than after the Mystery of Golgotha. In ancient times, people looked to the origin of man and they felt: Man is not valuable for the development of humanity as a sensual being; as spiritual beings we have descended from a spiritual world into this sensual world to live in a physical body, after we were previously in an ocean of divine spiritual life; through our soul we can in turn find our way back to this common human origin.

This is no longer appropriate for our time; something else corresponds to our time. In ancient times, the human soul sought the origin of humanity in order to become aware of what united people. Today we look at what the human being can become, at a common goal for all people. Looking towards this goal, people must be able to say to themselves: This concerns every human being; something must come alive in the innermost being of every human being – this is the living Christ. In the future, human souls will come together in him. The earth, the physical body – it will fragment in its material existence. But the human souls that have the living Christ within them will advance to other levels of existence. When the body of the entire planet has disintegrated, all mankind will be one again, not as it was before it descended to the earth, but one in which the Christ will live as a common soul-blood in this humanity.

All our knowledge must be dedicated to the great moment in the evolution of mankind when the human soul can turn to the God-man who accomplished the Mystery of Golgotha. When we look into the future of mankind, we look for the Christ-consciousness in every human being. This has a completely different sense and a completely different meaning than when the Buddhist teaching speaks of a Nirvana and means by that a detachment of the soul from all earthly things. No, the soul should not detach itself from the earthly. We look to the living Christ, who can grasp our souls with his life, and to how the soul can shape itself ever more richly through the life of Christ in it, through immersion in the source of wisdom and truth in ever new incarnations.

Thus we see that spiritual science does not stand in opposition to that without which our culture cannot be imagined - to Christianity. It does not want to fight Christianity, but to deepen it by pointing to the living Christ. We, as Westerners, look to the event of Golgotha as to the point in time that is also known from history, but which only acquires its deep value, its deep meaning for us through the fact that we gain the Christ-idea not only from the historical Christ, but deepen this Christ-idea through spiritual science. Only when we have imbued our knowledge with soul, light and spirit through the idea of Christ does this idea of Christ become for us that through which the true idea of immortality is revealed to us ever more surely. And when the Christ in us has become the light of knowledge and the life of knowledge, then we connect with the power through which we pass through many deaths and through many lives. Knowledge of Christ is the way for man to absorb within himself the forces that lead him to true immortality, that is, to victory over death.

This idea can only be gained from higher knowledge - not with ordinary knowledge, which only wants to deal with the material. Nowadays, only the external, the material, is pursued in man, and that is the most fleeting, the most transient. The words of Hamlet, for example, point this out, showing how dying and death must appear to him in his melancholy mind, in which the light of Christ does not yet shine. He speaks of the great Alexander, saying:

Alexander turned to dust;
Dust is earth;
From earth we make clay.

And he speaks of the great Caesar:

The great Caesar, dead and turned to clay,
Might stop a hole as well as the rough north;
Oh that the earth,
Before the wind and weather, might stick a wall.

But Hamlet is only talking about where the earth that became Caesar's body may have gone. He pursues the fleeting, transient material instead of reflecting on where the great, richly developed souls of the great Alexander and the great Caesar have gone. You don't see what is important in man if you only look at the transitory, at the material, and think about what might have become of it. You should look beyond what goes through death and birth to recognize what true immortality is.

In recent centuries, when knowledge of the material world has made such great strides, we have become more and more accustomed to regarding matter, that which forces the spirit into its fetters, as the essential. But matter will perish, disintegrate; the earthly body, consisting of matter, will disintegrate. The spiritual researcher, for example, views today's radium research in such a way that he knows: here is the beginning of the disintegration of the atoms that form the earthly body. The material of the earth will perish, but the eternal, even of the earthly body, will merge into the eternal essence of things. Today's striving for knowledge pursues the material, forcing the soul into its spell. One believes that one can speak of eternity, of the indestructibility of matter. In the face of words such as those spoken by Hamlet, it must be said, based on the realization of the true nature of the human being and at the same time on the realization of the true nature of materiality: Not only the great Alexander, the great Caesar, no, all human souls are parts of eternity; they take on a physicality from the materials of the earth in ever new lives, they go through ever new lives, which are only steps towards immortality. This applies to every human being:

The humblest man on earth
is a son of eternity.
And in each new life he will
conquer the old death.

It seems obvious to me today that what has been discussed here, from this point of view, during these days, the harmony of the subjective and the objective, is now emerging as an introduction to my lecture, also based, so to speak, on a feeling. Yesterday morning, the reflections concluded with the speech of Professor Römer, which gave me great satisfaction – that is the subjective aspect – for the reason that it showed how a specialist, who is thoroughly and fully immersed in his field, can feel the need for the spiritual science to shed light on such a specific subject. It will also have become clear to you from what Professor Römer has already been able to cite from his field of expertise today, that above all, for this interweaving, strong, vigorous work must be developed on the part of the relevant spiritual science itself. For what has been given so far - and this should be fully recognized - are initially individual guidelines that require verification with reference to external science.

In all that has been brought to me through this lecture to a certain subjective satisfaction, there was a consideration of the teeth. So yesterday we concluded with the teeth – now I come to the objective. And allow me to start with the teeth again today, though not with something that I want to tell you about the teeth on my own initiative, but with a saying that emerged from the scholarship of the 11th century, as it was in Central Europe at the time. This saying goes:

When thy tongue catcheth the wind

and draweth it into thy mouth,

and with thy teeth thou choosest

the word that thou shalt speak.

This means: just as the tongue catches the wind from its surroundings and draws it into the mouth, so it draws the word it speaks out of the teeth.

Now, that is a product of 11th-century Central European scholarship. It means that the tongue draws the word out of the teeth just as it draws air into the mouth from the outside world.

Now a sample of 19th-century scholarship, from the last third of the century, a word pronounced by the philologist Wilhelm Scherer, who was revered by a large number of students as a modern idol, and which you will find in his “Deutsche Sprachgeschichte” (History of the German Language), where he also uses this word that I have just read to you. The word he uses in contrast to this is this: “We laugh at such a word in the present”.

That is the scientific confession from the 19th century about this word from the 11th century; it expresses the scientific attitude that still prevails today in the broadest sense and that the representatives of the corresponding field are still likely to express today in further references.

If we first consider this contrast from the point of view that has been adopted here more often, that a complete change has taken place in relation to the state of mind of people since the first third of the 15th century, then we have in the time that lies between the first quoted saying and the saying of Wilhelm Scherer, we have contained approximately just what has elapsed in time since the dawning of that state of mind that existed until the beginning of the 15th century, and the direction that has emerged since then and has so far undergone a certain development.

Wilhelm Scherer now continues the sentences that he began by saying that he had to laugh at such a word from the 19th He says that all efforts in the present must be directed, with regard to linguistics, to bringing together what physiologists have to say about speaking and word formation based on the physiological organization of the human body with what philologists have to say about the development of language from ancient times to the present. In other words, physiology and philology should join hands in this field of science. And Wilhelm Scherer adds that unfortunately he has to admit that the philologists are very, very far behind and that it cannot be hoped that they will meet the physiologists halfway in terms of what they have to say about the physical organization for the formation of speech. So that physiology and philology are two branches of science whose lack of mutual understanding a man regarded as a man of his time acknowledges in no uncertain terms.

This points to a phenomenon that is a dominant one in our time: that the individual sciences with their methods do not understand each other at all, that they talk alongside each other without the person who is placed in the midst of this scientific activity and hears what the physiologists on the one hand and the philologists on the other have to say, and who hears what they say, is able to do something with it – forgive the perhaps somewhat daring comparison – other than to be skewered from two sides in relation to his soul by the formations of concepts.

In a sense, although I do not want to say much more with this than something analogous, a certain contrast is already expressed in the word designation, which, I would like to say, is unconsciously taken seriously by the newer currents of science. The word 'physiology' expresses the fact that it wants to be a logos about the physical in man, so to speak, that which grasps the physical in a logical, intellectual way; the word 'philology' expresses: love of wisdom, love of the Logos, love of the word; so the word designation is taken from an emotional experience. In one case the word designation is taken from a rational experience, in the other from an emotional experience. And what the physiologist wants to produce as a kind of intellectual Logos about the human body, that - namely the Logos - the philologist actually wants to love. As I said, I am only trying to make an analogy here, but if we pursue it further, if we follow it historically, it will take on a certain significance. I would advise us to follow it more closely historically.

But we can point out something else that comes to us from prehistory, from the forerunner of that which has emerged in human consciousness since the beginning of the 15th century. We know that what is called logic and which, in a certain respect, has its image in language, at least essentially, is a creation of Aristotle. And if one were to claim that, just as a person today who has not studied logic nevertheless lives logic in his soul activity, logic also lived in people's soul activity before Aristotle, one overlooks the fact that the transformation of the unconscious into the conscious nevertheless has a deeper significance in the course of human events. The elevation of the logical into consciousness is also a real process, albeit an inwardly real process, in the development of the soul of humanity: in older times there was an intimate relationship between the concept and the word. Just as there was such an intimate relationship between the concept or idea and the perception, as you will find explained in my “Riddles of Philosophy”, there was also an intimate connection, an interlocking, I would say, of words and ideas.

The distinction that we have to make today, psychologically, between the word and the content of the idea – particularly when considering mathematization, this emerges with all clarity – was not made in older times. And it was precisely this distinction that Aristotle first arrived at. He singled out, within the life of the soul, that which is conception or concept from the fabric of language and made it into something that exists separately for knowledge. But in doing so, he pushed that which lives in language further down into the unconscious than it was before. In a sense, a gulf was created for knowledge between the concept or the conception and the word.

The further back we go in the consideration of human language, the more we find that the word and the concept or idea are experienced as one and the same thing, that man, so to speak, hears inwardly what he thinks, that he has a word-picture, not so much a thought-picture. The thought is linked externally to the sense perceptions and internally to the word. But in this way, even in these early times, a certain intuitive perception was present, which can be characterized as follows: as people expressed themselves in words, they felt as if what resounded in their words had entered their speech directly from a hidden, subconscious, instinctive aspect of things. They felt, as it were, that a real process takes place between what lives in things, and especially in facts, and what inwardly forms the impulse for the sounding of the word. They felt such a real connection as a person today still feels a real connection between the substances that are outside, say egg, veal, lettuce, and what then happens inside with the content of these substances when they are digested. He will see a real process in this process, which unfolds from the outside of the substances to what happens inside in the digestion. He experiences this real process subconsciously. What one experienced in language was subconscious — even if much more clearly, already permeated by a certain dim awareness. One had the feeling that something living in the things is related to the sounds, to the words. Just as the substances of the materials one eats are connected with what happens internally in the metabolism of the human being, one felt an inner connection between what takes place in the things and facts, which is similar to words, and what sounds internally as a word. And in that Aristotle raised to consciousness what was felt to be a real process, where concepts come into play, the same was achieved for language as a person achieves when he reflects on what the substances of the materials in his organism do. Thinking about digestion is, of course, somewhat further removed from the actual process of digestion than thinking about language. But we can gain an idea of the relationship by clarifying this idea by moving from the more immediate to the more distant, and by becoming clearer in the distance.

Now, for us, if we replace today's abstract view of history with a more concrete one, the fact that things that happened in Greece in the pre-Christian era, also in the pre-Aristotelian era, happened later for the Central European population - who still perceived the Greeks as barbaric, that is, at a lower level of culture - is clear. And we will be right, and spiritual science gives us the guidance to raise this feeling to certainty, if we imagine that the mental state from which we speak is spoken emotionally, “the tongue draws the outer air into the mouth just as it draws the word out of the teeth,” that this way of looking at things , this remarkably pictorially expressed view was roughly the same as that which prevailed in pre-Aristotelian times within Greece, and in the place of which there arose what was bound to arise through the separation of logic, of the logos, through the separation of the conceptual from that which is expressed in language.

You are aware that in that erudition which developed first in the 15th century and from which the various branches of the individual specialized sciences have emerged, that in this erudition as education much has contributed what has asserted itself as late Greek culture. The philologists, in other words, those who are supposed to love the logos, were thoroughly influenced by what emerged from late Greek culture. And just imagine such a late Greek as a Germanic scholar, like Wilhelm Scherer, confronted with early Greek, and it tells him: the tongue pulls the language out of the teeth – then he naturally rejects it, then he wants nothing to do with it from his point of view. One must consider such facts in a light that tries to shine a little deeper into the historical context than what is often available in the ordinary popular science of history today, both in the field of external political or cultural history and in the field of language history.

Now the question is what paths must be sought in order to scientifically penetrate into the structure of the language organism itself, if I may express it in this way.

Even in external appearances, it is expressed how the soul, which has gradually been elevated into the realm of abstract concepts, has moved away from what was felt about language in the pre-Aristotelian period. What, for example, has been produced, as an opinion about the origin of language, by this research, which is in the sign of Aristotelism? Well, it was elevated into the abstract, and thus alienated from its direct connection with the external world, through which one could experience what really corresponds to the formed word in things. It was alienated from this, but still sought to understand what such a connection might look like, and it then also translated this connection into all kinds of abstractions. What she felt inwardly, she placed in the realm where concepts are formed externally, based on sensory or other external observations. Because it was impossible to delve into things to search for the process of how the word works from things into the human organization, an abstract concept was used in place of such an understanding, for example in the so-called Wauwau theory or in the Bimbam theory. The wauwau theory says nothing more than that what appears externally in the organic as sound is imitated. It is a completely external consideration of an external fact with the help of abstract concepts. The Bim-Bim theory differs from the Bow-Wow theory only in that it takes into account the inorganic way in which sound is released from itself. This sound is then imitated in an external way by the human being who is confronted with and influenced by external nature. And the transformation of that which children call — though not everywhere, but only in a very limited area of the earth — when they hear the dog bark: woof-woof, or that which comes into their sense of language when they hear the bell ring: ding-dong-dong, this transformation is then followed by a curious method. Thus, what has then formed into the organism of language can be seen in the indicated 'theories', which, it is true, have not been replaced by much better ones to this day.

We are therefore dealing with an inwardness of the observation of language. Above all, the aim of spiritual science, as it is meant here, is to make the study of language an inward one again, so that through what can be achieved in the ascent from sensory to supersensible knowledge, what was once thought about language through feeling and instinct can be found independently again, but now in a form appropriate to advanced humanity. And here I must point out (owing to the limited time I have only to indicate the directions in which the empirical facts can be followed) how spiritual science takes a strictly concrete path when it wants to understand how the human being develops from childhood to a certain age. You will find what I am trying to suggest here outlined, for example, in my booklet 'The Education of the Child from the Point of View of Spiritual Science'.

First of all, it must be pointed out how the entire soul-physical configuration of the human being in the period before the change of teeth is essentially different from what it becomes after the change of teeth. Anyone who has observed this fact knows how much is metamorphosed in the soul-physical life during the period when the second teeth replace the first. And anyone who does not seek the relationships between body, soul and spirit through abstractions such as the followers of psychophysical parallelism, but seeks them in concrete phenomena, seeks them according to a truly further developed scientific method, and is able to grasp the inner structure of the soul life in the concrete, will find just how what later, in a more soul-like way, in the peculiar configuration of conceptual life, in the implementation of that which is experienced conceptually, with will impulses, which then lead to the formation of the judgment, as something that has been working in the physical organization until the change of teeth. And he will not speculate about what can “work spiritually” in the physical organization from birth to the change of teeth. Rather, he will say to himself, what is then released during the change of teeth, released from a body in which it was previously latent, that has previously been active in a latent and bound state in the physical organization of the human being. And this particular type of physical organization, in which what can later be observed in the soul is active, comes to an end with the eruption of the second teeth, which you were also made aware of yesterday.

Now, the facts at hand must be considered not only from a physiological point of view, but also from the perspective of the human soul. Just as the physiologist, with his senses and the mind bound to them, penetrates into the physical processes of the human organism, so too does the soul, with its faculties of imagination and inspiration. If one really penetrates into these processes, then one must see in the real, which is first latent from birth to the change of teeth, and then becomes free, also in terms of imagination and knowledge. That is why my writing on “The Education of the Child from the Point of View of Spiritual Science”, in summarizing this process in a formulaic way, speaks of the fact that with the change of teeth, the etheric body of the human being, which previously worked in the physical body, is only born free to be active in the soul life. This “birth of the etheric body” is expressed in the change of teeth.

It is necessary to have such formulaic expressions at the starting point of anthroposophical spiritual scientific observation, such as “birth of the etheric body from the physical body”, which corresponds to an actual event. But when we seek to make the transition from spiritual science in the narrower sense — which is concerned with the observation of the human being's direct experience of the day — to the approach taken in the individual specialized sciences, then what is initially expressed in such a formulaic way becomes something similar to a mathematical formula: it becomes method, method for dealing with the facts. And that is why this spiritual science can have a fruitful effect on the individual sciences, without always merely continuing into the individual sciences that which, admittedly, must be clearly borne in mind at the starting point: that the human being is structured into a physical body, etheric body, and so on. At the beginning one can and must know such things; but if spiritual science is to bring about a fruitful influence, they must become active, they must become a method, a way of treating even the empirically given 'facts'. And in this respect spiritual science, because it rises from the inorganic, where it can do little, through the organic into the spiritual realm, I would like to say, not only in the way the individual sciences can fertilize can, but it will, as a result of its findings, have confirmations of facts to hand over to them, which will shed light on what is gained from the other side through sensory-physical observation and then seen through with the mind. Spiritual and sensory-physical research must meet. And it is one of the most important tasks for the future to ensure that this spiritual research and this sensory-physical research meet.

In the process that manifests itself externally during the change of teeth, it becomes clear that what is designated as the etheric body – but by taking a concrete view, not a word concept, into the eye of the soul – becomes freely active for the entire human organism, after previously having had an organizing effect in the physical body. Now it rises into the soul, becomes free and then consciously works back to the whole human being to a certain degree.

Something similar occurs again with what manifests externally as sexual maturity. There we see how, once again, something arises in human experience that expresses itself, on the one hand, in a certain metamorphosis of the physical organism and, on the other hand, in a metamorphosis of the spiritual. And an essential part of the spiritual researcher's work is to acquire a concrete way of looking at what occurs in the soul and spirit, just as someone who only wants to educate themselves through external observation acquires a concrete way of looking at what they can see with their eyes and combine with their mind. Soul cannot be looked at in this way, but can only be looked at in its reality through imagination. There is no true psychology that does not begin with imaginative observation, and there is no way to find the interrelationship of body and soul or physical body and spiritual soul other than to build a bridge between what is given to external physical sensory perception as the physical body, and what falls away from this perception, what can only be given as reality in the ascent to supersensible knowledge, the spiritual-soul.

If we now turn to what occurs during puberty, we must say: here we see, in a certain sense, the reverse process of what took place when the teeth changed. We see how what plays as the capacity for desire in man, what is the instinctive character of his will, takes hold of the organism in a way it did not take hold of it before. Summarizing the whole broad complex of facts that this involves in a formulaic way, it comes about that one says: the one in which the nature of desire slumbers, the astral body of the human being, becomes free when sexual maturity occurs. It is this body that now, if I may express it in this way, sinks freely into the physical organism, takes hold of it, permeates it, and thus materializes desire, which finds expression in sexual maturation.

Now, what does an appropriate comparison of these two processes show? We see, so to speak, when the change of teeth occurs, a liberation of the etheric body of the human being. How does what is happening actually express itself? It expresses itself in such a way that the human being becomes capable of further developing the formation of concepts, in general the movement in the life of ideas, which used to be more bound to his whole organism, bound to the organization of the head. To a certain extent we see, and spiritual science sees it not only to a certain extent but in its reality, that the etheric, which we ascribe to the human being as an etheric body, withdraws with the change of teeth to that which only lives in the rhythm of the human organism and in the metabolic limb-organism, and that it develops a free activity in the formation of the head, in the plastic formation of the head, in which the consciousness life of the human being participates in the imagination. In a sense, the organization of the head is uncovered during this time. And if I may express myself figuratively about a reality that certainly exists, I must say that what drives itself to the surface from the entire human organization in the second teeth is the soul-spiritual activity that previously permeates the entire bodily organization and then becomes free. Before, it permeated the whole human being right into the head. It gradually withdraws from the head; and it shows how it withdraws by revealing its no-longer-to-the-head activity in that it stops and produces the second teeth. You can visualize this almost schematically. If I indicate schematically what the human physical organization is with the white chalk, and what the etheric organization is with the red chalk, then the following would result schematically (see figure):

In the figure on the left, you see the human being in his spiritual, soul and physical activity as he stands before you until his teeth change. In the second figure, which is to your right, you see how the etheric element has withdrawn from the immediate effect of the head organization, how it has become free in a certain respect, so that from there it can freely affect the human head organism. And the last thing that happens in the physical organism as a result of this activity of the soul-spiritual is the eruption of the second teeth. I would say that you can observe in its image what is being communicated to you here as a spiritual view if you take the skulls that Professor Römer showed you yesterday, because you can compare the insertion of the first teeth with the insertion of the second teeth. If you want to follow this logically, then you have to take as a basis what has been gained here from spiritual science. Then you have to say to yourself, the first teeth, with all that is expressed in them, are taken out of the whole human organization, including the head organization. What is expressed in the second teeth is taken out after the inner soul organization, insofar as it concerns the etheric body, has slowly withdrawn into the rhythmic and metabolic organism and become free for the main head organization. In a similar way, we can say — as I said, I can only give guidelines — that something is happening with sexual maturity. What we call the astral body is sunk into the physical body, so that it finally takes hold of it and brings about what constitutes sexual maturity.

But now what happens in the human being takes place in the most manifold metamorphoses. Once one has truly understood a process such as that which is expressed through sexual maturity, which brings about a certain new relationship in human development, in the development of the human being to the outer world, once one truly understands such a process inwardly, one then also recognizes it when it occurs in a certain metamorphosis. What occurs at puberty, in that it takes hold of the whole person, in that it, so to speak, forms a relationship between the whole person and their environment, is, I would say, anticipated in a different metamorphosis at the moment when language develops in the child. Only what takes place with sexual maturation in the child takes place in a different metamorphosis in the formation of speech. What takes hold of the whole human being at sexual maturation and pours into his relationship with the outside world takes place between the rhythmic and limb human being and the human being's head organization. To a certain extent, the same forces that take hold of the whole person during puberty and direct their relationship to the outside world assert themselves between the lower and upper human beings. And as the lower human being learns to feel the upper human being in the way that the human being later learns to feel the outside world, he learns to speak. A process that can be observed externally in a person at a later age must be followed in its metamorphosis until it appears as an internal process in the human organism, in the learning to speak: the process that otherwise occurs in the whole person at puberty.

And once we have grasped this, we are able to comprehend how the interaction of the lower human being — the rhythmic and the limb-based human being — in its reciprocity develops an inner experience of something that is also present externally in the nature around us. This inward experiencing of what is outwardly present leads to the fact that what remains outwardly mute in things as their own language begins to resound as the human language in the human inner being. Please proceed from this sentence as from a regulative principle. Proceed from this sentence that what is in things, as they become external, material, falls silent, that in dematerialization it becomes audible in the human being and comes to speak. Then you will find the way in which you do not develop a yap-yap or a bim-bim theory, but on which you see that which is external to things – and cannot be perceived by external observation because it is silent and only exists in a supersensible way – as language in the human interior.

What I am saying here is like drawing a line to indicate the direction in which one would most like to paint a wide-ranging picture. I can only present this rather abstract proposition regarding the relationship between the things and facts of the external world and the origin of human language in the inner life. And you will see everything you can sense about language in a new light when you follow the path from this abstractly assumed sentence, which initially sounds formulaic, to what the facts connect for you in terms of meaning. And if you then want to apply what has been philologically obtained in this way to physiology, you will be able to learn about the connection between external sexual metamorphosis and linguistic metamorphosis by studying facts that are still present as a linguistic remnant of the sexual maturation metamorphosis in the change of the voice, that is, of the larynx in boys, and in some other phenomena that occur in women. If you have the will to engage with the facts and to draw the threads from one series of facts to another, not to encapsulate yourself in barren specialized sciences, but to really illuminate what is present in one science as fact , through the facts that come to light through other sciences, then the individual special sciences will be able to become what man must seek in them if he is to make progress on the path of his knowledge as well as on the path of his will.

In a context that might seem unrelated, we will see tomorrow in a very natural way how we can go from the change of teeth to the appearance of speech and then further back to what is the third on this retrogressive path: we see, so to speak, in what is expressed in the change of teeth, an interaction between the physical body and the etheric body. We see, in turn, in what is expressed in language, an interaction between the astral body and the etheric body. And thirdly, we must seek an interrelationship between the I and that which lives in man as an astral body, and we will be led to that which is the third in this retrospective consideration: to the embodiment of the spiritual-soul, to that which is born in the spiritual-soul. If one seeks the path from the change of teeth through the emergence of speech, the third stage is the stage of uniting the pre-existing human soul with the physical.

By walling up the way out of his consideration of the change of teeth to the consideration of language through his abstraction, Aristotle was forced to resort to the dogma that a new spiritual soul is born with each new human being. Due to a lack of will to continue on a path of knowledge, knowledge of human preexistence has been lost, and with it knowledge of all that truly leads to the knowledge of the human soul.

We see a historical connection, which, however, comes to expression in the treatment of certain problems, and we can say in conclusion: Today, according to the dictum of a philologist who is quite significant in the contemporary sense, philology and physiology are so opposed that they cannot understand each other. Why is this so? Because physiology studies the human body and does not come back to the mind in this study. If one pursues true physiology, then one finds the spiritual and psychological in man through the bodily in physiological observation. What happens when one pursues true philology? If one pursues true philology, then one does not reduce the logos to an abstraction, for which one then seeks to see through after-images, after-images in a scientific method, but one seeks to penetrate into that which one supposedly loves as a “philo”-logist, through imaginative and other forms of observation. But then, when one penetrates into that which has become shadowy and nebulous for today's philology, namely the genius of language, the creative genius of language, when one penetrates into it, then one penetrates through the spirit to the external corporeality.

Physiology finds the spirit by way of the inner body. Philology, when viewed correctly, finds what speaks and has fallen silent in things on the way out through the genius of language. It does not find bark and bim-bam, but rather finds the reason why words and language arise in us in the things that physically surround us. Physiology has lost its way because it stops at the body and does not penetrate inwardly through the body to the spirit. Philology has lost its way because it stops at the genius of language, which it then only grasps in the abstract, and does not penetrate into the inner being of the outer things from which what lives in the word resounds. If philology does not speak as if the wauwau and bimbam are imitated in an externally abstract way by man, but speaks about the external physicality in such a way that it becomes clear to it in imaginations, how the word arises from this external physicality, which echoes internally, so that when physiology has found spirit and philology has found physicality, they will find each other.

In this way I have traced the path that spiritual science in the anthroposophical sense wants to lead in conscientious work. I have only given a few hints in this particular field of introductory linguistics.

Now, these things are discussed among us, these things are striven for by us. While we strive for these things, so that they may bear witness to what is being striven for on a path of knowledge that arises entirely out of the spirit of our time. And while you can see from what is being striven for that there is probably a certain seriousness that can be measured against the seriousness that exists in other areas of life, Stuttgart, a meeting raged that trampled on most of our speakers, that had no intention of listening to anything, that did not want to engage with what we had to say, but that, through trampling and similar things, sought to crush what is being seriously pursued. And, addressing my fellow students, I may say: yesterday evening in Stuttgart, your colleagues were absent – not from the other faculty, but from the other attitude – they were not absent, they were present in the trampling.

Dear attendees, my dear fellow students! It will become ever clearer and clearer that there are those who, because they cannot be refuted – because they do not want to be refuted – because they do not want to engage with the new at all by inertly continuing with the old that has outlived itself, they will want to trample down on that with external force. Well, I would just like to appeal to you here in the sense that I do have faith in you, that you may say to yourself: We still have a say in this trampling down procedure! – But may this word become action.

Third evening of disputations

The questions did not relate to the theme of the day, “Linguistics”, but drew on problems dealt with earlier.

Dr. Steiner. Here is the question: It has been said that the three dimensions of space are not equal in structure – what is the difference?

In any case, the sentence was never formulated in this way: the three dimensions of space are “not equal in structure”, but what is probably meant here is the following. First of all, we have mathematical space, the space that we imagine – if we have an exact idea of it at all – as three mutually perpendicular dimensional directions, which we can thus define by the three mutually perpendicular coordinate axes.

In the usual mathematical treatment of space, the three dimensions are treated absolutely equally. We make so little distinction between the dimensions up-down, right-left, front-back that we can even think of these three dimensions as interchangeable. In the case of mere mathematical space, it does not matter whether, when we have the X-axis and the Z-axis perpendicular to each other, and the Y-axis perpendicular to them, we call the plane on which the Y-axis stands “horizontal” or “vertical” or the like. Likewise, we do not concern ourselves with the limitations of this space, so to speak. Not that we imagine it to be limitless. One does not usually ascend to this notion, but one imagines it in such a way that one does not concern oneself with its limits, but rather tacitly assumes that one can start from any point – let us say, for example, the X-direction and adding another piece to what you have already measured in the X-direction, to that again a piece and so on, and you would never be led to come to an end anywhere. In the course of the 19th century, much has been said against this Euclidean-geometric conception of space from the standpoint of meta-geometry. I will only remind you of how, for example, Riemann distinguished between the “unboundedness” of space and the “infiniteness” of space. And initially, there is no necessity for the purely conceptual imagination to assume the concept of “unboundedness” and that of “infiniteness” as identical. Take, for example, a spherical surface. If you draw on a spherical surface, you will find that nowhere do you come up against a spatial boundary that could, as it were, prevent you from continuing your drawing. You will certainly enter into your last drawing if you continue drawing; but you will never be forced to stop drawing because of a boundary if you remain on the spherical surface. So you can say to yourself: the spherical surface is unlimited in terms of my ability to draw on it. But no one will claim that the spherical surface is infinite. So you can distinguish, purely conceptually, between unlimitedness and infinity.

Under certain mathematical conditions, this can also be extended to space, can be extended to space in such a way that one imagines: if I add a distance in the X or Y axis, and then another and so on, and am never prevented from adding further distances, then this property of space could indeed speak for its unlimitedness, but not for the infinity of space. Despite the fact that I can always add new pieces, space does not need to be infinite at all; it could be unlimited. So these two concepts must be kept separate. So one could assume that if space were unbounded but not infinite, it would have an inward curvature in the same way as space does now, that is, in some way it would likewise recede into itself, like the surface of a sphere recedes into itself.

Certain ideas of newer metageometry are based on such assumptions. Actually, no one can say that there is much to be said against such assumptions; because, as I said, there is no way to derive the infinity of space from what we experience in space. It could very well be curved in on itself and then be finite.

Of course, I cannot go into this line of thought in detail, because it is almost the only one followed by the whole of modern metageometry. However, you will find sufficient evidence in the works of Riemann, Gauss and so on, which are readily available, to explore if you value such mathematical ideas.

From the purely mathematical point of view, therefore, this is what has been introduced into the, I would say rigid, neutral space of Euclidean geometry, which was only derived from 'unboundedness'. But what is indicated in the question is rooted in something else. Namely, that space, with which we initially calculate and which is available to us in analytical geometry, for example, when we deal with the three coordinate axes that are perpendicular to one another, that space is initially an abstraction. And an abstraction – from what? That is the question that must first be raised.

The question is whether we have to stop at this abstraction of “space” or whether that is not the case. Do we have to stop at this abstraction of space? Is this the only space that can be spoken of? Or rather, if this abstract concept of space is the only one that can legitimately be spoken of, then there is really only one objection that can be raised, and this is sufficiently addressed in Riemannian or any other metageometry. The fact of the matter is that, for example, Kant's definitions of space are based on the very abstract concept of space, in which one does not initially concern oneself with infinity or boundlessness, and that in the course of the 19th century, this concept of space was also shaken internally, in terms of its conceptual content, by mathematics. There can be no question of Kant's definitions still applying to a space that is not infinite but unlimited. In fact, much of the further development of the “Critique of Pure Reason” would be called into question, for example the doctrine of paralogisms, if one were obliged to move on to the concept of unlimited space curved in on itself.

I know that for the ordinary conception this concept of curved space causes difficulties. But from the purely mathematical-geometric point of view, nothing can be objected to what is assumed there, except that one is moving in a realm of pure abstraction that is initially quite far from reality. And if you look more closely, you will find that there is a strange circularity in the derivations of modern meta-geometry. It is this, that one starts out from the idea of Euclidean geometry, which is not concerned with the limitations of space. From this, one then gets certain derived ideas, let us say ideas that relate to something like a spherical surface. And then, in turn, by undertaking certain reconciliations or reinterpretations with the forms that arise, one can make interpretations of space from there. Actually, everything is said under the assumption of Euclidean coordinate geometry. Under this assumption, one arrives at a certain measure of curvature. One arrives at the derivations. All of this is done with the concepts of Euclidean geometry. But then one turns around, so to speak: one now uses these ideas, which can only arise with the help of Euclidean geometry, for example the measure of curvature, in order to arrive at a different idea that leads to a reorganization and can provide an interpretation for what has been gained from the curved forms. Basically, we are moving in an unrealistic area by extracting abstractions from abstractions. The matter would only be justified if empirical facts made it necessary to conform to the ideas of these facts according to what is obtained through such a thing.

The question, then, is: what is the experiential basis for the abstraction “space”? After all, space as such, as presented in Euclid, is an abstraction. What is the basis for what can be experienced, what can be perceived?

We must start from the human experience of space. Placed in the world, human beings, through their own activity of experience, actually perceive only one spatial dimension, and that is the dimension of depth. This perception, this acquired perception of the dimension of depth by the human being is based on a process of consciousness that is very often ignored. But this acquired perception is something quite different from the perception of the plane-like, the perception of extension in two dimensions. When we see with our two eyes, that is, with our total vision, we are never aware that these two dimensions come about through an activity of their own, through an activity of the soul. They are, so to speak, there as two dimensions. Whereas the third dimension comes about through a certain activity, even if this activity is not usually brought to consciousness. We actually have to first acquire the knowledge and understanding of how deep in space something lies, how far away from us any object is. We do not acquire the extent of the surface, it is given by observation. But we do acquire the sense of depth through our two eyes. The way in which we experience the sense of depth is indeed on the borderline between the conscious and the unconscious; but anyone who has learned to focus his attention on such things knows that the semi-unconscious or unconscious, never conscious, activity of judging the depth dimension is much more similar to an intellectual, or even a soul activity, an active soul activity than to everything that is only viewed on the plane.

Thus, the one dimension of three-dimensional space is already actively conquered for our objective consciousness. And we cannot say otherwise than: By observing the position of the upright human being, something is given in relation to this depth dimension — front-back — which is not interchangeable with any other dimension. Simply because a person stands in the world and experiences this dimension in a certain way, what he experiences there is not interchangeable with any other direction. For the individual, this depth dimension is something that cannot be exchanged for any other dimension. It is also the case that the grasping of two-dimensionality – that is, up-down, right-left, of course also when it is in front of us – is also tied to other parts of the brain, since it lies within the process of seeing, that is, within the sensory process of perception; while, with regard to localization in the brain, the emergence of the third dimension is quite close to those centers that are to be considered for intellectual activity. So here we can already see that in the realization of this third dimension, even in terms of experience, there is an essential difference compared to the other two dimensions.

But if we then move up to imagination, we get out of what we experience in the third dimension altogether: in imagination, we actually move on to two-dimensional representation. And now we have yet to work out the other imagination, the imagination of right and left, although this has been hinted at just as quietly as the development of the third dimension in objective imagining; so that there is again a specific experience in right and left. And finally, when we ascend to inspiration, the same applies to up and down.

For ordinary imagining, which is tied to our nervous sense system, we develop the third dimension. But when we turn directly to the rhythmic system by excluding the ordinary activity of the nervous sense system – which in a certain respect occurs when we ascend to the level of inspiration; it is not entirely precise to say this, but it does not matter for now – then we have the experience of the second dimension. And we have the experience of the first dimension when we ascend to inspiration, that is, when we advance to the third member of the human organization.

Thus that which we have before us in abstract space proves to be exact because everything we conquer in mathematics we extract from within ourselves. What arises in mathematics as three-dimensional space is actually something that we have within ourselves. But if we descend into ourselves through supersensible representations, it is not abstract space with its three equally valid dimensions that arises, but three different valences for the three different dimensions: front-back, right-left, up-down; they cannot be interchanged. From this follows yet another: if these three are not interchangeable, there is no need to imagine them with the same intensity. That is the essence of Euclidean space: that we imagine the X-, Y-, Z-axis with the same intensity – this is assumed for any geometric calculation.

If we hold the X-, Y-, Z-axis in front of us, then we must – if we want to stick with what our equations tell us in analytical geometry, but assume an inner intensity of the three axes – imagine this intensity as being of equal value. If we were to elastically enlarge the X-axis with a certain intensity, for example, the Y- and Z-axes would have to enlarge with the same intensity. That is to say, if I now grasp intensively that which I am expanding, the force of expansion, if I may say so, is the same for the X-, Y-, Z-axis, that is, for the three dimensions of Euclidean space. Therefore, applying the concept of space in this way, I would like to call this space rigid space.

Now, this is no longer the case when we take real space, of which this rigid space is an abstraction, when we take space as it is experienced by a human being. Then we can no longer speak of these three intensities of expansion being the same. Rather, the intensity is essentially dependent on what is found in the human being: the human proportions are entirely the result of the intensities of spatial expansion. And we must, for example, if we call the up-down the Y-axis, imagine this with a greater intensity of expansion than, for example, the X-axis, which would correspond to the right-left. If we were to look for a formulaic expression for this real space, if we were to express in formulaic terms what is meant by 'real' here, then again we would end up with a three-axis ellipsoid.

Now we also have the reason to imagine this three-axis space, in which supersensible thinking must live, in its three quite different possibilities of expansion, so that we can also recognize this space, through the real experience of the X-, Y- and Z-axis given to us with our physical body, as that which simultaneously expresses the relationship of the world bodies situated in this space.

When we imagine this, we must bear in mind that everything we think of out there in this three-dimensional cosmic space cannot be thought of as simply extending in different directions with the same intensity of expansion along the X-, Y- and Z-axes Z-axis, as is the case with Euclidean space, but we must think of space as having a configuration that could also be imagined by a triaxial ellipsoid. And the arrangement of certain stars certainly supports this. Our Milky Way system is usually called a lens and so on. It is not possible to imagine it as a spherical surface; we have to imagine it in a different way if we stick to a purely physical fact.

You can see from the treatment of space how little newer thinking is in line with nature. In ancient times, in older cultures, no one had such a conception as that of rigid space. One cannot even say that in Euclidean geometry there was already a clear conception of this rigid space with the three equal intensities of expansion, and also the three lines perpendicular to one another. It was only when people began to treat space in the manner of Euclidean geometry, in their calculations, that this abstract conception of space actually arose. In earlier times, quite similar insights had been gained, as I have now developed them again from the nature of supersensible knowledge. From this you can see that things on which people today rely so heavily, which are taken for granted, only have such significance because they operate in a sphere that is divorced from reality. The space that people use in their calculations today is an abstraction; it operates entirely in a sphere that is divorced from reality. It is abstracted from experiences that we can know through real experience. But today, people are often content with what abstractions are. In our time, when so much emphasis is placed on empiricism, abstractions are most often invoked. And people don't even notice it. They believe that they are dealing with things in reality. But you can see how much our ideas need to be rectified in this regard.

In every concept, the spiritual researcher does not merely ask whether it is logical. Although, in a certain sense, it is only a branch of Euclidean space, it is not really possible to grasp it conceptually, because one arrives at it through a completely abstract train of thought, in which one comes to a conclusion and, as it were, turns one's whole thinking upside down. When imagining, the spiritual researcher does not merely ask whether it is logical, but whether it is also in line with reality. That is the deciding factor for him in accepting or not accepting an idea. He only accepts an idea if this idea is in line with reality.

And this criterion of correspondence to reality will be given when one begins to deal with such ideas in an appropriate way, which is the justification for something like the theory of relativity, for example. It is logical in itself, I would like to say, because it only comprehends itself within the realm of logical abstraction, as logically as anything can be logical. Nothing can be more logical than the theory of relativity! But the other question is whether its ideas are realizable. And there you need only look at the ideas that are listed there as analogous, and you will find that they are actually quite unrealistic ideas that are just thrown around. It is only there for sensualization, they say beforehand. But it is not just there for symbolization. Otherwise the whole procedure would be in the air.

That is what I would like to say about the question. You see, it is not possible to answer questions that touch on such areas very easily. Now there is a question regarding the sentence: “The organism of an ancient Egyptian or Greek was quite different from that of modern man.

Dear attendees, I certainly did not say that! And at this point I must definitely draw attention to something that I often draw attention to, and really not out of immodesty: I am in the habit of expressing myself as precisely as I possibly can. And it is actually an extremely painful fact, not just for me personally, since it is tolerable, but from the point of view of the anthroposophical spiritual movement, that in the face of many things, for the formulation of which I have used all possible precautions to formulate the facts as adequately as possible, then everything possible is done, everything possible is said, and then these assertions are sent out into the world as “genuine anthroposophical teachings”. One of these assertions is that I am supposed to have said, “The organism of an ancient Egyptian or Greek was quite different from that of a modern man”.

It can be reduced to the following. I said: the modern way of thinking imagines too strongly that man, as a whole being, has basically always been as he is today, right down to a certain historical time. I usually only speak of “completely different,” of metamorphoses of man as such, where there are great differences, where man becomes “completely different” in a certain respect: in prehistoric times. But anyone who is able to penetrate to the subtleties of the structure and the innermost fabric – as a human being can in spiritual science – will find that a metamorphosis of the human being is constantly taking place, that, for example, the modern human being differs from the Egyptian or the Greek. Of course not in terms of external, striking characteristics, which are as striking as external physiognomy and the like. That is probably what is meant in the question, but that is not my opinion, because in terms of striking characteristics, modern man is of course not “completely different” from the Egyptian. But in terms of finer internal structural relationships, spiritual science comes to the following conclusion, for example. It has to be said that since the first third of the 15th century, humanity has become particularly adept at abstract thought, at moving more and more towards abstract trains of thought. This is also essentially based on a different structure of the brain. And through the method of spiritual science, the spiritual researcher can recognize the matter. Then it turns out that it is really the case that the brain has indeed changed in its finest structures since Egyptian times. The brain of the Egyptian was such that, to take one example, he also belonged to those of whom Dr. Husemann spoke, that the ancient Egyptian also had no sense for the blue color nuance and so on. In any case, we can see that the sense of abstraction occurs to the same extent as the nuances of blue emerge from mere darkness. What occurs in the life of the soul corresponds entirely to a physical metamorphosis. It is extremely important that we do not stop at the coarser aspects of human nature, as they are presented when we go back, for my sake, to the long periods of time that lie before history. Rather, if we want to consider human beings as humanity, we must also consider the finer structural changes during their historical existence.

Question: It would be interesting to hear, in a more intimate way, how this fact behaves.

Well, quite a lot has actually been said in these days, let us say, also through the things that Dr. Husemann has presented, about how this fact behaves. And if we were to go into other fields of fact, there would certainly be much that could be said about these other, very fine, intimate structural relationships of the human being.

Question: How do you explain the phenomenon of the well-known horse that solved all arithmetic and mathematical problems without difficulty, to the amazement of all scholars, and only then failed completely when the problems were written on pieces of paper in front of the examiner? If it is the case with the horse that none of those present in the room could see the problem, is this based on a strong suggestiveness on the part of the animal? And how does that come about?

I never want to talk about anything other than what I have investigated myself. And so, in answering this question, I would only like to share what I have experienced myself. For example, I don't know the famous Elberfeld horses. I also don't know the dog Rolf, I never had the honor of meeting him. Now, with regard to such things, I could always state that the story is all the more wonderful the less one is embarrassed by not really being able to see through it, to really get to know it. But I once saw Mr. von Osten's horse in Berlin. I can't say that the calculations that Mr. von Osten presented to the horse were extraordinarily complicated. But I was able to get an instant idea of what it was all about from what was going on there – although you had to look very closely.

I could only marvel at the strange theories that had been advanced about these things. There was a lecturer, I think his name was Fox or something like that, who was supposed to examine this whole story with the horse; and he now put forward the theory that every time the gentleman from the east gave some task, terribly small movements would occur in the eye or something like that. Another small movement would occur when Mr. von Osten says “three” like that, or when he says it like that; another movement would occur when he says “two”. So that a certain fine series of movements would come about if Mr. von Osten said, “three times two”; then the same sign of this movement would come again, six! And Mr. von Osten's horse should now be particularly predisposed to guess these fine movements, which the lecturer in question said he did not perceive in any way, but only assumed hypothetically. After all, the whole “theory” was based on the fact that Mr. von Osten's horse was much more perceptive, to a much greater extent in reality, than the lecturer who put forward this theory.

If you stick to the flashy blue thinking in hypothesizing, you can set up hypotheses in the most diverse ways. For those who have some insight into such matters, certain circumstances were of extraordinary value. During the entire time that Mr. von Osten presented his experiments to the amazed public with his horse, he gave the horse nothing but sweets – he had huge pockets in the back of his coat. And the horse just kept licking, and that's how it solved these tasks.

Now imagine that this has created a completely different relationship between the horse and Mr. von Osten himself. When Mr. von Osten continually gives the horse sugar, a very special relationship of love and intimacy develops between them. Now the animal nature is so extraordinarily variable due to the intimacy of the relationship that develops, both from 'animal to human and from human to animal'. And then effects come about that are actually wrongly described when they are called “mind reading” in the sense in which the word is often understood, but they are mediators for that which is not “subtle twitchings” that a private lecturer hypothetically posits, but which he himself says he does not see! No subtle twitches are needed to convey the solutions. It can be traced back to the following: imagine what went through the mind of Herr von Osten, who of course was vain enough to realize that the tension in the audience, made up of sensation-hungry people, was going through the most incredible twists and turns as he noticed it, and when he was then standing in front of the solution to the task, he gave the horse a piece of sugar. And add to that the effect on the horse of the mental relationship. It was truly not a command given by words or twitching, but an intimately given command that always went from Mr. von Osten to the horse when he gave him sweets to eat. Suggestion is probably not the right word. Relationships that take place between people cannot be transferred to every living being.

I have tried to show these things in concrete terms by highlighting a circumstance that many will consider trivial: the constant giving of sugar as something extraordinarily essential.

Question: Is there a possibility for pointing out a point of view that is just as stimulating for systematics in the field of mineralogy and crystallography as the idea of the primal plant is for botany or a new understanding of the periodic system of elements is for chemistry?

When we speak of crystal forms, we are dealing with forms that are actually different in their overall relationship to the cosmos, in their entire position in the world, than the forms that one can imagine in the Primordial Plant and, again, in the plant forms derived from the Primordial Plant, that is to say, in the possibility of real existence. For example, the principle applied to the design of the primeval plant could not be applied to the field of mineralogy or crystallogy. For there one is dealing with something that must be approached from a completely different angle. And one must first approach it by actually approaching the field of polyhedral crystal forms. And this approach, I can only hint at now. I have explained it in more detail in its individual representations in a lecture course that I gave for a smaller group. This approach is taken when one starts from the consideration, an internal dynamic consideration of the state of aggregation, let us say first of all from the gaseous state downwards to the solid. I can only draw the lines now; it would take too long if I were to explain it in detail, but I will hint at it. If one descends – if I may express it this way – from the gaseous state to the liquid state, then one must say: the liquid state of aggregation shows itself in that, as the one in the whole coherence of nature, a level-limiting surface, which is a spherical surface, and the degree of curvature of which can be obtained from any point on the surface by means of the transition to the tangent at that point. What you get there includes the shape that has its outer circumference in the spherical surface, and a point in the interior that is the same distance from this spherical surface everywhere.

If we now imagine the drop in an unlimited way, I do not say in an infinite way, but enlarged in an unlimited way, we get a level surface approaching the horizontal, and we have certain relationships in mind that are perpendicular to this level surface.

But we arrive at the same idea by observing the connections that arise when we simply regard our earth as a force field that can attract surrounding objects that are not firmly attached to it. If we regard the earth not as a center of gravity but as a spherical surface of gravity, then we arrive at the same result for this, I would say, gravitational figure as we need in another respect for the material constitution of the drop. So for a pure force context, we get something that corresponds to a material context. And in this way we arrive at a possibility for studying the formal relationships in the inorganic.

13

So that we can say that in this context of forces, which is present in the whole body of the earth, we are always dealing with the horizontal plane. If we now move from this state of forces to one in which, let us say, there is not a point in the center to which the level surface refers as in the 'drop to the one center point', but rather several points, we would find a strangely composed surface. These relationships of the line to these 'centers' I would have to draw in the diagram in something like the following way: But if we now proceed—and now I am taking a great leap, which is well-founded, but in the short time available I can only hint at the true content—if we now proceed to assume these points not inside, within the system we are dealing with, but outside, then perhaps we would get a diagram that can be made diagrammatically in the following way: If we transfer the points into immeasurable distances, not into infinite distances, but into very great distances, then these curved surfaces, which are indicated here by curved lines, by curves, pass over into planes, and we would get a polyhedral form, which approximates to what we have before us in the known crystal forms.

14

And indeed, spiritual scientific observation leads us to look at the crystal in such a way that we do not merely derive it from certain inner figurative forces in some material substance, but we relate it to the exterior of the cosmos, and we seek in the cosmos the directions that then, through the distribution of their starting points, result in what the individual crystal form is. In the individual crystal form, we actually get, so to speak, impressions of large cosmic relationships. All of this needs to be studied in detail. I fear that what I have been able to hint at, albeit only in a few very sparse lines, may already seem to you to be something very daring. But it must be said that today people have encapsulated themselves in their world of ideas in a very narrow area, and that is why they feel so uncomfortable when one does not stick to the conceptual world that is usually taken as a basis today, I would say is taken as a basis in all sciences. Spiritual science demands an - as experience makes necessary - immeasurable expansion of concepts compared to the present situation. And that is precisely what makes some people uneasy. They cannot see the shore, so to speak, and believe they are losing their way. But they would realize that what is lost through the expanse is gained again as a certain inner firmness and security, so that there is no need to be so afraid of what appears to be an expansion into the boundless.

Of course, it is much easier to make up some model or other — as was also mentioned today in a certain question — than to advance to such ideas. It is easier to say: the truth must be simple! — The reason why one says that the truth must be simple is not, in fact, that the truth really must be simple, because the human organism, for example, is incredibly complicated. Rather, the reason why it is said that the true must be simple is that the simple is convenient in thinking. That is the whole point. And it is necessary, above all, to advance to the fuller content if one really wants to understand reality bit by bit.

The question that was raised here still required that one should present three hours of theory. One cannot speak about the sun through “a brief answer to the question,” because one would be completely misunderstood. And I do not want that. — So, first of all, the answerable questions are answered provisionally.

Question: Does spiritual science find a transformation of the material earth with the entry of the Christ-Spirit into the earth? Is the effect of the power of Christ perhaps particularly expressed in one of the elements found in modern times?

What is the question? — Not true, one must only consider from which point of view such a question can be asked. The question is posed: Is the effect of the power of Christ expressed in the material earth? — You must only bear in mind that spiritual science, based on its research, has a very definite idea about the earth that does not coincide with what one imagines about the earth when one speaks of the “material earth” in the sense of the word “material” in today's language. So the question is actually without real content. If one speaks of something like an “influence of the power of Christ on the earth”, then, since this idea is in turn borrowed from spiritual science, one must also have the idea of the earth that applies to anthroposophy, to spiritual science. And how the power of Christ stands in a certain relationship to the whole metamorphosis of the earth can only be presented in the overall context that I have given in Occult Science. And there one also finds what is necessary to answer the question, if it is formulated correctly.

In response to requests from many course participants, a gentleman from Stuttgart will give a brief report on the lecture given the previous evening by the Pan-German General v. Gleich at a mass meeting in Stuttgart on “Rudolf Steiner as the prophet of a questionable teaching” (see Rudolf Steiner's reference to this at the end of the morning lecture, $. 139/140).

I would just like to add that the aforementioned General v. Gleich, quite a long time before, for weeks before, he proceeded to his lecture and to the writing of his pamphlet, wrote a letter to our friend Mr. Molt, as a concerned father, concerned about the misfortune that he, as the owner of a forty-year-old nobility, not only “handed over” his son to anthroposophy, but also to a completely un-noble lady who is an anthroposophist! As a concerned father, he wrote to our friend Molt, asking him to visit him. Mr. Molt did so, but said that he did not know what to do with him. This was clear to him from the fact that Mr. v. Gleich demanded that we “of the threefold social order movement” should henceforth pay the son of General v. Gleich, who was employed by us, so little that the young man would not be able to marry, and that we should at least protect General v. Gleich from this marriage of his son by paying him so little. After these events, it was understandable that one could not expect the best from General von Gleich's lecture. We then actually saw even the worst expectations exceeded! It was the case with this lecture that Gleich essentially presented the content of a brochure – somewhat more fully developed, we might say – that appeared in Ludwigsburg at the same time. It had already been arranged that this brochure should appear at the same time as the lecture. In this brochure, he makes various accusations against anthroposophy in the most uninformed way, without providing any evidence for what he says – anyone who reads this brochure can see that for themselves – by actually only using the opponents of anthroposophy. This is clear from the brochure's table of contents: a few references to literature where one can find out about anthroposophy. One would think that these would be the anthroposophical books, but no, there are about twenty opponents, with the most shameless one right at the front: Max Seiling! Von Gleich essentially brings nothing new to the table that cannot be found in Seiling's brochure, only in the way General von Gleich used to give his lecture. And it was the case that this lecture was announced “without discussion”. There were numerous followers of the anthroposophical movement in the audience. After he had finished the lecture, which was full of the harshest expressions and included some of the most crude slander, he simply left the hall without entering into any discussion. And when someone tried to get a word in edgewise, and when Mr. Molt, who was there and was also personally attacked several times in the lecture, shouted: “He hereby publicly declares – he shouted this into the hall, in which there was a raging was a raging crowd of Mr. v. Gleich's supporters, he did not consider it worth replying to anything. He had already left the hall. On the other hand, the supporters, who were equipped with whistles and other noisy instruments, tried to shout down the anthroposophists who wanted to object. And it was quite close to a brawl. It was very difficult to protest against the most serious defamations, since the whole meeting immediately took on a threatening character, and it was clear that it would come to a brawl.

There followed some reports about the previous lecture by v. Gleich in Ludwigsburg. Finally, a letter from General v. Gleich to his son was read out.

I would just like to say a few words. Can I have this letter again? I would just like to make a formal comment, a comment that does not concern the matter itself. So, in the letter from Mr. v. Gleich to his son, it says: “[...] If only God had willed that you, a decent Christian nobleman, had fallen for your fatherland, then I could at least mourn you with pride [...] I pray to God to take the blindness from you again, so that you may awaken from it again [...].” (space in the postscript).

As you can see, a lot has been said about Mr. von Gleich's own Christianity; I would like to emphasize this: his own Christianity, in comparison with the unreasonable demand that we have been made to pay our son so badly that he cannot marry. That seems to me a very Christian act! And I do not want to be distracted by these “little piquant matters”, which are also on this program, and talk about the seriousness of the situation. Because I know very well that what happened yesterday in Stuttgart is not an end, but a beginning, that behind it stands a strong organization. And it is precisely out of this feeling that I may thank such a personality as the one who has just spoken - out of a real inner feeling for what Anthroposophy at least wants to be. But I would like to point out the seriousness of the situation and the necessity to act in the spirit of this serious situation.

What I want to say must, of course, be distinguished from a certain understanding that one can also have of such Christians as General von Gleich, for example, who is a Christian! I do not want to make a comparison, not even a formal one, but I just want to say something that I had to remember with this kind of Christianity. There are, in fact, very different kinds of Christianity, even of Orthodox Christianity. When the criminal anthropologist Moritz Benedikt started working and writing in criminal anthropology, he initially found little understanding in Vienna. He then found extraordinary understanding in a director of a home for dangerous criminals in Hungary. He was given the opportunity to examine the skulls of criminals, including the skulls of the most dangerous Hungarian criminals. Among them were the strangest people, including a very devout Orthodox Christian, who, of course, could not behave towards Professor Benedikt in accordance with his Christian intentions. He was very angry with him because he was allowed to examine his skull. And he was especially angry about it because he had heard that the prison director had agreed that Professor Benedikt would get to study particularly characteristic criminal skulls after death. And since he was not released to the professor Benedikt in this institution, he wanted to be at least presented to this Benedikt in chains. During this presentation, he said that he could not admit that, given his Christian beliefs, he should allow his skull to be sent to the professor Benedikt in Vienna after his death; he would then be buried here, and his skull would lie around in Vienna! And he wanted to know how his body and his skull would be brought together at the resurrection. He believed so much in his bodily resurrection – he was a real criminal, I think even a murderer.

[ 1 ] We have established that the elements for the explanation of reality are to be taken from the two spheres of perception and thinking. It is due, as we have seen, to our organization that the full totality of reality, including our own selves as subjects, appears at first as a duality. Knowledge overcomes this duality by fusing the two elements of reality, the percept and the concept gained by thinking, into the complete thing. Let us call the manner in which the world presents itself to us, before by means of knowledge it has taken on its true nature, “the world of appearance,” in distinction from the unified whole composed of percept and concept. We can then say: The world is given to us as a duality, and knowledge transforms it into a unity. A philosophy which starts from this basic principle may be called a Monistic philosophy, or Monism. Opposed to this is the theory of two worlds, or Dualism. The latter does not indeed assume that there are two sides of a single reality, which are kept apart merely by our organization, but that there are two worlds absolutely distinct from one another. It then tries to find in one of these two worlds the principles of explanation for the other.

[ 2 ] Dualism rests on a false conception of what we call knowledge. It divides the whole of existence into two spheres, each of which has its own laws, and it leaves these two worlds standing opposite and outside one another.

[ 3 ] It is from a Dualism such as this that there arises the distinction between the object of perception and the thing-in-itself, which Kant introduced into science, and which, to the present day, we have not succeeded in expelling. According to our interpretation, it is due to the nature of our spiritual organization that a particular thing can be given to us only as a percept. Thinking then overcomes this particularity by assigning to each percept its legitimate place in the world as a whole. As long as we determine the separated parts of the cosmos as percepts, we are simply following, in this sorting out, a law of our subjectivity. If, however, we regard all percepts, taken together, merely as one part, and contrast with this a second part, viz., the things-in-themselves, then our philosophy is building castles in the air. We are then engaged in mere playing with concepts. We construct an artificial opposition, but we can gain no content for the second of these opposites, for such a content for a particular thing can be gathered only from perception.

[ 4 ] Every kind of existence which is assumed outside the realm of percept and concept must be relegated to the sphere of unjustified hypotheses. To this category belongs the “thing-in-itself.” It is quite natural that a Dualistic thinker should be unable to find the connection between the world-principle which he hypothetically assumes and the things given in experience. For the hypothetical world-principle itself a content can be found only by borrowing it from the world of experience and shutting one's eyes to the fact of the borrowing. Otherwise it remains an empty concept, a non-concept which has only the form of a concept. In this case the Dualistic thinker generally asserts that the content of this concept is inaccessible to our knowledge. We can know only that such a content exists, but not what it is. In either case it is impossible to overcome Dualism. Even though one were to import a few abstract elements from the world of experience into the concept of the thing-in-itself, it would still remain impossible to reduce the rich concrete life of experience to those few qualities which are, after all, themselves taken from perception. Du Bois-Reymond lays it down that the imperceptible atoms of matter produce sensation and feeling by means of their position and motion, and then comes to the conclusion that we can never find a satisfactory explanation of how matter and motion produce sensation and feeling, for “it is absolutely and for ever unintelligible that it should be other than indifferent to a number of atoms of carbon, hydrogen, and nitrogen, etc., how they lie and move, how they lay and moved, or how they will lie and will move. It .is in no way intelligible how consciousness can come into existence through their interaction.” This conclusion is characteristic of the tendency of this whole trend of thought. Position and motion are abstracted from the rich world of percepts. They are then transferred to the fictitious world of atoms. And then astonishment arises that life cannot be evolved out of this self-made principle borrowed from the world of percepts.

[ 5 ] That the Dualist, working as he does with a completely empty concept of the thing-in-itself, can reach no explanation of the world, follows already from the very definition of his principle which has been given above.

[ 6 ] In any case, the Dualist finds it necessary to set impassable barriers to our faculty of knowledge. The follower of a Monistic world-conception knows that all he needs to explain any given phenomenon in the world is to be found within this world itself. What prevents him from reaching it can be only contingent limitations in space and time, or defects of his organization, i.e., not of human organization in general, but only of his own particular one.

[ 7 ] It follows from the concept of knowledge, as defined by us, that there can be no talk of limits of knowledge. Knowledge is not a concern of the universe in general, but one which men must settle for themselves. Things claim no explanation. They exist and act on one another according to laws which thinking can discover. They exist in indivisible unity with these laws. Our Egohood confronts them, grasping at first only what we have called percepts. However, within our Egohood we find the power to discover also the other part of reality. Only when the I has combined for itself the two elements of reality which are indivisibly bound up with one another in the world, is our thirst for knowledge stilled. The I has then again attained reality.

[ 8 ] The presuppositions for the arising of the act of knowledge thus exist through and for the I. It is the I which sets itself the problems of knowledge. It takes them from thinking, an element which in itself is absolutely clear and transparent. If we set ourselves questions which, we cannot answer, it must be because the content of the questions is not in all respects clear and distinct. It is not the world which sets questions to us, but we who set them.

[ 9 ] I can imagine that it would be quite impossible for me to answer a question which I happened to find written down somewhere, without knowing the sphere from which the content of the question was taken.

[ 10 ] In knowledge we are concerned with questions which arise for us through the fact that a sphere of percepts, conditioned by time, space, and our subjective organization, stands over against a sphere of concepts pointing to the totality of the universe. My task consists in reconciling these two spheres, with both of which I am well acquainted. There is no room here for speaking of limits of knowledge. It may be that, at a particular moment, this or that remains unexplained because, through our place in life, we are prevented from perceiving the things involved. What is not found to-day, however, may be found to-morrow. The limits due to these causes are only transitory, and must be overcome by the progress of perception and thinking.

[ 11 ] Dualism makes the mistake of transferring the opposition of object and subject, which has meaning only within the perceptual realm, to purely fictitious entities outside this realm. Now the distinct and separate things within the perceptual field remain separated only so long as the perceiver refrains from thinking. For thinking cancels all separation and reveals it as due to purely subjective conditions. The Dualist, therefore, transfers to entities behind the percepts determinations which, by themselves, have no absolute, but only relative, validity. He thus divides the two factors concerned in the process of knowledge, viz., percept and concept, into four: (1) the object in itself; (2) the percept which the subject has of the object; (3) the subject; (4) the concept which relates the percept to the object in itself. The relation between subject and object is “real”; the subject is really (dynamically) influenced by the object. This real process is supposed not to appear in consciousness. But it is said to evoke in the subject a response to the stimulation from the object. The result of this response is said to be the percept. This, at length, is supposed to appear in consciousness. The object is thought to have an objective (independent of the subject) reality, the percept a subjective reality. This subjective reality is said to be referred by the subject to the object. This latter reference is called an ideal one. Dualism thus divides the process of knowledge into two parts. The one part, viz., the production of the perceptual object by the thing-in-itself, he conceives of as taking place outside consciousness, whereas the other, the combination of percept with concept and the letter's reference to the thing-in-itself, takes place, according to him, within consciousness.

With such presuppositions, it is clear why the Dualist regards his concepts merely as subjective representatives of what lies before his consciousness. The objectively real process in the subject by means of which the percept is produced, and still more the objective relations between, things-in-themselves, remain for the Dualist inaccessible to direct knowledge. According to him, man can get only conceptual representatives of the objectively real. The bond of unity of things which connects them with one another, and also objectively with the individual spirit (as things-in-themselves) of each of us, lies beyond our consciousness in a Being in itself of whom, once more, we may have in our consciousness merely a conceptual representative.

[ 12 ] The Dualist believes that the whole world would be dissolved into a mere abstract scheme of concepts, did he not posit real connections beside the conceptual ones. In other words, the ideal principles which thinking discovers seem too airy for the Dualist, and he seeks, in addition, “real principles” with which to support them.

[ 13 ] Let us examine these real principles a little more closely. The naive man (Naive Realist) regards the objects of external experience as realities. The fact that his hands can grasp, and his eyes see these objects, is for him sufficient proof of their reality. “Nothing exists that cannot be perceived” is, in fact, the first axiom of the naive man; and it is held to be equally valid in its converse: “Everything which can be perceived exists.” The best proof for this assertion is the naive man's belief in immortality and in ghosts. He thinks of the soul as a fine kind of sensible matter which, in special circumstances, may actually become visible to the ordinary man (naive belief in ghosts).

[ 14 ] In contrast with this, his real world, the Naive Realist regards everything else, especially the world of Ideas, as unreal, or “merely ideal.” What we add to objects by thinking is merely thoughts about the objects. Thought adds nothing real to the percept.

[ 15 ] But it is not only with reference to the existence of things that the naive man regards sense-perception as the sole proof of reality, but also with reference to the occurrences (processes). A thing, according to him, can act on another only when a force actually present to perception issues from the one and seizes upon the other. The older physicists thought that very. fine kinds of substances emanate from the objects and penetrate through the sense-organs into the soul. The actual seeing of these substances is impossible only because of the coarseness of our sense-organs relatively to the fineness of these substances. In principle, the reason for attributing reality to these substances was the same as that for attributing it to the objects of the sensible world, viz., their form of existence, which was conceived to be analogous to that of sense reality.

[ 16 ] The self-contained character of that which is of the nature of thought is not regarded by the naive mind as real in the same sense. An object conceived “merely in Idea” is regarded as a chimera until sense-perception can furnish conviction of its reality. In short, the naive man demands, in addition to the ideal evidence of his thinking, the real evidence of his senses. In this need of the naive man lies the ground for the origin of primitive forms of the belief in revelation. The God who is given through thinking remains always a God merely “thought.” The naive consciousness demands that God should manifest Himself in ways accessible to sense-perception. God must appear in the flesh, and little value is attached to the testimony of thinking, but only to the divine nature being proved by the changing of water into wine in a way which can be testified by the senses.

[ 17 ] Even knowledge itself is conceived by the naive man as a process analogous to sense-perception. Things, it is thought, make an impression on the soul, or send out images which enter through our senses, etc.

[ 18 ] What the naive man can perceive with his senses he regards as real, and what he cannot thus perceive (God, soul, knowledge, etc.) he regards as analogous to what he perceives.

[ 19 ] On the basis of Naive Realism, science can consist only in an exact description of the content of perception. Concepts are only means to this end. They exist to provide ideal counterparts of percepts. For the things themselves they do not matter. For the Naive Realist only the individual tulips, which we see or can see, are real. The Idea of the tulip is to him an abstraction, the unreal thought-picture which the soul combines for itself out of the characteristics common to all tulips.

[ 20 ] Naive Realism, with its fundamental principle of the reality of all perceived things, contradicts experience, which teaches us that the content of percepts is of a transitory nature. The tulip I see is real to-day; in a year it will have vanished into nothingness. What persists is the species “tulip.” This species is, however, for the Naive Realist “merely” an Idea, not a reality. Thus this theory of the world finds itself in the position of seeing its realities arise and perish, while that which, by contrast with its realities, it regards as unreal, endures. Hence Naive Realism is compelled to acknowledge the existence of something ideal by the side of percepts. It must include within itself entities which cannot be perceived by the senses. In admitting them, it escapes contradicting itself by conceiving their existence as analogous to that of objects of sense. Such hypothetical realities are the invisible forces by means of which the objects of sense-perception act on one another. Another such reality is heredity, the effects of which survive the individual, and which is the reason why from the individual a new being develops which is similar to it, and by means of which the species is maintained. The life-principle permeating the organic body, the soul, is another such reality which the naive mind is always found conceiving in analogy to sense-realities. And, lastly, the Divine Being, as conceived by the naive mind, is a reality of this kind. This Being is thought of as acting in a manner exactly corresponding to that which we can perceive in man himself, i.e., the Deity is conceived anthropomorphically.

[ 21 ] Modern Physics traces sensations back to processes of the smallest particles of bodies and of an infinitely fine substance, called ether, or the like. What we experience, e.g., as warmth is a movement of the parts of a body which causes the warmth in the space occupied by that body. Here again something imperceptible is conceived on the analogy of what is perceptible. Thus, the perceptible analog to the concept “body” is, say, the interior of a room, shut in on all sides, in which elastic balls are moving in all directions, impinging one on another, bouncing on and off the walls, etc.

[ 22 ] Without such assumptions the world of Naive Realism would collapse into a disconnected chaos of percepts, without mutual relations, and having no unity within itself. It is clear, however, that Naive Realism can make these assumptions only by an inconsistency. If it would remain true to its fundamental principle, that only what is perceived is real, then it ought not to assume a reality where it perceives nothing. The imperceptible forces of which perceptible things are the bearers are, in fact, illegitimate hypotheses from the standpoint of Naive Realism. And because Naive Realism knows no other realities, it invests its hypothetical forces with perceptual content. It thus transfers a form of existence (the perceptible existence) to a sphere where the only means of making any assertion concerning such existence, viz., sense-perception, is lacking.

[ 23 ] This self-contradictory theory leads to Metaphysical Realism. The latter constructs, beside the perceptible reality, an imperceptible one which it conceives on the analogy of the former. Metaphysical Realism is, therefore, of necessity Dualistic.

[ 24 ] Wherever the Metaphysical Realist observes a relation between perceptible things (mutual approach through movement, the entrance of an object into consciousness, etc.), there he posits a reality. However, the relation which he notices can only be expressed by means of thinking, but not perceived. The ideal relation is thereupon arbitrarily imagined as something perceptible. Thus, according to this theory, the real world is composed of the objects of perception which are in ceaseless flux, arising and disappearing, and of imperceptible forces by which the perceptible objects are produced, and which are permanent.

[ 25 ] Metaphysical Realism is a heterogeneous mixture of Naive Realism and Idealism. Its hypothetical forces are imperceptible entities endowed with the qualities proper to percepts. The Metaphysical Realist has made up his mind to acknowledge, in addition to the sphere for the existence of which he has an instrument of knowledge in sense-perception, the existence of another sphere for which this instrument fails, and which can be known only by means of thinking. But he cannot make up his mind at the same time to acknowledge that the mode of existence which thinking reveals, viz., the concept (or Idea), has equal rights with percepts. If we are to avoid the contradiction of imperceptible percepts, we must admit that, for us, the relations which thinking traces between percepts can have no other mode of existence than that of concepts. If one rejects the untenable part of Metaphysical Realism, there remains the concept of the world as the sum of percepts and their conceptual (ideal) relations. Metaphysical Realism, then, merges itself in a view of the world according to which the principle of perceptibility holds for percepts, and that of conceivability for the relations between the percepts. This view of the world has no room, in addition to the perceptual and conceptual worlds, for a third sphere, in which both principles, the so-called “real” principle and the “ideal” principle, are simultaneously valid.

[ 26 ] When the Metaphysical Realist asserts that, beside the ideal relation between the perceived object and the perceiving subject, there must exist a real relation between the “thing-in-itself” of the percept and the “thing-in-itself” of the perceptible subject (i.e., of the so-called individual spirit), he is basing his assertion on the false assumption of a real process, analogous to the processes in the sense-world, but imperceptible. Further, when the Metaphysical Realist asserts that we enter into a conscious ideal relation to our world of percepts, but that to the real world we can have only a dynamic (force) relation, he repeats the mistake we have already criticized. One can talk of a dynamic relation only within the world of percepts (in the sphere of the sense of touch), but not outside that world.

[ 27 ] Let us call the view which we have just characterized, and into which Metaphysical Realism merges when it discards its contradictory elements, Monism, because it combines one-sided Realism and Idealism into a higher unity.

[ 28 ] For Naive Realism, the real world is an aggregate of objects of perception; for Metaphysical Realism, reality belongs not only to percepts but also to imperceptible forces; Monism replaces forces by ideal connections which are supplied by thinking. Such connections are the Laws of Nature. A Law of Nature is nothing but the conceptual expression for the connection of certain percepts.

[ 29 ] Monism is never called upon to ask for any other principles of explanation for reality than percepts and concepts. It knows that in the whole range of the real there is no occasion for this question. In the perceptual world, as it lies before perception, it sees one-half of reality: in the union of this world with the world of concepts it finds full reality. The Metaphysical Realist may reply to the adherent of Monism that, for our organization, our knowledge may be complete in itself, that no part may be lacking; but we do not know how the world is mirrored in an Intelligence organized differently from our own. To this the Monist will reply: Maybe there are Intelligences other than human; if their percepts are different from ours, all that concerns me is what reaches me from them through perception and concept. Through my perceiving, i.e., through this specifically human mode of perceiving, I, as subject, am confronted with the object. The connection of things is thereby broken. The subject restores this connection by means of thinking. In doing so it re-inserts itself into the context of the world as a whole. As it is only through the subject that the whole appears rent in two at the place between our percept and concept, the reunion of those two factors gives us true knowledge. For beings with a different perceptual world (e.g., if they had twice our number of sense-organs) the nexus would appear broken in another place, and the reconstruction would accordingly have to take a form specific for such beings. The question concerning the limits of knowledge exists only for Naive and Metaphysical Realism, both of which see in the contents of the soul only an ideal representative of the real world. For, to these theories, whatever falls outside the subject is something absolute, a self-contained whole, and the subject's mental content is a picture thereof which is wholly external to this absolute. The completeness of knowledge depends on the greater or lesser degree of resemblance between the picture and the absolute object. A being with fewer senses than man will perceive less of the world, one with more senses will perceive more. The former's knowledge will, therefore, be less complete than the latter's.

[ 30 ] For Monism, the situation is different. The form in which the connection of the world appears to be rent asunder into subject and object depends on the organization of the perceiving being. The object is no absolute one but merely a relative one in reference to this particular subject. The bridging of the opposition, therefore, can again take place only in the quite specific way which is characteristic of the human subject. As soon as the I, which in perception is separated from the world, again reinserts itself into the world-nexus by thinking investigation, all further questioning ceases, having been but a consequence of the separation.

[ 31 ] A differently constituted being would have a differently-constituted knowledge. Our own knowledge, suffices to answer the questions put by our own nature.

[ 32 ] Metaphysical Realism must ask: How are our percepts given? What is it that affects the subject?

[ 33 ] Monism holds that percepts are determined through the subject. But, in thinking, the subject has, at the same time, the instrument for canceling this self-produced determination.

[ 34 ] The Metaphysical Realist is faced by a further difficulty when he seeks to explain the similarity of the world-pictures of different human individuals. He has to ask himself: How is it that my picture of the world, built up out of subjectively determined percepts and out of concepts, turns out to be like that which another individual is also building up out of these same two subjective factors? How, in any case, can I draw conclusions from my own subjective picture of the world on that of another human being? The Metaphysical Realist thinks he can infer the similarity of the subjective world-pictures of different human beings from their ability to get on with one another in practical life. From this similarity of world-pictures he then infers the likeness to one another of the “Individual Spirits” underlying the single human perceiving subjects, or the “I-in-itself” underlying the subjects.

[ 35 ] We have here an inference from a sum of effects to the character of the underlying causes. We believe we can, out of a sufficiently large number of instances, recognize the case sufficiently to know how the inferred causes will act in other instances. Such an inference is called an inductive inference. We shall be obliged to modify its results, if further observation yields some unexpected element, because the character of our conclusion is, after all, determined only by the particular shape of our actual observations. The Metaphysical Realist asserts that this knowledge of causes, though relative, is quite sufficient for practical life.

[ 36 ] Inductive inference is the methodical basis of modern Metaphysical Realism. At one time it was thought that out of concepts we could evolve something that is no longer a concept. It was thought that the metaphysical real Beings, which Metaphysical Realism after all requires, could be known by means of concepts. This kind of philosophizing is now out of date. Instead it is thought that from a sufficiently large number of perceptual facts one can infer the character of the thing-in-itself which underlies these facts. Formerly it was from concepts, now it is from percepts, that people seek to evolve the metaphysical. Since one has concepts before oneself in transparent clearness, it was thought that one might deduce from them the metaphysical with absolute certainty. Percepts are not given with the same transparent clearness. Each subsequent one is a little different from others of the same kind which preceded it. Actually, therefore, anything inferred from past percepts is somewhat modified by each subsequent percept. The character of the metaphysical thus obtained can, therefore, be only relatively true, for it is open to correction by further instances. The character of von Hartmann's Metaphysics is determined by this methodological principle. The motto on the title-page of his first important book is, “Speculative results gained by the inductive method of Natural Science.”

[ 37 ] The form which the Metaphysical Realist at the present day gives to his things-in-themselves is obtained by inductive inferences. Through considerations of the process of knowledge he is convinced of the existence of an objectively-real world-nexus, over and above the “subjective” world-nexus which we know by means of percepts and concepts. The nature of this reality he thinks he can determine by inductive inferences from his percepts.

Addition to the Revised Edition, 1918

[ 38 ] The unprejudiced study of experience, in perceiving and conceiving, such as we have attempted to describe it in the preceding chapter, is liable to be disturbed again and again by certain representations which spring from the soil of natural science. Thus, taking one's stand on science, one says that the eye perceives in the spectrum colours from red to violet. But beyond violet there lie forces within the compass of the spectrum to which corresponds, not a colour perceived by the eye, but a chemical effect. Similarly, beyond the activity of red, there are rays which have only heat effects. These and similar phenomena lead, on reflection, to the view that the range of man's perceptual world is defined by the range of his senses, and that he would have before himself a very different world if he had additional, or altogether different, senses. Those who like to indulge in far-roaming fancies for which the brilliant discoveries of recent scientific research in this direction provide a highly tempting occasion, may well be led to confess that nothing enters the field of man's observation except what-can affect his senses, as these have been determined by his organization. Man has no right to regard his percepts, limited as these are by his organization, as in any way a standard to which reality must conform. Every new sense would confront him with a different picture of reality. Within its proper limits, this is a wholly justified view. But if anyone lets himself be confused by this view in the unprejudiced study of the relation of percept and concept, as set forth in these chapters, he blocks the path for himself to a knowledge of man and the world which is rooted in reality. The experiencing of the essential nature of thinking, i.e., the active appropriation of the world of concepts, is something wholly different from the experiencing of a perceptible object through the senses. Whatever additional senses man might have, not one would give him reality, if his thinking did not permeate with concepts whatever he perceived by means of such a sense. Every sense, whatever its kind, provided only it is thus permeated, enables man to live amidst the real. The fancy-picture of other perceptual worlds, made possible by other senses, has nothing to do with the problem of how man stands in the midst of reality. We must clearly understand that every perceptual picture of the world owes its form to the organization of the perceiving being, but that only that perceptual picture which has been thoroughly permeated by a thinking investigation leads us into reality. Fanciful speculations concerning how different the world would appear to other than human senses, can give us no occasion to seek for knowledge of man's relation to the world; but only the recognition that every percept presents only a part of the reality it contains, and that, consequently, it leads us away from its own proper reality. This recognition is supplemented by the further one that thinking leads us into the part of reality which the percept conceals in itself. Another difficulty in the way of the unprejudiced study of the relation we have here described, between percept and concept as elaborated by thinking, may be met with, when in the field of physical experience the necessity arises of speaking, not of immediately perceptible elements, but of non-perceptible magnitudes, such as, e.g., lines of electric or magnetic force.

It may seem as if the elements of reality of which physicists speak, had no connection either with what is perceptible, or with the concepts which active thinking has elaborated. Yet such a view would rest on self-deception. The main point is that all the results of physical research, except illegitimate hypotheses which ought to be excluded, have been gained through perceiving and conceiving. Elements which are seemingly non-perceptible, are placed by the physicists' sound instinct for knowledge into the field in which percepts lie, and they are thought of in concepts which are commonly applied in this field. The magnitudes in a field of electric or magnetic force are reached, in their essence, by no other cognitive process that the one which connects percept and concept.—An increase or a modification of human senses would yield a different perceptual picture, an enrichment or a modification of human experience. But genuine knowledge could be gained also concerning this new experience only through the mutual co-operation of concept and percept. The deepening of knowledge depends on the powers of intuition which express themselves in thinking (see p. 70). This Intuition may, in the living experience which expresses itself in thinking, dive either into deeper or shallower levels of reality. An expansion of the perceptual picture may supply stimuli for, and thus indirectly promote, this diving of intuition. But this diving into the depth, through which we attain reality, ought never to be confused with the contrast between a wider and a narrower perceptual picture, which always contains only half of reality, as that is conditioned by the structure of the cognizing organization. He who does not lose himself in abstractions will understand how for a knowledge of human nature the fact is relevant, that physics must infer the existence, in the field of percepts, of elements for which no sense is tuned as for colour or sound. Human nature, taken concretely, is determined not only by what, in virtue of his organization, man faces as immediate percept, but also by all else which he excludes from this immediate percept. Just as life needs unconscious sleep alongside of conscious waking experience, so man's experience of himself needs over and above the range of his sense-perception another sphere—and a much bigger one—of non-perceptible elements belonging to the same field from which the percepts of the senses come. All this was laid down by implication in the original argument of this book. The author adds the present amplification of the argument, because he has found by experience that some readers have not read attentively enough.

It is to be remembered, too, that the Idea of percept, developed in this book, is not to be confused with the Idea of external sense-percept which is but a special instance of the other. The reader will gather from what has preceded, but even more from what will be expounded later, that everything is here taken as “percept,” which sensuously or spiritually approaches man, so long as it has not yet been grasped by the actively elaborated concept. No “senses,” as we ordinarily understand the term, are necessary in order to have percepts of a physical or spiritual kind. It may be urged that this extension of ordinary usage is illegitimate. But the extension is absolutely necessary, unless we are to be prevented by the current sense of a word from enlarging our knowledge of certain realms of facts. He who uses “percept” only as meaning “sense-percept,” will never arrive at a concept fit for the purposes of knowledge even regarding sense-percept. It is sometimes necessary to enlarge a concept in order that it may get its appropriate meaning within a narrower field. Again, it is at times necessary to add to the original content of a concept, in order that the original concept may be justified or, perhaps, readjusted. Thus we find it said here in this book (p. 80): “A representation is an individualized concept.” It has been objected that this is an unusual use of the word. But this use is necessary if we are to find out what a representation really is. How can we expect any progress in knowledge, if everyone who finds himself compelled to readjust concepts, is to be met by the objection: “This is an unusual use of the word”?

[ 1 ] Goethe's world view attained its highest level of maturity when there arose for him the view of the two great driving wheels of nature: the significance of the concepts of polarity and of enhancement (Steigerung). (See the essay, “Commentary to the Essay Nature.”) Polarity is characteristic of the phenomena of nature insofar as we think of them as material. It consists of the fact that everything material manifests itself in two opposite states, as the magnet does in a north and a south pole. These states of matter either lie open to view or they slumber in what is material and are able to be wakened by suitable means within it. Enhancement belongs to the phenomena insofar as we think them to be spiritual. It can be observed in processes of nature that fall under the idea of development. At the various levels of development these processes show more or less distinctly in their outer manifestation the idea that underlies them. In the fruit, the idea of the plant, the law of vegetation, is only indistinctly manifest. The idea which the spirit recognizes and the perception are not similar to one another. “In the blossoms the law of vegetation comes into its highest manifestation, and the rose would again be but the pinnacle of the manifestation.” What Goethe calls enhancement consists of the bringing forth of the spiritual out of the material by creative nature. That nature is engaged “in an ever-striving ascent” means that it seeks to create forms which, in ascending order, increasingly represent the ideas of things even in outer manifestation. Goethe is of the view that “nature has no secret that it does not somewhere place naked before the eyes of the attentive observer.” Nature can bring forth phenomena from which there can be read directly the ideas applicable to a large area of related processes. It is those phenomena in which enhancement has reached its goal, in which the idea becomes immediate truth. The creative spirit of nature comes to the surface of things here; that which, in coarsely material phenomena, can only be grasped by thinking, that which can only be seen with spiritual eyes, becomes, in enhanced phenomena, visible to the physical eye. Everything sense-perceptible is here also spiritual, and everything spiritual is sense-perceptible. Goethe thinks of the whole of nature as permeated by spirit. Its forms are different through the fact that the spirit in them becomes also more or less outwardly visible. Goethe knows no dead, spiritless matter. Those things appear to be so in which the spirit of nature gives an outer form which is not similar to its ideal being. Because one spirit works both in nature and in man's inner life, man can lift himself to participation in the productions of nature. “... from the tile that falls from the roof, to the radiant lightning of the spirit which arises in you and which you communicate,” everything in the universe is for Goethe an effect, a manifestation of one creative spirit. “All the workings we take note of in experience, no matter what their nature, are interconnected in the most consistent way, pass over into one another; they undulate from the first ones to the last.” “A tile works loose from the roof: we ordinarily say this happens by chance; the tile, after all, certainly strikes the shoulders of a passerby mechanically; only, not altogether mechanically: it follows the laws of gravity and thus works physically. Ruptured bodily organs cease functioning; at that moment the fluids work chemically, the qualities of the elements emerge. But, the interrupted organic life reasserts itself just as quickly and seeks to re-establish itself; meanwhile the human entity is more or less unconscious and psychically disorganized. The person, regaining consciousness, feels himself ethically wounded to the depths; he laments his interrupted activity, no matter of what kind it might be, for no one wants to endure this patiently. Religiously, on the other hand, he can easily attribute this case to a higher destiny and regard it as saving him from far greater harm, as leading him to a higher good. This suffices for the sufferer; but the convalescent rises to his feet highly gifted, trusts God and himself and feels himself saved, really takes up also what happens by chance, turns it to, his advantage, in order to begin an eternally fresh life's cycle.” All things working in the world appear to Goethe as modifications of the spirit, and a person who immerses himself in them and observes them, from the level of chance happenings up to that of genius, lives through the metamorphosis of the spirit, from the form in which this spirit presents itself in an outer manifestation not resembling itself, up to the form in which the spirit appears in its own most archetypal form. In the sense of the Goethean world view all creative forces work in a unified way. They are a totality manifesting in successive levels of related manifoldnesses. But Goethe was never inclined to picture the unity of the world to himself as uniform. Adherents of the idea of unity often fall into the mistake of extending what can be observed in one region of phenomena out over all of nature. The mechanistic world view, for example, is in this situation. It has a particularly good eye and understanding for what can be explained mechanically. Therefore only the mechanical seems to it to be in accordance with nature. It seeks to trace even the phenomena of organic nature back to a mechanical lawfulness. A living thing is for it only a complicated form of the working together of mechanical processes. Goethe found such a world view expressed in a particularly repellent form in Holbach's Systeme de la Nature, which came into his hands in Strassburg. One matter supposedly exists from all eternity and has moved for all eternity, and now, with this motion, supposedly brings forth right and left and on all sides, without more ado, the infinite phenomena of existence. “We would indeed have been satisfied with this, if the author had really built up the world before our eyes out of his moving matter. But he might know as little about nature as we do, for as soon as he has staked up a few general concepts, he leaves nature at once, in order to transform what appears as something higher than nature or as a higher nature in nature, into a nature that is material, heavy, moving, to be sure, but still without direction or shape, and he believes that he has gained a great deal by this” (Poetry and Truth, second book). Goethe would have expressed himself in a similar way if he could have heard Du Bois-Reymond's statement (Limits to Knowing Nature, page 13): “Knowledge of nature ... is a tracing of the changes in the corporeal world back to the movements of atoms which are caused by their central forces, independent of time, or it is a dissolving of all the processes of nature into the mechanics of the atoms.” Goethe thought the different kinds of nature workings to be related to each other and as passing over into one another; but he never wanted to trace them back to one single kind. He was not striving for one abstract principle to which all the phenomena of nature should be traced, but rather he strove for observation of the characteristic way in which creative nature manifested its general lawfulness in particular forms within every single one of its realms. He did not want to force one thought form upon the whole of nature's phenomena, but rather, by living into the different thought forms, he wanted to keep his spirit as lively and pliable as nature itself is. When the feeling of the great unity of all nature's working was powerful in him, then he was a pantheist. “I for myself, with all the manifold tendencies of my nature, cannot get enough from one way of thinking; as poet and artist I am a polytheist, as natural scientist a pantheist, and am one just as positively as the other. If I need a God for my personality as a moral person, that is also already provided for” (to Jacobi, January 6, 1813). As artist, Goethe turned to those phenomena of nature in which the idea is present to direct perception. The single thing appeared here directly as divine; the world as a multiplicity of divine individualities. As natural scientist Goethe had to follow the forces of nature also into phenomena whose idea does not become visible in its individual existence. As poet he could be at peace with himself about the multiplicity of the divine; as natural scientist he had to seek the ideas of nature, which worked in a unified way. “The law, that comes into manifestation in the greatest freedom, in accordance with its most archetypal conditions, brings forth what is objectively beautiful, which, to be sure, must find worthy subjects by whom it can be grasped.” This objectively beautiful within the individual creature is what Goethe as artist wants to behold; but as natural scientist he wants “to know the laws according to which universal nature wants to act.” Polytheism is the way of thinking which sees and reveres something spiritual in the single thing; pantheism is the other way, which grasps the spirit of the whole. Both ways of thinking can exist side by side; the one or the other comes into play according to whether one's gaze is directed upon nature's wholeness, which is life and sequence out of a center, or upon those individuals in which nature unites in one form what it as a rule spreads out over a whole realm. Such forms arise when, for example, the creative forces of nature, after “thousandfold plants,” make yet one more, in which “all the others are contained,” or “after thousandfold animals make one being which contains them all: man.”

[ 2 ] Goethe once made the remark: “Whoever has learned to understand them (my writings) and my nature in general will have to admit after all that he has won a certain inner freedom” (Conversations with Chancellor F. von Mueller, January 5, 1831). With this he was pointing to the working power which comes into play in all human striving to know. As long as man stops short at perceiving the antitheses around him and at regarding their laws as principles implanted in them by which they are governed, he has the feeling that they confront him a! unknown powers, which work upon him and impose upon hill the thoughts of their laws. He feels himself to be unfree with respect to the things; he experiences the lawfulness of nature as rigid necessity into which he must fit himself. Only when man becomes aware that the forces of nature are nothing other than forms of the same spirit which also works in himself does the insight arise in him that he does partake of freedom. The lawfulness of nature is experienced as compelling only as long as one regards it as an alien power. Living into its being, one experiences it as a power which one also exercises in one's own inner life; one experiences oneself as a productive element working along with the becoming and being of things. One is on intimate terms with any power that has to do with becoming. One has taken up into one's own doing what one otherwise experiences only as outer incentive. This is the process of liberation which is effected by the act of knowledge, in the sense of the Goethean world view. Goethe clearly perceived the ideas of nature's working as he encountered them in Italian works of art. He had a clear experience also of the liberating effect whiM the possession of these ideas has upon man. A result of this experience is his description of that kind of knowledge which he characterizes as that of encompassing individuals. “The encompassing ones, whom one in a prouder sense could call the creative ones, conduct themselves productively in the highest sense; insofar, namely, as they take their start from ideas, they express already the unity of the whole, and afterward it is in a certain way up to nature to fit in with this idea.” But Goethe never got to the point of having a direct view of the act of liberation itself. Only that person can have this view who in his knowing is attentive to himself. Goethe, to be sure, practiced the highest kind of knowledge; but he did not observe this kind of knowledge in himself. He admits to himself, after all:

“How did you get so very far?
They say you have done it all wonderfully well!”
My child! In this I have been smart;
I never have thought about thinking at all.

[ 3 ] But just as the creative nature forces, “after thousandfold plants,” make still one more in which “all the others are contained,” so do they also, after thousandfold ideas, bring forth still one more in which the whole world of ideas is contained. And man grasps this idea when, to his perception of the other things and processes he adds that of thinking as well. Just because Goethe's thinking was continuously filled with the objects of perception, because his thinking was a perceiving, his perceiving a thinking, he could not come to the point of making thinking itself into an object of thinking. One attains the idea of freedom, however, only by looking at thinking. Goethe did not make the distinction between thinking about thinking and looking at thinking. Otherwise he would have attained the insight that one, precisely in the sense of his world view, could very well reject thinking about thinking, but that one could nevertheless come to a beholding of the thought world. Man is uninvolved in the coming about of everything else he sees. The ideas of what he sees arise in him. But these ideas would not be there if there were not present in him the productive power to bring them to manifestation. Even though ideas are the conten1 of what works within the things, they come into manifest existence through human activity. Man can therefore know the intrinsic nature of the world of ideas only if he looks at his activity. With everything else he sees he penetrates only into the idea at work in it; the thing, in which the idea works, remains as perception outside of his spirit. When he looks at the idea, what is working and what is brought forth are both entirely contained within his inner life. He has the entire process totally present if his inner life. What he sees no longer appears as brought ford by the idea; for what he sees is itself now idea. To see something bringing forth itself is, however, to see freedom. In observing his thinking man sees into world happening. Here he does no have to search after an idea of this happening, for this happening is the idea itself. What one otherwise experiences as the unity of what is looked at and the ideas is here the experiencing of the spirituality of the world of ideas become visible. The person who beholds this self-sustaining activity feels freedom. Goethe in fact experienced this feeling, but did not express it in its highest form. In his looking at nature he exercised a free activity, but this activity never became an object of perception for him. He never saw behind the scenes of human knowing and therefore never took up into his consciousness the idea of world happening in its most archetypal form, in its highest metamorphosis. As soon as a person attains a view of this metamorphosis, he then conducts himself with sureness in the realm of things. In the center of his personality he has won the true starting point for all consideration of the world. He will no longer search for unknown foundations, for the causes lying outside him, of things; he knows that the highest experience of which he is capable consists of self-contemplation of his own being. Whoever is completely permeated with the feelings which this experience calls forth will gain the truest relationships to things. A person for whom this is not the case will seek the highest form of existence elsewhere, and, since he cannot find it within experience, will suppose it to be in an unknown region of reality. Uncertainty will enter into his considerations of things; in answering the questions which nature poses him, he will continually call upon something he cannot investigate. Because, through his life in the world of ideas, Goethe had a feeling of the firm center within his personality, he succeeded, within certain limits, in arriving at sure concepts in his contemplation of nature. But because he lacked a direct view of his innermost experiences, he groped about uncertainly outside these limits. For this reason he says that man is not born “to solve the problems of the world but in fact to seek where the problem begins, and then to keep oneself within the limits of what is understandable.” He says, “Kant has unquestionably been of most use in his drawing of the limits to which the human spirit is capable of penetrating, and through the fact that he J unsolvable problems lie.” If a view of man's highest experience! had given him certainty in his contemplation of things, then he would have been able to do more along his path than “through regulated experience, to attain a kind of qualified trustworthiness.” Instead of proceeding straight ahead through his experiences in the consciousness that the true has significance only insofar as it is demanded by human nature, he still arrives at the conviction that a “higher influence helps those who are steadfast, active, understanding, disciplined and disciplining, humane, devout” and that “the moral world order” manifests itself most beautifully where it “comes indirectly to the aid of the good person, of the courageously suffering person.”

[ 4 ] Because Goethe did not know the innermost human' experience, it was not possible for him to attain the ultimate thoughts about the moral world order which necessarily belong to his view of nature. The ideas of the things are the content of what works and creates within the things. Man experiences moral ideas directly in the form of ideas. Whoever is able to experience how, in his beholding of the world of ideas, the ideal element itself becomes content, fills itself with itself, is also in a position to experience the production of the moral within human nature. Whoever knows the ideas of nature only in their relation to the world we behold will also want to relate moral concepts to something external to them. He will seek for these concepts a reality similar to that which is present for concepts won from experience. But whoever is able to view ideas in their most essential being will become aware, with moral ideas, that nothing external corresponds to them, that they are directly produced as ideas in spiritual experience. It is clear to him that neither a divine will, working only outwardly, nor a moral world order of a like sort are at work to produce these ideas. For there is in them nothing to be seen of any relation to such powers! Everything they express is also contained within their spiritually experienced pure idea-form. Only through their own content do they work upon man as moral powers. No categorical imperative stands behind them with a whip and forces man to follow them. Man feels that he himself has brought them forth and loves them the way one loves one's child. Love is the motive of his action. The spiritual pleasure in one's own creation is the source of the moral.

[ 5 ] There are people who are unable to produce any moral ideas. They take up into themselves the moral ideas of other people through tradition, and if they have no ability to behold ideas as such, they do not recognize the origin, experienceable in the spirit, of the moral. They seek it in a supra-human will outside themselves. Or they believe that there exists, outside the spirit world which man experiences, an objective moral world order from which the moral ideas stem. The speech organ of that world order is often sought in the conscience of man. As with certain things in the rest of his world view, Goethe is also uncertain in his thoughts about the origin of the moral. Here also his feeling for what is in accord with ideas brings forth statements which are in accord with the demands of his nature. “Duty: where one loves what one commands oneself to do.” Only a person who sees the foundations of the moral purely in the content of moral ideas should say: “Lessing, who resentfully felt many a limitation, has one of his characters say, ‘No one has to have to.’ A witty jovial man said, ‘Whoever wants to has to.’ A third, admittedly a cultivated person, added, ‘Whoever has insight, also wants to.’ And in this way it was believed that the whole circle of knowing, wanting, and having to had been closed. But in the average case, man's knowledge, no matter what kind it is, determines what he does or doesn't do; for this reason there is also nothing worse than to see ignorance in action.” The following statement shows that in Goethe a feeling for the true nature of the moral held sway, but did not rise into clear view: “In order to perfect itself the will must, in its moral life, give itself over to conscience which does not err ... Conscience needs no ancestor; with conscience everything is given; it has to do only with one's own inner world.” To state that conscience needs no ancestor can only mean that man does not originally find within himself any moral content; he gives this content to himself. Other statements stand in contrast to these, setting the origin of the moral into a region outside man: “Man, no matter how much the earth attracts him with its thousand upon thousand manifestations, nevertheless lifts up his gaze longingly toward heaven ... because he feels deeply and clearly within himself that he is a citizen of that spiritual realm which we are not able to deny nor give up our belief.” “We leave to God, as the all-determining and all-liberating Being, what is totally insoluble.”

[ 6 ] Goethe lacks the organ for the contemplation of man's innermost nature, for self-perception. “I hereby confess that from the beginning the great and significant sounding task, Know thou thyself, has always seemed suspect to me, as a ruse of secretly united priests who wanted to confuse man with unattainable demands and to seduce him away from activity in the outer world into an inner false contemplation. Man knows himself only insofar as he knows the world which he becomes aware of only within himself and himself only within it. Every new object which we really look at opens up a new organ within us.” Exactly the reverse of this is true: man knows the world only insofar as he knows himself. For in his inner life there reveals itself in its most archetypal form what is present to view in outer things only in reflection, in example, symbol. What man otherwise can only speak of as something unfathomable, undiscoverable, divine, comes into view in its true form in self-perception. Because in self-perception he sees what is ideal in its direct form, he gains the strength and ability to seek out and recognize this ideal element also in all outer phenomena, in the whole of nature. Someone who has experienced the moment of self-perception no longer thinks in terms of seeking some “hidden” God behind phenomena: he grasps the divine in its different metamorphoses in nature. Goethe remarked, with respect to Schelling: “I would see him more often if I did not still hope for poetic moments; philosophy destroys poetry for me, and does so for the good reason that it drives me to the object because I can never remain purely speculative but must seek right away a perception for every principle and therefore flee right away out into nature.” He was in fact not able to find the highest perception, the perception of the world of ideas itself. This perception cannot destroy poetry, for it only frees one's spirit from all supposition that there might be an unknown, unfathomable something in nature. But for this reason it makes him capable of giving himself over entirely, without preconceptions, to things; for it gives him the conviction that everything can be drawn from nature that the spirit can ever want from it.

[ 7 ] But this highest perception liberates man's spirit also from all one-sided feeling of dependency. He feels himself, through having this view, to be sovereign in the realm of the moral world order. He knows that the driving power which brings forth everything works in his inner life as within his own will, and that the highest decisions about morality lie within himself. For these highest decisions flow out of the world of moral ideas, in whose production the soul of man is present. Even though a person may feel himself restricted in part, may also be dependent upon a thousand things, on the whole he sets himself his moral goal and his moral direction. What is at work in all other things comes to manifestation in the human being as idea; what is at work in him is the idea which he himself brings forth. In every single human individuality a process occurs that plays itself out in the whole of nature: the creation of something actual out of the idea. And the human being himself is the creator. For upon the foundation of his personality there lives the idea which gives a content to itself. Going beyond Goethe one must broaden his principle that nature is “great enough in the wealth of its creation to make, after thousandfold plants, one in which all the others are contained, and to make, after thousandfold animals, one being that contains them all: man.” Nature is so great in its creation that it repeats in every human individual the process by which it brings forth freely out of the idea all creatures, repeats it through the fact that moral actions spring from the ideal foundation of the personality. Whatever a person also feels to be an objective reason for his action is only a transcribing and at the same time a mistaking of his own being. The human being realizes himself in his moral actions. Max Stirner has expressed this knowledge in lapidary words in his book, The Single Individual and What Is His Own. “It lies in my power to be my own person, and this is so when I know myself as a single individual. Within the single individual even someone who is his own person returns to the creative nothingness out of which he is born. Every higher being over me, be it God or man, weakens the feeling of my singleness and pales only before the sun of this consciousness. If I base my affairs upon myself, the single individual, then they rest upon their own transitory mortal creator, who devours himself, and I can say that I have based my affairs upon nothing.” But at the same time one can tell this Stirnerian spirit what Faust told Mephistopheles: “In your nothingness I hope to find my all,” for there dwells in my inner life in an individual form the working power by which nature creates the universe. As long as a person has not beheld this working power within himself, he will appear with respect to it the way Faust did with respect to the earth spirit. This working power will always call out to him the words, “You resemble the spirit that you can grasp, not me!” Only the beholding of one's deepest inner life conjures up this spirit, who says of itself:

In the tides of life, in action's storm,
Up and down I wave,
To and fro weave free,
Birth and the grave,
An infinite sea,
A varied weaving,
A radiant living,
Thus at Time's humming loom it's my hand that prepares
The robe ever-living the Deity wears,
(Priest's translation)

[ 8 ] I have tried to present in my Philosophy of Spiritual Activity how knowledge of the fact that man in his doing is based upon himself comes from the most inward experience, from the beholding of his own being. In 1844 Stirner defended the view that man, if he truly understands himself, can see only in himself the basis for his activity. With Stirner, however, this knowledge does not arise from a beholding of his innermost experience but rather from the feeling of freedom and independence from all world powers that require coercion. Stirner stops short at demanding freedom; he is led in this area to put the bluntest possible emphasis upon the human nature which is based upon itself. I am trying to describe the life in freedom on a broader basis, by showing what man sees when he looks into the foundation of his soul. Goethe did not go as far as to behold freedom, because he had an antipathy for self-knowledge. If that had not been the case, then knowledge of man as a free personality founded upon himself would have had to be the peak of his world view. The germ of this knowledge is to be found everywhere in his works; [ 9 ] it is at the same time the germ of his view of nature. In his actual nature studies Goethe never speaks of unexplorable foundations, of hidden driving Powers of phenomena. He contents himself with observing the phenomena in their sequence and of explaining them with the help of those elements which, during observation, reveal themselves to the senses and to the spirit. In this vein he writes to Jacobi on May 5, 1786 that he has the courage “to devote his whole life to the contemplation of the things which he can hope to reach” and of whose being “he can hope to form an adequate idea,” without bothering himself in the least about how far he will get and about what is cut out for him. A person who believes he can draw near to the divine in the individual objects of nature no longer needs to form a particular mental picture for himself of a God that exists outside of and beside the things. It is only when Goethe leaves the realm of nature that his feeling for the being of things no longer holds up. Then his lack of human self-knowledge leads him to make assertions which are reconcilable neither with his inborn way of thinking nor with the direction of his nature studies. Someone who is inclined to cite these assertions might assume that Goethe believed in an anthropomorphic God and in the individual continuation of that life-form of the soul which is bound up with the conditions of the physical bodily organization. Such a belief stands in contradiction to Goethe's nature studies. They could never have taken the direction they did if in them Goethe had allowed himself to be determined by this belief. It lies totally in the spirit of his nature studies to think the being of the human soul such that, after laying aside the body, it lives in a supersensible form of existence. This form of existence requires that the soul, because of different life requirements, also take on a different kind of consciousness from the one it has through the physical body. In this way the Goethean teaching of metamorphosis leads also to the view of metamorphoses of soul life. But this Goethean idea of immortality can be regarded correctly only if one knows that Goethe had not been able to be led by his world view to an unmetamorphosed continuation of that spiritual life which is determined by the physical body. Because Goethe, in the sense indicated here, did not attempt to view his life of thought, he was also not moved in his further life's course to develop particularly this idea of immortality which would be the continuation of his thoughts on metamorphosis. This idea, however, would in truth be what would follow from his world view with respect to this region of knowledge. Whatever expression he gave to a personal feeling about the view of life of this or that contemporary, or out of any other motivation, without his thinking thereby of the connection to the world view won through his nature studies, may not be brought forward as characteristic of Goethe's idea of immortality.

[ 10 ] For the evaluation of a Goethean statement within the total picture of his world view there also comes into consideration the fact that his mood of soul in his different stages of life gives particular nuances to such statements. He was fully conscious of these changes in the form of expression of his ideas. When Foerster expressed the view that the solution to the Faust problem is to be found in the words, “A good man is in his dim impulse well aware of his right path,” Goethe responded, “That would be rationalism. Faust ends up as an old man, and in old age we become mystics.” And in his prose aphorisms we read, “A certain philosophy answers to each age of man. The child appears as realist; for he finds himself as convinced of the existence of pears and apples as of his own. The youth, assailed by inner passions, must take notice of himself, feel his way forward; he is transformed into an idealist. On the other hand the grown man has every reason to become a skeptic; he does well to doubt whether the means he has chosen for his purpose are indeed the right ones. Before acting and in acting he has every reason to keep his intellect mobile, so that afterward he does not have to feel badly about a wrong choice. The old man, however, will always adhere to mysticism; he sees that so much seems to depend upon chance; what is unreasonable succeeds; what is reasonable goes amiss; fortune and misfortune turn unexpectedly into the same thing; it is so, it was so, and old age attains peace in what is, what was, and will be.”

[ 11 ] I am focusing in this book upon the world view of Goethe out of which his insights into the life of nature have grown and which was the driving force in him from his discovery of the intermaxillary bone in man up to the completion of his studies on color. And I believe I have shown that this world view corresponds more perfectly to the total personality of Goethe than does any compilation of statements in which one would have to take into account how such thoughts are colored by the mood of his youthful period or by that of his old age. I believe that Goethe in his studies of nature, although not guided by a clear self-knowledge in accord with ideas, was guided by a right feeling and did observe a free way of working which flowed from a true relationship between human nature and the outer world. Goethe is himself clear about the fact that there is something incomplete about his way of thinking: “I was aware of having great and noble purposes but could never understand the determining factors under which I worked; I was well aware of what I lacked, and likewise of what I had too much of; therefore I did not cease to develop myself, outwardly and from within. And still it was as before. I pursued every purpose with earnestness, force, and faithfulness; in doing so I often succeeded in completely overcoming stubborn conditions but also often foundered because I could not learn to give in and to go around. And so my life went by this way, in doing and enjoying, in suffering and resisting, in the love, contentment, hatred, and disapproval of others. Find yourself mirrored here whoever's destiny was the same.”

[ 1 ] We have established that the elements needed for the explanation of reality are to be taken from the two spheres: perceiving and thinking. As we have seen, it is because of our organization that full, total reality, including our own subject, appears to us at first as a duality. The activity of knowing overcomes this duality inasmuch as, out of the two elements of reality—i.e., out of the perception and out of the concept produced by thinking—it joins together the complete thing. Let us call the way in which the world approaches us, before it has gained its rightful form through out knowing activity, “the world of appearance” in contrast to the entity composed, in a unified way, of perception and concept. Then we may say that the world is given us as a duality (dualistic), and our activity of knowing elaborates it into a unity (monistic.) A philosophy which takes its starting point from this basic principle may be designated as a monistic philosophy or monism. Confronting this view there stands the two-world theory or dualism. This latter assumes, not just two sides of one unified reality, merely kept part by our organization, but rather two worlds absolutely different from each other. It then seeks principles of explanation for one of these worlds within the other.

[ 2 ] Dualism is based on an incorrect understanding of what we call knowledge. It separates the whole of existence into two regions, each of which has its own laws, and lets these regions stand over against one another outwardly.

[ 3 ] Out of such a dualism has sprung the differentiation between the object of perception and the “thing-in-itself” which, through Kant, has been introduced into science and to the present day has not been expelled from it. According to our expositions, it lies in the nature of our spiritual organization that a particular thing can be given only as a perception. Our thinking then overcomes the separateness of the thing by assigning to each perception its lawful place within the world whole. As long as the separated parts of the world whole are designated as perceptions, we are simply following, in this separating out, a law of our subjectivity. But if we consider the sum total of all perceptions to be one part, and then place over against this part a second one in the “things-in-themselves,” we are philosophizing off into the blue. Then we are merely playing with concepts. We are constructing an artificial polarity, but cannot gain any content for the second part of it, because such a content for a particular thing can be drawn only from perception.

[ 4 ] Any kind of existence which is assumed outside the region of perception and concept is to be assigned to the sphere of unjustified hypotheses. The “thing-in-itself” belongs in this category. It is of course completely natural that the dualistic thinker cannot find the connection between his hypothetically assumed world principle and what is given in an experienceable way. A content for his hypothetical world principle can be gained only if one borrows it from the world of experience and deceives oneself about so doing. Otherwise his hypothetical world principle remains a concept devoid of any content, a non-concept which only has the form of a concept. The dualistic thinker usually asserts then that the content of this concept is inaccessible to our knowledge; we can only know that such a content is present, not what is present. In both cases the overcoming of dualism is impossible. If one brings a few abstract elements from the world of experience into the concept of the thing-in-itself, it still remains impossible, in spite of this, to reduce the rich concrete life of experience down to a few characteristics which themselves are only taken from this perception. Du Bois-Reymond thinks that the unperceivable atoms of matter, through their position and motion, produce sensation and feeling, and then comes to the conclusion that we can never arrive at a satisfactory explanation as to how matter and motion produce sensation and feeling, for “it is, indeed, thoroughly and forever incomprehensible that it should not be a matter of indifference to a number of atoms of carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, etc. how they lie and move, how they lay and moved, how will lie and move. There is no way to understand how consciousness could arise out of their interaction.” This conclusion is characteristic for this whole trend of thought. Out of the rich world of perceptions are isolated: position and motion. These are carried over and applied to the imagined world of atoms. Then astonishment sets in about the fact that one cannot unfold concrete life out of his principle, which one has made oneself and which is borrowed from the world of perception.

[ 5 ] That the dualist, working with a concept which is completely devoid of any content, of “in-itself,” can come to no elucidation of the world, follows already from the definition of his principle presented above.

[ 6 ] In any case, the dualist sees himself compelled to set insurmountable barriers before our ability to know. The adherent of a monistic world view knows that everything he needs to explain any given phenomenon of the world must lie within the sphere of this phenomenon given him. What might hinder him from attaining this explanation can only be barrier or shortcomings of his organization which chance to be there because of his time or place. And these are, in fact, not barriers and shortcomings of the human organization in general, but only of his particular individual one.

[ 7 ] It follows from the concept of the activity of knowing, as we have determined this concept to be, that limits to knowledge cannot be spoken of. The activity of knowing is not a general concern of the world, but rather is a business which the human being has to settle with himself. Things demand no explanation. They exist and affect each other according to the laws which are discoverable through thinking. They exist in inseparable oneness with these laws. Our selfhood approaches the things then, and at first grasps only that part of them which we have called perception. But within the inner being of this selfhood, the power is to be found with which to find also the other part of reality. Only when my selfhood has united, also for itself, the two elements of reality which in the world are inseparably joined, is the satisfaction of knowledge then present: the “I” has attained reality again.

[ 8 ] The preconditions for the coming into existence of the activity of knowing are therefore through and for the “I.” The latter poses for itself the questions of knowing activity. And my “I” takes them, in fact, from the element of thinking, which is entirely clear and transparent in itself. If we pose ourselves questions which we cannot answer, then the content of the question must not be clear and definite in all its parts. It is not the world which poses us questions, but rather we ourselves who pose them.

[ 9 ] I can imagine that I would lack any possibility of answering a question that I found written down somewhere, without knowing from which sphere the content of the question has been taken.

[ 10 ] Our knowledge is concerned with questions that are posed us through the fact that, over against a sphere of perception which is determined by place, time, and my subjective organization, there stands a conceptual sphere which points to the totality of the world. My task consists in reconciling these two spheres, both well known to me, with each other. A limit to knowledge cannot be spoken of here. This or that can at some time or other remain unexplained because we are hindered by our place in life from perceiving the things that are at work there. What is not found today, however, can be found tomorrow. The barriers erected in this way are only transitory ones which, with the progress of perception and thinking, can be overcome.

[ 11 ] Dualism makes the mistake of transferring the antithesis of object and subject, which has significance only within the realm of perception onto purely imaginary entities outside the realm of perception. But since the things, which are separated within the horizon of perception, are separate from each other only as long as the perceiving person refrains from thinking, which removes all separation and lets it be known as a merely subjectively determined one, the dualist transfers onto entities behind our perceptions characteristics which, even for these perceptions, have no absolute validity, but only a relative one. He thereby divides the two factors which come into consideration for the process of knowledge, perception and concept, into four: 1. the object-in-itself; 2. the perception which the subject has of the objects; 3, the subject; 4. the concept which relates the perception to the object-in-itself. The relation between the object and the subject is a real one; the subject is really (dynamically) influenced by the object. The real process is said not to fall within our consciousness. This real process, however, is said to evoke in the subject a counter-effect to the effect coming from the object. The result of this counter-effect is said to be the perception. This is what first falls within our consciousness. The object is said to have an objective reality (independent of the subject), the perception is subjective reality. This subjective reality is said to relate the subject to the object. This latter relation is said to be an ideal one. Dualism thus splits the process of knowledge into two parts. The one part, creation of the object of perception out of the “thing-in-itself,” dualism lets take place outside our consciousness; the other part, connection of the perception with the concept and the relation of the concept to the object, dualism lets take place inside our consciousness. With these presuppositions it is clear that the dualist believes he can gain in his concepts only subjective representations of what lies in front of his consciousness. The objectively real process in the subject, through which the perception comes about, and all the more so, the objective interrelationships of the “things-in-themselves,” remain unknowable in any direct way for such a dualist; in his opinion the human being can only create for himself conceptual representations of what is objectively real. The bond of unity among things, which joins these things with one another and objectively with our individual spirit (as “thing-in-itself”), lies beyond our consciousness in an existence-in-itself of which we would likewise only be able to have a conceptual representation within our consciousness.

[ 12 ] Dualism believes it would rarify the whole world into an abstract conceptual pattern if it did not affirm, besides the conceptual relationships of objects, real relationships as well. In other words, the ideal principles to be found through thinking appear to the dualist to be too airy, and he seek in addition to them real principles by which they can be supported.

[ 13 ] Let us take a closer look at these real principles. The naive person (naive realist) regards the objects of outer experiences are realities. The fact that he can grasp these things with his hands and see them with his eyes, is for him valid proof of their reality. “Nothing exists the one cannot perceive,” is to be regarded as precisely the first axiom of the naive person, and it is accepted just as much in its reverse form: “Everything that can be perceived, exists.” The best proof for this assertion is the naive person's believe in immortality and spirits. He pictures the soul to himself as fine physical matter, which under particular conditions can become visible, even to the ordinary person (naive belief in ghosts).

[ 14 ] Compared to his real world, everything else for the naive realist, particularly the world of ideas, is unreal, “merely ideal.” What we bring to the objects in thinking, that is mere thought about things. Our thought adds nothing real to our perception.

[ 15 ] However, not only with respect to the existence of things does the naive person consider sense perception to be the only testimony of reality, but also with respect to processes. A thing can, in his view, only work upon another when a force present to sense perception goes forth from the one thing that lays hold of the other. Earlier physics believed that extremely fine substances stream out of material bodies and penetrate through out sense organs into the soul. The actual seeing of these substances is impossible only because of the coarseness of our senses compared with the fineness of these substances. In principle one granted reality to these substances for the same reason one grants it to the objects of the sense world, namely, because of their form of existence which was thought to be analogous to that of sense-perceptible reality.

[ 16 ] The self-sustained being of what is ideally experienceable is not regarded by the naive consciousness as real in the same sense as what is experienceable by the senses. An object grasped in a “mere idea” is regarded as a mere chimera until conviction as to its reality can be given through sense perception. The naive person demands, to put it briefly, in addition to the ideal testimony of his thinking, the real testimony of his senses as well. In this need of the naive person lies the basis for the rise of the primitive forms of belief in revelation. The God who is given through thinking remains, to the naive consciousness, always a God who is only “thought.” The naive consciousness demands a manifestation through means which are accessible to sense perception. God must appear in bodily form, and one wants to attach little value to the testimony of thinking but only to such things as proof of divinity through changing water into wine, which is verifiable by sense perception.

[ 17 ] The naive person also pictures the activity of knowing as an occurrence analogous to the sense process. The things make an impression in the soul, or they send out pictures which penetrate through the senses, and so on.

[ 18 ] That which the naive person can perceive with his senses, he regards as real, and that of which he has no perception (God, soul, knowing, etc.) he pictures to himself as analogous to what is perceived.

[ 19 ] If naive realism wants to found a science, it can view such a science only as the exact description of the content of perception. Concepts are for it only means to an end. They are there in order to create ideal reflections of our perceptions. For the things themselves they mean nothing. Then naive realist regards as real only the individual tulips which are seen, or can be seen; he regards the one idea of tulip as an abstraction, as the unreal thought pictures which the soul has composed for itself out of the features which all tulips have in common.

[ 20 ] Experience, which teaches us that the content of our perceptions is of a transitory nature, refutes naive realism and its basic principle that everything which is perceived is real. The tulip that I see is real today; in a year it will have vanished into nothingness. What has maintained itself is the species tulip. But this species, for naive realism is “only” an idea, not a reality. Thus this world view finds itself in the situation of seeing its realities come and then vanish, while what it holds to be unreal maintains itself in the face of what is real. Therefore the naive realist must also allow, besides his perceptions, something else of an ideal nature to play its part. He must take up into himself entities which he cannot perceive with his senses. He comes to terms with this in that he thinks the form of existence of these entities to be analogous to that of sense objects. Such hypothetically assumed realities are the invisible forces through which sense-perceptible things act upon each other. One such thing is heredity, which transcends the individual, and which is the reason why, out of one individual, a new one develops, similar to it, through which the species maintains itself. Another such thing is the life principle permeating the bodily organism; another is the soul, for which the person of naive consciousness always finds a concept analogous to sense realities; and still another, finally, is the Divine Being of the naive person. This Divine Being is thought to be active in a way that corresponds exactly to what can be perceived of how the human being himself is active; anthropomorphically.

[ 21 ] Modern physics traces sense impressions back to processes of the smallest parts of bodies and of an infinitely fine substance, of ether, or to something similar. What we, for example, experience as warmth is the motion of a body's parts within the space taken up by the body causing the warmth. Here also something unperceivable is again thought of an analogous to what is perceivable. The sense-perceptible analogy to the concept “body” is in this sense something like the interior of space enclosed on all sides, within which elastic balls are moving in all direction, striking each other, bouncing on and off the walls and so on.

[ 22 ] Without such assumptions the world would disintegrate for naive realism into an incoherent aggregate of perceptions without mutual relationships, that comes together in no kind of unity. It is clear, however, that naive realism can only come to this assumption through an inconsistency. If it wants to remain true to its basic principle that only what is perceived is real, then it ought not, after all, assume something real where it perceives nothing. The unperceivable forces which emanate from perceivable things are actually unjustified hypotheses from the standpoint of naive realism. And because it knows of no other realities, it endows its hypothetical forces with perceptible content. It therefore applies one form of being (that of perceptible existence) to a region where it lacks the means which alone has anything to say about this form of being: sense perception.

[ 23 ] This self-contradictory world view leads to metaphysical realism. This constructs, besides perceivable reality, still another unperceivable one, which it thinks of as analogous to the first. Metaphysical realism is therefore necessarily dualism.

[ 24 ] Wherever metaphysical realism notices a relationship between perceivable things (movement toward something, becoming aware of something objective, and so on), there it postulates a reality. But the relationship which it notices, it can express only through thinking; it cannot perceive the relationship. The ideal relationship is arbitrarily made into something similar to what is perceivable. So for this trend of thought, the real world is composed of the objects of perception, which are in eternal becoming, which come and then vanish, and of the unperceivable forces by which the objects of perception are brought forth and which are what endure.

[ 25 ] Metaphysical realism is a contradictory mixture of naive realism and idealism. Its hypothetical forces are unperceivable entities with the qualities of perceptions. It has decided—besides the region of the world for whose form of existence it has a means of knowledge in perception—to allow yet another region to exist, where this means fails, and which can be discovered only by means of thinking. But metaphysical realism cannot at the same time bring itself also to acknowledge the form of being which thinking communicates to it, the concept (the idea), as an equally valid factor along with perception. If one wants to avoid the contradiction of the unperceivable perception, one must acknowledge that, for the relationship between perceptions which is communicated through thinking, there is no other form of existence for us than that of the concept. When one throws out the unjustified part of metaphysical realism, the world presents itself as the sum total of perceptions and their conceptual (ideal) relationships. Then metaphysical realism flows over into a world view which demands, for perception, the principle of perceivability, and for the interrelationships among perceptions, thinkability. This world view can grant no credibility to a third region of the world—besides the perceptual world and the conceptual one—for which both principles, the so-called real principle and the ideal principle, have validity at the same time.

[ 26 ] When metaphysical realism asserts that, besides the ideal relationship between the object of perception and in perceiving subject, there must exist in addition a real relationship between the “thing-in-itself” of the perception and the “thing-in-itself” of the perceivable subject (of the so-called individual spirit), then this assertion rests upon the incorrect assumption of an unperceivable real process analogous to the processes of the sense world. When metaphysical realism states further that I come into a consciously ideal relationship with my world of perception, but that I can only come into a dynamic (force) relationship with the real world—then one commits no less the error already criticized. One can speak of a relationship between forces only within the world of perception (in the sphere of the sense of touch), but not outside it.

[ 27 ] We shall call the world view characterized above, into which metaphysical realism finally flows when it strips of its contradictory elements, monism, because this world view joins one-sided realism with idealism into a higher unity.

[ 28 ] For naive realism the real world is a sum of objects of perception; for metaphysical realism, reality is also ascribed to the unperceivable forces, as well as to perceptions; monism replace the forces with the ideal connections which it gains through thinking. Such connections, however, are the laws of nature. A law of nature is indeed nothing more than the conceptual expression for the connection between certain perceptions.

[ 29 ] Monism is never put in the position of asking for other principles of explanation for reality besides perception and concept. It knows that within the entire domain of reality there is no cause to do so. It sees in the world of perception, as this is directly present to perception, something half real; in uniting the world of perception with the conceptual world it finds the full reality. The metaphysical realist may object to the adherent of monism: It might be the case that for your organization your knowledge is complete in itself, that no part is mission; but you do not know how the world is mirrored in an intelligence organized differently from yours. Monism's answer would be: If there are intelligences other than human ones, and if their perceptions have another form than ours do, then only that has significance for me which reaches me from them through perception and concept. Through my perception, and indeed through my specifically human perception, I am placed as subject over against the object. The connection of things is thereby broken. The subject re-establishes this connection through thinking. It has thereby united itself again with the world whole. Since it is only by our subject that this whole seems to be split at a place between our perception and our concept, so it is that in the reuniting of these two true knowledge is also given. For beings with a different world of perception (for example, with twice our number of sense organs) the connection would appear to be broken at a different place, and its re-establishment would accordingly also have to take a form specific to those beings. Only for naive and metaphysical realism, which both see in the content of the soul only an ideal representation of the world, does the question of a limit to knowledge arise. For them, what is outside the subject is something absolute, something self-contained, and the content of the subject is a picture of it and stands totally outside this absolute. The completeness of one's knowledge depends upon the greater or lesser similarity of one's picture to the absolute object. A being whose number of senses is smaller than man's will perceive less of the world; a being with a larger number, more of it. The former accordingly will have a less complete knowledge than the latter.

[ 30 ] Monism sees the matter differently. Through the organization of the perceiving entity, the form is determined as to where the coherency of the world appears torn apart into subject and object. The object is not something absolute, but only something relative with respect to this particular subject. Therefore the bridging over of this antithesis can again only happen in the very specific way precisely characteristic of the human subject. As soon as the “I,” which is separated off from the world in perception, joins itself back into coherency with the world again in thinking contemplation, then all further questioning, which was only a consequence of the separation, ceases.

[ 31 ] A differently constituted being would have a differently constituted knowledge. Our knowledge suffices to answer the questions posed by our own being.

[ 32 ] Metaphysical realism must ask, by what means is what is given as perception given; by what means is the subject affected?

[ 33 ] For monism, perception is determined through the subject. But at the same time, the subject has in thinking the means by which to dispel this self-evoked determination again.

[ 34 ] Metaphysical realism confronts a further difficulty when it wants to explain the similarity of the world pictures of different human individuals. It must ask itself how it comes about that the picture of the world, which I construct out of my subjectively determined perception and my concepts, is equivalent to the picture which another individual constructs out of the same two subjective factors. How can I, out of my subjective world picture, draw any conclusions at all about that of another person? From the fact that people manage to deal with each other in actual practice, the metaphysical realist believes himself able to infer the similarity of their subjective pictures of the world. From the similarity of these world pictures he then goes on to infer the likeness existing between the individual spirits underlying the single human subjects of perception, or rather between the “I's-in-themselves” underlying the subjects.

[ 35 ] This inference is therefore of a kind in which, from a sum of effects, the character of their underlying causes is inferred. We believe, from a sufficiently large number of instances, that we recognize the state of affairs well enough to know how the inferred causes will behave in other instances. We call such an inference an inductive inference. We will see ourselves obliged to modify the results of an inference, if a further observation yields something unexpected, because the character of the result is after all determined only by the individual form of the observations already made. The metaphysical realist claims, however, that this conditional knowledge of the causes is altogether sufficient for practical life.

[ 36 ] The inductive inference is the methodological basis of modern metaphysical realism. There was a time when one believed one could unfold something out of concepts which was no longer a concept. One believed that, out of concepts, one could know the metaphysical real beings which metaphysical realism after all needs. This kind of philosophizing has been overcome and is obsolete today. Instead of this, however, one believes that one can infer, from a large enough number of perceptible facts, the character of the thing-in-itself which underlies these facts. Just as formerly from the concept, so today one seeks from our perceptions to be able to unfold the metaphysical. Since one has concepts before oneself in transparent clarity, one believed that one could also derive the metaphysical from them with absolute certainty. Perceptions do not lie before us with the same transparent clarity. Each successive one presents something different again from earlier ones of the same kind. Basically, therefore, what has been inferred from earlier perceptions is somewhat modified by each succeeding one. The form which one wins in this way for the metaphysical must therefore be called only a relatively true one; it is subject to correction through future instances. Eduard von Hartmann's metaphysics has a character determined by this basic, methodological principle; he set as motto on the title page of his first major work: “Speculative results arrived at by the inductive scientific method.”

[ 37 ] The form which the metaphysical realist today gives to his things-in-themselves is won through inductive inferences. Through his deliberations on the process of knowledge he is convinced of the existence of an objective real coherency of the world alongside the “subjective” coherency knowable through perception and concept. He believes that he can determine, through inductive inferences drawn from his perceptions, how this objective reality is constituted.

Addendum to the Revised Edition of 1918

[ 38 ] For the unprejudiced observation of our experience in perception and concept—the description of which has been attempted in the foregoing considerations—certain mental pictures that arise in the field of nature study will again and again be troublesome. One says to oneself, standing in this field, that colors in the light spectrum from red to violet are perceived through the eye. But beyond violet there lie forces within the spectrum's sphere of radiation for which there is no corresponding color perception of the eye, but for which there is definitely a corresponding chemical effect; in the same way, beyond the boundary of red effects, there lie radiations which have only warmth effects. Through consideration of this and similar phenomena, one comes to the view that the scope of the human world of perception is determined by the scope of the human senses, and that man would have a completely different world before him, if he had, in addition to his own senses, still others, or if he had altogether different ones. A person who likes to go off into extravagant fantasies (to which the brilliant discoveries of recent scientific research give a quite enticing stimulus) may very well conclude that into man's field of observation can come only what can act upon those senses which have emerged out of his organization. Man has no right to regard these perceptions, which are limited by his organization, as being in any way conclusive for reality. Every new sense would have to place him before a different picture of reality.—All this is, within appropriate bounds, an altogether justified opinion. But if someone allows this opinion to confuse him in his unprejudiced observation of the relationship between perception and concept which our expositions establish as valid, then he blocks his way to a knowledge of the world and of man that is rooted in reality. The experience of the being of thinking, that is, active working with the world of concepts, is something altogether different from the experience of what is perceivable through the senses. Whatever senses man might ever have in addition to his present ones, not one of them would give him a reality if he did not, in thinking, permeate with concepts the perceptions communicated by it; and every sense, whatever its nature, thus permeated, gives man the possibility of living within reality. Fantasies about the completely different perceptual picture possible with other senses have nothing to do with the question of how the human being stands within the real world. One has to recognize, in fact, that every perceptual picture receives its form from the organization of the perceiving entity, but that the perceptual picture, which is permeated by the experience of thinking contemplation, leads the human being into reality. Fantastic depictions of how differently a world would have to appear to other than human senses cannot motivate the human being to seek knowledge about his relationship to the world, but only the insight can do so, that each perception gives only a part of the reality contained within it, that it leads, therefore, away from its own reality. The other insight then takes its place beside the first, that thinking leads into that part of reality which is present in, but hidden by, the perception itself. It can also be disturbing for the unprejudiced observation of the relationship presented here between perception and concept worked out by thinking, when the necessity arises in the realm of physical experience of speaking, not at all about elements which are directly visible to perception, but rather about invisible magnitudes such as electrical or magnetic lines of forces, and so on. It can seem as though the elements of reality about which physics speaks had nothing to do either with what is perceivable, nor with the concept worked out in active thinking. But such an opinion would rest on a self-deception. In the first place it comes down to the fact that everything which is worked out by physics, insofar as it does not represent unjustified hypotheses which should be excluded, is won through perception and concept. What seems to be an invisible content is placed, by the physicist's correct instinct, for knowledge, totally into the realm in which perceptions lie, and is thought about in concepts with which one is active in this realm. The strengths of electrical and magnetic fields and so on are essentially not found through any process of knowledge other than that which occurs between perception and concept.—Increasing the number, or changing the form, of our human senses would result in a changed perceptual picture, in an enrichment or different form of human experience; but even with respect to this experience, a real knowledge would have to be attained through the interaction of concept and perception. Any deepening of knowledge depends upon the powers of intuition that live in thinking (see pages 71–72). This intuition can, within that experience which takes shape and is elaborated in thinking, delve down into greater or lesser depth of reality. The broadening of one's perceptual picture can be a stimulus to this delving down and in this way indirectly promote it. But this delving into the depths should never, in its attainment of reality, be confused with whether one stands before a broader or more narrow perceptual picture, in which always is present only half of reality because of conditions placed on it by the knowing organization. Whoever is not lost in abstractions will see how there is relevance for our knowledge of man's nature in the fact that physics must infer elements within the realm of perception, to which no sense is directly attuned the way there is to color or tone. The concrete nature of man is not only determined by what, through his organization, he places before himself as direct perception, but also through the exclusion of other things from this direct perception. Just as, besides our conscious waking state, the unconscious sleeping state is necessary to life, so, besides the circumference of our sense perception, there is necessary for man's experience of himself, a circumference—much greater in fact—of non-sense-perceptible elements within the realm from which our sense perceptions originate. All this has already been indirectly expressed in the original text of this book. The author adds these amplifications to the content of his book, because it has been his experience that many readers have not read carefully enough.—Attention should also be paid to the fact that the idea of perception, as developed in this book, should not be confused with the idea of outer sense perception, which is only a specific instance of the idea of perception. One will see, from the foregoing considerations, but even more from the following ones, that here, everything which approaches man sense-perceptibly and spiritually, is regarded as perception, before it is grasped by the actively elaborated concept. In order to have perceptions of a soul or spiritual nature, senses of the kind usually meant are not necessary. One might say that broadening our present use of language in this way is not permissible. But this broadening is absolutely necessary, if one does not want to be fettered in certain areas by just such current usage in broadening our knowledge. A person who speaks of perception only in the sense of sense perception will also fail to arrive at a concept, adequate for knowledge, concerning this sense perception. One must oftentimes broaden a concept so that, in a narrower realm, it will gain the meaning appropriate to it. One must also sometimes add something to what was at first meant by a certain concept so that what was thus meant finds its justification or even its correction. Thus, on page 96 of this book, one finds it stated that, “The mental picture is therefore an individualized concept.” The objection was made to me that this is an unusual use of language. But this use of language is necessary, if one wants to get behind what a mental picture really is. What would become of our progress in knowledge if the objection were made to everyone who is obliged to set a concept right, that: “That is an unusual use of language?”

[ 1 ] We have established that the elements for the explanation of reality are to be found in the two spheres: perceiving and thinking. It is due, as we have seen, to our organization that the full, complete reality, including our own selves as subjects, appears at first as a duality. The act of knowing overcomes this duality by fusing the two elements of reality, the percept and the concept gained by thinking, into the complete thing. Let us call the manner in which the world presents itself to us, before it has taken on its true nature through our knowing it, “the world of appearance,” in contrast to the unified whole composed of percept and concept. We can then say: The world is given to us as a duality, and knowledge transforms it into a unity. A philosophy which starts from this basic principle may be called a monistic philosophy, or monism. Opposed to this is the two-world theory, or dualism. The latter does not assume just that there are two sides of a single reality which are kept apart merely by our organization, but that there are two worlds absolutely distinct from one another. It then tries to find in one of these two worlds the principles for the explanation of the other.

[ 2 ] Dualism rests on a false conception of what we call knowledge. It divides the whole of existence into two spheres, each of which has its own laws, and it leaves these two worlds standing apart and opposed.

[ 3 ] It is from a dualism such as this that there arises the distinction between the perceptual object and the thing-in-itself, which Kant introduced into philosophy, and which, to the present day, we have not succeeded in eradicating. According to our line of argument, it is due to the nature of our mental organization that a particular thing can be given to us only as a percept. Thinking then overcomes this particularity by assigning to each percept its rightful place in the world as a whole. As long as we designate the separated parts of the world as percepts, we are simply following, in this separating out, a law of our subjectivity. If, however, we regard the sum of all percepts as the one part, and contrast with this a second part, namely, the things-in-themselves, then we are philosophizing into the blue. We are merely playing with concepts. We construct an artificial pair of opposites, but we can gain no content for the second of these opposites, since such content for a particular thing can be drawn only from perception.

[ 4 ] Every kind of existence that is assumed outside the realm of percept and concept must be relegated to the sphere of unjustified hypotheses. To this category belongs the “thing-in-itself”. It is quite natural that a dualistic thinker should be unable to find the connection between the world principle which he hypothetically assumes and the things given in experience. A content for the hypothetical world principle can be arrived at only by borrowing it from the world of experience and then shutting one's eyes to the fact of the borrowing. Otherwise it remains an empty concept, a non-concept which has nothing but the form of a concept. Here the dualistic thinker usually asserts that the content of this concept is inaccessible to our knowledge; we can know only that such a content exists, but not what it is that exists. In both cases it is impossible to overcome dualism. Even though one were to import a few abstract elements from the world of experience into the concept of the thing-in-itself, it would still remain impossible to derive the rich concrete life of experience from these few qualities which are, after all, themselves taken from perception. DuBois-Reymond considers that the imperceptible atoms of matter produce sensation and feeling by means of their position and motion, and then comes to the conclusion that we can never find a satisfactory explanation of how matter and motion produce sensation and feeling, for “it is absolutely and for ever incomprehensible that it should be other than indifferent to a number of atoms of carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, and so on, how they lie and move, how they lay and moved, or how they will lie and will move. It is impossible to see how consciousness could come into existence through their interaction.” This conclusion is characteristic of this whole trend of thought. Position and motion are abstracted from the rich world of percepts. They are then transferred to the notional world of atoms. And then astonishment arises that real life cannot be evolved out of this self-made principle borrowed from the world of percepts.

[ 5 ] That the dualist can reach no explanation of the world, working as he does with a completely empty concept of the “in-itself” of a thing, follows at once from the very definition of his principle given above.

[ 6 ] In every case the dualist finds himself compelled to set impassable barriers to our faculty of knowledge. The follower of a monistic world conception knows that everything he needs for the explanation of any given phenomenon in the world must lie within this world itself. What prevents him from reaching it can be only accidental limitations in space and time, or defects of his organization, that is, not of human organization in general, but only of his own particular one.

[ 7 ] It follows from the concept of the act of knowing as we have defined it, that one cannot speak of limits to knowledge. Knowing is not a concern of the world in general, but an affair which man must settle for himself. Things demand no explanation. They exist and act on one another according to laws which can be discovered through thinking. They exist in indivisible unity with these laws. Our Egohood confronts them, grasping at first only that part of them we have called percepts. Within our Egohood, however, lies the power to discover the other part of the reality as well. Only when the Egohood has taken the two elements of reality which are indivisibly united in the world and has combined them also for itself, is our thirst for knowledge satisfied—the I has then arrived at the reality once more.

[ 8 ] Thus the conditions necessary for an act of knowledge to take place are there through the I and for the I. The I sets itself the problems of knowledge; and moreover it takes them from an element that is absolutely clear and transparent in itself: the element of thinking. If we set ourselves questions which we cannot answer, it must be because the content of the questions is not in all respects clear and distinct. It is not the world which sets us the questions, but we ourselves.

[ 9 ] I can imagine that it would be quite impossible for me to answer a question which I happened to find written down somewhere, without knowing the sphere from which the content of the question was taken.

[ 10 ] In our knowledge we are concerned with questions which arise for us through the fact that a sphere of percepts, conditioned by place, time, and our subjective organization, is confronted by a sphere of concepts pointing to the totality of the universe. My task consists in reconciling these two spheres, with both of which I am well acquainted. Here one cannot speak of a limit to knowledge. It may be that, at any particular moment, this or that remains unexplained because, through our place in life, we are prevented from perceiving the things involved. What is not found today, however, may be found tomorrow. The limits due to these causes are only transitory, and can be overcome by the progress of perception and thinking.

[ 11 ] Dualism makes the mistake of transferring the antithesis of object and subject, which has meaning only within the perceptual realm, to purely notional entities outside this realm. But since the separate things within the perceptual field remain separated only so long as the perceiver refrains from thinking (which cancels all separation and shows it to be due to purely subjective factors), the dualist is therefore transferring to entities behind the perceptible realm determining factors which even for this realm have no absolute validity, but only relative. He thus splits up the two factors concerned in the process of knowledge, namely percept and concept, into four: (1) the object in itself; (2) the precept which the subject has of the object; (3) the subject; (4) the concept which relates the precept to the object in itself. The relation between subject and object is a real one; the subject is really (dynamically) influenced by the object. This real process is said not to appear in consciousness. But it is supposed to evoke in the subject a response to the stimulation from the object. The result of this response is said to be the percept. Only at this stage does it enter our consciousness. The object is said to have an objective (independent of the subject) reality, the percept a subjective reality. This subjective reality is referred by the subject to the object. This reference is called an ideal one. With this the dualist therefore splits up the process of knowledge into two parts. The one part, namely, the production of the perceptual object out of the thing-in-itself, he conceives of as taking place outside consciousness, whereas the other, the combination of percept with concept and the reference of the concept to the object, takes place, according to him, within consciousness.

With these presuppositions, it is clear why the dualist believes his concepts to be merely subjective representatives of what is there prior to his consciousness. The objectively real process in the subject by means of which the percept comes about, and still more the objective relations between things-in-themselves, remain for such a dualist inaccessible to direct knowledge; according to him, man can obtain only conceptual representatives of the objectively real. The bond of unity which connects things with one another and also objectively with the individual mind of each of us (as thing-in-itself) lies beyond our consciousness in a being-in-itself of whom, once more, we can have in our consciousness merely a conceptual representative.

[ 12 ] The dualist believes that he would dissolve away the whole world into a mere abstract. scheme of concepts, did he not insist on real connections between the objects besides the conceptual ones. In other words, the ideal principles which thinking discovers seem too airy for the dualist, and he seeks, in addition, real principles with which to support them.

[ 13 ] Let us examine these real principles a little more closely. The naïve man (naïve realist) regards the objects of external experience as realities. The fact that his hands can grasp these objects, and his eyes see them, is for him sufficient proof of their reality. “Nothing exists that cannot be perceived” is, in fact, the first axiom of the naïve man; and it is held to be equally valid in its converse: “Everything which can be perceived exists.” The best evidence for this assertion is the naïve man's belief in immortality and ghosts. He thinks of the soul as refined material substance which may, in special circumstances, become visible even to the ordinary man (naïve belief in ghosts).

[ 14 ] In contrast with this real world of his, the naïve realist regards everything else, especially the world of ideas, as unreal or “merely ideal”. What we add to objects by thinking is nothing more than thoughts about the things. Thought adds nothing real to the percept.

[ 15 ] But it is not only with reference to the existence of things that the naïve man regards sense perception as the sole proof of reality, but also with reference to events. A thing, according to him, can act on another only when a force actually present to sense perception issues from the one and seizes upon the other. In the older physics it was thought that very fine substances emanate from the objects and penetrate through the sense organs into the soul. The actual seeing of these substances is impossible only because of the coarseness of our sense organs relative to the fineness of these substances. In principle, the reason for attributing reality to these substances was the same as for attributing it to the objects of the sense-perceptible world, namely because of their mode of existence, which was thought to be analogous to that of sense-perceptible reality.

[ 16 ] The self-contained nature of what can be experienced through ideas is not regarded by the naïve mind as being real in the same way that sense experience is. An object grasped in “mere idea” is regarded as a chimera until conviction of its reality can be given through sense perception. In short, the naïve man demands the real evidence of his senses in addition to the ideal evidence of his thinking. In this need of the naïve man lies the original ground for primitive forms of the belief in revelation. The God who is given through thinking remains to the naïve mind always a merely “notional” God. The naïve mind demands a manifestation that is accessible to sense perception. God must appear in the flesh, and little value is attached to the testimony of thinking, but only to proof of divinity such as changing water into wine in a way that can be testified by the senses.

[ 17 ] Even the act of knowing itself is pictured by the naïve man as a process analogous to sense perception. Things, it is thought, make an impression on the soul, or send out images which enter through our senses, and so on.

[ 18 ] What the naïve man can perceive with his senses he regards as real, and what he cannot thus perceive (God, soul, knowledge, etc.) he regards as analogous to what he does perceive.

[ 19 ] A science based on naïve realism would have to be nothing but an exact description of the content of perception. For naïve realism, concepts are only the means to an end. They exist to provide ideal counterparts of percepts, and have no significance for the things themselves. For the naïve realist, only the individual tulips which he sees (or could see) are real; the single idea of the tulip is to him an abstraction, the unreal thought-picture which the soul has put together out of the characteristics common to all tulips.

[ 20 ] Naive realism, with its fundamental principle of the reality of all perceived things, is contradicted by experience, which teaches us that the content of percepts is of a transitory nature. The tulip I see is real today; in a year it will have vanished into nothingness. What persists is the species tulip. For the naïve realist, however, this species is “only” an idea, not a reality. Thus this theory of the world find itself in the position of seeing its realities arise and perish, while what it regards as unreal, in contrast with the real, persists. Hence naïve realism is compelled to acknowledge, in addition to percepts, the existence of something ideal. It must admit entities which cannot be perceived by the senses. In doing so, it justifies itself by conceiving their existence as being analogous to that of sense-perceptible objects. Just such hypothetical realities are the invisible forces by means of which the sense-perceptible objects act on one another. Another such thing is heredity, which works on beyond the individual and is the reason why a new being which develops from the individual is similar to it, thereby serving to maintain the species. Such a thing again is the life-principle permeating the organic body, the soul for which the naïve mind always finds a concept formed in analogy with sense realities, and finally the naïve man's Divine Being. This Divine Being is thought of as acting in a manner exactly corresponding to the way in which man himself is seen to act; that is, anthropomorphically.

[ 21 ] Modern physics traces sensations back to processes of the smallest particles of bodies and of an infinitely fine substance, called ether, or to other such things. For example, what we experience as warmth is, within the space occupied by the warmth-giving body, the movement of its parts. Here again something imperceptible is conceived in analogy with what is perceptible. In this sense, the perceptual analogue to the concept “body” would be, shall we say, the interior of a totally enclosed space, in which elastic spheres are moving in all directions, impinging one on another, bouncing on and off the walls, and so on.¹

[ 22 ] Without such assumptions the world would fall apart for the naïve realist into an incoherent aggregate of percepts without mutual relationships and with no tendency to unite. It is clear, however, that naïve realism can make these assumptions only by an inconsistency. If it would remain true to its fundamental principle that only what is perceived is real, then it ought not to assume a reality where it perceives nothing. The imperceptible forces which proceed from the perceptible things are in fact unjustified hypotheses from the standpoint of naïve realism. And because naïve realism knows no other realities, it invests its hypothetical forces with perceptual content. It thus ascribes a form of existence (perceptible existence) to a sphere where the only means of making any assertion about such existence, namely, sense perception, is lacking.

[ 23 ] This self-contradictory theory leads to metaphysical realism. This constructs, in addition to the perceptible reality, an imperceptible reality which it conceives on the analogy of the perceptible one. Therefore metaphysical realism is of necessity dualistic.

[ 24 ] Wherever the metaphysical realist observes a relationship between perceptible things (such as when two things move towards each other, or when something objective enters consciousness), there he sees a reality. However, the relationship which he notices can only be expressed by means of thinking; it cannot be perceived. The purely ideal relationship is then arbitrarily made into something similar to a perceptible one. Thus, according to this theory, the real world is composed of the objects of perception which are in ceaseless flux, arising and disappearing, and of imperceptible forces which produce the objects of perception, and are the things that endure.

[ 25 ] Metaphysical realism is a contradictory mixture of naïve realism and idealism. Its hypothetical forces are imperceptible entities endowed with the qualities of percepts. The metaphysical realist has made up his mind to acknowledge, in addition to the sphere which he is able to know through perception, another sphere for which this means of knowledge fails him and which can be known only by means of thinking. But he cannot make up his mind at the same time to acknowledge that the mode of existence which thinking reveals, namely, the concept (idea), is just as important a factor as the percept. If we are to avoid the contradiction of imperceptible percepts, we must admit that the relationships which thinking establishes between the percepts can have no other mode of existence for us than that of concepts. If we reject the untenable part of metaphysical realism, the world presents itself to us as the sum of percepts and their conceptual (ideal) relationships. Metaphysical realism would then merge into a view of the world which requires the principle of perceivability for percepts and that of conceivability for the relationships between the percepts. This view of the world can admit no third sphere—in addition to the world of percepts and the world of concepts—in which both the so-called “real” and “ideal” principles are simultaneously valid.

[ 26 ] When the metaphysical realist asserts that, besides the ideal relationship between the percept of the object and the percept of the subject, there must also exist a real relationship between the “thing-in-itself” of the percept and the “thing-in-itself” of the perceptible subject (that is, of the so-called individual spirit), he is basing his assertion on the false assumption of a real process, analogous to the processes in the sense world but imperceptible. Further, when the metaphysical realist asserts that we enter into a conscious ideal relationship to our world of percepts, but that to the real world we can have only a dynamic (force) relationship, he repeats the mistake we have already criticized. One can talk of a dynamic relationship only within the world of percepts (in the sphere of the sense of touch), but not outside that world.

[ 27 ] Let us call the view which we have characterized above, into which metaphysical realism merges when it discards its contradictory elements, monism, because it combines one-sided realism with idealism into a higher unity.

[ 28 ] For naïve realism, the real world is an aggregate of perceived objects (percepts); for metaphysical realism, not only percepts but also imperceptible forces are real; monism replaces forces by ideal connections which are gained through thinking. The laws of nature are just such connections. A law of nature is in fact nothing but the conceptual expression of the connection between certain percepts.

[ 29 ] Monism never finds it necessary to ask for any principles of explanation for reality other than percepts and concepts. It knows that in the whole field of reality there is no occasion for this question. In the perceptual world, as it presents itself directly to perception, it sees one half of the reality; in the union of this world with the world of concepts it finds the full reality.

The metaphysical realist may object to the adherent of monism: It may be that for your organization, your knowledge is complete in itself, with no part lacking; but you do not know how the world is mirrored in an intelligence organized differently from your own. To this the monist will reply: If there are intelligences other than human, and if their percepts are different from ours, all that concerns me is what reaches me from them through perception and concept. Through my perceiving, that is, through this specifically human mode of perceiving, I, as subject, am confronted with the object. The connection of things is thereby interrupted. The subject restores this connection by means of thinking. In doing so it puts itself back into the context of the world as a whole. Since it is only through the subject that the whole appears cut in two at the place between our percept and our concept, the uniting of those two gives us true knowledge. For beings with a different perceptual world (for example, if they had twice our number of sense organs), the continuum would appear broken in another place, and the reconstruction would accordingly have to take a form specific for such beings. The question concerning the limits of knowledge exists only for naïve and metaphysical realism, both of which see in the contents of the soul only an ideal representation of the real world. For these theories, what exists outside the subject is something absolute, founded in itself, and what is contained within the subject is a picture of this absolute, but quite external to it. The completeness of knowledge depends on the greater or lesser degree of resemblance between the picture and the absolute object. A being with fewer senses than man will perceive less of the world, one with more senses will perceive more. The former will accordingly have a less complete knowledge than the latter.

[ 30 ] For monism, the situation is different. The manner in which the world continuum appears to be rent asunder into subject and object depends on the organization of the perceiving being. The object is not absolute, but merely relative, with reference to this particular subject. Bridging over the antithesis, therefore, can again take place only in the quite specific way that is characteristic of the particular human subject. As soon as the I, which is separated from the world in the act of perceiving, fits itself back into the world continuum through thoughtful contemplation, all further questioning ceases, having been but a consequence of the separation.

[ 31 ] A differently constituted being would have a differently constituted knowledge. Our own knowledge suffices to answer the questions put by our own nature.

[ 32] Metaphysical realism has to ask: By what means are our percepts given? What is it that affects the subject?

[ 33] Monism holds that percepts are determined through the subject. But at the same time, the subject has in thinking the means for canceling this self-produced determination.

[ 34 ] The metaphysical realist is faced by a further difficulty when he seeks to explain the similarity between the world pictures of different human individuals. He has to ask himself: How is it that the picture of the world which I build up out of my subjectively determined percepts and my concepts turns out to be the same as the one which another individual is also building up out of the same two subjective factors? How can I, in any case, draw conclusions from my own subjective picture of the world about that of another human being? The fact that people can understand and get on with one another in practical life leads the metaphysical realist to conclude that their subjective world pictures must be similar. From the similarity of these world pictures he then further concludes that the “individual spirits” behind the single human subjects as percepts, or the “I-in-itself” behind the subjects, must also be like one another.

[ 35 ] This is an inference from a sum of effects to the character of the underlying causes. We believe that we can understand the situation well enough from a sufficiently large number of instances to know how the inferred causes will behave in other instances. Such an inference is called an inductive inference. We shall be obliged to modify its results if further observation yields some unexpected element, because the character of our conclusion is, after all, determined only by the particular form of our actual observations. The metaphysical realist asserts that this knowledge of causes, though conditional, is nevertheless quite sufficient for practical life.

[ 36 ] Inductive inference is the method underlying modern metaphysical realism. At one time it was thought that we could evolve something out of concepts that is no longer a concept. It was thought that the metaphysical realities, which metaphysical realism after all requires, could be known by means of concepts. This kind of philosophizing is now out of date. Instead it is thought that one can infer from a sufficiently large number of perceptual facts the character of the thing-in-itself which underlies these facts. Whereas formerly it was from concepts, now it is from percepts that people seek to evolve the metaphysical. Since one has concepts before oneself in transparent clearness, it was thought that one might be able to deduce the metaphysical from them with absolute certainty. Percepts are not given with the same transparent clearness. Each subsequent one is a little different from others of the same kind which preceded it. Basically, therefore, anything inferred from past percepts will be somewhat modified by each subsequent percept. The character of the metaphysical thus obtained can, therefore, be only relatively true, since it is subject to correction by further instances. Eduard von Hartmann's metaphysics has a character determined by this basic method, as expressed in the motto on the title page of his first important book: “Speculative results following the inductive method of Natural Science.”

[ 37 ] The form which the metaphysical realist nowadays gives to his things-in-themselves is obtained by inductive inferences. Through considerations of the process of knowledge he is convinced of the existence of an objectively real world continuum, over and above the “subjective” world continuum which we know through percepts and concepts. The nature of this reality he thinks he can determine by inductive inferences from his percepts.

Author's addition, 1918

[ 38 ] For the unprejudiced observation of what is experienced through percept and concept, as we have tried to describe it in the foregoing pages, certain ideas which originate in the field of natural science are repeatedly found to be disturbing. Thus it is said that in the spectrum of light the eye perceives colors from red to violet. But in the space beyond the violet there are forces of radiation for which there is no corresponding color-perception in the eye, but instead there is a definite chemical effect; in the same way, beyond the limit of the red there are radiations having only an effect of warmth. By studying these and other similar phenomena, one is led to the view that the range of man's perceptual world is determined by the range of his senses, and that he would be confronted by a very different world if he had additional, or altogether different, senses. Anyone who chooses to indulge in the extravagant flights of fancy for which the brilliant discoveries of recent scientific research offer such tempting opportunities, may well arrive at the conclusion that nothing enters man's field of observation except what can affect the senses which his bodily organization has evolved. He has no right to regard what is perceived, limited as it is by his organization, as in any way setting a standard for reality. Every new sense would confront him with a different picture of reality.

Within its proper limits this view is entirely justified. But if anyone allows this view to confuse him in his unprejudiced observation of the relationship of percept and concept as set out in these chapters, then he will bar his own way to any realistic knowledge of man and of the world. To experience the essential nature of thinking, that is, to work one's way into the world of concepts through one's own activity, is an entirely different thing from experiencing something perceptible through the senses. Whatever senses man might possibly have, not one would give him reality if his thinking did not permeate with concepts whatever he perceived by means of it. And every sense, however constructed, would, if thus permeated, enable him to live within reality. This question of how he stands in the world of reality is untouched by any speculations he may have as to how the perceptual world might appear to him if he had different senses. We must clearly understand that every perceptual picture of the world owes its form to the organization of the perceiving being, but also that the perceptual picture which has been thoroughly permeated by the experience of thinking leads us into reality. What causes us to enquire into our relationship to the world is not the fanciful pictures of how different the world would appear to other than human senses, but the realization that every percept gives us only a part of the reality concealed within it, in other words, that it directs us away from its inherent reality. Added to this is the further realization that thinking leads us into that part of the reality which the percept conceals within itself.

Another difficulty in the way of the unprejudiced observation of the relationship between the percept and the concept wrought by thinking, as here described, arises when, for example, in the field of experimental physics it becomes necessary to speak not of immediately perceptible elements, but of non-perceptible quantities as in the case of lines of electric or magnetic force. It may seem as if the elements of reality of which physicists speak had no connection either with what is perceptible or with the concepts which active thinking has wrought. Yet such a view would be based on self-deception. The main point is that all the results of physical research, apart from unjustifiable hypotheses which ought to be excluded, have been obtained through percept and concept. Elements which are seemingly non-perceptible are placed by the physicist's sound instinct for knowledge into the field where percepts lie, and they are thought of in terms of concepts commonly used in this field. The strengths of electric or magnetic fields and such like are arrived at, in the very nature of things, by no other process of knowledge than the one which occurs between percept and concept.

An increase or a modification of human senses would yield a different perceptual picture, an enrichment or a modification of human experience. But even with this experience one could arrive at real knowledge only through the interplay of concept and percept. The deepening of knowledge depends on the powers of intuition which express themselves in thinking (see Chapter 5). In the living experience which develops within thinking, this intuition may dive down to greater or to lesser depths of reality. An extension of the perceptual picture may provide stimulation for this diving down of intuition, and thus indirectly promote it. But under no circumstances should this diving into the depths to reach reality be confused with being confronted by a perceptual picture of greater or lesser breadth, which in any case can only contain half the reality, as determined by the organization of the cognizing being. If one does not lose oneself in abstractions, one will realize that for a knowledge of human nature it is a relevant fact that in physics one has to infer the existence of elements in the perceptual field for which no sense organ is tuned as it is for color or sound. Man's being, quite concretely, is determined not only by what his organization presents to him as immediate percept, but also by the fact that from this immediate perception other things are excluded. Just as it is necessary for life that in addition to the conscious waking state there should be an unconscious sleeping state, so for man's experience of himself it is necessary that in addition to the sphere of his sense perception there should be another sphere—in fact a far larger one—of elements not perceptible to the senses but belonging to the same field from which the sense percepts come. All this was already implied in the original presentation of this work. The author adds these extensions to the argument because he has found by experience that many a reader has not read accurately enough.

It is to be remembered, too, that the idea of percept developed in this book is not to be confused with the idea of external sense percept which is but a special instance of it. The reader will gather from what has gone before, but even more from what will follow, that “percept” is here taken to be everything that approaches man through the senses or through the spirit, before it has been grasped by the actively elaborated concept. “Senses”, as we ordinarily understand the term, are not necessary in order to have percepts in soul- or spirit-experience. It might be said that this extension of our ordinary usage is not permissible. But such extension is absolutely necessary if we are not to be prevented by the current sense of a word from enlarging our knowledge in certain fields. Anyone who uses “perception” to mean only “sense perception” will never arrive at a concept fit for the purposes of knowledge—even knowledge of this same sense perception. One must sometimes enlarge a concept in order that it may get its appropriate meaning in a narrower field. Sometimes one must also add to the original content of a concept in order that the original concept may be justified or, perhaps, readjusted. Thus we find it said here in this book (see Chapter 6): “The mental picture is an individualized concept.” It has been objected that this is an unusual use of words. But this use is necessary if we are to find out what a mental picture really is. How can we expect any progress in knowledge if everyone who finds himself compelled to readjust concepts is to be met by the objection, “This is an unusual use of words”?

• 1. hat is, movements of a kind similar to those which can be perceived are supposed to occur imperceptibly within the body and to account for the warmth which is perceived directly but as something quite different.—Translator's footnote