The Rudolf Steiner Archive

In my last lecture I tried to show how it is due to misunderstandings if there is so little understanding between those who direct their research and attention to the soul and its processes and those who direct their attention to the material processes in the human organism, which proceed — well, as one will call it — as accompanying phenomena or also, as materialism maintains, as necessary causes for the psychic events. And I tried to show what the reasons for such misunderstandings are. Today I would like to draw attention to the fact that wherever real, true knowledge is sought, such misunderstandings, and also misunderstandings in a different direction, must necessarily arise if one does not take into account in the process of knowledge itself, which, in the course of more intimate, especially longer research, imposes itself more and more on the spiritual researcher as a direct experience, as an inner experience. It is something that at first seems very strange when it is expressed: In the field of world-views, that is to say in the field of knowledge of the spiritual-real or in general the knowledge of the sources of existence, if one, I might say, is too entangled in certain conceptions, in certain concepts, then one must of necessity enter upon such a view of the human soul that can absolutely be refuted, and just as well be proved.

Therefore, the spiritual researcher will increasingly deviate from what is otherwise customary in matters of world view, namely, to present this or that in support of one or the other view, which would be similar to what is called proof or even refutation in ordinary life. For in this field, as I said, everything can be proved with certain reasons, everything can be refuted with certain reasons. Materialism can be rigorously proven in its entirety, and it can be rigorously proven when it engages in individual questions of life or existence. And one will not be able to simply knock out of the field that which a materialist can cite in support of his views, if one simply wants to refute his view from opposite points of view. It is the same for someone who represents a spiritual existence. Therefore, anyone who really wants to research spiritual matters must not only know the arguments in favor of a particular worldview, but must also know all the arguments against it. For the remarkable result emerges that the actual truth only emerges when one allows what speaks for a matter and what speaks against a matter to take effect on the soul. And anyone who allows his mind to be fixed, I might say, on any web of concepts or images of a one-sided world view will always close his mind to the fact that the opposite can also assert itself in the soul, that the opposite must even appear right to a certain degree. And so he will be in a situation, like someone who wanted to claim that human life could only be sustained by inhalation. Inhalation presupposes exhalation; the two belong together. But this is always the case with our concepts and ideas that relate to questions of world view. We can put forward a concept that affirms something, we can put forward a concept that denies it; the one demands the other, like inhalation demands exhalation, and vice versa. And just as real life can only appear, can only reveal itself through exhalation and inhalation, when both are present, so can the spiritual only come to life in the soul when one is able to respond in an equally positive way to both the pros and cons of a matter. The affirmative concept, the affirmative idea, is within the living whole of the soul, so to speak, like an exhalation; the negative concept, like an inhalation; and it is only in their living interaction that that which relates to spiritual reality is revealed. Therefore, it is not at all appropriate for spiritual science to apply the usual methods that one is so accustomed to in everyday literature, where this or that is proved or refuted. The spiritual scientist realizes that what is presented in a positive way can always have a certain justification when it relates to questions of world view, but so can the opposite phenomenon. But when one advances in matters of world-conception to that direct life which lives in positive and negative concepts, just as physical life lives in inhalation and exhalation, then one comes to concepts which really take in the spirit directly, to concepts which are equal to reality. One must then, however, often express oneself differently than one expresses oneself according to the habits of thinking in ordinary life. But the way in which one expresses oneself arises out of the living, active inner experiencing of the spirit. And the spirit can only be inwardly experienced, not outwardly perceived in the way of material existence.

Now you know that one of the most important questions of our world view, and one that was also treated in the first lectures I gave here this winter, is the question of substance, of matter. And I would like to touch on this question today from the point of view I have just hinted at, as an introduction.

We cannot come to terms with the question of substance or matter if we keep trying to form ideas or concepts of what matter actually is; if we want to understand, in other words, what matter is. Anyone who has really wrestled with such questions, which are remote for many people, knows what such questions are all about. For if he has wrestled with it for a time, without yielding to any prejudice, then he comes to a completely different point of view regarding such a question. He comes to a point of view that makes him consider more important the way one behaves in one's soul when forming such a concept as that of matter. This wrestling of the soul itself is raised into consciousness. And then one arrives at a view precisely on these riddle-questions, which I could express in the following way.

He who wants to understand matter, substance, in the way it is usually understood, is like a person who says: I now want to get an impression of darkness, of a dark room. What does he do? He lights a light and regards this as the right method to get the impression of the dark room. It is, in fact, the most absurd thing one could do. And it is equally absurd — but one must become aware of this through a marked struggle — to believe that one will ever be able to cognize matter by setting the spirit in motion to illuminate matter with the spirit, as it were. Only where the spirit can be silent in our body itself, in the sensation of the senses, where the life of representation ends, only there does an external process penetrate into our inner being. There we can - by letting the spirit be silent and experiencing this silence of the spirit - have matter, substance, truly represented in our soul, so to speak.

One does not arrive at such concepts through ordinary logic; or if one does arrive at them through ordinary logic, then they turn out, I might say, to be much too thin to evoke real conviction. Only when one wrestles in the indicated way in one's soul with certain concepts, then they lead one to such a result as I have indicated.

Now the opposite is also the case. Let us assume that someone wants to grasp the spirit. If he seeks it, for example, in the purely external material form of the human body, he is like someone who, in order to grasp the light, extinguishes it. For the secret of the matter is that the external sensual nature itself is the refutation of the spirit, the extinguishing of the spirit. It reproduces the spirit just as illuminated objects reflect light. But nowhere can we, if we do not grasp the spirit in living activity, ever find it from any material processes. For that is precisely the essence of material processes: that the spirit has transformed itself into them, that the spirit has been transformed into them. And if we then try to recognize the spirit from them, then we misunderstand ourselves.

I wanted to say this by way of introduction so that more and more clarity can come about what the cognitive attitude of the spiritual researcher actually is, and how the spiritual researcher needs a certain breadth and mobility of the life of ideas in order to penetrate the things that are to be penetrated. With such concepts it is then possible to illuminate the important questions, which I also touched on last time here, and which I will only briefly mention in order to move on to our considerations today.

I said: As things have developed in the newer formation of the spirit, a one-sided view of the relationship between the soul-spiritual and the bodily-physical has increasingly come about, which is expressed by the fact that today the soul-spiritual is actually only sought within that part of the human body that lies in the nervous system or in the brain. In a sense, the soul-spiritual is assigned to the brain and nervous system alone, and one regards the rest of the organism more or less as an adjunct to the brain and nervous system when speaking of the soul-spiritual. Now I have tried to explain the results of spiritual research in this field by pointing out that one can only arrive at a true understanding of the relationship between the human soul and the human body if one places the whole human soul in relation to the whole physical body. But then it becomes clear that there is a deeper background to the structure of the human soul as a whole, into the actual life of perception, into the life of feeling and into the life of will. For only the actual life of perception of the soul is bound to the nervous organism in the way that modern physiological psychology assumes. On the other hand, the life of feeling — and here I must make it clear that I do not speak of it as it is presented to us, but as it arises — is related to the breathing organism of the human being, to everything that is breathing and is connected with breathing, in the same way as the life of presentation is related to the nervous system. So we must allot to the breathing organism the life of feeling of the soul. Then further: that which we call the life of will is in an equal relationship to that which we must call metabolism in the body; naturally right down into its finest ramifications. And by taking into account the fact that the individual systems in the organism are intertwined — metabolism naturally also takes place in the nerves —, I would like to say that at these outermost ends things interpenetrate. But a true understanding is only possible if we look at things in this way, if we know that the impulses of will can be attributed to metabolic processes in the same way as imaginative experiences can be attributed to processes in the human nervous system or in the brain.

Of course, such things can only be hinted at at first. And for the very reason that they can only be hinted at, objections are possible over and over again. But I do know one thing for certain: if we approach the subject with the whole range of anatomical and physiological research, that is, if we consider everything that anatomical and physiological research is, then there will be complete harmony between the spiritual scientific assertions I have made and the natural scientific assertions. On a superficial examination — let me just put forward the objection as a particularly characteristic one — objections can, of course, be raised against such a comprehensive truth. Someone might say: Let us first agree that certain feelings are connected with the respiratory organism; for the fact that this can be shown very plausibly for certain feelings cannot actually be doubted by anyone. But someone might say: Yes, but what about the fact that we perceive melodies, for example, that melodies arise in our consciousness? The feeling of aesthetic pleasure is connected with melodies. Can we speak here of some kind of relationship between the respiratory organism and that which quite obviously arises in the head and which, according to physiological findings, is so clearly connected with the nervous organism? As soon as we look at the matter properly, the correctness of my assertion immediately becomes completely clear. Namely, one must then take into consideration that with every exhalation an important process in the brain occurs in parallel: that the brain would rise during exhalation if it were not held down by the skullcap – breathing propagates into the brain – and vice versa; during inhalation the brain sinks. And since it cannot rise and fall because the skullcap is there, what is known to physiology occurs: the change in the blood flow occurs, what is known to physiology as brain breathing takes place, that is, certain processes that occur in parallel with the breathing process in the nerve environment. And in this encounter of the breathing process with what lives in us as sounds through our ear, what happens is that feeling is also connected to the respiratory organism in this area in the same way as the mere life of thinking is connected to the nervous organism.

I will only hint at this because it is something particularly remote and therefore provides a close objection. If one could agree with someone on all the details of the physiological results, no such details would contradict what was presented here last time and what has been presented again today.

Now it is my task to continue our discussion in a similar way to the last lecture. And for that I must go into a little more detail about the way in which the human being develops sensory perception in order to show what the actual relationship is between the sensory perception that leads to representations and the life of feeling and will, and indeed the life of the human being as soul, as body and as spirit.

Through our sensory life, we come into contact with our sensory environment. Within this sensory environment, natural science distinguishes certain substances, or, to be more precise, forms of substance, for it is these that are important here. If I wanted to speak in terms of physics, I would have to say aggregate states: solid, liquid, gaseous. But now, as you all know, physical and scientific research adds something else to these material forms. When science wants to explain light, it is not satisfied with just accepting the material forms that I have just mentioned. Instead, it reaches for what appears to it to be more subtle than these types of matter; it reaches for what is usually called ether. The concept of ether is, of course, an extraordinarily difficult one, and it can be said that the various thoughts that have been formed about what should be said about ether are conceivably diverse and manifold. Naturally, all these details cannot be discussed here. It should only be noted that natural science feels compelled to establish the concept of ether, that is, to think of the world not only as filled with the denser substances that can be perceived directly by the senses, but as filled with ether. The characteristic feature is that natural science cannot use its methods to determine what ether actually is. This is because natural science always needs material foundations for its actual work. But the ether itself always eludes material foundations, so to speak. It appears in connection with material processes, it causes material processes; but it cannot be grasped, so to speak, by the means that are tied to the material foundations. Therefore, a peculiar concept of ether has emerged, especially in recent times, which is actually extraordinarily interesting. The concept of ether that can be found among physicists today tends to say: ether must be that which, whatever else it may be, in any case has none of the properties that ordinary matter has. Thus, natural science points beyond its own material foundations by saying of the ether that it has what it cannot find with its methods. Natural science comes precisely to the assumption of an ether, but not to filling this ether concept with any content with its methods.

Now, spiritual research yields the following. Natural science starts from the material basis, spiritual research starts from the basis of soul and spirit. The spiritual researcher, if he does not arbitrarily stop at a certain boundary, is driven to the concept of ether in the same way as the natural scientist, only from the other side. The spiritual researcher attempts to include in his knowledge that which is active and effective within the soul. If he were to stop at what he can experience inwardly in ordinary soul life, then in this field he would not even go as far as the natural scientist who accepts the concept of ether. For the natural scientist at least formulates the concept of ether and accepts it. The student of the soul who does not arrive at a concept of ether on his own initiative is like a natural scientist who says: What do I care about what else is alive there! I assume the three basic forms: solid, liquid, gaseous bodies; I do not concern myself with what is supposed to be even thinner. This is indeed how the science of the soul usually proceeds.

But not everyone who has worked in the field of soul research does it this way; and particularly within that extraordinarily significant scientific development, which is based on German idealism that became established in the first third of the nineteenth century, — not in this idealism itself, but in what then developed out of it —, we find attempts to approach the ether concept from the other side, from the spiritual-soul side, just as natural science ascends from the material side to the ether. And if you really want to have the ether concept, you have to approach it from two sides. Otherwise you will not be able to come to terms with it. Now, the interesting thing is that the great German philosophical idealists, Fichte, Schelling and Hegel, despite their insistent thinking and conceptualizing, which I have often characterized here, still did not have the ether concept. They could not, so to speak, strengthen their inner soul life, could not so energize it that the ether concept would have presented itself to them. On the other hand, in those who allowed themselves to be fertilized by this idealism, who, so to speak, allowed the thoughts that were generated at that time to continue to work in their souls, although they were not as great geniuses as their idealist predecessors, this ether concept arose out of this soul research. We find this concept of ether first in Immanuel Hermann Fichte, the son of the great Johann Gottlieb Fichte, who was also a disciple of his father, in that he allowed what Johann Gottlieb Fichte and his successors, Schelling and Hegel, had done in their souls to continue to work within him. But by condensing it, as it were, to greater inner effectiveness, he came to say to himself: When one looks at the soul-spiritual life, when one, I might say, measures it on all sides, then one comes to say to oneself: This soul-spiritual life must run down into the ether, just as solid, liquid, and gaseous matter runs up into the ether. The lowest part of the soul must, as it were, open into the ether in the same way that the highest part of the material opens into the ether at the top. And Immanuel Hermann Fichte formed certain characteristic ideas about this, through which he really did come from the spiritual-soul to the boundary of the ether. We read in his “Anthropology” 1860 - you will find the passage quoted in my last book “Vom Menschenrätsel” -:

“In the material elements....the truly enduring, that unifying form principle of the body cannot be found, which proves effective throughout our entire life.” “So we are pointed to a second, essentially different cause in the body.” “In that it contains that which is actually enduring in metabolism, it is the true, inner, invisible body, but one that is present in all visible materiality. The other, the outer appearance of the same, formed from incessant metabolism, may henceforth be called 'body', which is truly not enduring and not one, but the mere effect or afterimage of that inner corporeality, which throws it into the changing material world, just as, for example, the magnetic force prepares a seemingly dense body from the parts of iron filings, but which atomizes in all directions when the binding force is withdrawn.

Now, for I. H. Fichte, an invisible body lived in the ordinary body, which consists of external matter, and we could also call this invisible body the etheric body; an etheric body that brings the individual particles of matter of this visible body into their forms, shapes them, and develops them. And I. H. Fichte is so clear that this etheric body, to which he descends from the soul, is not subject to the processes of the physical body, that for him it is enough to have insight into the existence of such an etheric body to get beyond the riddle of death. For I. H. Fichte says in his “Anthropology”:

I have shown with I. H. Fichte how he advances to such an invisible body of the soul. It is interesting that in many places in the heyday of German idealistic intellectual life, the same thing emerged. Some time ago I pointed out a solitary thinker who was a school director in Bromberg and who dealt with the question of immortality: Johann Heinrich Deinhardt, who died in the 1860s. He initially approached the question of immortality like the others, by trying to get behind this question of immortality through ideas and concepts. But for him, more emerged than for those who merely live in concepts. And so the editor of that treatise on immortality written by J. H. Deinhardt was able to cite a passage from a letter that the author wrote to him in which Deinhardt says that although he had not yet communicate the matter in a book, but that his inner research had clearly shown him that during his life between birth and death, man works on the development of an invisible body, which is released into the spiritual world at death.

And so many other phenomena of German intellectual life could be cited in favor of such a direction of research and contemplation. They would all prove that in this direction of research there was a desire not to stop at what mere philosophizing speculation, mere living in concepts can yield, but to strengthen the inner soul life in such a way that it reaches the density that reaches the ether.

Of course, the real mystery of the ether will not yet be solved from within by following the paths these researchers have taken, but it can be said, so to speak, that these researchers are on the path to spiritual science. For this mystery of the ether will be solved as the human soul undergoes those inner processes through practice, which I have often characterized here and which are described in more detail in my book “How to Know Higher Worlds”. Man does, however, gradually attain to really reaching the ether from within by going through these inner soul processes. Then the ether will be directly there for him. But only then is he capable of grasping what a sense perception actually is, what is actually present in sensory perception.

In order to present this today, I must, so to speak, approach the question from a different angle. Let us approach what actually takes place in metabolic processes for humans. Roughly speaking, we can think of the metabolic processes in the human organism as taking place in such a way that they essentially have to do with the liquid element of substance. This will be easy to see if one is even slightly familiar with the most viable scientific ideas in this field. What is a metabolic process lives, so to speak, in the liquid element. What breathing is, lives in the airy element; in breathing we have an interaction between inner and outer air processes, just as in metabolism we have an interaction between material processes that have taken place outside our body and those that take place inside our body. What happens when we perceive with our senses and follow it with our imagination? What does that actually correspond to? In the same way that fluid processes correspond to metabolism and airy processes to breathing, what corresponds to perception? Perceptual processes correspond to etheric processes. Just as we live, as it were, with metabolism in the liquid, we live with breathing in the air, we live with perception in the ether. And inner etheric processes, inner etheric processes that take place in the invisible body, of which has just been spoken, touch with external etheric processes in sensory perception. If one objects: Yes, but certain sensory perceptions are obvious metabolic processes! — it is particularly striking for those sensory perceptions that correspond to the so-called lower senses, smell, taste — a closer look would show that what is material belongs to the metabolism itself, and that in every such process, even in tasting for example, an etheric process takes place through which we enter into relationship with the outer ether, just as we enter into relationship with the air with our physical body when we breathe. Without an understanding of the etheric world, an understanding of the sensations is not possible. |

And what actually happens? Well, what happens there can basically only be understood when one has brought the inner soul process so far that the inner etheric-physical has become a reality. This will be the case when what I have recently called imaginative visualization in my lectures here has been achieved. When the images have been strengthened by the exercises that you can find in the book mentioned above, so that they are no longer abstract images, which we otherwise have, but are images full of life, then they can be called imaginations. When these images have become so full of life that they are imaginations, then they live directly in the etheric, whereas when they are abstract images, they only live in the soul. They spread into the etheric. And then, when one has so far brought it in one's inner experimentation that one experiences the ether as a living reality within oneself, then one can experience what happens in the sense perception. The sensation consists in this – I can only present this today as a result – that, as the external environment sends the etheric from the material into our sense organs, it creates those gulfs of which I spoke the day before yesterday, so that what is outside also becomes internal within our sense realm; for example, we have a sound, so to speak, between the sense life and the external world. Then, as a result of the outer ether penetrating our sense organs, this outer ether is killed. And as the outer ether enters our sense organs in a deadened state, it is revived by the inner ether of the etheric body counteracting it. This is the essence of sensory perception. Just as in the breathing process, death and life come into being when we inhale oxygen and exhale carbonic acid, so there is an interaction between the quasi-dead ether and the living ether in the sense of feeling.

This is an extraordinarily important fact for spiritual science. For that which cannot be found through philosophical speculation, on which the philosophical speculation of the last centuries has so often failed, can only be found through spiritual science. Sensory perception can thus be recognized as a fine interaction between external and internal ether; as the animation of the ether killed in the sensory organ from the inner etheric body. So that what the senses kill in us from the environment is inwardly revived by the etheric body, and we thereby come to what is precisely perception of the external world.

This is extraordinarily important, for it shows how, even when he is giving himself up to sense perception, man lives not only in the physical organism but also in the ethereal supersensible, and how the whole life of the senses is a

life and weaving in the invisible etheric. This is what the deeper researchers have always suspected in the characterized time, but it will be raised to certainty through spiritual science. Among those who recognized this significant truth, I will mention the almost completely forgotten J.P.V. Troxler. I have already mentioned him in earlier lectures here in earlier years. In his Lectures on Philosophy, he said:

"Even in the past, philosophers distinguished a fine, noble soul body from the coarser body... a soul that has an image of the body, which they called a schema, and which was the higher inner human being... In more recent times, even Kant in Dreams of a Spirit-Seer seriously dreams, in jest, of an entire inner spiritual human being who carries all the limbs of the outer one on his spirit body; Lavater also writes and thinks in the same way... ."

These researchers were also aware that the moment one ascends from mere material observation to the observation of this supersensible organism within us, one has to pass from ordinary anthropology to a kind of knowledge that comes to its results by way of inner observation. It is therefore interesting that both I. H. Fichte and Troxler are clear about the fact that anthropology must be elevated to something else if it is to grasp the whole human being. I. H. Fichte says in his 'Anthropology':

"Sensual consciousness... with the entire, also human, life of the senses, has no other significance than to be the site in which the supersensible life of the spirit is realized, in that through free conscious deed it introduces the otherworldly spiritual content of the ideas into the world of the senses... This thorough grasp of the human being now elevates “anthropology in its final result to ‘anthroposophy’.”

We see from this current of German intellectual life, which, I would say, drives idealism from its abstractness to reality, the inkling of an anthroposophy. And Troxler says that one must assume a super-spiritual sense in conjunction with a super-sensible spirit, and that one can thus grasp the human being in such a way that one no longer has to deal with an ordinary anthropology, but with something higher:

"If it is now highly gratifying that the latest philosophy, which... . in every anthroposophy.. . must reveal itself in every anthroposophy, it cannot be overlooked that this idea cannot be a fruit of speculation, and that the true individuality of man must not be confused either with what it sets up as subjective spirit or finite ego, nor with what it juxtaposes to it as absolute spirit or absolute personality.

With Anthroposophy, something is not presented that emerges, as it were, out of arbitrariness, but something that inevitably leads to that spiritual life, which once it is engaged in, experiences concepts and ideas not only as concepts and ideas, but condenses them to such an extent - and I would like to use the expression again - that they lead into reality, that they become saturated with reality.

But, and this is the defect of this research, if one merely rises from the physical to the etheric body, one still does not get along; but one only comes to a certain limit, which must be exceeded, however, because beyond the etheric only the soul-spiritual lies. And the essential thing is that this soul-spiritual can only enter into a relationship with the physical through the mediation of the etheric. Thus, we have to look for the actual soul of the human being in that which now works completely super-etherically in the etheric, so that the etheric in turn shapes the physical as it is itself shaped, permeated, and lived through by the soul.

Let us now try to grasp the human being at the other pole, the will pole: We have said that the life of the will is connected with the metabolism. Inasmuch as the impulse of the will expresses itself in the metabolism, it lives, not merely in the external physical metabolism, but, since the whole human being is within the boundaries of his being, the etheric also lives in what develops as metabolism when a will impulse proceeds. Spiritual science shows that the opposite of sensory perception is present in the will impulse. While in sensory perception the outer ether is, as it were, animated by the inner ether, so that the inner ether pours into the dead ether, in the case of the will impulse, when it arises from the soul spiritual, then through metabolism and everything connected with it, the etheric body is loosened and driven out of the physical body in those areas where the metabolism takes place. So here we have the opposite: the etheric body, as it were, withdraws from physical processes. And therein lies the essence of acts of will, in that the etheric body withdraws from the physical body.

Now those revered listeners who have heard the earlier lectures will remember that, in addition to imaginative knowledge, I have distinguished between inspired knowledge and the actual intuitive knowledge. And just as imaginative knowledge is the result of such a strengthening of the soul life that one comes to the etheric life in the way indicated earlier, so intuitive knowledge is given by the fact that one learns, so to speak, in one's soul life to participate through powerful impulses of will, even to evoke what one can call withdrawal of the etheric body from physical processes. Thus in this area the soul-spiritual extends into the physical-bodily. When a volitional impulse originally emanates from the soul-spiritual, it finds the etheric, and the consequence is that this etheric is withdrawn from some metabolic area of the physical body. And from this working of the soul-spiritual through the etheric upon the bodily, there arises what may be called the transmission of a volitional impulse to some bodily movement, to some bodily activity. But it is only when we consider the human being as a whole in this way that we arrive at his actual immortal part. For as soon as we learn to recognize how the spiritual-soul element weaves in the ether, it also becomes clear to us that this weaving of the spiritual-soul element in the ether is independent of those processes of the physical body that are included in birth, conception and death. And in this way it is possible to truly rise to the immortal in the human being, to that which connects with the body that one receives through the hereditary current and which is maintained when the human being passes through the gate of death again. For the eternal spiritual is connected with that which is born and dies here, indirectly through the etheric.

It has become clear that the concepts presented by spiritual science are very much at odds with today's thinking habits and that it is difficult for people to find their way into these concepts. It may be said that one of the obstacles to this finding one's way in, besides others, is that so little effort is made to seek the real connection between the spiritual and soul life and the bodily in the way suggested today. Most people long for something quite different from what spiritual research can actually provide. What is it actually that takes place in man when he imagines? An etheric process that only interacts with an external etheric process. But in order for a person to be in this direction in a healthy mental and physical way, it is necessary for that person to become aware of where the boundary is where the inner and outer ether touch. This mostly happens unconsciously. It becomes conscious when the human being rises to imaginative knowledge, when he experiences inwardly the rain and movement of the ether, and his coming together with the outer ether, which dies in the sense organ. In this interaction between the inner and outer ether, we have, so to speak, the outermost limit of the effectiveness of the ether in general on the human organism. For that which is in our etheric body, for example, primarily affects the organism in terms of growth. There it is still active within the organism, forming it. It gradually organizes our organism so that it adapts to the outside world, as we see when a child grows up. But this inwardly formative grasp of the physical body by the ether must reach a certain limit. If it goes beyond this limit through some morbid process, then what lives and moves in the ether, but which should maintain itself in the etheric, encroaches upon the physical organism, so that what should remain as ether movement is, as it were, interwoven into the physical organism. What then happens? That which should actually only be experienced inwardly as an image, occurs as a process in the physical body. Then it is what is called a hallucination. When the ether process crosses its boundary into the physical, because the body, through its disease, does not offer the right resistance, then what is called a hallucination arises. Now, many people who want to enter the spiritual world actually desire hallucinations above all. Of course, the spiritual researcher cannot offer them that, because hallucination is nothing more than the reproduction of a purely material process, a process that takes place in relation to the soul beyond the boundaries of the body, that is, in the body. On the other hand, what leads to the spiritual world is that one goes from this boundary back into the soul and instead of hallucinations, one comes to imagination, and imagination is a purely mental experience. And because it is a purely mental experience, the soul lives in the spiritual world in the imagination. But in this way the soul also lives in fully conscious penetration of the imagination. And it is important to realize that imagination, that is, the right way to gain spiritual knowledge, and hallucination, are opposites and also destroy each other. He who hallucinates through a diseased organism blocks the path to true imagination; and he who has true imagination is most safely guarded from all hallucination. Hallucination and imagination are mutually exclusive and mutually destructive.

But the same is true at the other pole of the human being. Just as the etheric body can encroach upon the physical body, can sink its formative power into the physical body, and thereby cause hallucinations, that is, purely physical processes, so on the other side, through certain morbid formations of the organism or through induced fatigue or other conditions of the organism, the etheric, as it was characterized in the act of will, can emerge in an irregular manner. Then it may happen that instead of the etheric really being withdrawn from the physical metabolic region in a correct act of will, it remains within, and the purely physical activity of the physical metabolic region encroaches upon the etheric , so that the etheric becomes dependent on the physical, whereas in normal will-manifestation the physical is dependent on the etheric, which in turn is determined by the soul-spiritual. When this happens through such processes as I have indicated, then, I might say, the compulsive act, which consists in the physical body with its metabolic processes forcing its way into the etheric, so to speak pushing itself into the etheric body, gives rise to the morbid counter-image of hallucination. And if the compulsive act is evoked as a pathological phenomenon, then one can again say: it excludes what is called intuition in spiritual scientific knowledge. Intuition and compulsive behavior are mutually exclusive, just as hallucination and imagination are mutually exclusive. This is why there is nothing more soulless than, on the one hand, hallucinators, because hallucinations are just hints at bodily conditions that should not be; and, on the other hand, for example, the whirling dervishes. The dance of the dervish comes about through the physical body pushing into the etheric, so that it is not the etheric that brings about the effect from the spiritual-soul, but basically only regular compulsive actions occur. And anyone who believes that they can find revelations of the soul in the dancing dervish should first of all study spiritual science in order to realize that the dancing dervish is proof that the spirit, the spiritual-soul, has left its body; that is why he dances in this way.

And, I would like to say, only a little more extensive is that which is not dancing, but which, for example, is automatic writing, mediumistic writing. This also consists in nothing more than first driving the spiritual-soul out of the human being completely, and allowing the physical body, which has been pushed into the etheric body, to unfold as it does when it has become empty, as it were, of the inner ether and now comes under the control of the surrounding outer ether. All these subjects lead away from spiritual science, not toward it, although nothing should be objected to them from the standpoint of those from whom they usually meet with so much opposition. In the dancing dervish one can study what a danced art, a truly artistic dance, should be. The artistic dance should consist precisely in the fact that each individual movement corresponds to a volitional impulse, which can also become conscious to the person concerned, so that one is never dealing with a mere intrusion of physical processes into ethereal processes. Only spiritualized dance is artistic dance. The dancing of the dervish is only the denial of spirituality. Some will object: But it does show the spirit! It does, but how? You can study a shell if you take in and look at the living shell; but you can also study it when the living shell is gone, by looking at the shell: the shape of the shell is reproduced in the shell, the shape born out of life. But in a similar way, we also have a reproduction of the spiritual, a dead reproduction of the spiritual, when we are dealing with automatic writing or with a whirling dervish. That is why it resembles the spiritual as much as the shell resembles the mussel, and why it can be so easily confused. But only when we truly penetrate into the spiritual can we have the right understanding of these things.

If we start from the bodily, through the sensation of the senses, and ascend to the realm of the imagination, which then transfers itself into the soul-spiritual, we come to recognize in this way, in a spiritual-scientific way, that what is aroused by the sensations of the senses is, as it were, deposited at a certain point and becomes memory. Memory arises from the fact that the sensory impression continues in the body, so that not only can the etheric work from within in the sensory impressions themselves, but the etheric can now also be active in what the sensory impression has left behind in the body. Then what has gone into memory is brought up again from remembrance.

Of course, it is not possible to go into these things in more detail in the short time of a one-hour lecture. But one will never come to a real understanding of what imagination and memory are, and how they relate to the soul and spirit, if one does not advance in the spiritual-scientific sense on the path that has been indicated.

At the other pole, there is the whole current that flows from the spiritual-soul of the will impulses down into the physical body, through which the actions are effected. In the ordinary life of man, the sense life comes to remembrance and remains, as it were, in the act of remembering. Remembrance is placed before the soul-spiritual, so that the latter is not aware of itself, of how it creates and is active through the sensations of the senses. Only a vague, confused notion arises that the soul lives and weaves in the etheric, when this soul, living and weaving in the etheric, is not yet so strengthened in this etheric weaving that all etheric weaving breaks at the boundary of the physical. When the soul-spiritual interweaves the etheric body in such a way that what it expresses in the etheric body does not immediately break at the physical body, but is so sustained in the etheric that it reaches the boundaries of the physical body, but is still noticed in the etheric, then the dream arises. And the life of dreams, when it is really studied, will become proof of the lowest form of supersensible experience of man. For in dreams man experiences that he cannot unfold his soul-spiritual, because it seems too powerless, in will impulses within that which is present in the dream images. And because the will impulses are lacking, because the spirit and soul intervene so little in the etheric in the dream that the soul itself becomes aware of these will impulses, the chaotic fabric that the dream represents arises.

What dreams are on the one hand, on the other hand there are those phenomena in which the will, coming from the soul-spiritual, intervenes in the outer world through the etheric-physical , but is just as little aware of what is actually happening there as he is able to become aware in the dream, due to the weak activity of the spiritual-soul, that the human being is living and breathing in the spiritual. Just as the dream so to speak represents the attenuated sense perception, so something else represents the intensified effect of the spiritual-soul, the intensified effect of the will impulses; and that is what we call fate.

We do not see the connections in fate, just as we do not see in the dream what is actually weaving and living there as the real thing. Just as material processes always underlie the dream, surging into the ether, so the soul and spiritual anchored in the will surge towards the outer world. But in ordinary life the soul and spiritual are not organized in such a way that the spirit itself can be seen in its activity in what happens to us as the succession of so-called fateful experiences. At the moment we grasp this succession, we learn to recognize the fabric of fate, we learn to recognize that just as in ordinary life the soul obscures the spiritual through ideas, in fate it obscures the spiritual through affect, through sympathy and antipathy, with which it takes in the events that come to it as life events. In the moment when one sees through sympathy and antipathy in a spiritual-scientific way, when one really grasps the course of life's events objectively and calmly, one notices how everything that happens in our lives between birth and death is either the after-effect of previous lives on earth or the preparation for later lives on earth. Just as, on the one hand, natural science does not penetrate to the spiritual and soul, not even to the etheric, when it seeks the relationships between the material world and the imagination, so at the other pole, natural science cannot cope with its efforts today. Just as it clings to material processes in the nervous organism in the life of the imagination, so at the other pole it clings to something unclear, which, I might say, hovers nebulously between the physical and the soul.

These are precisely the areas where one must become fully aware of how world-view concepts can be both proven and refuted. And for those who insist on proof, the positive has much to recommend it; but one must also be able to experience the negative inwardly, in keeping with one's insights, as with exhalation one inhales. Recently, what is called analytical psychology has emerged. This analytical psychology is, I would say, inspired by good intuitions. For what does it want? This analytical psychology, or as it is usually called today, psychoanalysis, wants to descend from the ordinary soul life to that which is no longer contained in the ordinary present soul life, but is a remnant of earlier soul experience. The psychoanalyst assumes that mental life is not exhausted in the present mental experience, in the conscious mental experience, but that consciousness dips down into the subconscious. And in much of what appears in the mental life as a disturbance, as confusion, as this or that defect, the psychoanalyst sees an effect of what surges down in the subconscious. But what the psychoanalyst sees in this subconscious is interesting. When you hear what he lists in this subconscious, it is first of all deceived hopes in life. The psychoanalyst finds some person who suffers from this or that depression. This depression does not have to originate in the present conscious mental life, but in the past. Something occurred in mental experience in this life. The person has since emerged from it, but not completely; a residue remains in the subconscious. He has experienced disappointments, for example. Through education and other processes, he has come to terms with these disappointments in his conscious mental life, but in the subconscious they live on. There they surge, as it were, to the very edge of consciousness. There it then produces the unclear mental depression. The psychoanalyst thus searches in all kinds of disappointments, in deceived hopes of life that have been drawn down into the subconscious, for that which determines the conscious life in a dark way. He also searches for this in what colors the soul life as temperament. In what the soul life colors out of certain rational impulses, the psychoanalyst seeks a subconscious that, as it were, only strikes against consciousness. But then he comes to a broad area — I am only reporting here — which the psychoanalyst grasps by saying: 'The animalistic mud of the soul is playing up into conscious life'. Now, it is not at all denied that this basic sludge is present. In these lectures I myself have already pointed out how certain mystics have experiences in that something, be it for example the erotic, is subtly brought up and plays into consciousness, so that one believes to have particularly exalted experiences, while only the erotic, “the animalistic basic mud of the soul,” is brought up and sometimes interpreted in a deeply mystical sense. One can still see in such a poetically delicate mystic as Mechthild of Magdeburg how erotic feeling goes into the details of the images. These things must be clearly grasped so that no errors are made in the spiritual-scientific field. For anyone who wants to penetrate the spirit must be particularly aware of all the paths of error, not to avoid them, but to avoid them. But anyone who speaks of this animalistic basic mud of the soul, who only speaks of disappointed hopes in life and the like, does not go deep enough into the life of the soul: he is like a person walking across a field in which nothing can yet be seen and who believes that it contains only the soil or even the manure, whereas in fact this field already contains all the fruits that will soon come up as grain or other things. When speaking of the basic mud of the soul, one should also speak of what is embedded in it. Certainly, there are disappointed hopes contained in this basic mud; but at the same time, what is embedded in it contains a germinating power that represents what – when the human being has passed through the gate of death into the life that between death and a new birth, and then enters into a new earth-life, makes something quite different out of the deceived hopes than a depression, that makes out of them that which then in a next life leads to disillusionment, to hardening. What the psychoanalyst seeks in the disappointed hopes of life in the depths of the soul, if he delves deeply enough, is what is being prepared in the present life in order to intervene fatefully in the next life.

Thus, if we dig around and search through the animalistic mud of the ground without dirtying our hands, as is unfortunately so often the case with psychoanalysts, we find the spiritual and mental weaving of fate that extends beyond birth and death with the spiritual and mental life of the soul. Analytical psychology is precisely the kind of psychology that can be used to learn how everything is right and everything is wrong when it comes to questions of world view, namely from one side or the other. Nevertheless, there is an enormous amount that can be said in support of the one-sided assertions of the psychoanalysts; therefore a refutation will not greatly impress those who are sworn to these concepts. But if one learns to recognize what speaks for and against with the attitude of knowledge that was characterized at the beginning of this lecture, then it is precisely from the pros and cons of the soul that one will experience what really works. For, I might say, between what can be observed in the soul, as psychologists do, who only go to the level of consciousness, and what the psychoanalyst finds down in the animalistic mud of the soul, lies the realm that belongs to the spiritual-soul-eternal, which goes through births and deaths.

The exploration of the human soul also leads to a correct relationship with the external world. Modern science has not only spoken about the ether in an indeterminate way, but it is also spoken about in such a way that the greatest mysteries of the world are actually attributed to it: what then took on solid forms, became planets, suns and moons, and so on. In this view, the soul and spiritual processes at work in man are regarded as no more than a mere episode. There is only dead ether, back and front. If one gets to know the ether only from one side, then one can come to such a construction of the becoming of the world, to which the subtle Herman Grimm — I have quoted his saying before, but it is so significant that it can always be brought before the soul again — says the following words. By familiarizing himself with how one thinks that the dead etheric mist of the cosmos has given rise to that out of which life and spirit are now developing, and by measuring it against Goethe's world view, he comes to the following saying:

What appears here again within German intellectual life as a feeling born out of a healthy soul life is shown in a true light by spiritual science. For, as one learns to recognize, how the animation of the dead ether through the soul, through the living ether, comes about, then through inner experience one comes away from the possibility that our world building could ever have arisen from a dead etheric. And this riddle of the world takes on a quite different form when we become acquainted with the corresponding riddle of the soul. We now recognize the ether itself in its living form, we recognize how the dead ether must first arise out of the living. So that by going back to the beginning of the world, we must come back to the soul and see in the spiritual-soul the origin of that which is developing today. But while this spiritual-soul substance remains a mere hypothesis, a mere figment of the imagination, in relation to the outer riddles of the world, so long as one does not learn about the whole life and weaving of the etheric through spiritual science in the encounter of the living ether from within with the dead ether from without, it is precisely through spiritual science that the cosmic fog itself becomes a living, spiritual-soul substance.

As you can see, the riddles of the soul also open up a significant perspective for the riddles of the world. I must pause on this perspective today. You can see that a true contemplation of outer and inner life from the point of view of spiritual science leads across the ether into the spiritual-soul realm, both in the soul itself and in the outer world.

On the other hand, there is the attitude of knowledge such as I have described in the case of a man whom I mentioned last time. Today we can at least surmise that from the corporeal as conceived by spiritual science, the bridge leads directly up to the spiritual-soul, in which ethics, morality, and morals are rooted, which originate in the spirit, just as the sensual leads into the spiritual. But in its study of purely external material things, science has arrived at a point of view that denies that ethics is rooted in the spiritual at all. Today, people are still too embarrassed to deny ethics itself, but they say the following about ethics, which is at the end of Jacques Loeb's lecture, which I presented last time with reference to the beginning. There he says, who comes to a brutal denial of ethics through scientific research:

“If our existence is based on the play of blind forces and is only a work of chance, if we ourselves are only chemical mechanisms, how can there be an ethic for us?” The answer to this is that our instincts form the root of our ethics, and that instincts are just as hereditary as the formative components of our body. We eat and drink and reproduce, not because metaphysicians have come to the conclusion that this is desirable, but because we are mechanically induced to do so. We are active because we are mechanically compelled to do so by the processes in our nervous system, and, if people are not economic slaves, the instinct of “successful triggering or successful work determines the direction of their activity. The mother loves her children and takes care of them, not because metaphysicians had the idea that this was beautiful, but because the instinct of brood care, presumably through the two sex chromosomes, is just as firmly determined as the morphological characters of the female body. We enjoy the company of other people because we are forced to do so by hereditary conditions. We fight for justice and truth and are willing to make sacrifices for them because we instinctively want to see our fellow human beings happy. That we have an ethic is due solely to our instincts, which are chemically and hereditarily laid down in us in the same way as the shape of our body."

Moral action leads back to instincts! Instincts lead back to physical-chemical action! The logic is, however, very threadbare. Of course, one can say that one should not wait for the metaphysicians to work out some metaphysical principles before acting ethically, but that is the same as saying: should one wait for the metaphysicians or the physiologists to discover the laws of digestion before digesting? I would therefore recommend to Professor Loeb not to investigate the physiological laws of digestion in the same brutal way as he attacks the metaphysical laws of ethical life. But one can say: one can be an important natural scientist today – but the habits of thought are such that they cut you off, as it were, from all spiritual life, that you no longer have an eye for this spiritual life at all. But this always goes hand in hand with the fact that you can, as it were, prove a defect in thinking, so that you never really have everything that goes into a thought.

One can indeed have strange experiences in this regard. I have already presented such an experience here some time ago; but I would like to present it again because it ties in with the ideas of a very important contemporary natural scientist, who is also one of those whom I attack precisely because I hold him in high esteem in one field. This naturalist has made great contributions in the field of astrophysics and also in certain other fields of natural science. But when he wrote a book summarizing the world view of the present and the development of this world view, he makes a remarkable statement in the preface. He is, so to speak, enchanted by how wonderfully far we have come in being able to interpret everything scientifically, and with a certain arrogance, as is common in such circles, he points to earlier times when this was not the case. Goethe, saying: “Whether one can really say that we live in the best of times is not clear; but that, in terms of scientific knowledge, we live in the best of times for knowledge compared to earlier times, we can refer to Goethe, who says:

It is a great delight
to place oneself in the spirit of the times,
to see how a wise man thought before us,
and how we have then finally come so gloriously far.

With this, a great naturalist of the present day concludes, that is, with a confession that he takes from Goethe. He has only forgotten that it is Wagner who makes this confession and that Faust says to this confession when Wagner has left:

How can the mind not lose all hope,
When it is always stuck with stale evidence,
Digging for treasure with a greedy hand
And happy when it finds earthworms!

This great researcher forgot to reflect on what Goethe actually says the moment he refers to Wagner to express how wonderfully far we have come. One can, I would say, see where thinking leaves off in the pursuit of reality.

And we could cite many more examples if we were to delve a little deeper into contemporary scientific literature. Since I hold the aforementioned natural scientist in high regard, as I have said, it will certainly not be taken amiss if I were to assert the true Goethean attitude in the face of such natural science, which puffs itself up by also claiming to be able to provide information about the spirit. For although we can forgive many a monist for being unable to grasp the spirit due to the weakness of his thinking, it is dangerous when the attitude that appears in Jacques Loeb and in the characterized natural scientist, who characterizes himself as Wagner but believes he is characterizing himself as Goethe, spreads more and more into the widest circles through the belief in authority. And it does. Those who penetrate into what spiritual science can give in terms of attitude may, if they follow the example of the natural scientist, even if it may not seem reverent enough to some, come to the genuine Goethean attitude by taking up Goethe's words, with which I would like to conclude this lecture:

It is a great horror
to put oneself in the shoes of souls like that,
how greedily they touch the material
and rush past the spirit!

[ 1 ] Through thinking, concepts and ideas arise. What a concept is cannot be said in words. Words can only make the human being aware of the fact that he has concepts. When someone sees a tree, his thinking reacts to his observation; to the object there comes then an ideal counterpart, and he regards the object and ideal counterpart as belonging together. When the object disappears from his field of observation, there remains behind only its ideal counterpart. The latter is the concept of the object. The more our experience broadens, the greater the sum of our concepts becomes. The concepts however by no means stand there isolated. They join themselves together into a lawful whole. The concept “organism” joins itself, for example, to the others of “lawful development” and “growth.” Other concepts formed in connection with single things merge totally into one. All the concepts that I make for myself of lions merge together into the overall concept “lion.” In this way the individual concept join themselves into a united system of concepts within which every one has its particular place. Ideas are not qualitatively different from concepts. They are only concepts that are fuller in content, more saturated, and wider in scope. I must particularly emphasize that heed be taken at this point of the fact that I have indicated thinking as my starting point and not concepts and ideas, which are first gained through thinking. These already presuppose thinking. What I have said therefore about the self-sustaining and self-determined nature of thinking cannot simply be transferred to concepts. (I state this here expressly, because herein lies my difference with Hegel. He posits the concept as primary and original.)

[ 2 ] The concept cannot be gained from observation. This is already evident from the fact that the maturing human being only slowly and gradually forms his concepts for the objects which surround him. The concepts are added to the observation.

[ 3 ] A widely read philosopher of the present day, Herbert Spencer, describes the mental process we carry out with respect to an observation in the following way:

[ 4 ] “If, when walking through the fields some day in September you hear a rustle a few yards in advance, and, on observing the ditch-side where it occurs, see the herbage agitated, you will probably turn toward the spot to learn by what this sound and motion are produced. As you approach, there flutters into the ditch a partridge; on seeing which your curiosity is satisfied—you have what you call an explanation of the appearances. The explanation, mark, amounts to this: that whereas through life you have had countless experiences of disturbance among small stationary bodies, accompanying the movement of other bodies among them, and have generalized the relation between such disturbances and such movements, you consider this particular disturbance explained on finding it to present an instance of the like relation.”¹ When viewed more closely the matter turns out to be completely different from what is described here. When I hear a sound, I seek first of all the concept corresponding to this observation. It is only this concept that first takes me beyond the sound. Whoever does not reflect further just hears the sound and is content with that. Through my reflection, however, it is clear to me that I have to comprehend a sound as an effect. Therefore, only when I join the concept effect with the perception of the sound, am I moved to go beyond the individual observation and seek the cause. The concept “effect” calls up the concept “cause,” and I then look for the causal object, which I find in the form of the partridge. These concepts, “cause” and “effect,” however, I can never gain through mere observation, no matter how many instances it may cover. Observation calls forth thinking, and this latter first shows me the way to join the single experience to another.

[ 5 ] If one demands of a “strictly objective science” that is take its content only from observation, one must demand at the same time that it renounce all thinking Because thinking by its very nature goes beyond what is observed.

[ 6 ] This is the place now to pass from thinking to the being who thinks. For, through him thinking is joined with observation. Human consciousness is the stage upon which concept and observation meet each other and where they become joined. But this (human) consciousness is thereby characterized at the same time. It is the mediator between thinking and observation. Insofar as the human being observes a thing, this thing appears to him as given; insofar as he thinks, he appears to himself as active. He considers the thing as object, himself as the thinking subject. Because he focuses his thinking upon the observation, he has consciousness of the objects; because he directs his thinking upon himself, he has consciousness of himself or self-consciousness. Human consciousness must necessarily be self-consciousness at the same time, because it is thinking consciousness. For then thinking directs its gaze upon its own activity, it then has its own inmost being, its subject, as object before it.

[ 7 ] But the fact must not be overlooked now that it is only with the help of thinking that we are able to designate ourselves as subject ad to set ourselves over against objects. Therefore thinking must never be considered to be a merely subjective activity. Thinking is beyond subject and object. It forms these two concepts just as much as all others. When we as thinking subject, therefore, relate the concept to an object, we must not, in so doing, consider this relationship to be something merely subjective. It is not the subject that brings about the relationship, but rather thinking. The subject does not think by virtue of being subject, but rather appears to itself as a subject because it is able to think. The activity which the human being as thinking entity, exercises is therefore no merely subjective one, but rather one that is neither subjective nor objective, one that goes beyond these two concepts. I must never say that my individual subject thinks; it is much more the case that my subject itself lives by the grace of thinking. Thinking is an element that leads me out of and above my self, and joins me with objects. But it separates me from them at the same time, inasmuch as it places me over against them a subject.

[ 8 ] This is the basis for the double nature of the human being: he thinks and thereby encompasses himself and the rest of the world; but he must, by means of thinking, at the same time designate himself as an individual that stands over and against the things.

[ 9 ] The next thing will now be to ask ourselves how the other element—which we have up to now merely called object of observation, and which encounters thinking within our consciousness—come into our consciousness?

[ 10 ] In order to answer this question we must exclude from our field of observation everything that has already been brought into it through thinking. For our content of consciousness at any given moment is already permeated with concepts in the most manifold way.

[ 11 ] We must picture to ourselves a being with fully developed human intelligence arising out of nothingness and approaching the world. What he would become aware of in it, before he brought his thinking into activity, is the pure content of observation. The world would then show this being only the bare aggregate, without interconnection of the objects of sensation: colors, tones, sensations of pressure, warmth, taste, and smell; then feelings of pleasure and displeasure. This aggregate is the content of pure observation without thoughts. Over against it stands thinking, which is ready to unfold its activity when a point of attack is found. Experience soon teaches us that a point is found. Thinking is capable of drawing threads from one element of observation to the other. Thinking connects definite concepts with these elements and brings them thereby into a relationship. We have already seen above, how a sound confronting us is joined with another observation through the fact that we designate the former as the effect of the latter.

[ 12 ] When we now recall that the activity of thinking is absolutely not to be taken as subjective, we will thus also not be tempted to believe that such connections, established through thinking, have a merely subjective validity.

[ 13 ] It will now be a matter, through thinking considerations of seeking the connection which the directly given content of observation described above has to our conscious subject.

[ 14 ] Because of the variability in the use of language it seems advisable for me to come to an understanding with my reader about the use of a word which I will have to employ in what follows. I will call the immediate objects of sensation enumerated above perceptions, insofar as the conscious subject takes cognizance of them through observation. I therefore use this word to indicate, not the process of observation, but rather the object of this observation.

[ 15 ] I do not choose the term sensation, because in physiology this has a definite meaning that is narrower than my concept of perception. An emotion within myself can certainly be called a perception, but not a sensation in the physiological sense. I come to know even my emotions through their becoming perceptions for me. And the way we come to know our thinking through observation is such, that we can also use the word perception for thinking as it first appears to our consciousness.

[ 16 ] The naive person considers his perceptions, in the way they immediately appear to him, as things having an existence completely independent of him. When he sees a tree, he believes right away that it is standing there in that spot toward which his gaze is directed, in the shape he sees, with the colors its parts have, etc. When the same person sees the sun appear in the morning as a disk on the horizon, and follows the course of this disk, he believes that all this exists and occurs in this way (in and for itself), just as he observes it to. He holds fast to his belief, until he meets other perceptions that contradict his former ones. The child, who does not yet have any experience of distance, reaches for the moon, and corrects the way he had first seen it to be only when a second perception is found to be in contradiction with the first. Every broadening of the circle of my perception obliges me to correct my picture of the world. This is evident in daily life just as much as in the spiritual development of mankind. The picture which the ancients made for themselves of the relationship of the earth to the sun and to the other heavenly bodies, had to be replaced by Copernicus with another one, because it did not accord with perceptions unknown to earlier times. A man born blind said, after Dr. Franz had operated on him, that before his operation he had formed a completely different picture of the size of objects through the perceptions of his sense of touch. He had to correct his perceptions of touch through his perceptions of sight.

[ 17 ] How is it that we are compelled to make such continuous corrections of our observations?

[ 18 ] A simple reflection brings the answer to this question. When I am standing at one end of an avenue of trees, the trees distant from me at the other end appear to me smaller and closer together than they do where I am standing. My perceptual picture becomes a different one when I change the place from which I make my observations. This picture, therefore, in the form in which it approaches me, is dependent upon a determining factor which is not due to the object, but which rather is attributable to me, the one doing the perceiving. For an avenue of trees it is a matter of complete indifference where I am standing. The picture, however, that I receive of it, is essentially dependent upon where I am standing. In the same way it is a matter of indifference to the sun and to the planetary system that human beings happen to view them from the earth. The perceptual picture, however, which presents itself to human beings is determined through this their dwelling place. This dependency of our perceptual picture upon our point of observation is the one that is easiest to recognize. The matter becomes more difficult, to be sure, when we learn to know the dependency of our perceptual world upon our bodily and spiritual organization. The physicist shows us that within the space in which we hear a sound, vibrations of the air take place, and that the body also, in which we seek the origin of the sound, exhibits a vibrating movement of its parts. We only perceive this movement as sound if we have a normally organized ear. Without such an ear the whole world would remain forever silent for us. Physiology teaches us that there are people who perceive nothing of the magnificent splendor of color that surrounds us. Their perceptual picture evinces only nuances of light and dark. Others do not perceive only one particular color, such as red, for example. This shade is missing from their world picture, which is therefore actually a different one than that of the average person. I would like to call the dependency of my perceptual picture upon my place of observation, “mathematical,” and the dependency upon my organization “qualitative.” Through the former, the size relationships and respective distances of my perceptions are determined; through the latter, the quality of my perceptions. That I see a red surface as red—this qualitative determination—depends upon the organization of my eye.

[ 19 ] My perceptual pictures are therefore at first subjective. Knowledge of the subjective character of our perceptions can easily lead to doubt as to whether anything objective underlies them at all. When we know that a perception—of a red color, for example, or of a particular tone—is not possible without a definite structure in our organism, one can arrive at the belief that this perception, apart from our subjective organism, has no reality, that the perception has no kind of existence without the act of perceiving, whose object it is. This view has found a classic proponent in George Berkeley, who was of the opinion that the human being, from the moment he has become conscious of the significance of the subject for the perception, can no longer believe in a world that is present without the conscious mind. He says, “Some truths there are, so near and obvious to the mind that man need only open his eyes to see them. Such I take this important one to be, to wit, that all the choir of heaven and furniture of the earth, in a word, all those bodies which compose the mighty frame of the world, have any subsistence without a mind, that their being is to be perceived or known; that, consequently, so long as they are not actually perceived by me, or do not exist in my mind or that of any other created spirit, they must either have no existence at all, or else subsist in the mind of some eternal spirit.”² For this view, nothing more of the perception remains, if one disregards the fact of its being perceived. There is no color when none is seen, no tone when none is heard. Just as little as color and tone, do dimension, shape, and motion exist outside of the act of perception. We nowhere see bare dimension or shape, but always see them connected with color or with other characteristics which indisputably depend upon our subjectivity. If these latter characteristics disappear along with our perception, then that must also be the case for the elements of dimension or shape that are bound to them.

[ 20 ] An objection can be made that, even if figure, color, tone, etc. do have not existence other than within my act of perception, there must still be things which are there without my act of perception, there must still be things which are there without my consciousness and to which my conscious perceptual pictures are similar; to this objection the above view responds by saying that a color can only be similar to a color, a figure similar to a figure. Our perceptions can only be similar to our perceptions, but not to any other things. Even what we call an object is nothing other than a group of perceptions which are connected in a definite way. If I take away from a table its shape, dimensions, color, etc.—everything in short that is only my perception—then nothing more remains. This view, consistently pursued, leads to the opinion that the objects of my perceptions are present only through me, and indeed only insofar as, and as long as, I perceive them; they disappear along with my act of perceiving and have no meaning without it. Other than my perceptions I know of no objects, however, and can know of none.

[ 21 ] No objection can be brought against this opinion as long as I am merely bringing into consideration in a general way the fact that the perception is codetermined by the organization of my subject. The matter would present itself in an essentially different way, however, if we were able to say what the function of our perceiving is in the genesis of a perception. We would then know what is happening with the perception during the act of perceiving, and could also determine what about it would already have to exist, before it is perceived.

[ 22 ] With this, our consideration of the object of perception leads over to the subject of perception. I do not perceive other things only; I also perceive my self. The perception of my self has at first the content that I am what endures in the face of perceptual pictures that continually come and go. The perception of my “I” can always appear in my consciousness while I am having other perceptions. When I am absorbed in the perception of a given object, I have for the moment only a consciousness of it. To this can then come the perception of my self. I am from then on conscious not merely of the object, but also of my personality, which stands before the object and observes it. I do not merely see a tree, but I also know that it is I who see it. I recognize also that something is occurring within me while I observe the tree. When the tree disappears from my field of vision, something of this occurrence remains behind for my consciousness: a picture of the tree. During my observation this picture has connected itself with my self. My self has become richer; its content has acquired a new element. This element I call my mental picture³ of the tree. I would never be in a position to speak of mental pictures, if I did not experience them within the perception of my self. Perceptions would come and go; I would let them pass before me. Only because I perceive my self and notice that its content also changes with ever perception, do I see myself compelled to bring my observation of the object into relationship with my own change in condition, and to speak of my mental picture.

[ 23 ] I perceive the mental picture connected to my self in the same sense as I perceive color, tone, etc. connected to other objects. I can also now make the distinction of calling these other objects which come before me outer world, while I designate the content of my self-perception as inner world. Misconceptions about the relationship of mental picture and object have brought about the greatest misunderstandings in modern philosophy. The perception of a change in us, the modification that my self undergoes, was pushed into the foreground, and the object causing this modification was totally lost from view. One said that we do not perceive the objects, but only our mental pictures. I supposedly know nothing about the table-in-itself, which is the object of my observation, but only about the change which takes place with my self while I am perceiving the table. This view should not be confused with that of Berkeley mentioned before. Berkeley maintains the subjective nature of the content of my perception, but he does not say I can only know about my mental pictures. He limits my knowledge to my mental pictures, because he is of the opinion that there are no objects outside of mental picturing. What I look upon as a table is for Berkeley no longer present as soon as I no longer direct my gaze upon it. Therefore Berkeley lets my perception arise directly through the power of God. I see a table because God calls forth this perception within me. Berkeley thus knows no other real beings except God and human spirits. What we call world is present only within spirits. What the naive person calls outer world, physical nature, does not exist for Berkeley. Over against this view there stands the Kantian one now predominating, which limits our knowledge of the world to our mental pictures, not because it is convinced that there can be nothing apart from our mental pictures, but because it believes us to be so organized that we can experience only the changes of our own self and not the things-in-themselves which cause these changes. From the fact that I know only my mental pictures, this view concludes not that there is no existence independent of these mental pictures, but only that the subject cannot take up such an existence directly into itself; it can do nothing with it except through the “medium of his subjective thoughts, to imagine it, to suppose it, to think it, to know it, or perhaps also not to know is” (O. Liebmann, Contribution to the Analysis of Reality).⁴ This view believes it is saying something absolutely certain, something directly obvious without any proof. “The first fundamental principle which the philosopher has to bring to distinct consciousness for himself consists in the recognition that our knowledge at first extends itself to nothing beyond our mental pictures. Our mental pictures are the only thing that we know directly, experience directly; and, just because we experience them directly, it is the case that even the most radical doubt cannot tear away from us our knowledge of our mental pictures. On the other hand, knowledge that goes beyond our mental picturing—whenever I use this expression I mean it in the widest sense, so that all psychic happenings come under it—is not secure from doubt. Therefore, at the beginning of any philosophizing, all knowledge which goes beyond our mental pictures must be expressly presented as doubtful”; thus Volkelt begins his book on Immanuel Kant's Epistemology. What is here presented in this way, as though it were an immediate and obvious truth, is in reality, however, the result of a thought-operation that runs as follows: The naive person believes that the objects, in the way he perceives them, are also present outside of his consciousness. Physics, physiology, and psychology seem to teach, however, that for our perceptions our organization is necessary, that we consequently can know about nothing except what our organization transmits to us from the things. Our perceptions are thus modifications of our organization, not things-in-themselves. Eduard von Hartmann has characterized the train of thought indicated here as in fact the one which must convince us of the principle that we can have a direct knowledge only of our mental pictures (see his Basic Problem of Epistemology).⁵ Because outside of our organism, we find vibrations of physical bodies and of the air which manifest to us as sound, it is concluded that what we call sound is nothing more than a subjective reaction of our organism to those motions in the outer world. In the same way one finds that color and warmth are only modifications of our organism. And one is in fact of the view that these two kinds of perceptions are called forth in us through the effect of occurrences in the outer world which are utterly different form what our warmth of color experience is. When such occurrences stimulate the nerves in my skin, I have the subjective perception of warmth; when such occurrences encounter the optic nerve, I perceive light and color. Light, color, and warmth, therefore, are that with which my sensory nerves respond to the stimuli from outside. Even my sense of touch transmits to me, not the objects of the outer world, but only my own states. In the sense of modern physics one could think, for example, that bodies consist of infinitely small particles, of molecules, and that these molecules do not border directly upon each other, but rather are at certain distances from each other. Between them, therefore, is empty space. Across these distances the molecules act upon each other by means of forces of attraction and repulsion. When I bring my hand toward a body, the molecules of my hand by no means directly touch those of the body, but rather there remains a certain distance between body and hand; and what I sense as the body's resistance is nothing more than the effect of the force of repulsion which its molecules exert upon my hand. I am altogether outside the body and only perceive its effect upon my organism.

[ 24 ] The doctrine put forward by J. Müller (1801–1858) about the so-called specific sense energies complements these reflections. It consists in declaring that each sense organ has the characteristic of responding to all outer stimuli in one specific way only. If the optic nerve is acted upon, a perception of light arises, no matter whether the stimulus occurs through what we call light, or whether a mechanical pressure or an electric current affects the nerve. Furthermore, different perceptions are called forth in the different sense organs by the same outer stimuli. This seems to indicate that our senses can transmit only what occurs within them, but nothing of the outer world. The senses, each according to its nature, determine the perceptions.

[ 25 ] Physiology shows that a direct knowledge of what the objects cause to happen within our sense organs is also out of the question. As the physiologist pursues the occurrences in our own body, he finds that, already in the sense organs, the effects of an outer motion are transformed in the most manifold way. We see that most distinctly with the eye and ear. Both are very complicated organs which essentially change the outer stimulus before they bring it to the corresponding nerve. From the peripheral end of the nerve, the already changed stimulus is now conducted further to the brain. Here first of all the central organs must be stimulated again. From this is inferred that the outer occurrence has undergone a series of transformations before it comes to consciousness. What takes place in the brain is connected with the outer occurrence through so many intermediary occurrences that any similarity between the two is inconceivable. What the brain finally communicates to the soul are neither outer occurrences nor occurrences in the sense organs, but only such as are in the brain. But the soul still does not perceive even these directly. What we finally have in our consciousness are not brain processes at all, but rather sensations. My sensation of red has absolutely no similarity to the process which takes place in my brain when I experience the red. The latter only appears again in the soul as an effect and is only caused by the brain process. Therefore Hartmann says (The Basic Problem of Epistemology), “What the subject perceives are therefore always only modifications of his own psychic states and nothing else.” When I have sensations thee are, however, still far from being grouped together into what I perceive as the things. Only single sensations, after all, can be communicated to me through the brain. The sensations of hard and soft are communicated to me through the sense of touch, sensations of color and light through the sense of sight. In spite of this the sensations find themselves united upon one and the same object. This union must therefore first be accomplished by the soul itself. This means that the soul assembles into physical objects the single sensations communicated through the brain. My brain transmits to me individually my sensations of sight, touch, and hearing—and does this, indeed, along entirely different paths—which my soul then assembles into the mental picture “trumpet.” It is this last part (mental picture of the trumpet) of a process that, for my consciousness, is given first of all. There is in this lat part nothing more to be found of what is outside me and originally made an impression on my senses. The external object, on its way to the brain, and through the brain to the soul, has been entirely lost.

[ 26 ] It would be difficult to find another edifice of thought in the history of the spiritual life of man which has been assembled with keener thought, and which nevertheless crumbles into nothingness upon closer examination. Let us take a closer look at the way it is built up. One starts first of all with what is given to naive consciousness, with the thing that is perceived. Then one shows that everything belonging to this thing would not be there for us if we had no senses. No eye: no color. Therefore the color is not yet present in that which works upon the eye. The color first arises through the interaction of the eye with the object. The latter is therefore colorless. But the color is also not present in the eye; for in it a chemical or physical process is present, which is first led to the brain through a nerve, and which there causes another process. Even this is not yet the color. The color is first called forth, through the brain process, within the soul. There the color still does not enter into my consciousness, but rather is first transferred outward by the soul onto a body. On this body I believe I finally perceive the color. We have made a complete circle. We become conscious of a colored body. That is first. Now the thought operation commences. If I had no eye, the body would be colorless for me. Thus, I cannot attribute the color to the body. I take up the search for the color. I look for it in the eye: in vain; in the nerve: in vain; in the brain: also in vain; in the soul: here I do find it, in fact, but not connected with the body. I find the colored body again only where I took my start. The circle is closed. I believe that I now recognize as a creation of my soul, what the naive person believes to be present outside of space.

[ 27 ] As long as one stops here, everything seems to be in excellent shape. But the matter must be taken up once more from the beginning. Until now I have been dealing with an object: with the outer perception about which earlier, as a naive person, I had a completely incorrect view. I was of the opinion that the perception had an objective existence, in the form that I perceive it. Now I notice that the perception disappears along with my mental picturing, that it is only a modification of my soul state. Now do I still have any right at all to start with the perception in my consideration? Can I say of the perception that it acts upon my soul? From now on I must treat the table, which I earlier believed acted upon me and brought forth a mental picture of itself in me, itself as a mental picture. But then my sense organs and the processes in them are also merely subjective. I have no right to speak of a real eye, but only of my mental picture of an eye. It is just the same with the nerves and the brain process, and no less so with the occurrence in the soul itself through which things are supposedly built up out of the chaos of manifold sensations. If, under the assumption of the correctness of the first circle of thought, I run through once more the parts of my act of knowledge, the latter shows itself to be a web of mental pictures that, as such, certainly cannot act upon each other. I cannot say that my mental picture of the object acts upon my mental picture of the eye and that out of this interaction emerges my mental picture of the color. But I also do not need to do this. For as soon as it is clear to me that my sense organs and their activity, my nerve and soul process, can also only be given me through perception, the train of thought described above reveals itself in its full impossibility. It is correct that for me there is no perception without the corresponding sense organ. But just as little is there a sense organ without perception. I can go over from my perception of the table to the eye that sees it, to the nerves of the hand which touch it; but what occurs within these I can again learn only from perception. And there I soon notice then that in the process which takes place in the eye, there is not a trace of similarity with what I perceive as color. I cannot do away with my perception of color just by showing the process in the eye that takes place in it during this perception. Just as little do I find the color again within the processes of the nerves and brain; I only connect new perceptions within my organism to the first ones which the native person places outside his organism. I only go from one perception to another.

[ 28 ] Moreover, there is a break in this whole line of reasoning. I am in a position to follow the occurrences in my organism up to the processes in my brain, even though my conclusions become every more hypothetical the more I approach the central occurrences of the brain. The path of external observation ends with the occurrences in my brain, with that occurrence, in fact, which I would perceive if I could study the brain with the help of physical and chemical means and methods. The path of inner observation begins with the sensation and extends to the construction of things out of the material of sensation. In the transition from brain process to sensation the path of observation is broken.

[ 29 ] The way of thinking characterized here, which calls itself “critical idealism” in contradistinction to the standpoint of the naive consciousness which calls itself “naive realism,” makes the mistake of characterizing the one perception as mental picture, while accepting the other in the very same sense as does the native realism which it seemingly had refuted. This way of thinking wants to prove that perceptions have the character of mental pictures, by accepting in naive fashion the perceptions made of one's own organism as objectively valid facts, and in all this still overlooking the fact that it is throwing together two realms of observation, between which it can find no mediation.

[ 30 ] Critical idealism can refute naive realism only if it itself accepts, in naive realistic fashion, that one's own organism exits objectively. The moment it becomes conscious of the total similarity in nature between the perceptions made of one's own organism and the perceptions accepted by native realism as existing objectively, it can no longer base itself upon the first kind of perceptions as though they afforded a sure foundation. It would also have to regard one's subjective organization as a mere complex of mental pictures. In so doing, however, it would lose the possibility of thinking that the content of the perceived world is caused by one's spiritual organization. One would have to assume that the mental picture “color” is only a modification of the mental picture “eye.” So-called critical idealism cannot be proven without borrowing from naive realism. The latter is only refuted through the fact that one accepts naive realism's own presuppositions as valid in another area, without examining them there.

[ 31 ] From all this, it is certain, at least that critical idealism cannot be proven through investigations within the realm of perception, and that thereby perception cannot be divested of its objective character.

[ 32 ] But even less can the thesis, “The perceived world is my mental picture,” be presented as obvious in itself and needing no proof. Schopenhauer begins his principal work, The World as Will and Mental Picture,⁶ with the word: “The world is my mental picture:—this is the truth which is valid with respect to every living and knowing being, even though man alone can bring it into reflective abstract consciousness; and if he really does this, then philosophical enlightenment has occurred for him. It will then become definite and certain for him that he knows no sun and no earth, but always only an eye that sees the sun, a hand that feels the earth; that the world which surrounds him is there only as mental picture, i.e., that it absolutely is there only in relationship to something else, to the one doing the mental picturing, which he himself is.—If ever a truth could be declared a priori, it is this one; for it is the expression of that form which every possible and imaginable experience has, that form which is more general than all others, such as time, space and causality; for all these already presuppose the first form ...” This whole thesis founders upon the fact I have already indicated above, that the eye and the hand are no less perceptions than the sun and the earth. And one could, in Schopenhauer's sense and in his own terms, confront his thesis with: My eye that sees the sun, and my hand that feels the earth are my mental pictures in just the same way as the sun and earth themselves are. That I thereby invalidate his thesis, however, is immediately clear. For only my real eye and my real hand could have, connected to them as their own modifications, the mental pictures sun and earth; my mental pictures of eye and hand could not however have these mental pictures. But only of these can critical idealism speak.

[ 33 ] Critical idealism is totally unfitted to gain a view of the relationship between perception and mental picture. To distinguish, as indicted on page 49, between what is happening with the perception during the act of perceiving, and what must already be there in the perception before it is perceived—this, critical idealism cannot undertake to do. In order to do this, therefore, another path must be taken.

• 1. First Principles, Part I, Par. 23.
• 2. Principles of Human Knowledge, Part I, Section 6
• 3. Vorstellung (often translated “representation”)
• 4. Zur Analysis der Wirklichkeit
• 5. Das Grundproblem der Erkenntnistheorie
• 6. Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung (usually translated The World as Will and Representation).

[ 1 ] Through thinking, concepts and ideas arise. What a concept is cannot be expressed in words. Words can do no more than draw our attention to the fact that we have concepts. When someone sees a tree, his thinking reacts to his observation, an ideal element is added to the object, and he considers the object and the ideal counterpart as belonging together. When the object disappears from his field of observation, only the ideal counterpart of it remains. This latter is the concept of the object. The more our range of experience is widened, the greater becomes the sum of our concepts. But concepts certainly do not stand isolated from one another. They combine to form a systematically ordered whole. The concept “organism”, for instance, links up with those of “orderly development” and “growth”. Other concepts which are based on single objects merge together into a unity. All concepts I may form of lions merge into the collective concept “lion”. In this way all the separate concepts combine to form a closed conceptual system in which each has its special place. Ideas do not differ qualitatively from concepts. They are but fuller, more saturated, more comprehensive concepts. I must attach special importance to the necessity of bearing in mind, here, that I make thinking my starting point, and not concepts and ideas which are first gained by means of thinking. For these latter already presuppose thinking. My remarks regarding the self-supporting and self-determined nature of thinking cannot, therefore, be simply transferred to concepts. (I make special mention of this, because it is here that I differ from Hegel, who regards the concept as something primary and original.)

[ 2 ] Concepts cannot be gained through observation. This follows from the simple fact that the growing human being only slowly and gradually forms the concepts corresponding to the objects which surround him. Concepts are added to observation.

[ 3 ] A philosopher widely read at the present day—Herbert Spencer—describes the mental process which we carry out with respect to observation as follows:

[ 4 ] If, when walking through the fields some day in September, you hear a rustle a few yards in advance, and on observing the ditch-side where it occurs, see the herbage agitated, you will probably turn towards the spot to learn by what this sound and motion are produced. As you approach there flutters into the ditch a partridge; on seeing which your curiosity is satisfied—you have what you call an explanation of the appearances. The explanation, mark, amounts to this; that whereas throughout life you have had countless experiences of disturbance among small stationary bodies, accompanying the movement of other bodies among them, and have generalized the relation between such disturbances and such movements, you consider this particular disturbance explained on finding it to present an instance of the like relation.¹

A closer analysis shows matters to stand very differently from the way described above. When I hear a noise, I first look for the concept which fits this observation. It is this concept which first leads me beyond the mere noise. If one thinks no further, one simply hears the noise and is content to leave it at that. But my reflecting makes it clear to me that I have to regard the noise as an effect. Therefore not until I have connected the concept of effect with the perception of the noise, do I feel the need to go beyond the solitary observation and look for the cause. The concept of effect calls up that of cause, and my next step is to look for the object which is being the cause, which I find in the shape of the partridge. But these concepts, cause and effect, I can never gain through mere observation, however many instances the observation may cover. Observation evokes thinking, and it is thinking that first shows me how to link one separate experience to another.

[ 5 ] If one demands of a “strictly objective science” that it should take its content from observation alone, then one must at the same time demand that it should forego all thinking. For thinking, by its very nature, goes beyond what is observed.

[ 6 ] We must now pass from thinking to the being that thinks; for it is through the thinker that thinking is combined with observation. Human consciousness is the stage upon which concept and observation meet and become linked to one another. In saying this we have in fact characterized this (human) consciousness. It is the mediator between thinking and observation. In as far as we observe a thing it appears to us as given; in as far as we think, we appear to ourselves as being active. We regard the thing as object and ourselves as thinking subject. Because we direct our thinking upon our observation, we have consciousness of objects; because we direct it upon ourselves, we have consciousness of ourselves, or self-consciousness. Human consciousness must of necessity be at the same time self-consciousness because it is a consciousness which thinks. For when thinking contemplates its own activity, it makes its own essential being, as subject, into a thing, as object.

[ 7 ] It must, however, not be overlooked that only with the help of thinking am I able to determine myself as subject and contrast myself with objects. Therefore thinking must never be regarded as a merely subjective activity. Thinking lies beyond subject and object. It produces these two concepts just as it produces all others. When, therefore, I, as thinking subject, refer a concept to an object, we must not regard this reference as something purely subjective. It is not the subject that makes the reference, but thinking. The subject does not think because it is a subject; rather it appears to itself as subject because it can think. The activity exercised by man as a thinking being is thus not merely subjective. Rather is it something neither subjective nor objective, that transcends both these concepts. I ought never to say that my individual subject thinks, but much more that my individual subject lives by the grace of thinking. Thinking is thus an element which leads me out beyond myself and connects me with the objects. But at the same time it separates me from them, inasmuch as it sets me, as subject, over against them.

[ 8 ] It is just this which constitutes the double nature of man. He thinks, and thereby embraces both himself and the rest of the world. But at the same time it is by means of thinking that he determines himself as an individual confronting the things.

[ 9 ] We must next ask ourselves how that other element, which we have so far simply called the object of observation and which meets the thinking in our consciousness, comes into our consciousness at all.

[ 10 ] In order to answer this question we must eliminate from our field of observation everything that has been imported by thinking. For at any moment the content of our consciousness will already be interwoven with concepts in the most varied ways.

[ 11 ] We must imagine that a being with fully developed human intelligence originates out of nothing and confronts the world. What it would be aware of, before it sets its thinking in motion, would be the pure content of observation. The world would then appear to this being as nothing but a mere disconnected aggregate of objects of sensation: colors, sounds, sensations of pressure, of warmth, of taste and smell; also feelings of pleasure and pain. This aggregate is the content of pure, unthinking observation. Over against it stands thinking, ready to begin its activity as soon as a point of attack presents itself. Experience shows at once that this does happen. Thinking is able to draw threads from one element of observation to another. It links definite concepts with these elements and thereby establishes a relationship between them. We have already seen how a noise which we hear becomes connected with another observation by our identifying the former as the effect of the latter.

[ 12 ] If now we recollect that the activity of thinking is on no account to be considered as merely subjective, then we shall also not be tempted to believe that the relationships thus established by thinking have merely subjective validity.

[ 13 ] Our next task is to discover by means of thoughtful reflection what relation the immediately given content of observation mentioned above has to the conscious subject.

[ 14 ] The ambiguity of current speech makes it necessary for me to come to an agreement with my readers concerning the use of a word which I shall have to employ in what follows. I shall apply the word “percept” to the immediate objects of sensation enumerated above, in so far as the conscious subject apprehends them through observation. It is, then, not the process of observation but the object of observation which I call the “percept”.

[ 15 ] I do not choose the term “sensation”, since this has a definite meaning in physiology which is narrower than that of my concept of “percept”. I can speak of a feeling in myself (emotion) as percept, but not as sensation in the physiological sense of the term. Even my feeling becomes known to me by becoming a percept for me. And the way in which we gain knowledge of our thinking through observation is such that thinking too, in its first appearance for our consciousness, may be called a percept.

[ 16 ] The naïve man regards his percepts, such as they appear to his immediate apprehension, as things having an existence wholly independent of him. When he sees a tree he believes in the first instance that it stands in the form which he sees, with the colors of its various parts, and so on, there on the spot towards which his gaze is directed. When the same man sees the sun in the morning appear as a disc on the horizon, and follows the course of this disc, he believes that all this actually exists and happens just as he observes it. To this belief he clings until he meets with further percepts which contradict his former ones. The child who as yet has no experience of distance grasps at the moon, and only corrects its picture of the reality, based on first impressions, when a second percept contradicts the first. Every extension of the circle of my percepts compels me to correct my picture of the world. We see this in everyday life, as well as in the spiritual development of mankind. The picture which the ancients made for themselves of the relation of the earth to the sun and other heavenly bodies had to be replaced by another when Copernicus found that it was not in accordance with some percepts, which in those early days were unknown. A man who had been born blind said, when operated on by Dr. Franz, that the picture of the size of objects which he had formed by his sense of touch before his operation, was a very different one. He had to correct his tactual percepts by his visual percepts.

[ 17 ] How is it that we are compelled to make these continual corrections to our observations?

[ 18 ] A simple reflection gives the answer to this question. When I stand at one end of an avenue, the trees at the other end, away from me, seem smaller and nearer together than those where I stand. My percept-picture changes when I change the place from which I am looking. Therefore the form in which it presents itself to me is dependent on a condition which is due not to the object but to me, the perceiver. It is all the same to the avenue wherever I stand. But the picture I have of it depends essentially on just this viewpoint. In the same way, it makes no difference to the sun and the planetary system that human beings happen to look at them from the earth; but the percept-picture of the heavens presented to them is determined by the fact that they inhabit the earth. This dependence of our percept-picture on our place of observation is the easiest one to understand. The matter becomes more difficult when we realize how our world of percepts is dependent on our bodily and spiritual organization. The physicist shows us that within the space in which we hear a sound there are vibrations of the air, and also that the body in which we seek the origin of the sound exhibits a vibrating movement of its parts. We perceive this movement as sound only if we have a normally constructed ear. Without this the world would be for ever silent for us. Physiology tells us that there are people who perceive nothing of the magnificent splendor of color which surrounds us. Their percept-picture has only degrees of light and dark. Others are blind only to one color, for example, red. Their world picture lacks this hue, and hence it is actually a different one from that of the average man. I should like to call the dependence of my percept-picture on my place of observation, “mathematical”, and its dependence on my organization, “qualitative”. The former determines the proportions of size and mutual distances of my percepts, the latter their quality. The fact that I see a red surface as red—this qualitative determination—depends on the organization of my eye.

[ 19 ] My percept-pictures, then, are in the first instance subjective. The recognition of the subjective character of our percepts may easily lead us to doubt whether there is any objective basis for them at all. When we realize that a percept, for example that of a red color or of a certain tone, is not possible without a specific structure of our organism, we may easily be led to believe that it has no permanency apart from our subjective organization and that, were it not for our act of perceiving it as an object, it would not exist in any sense. The classical representative of this view is George Berkeley, who held that from the moment we realize the importance of the subject for perception, we are no longer able to believe in the existence of a world without a conscious Spirit.

Some truths there are so near and obvious to the mind that man need only open his eyes to see them. Such I take this important one to be, to wit, that all the choir of heaven and furniture of the earth, in a word, all those bodies which compose the mighty frame of the world, have not any subsistence without a mind, that their being is to be perceived or known; that, consequently, so long as they are not actually perceived by me, or do not exist in my mind or that of any other created spirit, they must either have no existence at all, or else subsist in the mind of some Eternal Spirit.²

On this view, when we take away the fact of its being perceived, nothing remains of the percept. There is no color when none is seen, no sound when none is heard. Extension, form, and motion exist as little as color and sound apart from the act of perception. Nowhere do we see bare extension or shape, but these are always bound up with color or some other quality unquestionably dependent upon our subjectivity. If these latter disappear when we cease to perceive them, then the former, being bound up with them, must disappear likewise.

[ 20 ] To the objection that there must be things that exist apart from consciousness and to which the conscious percept-pictures are similar, even though figure, color, sound, and so on, have no existence except within the act of perceiving, the above view would answer that a color can be similar only to a color, a figure only to a figure. Our percepts can be similar only to our percepts and to nothing else. Even what we call an object is nothing but a collection of percepts which are connected in a particular way. If I strip a table of its shape, extension, color, etc.—in short, of all that is merely my percept—then nothing remains over. This view, followed up logically, leads to the assertion that the objects of my perceptions exist only through me, and indeed only in as far as, and as long as, I perceive them; they disappear with my perceiving and have no meaning apart from it. Apart from my percepts, I know of no objects and cannot know of any.

[ 21 ] No objection can be made to this assertion as long as I am merely referring to the general fact that the percept is partly determined by the organization of myself as subject. The matter would appear very different if we were in a position to say just what part is played by our perceiving in the bringing forth of a percept. We should then know what happens to a percept while it is being perceived, and we should also be able to determine what character it must already possess before it comes to be perceived.

[ 22 ] This leads us to turn our attention from the object of perception to the subject of perception. I perceive not only other things, but also myself. The percept of myself contains, to begin with, the fact that I am the stable element in contrast to the continual coming and going of the percept-pictures. The percept of my “I” can always come up in my consciousness while I am having other percepts. When I am absorbed in the perception of a given object I am for the time being aware only of this object. To this the percept of my self can be added. I am then conscious not only of the object but also of my own personality which confronts the object and observes it. I do not merely see a tree, but I also know that it is I who am seeing it. I know, moreover, that something happens in me while I am observing the tree. When the tree disappears from my field of vision, an after-effect of this process remains in my consciousness—a picture of the tree. This picture has become associated with my self during my observation. My self has become enriched; its content has absorbed a new element. This element I call my mental picture of the tree. I should never have occasion to speak of mental pictures did I not experience them in the percept of my own self. Percepts would come and go; I should let them slip by. Only because I perceive my self, and observe that with each percept the content of my self, too, is changed, am I compelled to connect the observation of the object with the changes in my own condition, and to speak of my mental picture.

[ 23 ] I perceive the mental picture in my self in the same sense as I perceive color, sound, etc., in other objects. I am now also able to distinguish these other objects that confront me, by calling them the outer world, whereas the content of my percept of my self I call my inner world. The failure to recognize the true relationship between mental picture and object has led to the greatest misunderstandings in modern philosophy. The perception of a change in me, the modification my self undergoes, has been thrust into the foreground, while the object which causes this modification is lost sight of altogether. It has been said that we perceive not objects but only our mental pictures. I know, so it is said, nothing of the table in itself, which is the object of my observation, but only of the change which occurs within me while I am perceiving the table. This view should not be confused with the Berkeleyan theory mentioned above. Berkeley maintains the subjective nature of the content of my percepts, but he does not say that my knowledge is limited to my mental pictures. He limits my knowledge to my mental pictures because, in his opinion, there are no objects apart from mental picturing. What I take to be a table no longer exists, according to Berkeley, when I cease to look at it. This is why Berkeley holds that my percepts arise directly through the omnipotence of God. I see a table because God calls up this percept in me. For Berkeley, therefore, there are no real beings other than God and human spirits. What we call the “world” exists only in these spirits. What the naïve man calls the outer world, or corporeal nature, is for Berkeley non-existent. This theory is confronted by the now predominant Kantian view which limits our knowledge of the world to our mental pictures, not because it is convinced that things cannot exist beyond these mental pictures, but because it believes us to be so organized that we can experience only the changes of our own selves, but not the things-in-themselves that cause these changes. This view concludes from the fact that I know only my mental pictures, not that there is no reality independent of them, but only that the subject cannot directly assimilate such reality. The subject can merely, “through the medium of its subjective thoughts, imagine it, invent it, think it, cognize it, or perhaps even fail to cognize it.”³ This (Kantian) conception believes it gives expression to something absolutely certain, something which is immediately evident, requiring no proof.

The first fundamental proposition which the philosopher must bring to clear consciousness is the recognition that our knowledge, to begin with, is limited to our mental pictures. Our mental pictures are the only things that we know directly, experience directly; and just because we have direct experience of them, even the most radical doubt cannot rob us of our knowledge of them. On the other hand, the knowledge which goes beyond my mental pictures—taking mental pictures here in the widest possible sense, so as to include all psychical processes—is not proof against doubt. Hence, at the very beginning of all philosophizing we must explicitly set down all knowledge which goes beyond mental pictures as being open to doubt.

These are the opening sentences of Volkelt's book on Immanuel Kant's Theory of Knowledge. What is here put forward as an immediate and self-evident truth is in reality the result of a thought operation which runs as follows: The naïve man believes that things, just as we perceive them, exist also outside our consciousness. Physics, physiology, and psychology, however, seem to teach us that for our percepts our organization is necessary, and that therefore we cannot know anything about external objects except what our organization transmits to us. Our percepts are thus modifications of our organization, not things-in-themselves. This train of thought has in fact been characterized by Eduard von Hartmann as the one which must lead to the conviction that we can have direct knowledge only of our mental pictures.⁴ Because, outside our organism, we find vibrations of physical bodies and of the air which are perceived by us as sound, it is concluded that what we call sound is nothing more than a subjective reaction of our organism to these motions in the external world. Similarly, it is concluded that color and warmth are merely modifications of our organism. And, further, these two kinds of percepts are held to be produced in us through processes in the external world which are utterly different from what we experience as warmth or as color. When these processes stimulate the nerves in my skin, I have the subjective percept of warmth; when they stimulate the optic nerve, I perceive light and color. Light, color, and warmth, then, are the responses of my sensory nerves to external stimuli. Even the sense of touch reveals to me, not the objects of the outer world, but only states of my own body. In the sense of modern physics one could somehow think that bodies consist of infinitely small particles called molecules, and that these molecules are not in direct contact, but are at certain distances from one another. Between them, therefore, is empty space. Across this space they act on one another by forces of attraction and repulsion. If I put my hand on a body, the molecules of my hand by no means touch those of the body directly, but there remains a certain distance between body and hand, and what I experience as the body's resistance is nothing but the effect of the force of repulsion which its molecules exert on my hand. I am absolutely external to the body and perceive only its effects on my organism.

[ 24 ] In amplification of this discussion, there is the theory of the so-called Specific Nerve Energies, advanced by J. Müller (1801–1858). It asserts that each sense has the peculiarity that it responds to all external stimuli in one particular way only. If the optic nerve is stimulated, perception of light results, irrespective of whether the stimulation is due to what we call light, or whether mechanical pressure or an electric current works upon the nerve. On the other hand, the same external stimulus applied to different senses gives rise to different percepts. The conclusion from these facts seems to be that our senses can transmit only what occurs in themselves, but nothing of the external world. They determine our percepts, each according to its own nature.

[ 25 ] Physiology shows that there can be no direct knowledge even of the effects which objects produce on our sense organs. Through following up the processes which occur in our own bodies, the physiologist finds that, even in the sense organs, the effects of the external movement are transformed in the most manifold ways. We can see this most clearly in the case of eye and ear. Both are very complicated organs which modify the external stimulus considerably before they conduct it to the corresponding nerve. From the peripheral end of the nerve the already modified stimulus is then conducted to the brain. Only now can the central organs be stimulated. Therefore it is concluded that the external process undergoes a series of transformations before it reaches consciousness. What goes on in the brain is connected by so many intermediate links with the external process, that any similarity to the latter is out of the question. What the brain ultimately transmits to the soul is neither external processes, nor processes in the sense organs, but only such as occur in the brain. But even these are not perceived directly by the soul. What we finally have in consciousness are not brain processes at all, but sensations. My sensation of red has absolutely no similarity to the process which occurs in the brain when I sense red. The redness, again, only appears as an effect in the soul, and the brain process is merely its cause. This is why Hartmann says, “What the subject perceives, therefore, are always only modifications of his own psychical states and nothing else.”⁵ When I have the sensations, however, they are as yet very far from being grouped into what I perceive as “things”. Only single sensations can be transmitted to me by the brain. The sensations of hardness and softness are transmitted to me by the sense of touch, those of color and light by the sense of sight. Yet all these are to be found united in one and the same object. This unification, therefore, can only be brought about by the soul itself; that is, the soul combines the separate sensations, mediated through the brain, into bodies. My brain conveys to me singly, and by widely different paths, the visual, tactile, and auditory sensations which the soul then combines into the mental picture of a trumpet. It is just this very last link in a process (the mental picture of the trumpet) which for my consciousness is the very first thing that is given. In it nothing can any longer be found of what exists outside me and originally made an impression on my senses. The external object has been entirely lost on the way to the brain and through the brain to the soul.

[ 26 ] It would be hard to find in the history of human culture another edifice of thought which has been built up with greater ingenuity, and which yet, on closer analysis, collapses into nothing. Let us look a little closer at the way it has been constructed. One starts with what is given in naïve consciousness, with the thing as perceived. Then one shows that none of the qualities which we find in this thing would exist for us had we no sense organs. No eye—no color. Therefore the color is not yet present in that which affects the eye. It arises first through the interaction of the eye and the object. The latter is, therefore, colorless. But neither is the color in the eye, for in the eye there is only a chemical or physical process which is first conducted by the optic nerve to the brain, and there initiates another process. Even this is not yet the color. That is only produced in the soul by means of the brain process. Even then it does not yet enter my consciousness, but is first transferred by the soul to a body in the external world. There, upon this body, I finally believe myself to perceive it. We have traveled in a complete circle. We became conscious of a colored body. That is the first thing. Here the thought operation starts. If I had no eye, the body would be, for me, colorless. I cannot therefore attribute the color to the body. I start on the search for it. I look for it in the eye—in vain; in the nerve—in vain; in the brain—in vain once more; in the soul—here I find it indeed, but not attached to the body. I find the colored body again only on returning to my starting point. The circle is completed. I believe that I am cognizing as a product of my soul that which the naïve man regards as existing outside him, in space.

[ 27 ] As long as one stops here everything seems to fit beautifully. But we must go over the whole thing again from the beginning. Hitherto I have been dealing with something—the external percept—of which, from my naïve standpoint, I have had until now a totally wrong conception. I thought that the percept, just as I perceive it, had objective existence. But now I observe that it disappears together with my mental picture, that it is only a modification of my inner state of soul. Have I, then, any right at all to start from it in my arguments? Can I say of it that it acts on my soul? I must henceforth treat the table, of which formerly I believed that it acted on me and produced a mental picture of itself in me, as itself a mental picture. But from this it follows logically that my sense organs and the processes in them are also merely subjective. I have no right to speak of a real eye but only of my mental picture of the eye. Exactly the same is true of the nerve paths, and the brain process, and no less of the process in the soul itself, through which things are supposed to be built up out of the chaos of manifold sensations. If, assuming the truth of the first circle of argumentation, I run through the steps of my act of cognition once more, the latter reveals itself as a tissue of mental pictures which, as such, cannot act on one another. I cannot say that my mental picture of the object acts on my mental picture of the eye, and that from this interaction my mental picture of color results. Nor is it necessary that I should say this. For as soon as I see clearly that my sense organs and their activity, my nerve and soul processes, can also be known to me only through perception, the train of thought which I have outlined reveals itself in its full absurdity. It is quite true that I can have no percept without the corresponding sense organ. But just as little can I be aware of a sense organ without perception. From the percept of a table I can pass to the eye which sees it, or the nerves in the skin which touch it, but what takes place in these I can, in turn, learn only from perception. And then I soon notice that there is no trace of similarity between the process which takes place in the eye and the color which I perceive. I cannot eliminate my color percept by pointing to the process which takes place in the eye during this perception. No more can I rediscover the color in the nerve or brain processes. I only add new percepts, localized within the organism, to the first percept, which the naïve man localizes outside his organism. I merely pass from one percept to another.

[ 28 ] Moreover there is a gap in the whole argument. I can follow the processes in my organism up to those in my brain, even though my assumptions become more and more hypothetical as I approach the central processes of the brain. The path of external observation ceases with the process in my brain, more particularly with the process which I should observe if I could deal with the brain using the instruments and methods of physics and chemistry. The path of inner observation begins with the sensation, and continues up to the building of things out of the material of sensation. At the point of transition from brain process to sensation, the path of observation is interrupted.

[ 29 ] The way of thinking here described, known as critical idealism, in contrast to the standpoint of naïve consciousness known as naïve realism, makes the mistake of characterizing the one percept as mental picture while taking the other in the very same sense as does the naïve realism which it apparently refutes. It wants to prove that percepts have the character of mental pictures by naïvely accepting the percepts connected with one's own organism as objectively valid facts; and over and above this, it fails to see that it confuses two spheres of observation, between which it can find no connection.

[ 30 ] Critical idealism can refute naïve realism only by itself assuming, in naïve-realistic fashion, that one's own organism has objective existence. As soon as the idealist realizes that the percepts connected with his own organism are exactly of the same nature as those which naïve realism assumes to have objective existence, he can no longer use those percepts as a safe foundation for his theory. He would have to regard even his own subjective organization as a mere complex of mental pictures. But this removes the possibility of regarding the content of the perceived world as a product of our spiritual organization. One would have to assume that the mental picture “color” was only a modification of the mental picture “eye”. So-called critical idealism cannot be proved without borrowing from naïve realism. Naive realism can be refuted only if, in another sphere, its own assumptions are accepted without proof as being valid.

[ 31 ] This much, then, is certain: Investigation within the world of percepts cannot establish critical idealism, and consequently, cannot strip percepts of their objective character.

[ 32 ] Still less can the principle “the perceived world is my mental picture” be claimed as obvious and needing no proof. Schopenhauer begins his chief work⁶ with the words:

The world is my mental picture—this is a truth which holds good for everything that lives and cognizes, though man alone can bring it into reflective and abstract consciousness. If he really does this, he has attained to philosophical discretion. It then becomes clear and certain to him that he knows no sun and no earth, but only an eye that sees a sun, a hand that feels an earth; that the world which surrounds him is there only as mental picture, that is, only in relation to something else, to the one who pictures it, which is he himself. If any truth can be asserted a priori, it is this one, for it is the expression of that form of all possible and thinkable experience which is more universal than all others, than time, space, or causality, for all these presuppose it ...

This whole theory is wrecked by the fact, already mentioned, that the eye and the hand are percepts no less than the sun and the earth. Using Schopenhauer's expressions in his own sense, we could reply: My eye that sees the sun, my hand that feels the earth, are my mental pictures just as much as the sun and the earth themselves. That with this the whole theory cancels itself, is clear without further argument. For only my real eye and my real hand could have the mental pictures “sun” and “earth” as modifications of themselves; the mental pictures “eye” and “hand” cannot have them. Yet it is only of these mental pictures that critical idealism is allowed to speak.

[ 33 ] Critical idealism is totally unfitted to form an opinion about the relationship between percept and mental picture. It cannot begin to make the distinction, mentioned above, between what happens to the percept in the process of perception and what must be inherent in it prior to perception. We must, therefore, tackle this problem in another way.

• 1. First Principles, Part I, 23.
• 2. Berkeley Principles of Human Knowledge, Part I, Section 6.
• 3. O. Liebmann, Zur Analysis der Wirklichkeit, p 28.
• 4. See his Das Grundproblem der Erkenntnistheorie, pp. 16–40.
• 5. Das Grundproblem der Erkenntnistheorie, pp. 37.
• 6. Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung.

The questions that arise for the observer of Goethe's scientific writings were not easy to answer from the material available so far. The reason for this is to be found in the fact that only in the field of color theory do we have to do with a fully elaborated work by the poet from the field of natural science, complete in all respects. From the other parts of it we have only more or less elaborated essays which comment on the most varied problems, but of which it cannot be denied that they present contradictions which are apparently difficult to reconcile when it is a question of gaining an all-round comprehensive view of Goethe's significance in this field. The most important points that come into consideration here have therefore been interpreted in the most diverse ways imaginable by the researchers involved in the matter. Was Goethe a theorist of descent? Did he assume a real transformation of species, and to what causes did he attribute it? Was he thinking of a sensuous-real being or an idea in his "type"? These are questions to which we have heard completely contradictory answers from various quarters in recent decades. From the assertion that Goethe was only thinking of an abstract concept in the Platonic sense with his "type", to the assertion that he should be regarded as a genuine predecessor of Darwin, all intermediate stages have found their representatives. While some disparaged him as a man who merely fantasized about nature, others praised him because he was the first to take that direction in natural science which today is regarded as the only one leading to the goal.

It must be admitted that the defenders of all these views were able to provide sufficient evidence from Goethe's works for their respective arguments. Of course, it should not be overlooked that in each case only the most appropriate passages were selected and other passages that would justify a contrary opinion were simply ignored. We are far from reproaching anyone for this; rather, we are convinced that what has been presented so far has made it extremely difficult to arrive at a consistent view of the matter, even if we cannot admit the impossibility of doing so.

For all those who have an interest in this aspect of Goethe's work, the question must have arisen at the moment when the treasures of the Goethe Archive became accessible: do the papers left behind by the poet offer a supplement here? The writer of these lines now finds, on studying them in detail, that they provide us with the most surprising information, especially with regard to the above-mentioned points of view, which are quite suitable for bringing about complete satisfaction in this direction.

The high owner of the archive, the Grand Duchess of Saxony, has graciously allowed me to use the available materials for the purpose of a preliminary orienting work in this field, and so this essay has been written, for which the necessary evidence was selected from the treasures of the archive with the continued loving assistance of the director of the Goethe and Schiller Archive, Prof. Suphan.

For the time being, we will leave aside the color theory and the geological and meteorological writings and limit ourselves to the morphological works, which are the most important for the problems outlined above. The purpose of our remarks is to show in general outline what we can expect from the publication of Goethe's as yet unprinted essays and fragments in this field for the clarification of the poet's significance in the field of the science of the organic. We will avoid as much as possible going into contemporary views on these matters and refrain from any polemics. For now, it will suffice to present Goethe's views purely in themselves, without any sideways glances at others.

Above all else, however, we must reject an error that is deeply rooted and with which Goethe already had to struggle many times during his lifetime. It culminates in the assumption that the poet did not arrive at his scientific results through methodical, logical thought, but "in passing", through a "happy idea". Goethe described the "History of his botanical studies" in detail mainly because he wanted to "illustrate" how he "found the opportunity to devote a large part of his life with inclination and passion to nature studies".¹

No better illustration of this last sentence can be imagined than the sheets preserved in the archives, which give us an insight into the course of Goethe's botanical work during his Italian journey. We can see from them how, through countless observations and conscientious considerations of the natural objects, he came to final clarity. These are records which point to the opposite of random ideas or a fleeting rush, but rather to careful and deliberate step-by-step striving towards the predetermined goals. Goethe is tireless in his search for plant specimens that are in some way suitable for introducing us to the laws of growth and reproduction. Particularly characteristic features are drawn in order to discover the secrets of nature's efficacy in vivid reproduction. We find observations made with great care about the importance of the individual organs, the influence of the climate and the environment of the plants. If Goethe thought he was on the trail of some law, he first set it out in hypothetical form in order to use it as a guide for further observations. In this way, it should either be confirmed or refuted. He assigned such hypotheses a very special task in scientific research. We take the following from an unpublished note: "Hypotheses are scaffolds that are erected in front of the building and taken down when the building is finished; they are indispensable to the worker, but he does not have to regard the scaffolding as the building."

These words indicate his scientific attitude, which is wary of taking a passing remark for a law of nature.

The sheets on which Goethe made his scientific notes during the Italian journey belonged to small notebooks, which were found torn apart, like other papers with notes from the same period, for example those on "Nausikaa". The latter were always arranged by Prof. Suphan for the respective purpose; the same has now been done with those belonging to natural science.

Goethe often remained in the dark for quite a long time with his observations, and he wanted this in order to gain as broad a basis as possible for his theoretical construction. He studies the processes of germination and fertilization, observes the various forms of organs and their transformations. We can see sentences that later became integral parts of his theory of metamorphosis here in these papers in their first form, as he reads them directly from the natural processes, for example: "The plant must have a lot of aqueous moisture so that the oils and salts can combine in it. The leaves must draw off this moisture, perhaps modify it." Or:

"What the soil is to the root, the plant later becomes to the finer vessels, which develop upwards and suck the finer juices out of the plant."

"Aloe... the leaves are expanded by the air and displace the interstices ... underground, the leaves are small, the interstices larger."

After Goethe had worked his way through a series of observations in this way, his later view suggested itself to him as a hypothesis. We find the following note on a leaf: "Hypothesis. Everything is a leaf and this simplicity makes the greatest diversity possible."

He now pursues this hypothesis further. Where a case of experience leaves him unclear about something, he conscientiously notes it down in order to obtain the necessary information from a more favorable one. We very often encounter such questions that have remained unclear and have been saved for future observations. In any case, these sheets provide proof that Goethe had put a great deal of thought and a considerable amount of experience behind him when he finally became firmly convinced of the hypothesis of the primordial plant in mid-1787. I have described in detail in the introduction to my edition of Goethe's scientific writings (Goethe's Works, in Kürschner's "Deutsche NationalLiteratur", Volume XXXIII) how he pursued it further, extended the approach he had adopted to other organisms and published the first attempt in this direction in 1790.

At this point, let us immediately turn to the question: what does Goethe mean by "Urpflanze"? On 17 April 1787 in Palermo, he wrote the following words about it: "There must be such a plant; how else would I recognize that this or that structure is a plant if they were not all formed according to one pattern." ² This sentence provides the proof that the primordial plant is to be understood as that something which confronts the human mind as the same in all the plant forms that are different for the sensory perception. We would not be able to recognize that all these forms belong together, that they form a kingdom of nature, if we could not grasp the "primordial plant".

If we visualize this, we can immediately get an idea of what Goethe meant by experience. He not only wanted to carefully observe that which is accessible to sense perception, but at the same time he strove for a spiritual content that would allow him to determine the objects of this experience according to their essence. He called this spiritual content, whereby a thing emerged from the dullness of sensory existence, from the indeterminacy of external perception, and became a definite thing (animal, plant, mineral), an idea. Nothing else can be read from the above words, and we are also able to substantiate our assertion with the following previously unpublished statement: "Time is governed by the swing of the pendulum, the moral and scientific world by the alternating movement from idea to experience."

What did Goethe mean by these words, if not that science cannot be content with experience, but must progress beyond it to the idea? The idea is supposed to determine what the object of experience is; it cannot therefore be identical with it. The fact that Goethe ascribed an essentially active role to the spirit in the production of ideas emerges from the following interesting classification of types of knowledge:

"In order to orient ourselves to some extent in these different kinds ³ let us divide them into: Users, Knowers, Viewers and Comprehenders.

1. the users, those who seek benefits, those who make demands are the first to outline the field of science, as it were, to grasp the practical. Consciousness through experience gives them security, the need a certain breadth.

2 The inquisitive require a calm, disinterested eye, a curious restlessness, a clear mind and are always in relation to them; they also only process in a scientific sense what they find.

3. the contemplators already behave productively, and knowledge, by increasing itself, demands contemplation without realizing it, and passes over to it, and however much the knowers crucify and bless themselves before the imagination, they must, before they know it, call upon the productive imagination for help.

4 The comprehensive ones, who in a proud sense could be called the creators, behave in the highest degree productively; namely, by starting from ideas, they already express the unity of the whole, and it is to a certain extent afterwards the matter of nature to fit into this idea."

What at the highest level of cognition should actually first lead into the riddles of nature, the spirit must creatively bring to the things of sense perception. Without this productive power, our cognition remains at one of the lower levels.⁴

Goethe thus conceives of the primordial plant as an entity that cannot become present in our spirit if it merely behaves passively towards the outside world. But what can only appear through the human spirit does not necessarily have to originate from the spirit. Here an erroneous view is very obvious. It is impossible for the majority of people to imagine that something, for the appearance of which subjective conditions are absolutely necessary, can nevertheless have an objective meaning and essence. And the "original plant" is precisely of this latter kind. It is the essential objectively contained in all plants; but if it is to gain apparent existence, the human mind must construct it freely.

But basically this view is only a further development of the view that modern natural science also holds in the field of sensory perception. Without the constitution and effectiveness of the eye there would be no perception of color, without that of the ear no sound. Nevertheless, no one would want to claim that color and sound do not have their absolutely objective meaning and essence. How one wants to imagine this in more detail: whether, as a supporter of the undulation hypothesis, one regards vibrations of the body parts and the ether or the air as the objective essence of color and sound, or whether one leans towards a different view, is irrelevant here. We only attach importance to the fact that, although the modern physiologist is convinced that sensory perception can only enter into apparent, perceptible existence through the activity of the corresponding sense organ, he will not for a moment assert that color, sound, warmth and so on are merely subjective, are without a corresponding correlate in the realm of the objective. But Goethe's idea of the organic type is only the logical extension of this conception of the subjective production of phenomenal existence to an area in which mere sensory perception is no longer sufficient to arrive at knowledge.

The matter only presents difficulties of understanding in this area because consciousness already begins at that stage of the human faculty of perception at which ideas are generated. We now know that we play an active part in the apprehension of ideas, while the activity of the organism, where it mediates sense-perception, is a completely unconscious one. But this circumstance is quite irrelevant to the matter itself. Just as color, sound, warmth and so on have an objective meaning in rerum natura, although they cannot acquire a meaning for us without the subjective activity of our sensory instruments, so ideas have an objective value, although they cannot enter into it without the mind's own activity.

It is absolutely necessary that everything that is to appear in our consciousness first passes through our physical or psychic organism.

Given this, we recognize that, in Goethe's way of thinking, there must be a constant alternation between the influx of material supplied by the senses and the typical created freely by reason and an interpenetration of these two products in the mind of the researcher if a satisfactory solution to the problems of natural science is to be possible. Goethe compares this alternation to a systole and diastole of the mind, the continuous merging of which he presupposes in every true natural scientist. He says: "In the mind of the true naturalist, it must always alternate like a systole and diastole moving in equilibrium."

What has been said so far now also provides us with the opportunity to decide whether it is in accordance with Goethe's view to identify the primordial plant or the primordial animal with any sensory-real organic form that occurred at a certain time or still occurs. The answer to this can only be a decisive "no". The "original plant" is contained in every plant and can be obtained from the plant world through the constructive power of the spirit; but no single individual form may be addressed as typical.

Now, however, the "original plant" (or the "original animal") is precisely what makes each individual form what it is; it is the essence. We must keep this in mind if we want to fully penetrate Goethe's intentions.

The lawfulness of the organic must not be sought in the same field as that of the inorganic. In the science of inorganic nature, I have completely fulfilled my task when I have succeeded in explaining what I perceive with my senses according to its causal connection. In the organic, I must subject to explanation those facts which are no longer perceptible to the senses. Anyone who only wanted to look at a living being and use as an explanation what he perceives about it with his senses was not sufficient in the forum of Goethean science.

It has often been claimed that the organic can only be explained if the laws of the inorganic are simply transferred to the realm of the animate. Attempts to establish a science of living things in this way are still on the agenda today. But it was Goethe's great flight of thought that made him realize that one need not doubt the possibility of an explanation of the organic even if the inorganic laws of nature should prove inadequate for this purpose. Should our ability to explain only extend as far as we can apply the laws of the inorganic? What Goethe wanted was nothing other than to banish all dark and unclear ideas such as the life force, formative instinct and so on from science and to find natural laws for them. But he wanted to find laws for organics that had been found for mechanics, physics and chemistry, not simply adopt those existing in these other fields. He would destroy the realm of the organic if he simply allowed it to merge into that of the inorganic. Goethe wanted an independent organic science that had its own axioms and its own method. This idea became more and more firmly established in his mind, and "morphology" gradually became for him the epitome of everything that must be applied to a satisfactory explanation of the phenomena of life. As long as one could not derive all phenomena of motion from natural laws, there was no mechanics; as long as one was not able to summarize the individual places occupied by the celestial bodies by legal lines, there was no astronomy; as long as one was not able to grasp the manifestations of life in the form of principles, there was no organics, Goethe said to himself. He envisioned a science that would grasp the organic at its core and reveal the laws of its various forms. He did not want to grasp the forms of the organs alone, nor the metabolism and its laws in isolation, nor the anatomical facts in isolation; no, he strove for a total conception of life from which all those partial phenomena could be derived. He wanted a science to which natural history, natural science, anatomy, chemistry, zoonomy and physiology were merely preparatory stages. Each of these sciences deals with only one side of the body of nature; but all of them together, considered merely as a sum, do not exhaust life. For life is much more than the sum of its individual phenomena. Anyone who has grasped all sides of organic being with the help of the individual sciences mentioned is still missing the living unity. According to Goethe, grasping this is the task of morphology in the broader sense.

The natural history has the task of conveying the "knowledge of organic natures according to their habitus and according to the difference in their form relationships"; the theory of nature is responsible for the "knowledge of material natures in general as forces and in their spatial relationships"; anatomy seeks the "knowledge of organic natures according to their internal and external parts, without taking into account the living whole"; chemistry strives for "knowledge of the parts of an organic body, in so far as it ceases to be organic, or in so far as its organization is regarded only as producing matter and as composed of matter"; zoonomy requires: "the consideration of the whole, in so far as it lives and a special physical force is subordinated to this life"; of physiology, "the consideration of the whole, in so far as it lives and acts"; of morphology in the narrower sense, "the consideration of the form both in its parts and as a whole, its correspondences and deviations without all other considerations". Morphology in the broader and Goethean sense, however, wants: "Observation of the organic whole by visualizing all these considerations and linking them through the power of the mind." ⁵

Goethe is fully aware that he is putting forward the idea of a "new science" according to "view and method". However, it is not new in terms of content, "for the same is known". But this means nothing other than that it is, taken purely as a matter of fact, the same as that set out in the previously characterized auxiliary sciences. What is new, however, is the way in which this content is placed at the service of an overall understanding of the organic world.

This is again important for the definition of Goethe's "type". For the type, the lawful in the organic, is the object of his morphology in the broader sense. What the seven auxiliary sciences have to achieve lies in the realm of the sensually attainable. Indeed, precisely because they remain in the realm of the sensually attainable, they cannot go beyond the knowledge of individual sides of the organic.

So we are forced to recognize that Goethe ascribed a lawfulness to the organic world that does not coincide with that which we observe in the phenomena of inorganic nature. We can only visualize it through a free construction of the mind, since it does not coincide with what we perceive in the organism through our senses.

The question now arises: how does Goethe relate to the diversity of organic species under such conditions?

This question cannot be answered without first establishing the relationship between the type (original plant, original animal) and the individual. "The individual is not a single entity, but a majority." ⁶ And indeed a majority of details that are outwardly quite different from one another. How is this possible? How can the different be a unity? Or more specifically: how can one and the same organ appear as a stem leaf, then again as a petal or as a stamen? Anyone who conceives of unity in terms of an abstract concept, a schema or the like cannot, of course, grasp this. But that is not what it is in Goethe's sense. There it is a lawfulness which, as such, leaves the form in which it expresses itself for the sense world still completely undefined. Precisely because the actual core, the deeper content of this lawfulness does not merge into that which becomes perceptible to the senses, it can express itself in different sensual forms and yet always remain the same. Rather, an infinite field is open to organic lawfulness in its appearance as external manifestation, as is possible. But since the substances and forces of inorganic nature must enter into the service of this lawfulness if real organisms are to arise at all, it follows of itself that only those forms are possible which do not contradict the conditions inherent in those substances and forces. And in this respect, the forces and substances of inorganic nature are negative conditions of organic life. The latter asserts itself through them and in their forms as well as they allow. This, however, already implies the necessity of an infinite diversity of organic forms. For this outwardness of existence is not something that stands in a clear connection with the inner lawfulness; indeed, from this point of view one can even raise the question: how is it that there are species at all, that not every individual is different from every other? We will come back to this later. In any case, it is certain that Goethe's characterized view cannot speak of constant forms of the organic, because that which gives a form its constancy does not flow from that which makes it an organic form. Only those who see something essential in this form can assume a constancy of form.

What is not essential to a thing, however, does not necessarily need to be retained. And thus the possibility of transforming existing forms is derived. From Goethe's point of view, however, nothing more could be given than a derivation of this possibility. Darwin provided the empirical observations for this. That is always the relationship between theory and experience, that the latter shows what is and happens, and the former shows the possibility of how such things can be and happen.

In any case, on the basis of the material available in the Goethe Archive, it is impossible to think of anything other than this relationship between Goethe and Darwin.

However, anyone who considers organic forms to be mutable is faced with the task of explaining the forms that actually exist at a given time, that is, of indicating the reasons why certain forms develop under the conditions he presupposes and, furthermore, of explaining the relationship between these existing forms. This was completely clear to Goethe, and we can see from the papers he left behind that he was thinking of shaping his views in this direction in the intended continuation of his morphological work. A scheme for a "Physiology of Plants" contains the following:

"The metamorphosis of plants, the basis of their physiology. It shows us the laws according to which plants are formed.

It draws our attention to a double law:

1. to the law of inner nature by which plants are constituted

2. to the law of external circumstances, by which plants are modified.

Botanical science makes us acquainted with the manifold formation of the plant and its parts, and from the other side it seeks out the laws of this formation.

If, then, the efforts to organize the great multitude of plants into a system deserve only the highest degree of applause, if they are necessary to separate the unchangeable parts from the more or less accidental and changeable, and thereby bring the nearest relations of the different sexes more and more into light: the efforts are certainly praiseworthy which seek to recognize the law by which those formations are produced; and though it may seem that human nature can neither grasp the infinite variety of organization, nor clearly comprehend the law by which it operates, yet it is well to exert all our powers, and to extend this field from both sides, by experience as well as by reflection. "

According to Goethe's conception, every particular plant and animal form can therefore be explained by two factors: the law of inner nature and the law of circumstances. But since these circumstances are given in a certain place and at a certain time, and do not change within certain limits, it is also explicable that the organic forms remain constant within these limits. For those forms which are possible under those circumstances find their expression in the beings once they have arisen. New forms can only be brought about by a change in these circumstances. But then these new circumstances not only have to submit to the laws of the interior of organic nature, but also have to reckon with the forms that have already arisen and which they confront. For what has once arisen in nature, henceforth proves to be a contributing cause in the context of facts. From this, however, it follows that the forms that have once arisen will have a certain power to maintain themselves. Certain characteristics, once adopted, will still be noticeable in the most distant descendants, even if they cannot be explained by the living conditions of these beings. This is a fact for which the word inheritance has been used in more recent times. We have seen that a conceptually strict correlate for what is connected with this word can be found in Goethe's way of looking at things.

However, the way in which Goethe conceived of the reproduction of organisms in connection with their other principles of development throws a special light on this view. For he imagined that the inner developmental capacity of an organic being is not yet complete with what we assume to be an individual, but that reproduction is simply the continuation and a special case of this developmental capacity. That which expresses itself as growth at a lower level is reproduction at a higher level. Goethe already held the view that procreation is only a growth of the organism beyond the individual.

This can also be proven from his own notes: "We have seen that plants reproduce in different ways, which species are to be regarded as modifications of a single species. Reproduction, like the continuation that occurs through the development of one organ from another, has mainly occupied us in metamorphosis. We have seen that these organs, which themselves change from external sameness to the greatest dissimilarity, have an internal virtual sameness..."

"We have seen that this sprouting continuation in perfect plants cannot go on to infinity, but that it leads step by step to the summit and produces, as it were, at the opposite end of its power, another kind of reproduction, by seeds."

Here, then, Goethe sees the continuation from limb to limb in one and the same plant and reproduction through seeds as just two different types of one and the same activity.

"In all bodies that we call living, we notice the power to produce their own kind," says Goethe; but this power also completes its circle, as it were, several times during the growth of an individual, for: Goethe wants to provide "proof" that "from node to node the whole circle of the plant is essentially completed"; when we then "become aware of this power divided, we designate it under the name of the two sexes". Based on this view, he outlines the course of his lecture on growth and reproduction as follows:

"In considering the plant, a living point is assumed, which eternally produces its own kind.

And it does so with the smallest plants by repeating the same thing.

Furthermore, in the more perfect ones, through progressive development and transformation of the basic organ into ever more perfect and effective organs, in order to finally produce the highest point of organic activity, to separate and detach individuals from the organic whole through procreation and birth.

Highest view of organic unity."

This also shows that Goethe does not see reproduction as an essentially new element of plant development, but only as a higher modification of growth.

The passage quoted is also remarkable in another respect. In it, Goethe speaks of an "organic whole" from which the individual parts separate and detach themselves. He calls understanding this the "highest view of organic unity".

This describes the sum of all organic life as a unified totality, and all individual beings can then only be described as members of this unity. We are therefore dealing with a consistent kinship of all living beings in the truest sense of the word. And this is an actual kinship, not a merely ideal one. The "organic wholeness" is a unified one that has the power to produce its own kind in perpetual external change; the diversity of forms arises by continuing this ability to produce not only beyond individuals, but also beyond genera and species.

It is only in the exact sense of Goethe's explanations if one says: the force by which the various plant families arise is exactly the same as that by which a stem leaf is transformed into a flower petal. And this force is to be conceived of as a real unity and the emergence of one species from another in a real sense.

The organic species and genera are to be traced back to a true descent under continuous change of forms. Goethe's view is a theory of descent with a deep theoretical foundation.

But one must by no means think that the following forms of development are already implied in the earlier ones. For what runs through all forms is precisely the ideal organic lawfulness, in which one cannot speak of those forms at all. Precisely because the essence of the organic has nothing to do with the way it appears in forms, it can realize itself in them without winding them out of itself. The organic essence does not form the form out of itself, but into it. For this reason, these forms cannot have any pre-existence, not even in terms of their disposition. Goethe was therefore an opponent of the theory of nesting, which assumed that the entire diversity of the organic is already contained in the germ, but hidden.

"To think of this many ⁷ in one successively and as a nesting, is an imperfect conception, not suited to the imagination or to reason, but we must admit a development in the higher sense: the many in the individual, in the individual; and (thus) no longer embarrasses us."

Development consists precisely in the fact that a unity continues to develop and that the forms it assumes in the process appear as something completely new in it. This is because these forms do not belong to the unified principle of development, but to the means which it uses to manifest itself. The forms of development must all be ideally explicable from the unity, even if they do not really emerge from it. That Goethe was only thinking of this ideal containment is proven, for example, by the assertion that "these different parts arose from an ideal primordial body and are thought to be gradually formed in different stages..."

The next thing that must force itself upon us after the above propositions is to find out how the two factors: internal principle of formation and external conditions are involved in the formation of an organic form. For only if the rightful share is given from both sides can one speak of an actual explanation of such a form.

There is no doubt that the external conditions must first of all be known according to their actual reality through experience. Goethe lists among these conditions: Temperature of a country, quantity of sunlight, constitution of the air of the surroundings, and others. Observation shows us that a certain form is formed under the influence of a certain series of facts. Goethe says that the type undergoes a certain "restriction". But once we have recognized in this way that some form arises under certain external influences, then we are faced with the problem of explaining it, of saying how it could arise. And here we must take the idea of the type as a basis for explanation. We must be able to derive this particular form from the general form of the type. If we are not able to say: how the particular case is connected with the general one of the type, if we are not able to say: through this or that form of action the type has developed in the individual way, then the knowledge of the external conditions is worthless.

These conditions give the occasional cause that the organic appears in a certain way; the knowledge of the inner lawfulness gives the explanation of how this particular form of reality could arise. Goethe says, in a way that should not be misunderstood, that the form of an organism can be explained by "the interaction of the living parts only from themselves". And as a method of explanation he very often recommends in the most definite manner: to take cognizance of the external circumstances and then to inquire into the internal conditions which appear as a principle of form under the influence of the same.

An explanation that would only accept external influences as the cause of organic transformations would therefore have to be decisively rejected by Goethe.

We have limited ourselves to simply stating Goethe's view. How it relates to Darwinism in its present form: we leave it to the reader to form an opinion on this. ⁸ We will only conclude by saying a word about the method by which Goethe arrived at his results. Goethe's scientific views are based on idealistic research results, which rest on an empirical basis.⁹ The type is such an idealistic research result. We know from that much-mentioned conversation with Schiller that Goethe decidedly emphasized the empirical character of this "type".¹⁰ He became angry when Schiller called him an "idea". It was at a time when he was not yet fully aware of its ideal nature. He was only aware at the time that he had arrived at his "original plant" through careful observation. However, he did not yet realize that he had arrived at an "idea" in this very way. He still held on to the view of the one-sided empiricists, who believe that the observable is exhausted in the objects of external sensory perception. But it was Schiller's remark that prompted him to reflect further on this point. He said to himself: "If he considered what I expressed as experience to be an idea, then there must be something mediating and related between the two! The first step had been taken." ¹¹ Namely, the first step towards arriving at a satisfactory solution to the question through further reflection: how are the ideas of the type (primordial plant, primordial animal) to be retained if one wants to remain strictly on the ground of observation, of empirical science? How can harmony be achieved between the method and the basic character of the result? By ordinary observation of things we only arrive at knowledge of mere individual details and not of types. What modification must observation undergo? Goethe had to be driven to a "theory of observation". It was to be established: how must one observe in order to obtain scientifically usable results in the above sense? Goethe had only one predecessor in this investigation, but his way of thinking was quite alien to his own: Francis Bacon. The latter showed how one had to confront the phenomena of nature in order to obtain not random, worthless facts, as they present themselves to the ordinary naive view, but results with the character of necessity and natural law. Goethe attempted the same in his own way. So far, the only known fruit of this reflection is the essay: "Der Versuch als Vermittler von Objekt und Subjekt".¹² Now, however, we learn from a letter Goethe wrote to Schiller on 17 January 1798, . January 1798,¹³ that the former enclosed an essay with his letter containing the principles of his scientific method of research. I assumed from Schiller's reply of January 19, 1798, that this essay must contain important information on the question of how Goethe had conceived the basic structure of natural science, and then attempted in the introduction to my second volume of Goethe's scientific writings ¹⁴ to reconstruct it according to Schiller's explanations. To my particular satisfaction, this essay was found in the Goethe Archive in exactly the form I had previously constructed. It actually provides detailed information on Goethe's basic views on scientific methodology and on the significance and value of different types of observations. The researcher must rise from common empiricism through the intermediate link of abstract rationalism to rational empiricism. Common empiricism remains with the immediate facts of experience; it does not arrive at an estimate of the value of the details for a conception of legality. It registers the phenomena according to their course, without knowing which of the conditions that come into consideration are necessary and which are accidental. It therefore provides little more than a description of the phenomenal world. He only ever knows what must be present for a phenomenon to occur, but he does not know what is essential. Therefore he cannot represent the phenomena as a necessary consequence of their conditions. The next thing is that man goes beyond this point of view by appealing to the intellect and thus wants to become clear about the conditions by way of thinking. This standpoint is essentially that of hypothesis formation. The rationalist does not seek the causes of phenomena; he conceives them; he lives in the belief that one can find out why a phenomenon occurs by thinking about it. This, of course, leads him nowhere. For our mind is a merely formal faculty. It has no content other than that which it acquires through observation. Anyone who strives for necessary knowledge on the condition of this knowledge can only grant the intellect a mediating role. He must grant it the ability to recognize the causes of phenomena when it finds them; but not that it can sense them itself. This is the standpoint of the rational empiricist. It is Goethe's own standpoint. "Concepts without views" are empty, he says with Kant; but he adds: they are necessary in order to determine the value of the individual views for the whole of a world view. When the intellect now approaches nature with this intention and assembles those elements of fact that belong together according to an internal necessity, it rises from the observation of the common phenomenon to the rational experiment, which is a direct expression of the objective law of nature. Goethe's empiricism takes everything he uses to explain phenomena from experience; only the way in which he takes it is determined by his view. Now we understand more fully how he could speak the above words about his intended morphology, that it contains the idea of a "new science" "not in content", but "in view and method".¹⁵

The essay in question is thus the methodological justification of Goethe's research method. In this respect, it complements everything Goethe has written about natural science, because it tells us how we should understand it.

With these remarks, we wanted to point out the pleasing fact that the material in the Archive sheds a brighter light on Goethe's scientific view in two respects: firstly, it fills in the gaps in his writings that have been noticeable up to now, and secondly, it sheds new light on the nature of his research and his entire attitude to nature.

The question: what did Goethe seek in nature and natural science, without the answer to which an understanding of the whole personality of man is not possible, will have to be answered in a completely different way after the publication of the "natural science section" in the Weimar Goethe edition than has often been the case to date.

• 1. See the end of the essay: "Geschichte meines botanischen Studiums", in Kürschner's "Deutsche National-Literatur", Goethes Werke, vol. XXXII, p. 84.
• 2. See Italienische Reise (Kürschners "Deutsche National-Literatur>), Goethes Werke, Vol. XXI, I. Abteilung,. 336.
• 3. of men according to the kinds of their knowledge and their behavior towards the outside world,
• 4. Although the above lines do not date from the time when Goethe began to pursue natural science, but probably from the end of the nineties, we can justifiably cite them here. For they were written at a time when the poet was already reflecting on his research, when he was becoming his own interpreter. They are therefore precisely suitable for showing how Goethe wanted his attitude towards nature to be conceived
• 5. These sentences are borrowed from a surviving manuscript, which outlines the idea of such a morphology in broad strokes and was apparently intended to serve as an introduction to it.
• 6. See: Goethes naturwissenschaftliche Schriften (Kürschners "Deutsche National-Literatur"), Goethes Werke, Vol. XXXII, p. 9.
• 7. the multiplicity of organs and organisms
• 8. We have explained this relationship in the introductions to Goethe's scientific writings (Kürschner's "Deutsche National-Literatur"), Goethes Werke, Volumes XXXIU and XXXIV.
• 9. The more detailed definition and proof of this sentence can be seen in Goethe's works (Kürschner's "Deutsche National-Literatur"), Volume XXXIV, 8. XXXVIff.
• 10. See the essay: "Glückliches Ereignis" (Kürschners "Deutsche National-Literatur>), Goethes Werke, vol. XXXILI, pp. 108-113.
• 11. See "Glückliches Ereignis", op.cit., p.112.
• 12. See Goethe's works (Kürschner's "Deutsche National-Literatur"), Volume XXXIV, pp. 10-21.
• 13. Briefwechsel zwischen Schiller und Goethe, 2. Band, 8.10 ff.
. January 1798,
• 13
• 14. Goethes Werke (Kürschner's "Deutsche National-Literatur"), vol. XXXIV, pp. XXXKX ff.
• 15. Cf. Goethe's letter to Hegel of October 7, 1820 (Fr. Strehlke, Goethes Briefe, Erster Teil, p.240 ): "We are not talking here of an opinion to be asserted, but of a method to be communicated, which everyone may use as a tool according to his own way."

In the last lecture I sought to show how in the spiritual culture of the present day, it is due to misunderstandings when there is so little understanding between those who direct their research to the soul and to the processes within the soul's realm and those who direct their attention to the material processes in the human organism which run their course—however one wishes to call it—as accompanying phenomena, or also, as materialism maintains, as the necessary causes of soul phenomena. And I sought to show what the causes are of such misunderstandings. Today I should, above all, like to draw attention to the fact that such misunderstandings—as well as misunderstandings in other regards—necessarily arise in the search for real, for genuine insight when one fails to take one aspect into consideration, in the cognitive process itself, an aspect which forcefully reveals itself to the spiritual investigator. This aspect reveals itself more and more as an immediate perception during the course of further, extensive spiritual-scientific research. This is something which at first appears very odd when one expresses it: In the sphere in which world conceptions arise, that is in the sphere of insight into spiritual reality, when, I would like to say, one ties oneself down to certain points of view, there necessarily arises a way of regarding the human soul which can both be unequivocally refuted and can just as well be proven correct.

Therefore, the spiritual-scientific researcher more and more tends to abandon the habit of reinforcing one or the other conception by bringing to bear what, in ordinary life would be called a proof, or a refutation. For, in this sphere, as has been said, everything can be proved with certain reasons and everything can, also with certain reasons, be contradicted. Materialism, in its totality, can indeed be strictly proved correct, and, when it addresses itself to single questions about life or about existence can also equally well be shown to be correct. And one will not necessarily find it easy to refute this or that argument which the materialist brings forward in support of his views by merely seeking to refute his conclusion by bringing forward opposing points of view. The same thing holds true for the one whose point of view is a spiritual view of existence. Therefore, the one who truly wishes to conduct research in spiritual fields must, in regard to any world conception know not only all that which speaks for the point of view, but also all that speaks against it. For the remarkable fact arises that the actual truth only becomes evident when one allows to work upon the soul that which speaks for a certain thing, as well as that which speaks against it. And the one who allows his spirit to stare in fixation upon any constellation of concepts or mental representations of a one-sided world view, such a one will always be closed to the fact that just the opposite can appear to be valid to the soul, indeed the opposite must appear to be correct up to a certain point. And such a person can be compared with someone who might insist that human life can only be sustained by breathing in. Breathing in assumes breathing out, both belong together. So also, our concepts, our representations, relate to one another in questions concerning world conceptions. We are able to put forward, in regard to any matter, a concept which confirms it and we are able to put forward a concept which refutes it; one way demands the other, just as inbreathing requires outbreathing, and vice versa. And thus, just as real life can only reveal itself through breathing out and breathing in—when both are present—so, also, the spiritual can only manifest itself within the soul when one is able to enter in an equally positive manner into the pro as well as the con of a particular matter. The supportive, confirming concept is like a breathing out, within the living wholeness of the soul, the reflecting, denying concept like a breathing in, and only in their living working together does that element reveal itself which is rooted in the spiritual reality. It is for this reason that spiritual science is not concerned to apply the methods, to which one is so accustomed in current literature, where this or that is proved or is refuted. The spiritual scientist realizes that that which is brought forward in a positive form concerning world conceptions, can always in a certain sense be justified, but, equally so, what appears to contradict it. When one moves forward in world conception questions to that immediate life which is present in positive and negative concepts, just as bodily life lives in outbreathing and breathing in, then one comes to concepts which truly are able to take in the spirit; one comes to concepts which are equal to reality. However, in doing so, one must often express oneself quite differently than when one expresses oneself according to the habits of thought of ordinary life. But the way in which one expresses oneself arises from the livingly active inner experience of the spirit. And the spirit can only be inwardly experienced, not, in the manner of material existence, be outwardly perceived.

Now, you know, that one of the principal world conception questions is that which I dealt with in the first lectures which I held here this winter, namely, the question concerning matter, concerning physical substance. And I shall touch on this question by way of introduction from the points of view which I have indicated.

One cannot come successfully to terms with the question about substance or about matter if one attempts, again and again, to form mental images or concepts about what matter actually is; when one tries to understand—in other words—what actually is matter, what is substance. One who has truly wrestled in his soul with such riddles—which are very far from the beaten track for many people—such a one knows what is involved in questions of this kind. For, if he has wrestled for a time without yielding to this or that prejudice, he comes to a very different point of view in relation to such a question. He comes to a point of view which allows him to consider as more important the inner attitude of the soul when one forms such a concept as the concept of matter. It is this wrestling of the soul itself which is raised to consciousness. And one then comes to a way of looking at these riddles, which I might characterize in the following way.

He who wishes to understand matter in the way in which it is usually conceived resembles a person who says; I now wish to form an impression of darkness, of a dark room. What does he do? He turns on the light and regards this as the correct method to gain an impression of a dark room. Now, you will agree, this is just the opposite of the right way to go about it. And, it is in the same way, the opposite of the right way—only one has to come to realize this through the inner wrestling which I have pointed to—if one believes that one will ever come to know the nature of matter in setting the spirit into motion in order to illuminate matter, to illuminate substance, by means of spirit. The one and only place where the spirit within the body can silence itself is where an outer process penetrates into our inner life, that is in sense perception, in sensation, where the life of representation, of forming mental images, ceases. It is just by letting the spirit come to silence and by our experiencing this silence of the spirit that we can allow matter, substance, truly to represent itself within our soul.

One does not come to such concepts through ordinary logic; or, I would say, if one does come to them through ordinary logic, then the concepts are much too thin to call forth a genuine power of conviction. Only when one wrestles within the soul with certain concepts, in the way which has been indicated, will they lead to the kind of result which I have pointed toward.

Now, the opposite is also the case. Let us assume, someone wants to comprehend spirit. If he seeks it, for example, in the purely material outward formation of the human body, he is similar to someone who extinguishes the light in order to comprehend it. For it is the secret in this matter, that outer, sense-perceptible nature contradicts the spirit, extinguishes the spirit. Nature builds the reflected image of the spirit, in the same way that an illuminated object throws back, reflects, the light. But nowhere can we find the spirit, in whatever material processes, if we do not grasp the spirit in living activity. Because that is just the essential nature of material processes that the spirit has transformed itself into them; that spirit has incorporated itself into them. And if we then try to come to know the spirit out of them, we misunderstand ourselves.

I wanted to give this as a preface, in order that ever greater clarity can be brought to bear on what the actual cognitive attitude of heart and mind of the spiritual researcher is, and how it is that he needs a certain width and mobility in his life of forming mental images, to be able to penetrate into those things which require penetration. With such concepts it then becomes possible to illuminate the important questions on which I touched last time and which I will briefly indicate in order to move on to our considerations for today.

I said: as things have developed in recent spiritual education and culture, one has come ever more and more to a one-sided way of looking at the relationships of the soul-spiritual to the bodily-physical; a way of looking which expresses itself in the fact that one actually only seeks for the soul- spiritual within that part of the human bodily constitution which lies in the nervous system, that is to say within the brain. One assigns the soul- spiritual exclusively to the brain and nervous system, and one regards the remaining organism, when one speaks of the soul-spiritual, more or less as a kind of incidental supplement to the brain and nervous system. Now, I tried to make clear the results of spiritual research in this field by drawing attention to the fact that one only comes to a true insight about the relationship of the human soul with the human body when one sees the relationship of the entire human soul to the entire bodily constitution. But there it became clear that the matter has yet a deeper background, that is the membering of the entirety of the human soul into the actual representational thought life, into the life of feeling and the life of will. For only the actual representational life of the soul is bound to the nervous organism in the way in which it is assumed by more recent physiological psychology. In contrast, the life of feeling—let it be rightly noted, not in so far as it is represented mentally, but in so far as it arises—is related with the human breathing organism, with everything which is breathing, and which is connected with breathing, as the life of mental representation is related with the nervous system. Thus, one must assign the life of feeling of the soul to the breathing organism. Then further: that which we designate as the life of will, is in a similar relationship with that which in the physical body we must designate as the metabolism, of course into its finest ramifications. And in as much as one takes into consideration that the single systems within the organism interact and interweave—metabolism, of course, also occurs in the nerves—they interpenetrate, I would say, the three systems interpenetrate at the outermost periphery. But a correct understanding, however, is only possible when one regards matters in such a way that one knows: will impulses belong with the metabolism in the same way that the experiences of forming mental images belong with the human nervous system, that is to say, with the brain.

Matters of this kind can, of course, only be indicated to begin with. And just for this reason, objection after objection is possible. But I know quite definitely: when one no longer approaches that which has just been presented out of merely partial aspects of today's natural scientific research but rather out of the whole spectrum of anatomical, physiological research, then the result will be a complete harmony between the assertions which I have made from the spiritual scientific point of view and the assertions of natural science. Regarded superficially—allow me to cite the following objection only as a characteristic example—objection after objection can be brought forward against so comprehensive a truth. Someone could say: Let us agree that certain feelings are connected with the breathing organism; for no one can really doubt that for certain feelings this can be very convincingly demonstrated. But someone could also say: Yes, but what do you have to say to the fact that we perceive certain melodies, that melodies arise in our consciousness; and the feeling of an aesthetic pleasure connects itself with melodies. Can one, in this case, speak of any kind of connection of the breathing organism to this which quite evidently arises in the head, and so obviously is connected with the nervous organism according to the results of physiological research? The moment one considers the matter rightly, the correctness of my assertion becomes evident with complete clarity. Namely, one must take into consideration that with every outbreath an important parallel process occurs in the brain: the brain would rise with the outbreath if it were not prevented from rising by top of the skull—the breathing carries forward into the brain—and in reverse, the brain sinks with the inbreath. And since it cannot rise or fall because of the skull, there arises, what is well known to physiology: there arises the change in the blood stream, there occurs what physiology knows as brain-breathing, that is to say, certain processes which occur in the surrounding of the nerves run parallel with the process of breathing. And in the meeting of the breathing process with that which lives in us as tone through the ear there occurs what points to the fact that feeling, also in this realm, is connected with the breathing organism, just as the life of mental representations is connected with the nervous organism.

I want to indicate this because it is a relatively remote example and can, therefore, provide a ready objection. If one could come to an understanding with someone concerning all the details given by physiological research, one would find that none of these details contradicts what was presented here last time and has been brought forward again today.

It should now be my task to extend our considerations in a similar way as was done in the last lecture. And, to do so, I must enter more closely into the manner in which the human being unfolds the life of sense perception, in order to show the actual relationship between the capacity for sense perception, which leads to representations, and the life of feeling and of will, indeed, altogether, the life of the human being as soul, as body, and as spirit.

Through our sense life we come into connection with the sense- perceptible environment. Within this sense-perceptible environment natural science distinguishes certain substances, let us rather say, substance-forms - - because it is on these that the matter depends; if I wished to discuss this with the physicist I would have to say aggregate-conditions—solid, fluid, gaseous. Now, however, as you all know, natural scientific research comes to assume—in addition to the above-mentioned form in which physical substance appears—also another condition. When natural science wants to explain light, it is not satisfied only to recognize the existence of these substance- forms, which I have just mentioned, but science reaches out to include that which at first appears to be finer than these sorts of substance; it reaches out to that which one usually calls ether. The idea of ether is an extraordinarily difficult one, and one can say: the various thoughts which have been developed about the ether, what can be said about it, are as different, as manifold as one can imagine. It is, of course, not possible to go into all these details. Attention should only be drawn to the fact that natural science feels impelled to postulate the concept of the ether, which means thinking about the world not only as filled with the immediate sense perception of the more solid substances, but to think of it as filled with ether. What is characteristic is that natural science with its current methods fails to ascend to an understanding of what the ether actually is. Natural research for its real activity always requires material bases. But the ether itself always escapes, in a certain sense, from the material foundations. The ether appears in union with material processes, it calls forth material processes; but it is not to be grasped, so to speak, with those means which are bound to the material foundations. There has, therefore, developed in recent times a strange ether-concept, which, basically, is extraordinarily interesting. The concept of the ether which one can already find today among physicists, goes in the direction of saying: the ether must be—whatever else it may be—something which at any rate has no attributes such as ordinary matter has. And in this way, natural scientific research points toward the recognition of something beyond its own material basis, when it says of the ether, it possesses aspects which research, with its methods, cannot find. Natural scientific research comes to the acceptance of an ether, but with its methods is unable to come to fill out this representation of the ether with any content.

Spiritual science yields the following. Natural scientific research proceeds from the material foundation; spiritual research from the spirit-soul basis. The spiritual researcher—if he does not arbitrarily remain within a certain limit—is also, like the natural scientist, driven to the concept of ether, only from the other side. The spiritual investigator attempts to come to know what is active and effective within the interior of the soul. If he were to remain standing at the point where he is able to experience inwardly only what takes place in the ordinary life of the soul, he would actually in this field not even advance as far as the natural scientist who postulates the concept of an ether. For the natural scientist at least forms the concept of an ether; he accepts it for consideration. The soul researcher, if he fails to come to a concept of ether, resembles a natural scientist who says: Why should I trouble myself about what else lives? I accept the three basic forms: solid, fluid, gaseous bodies; what is finer than that, about that I do not concern myself. This is, for the most part, just what the teachings of psychology in fact do.

However, not everyone who has been active in the realm of soul research acts in this way; and one finds especially within that extraordinarily significant scientific development which is based on the foundation laid in the first third of the nineteenth century by German Idealism—not in this Idealism itself, but in that which then evolved out of this Idealism—one finds the first beginnings leading toward the concept of the ether from the other side, from the spiritual-soul side, just as nature research ascends to the idea of ether from the material side. And, if one truly wishes to have the concept of the ether, one must approach it from two sides. Otherwise, one will not come rightly to terms with this concept. What is interesting is that the great German philosophical Idealists, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, despite their penetrating power of thinking—an ability which I have often characterized here—despite this, they did not form the concept of the ether. They were unable to so enstrengthen, to empower, their inner soul life in order to conceive of the ether. Instead, there arose within those who allowed themselves to be fructified by this Idealism, who, in a sense, allowed the thoughts which had been brought forth to work further within their souls - - despite the fact that they were not as great geniuses as their Idealist predecessors—this concept of the ether arose out of their research into the soul's realm. We first find this ether concept in the work of Immanuel Hermann Fichte, the son of the great Johann Gottlieb Fichte, who was also his father's pupil. He allowed that to continue to work within his soul which Johann Gottlieb Fichte and his successors, Schelling and Hegel, had accomplished. Immanuel Hermann Fichte, allowing this thought to become condensed to an even greater effectiveness within him, came to say: When one contemplates the life of soul and spirit, when one so to speak, traverses it in all directions, one comes to say: This soul-spiritual life must flow down into the ether, just as the solid, fluid, gaseous states flow up into the ether. So must, in a sense, the lowest element of the soul flow into the ether, just as the highest element of matter flows into the ether above. Characteristic also are certain thoughts which Immanuel Hermann Fichte formed about this matter, by means of which he, indeed, penetrated from the spirit- soul realm and came to the boundary of the ether. You will find this passage from his book Anthropology, 1860, quoted in my most recent book, Of the Human Riddle:

“One cannot find, within the material elements of substance ... that which truly endures, that uniting formative principle of the body, which reveals itself as operative during our entire life.” “Thus, we are directed to a second, essentially different causative principle in the body.” “Inasmuch” as this “contains that which actually persists, endures in the metabolism, it is the true, inner, invisible, but in all visible substantiality present body. That other, the outward manifestation of it, built up out of incessantly active metabolism, may from now on be designated ‘body,’ which is, in fact, not that which persists and is not the enduring whole, and which is the mere result or the after-image of that inner bodily presence, which casts him into the constantly changing world of substance, in a way similar to the way the magnetic force prepares an apparently solid body out of the particles of the iron filings, but which dissolves in all directions when the force which unites them is withdrawn.”

For I. H. Fichte there lived within the ordinary body, consisting of outer material substance, an invisible body, and this invisible body we might also call the etheric body; an etheric body which brings the single substantial particles of this visible body into their form, which sculpts them, forms them. And I. H. Fichte is so clear about the fact that this ether body, to which he descends out of the soul realm, is not subject to the processes of the physical body, that the insight into the existence of such an etheric body suffices to enable him to transcend the riddle of death. In this context I. H. Fichte says in his Anthropology:

“It is hardly necessary still to ask, how the human being finds himself in the process of death. The human being remains after this last, for us still visible act of the living process, he remains in his essential being entirely the same in spirit and in organizing power as he formerly was. His integrity is preserved; for he has indeed lost nothing of that which was his and belonged to his substance during his visible life. He only returns in death into the invisible world, or better said, as he never left this world, as it is that which actually endures within all that is visible—he has simply stripped off a particular form of the visible. ‘To be dead’ only signifies, to be no longer perceptible to the usual comprehension by the senses, just as in the same way, that which is actually real, the final ground of bodily manifestation is imperceptible to the senses.”

I have shown in the case of I. H. Fichte how he advances from the soul realm to such an invisible body. It is interesting to note that in a number of instances in the after-glow of the spiritual life of German Idealism, the same thing appears. Some time ago I also drew attention to a lonely thinker, who was a school director in Bromberg, who had occupied himself with the question of immortality, Johann Heinrich Deinhardt, who died in the sixties of the nineteenth century. At first, he concerned himself with the question of immortality as others had also done, seeking to penetrate the question of immortality through thoughts and concepts. But more resulted for him than for those who merely live in concepts. And it was there possible for the publisher of the treatise about immortality which J. H. Deinhardt had written to quote a passage from a letter which the author had written him, in which J. H. Deinhardt says, that, although he had not come so far as to publish it in a book, his inner research had, nevertheless, resulted clearly in the recognition that the human being, during his entire life between birth and death, works on the formation of an invisible body which is released into the spiritual world at death.

Thus, one could draw attention to a variety of other instances within German spiritual life of such a direction of research and of a way of seeing and comprehending the world. They would all show that in this direction of research there lay an urge not to remain limited by mere philosophical speculation, which results in a mere life in concepts, but rather to so enstrengthen the inner life of the soul that it presses forward to that degree of concentration that reaches through to the etheric.

Along the paths on which these researchers entered, the real riddle of the etheric cannot yet be resolved from within, but one can, in a certain sense say: these researchers are on the way to spiritual science. For this riddle concerning the etheric will be resolved when the human soul undergoes those inner processes of practical exercise which I have frequently characterized here, and which are described more exactly in my book How to Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds. The human being, when he undergoes these inner soul processes, does indeed gradually attain to the etheric from within. Then the etheric will be directly present for him. Only then, however, is he really in the position to understand what a sense perception is, to understand what actually occurs in the perception by the senses.

In order to characterize this today, I must seek access to this question, in a certain sense, from another side. Let us approach that which actually occurs in the metabolic processes for the human being. Simply expressed, we can think of the metabolic processes in the human organism as occurring in such a way that, essentially, they have to do with the fluid material element. This can be easily understood if one acquaints oneself, even only to a limited extent, with the most easily accessible natural scientific ideas in this field. What constitutes a metabolic process lives, one can say, in the fluid element. That which is breathing lives in the airy, gaseous element; in breathing we have an interchange between inner and outer processes in the air, just as in the metabolism we have an interchange between substance processes which have occurred outside of our body, and such which occur within our body. What happens then when we perceive with our senses and then proceed to form mental representations? What corresponds to this actually? In just the same way that the fluid processes correspond to the metabolism, and the airy processes correspond to breathing—what corresponds to perception? What corresponds to perception are etheric processes. Just as we in a sense live with our metabolism in the fluid, and live with our breathing in the air, we live with our perceiving in the ether. And inner ether processes, inner etheric processes, which occur in the invisible body, about which we have just been speaking, occur, come into contact with external etheric processes in sense perception. When it is objected: Yes, but certain sense perceptions are self-evidently metabolic processes!—this is especially obvious for those sense perceptions which correspond with the so- called lower senses, smell, taste. A more accurate consideration shows that along with that which is substantial, that belongs directly to the metabolism, along with every such process, also with tasting, for example, an etheric process occurs, by means of which we enter into relation with the external ether, just as we enter into relation with the air with our physical body when we breathe. Without the understanding of the etheric world, an understanding of sense perception and sensation is impossible.

What is it that actually happens? Well, one can only really know what happens there when one has gone far enough in the inner soul process that the inner etheric-bodily element has become a reality for one. This will happen when one has achieved what I called imaginative thinking in lectures which I recently gave here. When one's thinking has been so strengthened, by means of the exercises given in the book already mentioned, that they are no longer abstract concepts, such as we normally have, but are thoughts and mental representations filled with life, then one can call them imaginations. When these representations have become so alive that they are, in fact, imaginations, then they live directly in the etheric, whereas, if they are abstract representations, they live only in the soul. They grasp the etheric. And then, if one has progressed far enough, one might say, in an inward experimentation that one experiences within oneself the ether as living reality, then one can know, through experience, what happens in sense perception, in sensation. Sensation as it arises through sense perception—1 can only present this today in the form of results—consists in the fact that the outer environment sends the etheric from the material surroundings into our sense organs, thus making those gulfs, about which I spoke the day before yesterday, so that that which is outside also becomes inward within the sphere of our senses. We have, for instance, a tone between the life of the senses and the outer world. As a result of the fact that the external ether penetrates into our sense organs, this external ether is deadened. And as the outer deadened ether enters our sense organs, it is brought to life again through the fact that the inner ether from the etheric body works towards the deadened etheric coming from outside. Herein we have the essential being of sense perception and sensation. Just as the death process and enlivening arise in the breathing process, when we breathe in oxygen and breathe out carbon dioxide, so also a process of exchange takes place between the dead ether and enlivened ether in our sense experience.

This is an extraordinarily important fact which can be found through spiritual science. For that which no philosophical speculations can find, and on which the philosophical speculation of the last centuries has ship-wrecked countless times, can only be found along the path of spiritual scientific research. Sense perception can thus be recognized to be a fine process of exchange between the outer and the inner ether; to be the enlivening of the ether that is deadened in the sense organ by the forces of the inner etheric body. So that that which the senses kill for us out of the environment, is inwardly made alive again through the etheric body, and we come, thereby, to that which is indeed the perception of the outer world.

This is extraordinarily important, because it shows how the human being when he devotes himself to the sensations arising from sense perception, does not only live in the physical organism, but rather in the supersensible etheric, and shows how the entire life within the senses is a living and weaving in the invisible etheric. It is this which, in the time mentioned above, the more deeply insightful researchers have always sensed, have inwardly divined, but which will be raised to certainty through spiritual science. Among those who recognized this significant truth, I would like still to mention the almost totally forgotten J. P. V. Troxler. I have mentioned him here in earlier lectures, in earlier years. He said in his Lectures about Philosophy:

“Already in earlier times the philosophers have differentiated a finer, purer soul organism from the coarser body. ... a soul, carrying a picture of the bodily organism, which they called Schema, and which was for them the higher, inner human being. ... In recent times, even Kant in his Dreams of a Spiritual Seer, dreams earnestly, but jokingly, a whole inward soul man, who bears all the limbs of the outer body in his spirit body; Lavater composes poetically and thinks in a similar vein. …”

These investigators were also clear, however, that in the moment when one ascends out of the usual materialistic way of seeing things to the perception of this supersensible organism in us, one has to move from the usual anthropology to a way of recognition of such a kind that it achieves its results through an intensification of our inner capacities. It is, therefore, interesting how, for example, both I. H. Fichte as well as Troxler are clear that anthropology must ascend to something different, if it wishes to comprehend the whole human being. I. H. Fichte says in his Anthropology:

“Consciousness based in sense perception ... together with the whole, human life of the senses, has no other significance than to provide a place in which that supersensible life of the spirit occurs, by introducing—through a free, conscious deed of one's own—the spiritual content of the ideas (which lives beyond ordinary consciousness) into the world of the senses ... The fundamental comprehension of the being of man in this way thus raises ‘Anthropology’ in its final result to ‘Anthroposophy.’”

We see within this stream of German spiritual life which tends to drive idealism out of its abstraction toward reality, the premonition of Anthroposophy. And Troxler says, that one must assume a super-spiritual sense in union with a super-sensible spirit, and that, thereby, one can grasp the human being in such a way that one no longer has to do with a usual anthropology, but with something higher:

“If it is indeed highly welcome that the most recent philosophy, which ... in every Anthroposophy ... must reveal itself, climbs upward, it is, nevertheless, not to be overlooked that this idea cannot be the fruit of speculation, and the true ... individuality of the human being may not be confused, either with that which it postulates as subjective spirit or as finite I, nor confused also with that which it places in opposition with it as absolute spirit or as absolute personality.”

What is brought forward as Anthroposophy in no sense arises arbitrarily. Spiritual life leads to it with necessity, when concepts and mental pictures are not experienced as mere concepts and mental pictures, but rather are—I once again wish to use the expression—condensed to the point where they lead into reality, where they become saturated with reality.

One does not, however—and this is the weakness, the lack, in this research—if one merely raises oneself from the physical to the etheric body, one does not really find one's way; rather one comes to a certain boundary, which must, however, be transcended; for only beyond the etheric lies the soul-spiritual. And the essential thing is, that this soul-spiritual can only come into a relationship with the physical through the mediation of the etheric. We thus have to seek the actual soul element of the human being, working and impulsating within the etheric in a fully super-etheric way; working in such a way that the etheric, in its turn, forms the physical, just as it (the etheric) is itself formed, impulsated, enlivened by the element of the soul.

Let us now try to understand the human being from the other pole, the pole of will. We have said that the will-life is directly connected with the metabolism. In as much as the will impulse lives in the metabolism, it not only lives in the external, physical metabolic processes, but as the entire human being is everywhere present within the limits of his being, so the etheric also lives in that which is active as metabolism when an impulse of will occurs. Spiritual science shows that what lives in the will impulse is exactly the opposite of that which is present in sense perception. In the case of sense perception, the etheric outside of us is, in a certain sense, enlivened by the etheric within us. That is to say, the inner etheric pours itself into the dead etheric from outside. In the case of an impulse of will the situation is such that when the will impulse arises from the soul- spiritual, the etheric body is loosened, is expelled out of the physical body in those areas in which the metabolism occurs, through the activity of the metabolism and everything which is connected with it. As a result, we have here the exact opposite: the etheric body in a certain sense pulls back from the physical processes. And it is just in this that the essential element in will actions lies. In such actions of the will the etheric body draws back from the physical body.

Those among my audience who have heard the earlier lectures will remember that, in addition to imaginative cognition, I have also distinguished inspiration and, finally, actual intuitive cognition. Just as imaginative cognition is an intensification and a strengthening of the soul's life, which enables one to attain to the life of the etheric, in the way I have indicated, so is intuitive cognition achieved through the soul's learning by mighty impulses of will to participate—indeed, actually herself to call forth—what one can call: the pulling back, the withdrawing, of the etheric body from the physical processes. Thus, in this realm, the soul-spiritual penetrates into the bodily-physical. If an impulse of will arises originally from the soul-spiritual, it unites itself wit^h the etheric and the consequence is that this etheric is withdrawn, pulled back, from one or the other area of metabolic activity of the physical-bodily organism. And by means of this working of the soul-spiritual, through the etheric, upon the bodily organism, there arises that which one can designate as the transition of a will impulse into a bodily movement, into a bodily action. But it is just here, when in this way, one takes the whole human being into consideration, that one attains to one's actual immortal part. For as soon as one learns how the spirit-soul weaves in the etheric it becomes clear to one that this weaving of the spirit- soul in the etheric is independent also of those processes of the physical organism that are encompassed by birth, conception and death. Thus, along this path it becomes possible to truly raise oneself to the immortal in the human being, to raise oneself to that which unites itself with the body, received through the stream of inheritance, and which continues when one passes through the portal of death. For the eternal spirit is connected through the mediation of the etheric with that which is here born and dies.

The mental pictures, the ideas, to which spiritual science comes, are powerfully rejected by the habits of thought of the present day and human beings, as a result, have great difficulty in finding their way into an understanding of them. One can say that one of the hindrances which make it difficult to find one's way into this understanding—along with other difficulties—is that one makes so little effort to seek the real connection of the soul-spiritual with the bodily organism in the way which has been indicated. Most people long for something quite different from that which spiritual science can offer. What actually happens in the human being when he or she forms mental pictures, forms representations? An etheric process occurs, which only interacts with an external etheric process. What is necessary, however, in order that the human being remains healthy in soul and body in this regard, is that he or she becomes aware where the boundary lies in which the inner etheric and the outer etheric come into contact with each other. This occurs in most cases unconsciously. It becomes conscious when the human being ascends to imaginative cognition, when he inwardly experiences the stirring and the motion of the etheric and its encounter with the external ether, which dies into the sense organ. In this interaction between the inner and outer etheric, we have, in a sense, the furthest boundary of the effectiveness of the etheric on the human organism. For that which is at work in our etheric body affects the organism primarily, for example, in its growth. In growth it forms the organism from within. It gradually organizes our organism so that the organism adapts itself to the outer world, in the way in which we see it, as the child develops. But this inner formative grasping of the physical body by the etheric must come up against a certain limit or boundary. When it passes this boundary, as a result of some process of illness, the following occurs: that which lives and weaves within the etheric and which should remain contained within the etheric, overreaches and lays hold on the organism so that, as a result, the organism is permeated by that which ought to remain a movement within the etheric. What happens as a result? That which should only be experienced inwardly as mental representation now occurs as a process within the physical body. This is what one calls a hallucination. When the etheric activity crosses its boundary towards the bodily—because the body is unable to resist it in the right way, due to a condition of illness—then there arises what one calls a hallucination. Very many people who want to penetrate into the spiritual world wish, above all, to have hallucinations. This is, of course, something which the spiritual researcher cannot offer them; for a hallucination is nothing other than a reflection of a purely material process, of a process which from the viewpoint of the soul occurs beyond the boundary of the physical body, that is it occurs within the body. In contrast, what leads into the spiritual world consists in the fact that one turns back from this boundary, returning into the realm of the soul, attaining to imagination instead of to hallucination, and imagination is a pure soul experience. And inasmuch as it is a pure soul experience, the soul lives in imagination within the spiritual world. Thus, the soul penetrates the imagination in the fully conscious way. And it is important that one understands that imagination—that is the justified way to achieve spiritual cognition—and hallucinations are the direct opposite of each other, and, indeed destroy each other. He who experiences hallucinations, due to a condition of organic illness, puts obstacles in the way to achieving genuine imagination, and he who attains true imagination protects himself in the surest way from all hallucination. Hallucinations and imagination are mutually exclusive, destroy each other mutually.

The situation is similar also at the other pole of the human being. Just as the etheric body can overreach into the bodily organism, sinking its formative forces into the body, thereby calling forth hallucinations, that is calling forth purely organic processes, so, on the other side the etheric can be drawn out of the organism—as was characterized in relation with the action of the will—in an irregular way. This can happen as the result of certain pathological formations of the organism or also as a result of exhaustion or similar bodily conditions. Instead of the etheric being drawn out of the physical metabolism in a certain area of the body, as in a normal, healthy action of the will, it remains stuck within it and the physical metabolic activity in that area—as a purely physical activity—reaches into the etheric. In this case, the etheric becomes dependent on the physical, whereas in the normal unfolding of the will the physical is dependent on the etheric, which, in its turn, is determined by the soul- spiritual. Should this occur, as a result of such processes as I have indicated, there then arises—I would say, like the pathological counter picture of a hallucination—a compulsive action; which consists in the fact that the physical body, with its metabolic activities, penetrates into the etheric, more or less forces its way into the etheric. And if a compulsive action is called forth as a pathological manifestation, one can say: compulsive action excludes that which, in spiritual science, one calls intuition. Intuition and compulsive action are mutually exclusive, just as hallucination and imagination exclude each other. Therefore, there is nothing more empty of soul than—on the one hand—a hallucinating human being, for hallucinations are indications of bodily conditions which should not be; and, on the other hand, for instance, one can have the whirling dervishes. The dance of the dervish arises through the fact that the bodily-physical forces itself into the etheric so that the etheric is not effective out of its connection with the spiritual-soul element, but rather those characteristic compulsive actions occur. And he who believes that revelations of a soul nature manifest in the dance of the whirling dervish, such an one should consult spiritual science in order to become clear that the whirling dervish is evidence that the spirit, the spirit-soul, has left the body and he, therefore, dances in this way.

And, I should like to say, that for instance automatic writing, mediumistic writing, is only a somewhat more comprehensive example of the same phenomenon as that of the dervish dance. Mediumistic writing consists in nothing else than that the spirit-soul nature has been completely driven out of the human organism and that the physical body has been forced into the etheric body and has there been allowed to unfold; to unfold itself after being emptied of the inner etheric under the sway of the outer etheric which surrounds it. These realms lead away from spiritual science, they do not lead towards the science of the spirit, although no objection should certainly be raised from those points of view from which generally so many objections are raised against these things. Just in relation to the whirling dervish one can study what a truly artistic dance should be. The art of dance should consist just in the fact that every single movement corresponds to an impulse of will which can fully rise into the consciousness of the individual involved, so that she or he never is engaged in a mere intrusion of physical processes into processes of the etheric. Artistic dance is only achieved when it is spiritually permeated by mental pictures. The dance of the dervish is a denial of spirituality. Many, however, may object: But it just reveals the spirit!—That it does, but how? Well, you can study a mussel shell by taking up the living mussel and observing it; but you can also study it when the living mussel has left, and you study its shell: the form of the mussel is reproduced in the mussel shell, this form is born out of the life of the organism. Thus, one might say, one also has an after-image of the spirit, a dead after-image of the spirit, when one has to do with automatic writing or with the whirling dervish. For this reason, it resembles the spirit as closely as the mussel shell resembles the living mussel, and, therefore, can also so easily be confused with it. But only when one really penetrates inwardly into the genuine spirit, can one achieve a true understanding for these matters.

When we take our start from the bodily, ascend through sense perception and sensation to the activity of forming representations, to thinking, which then carries over into the soul-spiritual, we come along this path to the spiritual-scientific recognition that that which is stimulated through sense perception and sensation, at a certain point is brought to an end and becomes memory. Memory arises as the sense impression continues on its way into the body, so that the etheric is not only effective within the sense impressions themselves, but also engages itself with what is left behind in the body by the sense impression. Thus, that which has entered into memory is again called up out of memory.

It is of course not possible to go into more detail concerning these matters in an hour's lecture. But one will never come to a true understanding of the reality of mental representation and of memory and how they are related to the soul-spiritual if one does not proceed along the spiritual-scientific path here indicated.

At the other pole there is the whole stream which flows from the spirit- soul life of our will impulses into the bodily physical, as the result of which outer actions are brought about. In ordinary human life the situation is that the life of the senses goes as far as memory and comes to a halt with memory. Memory places itself, so to speak, in front of the spirit-soul so that spirit-soul is not aware of itself and how it works when it receives sense impressions. Only an indication, a confused indication that the soul weaves and lives in the etheric, arises when the soul—living and weaving in the etheric—is not yet so strongly impelled in its etheric weaving that all of this ether weaving breaks against the boundary of the bodily-physical. When the soul-spiritual weaves within the etheric in such a way that that which it forms within the etheric does not immediately break against the physical body, but rather so restrains itself in the etheric that it is as if it came to the boundary of the physical body, but remains perceptible in the etheric, there dream arises. When dream life is really studied it will prove itself to be the lowest form of supersensible experience for the human being. For the human being experiences in his dreams that his soul-spiritual cannot unfold itself as will impulses within that which appears as dream pictures because, within the dream life, it lacks strength and forcefulness in its working. And inasmuch as the will impulses are lacking, inasmuch as dreaming spirit and soul do not penetrate the etheric sufficiently for the soul herself to become aware of these will impulses, there arises this chaotic tapestry of dreams.

What on one hand the dreams are, on the other hand are those phenomena in which the will—which comes out of the spirit-soul realm—takes hold of the outer world through the etheric-bodily nature. But, in doing so, the will is as little aware of what actually is going on, as one is aware in the dream—because of the weak effect of the spirit-soul—that the human being weaves and lives in the spirit. Just as the dream is in a way the weakened sense perception, so something else occurs as the intensified effect of the spirit-soul element, the strengthened effect of the will impulses; and this is what we call destiny.

In destiny we have no insight into the connections, just as in the dream we have no insight into what actually weaves and lives there as reality. Just as material processes which flow up into the etheric are always present as the underlying ground in dreams so there storms up against the outer world the spirit-soul element which is anchored in the will. But the spirit-soul element in ordinary life is not so organized that it is possible to perceive the spirit in its effective working in what unfolds before us as the sequence of the so-called experiences of destiny. In the moment in which we grasp this sequence, we learn to know the fabric of destiny, we learn to know how, just as in ordinary life the soul conceals for itself the spirit through the mental representations, so also it conceals for itself the spirit active in destiny through the feelings, through the sympathy and antipathy with which it receives the events which approach it as the experiences of life. In the moment when one—with the help of spiritual scientific insight—sees through the veil of sympathy and antipathy, when one objectively takes hold of the course of life experiences with inner equanimity—in this moment one notices that everything which occurs as a matter of destiny in our life between birth and death is either the effect of earlier lives on earth or is the preparation for later earth lives. Just as, on one hand, outer natural science does not penetrate to spirit and soul, not even to the etheric, when it seeks for the connections between the material world and our mental representations, so also, in regard to the other pole, natural science today fails in its cognitive efforts. Just as, on one side, science remains bound to the material processes in the nervous organism in its attempts to explain the life of mental representations, so also, science remains caught at the other pole in unclarity, that, is, I would say, science teeters in a nebulous way between the physical and the realm of soul.

These are just the realms where one must become aware how concepts within world conceptions allow themselves to be proved as well as to be contradicted. And for the one who clings rigidly to the proof, the positive position has much to be said for it; but one must also—just as breathing in belongs necessarily with breathing out—be able to think one's way through to the experience of the negative. In recent times there arose what has come to be known as analytical psychology. This analytical psychology is, I would say, inspired by good intimations. For, what does she seek? This analytical psychology, or as it is generally known, psychoanalysis, seeks to descend from the ordinary level of the soul to that which is no longer contained in the generally present life of the soul, but which remains from the soul's earlier experiences. The psychoanalyst assumes that the soul's life is not exhausted with its present soul experiences, with that which is consciously experienced by the soul, but rather can dive down with consciousness into the subconscious. And in much that appears in the soul's life as disturbance, as confusion, as this or that one-sided lack, the psychoanalyst sees an effect of that which surges in the subconscious. But it is interesting to note what it is that the psychoanalyst sees in the subconscious. When one hears what he enumerates in this subconscious it is, to begin with, disappointed life expectations. The psychoanalyst encounters one or another human being who suffers from this or that depression. This depression need not have its origin in the current consciousness of the soul's life but may originate in the past. Something occurred in the soul's experience in this life. The human being has overcome the experience, but not completely; in the subconscious something is left over. For example, he or she has experienced disappointments. Through his education, or through other processes, he has transcended these disappointments in his conscious life of soul, but they live on in his subconsciousness. There these disappointments surge up, in a sense, to the boundary of consciousness. And there they then bring forth the indefinite soul depression. The psychoanalyst seeks, therefore, in all kinds of disappointments, in disappointed life hopes and expectations which have been drawn down into the subconsciousness, what determines conscious life in a dim, unclear way. He seeks this also in what colors the soul's life as temperament. In all of that which colors the soul's life out of certain rational impulses, the psychoanalyst seeks a subconsciousness which, in a certain sense, only strikes up against consciousness. But then he comes to a yet further realm—I am only reporting here—which the psychoanalyst seeks to grasp by saying: That which plays up into conscious life is the fundamental substratum, the primeval animalistic residual mud, of the soul. One can certainly not deny that this primeval mud is there. In these lectures I have already drawn attention to the fact that certain mystics have had experiences which result from the fact that certain things, for example, eroticism, are subtly refined and play up into consciousness in such a way that one believes that one has had especially lofty experiences, whereas actually only the erotic, “the primeval animalistic mud of the soul,” has surged up and has sometimes been interpreted in the sense of profound mysticism. One can document, even in the case of such a fine, poetic mystic as Mechthild von Magdeburg, how erotic sensibilities penetrate into even the single details of her mental representations, of her thoughts. One must grasp just these matters clearly, in order that one does not fall prey to errors in the sphere of spiritual scientific investigation. For it is just the one who wants to enter into the realm of the spirit for whom it is a special obligation to know all the possible paths of error—not in order to pursue them—but rather just in order to avoid them. But the one who speaks about this animalistic primeval mud of the soul, who only speaks about life's disappointed hopes and other similar matters, such a one does not go deep enough into the life of the soul; such a one is like a person who walks across a field in which there is nothing yet to be seen and believes that only the earth, or perhaps also the fertilizer is present in it, whereas this field already contains all the fruits which will soon spring forth from it as grain or as some other crop. When one speaks of the primeval mud of the soul, one should also speak of everything which is embedded in it. Certainly, there are disappointed hopes in this primeval mud; but in that which is embedded there is hidden also a germinating force which represents, at the same time, that which—when the human being will have passed through the gates of death into the life which runs its course between death and a new birth, and which then enters into a new life on earth—makes something very different out of the disappointed hopes than merely a depression. It makes something in the next life which leads, one might say, to an “appointment,” not to a “disappointment,” which leads to a strengthening of soul initiative. There lies in that which the psychoanalyst seeks in the disappointed life-hopes in the soul's deepest levels, there lies—if he only goes deeply enough into it—that which prepares itself in the present life to take hold in the next life according to the laws of destiny.

One thus finds everywhere, when one digs over the animalistic primeval mud—without thereby dirtying one's hands, as, regrettably so often happens with the psychoanalysts—the spiritual-soul weaving of destiny which extends beyond birth and death within the spiritual and psychic life of the soul. It is just in analytic psychology that we have a realm in which one can so well learn how everything can be right and everything can be wrong when it comes to questions of world conceptions, looked at from one point of view or from another. But there is a tremendous amount which can be brought forward in support of the one-sided assertions of the psychoanalysts, and, therefore, the disproving of these assertions will not greatly impress those who swear by these concepts. But if one learns to form one's judgments in accordance with the method of gaining knowledge which was characterized at the outset of this lecture, in which one recognizes both what speaks for a point of view and what speaks against it, then just out of this for and against the soul will experience what is truly at work. For, I would like to say, between that which one can only observe in the soul realm, as the psychologists do who only concern themselves with the conscious realm, and that which the psychoanalyst finds down below in the animalistic primeval mud of the soul, just between these two realms of research lies the sphere which belongs to the eternal spirit and soul and which goes through births and deaths.

The penetration of the whole human inner realm leads also to a right relationship with the outer world. More recent natural science not only speaks in vague, indefinite ways about the etheric, but also speaks about it in such a way that just the greatest world riddles lead one back to it. Out of etheric conditions there is thought to have formed itself what then took on fixed shapes and became planets, suns and moons, etc. That which occurs as the soul-spiritual in the human being is regarded, more or less, as a mere episode. Before and behind is dead ether. If one learns to know the ether only from one side then one can come to a hypothetical construction of world evolution about which the sensitive thinker Herman Grimm—I have frequently quoted his statement, but it is so significant that it may well be brought before the soul again and again—says the following. As he became acquainted with the train of thought which asserts that out of the dead cosmic etheric mist arose that wherein now life and spirit are unfolding, and as he measures this against Goethe's world conception, he comes to the following expression:

“Already in his (Goethe's) youth, the great Laplace-Kantian phantasy of the origin and the eventual destruction of the earth planet, had for a long time asserted itself. From the rotating cosmic mist—with which children already become familiar in school—the central gaseous drop forms itself, out of which the earth emerges, and undergoes, as a rigidifying sphere, in the course of unimaginable epochs of time, all those phases—including the episode of its habitation by the human race—in order, finally, to plunge back into the sun as a burned-out slag: a lengthy, but for the public in our (Goethe's) time an entirely comprehensible process, for whose origin no other outer intervention is needed than the effort of some external force, to maintain the sun at a steady temperature of heat. No more fruitless perspective for the future can be imagined than this which is to be forced upon us today in the expectation of its scientific inevitability. A bone of a carcass, around which even a hungry dog makes a detour, would be a refreshing, appetizing object in comparison with this ultimate excrement of creation, as which our earth would finally plunge back into the sun. The intellectual appetite with which our generation takes up something of this kind and feels impelled to believe it, is a sign of the sick phantasy, which learned scholars in future ages will need much cleverness to explain as an historical phenomenon of our time.”

What arises here once again within German spiritual life as a feeling born out of a healthy life of soul, just this is shown in a true light by spiritual science. For, if one learns to know how the dead etheric is enlivened through the soul element, through the living ether, then, through inner experience one distances oneself from the possibility that our universal structure could ever have arisen out of the dead etheric. And this world riddle takes quite another aspect if one becomes acquainted with the corresponding riddle of the soul. One comes to know the ether itself in its living form, one comes to know how the dead ether must first originate out of the living. Thus, as one returns to the origins of world evolution, one must return to the soul, and to the recognition that one must seek the origin of all that develops today in the realm of the spirit and the soul. The spiritual-soul will remain a mere hypothesis, something merely thought out, in relation with the outer world riddles as long as through spiritual science one does not learn to know the whole living and weaving of the etheric by experiencing how the living ether from within meets with the dead ether from without; only along the path of spiritual science the world mist itself will be recognized as being alive, as being of the nature of spirit and of soul.

So you see, also for the world riddles, a significant perspective is gained just through an understanding of the riddles of the soul. I must close today with this perspective. It is, you see, just through a genuine consideration of external and of inner life from the viewpoint of spiritual science that one is led by way of the etheric into the spirit and the soul, as well within the soul as within the outer world.

There stands in opposition to such a cognitive attitude of soul, indeed, the point of view expressed by a man to whom I referred last time and whom I named on that occasion. We can today at least have the feeling that from the way in which spiritual science thinks about the bodily nature of man, the bridge leads directly to the spirit-soul realm, in which ethics and morality are rooted and which stem from the spirit—just as the sense perceptible leads into the spirit. But in its preoccupation with the purely external material world, science has developed an attitude of mind which completely denies that ethics is anchored in the spirit. One still is embarrassed to deny ethics as such, but one today speaks about ethics in the following way, as it is expressed in the conclusion of the lecture by Jacques Loeb, which in reference to its beginning I brought forward last time. There he who comes through natural scientific research to a brutal disavowal of ethics says:

“If our existence depends on the blind play of forces and is only the work of chance; if we ourselves are only chemical mechanisms—how can there be for us an ethical reality? The answer to this is that our instincts form the roots of our ethical being, and our instincts are as subject to heredity as the constituent forms of our body. We eat and drink and reproduce ourselves, not because metaphysicians have attained the insight that this is desirable, but rather because we are mechanically predisposed to do so. We are active because we are forced mechanically to be so through the processes in our nervous system, and if human beings are not economic slaves, nevertheless it is instinct which determines the direction of their activity in regard to their successful triggering, or to their successful work. A mother loves her children and cares for them not because metaphysicians had the bright idea that this would be a lovely thing to do, but rather because the instinct to care for the offspring is as firmly implanted, presumably through the two sexual chromosomes, as is the morphological character of the female body. We enjoy the company of other human beings because we are compelled to do so by the conditions of our human inheritance. We fight for justice and truth, and are ready to make sacrifices for them, because, instinctively, we desire to see our fellow human beings happy. That we possess an ethical trait, for this we have solely to thank our instincts, which are determined for us chemically and through heredity in the same way as the form of our body.”

Ethical action leads us back to instinct! Instincts lead back to the effects of physical-chemical activity! This logic is indeed most threadbare. For, certainly as a matter of course, one can say, that one should not wait with ethical action for the metaphysicians, until they have spun out some metaphysical principles, but that is the same as if someone were to say: Should one wait with digestion until the metaphysicians or the physiologists have discovered the laws of digestion? I should once like to recommend to Professor Loeb that he not investigate the physiological laws of digestion as he storms with brutality against the metaphysical laws of ethical life. But one can say: One can be a significant investigator of nature today—but the habits of thought tend in the direction of cutting one off from all spiritual life, tend to prevent even a glance in the direction of the life of the spirit. But parallel with this there is always the fact that one can document a defect in thinking, so that one never has the full effectiveness which belongs to a thought.

One can have peculiar experiences in this regard. I recently brought forward such an experience; but I would like to present it once again because it links with the statements of a very significant natural scientist of the present time, who belongs with those whom I attack just because in one sphere I value them very highly. This natural scientist has earned great achievements in the field of astrophysics, as well as in certain other fields of natural scientific research. When, however, he came to write a comprehensive book about the present-day view of the universe and about the evolution of this world view, he comes, in his foreword, to a curious statement. He is, in a certain sense, delighted how wonderfully advanced we are in that we can now interpret all phenomena from a natural scientific perspective, and he points with a certain arrogance, as is customary in such circles, to earlier times, which had not yet advanced so far. And, in this regard, he calls upon Goethe, by saying: Whether one can truly say that we live in the best of times, that we cannot determine, but that we live in the best of times in regard to natural scientific knowledge in comparison with earlier times, in this regard we can call upon Goethe, who says:

Forgive! It does seem so sublime,
Entering into the spirit of the time
To see what wise men, who lived long ago, believed
Till we at last have all the highest aims achieved.
Faust, translated by Walter Kaufman

Therewith a distinguished natural scientist of the present day concludes his exposition by calling Goethe to witness. Only he forgot, in doing so, that it is Wagner who makes this assertion, and that Faust remarks to this assertion, after Wagner has left:

Hope never seems to leave those who affirm,
The shallow minds that stick to must and mold—
They dig with greedy hands for gold
And yet are happy if they find a worm.

To reflect on what Goethe actually says, the distinguished researcher neglected to do in the moment in which he called upon Wagner in order to lend expression to the thought of how splendidly advanced we are. In this, I should like to say, we can catch a glimpse of where it is that thinking fails in its pursuit of reality.

And we could cite many such examples if we were to explore, even a little, the scientific literature of the present day. It will surely not be held against me—as I have said that I greatly value the natural scientist whom I have just quoted—if, in relation with such natural scientific research, which prides itself on being able to impart information about the spirit, I seek to bring to expression the true Goethean attitude of mind and of heart. For, we can forgive one or another monistic thinker, when, out of the weakness of his thinking he fails to come to the spirit; it is dangerous, however, when the attitude of soul, which arises in Jacques Loeb and in the natural scientist just quoted, who presents himself as Wagner, while believing to characterize himself as Goethe, when this attitude of soul gains authority more and more in the uncritical acceptance of the widest circles. And this is what is happening. The one who penetrates into that which can arise as an attitude of mind and heart out of spiritual science, such a one, perhaps—even though it may not appear sufficiently respectful in the face of such a statement as that natural scientist made, in connection with Goethe—may come to the genuinely Goethean attitude, when he connects himself with those words of Goethe's which I would like to paraphrase in closing this lecture

Forgive! It is a shock indeed
Entering souls that in their greed
Cling to matter with all their might
And for the spirit have no sight.

[ 1 ] The Austrian thinker, Bartholomaeus Carneri (1871–1909) attempted to open wide perspectives of world conception and ethics on the ground of Darwinism. Eleven years after the appearance of Darwin's Origin of Species, he published his work, Morality and Darwinism (1871), in which he used the new world of ideas as the basis of an ethical world conception in a comprehensive way. (Compare his books, Foundation of Ethics, 1881, Man as His Own Purpose, 1878, and Modern Man, Essays on Life Conduct, 1891.) Carneri tries to find in the picture of nature the elements through which self-conscious ego is conceivable within this picture. He would like to think this world picture so wide and so comprehensive as to contain the human soul within its scope. He aims at the reunion of the ego with the mother ground of nature, from which it has become separated. He represents in his world conception the opposite tendency to the philosophy for which the world becomes an illusion of the imagination and which, for that reason, renounces all connection with the reality of the world so far as knowledge is concerned.

Carneri rejects all moral philosophy that intends to proclaim for man other moral commandments than those that result from his own nature. We must remember that man is not to be understood as a special being beside all other things of nature but that he is a being that has gradually developed from lower entities according to purely natural laws. Carneri is convinced that all life is like a chemical process. “The digestion in man is such a process as well as the nutrition of the plant.” At the same time, he emphasizes that the chemical process must be raised to a higher form of evolution if it is to become plant or animal.

Life is a chemical process of a special kind; it is the individualized chemical process, for the chemical process can reach a point where it can maintain itself without certain conditions . . . that it formerly needed.

It is apparent that Carneri observes that lower processes are transformed into higher ones, that matter takes on higher forms of existence through the perfection of its functions.

As matter, we conceive the substance insofar as the properties that result from its divisibility and its motion effect our senses physically, that is to say, as mass. If this division or differentiation goes so far as to produce phenomena that are no longer sensually perceptible but only perceptible to our thinking, we say the effect of the substance is spiritual.

Also, morality does not exist as a special form of reality; it is a process of nature on a higher level. Therefore, the question cannot be raised: What is man to do to comply with some special moral commandment that is valid for him? We can only ask: What appears as morality when the lower processes develop into the higher spiritual ones?

While moral philosophy proclaims certain moral laws and commands that they are to be kept so that man may be what he ought to be, our ethics develops man as he is. It wants to do no more than to show him what he may at some time become. While the former moralizing philosophy knows of duties to be enforced by punishments, our ethics uphold an ideal from which any compulsion would merely distract because it can be approached only on the path of knowledge and of freedom.

As the chemical process individualizes itself into a living being on a higher level, so on a still higher level life is transformed into self-consciousness. The entity that has become self-conscious no longer merely looks out into nature; it looks back into itself.

The awakened self-consciousness constituted, if conceived dualistically, a break with nature, and man felt himself separated from nature. This breach existed only for him, but for him it was complete. It had not developed as suddenly as it is taught in Genesis, just as the days of creation must not be taken literally as days. But with the completion of self-consciousness, the breach was a fact and with the feeling of boundless lonesomeness that overcame man in this state, his ethical development began.

Up to a certain point nature leads life. At this point, self-consciousness arises, man comes into existence. “His further development is his own work and what keeps him on the course of progress is the power and the gradual clarification of his wishes.” Nature takes care of a11 other beings, but it endows man with desires and expects him to take care of their fulfillment. Man has within himself the impulse to arrange his existence in agreement with his wishes. This impulse is his desire for happiness:

This impulse is unknown to the animal. It knows only the instinct for self-preservation; to develop that instinct into the desire for happiness, the human self-consciousness is necessary as a fundamental condition.

The striving for happiness is the basis of all action:

The martyr who sacrifices his life, be it for his scientific conviction or for his belief in God, aims for nothing but his happiness. He finds it in the first case in his loyalty of conviction, and in the second case he expects it in a better world. To everyone happiness is the last aim and no matter how different the picture may be that the individual has of this happiness, it is to every sentient living being the beginning and the end of all his thinking and feeling.

As nature gives man only the need for happiness, this image of happiness must have its origin within man himself. Man creates for himself the pictures of his happiness. They spring from his ethical fantasy. Carneri finds in this fantasy the new concept that prescribes the ideals of our action to our thinking. The “good” is, for Carneri, “identical with progressive evolution, and since evolution is pleasure . . . happiness not merely constituted the aim but also the moving element that drives toward that aim.”

[ 2 ] Carneri attempted to find the way that leads from the natural order to the sources of morality. He believed he had found the ideal power that propels the ethical world order as spontaneously from one moral event to the next as the material forces on the physical level develop formation after formation and fact after fact.

[ 3 ] Carneri's mode of conception is entirely in agreement with the idea of evolution that does not permit the notion that a later phase of development is already pre-formed in an earlier one, but considers it as a really new formation. The chemical process does not contain implicitly animal life, and happiness develops as an entirely new element on the ground of the animal's instinct for self-preservation. The difficulty that lies in this thought caused a penetrating thinker, W. H. Rolph, to develop the line of reasoning that he set down in his book, Biological Problems, an Attempt at the Development of a Rational Ethics (1884). Rolph asks himself, “What is the reason that a form of life does not remain at a given stage but develops progressively and becomes more perfect?” This problem presents no difficulty for a thinker who maintains that the later form is already implicitly contained in the earlier one. For him, it is quite clear that what is at first implicit will become explicit at a certain time. But Rolph was not willing to accept this answer. On the other hand, however, he was also not satisfied with the “struggle for existence” as a solution of the problem. If a living being fights only for the satisfaction of its necessary needs, it will, to be sure, overpower its weaker competitors, but it will itself remain what it is. If one does not want to attribute a mysterious, mystical tendency toward perfection to this being, one must seek the cause of this perfection in external, natural circumstances. Rolph tries to give an explanation by stating that, whenever possible, every being satisfies its needs to a greater extent than is necessary.

Only by introducing the idea of insatiability does the Darwinian principle of perfection in the struggle for life become acceptable, for it is only thus that we have an explanation for the fact that the creature acquires, whenever it can do so, more than it needs for maintaining its status quo, and that it grows excessively whenever the occasion is given for it. (Biological Problems)

What takes place in this realm of living beings is, in Rolph's opinion, not a struggle for acquisition of the necessary means of life but a “struggle for surplus acquisition.” “While the Darwinist knows of no life struggle as long as the existence of the creature is not threatened, I consider this struggle as ever present. It is simply primarily a struggle for life, a struggle for the increase of life, not a struggle for existence.” Rolph draws from these natural scientific presuppositions the conclusions for his ethics:

Expansion of life, not its mere preservation, struggle for advantage, not for existence, is the rallying cry. The mere acquisition of life's necessities and sustenance is not sufficient; what must also be gained is comfort, if not wealth, power and influence. The search and striving for continuous improvement of the condition of life is the characteristic impulse of animal and man. (Biological Problems)

[ 4 ] Rolph's thoughts stimulated Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) to produce his own ideas of evolution after having gone through other phases of his soul life. At the beginning of his career as an author, the idea of evolution and natural science in general had been far from his thoughts. He was at first deeply impressed by the philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer, and from him he adopted the conception of pain as lying at the bottom of all existence. Unlike Schopenhauer and Eduard van Hartmann, Nietzsche did not seek the redemption from this pain in the fulfillment of moral tasks. It was his belief rather that the transformation of life into a work of art that leads beyond the pain of existence. Thus, the Greeks created a world of beauty and appearance in order to make this painful existence bearable. In Richard Wagner's musical drama he believed he found a world in which beauty lifts man beyond pain. It was in a certain sense a world of illusion that was quite consciously sought by Nietzsche in order to overcome the misery of the world. He was of the opinion that, at the root of the oldest Greek culture, there had been the will of man to forget the real world through a state of intoxication.

Singing and dancing man manifests himself as a member of a higher community. He has forgotten to walk and to speak and, in his dance, he is about to fly up into the air. (The Birth of Tragedy, 1872)

With these words Nietzsche describes and explains the cult of the ancient worshippers of Dionysos, in which he saw the root of all art. Nietzsche maintained of Socrates that he had overpowered this Dionysian impulse by placing reason as judge over them. The statement, “Virtue is teachable,” meant, according to Nietzsche, the end of a comprehensive, impulsive culture and the beginning of a much feebler phase dominated by thinking. Such an idea arose in Nietzsche under the influence of Schopenhauer, who placed the untamed, restless will higher than the systematizing thought life, and under the influence of Richard Wagner who, both as a man and as an artist, followed Schopenhauer. But Nietzsche was, by his own inclination, also a contemplative nature. After having surrendered for awhile to the idea of the redemption of the world through beauty as mere appearance, he felt this conception as a foreign element to his own nature, something that had been implanted in him through the influence of Richard Wagner, with whom he had been connected by friendship. Nietzsche tried to free himself from this trend of ideas and to come to terms with a conception of reality that was more in agreement with his own nature. The fundamental trait of his character compelled him to experience the ideas and impulses of the development of a modern world conception as a direct personal fate. Other thinkers formed pictures of a world conception and the process of this formative description constituted their philosophic activity. Nietzsche is confronted with the world conceptions of the second half of the nineteenth century, and it becomes his destiny to experience personally all the delight but also all the sorrows that these world conceptions can cause if they affect the very substance of the human soul. Not only theoretically but with his entire individuality at stake, Nietzsche's philosophical life developed in such a way that representative world conceptions of modern times would completely take hold of him, forcing him to work himself through to his own solutions in the most personal experiences of life.

How can one live if one must think that the world is as Schopenhauer and Richard Wagner imagine it to be? This became the disturbing riddle for him. It was not, however, a riddle for which he sought a solution by means of thinking and knowledge. He had to experience the solution of this problem with every fibre of his nature. Others think philosophy; Nietzsche had to live philosophy. The modern life of world conception becomes completely personal in Nietzsche. When an observer meets the philosophies of other thinkers, he feels inclined to judge; this is one-sided, that is incorrect, etc. With Nietzsche such an observer finds himself confronted with a ,world conception within the life of a human being, and he sees that one idea makes this human being healthy while another makes him ill. For this reason, Nietzsche becomes more and more a poet as he presents his picture of world and life. It is also for this reason that a reader who cannot agree with Nietzsche's presentation insofar as his philosophy is concerned, can still admire it because of its poetic power.

What an entirely different tone comes into the modern history of philosophy through Nietzsche as compared to Hamerling, Wundt and even Schopenhauer! These thinkers search contemplatively for the ground of existence and they arrive at the will, which they find in the depths of the human soul. In Nietzsche this will is alive. He absorbs the philosophical ideas, sets them aglow with his ardent will-nature and then makes something entirely new out of them: A life through which will-inspired ideas and idea-illumined will pulsate. This happens in Nietzsche's first creative period, which began with his Birth of Tragedy (1870), and had its full expression in his four Untimely Meditations: David Strauss Confessor and Author; On the Use and Disadvantage of History for Life; Schopenhauer as Educator; Richard Wagner in Bayreuth. In the second phase of his life, it was Nietzsche's destiny to experience deeply what a life and world conception based exclusively on the thought habits of natural science can be to the human soul. This period is expressed in his works, Human, All Too Human (1878), The Dawn of Day (1881), and Gay Science (1882).

Now the ideals that inspired Nietzsche in his first period have cooled; they appear to him as bubbles of thought. His soul now wants to gain strength, to be invigorated in its feeling by the “reality” of the content that can be derived from the mode of conception of natural science. But Nietzsche's soul is full of life; the vigor of this inner life strives beyond anything that it could owe to the contemplative observation of nature. The contemplation of nature shows that the animal becomes man. As the soul feels its inner power of life, the conception arises: The animal bore man in itself; must not man bear within himself a higher being, the superman? Nietzsche's soul experiences in itself the superman wresting himself free from man. His soul revels in lifting the modern idea of evolution that was based on the world of the senses to the realm that the senses do not perceive, a realm that is felt when the soul experiences the meaning of evolution within itself. “The mere acquisition of life's necessities and sustenance is not sufficient; what must also be gained is comfort, if not wealth, power and influence. The search and striving for a continuous improvement of the condition of life is the characteristic impulse of animal and man.” This conviction, which in Rolph was the result of contemplative observation, becomes in Nietzsche an inner experience, expressed in a grandiose hymn of philosophic vision. The knowledge that represents the external world is insufficient to him; it must become inwardly increasingly fruitful. Self-observation is poverty. A creation of a new inner life that outshines everything so far in existence, everything man is already, arises in Nietzsche's soul. In man, the superman is born for the first time as the meaning of existence. Knowledge itself grows beyond what it formerly had been; it becomes a creative power. As man creates, he takes his stand in the midst of the meaning of life. With lyrical ardor Nietzsche expresses in his Zarathustra (1884) the bliss that his soul experiences in creating “superman” out of man. A knowledge that feels itself as creative perceives more in the ego of man than can be lived through in a single course of life; it contains more than can be exhausted in such a single life. It will again and again return to a new life. In this way the idea of “eternal recurrence” of the human soul thrusts itself on Nietzsche to join his idea of “superman.”

[ 5 ] Rolph's idea of the “enhancement of life” grows in Nietzsche into the conception of the “Will to Power,” which he attributes to all being and life in the world of animal and of man. This “Will to Power” sees in life “an appropriation, violation, overpowering of the alien and weaker being, its annexation or at least, in the mildest case, its exploitation.” In his book, Thus Spake Zarathustra, Nietzsche sang his hymn of praise to his faith in the reality and the development of man into “superman.” In his unfinished work, Will to Power, Attempt at a Revaluation of all Values, he wanted to reshape all conceptions from the viewpoint that no other will in man held higher sway than the will for power.

[ 6 ] The striving for knowledge becomes in Nietzsche a real force that comes to life in the soul of man. As Nietzsche feels this animation within himself, life assumes in him such an importance that he places it above all knowledge and truth that has not been stirred into life. This again led him to renounce all truth and to seek in the will for power a substitute for the will for truth. He no longer asks, “Is what we know true?” but rather, “Is it sustaining and furthering life?”

“What matters in all philosophizing is never ‘the truth’ but something entirely different, let us call it health, the future, power, life . . .” What man really strives for is always power; he only indulged himself in the illusion that he wanted “truth.” He confused the means with the end. Truth is merely a means for the purpose. “The fact that a judgment is wrong is no objection to it.” What is important is not whether a judgment is true or not, but “the question to what degree it advances and preserves life, preserves a race, perhaps even breeds a race.” “Most thinking of a philosopher is done secretly by his instincts and thus forced into certain channels.” Nietzsche's world conception is the expression of a personal feeling as an individual experience and destiny.

In Goethe the deep impulse of modern philosophical life became apparent; he felt the idea come to life within the self-conscious ego so that with this enlivened idea this ego can know itself in the core of the world. In Nietzsche the desire exists to let man develop his life beyond himself; he feels that then the meaning of life must be revealed in what is inwardly self-created being, but he does not penetrate essentially to what man creates beyond himself as the meaning of life. He sings a grandiose hymn of praise to the superman, but he does not form his picture; he feels his growing reality but he does not see him. Nietzsche speaks of an “eternal recurrence,” but he does not describe what it is that recurs. He speaks of raising the form of life through the will to power, but where is the description of the heightened form of life? Nietzsche speaks of something that must be there in the realm of the unknown, but he does not succeed in going further than pointing at the unknown. The forces that are unfolded in the self-conscious ego are also not sufficiently strong in Nietzsche to outline distinctly a reality that he knows as weaving and breathing in human nature.

[ 7 ] We have a contrast to Nietzsche's world conception in the materialistic conception of history and life that was given its most pregnant expression by Karl Marx (1818–83). Marx denied that the idea had any share in historical evolution. For him, the real factors of life constituted the actual basis of this evolution, and from them are derived opinions concerning the world that men have been able to form according to the various situations of life in which they find themselves. The man who is working physically and under the power of somebody else has a world conception that differs from that of the intellectual worker. An age that replaces an older economic form with a new one brings also different conceptions of life to the surface of history. If one wants to understand a historical age, one must, for its explanation, go back to its social conditions and its economic processes. All political and cultural currents are only surface-reflectings of these deeper processes. They are essentially ideal effects of real facts, but they have no share in those facts. A world conception, therefore, that is caused by ideal factors can have no share in the progressive evolution of our present conduct of life. It is rather our task to take up the real conflicts of life at the point at which they have arrived, and to continue their development in the same direction.

This conception evolved from a materialistic reversal of Hegelianism. In Hegel, the ideas are in a continuous progress of evolution and the results of this evolution are the actual events of life. What Auguste Comte derived from natural scientific conceptions as a conception of society based on the actual events of life, Karl Marx wants to attain from the direct observation of the economic evolution. Marxism is the boldest form of an intellectual current that starts from the historical phenomena as they appear to external observation, in order to understand the spiritual life and the entire cultural development of man. This is modern “sociology.” It in no way accepts man as an individual but rather as a member of social evolution. Man's conceptions, knowledge, action and feeling are all considered to be the result of social powers under the influence of which the individual stands.

Hippolyte Taine (1828–93) calls the sum total of the forces determining every cultural event the “milieu.” Every work of art, every institution, every action is to be explained from preceding and simultaneous circumstances. If we know the race, the milieu and the moment through and in which a human achievement comes into being, we have explained this work. Ferdinand Lassalle (1825–65), in his System of Acquired Rights (1861), showed how conditions of rights and laws, such as property, contract, family, inheritance, etc., arise and develop. The mode of conception of the Romans created a kind of law that differed from that of the Germans. In none of these thoughts is the question raised as to what arises in the human individual, what does he produce through his own inner nature? The question that is always asked is: What are the causes in the general social conditions for the life of the individual? One can observe in this thought tendency an opposite inclination to the one prevailing at the beginning of the nineteenth century with regard to the question of man's relation to the world. It was then customary to ask: What rights can man claim through his own nature (natural rights), or in what way does man obtain knowledge in accordance with his own power of reason as an individual? The sociological trend of thought, however, asks: What are the legal and intellectual concepts that the various social groupings cause to arise in the individual?

The fact that I form certain conceptions concerning things does not depend on my power of reasoning but is the result of the historical development that produced me. In Marxism the self-conscious ego is entirely deprived of its own nature; it finds itself drifting in the ocean of facts. These facts develop according to the laws of natural science and of social conditions. In this world conception the impotence of modern philosophy with regard to the human soul approaches a maximum. The “ego,” the self-conscious human soul, wants to find in itself the entity through which it can assert its own significance within the existence of the world, but it is unwilling to dive into its own depths. It is afraid it will not find in its own depths the support of its own existence and essence. It wants to derive its own being from an entity that lies outside its own domain. To do this, the ego follows the thought habits developed in modern times under the influence of natural science, and turns either to the world of material events or to that of social evolution. It believes it understands its own nature in the totality of life if it can say to itself, “I am, in a certain way, conditioned by these events, by this evolution.”

Such philosophical tendencies show that there are forces at work in the souls of which they are dimly aware, but which cannot at first be satisfied by the modern habits of thought and research. Concealed from consciousness, spiritual life works in human souls. It drives these souls to go so deep into the self-conscious ego that this ego can find in its depths what leads to the source of world existence. In this source the human soul feels its kinship with a world entity that is not manifested in the mere phenomena and entities of nature. With respect to these phenomena and entities modern times have arrived at an ideal of research with which the scientist feels secure in his endeavor. One would now also like to feel this security in the investigation of the nature of the human soul. It has been shown above that, in leading thinkers, the striving for such security resulted in world pictures that no longer contain any elements from which satisfactory conceptions of the human soul could be derived. The attempt is made to treat philosophy according to the method of natural science, but in the process of this treatment the meaning of the philosophical question itself is lost. The task with which the human soul is charged from the very depth of its nature goes far beyond anything that the thinkers are willing to recognize as safe methods of investigation according to the modern habits of thought.

In appraising the situation of the development of modern world conception thus characterized, one finds as the most outstanding feature the pressure that the mode of thought of natural science has exerted on the minds of people ever since it attained its full stature. One recognizes as the reason for this pressure the fruitfulness, the efficiency of this mode of thinking. An affirmation of this is to be found in the work of a natural scientist like T. H. Huxley (1825–95). He does not believe that one could find anything in the knowledge of natural science that would answer the last questions concerning the human soul. But he is convinced that our search for knowledge must confine itself to the limits of the mode of conception of natural science and we must admit that man simply has no means by which to acquire a knowledge of what lies behind nature. The result of this opinion is that natural science contains no insight concerning man's highest hopes for knowledge, but it allows him to feel that in this mode of conception the investigation is placed on secure ground. One should, therefore, abandon all concern for everything that does not lie within the realm of natural science, or one should consider it as a matter of belief.

[ 8 ] The effect of this pressure caused by the method of natural science is clearly expressed in a thought current called pragmatism that appeared at the turn of the century and intended to place all striving for truth on a secure basis. The name “pragmatism” goes back to an essay that Charles Pierce published in the American journal, Popular Science, in 1878. The most influential representatives of this mode of conception are William James (1842–1910) in America and F. C. Schiller (1864–1937) in England, who uses the word “humanism.” Pragmatism can be called disbelief in the power of thought. It denies that thinking that would remain within its own domain is capable of producing anything that can be proved as truth and knowledge justifiable by itself. Man is confronted with processes of the world and must act. To accomplish this, thinking serves him in an auxiliary function. It sums up the facts of the external world into ideas and combines them. The best ideas are those that help him to achieve the right kind of action so that he can attain his purpose in accordance with the facts of the world. These ideas man recognizes as his truth. Will is the ruler of man's relation to the world, not thinking. James deals with this matter in his book, The Will to Believe. The will determines life; this is its undeniable right. Therefore, will is also justified in influencing thought. It is, to be sure, not to exert its influence in determining what the facts are in a particular case; here the intellect is to follow the facts themselves. But it will influence the understanding and interpretation of reality as a whole. “If our scientific knowledge extended as far as to the end of things, we might be able to live by science alone. But since it only dimly lights up the edges of the dark continent that we call the universe, and since we must form, at our own risk, some sort of thought of this universe to which we belong with our lives, we shall be justified if we form such thoughts as agree with our nature—thoughts that enable us to act, hope and live.”

According to this conception, our thought has no life that could possibly concentrate and deepen in itself and, in Hegel's sense, for example, penetrate to the source of existence. It merely emerges in the human soul to serve the ego when it takes an active part in the world with its will and life. Pragmatism deprives thought of the power it possessed from the rise of the Greek world conception. Knowledge is thus made into a product of the human will. In the last analysis, it can no longer be the element into which man plunges in order to find himself in his true nature. The self-conscious ego no longer penetrates into its own entity with the power of thinking. It loses itself in the dark recesses of the will in which thought sheds no light on anything except the aims of life. But these, as such, do not spring from thought. The power exerted by external facts on man has become excessively strong. The conscious ability to find a light in the inner life of thought that could illumine the last questions of existence has reached the zero point. In pragmatism, the development of modern philosophy falls shortest of what the spirit of this development really demands: that man may find himself as a thinking and self-conscious ego in the depths of the world in which this ego feels itself as deeply connected with the wellspring of existence, as the Greek truth-seeker did through his perceived thought. That the spirit of modern times demands this becomes especially clear through pragmatism. It places man in the focal point of his world picture. In man, it was to be seen how reality rules in existence. Thus, the chief question was directed toward the element in which the self-conscious ego rests. But the power of thought was not sufficient to carry light into this element. Thought remained behind in the upper layers of the soul when the ego wanted to take the path into its own depth.

[ 9 ] In Germany Hans Vaihinger (1852–1933) developed his Philosophy of As-If (1911) along the same lines as pragmatism. This philosopher regards the leading ideas that man forms about the phenomena of the world not as thought images through which, in the cognitive process, the soul places itself into a spiritual reality, but as fictions that lead him to find his way in the world. The “atom,” for instance, is imperceptible. Man forms the thought of the “atom.” He cannot form it in order to know something of a reality, but merely “as if' the external phenomena of nature had come to pass through compound actions of atoms. If one imagines that there are atoms, there will be order in the chaos of perceived natural phenomena. It is the same with all leading ideas. They are assumed, not in order to depict facts that are given solely by perception. They are invented, and reality is then interpreted “as if” the content of these imagined concepts really were the basis of reality. The impotence of thought is thus consciously made the center of this philosophy. The power of the external facts impresses the mind of the thinker so overwhelmingly that he does not dare to penetrate with his “mere thought” into those regions from which the external reality springs. But as we can only hope to gain an insight into the nature of man if we have spiritual means to penetrate into the characterized regions, there can be no possibility of approaching the highest riddles of the universe through the “As-If Philosophy.”

[ 10 ] We must now realize that both “pragmatism” and the “As-If Philosophy” have grown out of the thought practice of the age that is dominated by the method of natural science. Natural science can only be concerned with the investigation of the connection of external facts, of facts that can be observed in the field of sense perception. In natural science it cannot be a question of making the connections themselves, at which its investigation aims, sensually perceptible, but merely of establishing these connections in the indicated field. By following this basic principle, modern natural science became the model for all scientific cognition and, in approaching the present time, it has gradually been drawn into a thought practice that operates in the sense of “pragmatism” and the “As-If Philosophy.” Darwinism, for instance, was at first driven to proclaim a line of evolution of living beings from the most imperfect to the most perfect and thus to conceive man as a higher form in the evolution of the anthropoid apes. But the anatomist, Carl Gegenbaur, pointed out as early as 1870 that it is the method of investigation applied to such an idea of evolution that constitutes the fruitful part of it. The use of this method of investigation has continued to more recent times, and one is quite justified in saying that, while it remained faithful to its original principle, it has led beyond the views with which it was originally connected. The investigation proceeded “as if” man had to be sought within the line of descent of the anthropoid apes. At the present time, one is not far from recognizing that this cannot be so, but that there must have been a being in earlier times whose true descendants are to be found in man, while the anthropoid apes developed away from this being into a less perfect species. In this way the original modern idea of evolution has proved to be only an auxiliary step in the process of investigation.

[ 11 ] While such a thought practice holds sway in natural science, it seems quite justified for natural science to deny that, in order to solve world riddles, there is any scientific cognitive value in an investigation of pure thought carried out by means of a thought contemplation in the self-conscious ego. The natural scientist feels that he stands on secure ground when he considers thinking only as a means to secure his orientation in the world of external facts. The great accomplishments to which natural science can point at the turn of the twentieth century agree well with such a thought practice. In the method of investigation of natural science, “pragmatism” and the “As-If Philosophy” are actually at work. If these modes of conception now appear to be special philosophical thought tendencies also, we see in this fact that modern philosophy has basically taken on the form of natural science.

[ 12 ] For this reason, thinkers who instinctively feel how the demand of the spirit of modern world conception is secretly at work will quite understandably be confronted with the question: How can we uphold a conception of the self-conscious ego in the face of the perfection of the natural scientific method? It may be said that natural science is about to produce a world picture in which the self-conscious ego does not find a place, for what natural science can give as a picture of the external man contains the self-conscious soul only in the manner in which the magnet contains its energy. There are now two possibilities. We either delude ourselves into believing that we produce a serious statement when we say, “Our brain thinks,” and then accept the verdict that “the spiritual man” is merely the surface expression of material reality, or we recognize in this “spiritual man” a self-dependent essential reality and are thus driven out of the field of natural science with our knowledge of man. The French philosophers, Emile Boutroux (1845–1921) and Henri Bergson (1859–1941), are thinkers who accept the latter possibility.

[ 13 ] Boutroux proceeds from a criticism of the modern mode of conception that intends to reduce all world processes to the laws of natural science. We understand the course of his thought if we consider that a plant, for example, contains processes that, to be sure, are regulated by laws effective also in the mineral world, but that it is quite impossible to imagine that these mineral laws themselves cause this plant life through their own content. If we want to recognize that plant life develops on the basis of mineral activity, we must presuppose that it is a matter of perfect indifference to the mineral forces if plant life develops from this basis. There must be a spontaneously creative element added to the mineral agencies if plant life is to be produced. There is, therefore, a creative element everywhere in nature. The mineral realm is there but a creative element stands behind it. The latter produces the plant life based on the ground of the mineral world. So it is in all the spheres of natural order up to the conscious human soul, indeed, including all sociological processes. The human soul does not spring from mere biological laws, but directly from the fundamental creative element and it assimilates the biological processes and laws to its own entity. The fundamental creative element is also at work in the sociological realm. This brings human souls into the appropriate connections and interdependence. Thus, in Boutroux's book, On the Concept of Natural Laws in the Science and Philosophy of Today (1895), we find:

Science shows us a hierarchy of laws, which we can, to be sure, bring closer and closer together but which we cannot blend into a single law. It shows us, furthermore, besides this relative dissimilarity of the laws, a mutual influence of these laws on each other. The physical laws affect the living being, but the biological laws are at work at the same time.

Boutroux turns his attention from the natural laws represented in the thinking of natural science to the creative process behind these laws. Emerging directly from this process are the entities that fill the world. The behavior of these entities to one another, their mutual effect on each other, can be expressed in laws that are conceivable in thought. What is thus conceived becomes, as it were, a basis of the natural laws for this mode of conception. The entities are real and manifest their natures according to laws. The sum total of these laws, which in the final analysis constitute the unreal and are attached to an intellectually conceived existence, constitutes matter. Thus, Boutroux can say:

Motion (what he means is the totality of everything that happens between entities according to natural laws) is, in itself, obviously as much an abstraction as thinking in itself. Actually, there are only living entities, their nature being halfway between the pure concepts of thinking and motion. These living entities form a hierarchy and activity circulates in them from above to below and from below to above. The spirit moves matter neither directly nor indirectly, for there is no raw matter and what constitutes the nature of matter is closely connected with what constitutes the nature of the spirit.

But if natural laws are only the sum total of the interrelation of the entities, then the human soul also does not stand in the world as a whole in such a way that it could be explained from natural laws; from its own nature it adds its manifestations to the other laws. With this step, freedom, the spontaneous self-revelation, is secured for the soul. One can see in this philosophical mode of thinking the attempt to gain clarity concerning the true essence of nature in order to acquire an insight into the relation of the human soul to it. Boutroux arrives at a conception of the human soul that can only spring from its self-manifestation. In former times, according to Boutroux, one saw in the mutual influences of the entities, the manifestation of the “capriciousness and arbitrariness” of spiritual beings. Modern thinking has been freed from this belief by the knowledge of natural laws. As these laws exist only in the cooperative processes of the entities, they cannot contain anything that might determine the entities.

The mechanical natural laws that have been discovered by modern science are, in fact, the bond that connects the external world with the inner realm. Far from constituting a necessity, they are our liberators; they allow us to add to the contemplation in which the ancients were locked up, a science of action.

These words point to the demand of the spirit of modern world conception that has repeatedly been mentioned in this book. The ancients were limited to contemplation. To them, the soul was in the element of its true nature when it was in thought contemplation. The modern development demands a “science of action.” This science, however, could only come into being if the soul could, in thinking, lay hold of its own nature in the self-conscious ego, and if it could arrive, through a spiritual experience, at inner activities of the self with which it could see itself as being grounded in its own entity.

[ 14 ] Henri Bergson tries to penetrate to the nature of the self-conscious ego in a different way so that the mode of conception of natural science does not become an obstacle in this process. The nature of thinking itself has become a world riddle through the development of the world conceptions from the time of the Greeks to the present age. Thought has lifted the human soul out of the world as a whole. Thus, the soul lives with the thought element and must direct the question to thought: How will you lead me again to an element in which I can feel myself really sheltered in the world as whole? Bergson considers the scientific mode of thinking. He does not find in it the power through which it could swing itself into a true reality. The thinking soul is confronted with reality and gains thought images from it. It combines these images, but what the soul acquires in this manner is not rooted within reality; it stands outside reality. Bergson speaks of thinking as follows:

It is understood that fixed concepts can be extracted by our thoughts from the mobile reality, but there is no means whatever of reconstituting the mobility of the real with the fixity of concepts. (Introduction to Metaphysics)

Proceeding from thoughts of this kind, Bergson finds that all attempts to penetrate reality by means of thinking had to fail because they undertook something of which thinking, as it occurs in life and science, is quite incapable to enter into true reality. If, in this way, Bergson believes he recognizes the impotence of thinking, he does not mean to say that there is no way by means of which the right kind of experience in the self-conscious ego may reach true reality. For the ego, there is a way outside of thinking—the way of immediate experience, of intuition.

To philosophize means to reverse the normal direction of the workings of thought . . . Symbolic knowledge is relative through preexisting concepts, which goes from the fixed to the moving, but not so intuitive knowledge, which establishes itself in the moving reality and adopts the life itself of things. (Introduction to Metaphysics)

[ 15 ] Bergson believes that a transformation of our usual mode of thinking is possible so that the soul, through this transformation, will experience itself in an activity, in an intuitive perception, in which it unites with a reality that is deeper than the one that is perceived in ordinary knowledge. In such an intuitive perception the soul experiences itself as an entity that is not conditioned by the physical processes, which produce sensation and movement. When man perceives through his senses, and when he moves his limbs, a corporeal entity is at work in him, but as soon as he remembers something a purely psychic-spiritual process takes place that is not conditioned by corresponding physical processes. Thus, the whole inner life of the soul is a specific life of a psychic-spiritual nature that takes place in the body and in connection with it, but not through the body. Bergson investigated in detail those results of natural science that seemed to oppose his view. The thought indeed seems justified that our physical functions are rooted in bodily processes when one remembers how, for instance, the disease of a part of the brain causes an impediment of speech. A great many facts of this kind can be enumerated. Bergson discusses them in his book, Matter and Memory, and he decides that all these facts do not constitute any proof against the view of an independent spiritual-psychical life.

In this way, modern philosophy seems through Bergson to take up its task that is demanded by the time, the task of a concentration of the experience of the self-conscious ego, but it accomplishes this step by declaring thought as impotent. Where the ego is to experience itself in its own nature, it cannot make use of the power of thinking. The same holds for Bergson insofar as the investigation of life is concerned. What must be considered as the driving element in the evolution of the living being, what places these beings in the world in a series from the imperfect to the perfect, we cannot know through a thoughtful contemplation of the various forms of the living beings. But if man experiences himself in himself as psychical life, he stands in the element of life that lives in those beings and knows itself in him. This element of life first had to pour itself out in innumerable forms to prepare itself for what it later becomes in man. The effusion of life (elan vital), which arouses itself into a thinking being in man, is there already manifested in the simple living entity. In the creation of all living beings it has so spent itself that it retains only a part of its entire nature, the part, to be sure, that reveals itself as the fruit of all previous creations of life. In this way, the entity of man exists before all other living beings, but it can live its life as man only after having ejected all other forms of life, which man then can observe from without as one form among all others. Through his intuitive knowledge Bergson wants to vitalize the results of natural science so that he can say:

It is as if a vague and formless being, whom we may call, as we will, man or superman, had sought to realize himself, and had succeeded only by abandoning a part of himself on the way. The losses are represented by the rest of the animal world, and even by the vegetable world, at least in what these have that is positive and above the accidents of evolution. (Creative Evolution)

[ 16 ] From lightly woven and easily attainable thoughts like this, Bergson produces an idea of evolution that had been expressed previously in a profound mode of thought by W. H. Preuss in his book, Spirit and Matter (1882). Preuss also held that man has not developed from the other natural beings but is, from the beginning the fundamental entity, which had first to eject his preliminary stages into the other living beings before he could give himself the form appropriate for him on earth. We read in the above-mentioned book:

The time should have come . . . to establish a theory of origin of organic species that is not based solely on one-sidedly proclaimed theorems from descriptive natural science, but is also in agreement with the other natural laws that are at the same time the laws of human thinking. What is necessary is a theory that is free from all hypothesizing and that rests solely on strict conclusions from natural scientific observations in the widest sense of the word; a theory that saves the concept of the species according to the actual possibility, but at the same time adapts Darwin's concept of evolution to its own field and tries to make it fruitful. The center of this new theory is man, the species unique on our planet: Homo sapiens. It is strange that the older observers began with the objects of nature and then went astray to such an extent that they did not find the way that leads to the human being. This aim had been attained by Darwin only in an insufficient and unsatisfactory way as he sought the ancestor of the lord of creation among the animals, while the naturalist should begin with himself as a human being in order to proceed through the entire realm of existence and of thinking and to return finally to humanity. . . . It was not by accident that the human nature resulted from the entire terrestrial evolution, but by necessity. Man is the aim of all telluric processes and every other form that occurs beside him has borrowed its traits from him. Man is the first-born being of the entire cosmos. . . . When his germinating state (man in his potentiality) had come into being, the remaining organic substance no longer had the power to produce further human possibilities. What developed thereafter became animal or plan. . . .

[ 17 ] Such a view attempts to recognize man as placed on his ground by the development of modern world conception, that is to say, outside nature, in order to find something in such a knowledge of man that throws light on the world surrounding him. In the little known thinker from Elsfleth, W. H. Preuss, the ardent wish arises to gain a knowledge of the world at once through an insight into man. His forceful and significant ideas are immediately directed to the human being. He sees how this being struggles its way into existence. What it must leave behind on its way, what it must slough off, remains as nature with its entities on a lower stage of evolution surrounding man as his environment. The way toward the riddles of the world in modern philosophy must go through an investigation of the human entity manifested in the self-conscious ego. This becomes apparent through the development of this philosophy. The more one tries to enter into its striving and its search, the more one becomes aware of the fact that this search aims at such experiences in the human soul that do not only produce an insight into the human soul itself, but also kindles a light by means of which a certain knowledge concerning the world outside man can be secured. In looking at the views of Hegel and related thinkers, more recent philosophers came to doubt that there could be the power in the life of thought to spread its light beyond the realm of the soul itself. The element of thought seemed not strong enough to engender an activity that could explain the being and the meaning of the world. By contrast, the natural scientific mode of conception demanded a penetration into the core of the soul that rested on a firmer ground than thought can supply.

[ 18 ] Within this search and striving the attempts of Wilhelm Dilthey (1833–1911) take a significant position. In writings like his Introduction to the Cultural Sciences, and his Berlin Academy treatise, Contributions to the Solution of the Problem of Our Belief in the Reality of the External World and Its Right (1890), he offered expositions that are filled with all the philosophical riddles that weigh on the modern development of world conception. To be sure, the form of his presentation, which is given in the modern terminology used by scholars, prevents a more general impression being created by what he has to say. It is Dilthey's view that through the thoughts and imaginations that appear in his soul man cannot even arrive at the certainty that the perceptions of the senses correspond to a reality independent of man. Everything that is of the nature of thought, ideation and sense perception is picture. The world that surrounds man could be a dream without a reality independent of him if he were exclusively dependent on such pictures in his awareness of the real world. But not only these pictures present themselves in the soul. In the process of life the soul is filled with will, activity and feeling, all of which stream forth from it and are recognized as an immediate experience rather than intellectually. In willing and feeling the soul experiences itself as reality, but if it experienced itself only in this manner, it would have to believe that its own reality were the only one in the world. This assumption could be justified only if the will could radiate in all directions without finding any resistance. But that is not the case. The intentions of the will cannot unfold their life in that way. There is something obtruding itself in their path that they have not produced but that must nevertheless be accepted by them.

To “common sense” such a thought development of a philosopher can appear as hairsplitting. The historical account must not be deflected by such judgment. It is important to gain an insight into the difficulty that modern philosophy had to create for itself in regard to a question that seems so simple and in fact superfluous to “common sense,” that is, if the world man sees, hears, etc., may rightly be called real. The “ego” that had, as shown above in our historical account of the development of philosophical world riddles, separated itself from the world, strives to find its way back into the world from what appears in its own consciousness as a state of loneliness. It is Dilthey's opinion that this way cannot be found back into the world by saying that the soul experiences pictures (thoughts, ideas, sensations), and since these pictures appear in our consciousness they must have their causes in a real external world. A conclusion of this kind would not, according to Dilthey, give us the right to speak of a real external world, for such a conclusion is drawn within the soul according to the needs of this soul, and there is no guarantee that there really is in the external world what the soul believes in following its own needs. Therefore, the soul cannot infer an external world; it would expose itself to the danger that its conclusion might have a life only within the soul but without any significance for an external world. Certainty concerning an outer world can be gained by the soul only if this external world penetrates into the inner life of the “ego,” so that within this “ego” not only the “ego” but also the external world itself unfolds its life. This happens, according to Dilthey, when the soul experiences in its will and its feeling something that does not spring from within. Dilthey attempts to decide from the most self-evident facts a question that is for him a fundamental problem of all world conception. A passage like the following may illustrate this:

As a child presses his hand against a chair in order to move it, he measures his power against the resistance; his own life and the object are experienced together. But now let the child be locked up. It is in vain that he rattles against the door; now his entire excited will becomes aware of the compulsion of an overwhelming powerful external world that hinders and restricts, and compresses, as it were, his own self-willed life. The desire to escape from the displeasure and to gratify his impulses is followed by the consciousness of obstruction, displeasure and dissatisfaction. What the child thus experiences follows him through his entire adult life. The resistance becomes pressure. We seem to be everywhere surrounded by walls of actual facts through which we cannot break. The impressions remain, no matter how much we would like to change them; they vanish although we strive to cling to them; impulses of motion directed by the idea of avoiding something that causes pain are, under certain circumstances always followed by emotions that hold us within the realm of pain. Thus, the reality of the external world grows, so to speak, progressively more dense around us.

Why is such a reflection, which seems unimportant for many people, developed in connection with the highest problems of philosophy? It seems hopeless to gain an insight into man's position in the world as a whole from such points of departure. What is essential, however, is the fact that philosophy arrived at reflections of this kind on its way, to use Brentano's words once more, to “gain certainty for the hopes of Plato and Aristotle concerning the continued life of our better part after the dissolution of our body.” To attain sure knowledge of this kind seems to become more difficult the more the intellectual development advances. The “self-conscious ego” feels itself more and more ejected from the world; it seems to find in itself less and less the elements that connect it with the world in a way different from that of our “body,” which is subject to “dissolution.” While this “self-conscious ego” searched for a certain knowledge concerning its connection with an eternal world of the spirit, it lost the certainty of an insight in its connection with the world as revealed through the perception of the senses. In our discussion of Goethe's world conception, it was shown how Goethe searched for such experiences of the soul that carry it into a reality lying behind sense perception as a spiritual world. In this world conception the attempt is made to experience something within the soul through which it no longer lives exclusively within its own confines in spite of the fact that it feels the experienced content as its own. The soul searches for world experiences in itself through which it participates with its experience in an element that it cannot reach through the mediation of the mere physical organs. Although Dilthey's mode of reflection may appear to be quite unnecessary, his efforts must be considered as belonging to the same current of the philosophical development. He is intent on finding an element within the soul that does not spring from the soul but belongs to an independent realm. He would like to prove that the world enters the experience of the soul. Dilthey does not believe that such an entrance can be accomplished by the thought element. For him, the soul can assimilate in its entire life content, in will, striving and feeling, something that is not only soul but part of the real external world. We recognize a human being in our soul as real not by forming a representative thought picture of the person we see before us, but by allowing his will and his feeling to enter into our own will and sentiment. Thus, a human soul, in Dilthey's opinion, acknowledges a real external world not because this outer world conveys its reality through the thought element, but because the soul as a self-conscious ego, experiences inwardly in itself the external world. In this manner he is led to acknowledge the spiritual life as something of a higher significance than the mere natural existence. He produces a counterbalance to the natural scientific mode of conception with his view, and he even thinks that nature as a real external world can be acknowledged only because it can be experienced by the spiritual part of our soul. The experience of the natural is a subdivision of our general soul experience, which is of a spiritual nature, and spiritually our soul is part of a general spiritual development on earth. A great spiritual organism develops and unfolds in cultural systems in the spiritual experience and creative achievement of the various peoples and ages. What develops its forces in this spiritual organism permeates the individual human souls. They are embedded in the spiritual organism. What they experience, accomplish and produce receives its impulses not from the stimulation's of nature, but from the comprehensive spiritual life. Dilthey's mode of conception is full of understanding for that of natural science. He often speaks in his discussions of the results of the natural scientists, but, as a counterbalance to his recognition of natural development, he insists on the independent existence of a spiritual world. Dilthey finds the content of a science of the spiritual in the contemplation of the cultures of different peoples and ages.

[ 19 ] Rudolf Eucken (1864–1926) arrives at a similar recognition of an independent spiritual world. He finds that the natural scientific mode of thought becomes self-contradictory if it intends to be more than a one-sided approach to reality, if it wants to proclaim what it finds within the possible grasp of its own knowledge as the only reality. If one only observed nature as it offers itself to the senses, one could never obtain a comprehensive conception of it. In order to explain nature, one must draw on what the spirit can experience only through itself, what it can never derive from external observation. Eucken proceeds from the vivid feeling that the soul has of its own spontaneous work and creation when it is occupied in the contemplation of external nature. He does not fail to recognize in which way the soul is dependent on what it perceives through its sense organs and how it is determined through everything that has its natural basis in the body. But he directs his attention to the autonomous regulating and life-inspiring activity of the soul that is independent of the body. The soul gives direction and conclusive connection to the world of sensations and perceptions. It is not only determined by stimuli that are derived from the physical world but it experiences purely spiritual impulses in itself. Through these impulses the soul is aware that it has its being in a real spiritual world. Into its experiences and creations flow the forces from a spiritual world to which it belongs. This spiritual world is directly experienced as real in the soul that knows itself as one with that world. In this way, the soul sees itself, according to Eucken, supported by a living and creative spiritual world. It is his opinion that the thought element, the intellectual forces, are not powerful enough to fathom the depths of this spiritual world. What streams from the spiritual world into man pours itself into his entire comprehensive soul life, not only into his intellect. This world of the spirit is endowed with the character of personality of a substantial nature. It also impregnates the thought element but it is not confined to it. The entire soul may feel itself in a substantial spiritual connection.

Eucken, in his numerous writings, knows how to describe in a lofty and emphatic way this spiritual world as it weaves and has its being: The Struggle for a Spiritual Content of Life (1896), Truth Content of Religion (1901), Basic Outlines of a New Life Conception, Spiritual Currents of the Present Time, Life Conceptions of the Great Thinkers, and Knowledge and Life. In these books he tries to show from different points of view how the human soul, as it experiences itself and as it understands itself in this experience, is aware of being permeated and animated by a creative, living spiritual substance of which it is a part and a member. Like Dilthey, Eucken describes, as the content of the independent spiritual life, what unfolds in the civilizations of humanity in the moral, technical, social and artistic creations of the various peoples and ages.

[ 19 ] In a historical presentation as is herein attempted, there is no place for criticism of the described world conceptions. But it is not criticism to point out how a world conception develops new questions through its own character, for it is thus that it becomes a part of the historical development. Dilthey and Eucken speak of an independent spiritual world in which the individual human soul is embedded. Their theory of this spiritual world, however, leaves the following questions open: What is this spiritual world and in what way does the human soul belong to it? Does the individual soul vanish with the dissolution of the body after it participated within that body in the development of the spiritual life manifested in the cultural creations of the different peoples and ages? One can, to be sure, answer these questions from Dilthey's and Eucken's point of view by saying that what the human soul can know in its own life does not lead to results with respect to these questions. But this is precisely what can be said to characterize such world conceptions that they lead, through their mode of conception, to no means of cognition that could guide the soul or the self-conscious ego beyond what can be experienced in connection with the body. In spite of the intensity with which Eucken stresses the independence and reality of the spiritual world, what the soul experiences according to his world conception of this spiritual world, and in connection with it, is experienced through the body. The hopes of Plato and Aristotle, so often referred to in this book, with regard to the nature of the soul and its independent relation to the spiritual world are not touched by such a world conception. No more is shown than that the soul, as long as it appears within the body, participates in a spiritual world that is quite rightly called real. What it is in the spiritual world as an independent spiritual entity cannot be discussed within this philosophy. It is characteristic of these modes of conception that they do, to be sure, arrive at a recognition of a spiritual world and also of the spiritual nature of the human soul. But no knowledge results from this recognition concerning the position of the soul, the self-conscious ego, in the reality of the world, apart from the fact that it acquires a consciousness of the spiritual world through the life of the body.

The historical position of these modes of conception in the development of philosophy appears in its right light if one recognizes that they produce questions that they cannot answer with their own means. They maintain emphatically that the soul becomes in itself conscious of a spiritual world that is independent of itself. But how is this consciousness acquired? Only through the means of cognition that the soul has in and through its existence in the body. Within this form of existence a certainty of a real spiritual world arises. But the soul finds no way to experience its own self-contained entity in the spirit outside the body. What the spirit manifests, stimulates and creates within the soul is perceived by it as far as the physical existence enables it to do so. What it is as a spirit in the spiritual world and, in fact, whether or not it is a separate entity within that world, is a question that cannot be answered by the mere recognition of the fact that the soul within the body can be conscious of its connection with a living and creative spiritual world. To obtain an answer of this kind it would be necessary for the self-conscious human soul, while it advances to a knowledge of the spiritual world, to become aware of its own mode of life in the world of the spirit, independent of the conditions of its bodily existence. The spiritual world would not only have to enable the soul entity to recognize its reality but it would have to convey something of its own nature to the soul. It would have to reveal to the soul in what way it is different from the world of the senses and in what manner it allows the soul entity to participate in this different mode of existence.

[ 20 ] A feeling for this question lives in those philosophers who want to contemplate the spiritual world by directing their attention toward something that cannot, according to their opinion, be found within the mere observation of nature. If it could be shown that there is something with regard to which the natural scientific mode of conception would prove to be powerless, then this could be considered to guarantee the justification of assuming a spiritual world. A mode of thought of this kind had already been indicated by Lotze (compare in Part II Chapter VI of this volume). It found forceful representatives later in Wilhelm Windelband (1848–1915), Heinrich Rickert (1863–1936) and others. These thinkers are of the opinion that there is an element entering into the world conception that is inaccessible to the natural scientific mode of thought. They consider this element to be the “values” that are of decisive importance in human life. The world is no dream but a reality if it can be shown that certain experiences of the soul contain something that is independent of this soul. The actions, endeavors and will impulses of the soul are no longer sparks that light up and vanish in the ocean of existence, if one must recognize that there is something that endows them with values independent of the soul. Such values, however, the soul must acknowledge for its will impulses and its actions just as much as it must recognize that its perceptions are not merely produced by its own effort. Action and will impulses of man do not simply occur like facts of nature; they must be considered from the point of view of a legal, moral, social, esthetic or scientific value. It is quite right to insist that during the evolution of civilizations in different ages and of different peoples, man's views concerning the values of right, morality, beauty and truth have undergone changes. If Nietzsche could speak of a “revaluation of all values,” it must be acknowledged that the value of actions, thoughts and will intentions is determined from without in a similar way to the way perceptual ideation receives the character of reality from without. In the sense of the “philosophy of values” one can say: As the pressure or resistance of the natural external world make the difference between an idea that is a mere picture of fantasy or one that represents reality, so the light and approbation that fall on the soul life from an external spiritual world decide whether or not an impulse of the will, an action and a thought endeavor have a value in the world as a whole or are only arbitrary products of the soul. As a stream of values, the spiritual world flows through the lives of men in the course of history. While the human soul feels itself as living in a world determined by values, it experiences itself in a spiritual element. If this mode of conception were seriously carried out, all statements that man could make concerning the spiritual would have to take on the form of value judgments. The only thing one could then say about anything not revealed in nature and therefore not to be known through the natural scientific mode of conception, would be in which way and in what respect it possessed an independent value in the whole of the world. The question would then arise: [ 21 ] If one disregards everything in the human soul that natural science has to say about it, is it then valuable as a member of the spiritual world, and does it have a significant independent value? Can the riddles of philosophy concerning the soul be solved if one cannot speak of its existence but only of its value? Will not the philosophy of values always be forced to adopt a language similar to that of Lotze when he speaks of the continuation of the soul?

Since we consider every being only as a creature of God, there is no fundamentally valid right on which the individual soul, for instance as a “substance,” could base its claim in order to demand an eternal, individual, continued existence. Perhaps we can only maintain that every being will be preserved by God as long as its existence is of a valuable significance for the whole of His world plan. . . . (Compare page in Part II Chapter VI). of this volume.)

Here the “value” of the soul is spoken of as its decisive character. Some attention, however, is also paid to the question of how this value may be connected with the preservation of existence. One can understand the position of the philosophy of value in the course of the development of philosophy if one considers that the natural scientific mode of conception is inclined to claim all knowledge of existence for itself. If that is granted, philosophy can do nothing but resign itself to the investigation of something else, and such a “something else” is seen in these “values.” The following question, as an unsolved problem, can be found in Lotze's statement: Is it at all possible to go no further than to define and characterize values and to renounce all knowledge concerning the form of existence of the values?

[ 22 ] Many of the most recent schools of thought prove to be attempts to search within the self-conscious ego, which in the course of the philosophical development feels itself more and more separated from the world, for an element that leads back to a reunion with the world. The conceptions of Dilthey, Eucken, Windelband, Rickert and others are such attempts. They want to do justice both to the demands of natural science and to the contemplation of the experience of the soul so that a science of the spirit appears as a possibility beside the science of nature. The same aims are followed by the thought tendencies of Herman Cohen (1842–1918) (compare in Part II Chapter IV of this volume), Paul Natorp (1854–1924), August Stadler (1850–1910), Ernst Cassirer (1874–1945), Walter Kinkel (born 1871) and others who share their philosophical convictions. In directing their attention to the processes of thinking itself, they believe that in this highest activity of the self-conscious ego the soul gains hold on an inner possession that allows it to penetrate into reality. They turn their attention to what appears to them as the highest fruit of thinking. A simple example of this would be the thinking of a circle in which specific representative thought pictures of any circle are disregarded entirely. As much can be embraced in this way by pure thinking as can be encompassed by the power of our soul through which we can penetrate into reality. For what we can think in this way manifests its own nature through thinking in the consciousness of man. The sciences strive to arrive, by means of their observations, experiments and methods, at such results concerning the world as can be seized in pure thinking. They will have to leave the fulfillment of this aim to a far distant future, but one can nevertheless say that insofar as they endeavor to have pure thought, they also strive to convey the true essence of things to the possession of the self-conscious ego. When man makes an observation in the sensual external world, or in the course of historical life, he has, according to this conception, no true reality before him. What the observation of the senses offers is merely the challenge to search for a reality, not a reality in itself. Only when, through the activity of the soul, a thought appears, so to speak, to reveal itself at the very place where the observation has been made, is the living reality of the observed object integrated into real knowledge. The progressively developing knowledge replaces with thought what has been observed in the world. What the observation showed in the beginning was there only because man with his senses, with his everyday imagination, realizes at first for himself the nature of things in his own limited way. What he has at his disposal in this way has significance only for himself. What he substitutes as thought for the observation is no longer troubled by his own limitation. It is as it is thought, for thought determines its own nature and reveals itself according to its own character in the self-conscious ego. Thought does not allow the ego to determine its character in any way.

[ 23 ] There lives in this world conception a subtle feeling for the development of thought life since its first philosophical flowering within Greek intellectual life. It was the thought experience that gave to the self-conscious ego the power to be vigorously conscious of its own self-dependent entity. In the present age this power of thought can be experienced in the soul as the impulse that, seized within the self-conscious ego, endows this ego with the awareness that it is not a mere external observer of things but that it lives essentially in an intimate connection with their reality. It is in thought itself that the soul can feel it contains a true and self-dependent reality. As the soul thus feels itself interwoven with thought as a content of life that breathes reality, it can again experience the supporting power of the thought element as this was experienced in Greek philosophy. It can be experienced again as strongly as it was felt in the philosophy that took thought as a perception. It is true that in the world conception of Cohen and kindred spirits, thought cannot be considered as a perception in the sense of Greek philosophy. But in this conception the inner permeation of the ego with the thought world, which the ego acquired through its own work, is such that this experience includes, at the same time, the awareness of its reality.

The connection with Greek philosophy is emphasized by these thinkers. Cohen expresses himself on this point as follows. “The relation that Parmenides forged as the identity of thinking and being must persist.” Another thinker who also accepts this conception, Walter Kinkel, is convinced that “only thinking can know being, for both thinking and being are, fundamentally understood, one and the same.” It is through this doctrine that Parmenides became the real creator of scientific idealism (Idealism and Realism).

It is also apparent from the presentations of these thinkers how the formulation of their thoughts presupposes the century-long effect of the thought evolution since the Greek civilization. In spite of the fact that these thinkers start from Kant, which could have fostered in them the opinion that thought lives only within the soul, outside true reality, the supporting power of thought exerts itself in them. This thought has gone beyond the Kantian limitation and it forces these thinkers who contemplate its nature to become convinced that thought itself is reality, and that it also leads the soul into reality if it acquires this element rightly in inner work and, equipped with it, seeks the way into the external world. In this philosophical mode of thinking thought proves intimately connected with the world contemplation of the self-conscious ego. The fundamental impulse of this thought tendency appears like a discovery of the possible service that the thought element can accomplish for the ego. We find in the followers of this philosophy views like these: “Only thinking itself can produce what may be accepted as being.” “Being is the being of thinking” (Cohen).

Now the question arises: Can these philosophers expect of their thought experience, which is produced through the conscious work in the self-conscious ego, what the Greek philosopher expected of it when he accepted thought as a perception? If one believes to perceive thought, one can be of the opinion that it is the real world that reveals it. As the soul feels itself connected with thought as a perception, it can consider itself as belonging to the element of the world that is thought, indestructible thought, while the sense perception reveals only destructible entities. The part of the human being that is perceptible to the senses can then be supposed to be perishable, but what emerges in the human soul as thought makes it appear as a member of the spiritual, the true reality. Through such a view the soul can conceive that it belongs to a truly real world. This could be achieved by a modern world conception only if it could show that the thought experience not only leads knowledge into a true reality, but also develops the power to free the soul from the world of the senses and to place it into true reality. The doubts that arise in regard to this question cannot be counteracted by the insight into the reality of the thought element if the latter is considered as acquired by perception actively produced through the work of the soul. For, from what could the certainty be derived that what the soul produces actively in the world of the senses, can also give it a real significance in a world that is not perceived by senses? It could be that the soul, to be sure, could procure a knowledge of reality through its actively produced thoughts, but that nevertheless the soul itself was not rooted in this reality. Also, this world conception merely points to a spiritual life, but it cannot prevent the unbiased observer from finding philosophical riddles at its end that demand answers and call for soul experiences for which this philosophy does not supply the foundations. It can arrive at the conviction that thought is real, but it cannot find through thought a guarantee for the reality of the soul.

[ 24 ] The philosophical thinking at which A. v. Leclaire (born 1848), Wilhelm Schuppe (1836–1913), Johannes Rehmke (1848 – 1930), von Schubert-Soldern (born 1852), and others arrived, shows how philosophical inquiry can remain confined to the narrow circle of the self-conscious ego without finding a possibility to make the transition from this region into the world where this ego could link its own existence to a world reality. There are certain differences among these philosophies, but what is characteristic of all of them is that they all stress that everything man can count as belonging to his world must manifest itself within the realm of his consciousness. On the ground of their philosophy the thought cannot be conceived that would even presuppose anything about a territory of the world if the soul wanted to transcend with its conceptions beyond the realm of consciousness. Because the “ego” must comprise everything to which its knowledge extends within the folds of its consciousness, because it holds it within the consciousness, it therefore appears necessary to this view that the entire world is within the limits of this awareness. That the soul should ask itself: How do I stand with the possession of my consciousness in a world that is independent of this consciousness, is an impossibility for this philosophy. From its point of view, one would have to decide to give up all questions of this kind. One would have to become blind to the fact that there are inducements within the realm of the conscious soul life to look beyond that realm, just as in reading one does not look for the meaning in the forms that are visible on the paper, but to the significance that is expressed by them. As in reading, it is a question not of studying the forms of the letters as it is of no importance for the conveyed meaning to consider the nature of these forms themselves, so it could be irrelevant for an insight into true reality that within the sphere of the “ego” everything capable of being known has the character of consciousness.

[ 25 ] The philosophy of Carl du Prel (1839–99) stands as an opposite pole to this philosophical opinion. He is one of the spirits who have deeply felt the insufficiency of the opinion that considers the natural scientific mode of conception to which so many people have grown accustomed to be the only possible form of world explanation. He points out that this mode of conception unconsciously sins against its own statements, for natural science must admit on the basis of its own results

that we never perceive the objective processes of nature but rather their effect on us, not vibrations of the ether but light, not air vibrations but sounds. We have then, so to speak, a subjectively falsified world picture, but this does not interfere with our practical orientation because this falsification shows no individual differences and proceeds in a constant manner and according to law. . . . Materialism itself has proved through natural science that the world transcends beyond our senses. It has undermined its own foundation and it has sawed off the branch on which it had been sitting. As a philosophy, however, it still continues to sit on that branch. Materialism, therefore, has no right at all to call itself a philosophy … . It has only the justification of a branch of knowledge; furthermore, the world, the object of its study, is a world of mere appearance. To try to build a world conception on this foundation is an obvious self-contradiction. The real world is entirely different, qualitatively as well as quantitatively, from the one that is known to materialism, and only the real world can be the object of a philosophy. (Carl du Prel, The Riddle of Man.)

Such objections are necessarily caused by the materialistically colored mode of thought of natural science. Its weakness is noticed by many people who share the point of view of du Prel. The latter can be considered as a representative of a pronounced trend of modern philosophy. What is characteristic of this trend is the way in which it tries to penetrate into the realm of the real world. This way still shows the aftereffect of the natural scientific mode of conception, although the latter is at the same time most violently criticized. Natural science starts from the facts that are accessible to the sensory consciousness. It finds itself forced to refer to a supersensible element, for only the light is sensually perceptible, not the vibrations of the ether. The vibrations then belong to a realm that is, at least, extrasensory in its nature. But has natural science the right to speak of an extrasensory element? It means to limit its investigations to the realm of sense perceptions. Is anyone justified to speak of supersensible elements who restricts his scientific endeavors to the results of the consciousness that is bound to the senses and therefore to the body?

Du Prel wants to grant this right of investigating the supersensible only to a thinker who seeks the nature of the human soul outside the realm of the senses. What he considers as the chief demand in this direction is the necessity to demonstrate manifestations of the soul that prove the soul is also active when it is not bound to the body. Through the body the soul develops its sensual consciousness. In the phenomena of hypnotism, hypnotic suggestion and somnambulism, it becomes apparent that the soul is active when the sensual consciousness is eliminated. The soul life, therefore, extends further than the realm of consciousness. It is here that du Prel arrives at the diametrically opposite position to those of the characterized philosophers of the all-embracing consciousness who believe that the limits of consciousness define at the same time the entire realm of philosophy. For du Prel, the nature of the soul is to be sought outside the circle of this consciousness. If, according to him, we observe the soul when it is active without the usual means of the senses, we have the proof that it is of a supersensible nature.

Among the means through which this can be done, du Prel and many others count, besides the observation of the above-mentioned “abnormal” psychic phenomena, also the phenomena of spiritualism. It is not necessary to dwell here on du Prel's opinion concerning this field, for what constitutes the mainspring of his view becomes apparent also if one considers only his attitude toward hypnotism, hypnotic suggestion and somnambulism. Whoever wants to prove the spiritual nature of the human soul cannot limit himself to showing that the soul has to refer to a supersensible world in its cognitive process. For natural science could answer that it does not follow that the soul is itself rooted in the supersensible realm because it has a knowledge of a supersensible world. It could very well be that knowledge of the supersensible could also be dependent on the activity of the body and thus be of significance only for a soul that is bound to a body. It is for this reason that du Prel feels it necessary to show that the soul not only knows the supersensible while it is itself bound to the body, but that it experiences the supersensible while it is outside the body. With this view, he also arms himself against objections that can be raised from the viewpoint of the natural scientific mode of thinking against the conceptions of Eucken, Dilthey, Cohen, Kinkel and other defenders of a knowledge of a spiritual world. He is, however, not protected against the doubts that must be raised against his own procedure.

Although it is true that the soul can find an access to the supersensible only if it can show how it is itself active outside the sensual realm, the emancipation of the soul from the sensual world is not assured by the phenomena of hypnotism, somnambulism and hypnotic suggestion, nor by all other processes to which du Prel refers for this purpose. In regard to all these phenomena it can be said that the philosopher who wants to explain them still proceeds only with the means of his ordinary consciousness. If this consciousness is to be useless for a real explanation of the world, how can its explanations, which are applied to the phenomena according to the conditions of this consciousness, be of any decisive significance for these phenomena? What is peculiar in du Prel is the fact that he directs his attention to certain facts that point to a supersensible element, but that he, nevertheless, wants to remain entirely on the ground of the natural scientific mode of thought when he explains those facts. But should it not be necessary for the soul to enter the supersensible in its mode of thinking when the supersensible becomes the object of its interest? Du Prel looks at the supersensible, but as an observer he remains within the realm of the sensual world. If he did not want to do this, he would have to demand that only a hypnotized person can say the right things concerning his experiences under hypnosis, that only in the state of somnambulism could knowledge concerning the supersensible be acquired and that what the not-hypnotized, the non-somnambulist must think concerning these phenomena is of no validity. If we follow this thought consistently, we arrive at an impossibility. If one speaks of a transposition of the soul outside the realm of the senses into another form of existence, one must intend to acquire the knowledge of this existence within that other region. Du Prel points at a path that must be taken in order to gain access to the supersensible. But he leaves the question open regarding the means that are to be used on this path.

[ 26 ] A new thought current has been stimulated through the transformation of fundamental physical concepts that has been attempted by Albert Einstein (1879–1955). The attempt is of significance also for the development of philosophy. Physics previously followed its given phenomena by thinking of them as being spread out in empty three dimensional space and in one dimensional time. Space and time were supposed to exist outside things and events. They were, so to speak, self-dependent, rigid quantities. For things, distances were measured in space. For events, duration was determined in time. Distance and duration belong, according to this conception, to space and time, not to things and events. This conception is opposed by the theory of relativity introduced by Einstein. For this theory, the distance between two things is something that belongs to those things themselves. As a thing has other properties it has also the property of being at a certain distance from a second thing. Besides these relations that are given by the nature of things there is no such thing as space. The assumption of space makes a geometry that is thought for this space, but this same geometry can be applied to the world of things. It arises in a mere thought world. Things have to obey the laws of this geometry. One can say that the events and situations of the world must follow the laws that are established before the observation of things. This geometry now is dethroned by the theory of relativity. What exists are only things and they stand in relations to one another that present themselves geometrically. Geometry thus becomes a part of physics, but then one can no longer maintain that their laws can be established before the observation of the things. No thing has any place in space but only distances relative to other things.

[ 27 ] The same is assumed for time. No process takes place at a definite time; it happens in a time-distance relative to another event. In this way, temporal distances in the relation of things and spatial intervals become homogenous and flow together. Time becomes a fourth dimension that is of the same nature as the three dimensions of space. A process in a thing can be determined only as something that takes place in a temporal and spatial distance relative to other events. The motion of a thing becomes something that can be thought only in relation to other things.

[ 28 ] It is now expected that only this conception will produce unobjectionable explanations of certain physical processes while such processes lead to contradictory thoughts if one assumes the existence of an independent space and independent time.

[ 29 ] If one considers that for many thinkers a science of nature was previously considered to be something that can be mathematically demonstrated, one finds in the theory of relativity nothing less than an attempt to declare any real science of nature null and void. For just this was regarded as the scientific nature of mathematics that it could determine the laws of space and time without reference to the observation of nature. Contrary to this view, it is now maintained that the things and processes of nature themselves determine the relations of space and time. They are to supply the mathematical element. The only certain element is surrendered to the uncertainty of space and time observations.

[ 30 ] According to this view, every thought of an essential reality that manifests its nature in existence is precluded. Everything is only in relation to something else.

[ 31 ] Insofar as man considers himself within the world of natural things and events, he will find it impossible to escape the conclusions of this theory of relativity. But if he does not want to lose himself in mere relativities, in what may be called an impotence of his inner life, if he wants to experience his own entity, he must not seek what is “substantial in itself' in the realm of nature but in transcending nature, in the realm of the spirit.

[ 32 ] It will not be possible to evade the theory of relativity for the physical world, but precisely this fact will drive us to a knowledge of the spirit. What is significant about the theory of relativity is the fact that it proves the necessity of a science of the spirit that is to be sought in spiritual ways, independent of the observation of nature. That the theory of relativity forces us to think in this way constitutes its value within the development of world conception.

[ 33 ] It was the intention of this book to describe the development of what may be called philosophical activity in the proper sense of the word. The endeavor of such spirits as Richard Wagner, Leo Tolstoi and others had for this reason to be left unconsidered, significant as discussion of their contribution must appear when it is a question of following the currents that lead from philosophy into our general spiritual culture.

Dear Attendees!

When any worldview asserts itself – be it a more materialistic-intellectual or an idealistic-spiritual worldview – it can be said that such a worldview has an opponent on the corresponding opposite side, or even just on a side that is more or less turned away from it, and that it is fought from that side. But of the spiritual scientific world view, as I have been developing it from this place for years now, it can be said that it is fought more or less by all of these world views, whether they lean more towards the idealistic-spiritual direction or the materialistic-realistic direction. The fact that it still has opponents from all sides today is largely due to the fact that the most essential basic characteristics of this spiritual scientific worldview are misunderstood and then judged or condemned before one has actually got to know them.

This spiritual-scientific worldview is misunderstood not only because of what it asserts, but above all from many sides because of certain fabrications that are made about it, because of certain false ideas that are formed about it. I have often emphasized this here, and I will have to ask you again today to allow me to say things that have already been said in some small details, but which are necessary to tie in so that new points of view can be developed.

For example, it is widely believed that spiritual science does not want to stand on the standpoint of firmly established scientific knowledge, which has rushed from triumph to triumph in recent centuries. But this is quite a mistake! For spiritual science, when it is represented from its true foundations, is entirely based on the point of view that says: everything that scientific knowledge has brought us must today be regarded as a first starting point for any, including the spiritual scientific, world view.

I have often said here that I would not say a word from the spiritual-scientific point of view if I were not aware that none of the scientifically justified truths would be contradicted by spiritual science.

First of all, there are two things to be emphasized if one wants to speak of the opposition of those who say: We stand on the firm ground of natural science, and we must fight against this amateurish intervention from an authoritative, spiritual-scientific point of view. In this connection two things must be considered. Firstly, that such people can either stand on the ground from which they say: everything that can be the subject of scientific observation and that may be taken into account when a scientific world picture is being built up, is the experience of natural science, that is, what natural science has brought.

Another direction, which arises from its point of view and is opposed to this humanistic direction, is that which says: Of course, one can admit that behind the facts that natural science establishes for the sensory world, there are still other spiritual facts or spiritual beings to be sought; but the human capacity for knowledge is not at all predisposed to recognize anything of this world of existence hidden behind the sensory world.

And from these two points of view, spiritual science is then fought against, as if from its side it itself somehow appeared antagonistic, appeared opposed to these two views, insofar as these two views are positive. But it does not do that at all! That it does not do that at all will be clear from some of the reflections of this evening.

On the other hand, however, spiritual science, as it is meant here, also has an opponent, an opponent who often does not present himself as its opponent, but who in many respects is perhaps even an honest opponent, as honest as the one just mentioned. And this other opponent of spiritual science, as it is meant here, is that which is brought into the world in terms of ideas and fantasies in a large number of unclear minds under all kinds of mystical names, and sometimes also under all kinds of mystical fraud. On this side, dear attendees, there are, above all, people who can count on such listeners and confidants who, in blind faith, accept everything that is somehow chattered about the spiritual world, and who accept it all the more willingly when such chatter occurs, usually in an amateurish way, of course, with a judgmental attitude towards strict science, which often appears all the more snobbish the less the person in question has taken in the denier of this strict science into his soul.

Then there are those who make all kinds of assertions that are supposed to come from the spiritual world, and who pursue quite different purposes with them, in that they first want to befuddle people with all kinds of assertions from the spiritual world so that they can then use them as tools for whatever purposes they have in mind.

Perhaps it will be possible, if time permits, to talk about this kind of opposition to spiritual science at the end of the lecture. This opposition is not harmless because people who are often quite honestly striving for science either lack the opportunity or the ability to engage with spiritual science and therefore lump together true spiritual science with nebulous mystical ravings, superstitious ideas, and the delusions of such ambiguous minds.

The question may still be raised as to why spiritual science is being fought by the more or less materialistically colored world view, which also believes that it stands on the firm ground of natural science.

This, esteemed attendees, is something that must indeed be seriously considered, considered for a very specific reason. From this side, from the more or less materialistically colored world view, which believes that it is standing on the firm ground of natural science, it will be emphasized again and again that spiritual science claims all sorts of things that cannot be understood, while the materialistically colored world view only says what can be observed everywhere, so to speak, what everyone can understand.

Spiritual science, however, does not want to deny the latter; and that is why it is so difficult for it to penetrate precisely against this objection. A materialistically colored worldview, such as the one I mentioned yesterday as that of de La Mettrie in his “Man a Machine”, such materialistic worldviews can be understood extremely easily. Everything about them is extremely plausible, obvious, clear. That is why they find such willing adherents in our time. And then such worldviews often spread the opinion that their clear views are denied by spiritual science.

Just as de La Mettrie can be described as the father of the newer, more materialistically-oriented positivism, how can spiritual science appreciate something like what de La Mettrie says in his book 'The Human Machine' to prove how everything of a spiritual nature is dependent on material things, how everything of a spiritual nature is conditioned by material things? De La Mettrie says:

“What power does a meal have over us? Joy awakens in a sad heart; it passes to the souls of the fellow diners and is expressed in those charming songs in which the French excel.”

No one with a humanistic worldview would dream of doubting such a palpable truth as is expressed here. And whether such a palpable truth is expressed in a coarse, boorish manner, as here, or whether it is expressed in a somewhat more refined way, is ultimately irrelevant!

This same de La Mettrie says, for example: Man's mental qualities, everything he reveals of his soul to the outside world, are so dependent on the mechanism of his body that one can say: If only some little thing in the brain of Erasmus or of Fontenelle – a little thing that cannot even be proved anatomically – had been different, then Erasmus and Fontenelle might have become blockheads instead of geniuses!

These things are always mentioned, with the intention of making it appear as if spiritual science could somehow be refuted by them! Spiritual science will readily admit this; it will only have to consider such a crude truth and the somewhat finer truth lying on the same board, as when one says, for example: It could have been much worse; let us assume that Erasmus, the one who should have become Erasmus, had been killed as a five-year-old boy by a bandit, then of course his soul would have been able to develop even less than if only a cog in his brain had been wrong! Or even before he was born, his mother would have been killed by a bandit!

All the things that are put forward from that side cannot be refuted at all; they even stand out because they are taken for granted, but it can still remain a small thing to keep mentioning them and to awaken the belief as if the spiritual scientist were so foolish that he could not admit such “tangible” things.

But the humanities scholar, he knows, dear attendees, that – [just as] such assertions are true, [just as] well-founded they are – that they are, on the other hand, just as well contestable, of course! – Because that which one can say with regard to the external world, can combine with the mind, can be totally wrong on the other hand! I have often repeated here what the unforgettable Vincenz Knauer said against materialism. He said: Just do the test and lock up a wolf, lock him up. After you can be sure that everything [he had in terms of matter was pure wolf matter], feed him only lamb meat. One will convince oneself that, even though he will have rebuilt his body out of lamb, one will convince oneself that, even though he will have rebuilt his body out of lamb, the wolf will not have become a lamb!

It is a matter of the fact that what de La Mettrie says about the influence of a meal on the soul is certainly very true; it is absolutely true. But assertions that are supposed to have the strength to support a worldview are likely to gradually merge into others, or even into their opposite; and that, when viewed from the other side, their opposite can be asserted just as well.

I had to presuppose this, especially today, when it will be a matter of entering, from a certain point of view, the path that spiritual scientific research takes. This path is initially characterized by the fact that, in its further pursuit, it leads the spiritual scientist to confirm certain scientific findings even more than the natural scientist himself can confirm them today.

Now I have often explained here that the path that spiritual research has to take is an entirely inward one; that although this spiritual science wants to be as scientific, as strictly scientific as any natural science, the path it has to take because it does not deal with the sensory world but with the spiritual, that this path must be a purely inward one. I shall not go into the exact nature of this inner path today; I have done so here often enough, and the same thing cannot be repeated over and over again. I must refer you to what is written in my book “How to Know Higher Worlds”, where it is described in detail what the soul has to do with itself if it wants to go the way that awakens certain dormant powers in it, which can be called spiritual eyes and spiritual ears, to use these Goethean expressions. It describes the development the soul must undergo to acquire such spiritual eyes and ears, in order to be able to see into a spiritual world just as the senses can see into the world of the senses.

But when everything that is needed for the soul to find the way that has just been indicated will come, then it will be found that the essential part of it is that thinking, and then imagining, is treated in a different way than this thinking, this imagining, is treated in ordinary life. In ordinary life, man forms ideas about the external world, and he is intent on this – and must be intent on this, for only in this way can he stand firmly in the external world and in practical life – he is intent on this and must be intent on this, in his ideas to have images of what is outside as reality, inwardly awakened images.

But something else is also necessary. Not only do the images have to be formed within us, but these images, which the human being forms as representations of reality in his environment, must - if I may use an expression that, although it does not accurately indicate the fact, allows us to communicate - these images must remain in the inner life of the human being: memory and recollection must be present. If the images did not stick, if what we imagine passes by without leaving a trace [in the form of memories], we would not have our continuous ego image, which must accompany us from the time we can remember back to our death and which must remain undisturbed. We only have this idea of self, we can only carry it with us, if the ideas we form are not just momentary, present experiences, but if they remain in our inner life, if they can be brought out of this inner life.

Now the essential thing about the first inner undertaking, the first inner activity that the spiritual researcher has to undertake with his own soul, is that this imagining, which is quite right for ordinary outer life, is changed, so that it occurs in the soul in a completely different way than it occurs in ordinary life. So in order to really recognize the spiritual, something must happen to the soul that arranges the life of ideas quite differently than it is in ordinary life.

Now, I have often emphasized that the point is for the spiritual researcher, in order to find his way into the spiritual world, to make a plan for himself, that it is a matter of making certain thoughts - the external reality of which is not important at first, they can be pictorial thoughts, symbolic thoughts - present in his soul. This is called 'meditation'; the soul's entire activity is concentrated on a thought-content that is placed arbitrarily in the soul, which one can survey, in which therefore no subconscious feeling, unconscious feeling driving forces can play a part, but a content that one can survey, that one places transparently clearly before the soul, is placed at the center of consciousness, moved to the center of thinking.

And then thinking must – this is a long path of practice that must be traversed, which can often take years – thinking must repeatedly return to placing this content at the center of consciousness. In this way, the entire life of the soul is concentrated – certainly, it may only last a short time, minutes during the day, for example – in this content. And in this way, little by little, I am describing what spiritual research really involves, the soul life gradually comes to separate two things that are always linked in ordinary thinking: namely, to separate the inner activity of thinking, of imagining, from the content. One must separate that, dear attendees, which one does when thinking, when visualizing – this inner activity of thinking must be completely separated from the content. So that when you place such a content at the center of your mental life, you gradually become aware: It does not depend on this content; I have only introduced this content so that I can exercise the inner activity of thinking with it.

And then I experience inwardly, now not a particular thought, now not a particular content, but the inner activity of thinking. This is less that which one otherwise calls thinking, but rather that which otherwise always remains unconscious in thinking; it is a certain activity of the will that is practiced in other thinking and imagining, a fine activity of the will. In ordinary life, in ordinary thinking, when one is thinking, one does not pay any attention to this at all. One does not pay any attention to the fact that one actually always uses one's will when one thinks, when one imagines; one does not pay attention to this. But now one experiences the fact that one exercises a fine inner will activity there. The soul becomes aware of certain powers within itself, which it otherwise exercises all the time in ordinary life, but to which it does not direct its consciousness and which remain unconscious. So that all the content of meditation can emerge from the imagination, and only this inner movement in thinking, in imagining, is inwardly grasped, so to speak. And that is what matters. Because when you continue to practise in this direction, you will have very definite experiences as you continue your search for the spiritual world. Certain experiences attach themselves to it when you have come to really separate the content and to be able to experience the mere inner activity, the activity in thinking, in imagining. Then you initially have an inner feeling as if you were now in some very vague experience. It is important - I would even say essential - to focus on these fine details if you want to know something about true spiritual scientific research.

What otherwise is the resting of thinking in the imagination can initially cease under the influence of such exercises if the goal is to be achieved, and must actually cease for certain experiences if the goal is to be achieved. One enters into an inner experience, into an inner movement. One does not feel external now - only the comparison is linked to the external - one feels as if one is groping spiritually in the darkness all around; one feels completely absorbed in the inner activity of thinking and imagining, which one has grasped. Through inner experience, one now has a certain experience; and that consists in saying to oneself: So, you have now reached the point where you live only in the activity of thinking, in the activity of imagining. First of all, one experiences that with regard to these inner experiences in the activity of thinking, in the activity of imagining, that which is otherwise the power of recollection, that which is otherwise memory, is no longer there. That is no longer there. One notices that one has entered into a completely different inner stream, that one does not experience what one now experiences as thinking activity in the same way as when one remembers something or when one otherwise thinks with reference to external objects or facts; but one notices that one is now developing thinking activity, just as one develops will activity out of habit – not a thinking, but an inner activity out of a certain fine habit, that is what one experiences inwardly now. And this inner experience has only one value, one meaning at that moment – this experience of inner activity has one meaning at the moment when one experiences it. It is also a rough comparison, but I can still use the comparison: what one experiences by separating one's inner thinking activity from one's thoughts now belongs to the momentary experience, just like eating and drinking. It is a rough comparison, but it is a comparison that illustrates everything I want to say. We cannot, when we have eaten yesterday, use yesterday's food or yesterday's drink to nourish the body today, but we have to eat and drink again today. Eating and drinking only have this momentary, present meaning. We cannot say: We eat today; and tomorrow, when we perform this activity, which [...] reminds us of our eating and drinking today, thereby also nourishing us. It is an activity – eating and drinking – that must always be repeated.

And so this inner activity of imagination is something, this inner activity of imagination is now something that has no value for a later time, but must always be evoked anew from the experience. You have to acquire the inner ability, not to remember what you have once experienced in this way, so that you can recall it, but so that you can experience it again and again from a now inner, finer habit. So that you realize that what you have now developed as an idea actually flows like dreams. Just as dreams flit by, so does this real sensing, spiritual-soul sensing, which is in an unchangeable mobility, as I have indicated.

So what do you actually notice at this moment, dear ones who are present? You notice that which can now have a shattering effect on the soul, as do many things that I have already mentioned on the occasion of the spiritual path of knowledge: you notice what it actually has to do with what we call memory, with what we call the power of remembrance. At first, we cannot use this power of recollection for spiritual knowledge. We have to let go of this power of recollection if we want to gain spiritual knowledge. And now we clearly recognize that the thinking that can be recollected – and that is all everyday thinking and must be all everyday thinking; if it is no longer everyday thinking, then one is no longer spiritually healthy – we recognize that the thinking that can be passed on to memory is directly connected to the physical body. One recognizes that the physical body really does function like a machine, albeit a more delicate one, in contributing to the thoughts we have in our daily lives in such a way that they can evoke memory.

You see, esteemed attendees, the spiritual researcher comes through an experience precisely to an affirmation of the trivial truth, which materialism claims as its own, that the thinking that is developed in everyday life is definitely conditioned by the body. Only what we have now peeled away, the inner activity, is not conditioned by the body. [It is not thinking, the activity of thinking, that is conditioned by the body, but the content of the thought is entirely dependent on the body.] The content of the thought is entirely dependent on the body.

And when some amateur spiritual scientists, or philosophically nuanced experts, come along and say: Yes, but a thought has an inner quality from which one recognizes that it cannot be absorbed into the body, that it is something other than the body, then one will say, with science that may not yet exist today – but with the ideal of science, which will one day be fulfilled, spiritual science –: there are certain materials that, when exposed to light, absorb it to a certain extent and then continue to radiate it for a while. Will these radiations now be regarded as something that is not based in matter? In the same way, when the external world, the physical, sensory external world, makes an impression on a person, and these thoughts are only retained during our lifetime, when they fluoresce, as it were, out of the physical body, these too should not be regarded as something that is spiritually alone, as something that could have significance for the eternal forces of the human soul. They are phenomena that occur in the physical matter of the human being. Just as electricity occurs in matter. Not in the denial of this justified scientific view, but in the right understanding lies what spiritual science has to do with it.

So that all philosophical talk, which is based on the observation of thoughts as they are, will never be able to say anything about the eternal powers of the human soul. Just as the fluorescence of matter, when it is removed as matter, naturally causes the fluorescence to cease, so anyone who is grounded in natural science cannot help but state the truth: when the body decays, its basis for the appearance of thoughts from the body also decays.

Only the direct evidence that arises from the fact that the otherwise unconscious thought activity, imagination, has separated itself from the thoughts themselves, has grasped itself inwardly, that initially gives the higher consciousness that one now lives in something that is really outside of the body. With the thoughts of everyday life, one does not live outside of the body. By seizing hold of the activity that one has isolated in the manner described from the content of one's thoughts, one knows that one is living with something in a sphere that is now outside of the body.

Thus, dear ones, one can never explore the eternal powers of the human soul from what a person consciously practices in relation to the physical environment and in relation to his outer life; but it is necessary that, from what a person experiences within himself in ordinary physical life, first that which can be inwardly grasped in the manner described is separated. But it is not enough for a person to go through the path just described; for by doing so, he would never come to anything other than to feel, in a sense of eternal departure, as if in a darkness of soul. So that is not enough.

What has a person actually achieved in this way? Basically, they have shed the content of thought, the thoughts themselves, and have recognized that these ideas, these thoughts, are bound to the physical, and that only the activity of imagining, the activity of thinking, is not bound to this physical.

Therefore, they must now go hand in hand – the exercises, the inner exercises that I have mentioned, in order to train the soul in the right way, must not be followed merely on their own – but they must be accompanied by other exercises. The exercises I have just characterized are actually intended to develop the life of thought, the life of imagination. One separates the activity of the will in imagining from the content of the life of imagination. These exercises must be accompanied by others that relate less to the life of thought and more to the life of the will. And just by practising the meditations – and that is usually enough; you can read more about it in my book 'How to Know Higher Worlds' – just by practising the meditations, by carrying out this daily concentration of thought, which is an inner activity of the will – a fine will activity – one practises the will in a way that is not otherwise used in ordinary life. In ordinary life, one does not do this, that one makes an original decision of the will out of oneself. So there you are already practicing a volitional activity that, so to speak, does not develop as darkly as the impulses that otherwise arise from our desires, from our wishes, or for that matter from all kinds of ideals; but you are practicing a volitional activity for which you must first equip yourself directly, which must arise from the most direct, inner resolve.

But that is not the important thing; rather, the important thing is that this activity of the will is now actually practiced with a completely different goal than the activities of the will in ordinary life. The activities of the will in ordinary life are practiced in such a way that one brings about this or that external action, that this or that happens. Isn't it true that when you will something, you want this or that to happen. But outwardly nothing should happen at all if you just want to direct your thinking in a certain direction, in a certain concentration. But inwardly something does happen; inwardly something very essential happens. What happens inwardly is that through such a volitional decision, the human being's I itself, its innermost soul essence, advances, that what is otherwise always, so to speak, the center of all volition, from which all volition emanates, the I, is now itself made the object of volition. Otherwise the I wills this or that; now one wants to transform the I with the will, to make the I into something else: The ego becomes the object, the goal of the will. And that is what matters.

These exercises can be intensified and made more effective if one starts out from the point just characterized, saying to oneself: the volition of ordinary life proceeds in such a way that one satisfies one's desires, and perhaps also pursues certain very justified ideals in the outer life. But now I will also take on something besides all that. Of course, the spiritual researcher must not step out of all the justified claims and demands of life step out of the justifiable claims and demands of life, otherwise he would become a crank and no spiritual researcher; but I will also, so to speak, take on things that do not have an external effect, that do not aim at the realization of these or those desires or ideals, but which are aimed at taking my own inner being in hand, at developing my own inner being in a way that would not otherwise develop if I did not take it in hand. For example, after I have poured, I realize that under certain circumstances I would wish for this or that: I want to consider not pursuing these desires, but rather to tame my ego and to steer it in a different direction of desire, and so on, and so on. In short, [the aim is] to develop an inner will that does not start from the ego, but that is directed precisely towards the ego, towards the development, the unfolding of the ego, towards the progress of the ego.

A will is developed that runs in the opposite direction to the ordinary will, a will that runs towards the I; while the ordinary will runs from the I. If you continue the practice in this way, after a reasonable period of time – which may be longer for some, shorter for others, and may take weeks for some and years for others, depending on their disposition – you will then you will notice that just as you have discovered the activity of the will in thinking through the treatment of the life of thinking, you will now, strangely enough, discover in the will a hidden consciousness, a real, true hidden consciousness. This is not just a figure of speech, but a statement that corresponds to reality: you discover a hidden consciousness, a constant observer of what actually develops as will activity. One really discovers now that in the self lives a higher self, a real higher self; not just as one often speaks in a figurative way of a higher self, but a real being lives there in the will. You discover this by colliding with the ego through the opposite direction of will, and now the ego becomes so objective to you, so external, so external to you, as it is otherwise always within you.

So the second, which must go hand in hand with the development of the life of thinking, and which must likewise discover consciousness, the more comprehensive thinking in the will - as one has discovered the will in thinking through the foregoing -, that is precisely an inner exercise of the will.

Both exercises must go hand in hand. And when one speaks of this, what arises in the soul, it appears to the uninitiated, who absolutely wants to remain with the obviously plausible world view with its more materialistic coloration, as a great folly. But it is there, and it can be described as an inner spectator. And what one calls an inner spectator, which speaks from the will when it is treated in the appropriate way – which you can read about in more detail in the book mentioned – is now able to brighten, really brighten, the darkness of which I spoke earlier, this darkness of the soul. And so two inner experiences are drawn together, as it were. The first is this groping experience in the realm of the movable; and the other is the survey, with the higher consciousness that one has now developed within oneself, of that which was at first dark. One illuminates for oneself that which was at first in the dark.

And now one recognizes that the refutation of materialism lies in a completely different area than where one usually looks for it! What de La Mettrie says, that some small cog, which anatomy cannot even explore, could perhaps have been just a little bit different in Erasmus, and Erasmus would have become a fool instead of a genius - that is quite right, so right that it is quite self-evident. But that is not the point; rather, the point is that the inner, finer structure of his organism, which made Erasmus Erasmus and a genius out of him, had already been created, had been made under the influence of the soul-spiritual!

So that, in our body, we initially carry something like a machine, but this machine has been made by the soul-spiritual, has been made under the influence of this soul-spiritual, which also emerges from the spiritual world and connects with what is inherited from the father and mother, as well as with what is present that has been inherited from the father and mother. Those 'cogs' in Erasmus that truly enabled him to make of his corporeality precisely that which his ingenious thoughts and ingenious creations were, the structure that was in him , these little cogs, were first made by his soul-spiritual individuality, which had descended from the spiritual world to his physical birth, and were first structured there!

If you look for the soul, the deeper soul of the human being, alongside the physical, during our physical life, you are quite wrong! You go so far astray that the spiritual researcher himself objects: Yes, what develops during your physical life, for example, as your world of thought, that is entirely dependent on your corporeality. And then, as a spiritual researcher, you are very aware of materialism insofar as it is justified. But that which is our material body is created out of spiritual power!

And it is with that, dear ones present, that which has gone before our physical existence and that which will be there after our physical existence has disintegrated, it is with that that one connects through the spiritual research path. And just as it is true that at the moment when the heat that I put into the steam engine is converted into propulsive power, the heat that is converted into propulsive power is no longer present as heat, but rather as propulsive , it is equally true that the power we have as soul and spirit before we have accepted physical existence, that this is precisely what is transformed by organizing the body, by becoming physical. And as long as we are physical, it is absorbed in the physical and can only be regained by spiritual research showing that the soul-spiritual is separated from the physical in the way described and knows itself as such soul-spiritual, living alongside the physical. One can be convinced that there was a spiritual-soul in us before it transformed into the physical – that it will be there spiritually-mentally when we have passed through the gate of death.

But it is crude spiritualism, one-sided spiritualism, to believe that on the one hand you have the matter of the body and on the other hand the spiritual, and that the two go side by side like two good comrades between birth and death.

The real process is very different. The real process is that this miracle of the human organism is actually created out of the spirit, is structured out of the spirit. And when it is structured, then it can unfold as a body. For just as it develops during ordinary external physical life through a higher fluorescence, so the eternal powers of the human soul are really only discovered through spiritual research. One cannot approach the human being philosophically and say: We point to the thoughts that have grown in the human being, and so on, and show that these thoughts are imperishable. Every sleep shows that they can be extinguished. And why should they not be extinguished as in sleep for all when the human being passes through the gate of death? In this way, one can never develop a proof of the eternal powers of the human soul. But if you want to develop a proof, win, then you have to win it on the way of spiritual research, by separating the will from the thoughts, and connecting this will, separated from the thoughts, with the thoughts that jump out like a higher consciousness from the development of the will. There you have that which goes through births and deaths.

Now I know, dearest attendees, that there are countless objections to what I have just said, as there are countless objections to spiritual research in general. And these objections are so self-evident internally, and so seemingly logical, that they must be convincing. And so, for example, someone could also raise the objection and have the opinion: The spiritual researcher is talking nonsense again; he says that the soul must be involved when a person comes into existence physically. As if it were not known through external science how a person comes into existence physically! That happens all by itself; no spiritual activity from spiritual worlds is necessary for that, that happens all by itself; natural science proves that very precisely in the doctrine of generations, in embryology and so on!

I will now use a comparison, one that can, of course, be refuted by obvious objections. But anyone who wants to think about this comparison will find it so powerful that it will overcome the purely materialistic objection alluded to here.

Let us assume that there are beings who cannot understand anything, perhaps cannot even see anything – of course it is a hypothesis, but it is a hypothesis that can be put forward after all – who cannot see how clocks are made. Let us assume that there are such beings walking around here in Stuttgart who cannot perceive how clocks are made. All the activity of making clocks and watches passes them by; they do not see it. But they see the clocks and watches; they are seen by them. They go into a watchmaker's shop, do not see how the clocks and watches are made, but they see the finished clocks and watches, the clocks and watches that have been created. Since they cannot see the clocks and watches coming into being, they will come to the conclusion that the clocks and watches come into being by themselves! That they will come together from the outside through an inner attraction of their individual parts and so on. These beings would speak in a way that is similar to the way people speak when they say: That which arises in the human being in the continuous succession of generations arises all by itself! Because what is not seen is that the spiritual forces that come from the spiritual world are involved in the deception that takes place here in the physical world. And in these spiritual forces lies that which we discover in ourselves through the paths of spiritual research just discussed.

In this way we arrive at a spiritual view of the eternal core of the human being, consisting of soul and spirit, which stands before our soul and of which we know that It inclines down from a spiritual existence and unites as a third with that which the person materially inherits from father and mother. And then one also knows what it is that passes through the gate of death in order to live again in a spiritual world.

And now possibilities arise for the spiritual researcher to speak of a structure of the human being, just as he does. You see, dear audience, when the spiritual researcher comes first and says: This person is not just made up of the physical body that the eyes can see and that ordinary science describes and explains – all that ordinary science has to say is readily admitted by spiritual research – when the spiritual researcher says: This person also has an etheric body - the spiritual researcher says: This person also has an ethereal body on them. The term is not important, it could also be called something else, there is no need to be put off by the term “ethereal body”; “ethereal” is meant quite differently from the usual ether in physics. When this is simply stated as an example - when it is said: There is a finer body living inside the coarser body and this gives rise to the idea: Now, the coarser body is just coarse, and a somewhat finer body lives in it, so a finer etheric body is woven into it, and this finer, woven-in body is just the etheric body – so one could indeed say that this is nonsense. But the spiritual researcher does not take this point of view; the spiritual researcher takes the point of view that just imagining, thinking, can be transformed in different ways, that thinking becomes such that the thinking person says: That is nonsense. But the spiritual researcher does not take this point of view; the spiritual researcher takes the point of view that precisely the imagination, the thinking, can be transformed in various ways, that thinking becomes such that the power of memory is woven out of thinking; that thinking is developed such that the imagination becomes such that it is not only experienced instantaneously, as is otherwise the case with coarse eating and drinking. And by living and moving in this thinking, which does not now lead directly to memory, but which must always be newly created, one lives in something other than the physical body; one lives in the etheric body. There the etheric body is pointed to as an experience. There it is pointed out what it is. And spiritual scientific truths are not found by simply showing physical facts in a more refined form, as spiritualism wants to do – this corruption of a true spiritual science – but by showing what the spiritual world is in inner experiences, which, however, also want to be inwardly experienced.

And then, when the spiritual researcher also talks about the existence of a so-called “astral body” in addition to this etheric body, well, then the objections come flying in from all sides, spurred on by all the scorn. One can say, as all the fine phrases are already called, one can say: spiritual research aims at man to “astralize” himself – and so on and so on.

The people who talk like this do not even notice how the spiritual researcher quite agrees with the most foolish way in which the astral body is often spoken of: But I have to explicitly point out that by developing one's will in the way I have explained, that one then discovers in oneself a more comprehensive , a consciousness that can illuminate what is first experienced in the etheric body, and which soul darkness provides us with; and this consciousness, which is shown to be a reality, is now what is figuratively called the “astral body”, these are the inner realities, but realities that are gained in inner experience!

The world is indeed comfortable and would like to have the spiritual world in front of it as one has the material world in front of one; this is called “spirit-matter” so that one can see it with physical eyes. One can then indeed spare oneself the trouble of using one's spiritual eyes! But these ghosts are usually something quite different from real ghosts, even when, as in the majority of cases, there is more than mere fraud. It is precisely this that spiritual science needs to shake off, because it is based on strict inner experience. And in this strict inner experience, the first thing that is achieved is that the human being has the experience of being able to distinguish between another consciousness and another experience in a world of facts, to distinguish this soul from its ordinary corporeality and to live in what its eternal powers are.

When he then lives in what his eternal powers are, then he will become aware of what actually builds up his body – or let us say 'helps to build it up' so that it cannot be misunderstood. that this whole life breaks down into lives that are spent in the body between birth – or let us say conception – and death here on earth, and such lives that are spent between death and a new birth [in a spiritual world].

In what the person experiences when he feels the indicated consciousness emerging from his will, he experiences something very special. If I am to characterize what he experiences, then I must show it as a consciousness. And that is what essentially matters – not that one points out that there is something nebulous, monadic – or whatever one wants to call it – contained in man, but that it is a certain consciousness. I have also described it as consciousness; consequently, I can characterize it.

When we survey external material processes, there is the possibility, as you all know, that from certain constellations of the sun and moon today, we can predict that after a certain time a lunar eclipse or a solar eclipse will occur. This means that the realization of a future event is already present in the present event. Here we are dealing with an external realization that lives in concepts, in concepts that correspond to the laws of nature. Here we see a future event in the present event.

As the soul develops that consciousness out of the will, of which I have spoken, she actually experiences in the present physical body that which must necessarily lead to a next life on earth. What must lead to the next life on earth is experienced as truly as the future can be foreseen in the present constellation of the sun and moon. [How the future can be foreseen], so is experienced in advance that which must lead to the next earthly life. And so it is experienced that what goes through the gate of death, then lives in the spiritual world for a time, and then must come again to a new earthly life. This is experienced.

And this must be said as a general characteristic: the insights of spiritual science are not merely hinted at, but are inwardly experienced insights. Mere conceptual inner activity is transformed into direct experience. And things are experienced.

There is something important about this, very revered attendees, when we emphasize that what is, so to speak, detached from memory, that this only has a meaning for the moment, that it must be experienced again and again if it is to be there properly.

This is how it is in general with regard to the spiritual world. The spiritual world must always be experienced anew. And if someone wants to speak from the spiritual world, to characterize the facts of the spiritual world, then basically he cannot always remember and then recite them, but basically, if what he has to say is to come directly from the spiritual world, he must give it in the moment as his own experience again and again, he must bring it out of his innermost being in that moment.

Therefore, what is to be spoken of the spiritual world will have to have a somewhat different character than what is spoken in external science from mere memory. What is spoken from the spiritual world will be directly related to the present insight into the spiritual world, so that it can be described from the spiritual world. But as a result of this, dear attendees, one is also protected from falling into a kind of aberration of spiritual scientific research, namely, that one merely adheres to what has been said.

Those who stand on materialistic ground, on self-evident materialistic ground – I must emphasize this again and again – will say: Well, what the spiritual researcher claims to have developed within himself through his special development of thinking, what is it other than what we all know in psychology as hallucinations, visions and so on and so forth? What is it other than that? It is a riding-oneself-into-an-unhealthy-mental-life that is indicated as a spiritual research path!

There is another objection, which is just as foolish as it is self-evident and plausible; plausible for anyone who stands on the ground of a materialistic interpretation of psychiatric phenomena, self-evident. It is only through constantly experiencing anew that one actually knows that one is in touch with the spiritual world; because there is nothing to prove. It is not possible to prove that anything is a reality. Those people who believe that one can prove that something is a reality – I have often pointed this out here – do not understand anything about the concept of reality. You cannot prove that a whale is a reality if you cannot show its existence in the external world. Reality can only be experienced, not proven. But in the direct experience of reality, what we need to show something as reality arises vividly. And so, in the direct experience of the spiritual world, what the spiritual world is must always be experienced anew; otherwise, of course, one can indulge in all sorts of fantasies.

This relationship between logic and reality even played a trick on Kant, causing a dispute. Kant sought to eliminate the so-called proof of the existence of God by agreeing that conceptually one hundred ordinary dollars, one hundred merely imagined dollars contain exactly the same amount as one hundred real dollars – not a penny less. Of course, in concept, a hundred imagined dollars contain just as much as a hundred real dollars. But in reality, which one reaches not in concepts but in experience, a hundred real dollars mean precisely a hundred dollars more than a hundred merely imagined ones! Everyone can convince themselves of this through life!

Now, it is very easy to fall into error by saying: Yes, but does this ordinary consciousness, which is bound to our physical body, as today's explanations have sufficiently shown, does this consciousness, which leads into the spiritual world, have no connection at all? One can have such a connection – and must even have it, and it is important that one has it. It is a very important thing that, while unfolding this higher consciousness, man should always have his quite ordinary rational human being at his side, so that he knows: as he otherwise looks at external objects that are before him and which he can neither imagine nor fantasize, he should look at his quite ordinary human being as he stands in the physical-sensual world; and while one dwells in the spiritual world, one must never for a moment lose sight of the quite ordinary physical man with his memory-producing thinking, with his will, which arises from desires, ideals, and so on. That is the characteristic. And anyone who understands this will immediately understand the truly foolish nature of the materialistic psychiatric objections that speak of an 'unhealthy mental life' in relation to spiritual research endeavors.

What happens when you enter into an unhealthy mental life, an abnormal mental life, a morbid consciousness? Then the consciousness, which may have been healthy before – I say “may” have been healthy, if it is not completely healthy but perhaps has certain aptitudes, these will develop the morbid, abnormal consciousness – then they become morbid and can no longer develop the healthy soul life, cannot develop one out of the other. For, to put it trivially, one cannot be a fool and healthy at the same time, otherwise one would no longer be a fool! But what is really necessary for proper spiritual research is that the person, so to speak, really knows himself as a duality, and that he, in his completely rational, healthy human being, equipped with the physical conditions of reality, has worked into all of way of life as it otherwise was, so that when he puts himself in the place of the other consciousness, which can see into the spiritual world, these two consciousnesses do not develop apart, but one must place itself next to the other. And that is the essential thing that must be thrown in more and more if one wants to put together in a dilettantish way that into which the spiritual researcher lives with some form of unhealthy consciousness: it is precisely the most healthy consciousness, because the spiritual researcher not only lives in his otherwise healthy human being, but because he also looks down on him, looks up to him or looks into him, if we want.

Now it is self-evident, dear attendees, that in order to start spiritual research, one cannot be a crank or something similar. Otherwise, one can only look at the crosshead, and one must not demand that any other starting point for spiritual research is the right one than that of a person who is in real life, who has a sound judgment for all things of immediate, practical life, who also has the corresponding sense of truth for all things of practical life. Nothing is more unhealthy than being in any way affected by untruthfulness or dishonesty and the like when it comes to the development of spiritual vision.

One must even say: that which is achieved on the two paths that have been indicated is achieved precisely by seeking out what is independent of physicality, what is not achieved with the help of physicality. One frees oneself precisely from physicality. Therefore, all things that are bound to physicality – and these are visions, hallucinations, which do not come from the spirit, as they are understood in the ordinary, trivial, superstitious, mystical sense – these have nothing to do with true spiritual research, because they depend on physicality. And they are not in a more spiritual realm than the one we are in when we are in the physical world; rather, they are in a more material realm than the one we are in when we are in the physical world. One can be a visionary because one works with fewer tools on one's physical body than one works in ordinary, external physical life. There one works with the entire healthy body and looks into ordinary reality.

The ordinary visions are only a kind of afterimage, are afterimages of what one can also see with the eyes; only that they are pressed out of the physical body. They are based on the fact that certain parts of our organism do not come into effect, and others can only then come into effect; so that we are driven to the undersensory, not to the supersensory in this case, that we see less reality than we see with the ordinary, healthy senses.

Spiritual science, when understood in its true basis, is not suitable for reinforcing any kind of superstition. On the contrary, it is precisely that which will eliminate any kind of superstition, of strange mysticism, because it wants to develop a different soul life, not out of a sick person, but out of a healthy one, and because it wants to reject everything that has to do with the ill visions and hallucinations, which must be eradicated root and branch, so that true clairvoyance can arise, leading to the spiritual worlds, on which alone spiritual science can be based!

In the way described, dear attendees, the human being discovers the eternal powers of the human soul, he discovers that which goes through births and deaths, he arrives at a certainty of the eternal significance of man.

And this is the task of spiritual science: to show, in a scientific way, that what science has produced so gloriously about the external world has a counterpart in the spiritual world of spiritual human development. That is the task of spiritual science.

For some centuries now, I would say, natural science has had to educate humanity to a sense of reality that did not exist in the past. The time could come – and it has now come – when, with the same rigor in the development of inner soul forces, man can also speak about the spiritual world. And even if today all the reasons that have already been mentioned are still being objected to this spiritual science – this spiritual science will become as much a part of the spiritual development of humanity as natural science has become a part of it. What is today taken for granted in natural science was, relatively recently, still fought against, fought against in the worst way. That which is fought against today in spiritual science will become a matter of course, like certain achievements in natural science. But then the time will come when people will realize that just as everyone does not have to be an astronomer to understand what astronomy contributes to general knowledge and to convey to the world, so too does not everyone need to be a spiritual researcher. Today, anyone can become one to a certain extent, as can be seen from my book 'How to Know Higher Worlds'. But it is not even necessary. It is just as little necessary as it is necessary, in order to understand a book, to have the gift of writing that book oneself. When the truths about the spiritual world have been brought forth by this spiritual world through this or that spiritual researcher, then ordinary human comprehension is enough to understand what the spiritual researcher says - not just to believe it, but to really absorb it and have it as soul food. So that even in such difficult times as these, when we are surrounded by hundreds and hundreds of deaths every day, we can develop an even greater awareness of the eternal significance of the human soul and the everlasting eternal powers that underlie the human soul.

I do not want to say, esteemed attendees, that our time – this time, which is so fateful – is more suitable than any other time to grasp these truths about the immortal powers of the human soul ; but what is happening around us and what we spoke about yesterday can be a pointer to point out to people that we need to reflect on what is happening around us a hundredfold every day, especially in our time. Our fateful time can serve as a pointer, if not as an extension of understanding, for these spiritual truths.

The spiritual researcher must speak when he, as I have indicated, looks into the spiritual world, a real, concrete spiritual world; not into the nebulous spiritual world already mentioned yesterday, which is spoken of by pantheism: “Spirit, spirit is behind everything! Spirit, spirit and always spirit again.” Abstract philosophy speaks of this. It is just the same as if one were always to say, “Nature, nature, nature!” and not “lilies”, “tulips” and so on. The spiritual researcher speaks of concrete spiritual facts and entities, with which spiritual life is related in the same way as our body is related to the outer sensory world through its senses.

However, when one enters this field, all those who, out of sheer cleverness in our time, have become foolish out of the obvious truths, which the spiritual researcher by no means denies, will rise up. But the time will also come when people will realize that just as there may still be people today who have not learned that there is air in the gap in the transcript, so too is there space. If space is empty, then air is not there. Just as it is a matter of course for someone who has learned something about these things to take the presence of air for granted, and even to consider it indispensable for life, so too will it be recognized as indispensable for the life of soul and spirit, that which constantly flows to us, as air flows to our lungs — flows to us from the spiritual and soul world that surrounds us and in which we live, just as the body lives in the physical and sensory world. A time will come when people will speak of this world, in which we are rooted spiritually and soulfully, just as the senses speak of the sensory world. However, there is still much to be improved, including the way in which spiritual science itself is practised. Today, strict scientists will say, and those who are immersed in and respect science will agree with them: 'Well, let's look at the people who talk about a spiritual world! We need only watch a little to see that some kind of enthusiasm, a morbid consciousness, is what brings it all about. And when you see how superficially this spiritual science sometimes behaves - well, then we have had enough!

One can certainly agree with those who, on the basis of their esteem for and application of the strictly scientific method, which is truly to be highly esteemed, come to such a judgment; because, as I have already indicated, that it can all too easily be lumped together with all kinds of amateurish and fantastic reveries and ravings, with starry-eyed nonsense. As true as it is on the one hand that there is a way into the spiritual world, to understand, to convince oneself of the eternal nature of the human soul, of its eternal life, as true as it is on the other hand that precisely this spiritual science, which by no means produces pathological clairvoyance, that this spiritual science must reject the community with all that wants to assert itself as a revelation of the spiritual world in a charlatan-like, twisted mystical way!

In our serious time, it is perhaps necessary that at the end such things are pointed out in more detail, dear attendees, so that people in wider circles do not believe that they can simply mix spiritual science, because it does not defend itself, with all kinds of confused stuff, and even worse than confused stuff. And so, because this has already been discussed in the circles of materialistic thinkers, let me, in conclusion, cite a fact, just as a fact, for a reason that will soon be apparent.

In 1912, in a yearbook published for 1913 by a person widely revered as a special prophetess who has much to say from the spiritual world, as many you could read in a yearbook that was published in 1912 for 1913, you could read – take note of the timing – you could read with reference to Austria: 'The one who still believes he can govern today will not govern. Instead, a young man will govern who should not yet govern. And the same assertion in a similar way then appeared again in 1913 in the same yearbook for 1914. And then, as we know, in June 1914 there was that assassination attempt on the Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand. I just want to put the facts together. Of course, anyone in their right mind would think of something other than the fact that the person in question, who is a highly dubious character in many other ways, prophetically foresaw it!

But this becomes even clearer when one makes the following discovery – as I said, these things have also been discussed in a healthy way in the materialistic field, and spiritual science has every reason to show where it stands in relation to such things – the matter becomes even clearer when one considers that as early as 1913 in a Paris newspaper – “Paris-Midi” – the wish was expressed to commit the assassination of Sarajevo; that in this same newspaper it was also expressed, on the occasion of the introduction of the three-year term of service in France, that if there were to be a mobilization in France, Jaures would be killed in the first days of mobilization!

Combine these facts with the fact that they are prophetically - seemingly - bandied about among people - prophetically, seemingly from spiritual realms, bandied about among people - then you have the choice of either thinking of something that I don't want to insinuate – some kind of underground connection between this apparent prophecy and what actually happened – or the fact that what actually happened was really foreseen!

But spiritual science emphasizes that clear, realistic, healthy thinking is particularly important for it and that it does not want to be mixed with what, especially in our time, people are willing to accept who, through some external evidence, want to have the spiritual realm “proven” to them.

Just as little as any materialist will the true spiritual researcher think of the “prophecy” of that dubious personality, but of something else! And there is every reason, esteemed attendees, that now that things are being discussed publicly, it should be pointed out that spiritual science must shake off everything that likes to attach itself to its coattails: all that is charlatan-like, all frauds, and all that speculates on the credulity of humanity to achieve certain ends, which may sometimes be ends reprehensible. And in no other field does charlatanry, nonsense and speculation on the folly and superstition of people flourish more than in the field of striving for the truth about the spiritual worlds with the spiritual-scientific direction and world view.

This serious word is especially necessary if one wants to put the sense of truth, which is inseparable from spiritual scientific research, in the right light, and if one wants to draw attention to how everything spiritual must be inward, must be based on the internalization of human must be based on the internalization of human nature, and how it strictly separates itself – when spiritual science also speaks of things that can only be recognized from the spiritual world, even with regard to such things it will not be dismissive – but it will strictly separate itself from all that has just been characterized. This is especially necessary in our serious time, because it is necessary on the other hand that spiritual science incorporates the course of development, the spiritual course of development, as natural science once incorporated the spiritual course of development of humanity.

This will only be possible if it is understood how spiritual scientific endeavor is really sought in the sense indicated today, as paradoxical as it may seem, outside of the body and not through physical strength. If it is pointed out that these complicated spiritual scientists are vegetarians, for example, then that is a matter of taste, which has nothing to do with spiritual science as such, and should not be lumped together, just as one should not lump together the fact that some who consider themselves part of the spiritual scientific school of thought , wear short hair, if they are men, long hair, and that they wear these or those clothes and the like; just as little can the spiritual world be “eaten” through a false asceticism, through any mortification of the body - even if it is necessary, of course, to develop a healthy life - just as little can the spiritual world be “eaten” through an unhealthy mortification of the body! You cannot enter the spiritual world by eating or by doing this or that, but only through spiritual and soul forces!

I wanted to add this in particular, dear readers, to what true spiritual research is and what true spiritual research often has to face difficulties in asserting its position in the world today, compared to what presents itself as such.

One can only ever act from this or that point of view. Of course, much could be said in support of what has been presented today; I just wanted to hint at individual points of view - individual points of view that should once again show how well grounded in human experience, and especially in healthy human experience, the spiritual research direction is.

And if this spiritual research direction, esteemed attendees, is still fought today from many a self-evident side – the time will come when people will have worked themselves up in sufficient numbers to that inner activity that makes the spiritual world an immediate knowledge, and when that which is spiritual knowledge will be incorporated into human knowledge, just as the Copernican world view incorporated itself into human knowledge.

Yesterday we saw how anchored in Central European intellectual life in particular is the path of spiritual research and how virtually, if also forgotten, a tone of German intellectual life strives towards a real grasp of the spiritual world. Therefore, we may confidently point to what was mentioned yesterday as a faded note of German spiritual life, confidently to that which is effective after all, even if it is not seen today, which will be the germ and root of blossoms and fruits that must develop. What has been prepared in Fichte, Schelling and Hegel and the others mentioned yesterday must come to the fore, what is a preparation for actually stepping into the spiritual world.

But this progression will come about just as surely as the plant, if it cannot be prevented, will develop from germ and root to leaf, flower and fruit. And the spiritual cannot find obstacles in the physical if it is well grounded. Therefore, we can look with confidence at the further development of what is in the German spiritual life and may do so - as a special act of self-reflection on the German nation - in this present, serious hour of world history. And we may also say to ourselves: however high and ever higher all the prejudices accumulate, all the prejudices against true spiritual-scientific knowledge, however great the power of those who exclude this spiritual-scientific world view or do not want to allow it to arise for whatever reasons: Looking into the nature of spiritual science, one can say: If spiritual science is truth, it will find the ways that truth has always found. It will develop through clefts and crevices as it has always developed, and so will spiritual truth. Even if many prejudices and opposing forces should pile up, he who is able to examine the relationship between truth and the human soul from a genuinely human, truly human feeling must say to himself again and again: Let it seem to him as if the human soul and truth are connected like sisters.

Truth, dear attendees, can be fought as an enemy, but it will always find ways and means. Even if it is suppressed by opposing prejudice in any given time, it will always find ways and means to prevail in the times to come.

Those who mock and ridicule spiritual science may be told by those who, as indicated, think about truth and life as indicated: Whatever powers still want to suppress spiritual science today, spiritual science can rely on its own strength. It will find itself in its own strength against all suppression; for one can suppress the truth, but one cannot erase it from the world.

Truth and the human soul are related and belong together like siblings, siblings in spirit. And even if human souls that tend towards error, not towards truth, may also diverge to a greater or lesser extent at one time or another, They will always find each other again in brotherly and sisterly love, and let me say this as the final word of today's lecture: these siblings, truth and the human soul, must find each other more and more in the spiritual love that rejects them both to their common origin, in which their brotherhood is rooted. And this origin is the light of the world, from which they both come, the spiritual world, the world of origin, the spiritual world, which is the paternal-maternal principle for truth and soul and to which truth and soul will always strive, embrace each other as siblings, mindful of their common origin in the all-encompassing, world-imbuing and world-interweaving spiritual of the world, in which this world has its true, its only true origin.

10.

[ 1 ] All striving of mankind, as of every living thing, exists for the satisfying, in the very best way, of impulses and instincts implanted by nature. When human beings strive toward morality, justice, knowledge and art, this is done because morality, justice, and so forth, are means by which these human instincts can develop themselves according to their nature. The instincts would atrophy without these means. Now it is a peculiarity of the human being that he forgets this connection between his life needs and his natural impulses, and regards these means for a natural, powerful life as something with unconditional intrinsic value. Man then says that morality, justice, knowledge, and so on, must be attained for their own sakes. They do not have an intrinsic value in that they serve life, but rather that life first receives value when it strives toward these ideal possessions. Man does not exist to live according to his instincts, like an animal, but that he may ennoble his instincts by placing them at the service of higher purposes. In this way man comes to the point where he worships as ideals what he had first created for the satisfaction of his impulses, ideals which first give his life true inspiration. He demands subjugation to ideals which he values more highly than himself. He frees himself from the mother ground of reality and wishes to give his existence a higher meaning and purpose. He invents an unnatural origin for his ideals. He calls them “God's will,” the “eternal, moral laws.” He wishes to strive after “truth for truth's sake,” “virtue for virtue's sake.” He considers himself a good human being only when he has supposedly succeeded in controlling his egotism, that is, his natural instincts, and in following one ideal goal selflessly. For such an idealist, that man is considered ignoble and “evil” who has not attained such self control.

[ 2 ] Now all ideals originally stem from natural instincts. Also what Christ considers as virtue, which God has revealed to Him, man has originally discovered as satisfying some instinct or other. The natural origin is forgotten, and the divine imagined and superimposed. A similar situation exists in relation to those virtues which the philosophers and preachers of morality set up.

[ 3 ] If mankind had only sound instincts and would determine their ideals according to them, then this theoretical error about the origin of these ideals would not be harmful. The idealists, of course, would have false opinions about the origin of their goals, but in themselves these goals would be sound, and life would have to flourish. But there are unsound instincts which are not directed toward strengthening and fostering life, but rather toward weakening and stunting it. These take control of the so-called theoretical confusion and make it into the practical life purpose. They mislead man into saying, A perfect man is not the one who wants to serve himself and his life, but the one who devotes himself to the realization of an ideal. Under the influence of these instincts, the human being does not merely remain at the point where he erroneously ascribes an unnatural or supernatural origin to his ideals, but he actually makes such ideals part of himself, or takes over from others those which do not serve the necessities of life. He no longer strives to bring to light the forces lying within his own personality, but he lives according to a pattern which has been forced upon him. Whether he takes this goal from a religion or whether he himself determines it on the basis of certain assumptions not lying within his own nature, is of no importance. The philosopher who has in mind a universal purpose for mankind, and from this purpose directs his moral ideals, lays just as many fetters upon human nature as the originator of a religion who says to mankind, This is the goal which God has set for you, and this you must follow. It is also of no importance whether man intends to become an image of God or whether he invents an ideal of the “perfect human being,” and resembles this as much as possible. Only the single human being, and only the impulses and instincts of this single human being are real. Only when he directs his attention to the needs of his own person, can man experience what is good for his life. The single human being does not become “perfect” when he denies himself and resembles a model, but when he brings to reality that within him which strives toward realization. Human activity does not first acquire meaning because it serves an impersonal, external purpose; it has its meaning in itself.

[ 4 ] The anti-idealist of course will also see in unsound human activity an instinctive expression of man's primeval instincts. He knows that only out of instinct can the human being accomplish even what is contrary to instinct. But he will of course attack that which is against instinct, just as the doctor attacks a sickness, although the doctor knows that the sickness has arisen out of certain natural causes. Therefore, we may not accuse the anti-idealist by saying, you assert that everything toward which man strives, therefore all ideals as well, have originated naturally; and yet you attack idealism. Indeed, ideals arise just as naturally as sickness, but the healthy human being fights idealism just as he fights sickness. The idealist, however, regards ideals as something which must be cherished and protected.

[ 5 ] According to Nietzsche's opinion, the belief that man will become perfect only when he serves “higher” goals is something that must be overcome. Man must recollect and know that he has created ideals only to serve himself. To live according to nature is healthier than to chase after ideals which supposedly do not originate out of reality. The human being who does not serve impersonal goals, but who looks for the purpose and meaning of his existence in himself, who makes his own such virtues as serve the unfoldment of his own power, and the perfection of his own might—Nietzsche values this human being more highly than the selfless idealist.

[ 6 ] This it is what he propounds through his Zarathustra. The sovereign individuum which knows that it can live only out of its own nature and which sees its personal goal in a life configuration which fits its own being: for Nietzsche this is the superman, in contrast to the human being who believes that life has been given to him as a gift to serve a purpose lying outside of himself.

[ 7 ] Zarathustra teaches the superman, that is, the human being who understands how to live according to nature. He teaches those human beings who regard their virtues as their own creations; he tells them to despise those who value their virtues higher than themselves.

[ 8 ] Zarathustra has gone into the loneliness to free himself from humility according to which men bow down before their virtues. He reappears among mankind only when he has learned to despise those virtues which fetter life and do not wish to serve life. He moves lightly like a dancer, for he follows only himself and his will, and disregards the lines which are indicated by the virtues. No longer does the belief rest heavily upon him that it is wrong to follow only himself. Now Zarathustra no longer sleeps in order to dream about ideals; he is a watcher who faces reality in freedom. For him the human being who has lost himself and lies in the dust before his own creations, is like a polluted stream. For him the superman is an ocean which takes this stream into itself without becoming impure. For the superman has found himself; he recognizes himself as the master and creator of his virtues. Zarathustra has experienced grandeur in that all those virtues which are placed above the human being have become repugnant to him.

[ 9 ] “What is the greatest which you can experience? It is the hour of great contempt, the hour in which your happiness becomes repugnance, and likewise your intellect and your virtue.”

11.

[ 10 ] The wisdom of Zarathustra is not in accord with the thinking of the “modern cultured person.” The latter would like to make all human beings equal. If all strive after only one goal, they say, then there is contentment and happiness upon earth. They require that man should restrain his special, personal wishes, and serve only the whole, the universal happiness. Peace and tranquility will then reign upon earth. If everyone has the same needs, then no one disturbs the orbits of others. The individual should not regard himself and his individual goals, but everyone should live according to their once-determined pattern. All individual living should vanish, and all become part of a universal world order.

[ 11 ] “No shepherd and one flock! Everyone desires the same, everyone is equal; he who feels otherwise goes voluntarily into the madhouse.

[ 12 ] “‘Formerly all the world was insane,’ say the best of them, and blink.

[ 13 ] “People are clever and know all that has happened, so there is no end to their mocking. People still quarrel, but are soon reconciled; otherwise it disturbs the digestion.”

[ 14 ] Zarathustra had been a lone-dweller too long to pay homage to such wisdom. He had heard the peculiar tones which sound from within the personality when man stands apart from the noise of the market place where one person merely repeats the words of another. And he would like to shout into the ears of human beings: Listen to the voices which sound forth in each individual among you. For only those voices are in accord with nature which tell; each one of what he alone is capable. An enemy of life, of the rich full life, is the one who allows these voices to resound unheard, and who listens to the common cry of mankind. Zarathustra will not speak to the friends of the equality of all mankind. They can only misunderstand him. For they would believe that his superman is that ideal model which all of them should resemble. But Zarathustra wishes to make no prescriptions of what men should be; he will refer each one only to himself, and will say to him, Depend upon yourself, follow only yourself, put yourself above virtue, wisdom, and knowledge. Zarathustra speaks to those who wish to find themselves, not to a multitude who search for a common goal; his words are intended for those companions who, like him, go their own way. They alone understand him because they know that he does not wish to say, Look, there is the superman, become like him, but, Behold, I have searched for myself; I am as I teach you to be; go likewise and search for your own self; then you have the superman.

[ 15 ] “To the one who dwells alone will I sing my song and to the twain-dweller; and unto him who still has ears for the unheard, his heart will I burden with my happiness.”

12.

[ 16 ] Two animals, the serpent, the wisest, and the eagle, the proudest, accompany Zarathustra. They are the symbols of his instincts. Zarathustra values wisdom because it teaches the human being to find the hidden paths to reality; it teaches him to know what he needs for life. And Zarathustra also loves pride because pride arouses self-estimation in the human being, through which he comes to regard himself as the meaning and purpose of his existence. Pride does not place his wisdom, his virtue, above his own self, in favor of “higher, more sacred” goals. Still, rather than lose pride Zarathustra would lose wisdom.

For wisdom which is not accompanied by pride does not regard itself as the work of man. The one who lacks pride and self-esteem, believes his wisdom has come to him as a gift from heaven. Such a one says, Man is a fool, and he has only as much wisdom as the heavens wish to grant him.

[ 17 ] “And should my wisdom abandon me—Oh, it loves to fly away—may my pride then still fly with my foolishness”

13.

[ 18 ] The human spirit must pass through three metamorphoses until he finds himself. This is Zarathustra's teaching. At first the spirit is reverent. He calls that virtue which weighs him down. He lowers himself in order to raise his virtue. He says, All wisdom comes from God, and I must follow God's paths. God imposes the most difficult upon me to test my power, whether it proves itself to be strong and patient in its endurance. Only the one who is patient is strong. I will obey, says the spirit at this level, and will carry out the commandments of the world-spirit, without asking the meaning of these commandments. The spirit feels the pressure which a higher power exerts upon it. The spirit does not take its own paths, but the paths of him he serves.

The time arrives when the spirit becomes aware that no God speaks to him. Then he wishes to be free, and to become master of his own world. He searches after a thread of direction for his destiny. He no longer asks the world spirit how he should arrange his own life. Rather, he strives after a firm command, after a sacred “you shall.” He looks for a yardstick by which he can measure the worth of things. He searches for a sign of differentiation between good and evil. There must be a rule for my life which is not dependent on me, on my own will: so speaks the spirit at this level. To this rule will I submit myself. I am free, the spirit means to say, but only free to obey such a rule.

[ 9 ] At this level, the spirit conquers. It becomes like the child at play, who does not ask, How shall I do this or that, but who merely carries out his own will, who follows only his own self. “The spirit now demands his own will; he who is lost in the world has now won his own world.”

[ 20 ] “I named for you three metamorphoses of the spirit: How the spirit became a camel, the camel a lion, and the lion at last, a child. Thus spake Zarathustra.”

14.

[ 21 ] What do the wise desire who place virtue above man? asks Zarathustra. They say, Only he who has done his duty, he who has followed the sacred “thou shalt,” can have peace of soul. Man shall be virtuous so that he may dream of fulfilled duty, about fulfilled ideals, and feel no pangs of conscience. The virtuous say that a man with pangs of conscience resembles one who is asleep and whose rest is disturbed by bad dreams.

[ 22 ] “Few know it, but one must have all virtues to sleep well. Do I bear false witness, do I commit adultery?

[ 23 ] “Do I lust after my neighbor's wife? All this is incompatible with good sleep.

[ 24 ] “Peace with God and with thy neighbor: this is what good sleep needs. And peace also with thy neighbor's devil! Otherwise it will haunt you at night.”

[ 25 ] The virtuous person does not do what his impulse tells him, but what produces his peace of soul. He lives so that he may peacefully dream about life. It is even more pleasant for him when his sleep, which he calls peace of soul is disturbed by no dreams. This means that it is most pleasant for the virtuous person when from some source or other he receives rules for his actions, and for the rest, he can enjoy his peace. “His wisdom is called, Wake, in order to sleep well. And indeed, if life had no meaning, and I should have to choose nonsense, to me this would be the most worthy nonsense to choose,” says Zarathustra.

[ 26 ] For Zarathustra also there was a time when he believed that a spirit dwelling outside of the world, a God, had created the world. Zarathustra imagined him to be an unsatisfied, suffering God. To create satisfaction for himself, to free himself from his suffering, God created the world; Zarathustra thought this, once upon a time. But he learned to understand that this is an illusion which he himself had created. “O you brothers, this God whom I created, was the work of a man and illusion of man, like all gods!” Zarathustra has learned to use his senses and to observe the world. And he becomes satisfied with the world; no longer do his thoughts sweep into the world beyond. Formerly he was blind, and could not see the world. For this reason he looked for salvation outside of the world. But Zarathustra has learned to see and to recognize that the world has meaning in itself.

[ 27 ] “My ego taught me a new pride, which I teach mankind: not to hide the head in the sand of celestial things, but to carry it freely, a terrestrial head, which carries meaning for the earth.”

15.

[ 8 ] The idealists have split man into body and soul, have divided all existence into idea and reality. And they have made the soul, the spirit, the idea, into something especially valuable in order that they may despise the reality, the body all the more. But Zarathustra says, There is but one reality, but one body, and the soul is only something in the body, the ideal is only something in reality. Body and soul of man are a unity; body and spirit spring from one root. The spirit is there only because a body is there, which has strength to develop the spirit in itself. As the plant unfolds the blossom from itself, so the body unfolds the spirit from itself.

[ 29 ] “Behind your thinking and your feeling, my brother stands a mighty master, an unknown wise one: he is called self. He lives within your body, he is your body.”

[ 30 ] The one with a sense for reality searches for the spirit, for the soul, in and about the real. He looks for intellect in the real; only he who considers reality as lacking in spirituality, as merely “natural,” as “coarse”—he gives the spirit, the soul a special existence. He makes reality merely the dwelling place of the spirit. But such a one also lacks the sense for the perception of the spirit itself. Only because he does not see the spirit in the reality does he search for it elsewhere.

[ 31 ] “There is more intelligence in your body than in your best wisdom.”

[ 32 ] “The body is one great intelligence, a plurality with one meaning, a war and a peace, a herd and a shepherd.

[ 33 ] “An instrument of your body is also your small intelligence, my brother, which you call spirit, a small instrument and a toy of your great intelligence.”

[ 34 ] He is a fool who would tear the blossom from the plant and believe the broken blossom will still develop into fruit. He is also a fool who would separate the spirit from nature and believe such a separated spirit can still create.

[ 35 ] Human beings with sick instincts have undertaken the separation of spirit and body. A sick instinct can only say, My kingdom is not of this world. The kingdom of a sound instinct is only this world.

16.

[ 36 ] But what ideals have they not created, these despisers of reality! If we look them in the eye, these ideals of the ascetics, who say, Turn your gaze away from this world, and look toward the other world, what then is the meaning of these ascetic ideals? With this question, and the suppositions with which he answers them, Nietzsche has let us look into the very depths of his heart, left unsatisfied by the more modern Western culture. (Genealogie der Moral, Section 3)

[ 37 ] When an artist like Richard Wagner, for example, becomes a follower of the ascetic ideal during his last period of creativity, this does not have too much significance. The artist places his entire life above his creations. He looks down from above upon his realities. He creates realities which are not his reality. “A Homer would not have created an Achilles, nor Goethe a Faust, if Homer had been an Achilles, or if Goethe had been a Faust.” (Genealogy, 3rd Section, ¶ 4). Now when such an artist once begins to take his own existence seriously, wishes to change himself and his personal opinion into reality, it is no wonder when something very unreal arises. Richard Wagner completely reversed his knowledge about his art when he became familiar with Schopenhauer's philosophy. Previously, he considered music as a means of expression which required something to which it gives expression—the drama. In his Opera and Drama, written in 1851, he says that the greatest error into which one can fall with regard to the opera is,

“That a means of expression (the music) is made the purpose, but the purpose of expression (the drama) is made the means.”

[ 38 ] He professed another opinion after he had come to know Schopenhauer's teaching about music. Schopenhauer is of the opinion that through music, the essence of the thing itself speaks to us. The eternal Will, which lives in all things, becomes embodied in all other arts only through images, through the ideas; music is no mere picture of the will: the will reveals itself in it directly. What appears to us in all our reflections only as image, the eternal ground of all existence, the will, Schopenhauer believed he heard directly in the sound of music. A message from the other world is brought to Schopenhauer by music. This point of view affected Richard Wagner. Thus he lets music no longer be a means of expression of real human passions as they are embodied in drama, but as a “sort of mouthpiece for the intrinsic essence of things, a telephone from the other world.” Richard Wagner now no longer believed in expressing reality in tones; “henceforth he talked not only music, this ventriloquist of God, but he talked metaphysics: no wonder that one day he talked ascetic ideals.” (Genealogy, 3rd Section, ¶ 5).

[ 39 ] If Richard Wagner had merely changed his opinion about the significance of music, then Nietzsche would have had no reason to approach him. At most Nietzsche could then say, Besides his art works Wagner has also created all sorts of wrong theories about art. But that during the last period of his creativity Wagner embodied in his an works the Schopenhauer belief in the world beyond, that he utilized his music to glorify the flight from reality, this was distasteful to Nietzsche.

[ 40 ] The Case of Wagner means nothing when it is a question of the significance of the glorification of the world beyond at the expense of this world, when it is a question of the significance of ascetic ideals. Artists do not stand on their own feet. As Richard Wagner is dependent upon Schopenhauer, so “at all times were the artists valets to a morality, a philosophy or a religion.”

[ 41 ] It is quite different when the philosophers represent a contempt of reality, of ascetic ideals. They do this out of a deep instinct.

[ 42 ] Schopenhauer betrayed this instinct through the description which he gives of the creating and enjoying of a work of art. “That the work of art makes the understanding of ideas, in which the aesthetic enjoyment consists, so much easier, depends not merely upon the fact that through emphasis of the material and discarding of the immaterial, art represents the things more clearly and more characteristically, but it depends much more upon the fact that the complete silence of the will, necessary for the objective understanding of the nature of things, is achieved with most certainty through the fact that the object looked upon does not lie at all within the realm of things which are capable of a relationship to will.” (Additions to the third book of Welt als Wille und Vorstellung, The World as Will and Reflection, Chapter 30) “When an outer circumstance or an inner soul mood lifts us suddenly out of the endless stream of willing, then knowledge takes away the slavish service of the will when attention is no longer directed to the motive of willing, but comprehends the things free from their relationship to will, that is, without interest, without subjectivity, considers them purely objectively, completely surrendered to them insofar as they are mere representations, not insofar as they are motives; then is begun the painless state which Epicurus praised as the highest good and as the state of the gods. Then, during that moment, we are freed from the contemptible pressure of the will; we celebrate the sabbath of the will's hard labor, the wheel of Ixion stands still.” Ibid. ¶ 38)

[ 43 ] This is a description of a type of aesthetic enjoyment which appears only with philosophers. Nietzsche contrasts this with another description “which a real spectator and artist has made—Stendhal,” who calls the beautiful une promesse de bonheur. Schopenhauer would like to exclude all will interest, all real life, when it is a question of the observation of a work of art, and would enjoy it only with the spirit; Stendhal sees in the work of art a promise of happiness, therefore, an indication for life, and sees the value of art in this connection of art with life.

[ 44 ] Kant demanded that a beautiful work of art should please without interest: that is, that the work of art lift us out of the reality of life and give us purely spiritual enjoyment.

[ 45 ] What does the philosopher look for in artistic enjoyment? Escape from reality. The philosopher wants to be transferred into an atmosphere foreign to reality, through works of art. Thereby he betrays his basic instinct. The philosopher feels most satisfied during those moments when he can be freed from reality. His attitude toward aesthetic enjoyment proves that he does not love this reality.

[ 46 ] In their theories the philosophers do not tell us what the spectator whose interests are turned toward life, demands of a work of art, but only what is of interest to themselves. And for the philosopher the turning away from life is very useful. He does not wish to have his hidden thought paths crossed by reality. Thinking flourishes better when the philosopher turns away from life. Then it is no wonder when this philosophical basic instinct becomes a mood almost hostile to life. We find that such a soul mood is cultivated by the majority of philosophers. And a very close connection exists between the fact that the philosopher develops and elaborates his own antipathy toward life into a teaching, and the fact that all men acknowledge such a teaching. Schopenhauer did this. He found that the noise of the world disturbed his thought work. He felt that one could meditate about reality better when one escaped from this reality. At the same time, he forgot that all thinking about reality has value only when it springs from this reality. He did not observe that the withdrawing of the philosopher from reality can occur only when the philosophical thoughts which have arisen out of this separation from life can be of higher service to life. When the philosopher wishes to force the basic instinct, which is only of value to him as a philosopher, upon the whole of mankind, then he becomes an enemy to life.

[ 47 ] The philosopher who does not regard the flight from the world as a means of creating thoughts friendly to the world, but as a purpose, as a goal in itself, can only create worthless things. The true philosopher flees from reality on the one hand, only that he may penetrate deeper into it on the other. But it is conceivable that this basic instinct can easily mislead the philosopher into considering the flight from the world as such to be valuable. Then the philosopher becomes a representative of world negation. He teaches a turning away from life, the ascetic ideal. He finds that “A certain asceticism, a hard and joyous renunciation of the best will, belongs to the favorable conditions of highest spirituality, as well as to their most natural consequences. So from the beginning it is not surprising if the ascetic ideal is never treated, particularly by the philosophers, without some objections.” (Genealogy, Part III, ¶ 9)

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[ 48 ] The ascetic ideals of the priests have another origin. What develops in the philosopher as the luxuriant grow of an impulse he considers justified, forms the basic ideal of the working and creating of the priest. The priest sees error in the surrender of the human being to real life; he demands that one respect this life less in face of another life, which is directed by higher than merely natural forces. The priest denies that real life has meaning in itself, and he challenges the idea that this meaning is given to it through an inoculation of a higher will. He sees life in the temporal as imperfect, and he places opposite to it an eternal, perfect life. The priest teaches a turning away from the temporal and entering into the eternal, the unchangeable. As especially significant of the way of thinking of the priest, I would like to quote a few sentences from the famous book, Die Deutsche Theologie, German Theology, which stems from the fourteenth century, and about which Luther says that from no other book, with the exception of the Bible, and the writings of St. Augustine, has he learned more about what God, Christ, and man are, than from this. Schopenhauer also finds that the spirit of Christianity is expressed more perfectly and more powerfully in this book than elsewhere. After the writer, who is unknown to us, has explained that all things of the world are imperfect and incomplete, in contrast to the perfect, “which in itself and in its essence comprehended all things and decided all things, and without which, and outside of which no true being exists, and in which all things have their being,” he continues that man can penetrate into this being only if he has lost all “creaturedom, creationdom, egodom, selfdom, and everything similar,” nullifying them in himself. What has flowed out of the perfect, and what the human being recognizes as his real world, is described in the following way: “That is no true being, and has no being other than in the perfect, but it is an accident or a radiance, and an illusion which is no being, or has no being other than in the fire from which the radiance streams, or in the sun, or in the light. The book says, as do belief, and truth, sin is nothing but that the creature turns away from the unchangeable good and turns toward the changeable, that is, that it turns away from the perfect to the incomplete and imperfect, and most of all to itself. Now note, If this creature takes on something good as existence, life, knowledge, understanding, possession, in short, all those things which one calls good, and thinks that they are good, or that it itself is good or that good belongs to it, or stems from it, just as often as this happens, so often does it turn itself away. In what way did the devil do anything different—or what was his fall and turning away—than that he thought he was something, and that that something was his, and also that something belonged to him? This acceptance, and his ‘I’ and his ‘me,’ his ‘to me,’ and his ‘mine’—all this was his turning away and his fall. Thus it is still ... For all that one considers good or would call good, belongs to no one, except to the eternal, true Good, who is God alone, and he who takes possession of it does wrong, and is against God.” (Chapters 1, 2, 4, of German Theology, 3rd edition)

[ 49 ] These sentences express the attitude of every priest. They express the particular character of the priesthood. And this character is exactly the opposite of that which Nietzsche describes as the more valuable, more worthy of life. The more highly valued type of man wants to be everything that he is, through himself alone; he wants all that he considers good and calls good to belong to no one but himself.

[ 50 ] But this mediocre attitude is no exception. It is one of “the most widespread, oldest facts that exist. Read from a distant star, perhaps, the writing of our earth existence would lead to the conclusion that the earth is the really ascetic star, a corner of dissatisfied, proud, disagreeable creatures who cannot free themselves from a deep dissatisfaction with themselves, with the earth, and with all life.” (Genealogy, Part III, ¶ 11) For this reason, the ascetic priest is a necessity, since the majority of human beings suffer from an “obstruction and fatigue” of life-forces because they suffer from reality. The ascetic priest is the comforter and physician of those who suffer from life. He comforts them by saying to them, This life from which you are suffering is not the real life; for those who suffer from this life, the true life is much more easily attainable than for the healthy, who depend upon this life and surrender themselves to it. Through such expressions the priest breeds contempt for, and betrayal of the real life. He finally brings forth the state of mind which says that to obtain the true life, the real life must be denied. In the spreading of this mood, the ascetic priest seeks his strength. Through the training of this soul mood, he eliminates a great danger which threatens the healthy, the strong, the ego-conscious, from the unhappy, the suppressed, the broken-down. The latter hate the healthy and the happy in body and soul, who take their strength from nature. This hatred, which must express itself, is that the weak wage a continuous war of annihilation against the strong. This the priest tries to suppress. Therefore, he represents the strong as those who lead a life which is worthless and unworthy of human beings, and, on the other hand, asserts that true life is obtainable only by those who were hurt by the earth life. “The ascetic priest must be accepted by us as the predestined saviour, shepherd, and champion of the sick herd; in this way we understand his tremendous historic mission for the first time. The domination over the sufferers is his kingdom. His instinct directs him toward it. In this he finds his own special art, his mastery, his form of happiness.” (Genealogy, Part III, ¶ 15)

It is no wonder that such a way of thinking finally leads to the fact that its followers not only despise life, but work directly toward its destruction. If it is said to man that only the sufferer, the weak, can really attain a higher life, then in the end the suffering, the weakness will be sought. To bring pain to oneself, to kill the will within oneself completely, will become the goal of life. The victims of this soul-mood are the saints. “Complete chastity and denial of all pleasure are for him who strives toward real holiness; throwing away of all possessions, desertion of every dwelling, of all dependents, deep, complete loneliness, spent in profound, silent reflection, with voluntary penitence and frightful, slow self-torture, to the complete mortification of the will, which finally dies voluntarily by hunger, or by walking toward crocodiles, by throwing oneself from sacred mountain heights in the Himalayas, by being buried alive, or by throwing oneself under the wheels of the Juggernaut driven among the statues of the idols, accompanied by the song, jubilation and dance of the Bajadere,” these are the ultimate fruits of the ascetic state of mind. (Schopenhauer, Welt als Wille und Vorstellung, World as Will and Representation, ¶ 68).

[ 51 ] This way of thinking has arisen out of the suffering of life, and it directs its weapons against life. When the healthy person, filled with joy of life, is infected by it, then it destroys the sound, strong instincts within him. Nietzsche's work towers above this in that in face of this teaching he brings out the value of another point of view for the healthy, for those of well-being. May the malformed, the ruined, find their salvation in the teaching of the ascetic priests; Nietzsche will gather the healthy about him, and will give them advice which will please them more than all ideals which are inimical to life.

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[ 52 ] The ascetic ideal is implanted in the guardians of modern science also. Of course, this science boasts that it has thrown all old beliefs overboard, and that it holds fast only to reality. It will consider nothing valid which cannot be counted, calculated, weighed, seen or grasped. That through this “one degrades existence to a slavish exercise in arithmetic and a game for mathematicians,” is of indifference to the modern scholar. (Fröhliche Wissenschaft, Joyful Science, ¶ 373). Such a scholar does not ascribe to himself the right to interpret the happenings of the world, which pass before his senses and his intellect, so that he can control them with his thinking. He says, Truth must be independent of my art of interpretation, and it is not up to me to create truth; instead, I must allow the world to dictate truth to me through world phenomena.

[ 53 ] The point to which this modern science finally comes when it contains within itself all arranging of world phenomena, has been expressed by Richard Wahle, a follower of this science, in a book which has just appeared: Das Ganze der Philosophie und ihr Ende, The Totality of Philosophy and its End. “What can the spirit who peers into this world-house and turns over the questions about the nature and goal of happenings, find as an answer at last? It has happened that as he stood so apparently in opposition to the world surrounding him, he became disentangled, and in a flight from all events, merged with all events. He no longer ‘knew’ the world. He said, I am not sure that those who know exist; perhaps there are simply events. They occur, of course, in such a way that the concept of a knowing could develop prematurely and without justification, and ‘concepts’ have sprouted up to bring light into these events, but they are will-o-the-wisps, souls of the desires for knowing, pitiful postulates of an empty form of knowledge, saying nothing in their evidence. Unknown factors must hold sway in the transitions. Darkness was spread over their nature. Events are the veil of the nature of truth.”

[ 54 ] That the human personality, out of its own capacities can instill meaning into the happenings of reality, and can supplement the unknown factors which rule in the transitions of events: modern scholars do not think at all about this. They do not want to interpret the flight from appearances by ideals which stem from their own personality. They want merely to observe and describe the appearances, but not interpret them. They want to remain with the factual, and will not allow the creative fantasy to make a dismembered picture of reality.

[ 55 ] When an imaginative natural scientist, for example, Ernst Haeckel, out of the results of individual observations, formulates a total picture of the evolution of organic life on earth, then these fanatics of factuality throw themselves upon him, and accuse him of transgression against truth. The pictures which he sketched about life in nature, they cannot see with their eyes or touch with their hands. They prefer the impersonal judgment to that which is colored by the spirit of the personality. They would prefer to exclude the personality completely from their observations.

[ 56] It is the ascetic ideal which controls the fanatics of factuality. They would like a truth beyond the personal individual judgment. What the human being can “imagine into” things, does not concern these fanatics. “Truth” to them is something absolutely perfect—a God; man should discover it, should surrender to it, but should not create it. At present, the natural scientists and the historians are enthused by the same spirit of ascetic ideals. Everywhere they enumerate in order to describe facts, and nothing more. All arranging of facts is forbidden. All personal judgment is to be suppressed.

[ 57 ] Atheists are also found among these modern scholars. But these atheists are freer spirits than their contemporaries who believe in God. The existence of God cannot be proven by means of modern science. Indeed, one of the brilliant minds of modern science, DuBois-Reymond, expressed himself thus about the acceptance of a “world-soul:” before the natural scientist decides upon such an acceptance he demands “That somewhere in the world, there be shown to him, bedded in nerve ganglia and nourished with warm, arterial blood under the correct pressure, a bundle of cell ganglia and nerve fibers, depending in size on the spiritual capacity of the soul.” (Grenzen des Naturerkennens, Limits of Natural Science, page 44). Modern science rejects the belief in God because this belief cannot exist beside their belief in “objective truth.” This “objective truth,” however, is nothing but a new God who has been victorious over the old one. “Unqualified, honest atheism (and we breathe only its air; we, the most intellectual human being of this age) does not stand in opposition to that (ascetic) ideal to the extent that it appears to; rather, it is one of its final phases of evolution, one of its ultimate forms, one of its logical consequences. It is the awe-inspiring catastrophe of a two thousand year training in truth, which finally forbids itself the lie of the belief in God.” (Genealogy, Part III, ¶ 27). Christ seeks truth in God because He considers God the source of all truth. The modern atheist rejects the belief in God because his god, his ideal of truth, forbids him this belief. In God the modern spirit sees a human creation; in “truth” he sees something which has come into being by itself without any human interference. The really “free spirit” goes still further. He asks, “What is the meaning of all will for truth?” Why truth? For all truth arises in that man ponders over the appearance of the world, and formulates thoughts about things. Man himself is the creator of truth. The “free spirit” arrives at the awareness of his own creation of truth. He no longer regards truth as something to which he subordinates himself; he looks upon it as his own creation.

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[ 58 ] People endowed with weak, malformed instincts of perception do not dare to attach meaning to world appearances out of the concept-forming power of their personality. They wish the “laws of nature” to stand before their senses as actual facts. A subjective world-picture, formed by the instrumentality of the human mind, appears worthless to them. But the mere observation of world events presents us with only a disconnected, not a detailed world picture. To the mere observer of things, no object, no event, appears more important, more significant than another. When we have considered it, the rudimentary organ of an organism which perhaps appears to have no significance for the evolution of life, stands there with exactly the same demand upon our attention as does the most noble part of the organism, so long as we look merely at the actual facts. Cause and effect are appearances following upon each other, which merge into each other without being separated by anything, so long as we merely observe them. Only when with our thinking, we begin to separate the appearances which have merged into each other, and relate them to each other intellectually, does a regular connection become visible. Thinking alone explains one appearance as cause and another as effect. We see a raindrop fall upon the earth and produce a groove. A being which is unable to think will not see cause and effect here, but only a sequence of appearances. A thinking being isolates the appearances, relates the isolated facts, and labels the one factor as cause, the other as effect. Through observation the intellect is stimulated to produce thoughts and to fuse these thoughts with the observed facts into a meaningful world-picture. Man does this because he wishes to control the sum of his observations with his thoughts. A thought-vacuum before him presses upon him like an unknown power. He opposes this power and conquers it by making it conceivable. All counting, weighing and calculating of appearances also comes about for the same reason. It is the will to power which lives itself out in this impulse for knowledge. (I have represented a process of knowledge in detail in my two writings, Wahrheit und Wissenschaft, Truth and Science, and Die Philosophie der Freiheit, The Philosophy of Freedom.)

[ 59 ] The dull, weak intellect does not want to admit to himself that it is he himself who interprets the appearances as expression of his striving toward power. He considers his interpretation also as an actual fact. And he asks, How does a man come to find such an actual fact in reality? He asks, for example, How is it that the intellect can recognize cause and effect in two appearances, one following upon the other? All theorists of knowledge, from Locke, Hume, Kant, down to the present time, have occupied themselves with this question. The subtleties which they have applied to this examination, have remained unfruitful. The explanation is given in the striving of the human intellect toward power. The question is not at all, Are judgments, thoughts about appearances, possible? but, Does the human intellect need such judgments? He needs them, hence he uses them, not because they are possible. It depends upon this: “To understand that for the sake of the preservation of creatures like ourselves such judgments must be believed to be true, though naturally they still may be false judgments!” (Jenseits von Gut und Böse, Beyond Good and Evil, ¶ 11) “And fundamentally we are inclined to assert that the most erroneous judgments are the most indispensable for us; that man could not live without belief in logical fiction, without measuring reality by the purely invented world of the unconditional, likening one's self to one's self, without a constant falsification of the world through number; that renunciation of false judgments would be a renunciation of life, a negation of life.” (Ibid, ¶ 4). Whoever regards this saying as a paradox, should remind himself how fruitful is the use of geometry in relation to reality, although nowhere in the world are really geometric, regular lines, planes, etc., to be found.

[ 60 ] When the dull, weak intellect understands that all judgments about things stem from within him, are all produced by him, and are fused with the observations, then he does not have the courage to use these judgments unreservedly. He says, judgments of this kind cannot transmit knowledge of the “true essence” of things to us. Therefore, this “true essence” remains excluded from our knowledge.

[ 61 ] The weak intellect tries in still another way to prove that no security can be attained through human knowledge. He says, The human being sees, hears, touches things and events. Thereby he perceives impressions of his sense organs. When he perceives a color, a sound, then he can only say, My eye, my ear are determined in a certain way to perceive color and tone. Man perceives nothing outside of himself except a determination, a modification of his own organs. In perceiving, his eyes, his ears, etc., become stimulated to feel in a certain way; they are placed in a certain condition. The human being perceives this condition of his own organs as colors, tones, odors, etc. In all perceiving, the human being perceives only his own conditions. What he calls the outer world is composed only of his own conditions; therefore, in a real sense it is his work. He does not know the things which cause him to spin the outer world out of himself; he only knows the effects upon his organs. In this light, the world appears like a dream which is dreamed by the human being, and is occasioned by something unknown.

[ 62 ] When this thought is brought to its consequential conclusion, it brings with it the following afterthought. Man knows only his own organs, insofar as he perceives them; they are parts of his world of perception. And man becomes conscious of his own self only to the extent that he spins pictures of the world out of himself. He perceives dream pictures, and in the midst of these dream pictures, an “I,” by which these dream pictures pass; every dream picture appears to be an accompaniment of this “I.” One can also say that each dream picture appears in the midst of the dream world, always in relation to this “I.” This “I” clings to these dream pictures as determination, as characteristic: Consequently, as a determination of dream pictures, it is a dream-like being itself. J. G. Fichte sums up this point of view in these words: “What develops through this knowing, and out of this knowing, is but a knowing. But all knowing is merely reflection, and something is always demanded of it which conforms to the picture. This demand cannot be satisfied by knowledge; and a system of knowledge is necessarily a system of mere pictures, without any reality, without significance, and without purpose.” For Fichte, “all reality” is a wonderful “dream without a life, which is being dreamed about, without a spirit who dreams.” It is a dream “which is connected with itself in a dream.” (Bestimmung des Menschen, Mission of Man, 2nd Book)

[ 63 ] What meaning has this whole chain of thoughts? A weak intellect, which does not dare to give meaning to the world out of himself, looks for this meaning in the world of observations. Of course, he cannot find it there because mere observation is void of thoughts.

[ 64 ] A strong, productive intellect uses his world of concepts to interpret the observations. The weak, unproductive intellect declares himself to be too powerless to do this, and says, I can find no sense in the appearances of the world; they are mere pictures which pass by me. The meaning of existence, therefore, must be looked for outside, beyond the world of appearances. Because of this, the world of appearances, that is, the human reality, is explained as a dream, an illusion, a Nothing, and “the true being” of appearances is searched for in a “thing in itself,” for which no observation, no knowledge is sufficient, that is, about which the knower can form no idea. Therefore, for the knower, this “true being” is a completely empty thought, the thought about a Nothing. For those philosophers who speak about the “thing in itself,” a dream is a world of appearances. But this Nothing they regard as the “true being” of the world of appearances. The whole philosophical movement which speaks about the “thing in itself,” and which, in more modern times, leans mainly upon Kant, is the belief in this Nothing; it is philosophical nihilism.

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[ 65 ] When the strong spirit looks for the cause of a human action and achievement, he will always find it in the will power of the individual personality. But the human being with a weak, timid intellect will not admit this. He doesn't feel himself sufficiently strong to make himself master and guide of his own actions. He interprets the impulses which guide him as the commandments of another power. He does not say, I act as I want to act, but he says, I act according to a law which I must obey. He does not wish to command himself; he wishes to obey. At one level of their development, human beings see their impulses to action as commandments of God; at another level, they believe that they are aware of a voice inside them, which commands them. In the latter case they do not dare to say, It is I myself who command; they assert, In me a higher will expresses itself. One person is of the opinion that it is his conscience which speaks to him in each individual case, and tells him how he should act, while another asserts that a categorical imperative commands him. Let us hear what J. G. Fichte says: “Something simply will happen because something just must happen; conscience now demands of me that it happen, and simply for this reason I am here; I am to realize it, and for that I have intellect. I am to achieve it, and for that I have strength.” (Ibid, Third Book) I mention J. G. Fichte's sayings with great pleasure because he maintained with iron consequence his opinion of the “weak and malformed.” He maintained it to the very end. One can only realize where this opinion finally leads when one looks for it where it was thought through to the end; one cannot depend upon those who are incomplete thinkers, who think each thought only to the middle.

[ 66 ] The fount of knowledge is not sought in individual personalities by those who think in the above mentioned way, but beyond personality in a “will in itself.” Just this “will in itself” shall speak to the individual as “God's voice,” as the “voice of conscience,” as categorical imperative, and so on. This is to be the universal leader of human actions, and the fount of all morality, and is also to determine the purpose of moral actions. “I say that it is the commandment to action itself which gives me a purpose through itself. It is the same in me which urges me to think that I should act in such a way, urges me to believe that out of these actions something will result; it opens the view to another world.” “As I live in obedience, at the same time I live in the reflection of its purposes; I live in the better world which it promises me.” (Ibid, Third Book) He who thinks thus, will not set a goal for himself; he will allow himself to be led to a goal by the higher will which he obeys. He will free himself from his own will, and will make himself into an instrument for “higher” purposes in words which express the highest; achievements of obedience and humility known to him. Fichte described the abandonment to this “eternal Will in itself.” “Lofty, living Will, which no name names and no concept encompasses, may I raise my soul to you, for you and I are not separated. Your voice sounds within me; mine resounds in you; and all my thoughts, when they are true and good, are thought within you. In you, the incomprehensible, I become comprehensible to myself, and the world becomes perfectly comprehensible to me. All problems of my existence are solved, and the most complete harmony arises within my spirit” ... “I veil my countenance before you. I lay my hand upon my mouth. As you yourself are, and as you appear to yourself, I can never understand, as certainly as I never could become you. After I have lived a thousand thousand spirit lives, I shall comprehend you as little as I do now in this hut upon earth.” (Ibid, Third Book)

[ 67 ] Where this will is finally to lead man, the individual cannot know. Therefore the one who believes in this will confesses that he knows nothing about the final purposes of his actions. For such a believer in a higher will, the goals which the individual sets for himself, are not “true goals.” Therefore, in place of the positive individual goals created by the individuum, he places a final purpose for the whole of mankind, the thought content of which, however, is a Nothing. Such a believer is a moral nihilist. He is caught in the worst kind of ignorance imaginable. Nietzsche wanted to deal with this type of ignorance in a special section of his incompleted work, Der Wille zur Macht, The Will to Power.

[ 68 ] We find the praise of moral nihilism again in Fichte's Bestimmung des Menschen, Destiny of Man (Third Book): “I shall not attempt what is denied me by the very Being of Limitations, and I shall not attempt what would avail me nothing. What you yourself are, I do not care to know. But your relationships and your connections with me, the Specific, and toward everything Specific, lie open before my eyes; may I become what I must become, and all this surrounds me in more brilliant clarity than the consciousness of my own existence. You create within me the knowledge of my duty, of my destiny, in the order of intelligent beings; how, I know not, nor do I need to know. You know, and you recognize what I think and what I will; how you can know it, through what act you achieve this consciousness, I understand nothing. Yes, I know very well that the concept of an act and of a special act of consciousness is valid only for me, but not for you, Infinite Being. You govern because you will that my free obedience has consequences to all eternity; the act of your willing I do not understand, and only know that it is not similar to mine. Your act and your will itself is a deed. But the way you work is exactly opposite to that way which I alone am able to understand. You live and you are because you know, will, and effectuate, ever present in the limited intellect, but you are not as I conceive a being to be through eternities.”

[ 69 ] Nietzsche places opposite to moral nihilism those goals which the creating individual will places before itself. Zarathustra calls to the teachers of the gospel of submission:

[ 70 ] “These teachers of the gospel of submission. Everywhere where there is smallness and sickness and dirt, there they creep like lice, and only my disgust prevents me from crushing them under foot.

“Attend! This is my gospel for their ears: I am Zarathustra, the godless, who asks, Who is more godless than I, that I may rejoice in his teaching?

“I am Zarathustra, the godless; where do I find my equal? All those are my equals who determine their will out of themselves, and who push all submission away from themselves.”

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[ 71 ] The strong personality which creates goals is disdainful of the execution of them. The weak personality, on the other hand, carries out only what the Divine Will, the “voice of conscience” or the “categorical imperative” says Yes to. That which is in accordance with this Yes, the weak person describes as good, that which is contrary to this Yes, it describes as evil. The strong personality cannot acknowledge this “good and evil,” for he does not acknowledge that power from which the weak person allows his “good and evil” to be determined. What the strong person wills is for him good; he carries it through in spite of all opposing powers. What disturbs him in this execution, he tries to overcome. He does not believe that an “Eternal Will” guides the decisions of all individual wills toward a great harmony, but he believes that all human development comes out of the will-impasses of the individual personalities, and that an eternal war is waged between the expressions of individual wills, in which the stronger will always conquers the weaker.

[ 72 ] The strong personality who lays down his own laws and sets his own goals, is described by the weaker and less courageous as evil, as sinful. He arouses fear, for he breaks through traditional ways; he calls that worthless which the weak person is accustomed to call valuable, and he invents the new, the previously unknown, which he describes as valuable. “Each individual action, each individual way of thinking causes shuddering; it is almost impossible to estimate exactly what those more uncommon, more select, more criminal spirits must have suffered in the course of history so that they were always regarded as bad, as dangerous, yes, even so that they themselves considered themselves in this light. Under the domination of custom, all originality of every kind has evoked a bad conscience. Up to this very time the heaven of the most admirable has become more darkened than it would have had to be.” (Morgenröte, Dawn, p. 9)

The truly free spirit makes original decisions immediately; the unfree spirit decides in accordance with his background. “Morality is nothing more (specifically, nothing more!) than obedience to customs of whatever nature these may be; but customs are the traditional way of acting and evaluating.” (Ibid, p. 9). It is this tradition which is interpreted by the moralists as “eternal will,” as “categorical imperative.” But every tradition is the result of natural impulses, of lives of individuals, of entire tribes, nations, and so on. It is also the product of natural causes, for example, the condition of the weather in specific localities. The free spirit explains that he does not feel himself bound by such tradition. He has his individual drives and impulses, and feels that these are not less justified than those of others. He transforms these impulses into action as a cloud sends rain to the earth's surface when causes for this exist. The free spirit takes his stand opposite to what tradition considers to be good and evil. He creates his own good and evil for himself.

[ 73 ] “When I came to men, I found them sitting there on an old presumption: they all assumed that they had long known what was good and evil for man.

“All debating about virtue seemed to them an old, worn-out affair, and he who wanted to sleep well, still spoke about good and evil before going to sleep.

“This sleepiness I disturbed by my teaching; what is good and what is evil, nobody knows; then let it be the creator.

“But that is he who creates man's goal and who gives meaning to the earth and to the future. It is he who first brings it about that there is something good and evil.” (Zarathustra, 3rd Part, From the Old and New Tablets)

[ 74 ] Besides this, when the free spirit acts according to tradition, he does this because he adopts the traditional motives, and because he does not consider it necessary in certain cases to put something new in place of the traditional.

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[ 75 ] The strong person seeks his life's task in working out his creative self. This self-seeking differentiates him from the weak person who, in the selfless surrender to that which he calls “good,” sees morality. The weak preach selflessness as the highest virtue, but their selflessness is only the consequence of their lack of creative power. If they had any creative self they would then have wished to manifest it. The strong person loves war because he needs war to manifest his creation in opposition to those powers hogstile to him.

[ 76 ] “Your enemy you shall seek, your war you shall wage, and as for your thoughts, if they succumb, then shall your very uprightness nevertheless attain triumph over their collapse!

[ 77 ] “You shall love peace as a means to a new war, and a short peace more than a long one.

[ 78 ] “I do not challenge you to work, but to fight. I do not challenge you to peace, but to victory. Your work be your struggle! Your peace be a victory!

[ 79 ] “You say that the good circumstance may even sanctify war, but I say to you, it is the ‘good’ war which sanctifies every circumstance.

[ 80 ] “War and courage have accomplished more great things than love for one's neighbor. Until now, not your sympathy but your courage has saved the unfortunate.” (Zarathustra, 1st Part, About War and People of War)

[ 81 ] The creative person acts without mercy and without regard for those who oppose. He has no cognizance of the virtue of those who suffer, namely, of sympathy. Out of his own power come his impulses to creativity, not out of his feelings for another's suffering. That power may conquer, for this he fights, not that suffering and weakness may be cared for. Schopenhauer has described the whole world as a hospital, and asked that the actions springing out of sympathy for suffering be considered as the highest virtue. Thereby he has expressed the morality of Christendom in another form than the latter itself has done. He who creates, though, does not feel himself destined to render these nursing services. The efficient ones, the healthy, cannot exist for the sake of the weak, the sick. Sympathy weakens power, courage, and bravery.

[ 82 ] Sympathy seeks to maintain just what the strong wishes to overcome, that is, the weakness, the suffering. The victory of the strong over the weak is the meaning of all human as well as of all natural development. “Life in its essence is a usurping, a wounding, an overcoming of the strange, of all that is misfit and weak. Life is the suppressing, the hardening and forcing through of one's own forms, the embodying, and, in the least and mildest, the erupting in boils.” (Jenseits van Gut und Böse, Beyond Good and Evil, ¶ 259).

[ 83 ] “And do you not wish to be a dealer of destiny and unmerciful? How else can you be mine or conquer with me?”

“And if your hardness will not strike as lightning and cleave and cut, how then can you ever create with me?

“For the creators are hard, and it must seem to you a blessing to press your hand upon the millennia as if upon wax.

“A blessing to inscribe upon the will of millennia as if upon bronze, harder than bronze, more precious than bronze. Entirely hard is the most precious alone.

“This new tablet, O my brothers, I raise above you, thou shalt become hard.” (Zarathustra, 3rd Part, From the Old and New Tablets)

[ 84 ] The free spirit makes no demands upon sympathy. He would have to ask the one who would pity him, Do you consider me as weak, that I cannot bear my suffering by myself? For him, each expression of sympathy is humiliating. Nietzsche shows this aversion of the strong person toward sympathy in the fourth part of Zarathustra. In his wanderings Zarathustra arrives in a valley which is called “Snake Death.” No living beings are found here. Only a kind of ugly green snake comes here in order to die. The “most ugly human being” has found this valley. He does not wish to be seen by anyone because of his ugliness. In this valley he sees no one besides God, but even His countenance he cannot bear. The consciousness that God's gaze has penetrated into all these regions becomes a burden for him. For this reason he has killed God, that is, he has killed the belief in God within himself. He has become an atheist because of his ugliness. When Zarathustra sees this human being, he is overcome by what he believed he had destroyed within himself forever: that is, sympathy for the most frightful ugliness. This becomes a temptation for Zarathustra, but very soon he rejects the feeling of sympathy and again becomes hard. The most ugly man says to him, “Your hardness honors my ugliness. I am too rich in ugliness to be able to bear the sympathy of any human being. Sympathy humiliates.”

[ 85 ] He who requires sympathy cannot stand alone, and the free spirit wishes to stand completely on his own.

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[ 86 ] The weak are not content with pointing to the natural will to power as the cause of human actions. They do not merely seek for natural connections in human development, but they seek for the relationship of human action to what they call the “will in itself,” the eternal, moral world order. They accuse the one who acts contrary to this world order. And they also are not satisfied to evaluate an action according to its natural consequences, but they claim that a guilty action also draws with it moral consequences, i.e., punishment. They consider themselves guilty if their actions are not in accord with the moral world order; they turn away in horror from the fount of evil in themselves, and they call this feeling bad conscience. The strong personality, on the other hand, does not consider all these concepts valid. He is concerned only with the natural consequences of actions. He asks, Of what value for life is my way of acting? Is it in accord with what I have willed? The strong cannot grieve when an action goes wrong, when the result does not accord with his intentions. But he does not blame himself. For he does not measure his way of acting by supernatural yardsticks. He knows that he has acted thus in accord with his natural impulses, and at most he can regret that these are not better. It is the same with his judgment regarding the actions of others. A moral evaluation of actions he does not grant. He is an amoralist.

[ 87 ] What tradition considers to be evil the amoralist looks upon as the outstreaming of human instincts, in fact, as good. He does not consider punishment as morally necessary but merely as a means of eradicating instincts of certain human beings which are harmful to others. According to the opinion of the amoralist, society does not punish for this reason but because it has “moral right” to expiate the guilt, and because it proves itself stronger than the individual who has instincts which are antagonistic to the whole. The power of society stands against the power of the individual. This is the natural connection between an “evil” action of the individual and the justification of society, leading to the punishment of the individual. It is the will to power, namely, the acting of these instincts present in the majority of human beings, which expresses itself in the administration of justice in society. Thus, each punishment is the victory of a majority over an individual. Should the individual be victorious over society, then his action must be considered good, and that of others, evil. The arbitrary right expresses only what society recognizes as the best basis of their will to power.

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[ 88 ] Because Nietzsche sees in human action only an outstreaming of instincts, and these latter differ according to different people, it seems necessary to him that their actions also be different. For this reason, Nietzsche is a decided opponent of the democratic premise, equal rights and equal duties for all. Human beings are dissimilar; for this reason their rights and duties also must be dissimilar. The natural course of world history will always point out strong and weak, creative and uncreative human beings. And the strong will always be destined to determine the goals of the weak. Yes, still more: the strong will make use of the weak as the means toward a certain goal, that is, to serve as slaves. Nietzsche naturally does not speak about the “moral” right of the strong to keep slaves. “Moral” rights he does not acknowledge. He is simply of the opinion that the overcoming of the weak by the strong, which he considers as the principle of all life, must necessarily lead toward slavery.

[ 89 ] It is also natural that those overcome will rebel against the overcomer. When this rebellion cannot express itself through a deed it will at least express itself in feeling, and the expression of this feeling is revenge, which dwells steadily in the hearts of those who in some way or other have been overcome by those more fortunately endowed. Nietzsche regards the modern social democratic movement as a streaming forth of this revenge. For him, the victory of this movement would be a raising of the deformed, poorly endowed to the disadvantage of those better equipped. Nietzsche strove for exactly the opposite: the cultivation of the strong, self-dominant personality. And he hates the urge to equalize everything and to allow the sovereign individuality to disappear in the ocean of universal mediocrity.

[ 90 ] Not that each shall have the same and enjoy the same, says Nietzsche, but each should have and enjoy what he can attain by his own personal effort.

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[ 91 ] What the human being is worth depends only upon the value of his instincts. By nothing else can the value of the human being be determined. One speaks about the worth of work, or the value of work, or that work shall ennoble the human being. But in itself work has absolutely no value. Only through the fact that it serves man does it gain a value. Only insofar as work presents itself as a natural consequence of human inclinations, is it worthy of the human being. He who makes himself the servant of work, lowers himself. Only the human being who is unable to determine his own worth for himself, tries to measure this worth by the greatness of his work, of his achievement. It is characteristic of the democratic bourgeoisie of modern times that in the evaluation of the human being they let themselves be guided by his work. Even Goethe is not free from this attitude. He lets his Faust find the full satisfaction in the consciousness of work well done.

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[ 92 ] Art also has value, according to Nietzsche's opinion, only when it serves the life of the individual human being. And in this Nietzsche is a representative of the opinion of the strong personality, and rejects everything that the weak instincts express about art. All German aesthetes represent the point of view of the weak instincts. Art should represent the “infinite” in the “finite,” the “eternal” in the “temporal,” and the “idea” in the “reality.” For Schelling, as an example, all sensual beauty is but a reflection of that infinite beauty which we can never perceive with our senses. The work of art is never there for the sake of itself, nor is beautiful through what it is, but only because it reflects the idea of the beautiful. The sense picture is only a means of expression, only the form for a supersensible content, and Hegel calls the beautiful, “the sense filled appearance of the Idea.” Similar thoughts also can be found among other German aesthetes. For Nietzsche, art is a life-fostering element, and only when this is the case, has it justification. The one who cannot bear life as he directly perceives it, transforms it according to his requirements, and thereby creates a work of art. And what does the one who enjoys it demand from the work of art? He demands heightening of his joy of life, the strengthening of his life forces, satisfaction of his requirements, which reality does not do for him. But in the work of art, when his senses are directed toward the real, he will not see any reflection of the divine or of the superearthy. Let us hear how Nietzsche describes the impression Bizet's Carmen made upon him: “I become a better man when Bizet speaks to me. Also a better musician, a better listener. Is it at all possible to listen still better? I continue to bury my ears beneath this music; I hear its wellsprings. It seems to me that I experience its development, its evolving. I tremble in face of dangers which accompany any daring adventure. I am delighted with happy fortunes for which Bizet is not responsible. And, strange, fundamentally I do not think about it, nor do I even know how much I ponder about it. For, meanwhile, entirely different thoughts run through my head. Has one noticed that music frees the spirit, gives wings to the thoughts, that one becomes more of a philosopher, the more one becomes a musician, that the grey heavens of abstraction are lighted by flashes of lightning, that the light is strong enough for all the tracery of things, the large problems near enough for grasping, and the world is seen as from a mountain? I have just defined philosophical pathos. And, inadvertently, answers fall into my lap, a small hail of ice and wisdom, of solved problems. Where am I? Bizet makes me fruitful. All good makes me fruitful. I have no other gratitude, I also have no other measure for that which is good.” (Case of Wagner, ¶ 1.) Since Richard Wagner's music did not make such an impression upon him, Nietzsche rejected it: “My objections to Wagner's music are physiological objections. ... As a fact, my petit fait vrai is that I no longer breathe easily when this music first begins to work upon me; that soon my foot becomes angry with it and revolts: it desires to beat, dance, march. It demands first of all from the music the pleasures which lie in good walking, striding dancing. But doesn't my stomach also protest? My heart? My circulation? Do not my intestines also grieve? Do I not become unknowingly hoarse? And so I ask myself, ‘What does my entire body really want from this music?’ I believe that it seeks levitation. It is as if all animal functions become accelerated through these light, bold, abandoned, self-sure rhythms; as if the brazen, leaden life would lose its weight through the golden tender flow of oily melodies. My melancholy heaviness could rest in the hide and seek and in the abysses of perfection; but for that I need music.” (Nietzsche contra Wagner)

[ 93 ] At the beginning of his literary career Nietzsche deceived himself about what his instincts demanded from art, and thus at that time he was a disciple of Wagner. He had allowed himself to be lead astray into idealism through the study of Schopenhauer's philosophy. He believed in idealism for a certain time, and conjured up before himself artistic needs, ideal needs. Only in the further course of his life did he notice that all idealism was exactly contrary to his impulses. Now he became more honest with himself. He expressed only what he himself felt. And this could only lead to the complete rejection of Wagner's music, which as a mark of Wagner's last working aim, assumed an ever more ascetic character, as mentioned above.

[ 94 ] The aesthetes who demand that art make the ideal tangible, that it materialize the divine, in this field present an opinion similar to the philosophical nihilist in the field of knowledge and morality. In the objects of art they search for a beyond which, before the sense of reality, dissolves itself into a nothingness. There is also an aesthetic nihilism.

[ 95 ] This stands in contrast to the aestheticism of the strong personality, which sees in art a reflection of reality, a higher reality, which man would rather enjoy than the commonplace.

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[ 96 ] Nietzsche places two types of human beings opposite each other: the weak and the strong. The first type looks for knowledge as an objective fact, which should stream from the outer world into his spirit. He allows himself to have his good and evil dictated by an “eternal world will” or a “categorical imperative.” He identifies each action as sin which is not determined by this world will, but only by the creative self-will, a sin which must entail a moral punishment. The weak would like to prescribe equal rights for all human beings, and to determine the worth of the human being according to an outer yardstick. He would finally see in art a reflection of the divine, a message from the beyond. The strong, on the contrary, sees in all knowledge an expression of the will to power. Through knowledge he attempts to make all things conceivable, and, as a consequence, to make them subject to himself. He knows that he himself is the creator of truth, and that no one but himself can create his good and his evil. He regards the actions of human beings as the consequences of natural impulses, and lets them count as natural events which are never regarded as sins and do not warrant a moral judgment. He looks for the value of a man in the efficiency of the latter's instincts. A human being with instincts of health, spirit, beauty, perseverance, nobility he values higher than one with instincts of weakness, ugliness or slavery. He values a work of art according to the degree to which it enhances his forces.

[ 97 ] Nietzsche understands this latter type of man to be his superman. Until now, such supermen could come about only through the coalescing of accidental conditions. To make their development into the conscious goal of mankind is the intention of Zarathustra. Until now, one saw the goal of human development in various ideas. Here Nietzsche considers a change of perception to be necessary. “The more valuable type has been described often enough, but as a happy fortune, as an exception, never as consciously willed. Moreover, he specifically is most feared; until now he was almost the most terrible one; and out of the terror the reverse type was willed, bred, achieved: the domestic animal, the herd animal, the sick animal man—the Christ.” (Antichrist, ¶ 3.)

[ 98 ] Zarathustra's wisdom is to teach about the superman, toward which that other type was only a transition.

[ 99 ] Nietzsche calls this wisdom, Dionysian. It is wisdom which is not given to man from without; it is a self-created wisdom. The Dionysian wise one does not search; he creates. He does not stand as a spectator outside of the world he wishes to know; he becomes one with his knowledge. He does not search after a God; what he can still imagine to himself as divine is only himself as the creator of his own world. When this condition extends to all forces of the human organism, the result is the Dionysian human being, who cannot misunderstand a suggestion; he overlooks no sign of emotions; he has the highest level of understanding and divining instinct, just he possesses the art of communication in the highest degree. He enters into everything, into every emotion; he transforms himself continually. In contrast to the Dionysian wise one, stands the mere observer, who believes himself to be always outside his objects of knowledge, as an objective suffering spectator. The Apollonian stands opposite to the Dionysian human being. The Apollonian is he who, “above all, keeps the eye very active so that it receives the power of vision.” Visions, pictures of things which stand beyond the reality of mankind: the Apollonian spirit strives for these, and not for that wisdom created by himself.

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[ 100 ] The Apollonian wisdom has the character of earnestness. It feels the domination of the Beyond, which it only pictures, as a heavy weight, as an opposing power. The, Apollonian wisdom is serious for it believes itself to be in possession of a message from the Beyond, even if this is only transmitted through pictures and visions. The Apollonian spirit wanders about, heavily laden with his knowledge, for he carries a burden which stems from another world. And he takes on the expression of dignity because, confronted with the annunciation of the infinite, all laughter must be stilled.

[ 101 ] But this laughing is characteristic of the Dionysian spirit. The latter knows that all he calls wisdom is only his own wisdom, invented by him to make his life; easier. This one thing alone shall be his wisdom: namely, a means which permits him to say Yes to life. To the Dionysian human being, the spirit of heaviness is repellent, because it does not lighten life, but oppresses it. The self-created wisdom is a merry wisdom, for he who creates his own burden, creates one which he can also carry easily. With this self-created wisdom, the Dionysian spirit moves lightly through the world like a dancer.

[ 102 ] “But that I am good to wisdom, and often too good, is because she reminds me so very much of life itself. [ 103 ] She has the eye of life, her laughter and even her golden fishing rod; how can I help it that the two are so alike? [ 104 ] Into your eye I gazed recently, O Life: gold I saw flickering in your eyes of night! My heart stood still before such joy.[ 105 ] A golden boat I saw flickering on the waters of night, a sinking, drinking, ever-winking, golden, rocking boat!

[ 106 ] “Upon my foot, so wild to dance, you cast a glance, a laughing questioning, a melting, rocking glance. [ 107 ] Twice only you shook your castanet with tiny hands. Thereupon, my foot rocked with urge to dance.

[ 108 ] “My heels arched themselves, my toes listened to understand you. Indeed, the dancer carries his ear—in his toes!” (Zarathustra – 2nd and 3rd Parts. “The Dance Song.”)

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[ 109 ] Since the Dionysian spirit draws out of himself all impulses for his actions and obeys no external power, he is a free spirit. A free spirit follows only his own nature. Now of course in Nietzsche's works one speaks about instincts as the impulses of the free spirit. I believe that here under one name Nietzsche has collected a whole range of impulses requiring a consideration which goes more into individual differentiations. Nietzsche calls instincts those impulses for nourishment and self preservation present in animals, as well as the highest impulses of human nature, for example, the urge toward knowledge, the impulse to act according to moral standards, the drive to refresh oneself through works of art, and so on. Now, of course, all these impulses are forms of expression of one and the same fundamental force, but they do represent different levels in the development of this power. The moral instincts, for example, are a special level of instinct. Even if it is only admitted that they are but higher forms of sensory instinct, nevertheless they do appear in a special form within man's existence. This shows itself in that it is possible for man to carry out actions which cannot be led back to sensory instincts directly, but only to those impulses which can be defined as higher forms of instinct. The human being himself creates impulses for his own actions, which are not to be derived from his own sensory impulses, but only from conscious thinking. He puts individual purposes before himself, but he puts these before himself consciously, and there is a great difference whether he follows an instinct which arose unconsciously and only afterward was taken into consciousness, or whether he follows a thought which he produced from the very beginning with full consciousness. When I eat because my impulse for nourishment drives me to it, this is something essentially different from my solving a mathematical problem. But the conceptual grasp of world phenomena presents a special form of general perceptability. It differentiates itself from mere sensory perception. For the human being, the higher forms of development of the life of instinct are just as natural as the lower. If both of them are not in harmony, then he is condemned to unfreedom. The case may be that a weak personality, with entirely healthy sense instincts, has but weak spiritual instincts. Then of course he will develop his own individuality in regard to the life of senses, but he will draw the thought impulses of his actions from tradition. Disharmony can develop between both worlds of impulses. The sense impulses press toward a living out of one's own personality; the spiritual impulses are fettered to outer authority. The spiritual life of such a personality will be tyrannized by the sensuous, the sensuous life by the spiritual instincts. This is because both powers do not belong together, and have not grown out of a single state of being. Therefore, to the really free personality belongs not only a soundly developed individualized life of sense impulses, but also the capacity to create for himself the thought impulses for life. Only that man is entirely free who can produce thoughts out of himself which can lead to action, and in my book, Die Philosophie der Freiheit, The Philosophy of Freedom, I have called the capacity to produce pure thought motives for action, “moral fantasy.” Only the one who has this moral fantasy is really free, because the human being must act in accordance with conscious motives. And when he cannot produce the latter out of himself, then he must let himself be given them by outer authority or by tradition, which speaks to him in the form of the voice of conscience. A man who abandons himself merely to sensual instincts, acts like an animal; a human being who places his sensuous instincts under another's thoughts, acts unfreely; only the human being who creates for himself his own moral goals, acts in freedom. Moral fantasy is lacking in Nietzsche's teaching. The one who carries Nietzsche's thoughts to their conclusion must necessarily come to this insight. But in any case, it is an absolute necessity that this insight be added to Nietzsche's world conception. Otherwise one could always object to his conception thus: Indeed the Dionysian man is no slave to tradition or to the “will beyond,” but he is a slave of his own instincts.

[ 110 ] Nietzsche looked toward the original, essential personality of the human being. He tried to separate this essential personality from the cloak of the impersonal in which it had been veiled by a world conception hostile to reality. But he did not come to the point where he differentiated the levels of life within the personality itself. Therefore he underestimated the significance of consciousness for the human personality. “Consciousness is the last and most recent development of the organic, and consequently the least prepared and the weakest. Out of consciousness come innumerable errors, which bring it about that an animal, a human being, disintegrates earlier than otherwise would be necessary—collapses ‘over his destiny,’ as Homer says. If the preserved union of instincts were not so overwhelmingly powerful, if, on the whole it did not serve as a regulator, mankind would go to pieces because of their confused judgment, spinning fantasies with open eyes through their superficiality and gullibility. In short, just because of their consciousness, mankind must be destroyed,” says Nietzsche (Fröhliche Wissenschaft, Joyful Science, ¶ 11.)

[ 111 ] Indeed, this is entirely admitted, but it does not affect the truth that the human being is free only insofar as he can create within his consciousness thought motives for his actions.

[ 112 ] But the contemplation of thought motives leads still further. It is a fact based upon experience, that these thought motives which the human being produces out of himself, nevertheless manifest an overall consistency to a certain degree in single individuals. Also, when the individual human being creates thoughts in complete freedom out of himself, these correspond in a certain way with the thoughts of other human beings. For this reason, the free person is justified in assuming that harmony in human society enters of its own accord when society consists of sovereign individualities. With this opinion he can confront the defender of unfreedom, who believes that the actions of a majority of human beings only accord with each other when they are guided by an external power toward a common goal. For this reason the free spirit is most certainly not a disciple of that opinion which would allow the animal instincts to reign in complete freedom, and hence would do away with all law and order. Moreover, he demands complete freedom for those who do not merely wish to follow their animal instincts, but who are able to create their own moral impulses, their own good and evil.

[ 113 ] Only he who has not penetrated Nietzsche so far as to be able to form the ultimate conclusions of his world conception, granted that Nietzsche himself has not formed them, can see in him a human being who, “with a certain stylized pleasure, has found the courage to unveil what perhaps lurked hidden in some of the most secret depths of the souls of flagrant criminal types.” (Ludwig Stein, Friedrich Nietzsches Weltanschauung und ihre Gefahren, Friedrich Nietzsche's World Conception and its Dangers, p. 5.) Still today the average education of a German professor has not reached the point of being able to differentiate between the greatness of a personality and his small errors. Otherwise, one could not observe that such a professor's criticism is directed toward just these small errors. I believe that true education accepts the greatness of a personality and corrects small errors, or brings incomplete thoughts to conclusion.

Die Raetsel des geschichtlichen Lebens der Menschheit nach Ergebnissen der Geisteswissenschaft. (The Historical Evolution of Humanity and the Science of Spirit. Lecture given at Stuttgart, Germany, April 25, 1918)

No person with real inner sensitivity would find it any longer necessary to have to speak about a mystery when dealing with human soul life, than he would have to speak about the presence of hunger when dealing with the life of the body.

In the way it functions the life process must be so regulated that it induces hunger. It is possible to disregard hunger by the use of certain drugs and to believe that we can get away from it for a time, but in the long run this cannot be done without injury to the body. Similarly, any attempt to conceal the fact that there is a mystery in human life is bound to lead to injury in the soul. Those who disregard the mystery of the human being, either because of their condition in life or a lack of interest, very easily fall prey to a kind of soul hunger and to what happens as a result of this—a sort of atrophy in the life of the soul, an uncertainty and powerlessness, an inability to find one's way in the world.

Although no really sensitive person would find it necessary to have to speak about a human mystery in general, he would probably find more reason to consider that the great questions of life take on a new character in each succeeding period of time. As our time is so short, it is not possible to do more than indicate this fact. We can see how the outer conditions of life change from epoch to epoch, how new needs, new questions arise about the way we live. This also happens within the soul, which in its search for a solution to the mystery of man, changes its own finer qualities from epoch to epoch in order to make it possible for man to find such a solution. In this age that has been with us for three or four centuries, and particularly in the 19th century and our own day, which has culminated in the controlling of the world by means of steam, electricity, modern economic and social conditions, in this age there are also questions about the world in which the human being is placed that are of a different kind from those of earlier times. The science of spirit or anthroposophy seeks to approach the solution of the mystery of man out of the needs of modern times.

It is a mistake to regard the science of spirit, or anthroposophy, as a renewal of the views of the old mystics. Those who level this sort of criticism, from whatever viewpoint it happens to come, usually construct their own picture of the science of spirit and then criticize this picture, which actually has very little to do with what the science of spirit really is. It is only a caricature of the science of spirit that is criticized.

It is of course not possible within the framework of an evening's lecture to mention everything that would be necessary even to provide an outline of the science of spirit. Only a few further points can be added to what I have been saying about this for many years now, even in this city. It is particularly important to remember that the science of spirit does not take its origin from religion or mystical movements—although we should not conclude that it is necessarily opposed to these, as we shall see later—but it arises out of the life of the modern scientific outlook, out of a scientific approach to the world, connected with what is happening in the evolution of present-day natural science.

I do not think that anyone who despises the modern scientific outlook can penetrate the mysteries of the world as is done in the science of spirit, even if it is not the results of science that matter so much as the method of approach in conscientiously applying one's thinking to the phenomena of the world. The science of spirit must be well versed in the ways natural science investigates and thinks, and in the way in which it disciplines the inner life of the soul in the art of acquiring knowledge. The science of spirit must absorb this and reckon with it, if it is to keep abreast of the times.

It is just in connection with such an approach that the question arises: How is it at all possible for modern science and the outlook which results from it, to arrive at a view of the mysteries of the human being that really satisfies us deep down? If we are really positive thinkers we cannot permit ourselves an answer derived from preconceived opinions, or from one form of belief or another, but only from the facts of present-day scientific development and its method of thought. And so you will allow me to start with the course of scientific thought and research in more recent times. This will be regarded very much from the viewpoint of an admirer of the enormous progress made by the scientific approach in the 19th century, a viewpoint which enables one to realize that the hopes placed in natural science, particularly in the 19th century, for a solution to the great mysteries of man were absolutely honest and genuine.

To take one aspect of this, let us look at the rise of the physical and chemical sciences, along with the hopes and aspirations which came with it. We see how people steeped in the scientific outlook began to believe (around the middle of the 19th century) that the inmost being of man can be explained in terms of the physical body just as the working of the forces and forms of nature can be explained in terms of the wonderfully advanced laws of physics and chemistry. The great progress made by physics and chemistry no doubt justified such hopes for a while, and this progress led to the formulation of particular ideas about the world of the smallest particles: atoms and molecules. Even if people think differently about such matters today, nevertheless what I have to say about the atom and the molecule holds good for the whole of the scientific development. The idea was to investigate them and to explain how the substances and physical forces worked in terms of the constitution of the material molecules and atoms, and of the forces and mutual relationships brought about by this constitution. It was thought that if it was possible to explain a process in terms of the smallest particles, it would not be long before the way would be found to understand even the most complicated process, which was seen as a natural process: the process of human thinking and feeling.

Now let us examine where this approach with its great hopes has led. Anyone having studied the achievements of physics and chemistry during the past decades can only be filled with admiration for what has been achieved. I cannot go into details, but I will mention the views of a representative scientist, who sought his views in physics and chemistry in investigating the nature of the smallest physical particle, the atom,—Adolf Roland, who specialized in spectral analysis. He formulated his views on the basis of everything that is possible to know about the smallest particles that can be imagined as effective in the material world.—And how remarkable his views are! And how justified they are must be recognized by anyone who has some understanding of the subject. Adolf Roland says: According to everything that can be known today, an atom of iron must be imagined as being more complicated than a Steinway piano.

Now this is a significant statement, coming from one so familiar with the methods of modern science. Years ago it was believed that one could investigate the tiniest lifeless beings, or at least produce provisional hypotheses about them, in order to find out something about the world that constitutes the immediate surroundings of our ordinary consciousness. And what, in fact, does one find out? The scientist has to admit that having penetrated this smallest of worlds, he finds nothing that is any more explicable than a Steinway piano. So it becomes quite clear that however far we are able to go by this process of division into the very smallest particles, the world becomes no more explicable than it already is to our ordinary, everyday consciousness.—This is one of the ways of approach, with its great hopes. We see as it were, these great hopes disappearing into the world of the smallest particles. And honest scientific progress will show more and more by penetrating into the smallest particles of space that we can add nothing toward answering the great human mystery to what can be known to our ordinary consciousness.

In another sphere there have been just as great hopes, and understandably so, in view of the condition of the times. Just think of the great hopes people had with the advent of the Darwinian theory, with its materialistic bias! People thought they could survey the whole range of living beings, of plants and animals, right up to man. It was thought possible to understand man through having seen how he arose out of the species below him. And in following the transformation of the different species, from the simplest living being right up to man, it was thought possible to find material which would help solve the mystery of man.

Once again, anyone initiated into the ways of modern research can only be filled with admiration for the wonderful work that has been done on this subject even to this day. It was thought that we would find the single egg cell, out of which man had evolved, in the appropriate simplest living being, and would then be able to explain the origin of man out of this egg cell, which would be similar to what would be discovered as the simplest animal form in the world. Once again the path was taken to the smallest, this time the smallest living beings. And what has been found there? It is interesting to hear what a conscientious and important scientist of the 80's, Naegeli, had to say. He expressed his view, which has become famous, in the following way: Exact research on the individual species of plants and animals shows that even the tiniest cells of each single species have the most varied differentiation. The egg cell of a hen is just as fully differentiated from that of a frog as a hen itself is different from a frog.—In descending to the simplest living cells, by means of which it was hoped to explain the complications facing our normal consciousness, we do not arrive at anything simpler—as for instance when we study the iron atom—and in the end have to admit that it is just as complicated as a Steinway piano. Thus we have to imagine that the difference between the individual egg cells is as great as is the difference between the various species we see in nature with our ordinary consciousness.

Naegeli therefore proves by means of his own scientific conscientiousness that the approach of Darwinism with its materialistic bias is of no value.

But now there is another interesting fact. We could, of course, think that Naegeli, the great botanist, was really a one-sided personality, and in any case what he said was spoken in the 80's and that science has progressed and that his views are out of date. But we can also study the very latest developments on this subject, which have been well summed up by a most significant person, one of the most eminent pupils of Ernst Haeckel:—Oskar Hertwig. In the last week or two there has been published his summing up of what he has to offer as a result of his research on—as he calls his book,—Das Werden der Organismen. Eine Widerlegung von Darwins Zufalls theorie.

Just imagine, we are confronted by the fact that one of the great pupils of Haeckel, the most radical exponent of materialistic Darwinism, has in the course of his life come to refute this materialistic Darwinism in the most thorough and complete way. I myself often heard from Haeckel's own lips that Oskar Hertwig was the one from whom he expected the most, and whom he expected to be his successor. And now we find today that it is Oskar Hertwig who refutes what he had absorbed as scientific Darwinism from his teacher, Haeckel! And he does it thoroughly, for his work—if I may use the expression—has a certain completeness.

This is what I wanted to say, to start with. I shall come back to the question later. I would only like to add that Oskar Hertwig makes use of everything that even the most recent research has brought to light in order to prove that what Naegeli said was absolutely true, so that one can say that the present-day position of biological research shows that a study of the smallest living entities does not tell us any more than does a study of the various species that we can perceive quite normally. For these smallest living entities, the cells, are, according to Naegeli and Hertwig, just as different as are the species themselves. A study of them only teaches us that nothing can be discovered in this way that cannot also be discovered by our normal perception in looking at the ordinary world.

Nor is it much different when—I can only mention this briefly—instead of looking at the very small, we look at the very large, the world of astronomy. For here too there has been the most wonderful progress in more recent times, for instance, in the study of the way the heavenly bodies move, which surprised everyone so much in 1859, and which has had such tremendous consequences in astronomy and especially in astrophysics.—And what has been the result? A thing one hears frequently from those who are at home in this subject is: Wherever we look in the world, whether we discover one or the other substance, this is not the main thing, for we find exactly the same substances with exactly the same forces in the universe, in the relatively large, as we find working here on the earth, so that when instead of looking into the very small, we examine the very large we only find what we know from our ordinary experience of space and time in everyday life. It is just in deepening what can be achieved by natural science and in particular in feeling deep admiration for what natural science has achieved that the way for a modern science of spirit or anthroposophy is prepared. But the latter is also well aware that however admirable these achievements of natural science are, however significant they may be for particular purposes, however necessary they may be for sound human progress, they can never penetrate the real mystery of man. This they themselves have proved until now.

The science of spirit or anthroposophy therefore takes its cue from natural science and tries to go quite a different way, and this way is not connected with trying to explain what we experience with our normal consciousness by means of a study of the very small or the very large, nor with methods using microscopes, telescopes or anything that can be attained by our senses or instruments which help them, nor by any scientific methods used in the sense world, nor by studying anything other than what we experience in our normal consciousness, but the science of spirit seeks to approach a solution to the mystery of man by a quite different kind of perception, as far as it is possible for human beings to do this.

In giving an outline of how one can imagine this other way of looking at the things that surround us, and at the events that happen around us in the world, I will make use of a comparison which will help to make the matter clearer.

In ordinary life we are familiar with two states of consciousness, the state of our normal consciousness which we have from the time we awaken in the morning to the time we go to sleep in the evening—this is our normal day consciousness. We are also familiar with the state of our so-called dream consciousness, in which pictures rise chaotically out of depths of the organism that are not accessible to human consciousness, and these pictures appear to be completely without any form of order. It is our experience that makes us aware of the difference between this chaotic dream consciousness and our orderly day consciousness which is encompassed by the real world.

The science of spirit or anthroposophy shows us that just as we awaken out of the chaotic dream consciousness into our ordinary day consciousness there is also a further awakening out of our day consciousness to—as I have called it in my book, Riddles of Man—a perceptive consciousness. The science of spirit does not deal with a reversion into a world of dreams, visions or hallucinations, but with something that can enter into human consciousness, into ordinary day consciousness in the same way that this day consciousness replaces our dream consciousness when we awaken. The science of spirit or anthroposophy is therefore concerned with a perceptive consciousness, with a real awakening out of our ordinary day consciousness, with a higher consciousness, if I may use such an expression. And its content is derived from the results of this perceptive, higher consciousness.—Just as the human being awakens from his dream world, where pictures move chaotically to and fro, into the world of the senses, so now as a scientist of spirit he awakens from the normal day consciousness into a perceptive consciousness, where he becomes a part of a real, spiritual world.

Now, first of all, I must give an idea of what this perceptive consciousness is. It is not acquired by means of any particular fantastic, arbitrary act or fantastic arbitrary decision, but it is acquired by a person working as a scientist of spirit, work which takes a long time, that is no less toilsome than work in the laboratory or observatory, which is pieced together out of the smallest fragments, perhaps even with only small results, but which are necessary for the progress of science as a whole. But everything that the scientist of spirit has to do is not done as in the laboratory or observatory with ordinary methods and appliances, but is done with the only apparatus that is of any use to the science of spirit, the human soul. It consists of inner processes of the human soul, which, as we shall now see, have nothing to do with vague or chaotic mysticism, but which demand systematic and methodical work on the human soul.

How does one acquire the wish to pursue such spiritual work, such an inner development, such a higher self training? It is possible to do it by taking our ordinary conscious life as a starting point, and gradually coming to a particular kind of conviction that becomes more compelling as one immerses one's mind in the modern scientific outlook. For several hundred years already there have been some personalities with this attitude of mind, and today this is increasingly the case. I cannot mention individual names now, but this inner experience, which gradually emerges under the influence of the scientific way of thinking as a distinct and necessary inner outlook and attitude, will affect increasingly wider circles of people and will become a common conviction with all the consequences that such a conviction is bound to entail.

There are two things that we are concerned with here. The first is that we have to acquire a certain view of the human ego, or what we call our self, by means of true and intimate observation, carried out willingly and with discipline. We address this self, we express it in one word, when after a certain point in our childhood development, we begin to use the word “I.” In our honest self-observation based on self-training we ask: What is this ego really like? Where is it to be found in us? Is it possible to find it or, if we are honest and conscientious, do we not have to admit as the great thinker Hume did, who did not arrive at his convictions arbitrarily, but by honest, self-observation, that however much I look into myself, I find feelings, ideas, joy and sorrow, I find what I have experienced in the world, but I do not find an ego anywhere? And how can I in any case—as he quite rightly says—find this ego? If it could be found so easily it would also have to be present when I sleep. But when I sleep, I know nothing about this ego. Can I assume that it is extinguished in the evening and revives again in the morning? Without actually being grasped by the mind, it must be present even when the mind is not working in sleep.

This is absolutely clear. And all those who are familiar with present-day literature on this subject will increasingly find this clear and obvious, that this will become more and more the case.

How are we to understand this? I would have to speak for hours if I were to go into details to prove what I am now saying.—I can only just mention the one fact that the ego of which we are speaking is present in the same way in our day consciousness as it is in the deepest, dreamless sleep. The ego always sleeps. It sleeps when we are asleep, and it sleeps when we are awake, and we know only about a sleeping ego when we are awake, about what lives, even as far as our waking consciousness is concerned, in a hardly conscious sphere of our soul life. Even when we are wide awake in our ordinary consciousness the ego is still only present as it is when we sleep. The reason we cannot imagine anything like an ego in us is because the rest of our soul life is present and, like the black spot in our eyes, cannot see.—The ego is made dark in our souls in a way, and can only be perceived as something we cannot imagine. The ego is always asleep and there is no difference between the way the ego should be imagined in sleep and when we are awake.

It is the same when we consider our minds; for if we train our self-observation properly we realize that our mental images have exactly the same existence in our waking day life as they do in the night in the chaotic mental images of our dreams. In our minds we dream, even when we are awake.

These truths that our ego sleeps and that we dream in our minds and imagination, even when we are awake—these truths, it is true, are washed away by our active life in the day. But for anyone able to observe the human soul they prove to be great and shattering truths which stand at the start of every spiritually scientific investigation.

And if we were then to ask, to ask one's self-observation: This is all very well, but how do we actually distinguish our ordinary waking life of the day from our dream life and our sleeping life? What happens at the moment when we wake up?—As I have said, I cannot go into details—you can find all the details necessary to understand more completely what I am now saying in outline in my book Knowledge of Higher Worlds and its Attainment.—The question arises: What actually happens when we wake up, if our ego really remains asleep and our ideas and images, even in waking life, are like dream pictures? What is the difference between the waking and the sleeping human being?

Trained self-observation provides the answer: It is solely the penetration of the will into the soul life which differentiates waking life from sleeping and dreaming. The fact that we are awake and do not dream is due solely to the will pouring into us. It is because of this that we do not have dream pictures rising up without any direction of will, that we unite ourselves to the outer world with our will and with our will become a part of the outer world. It is what awakens the dream pictures to the substance of real-ness that they are images of an outer world, that brings it about that after waking up we are able to incorporate ourselves into the world through our will.

However paradoxical this may sound to many people today, it will have to become a basic conviction of a future outlook and will indeed become so, because it is bound to follow from a science based on true self-observation.

It is the flashing of the will into our minds that gives us our real connection with the outer world, which we experience with our ordinary consciousness. It is this that provides us with real self-observation in our ordinary consciousness. But we cannot remain in this consciousness if we really wish to fathom the actual nature of the things that surround us and the connection of human beings with the world. There has to be a similar transformation in our soul life, in the ordinary soul life we have in the day, in relation to the transformation that happens in our sleeping and dreaming life when we wake up. And a transformation can come about by working arduously towards a change, firstly in the life of our minds, and secondly, in the life of our will.

And I would like to point out at the start that what we call the science of spirit or anthroposophy is not based on anything metaphysical, spiritualistic or anything vaguely mystical, but that it is a true continuation of the well-founded and human scientific way of thinking. And so we can, for instance, link on to the sound beginnings that are to be found in the Goethean outlook upon nature and the world.

Allow me this personal remark, because it has something to do with what I have to say. That I am linking on to this Goethean outlook upon nature and the world is due to the fact that my destiny led me to immerse myself in it and to take from it what leads, as we shall see, to real perception into the spiritual world that surrounds us, surrounds us in the same way that the sense world does. What is so noteworthy with Goethe—and which is still not appreciated today—is that for instance he is able to bring physical phenomena that normally are only considered quite apart from the soul being, right into the life of the human soul. It is really quite wonderful to see how Goethe treats the physical aspects in his Theory of Color, which is still looked down upon by most people today, how he starts with the physical and physiological aspects and leads from them to what he expresses so beautifully in the section, “The Physical and Moral Effect of Color.” Naturally, one compromises oneself in many respects if one speaks about Goethe's Theory of Color. It cannot be spoken about as a matter of course because in its present form physics does not allow for any possibilities of discussing a justification of Goethe's theory. But the time will come when Goethe's Theory of Color will be vindicated by a more advanced kind of physics.

I can refer to what I have said about the artistic side of this in my book Goethe's Conception of the World, and in my introduction to Goethe's scientific writings. (Published in English as Goethe the Scientist—Ed.) Today, however, I am not concerned with vindicating Goethe's Theory of Color, but only wish to deal with method, with how Goethe manages to evolve beyond purely physical considerations in the chapter “The Physical and Moral Effect of Colors.” Here he describes so beautifully what the human soul experiences when it perceives the color blue. Blue, says Goethe, pours into the soul the experience of coldness because it reminds us of shadow. Blue rooms bestow a feeling of sadness on all the objects in the rooms.—Or let us take what Goethe says about the experience of the color red. Red, says Goethe, produces an experience purely according to its own nature. It can produce the experience of seriousness and worthiness, or of devotion and grace—of seriousness and worthiness in its darker and thicker shades, of devotion and grace in its lighter and thinner shades.—So we see that Goethe does not only deal with the immediate physical nature of color, but he brings the soul into it, the experiences of sympathy and antipathy, as immediate experiences of the soul, as we have in life when we feel joy and sorrow. It may be that the intensity with which Goethe studied the colors is hardly noticeable, but nevertheless he goes through all the colors in a way that one can do if one allows one's soul life to pervade them,—that is, Goethe does not separate the physical from the soul experience. In doing this he laid the foundation for a kind of observation which even today is naturally only in its beginnings, but which will find a serious and worthy further development in the science of spirit. For the human being's relationship to color is exactly the same as exists with the rest of his senses. He is so fully taken up with the perception of something physical, with what works through his eyes and ears, that he does not perceive what radiates through and permeates the physical percept as an element of soul; he does not experience its full power and significance in his inner life. It is like not being able to see a weak light against a strong one. For it is above all the physical object that our eye normally perceives so strongly.

Now it is possible to take what is to be found in Goethe in its first beginnings—albeit instinctively with him because of his naturally sound outlook—a stage further. And it can also be looked at from another viewpoint. Goethe never deals with colors only as they exist in the world, but he also deals with the reaction they stimulate, their effect on the organism. How wonderful, even compared with the latest experiments in physics done by Hertwig, Hume and others, are the things that Goethe brought to light about the reaction of the eye, how the colors are not only perceived as long as one looks at them, but then they only gradually fade away. In all this there are in our ordinary perceptions weak beginnings which can be applied much more to the inner life of our mental images and can undergo further development. For in the conscientious and careful development of particular aspects of our cognitive and imaginative life there is to be found an aspect of science that belongs to the science of spirit or anthroposophy. Goethe's attitude to color has to be applied by those who wish to penetrate into the spiritual world by means of the science of spirit to the content of our minds, which for our normal consciousness is really only a world of dream pictures permeated by the will. The scientist of spirit also approaches the outer world in exactly the same way as our ordinary consciousness approaches the pictures in our minds, concepts and ideas. A sound thinking person does not become any different from anyone else. But if he is to receive a revelation of the spiritual world he has to effect a particular kind of perceptive consciousness. And he does this by inducing a certain metamorphosis in the life of his mind.

The details of what has to be done you can find in the book already mentioned. I only want to put before you now the main principles.

The scientist of spirit gradually manages to free his mental images from their normal task by a particular kind of methodical approach to the content of his mind. The normal function of our mental images is that they enable us to have pictures of the outer world. These pictures are the end result. But for the scientist of spirit they are a beginning, for whatever their significance, whatever kind of picture of the world they give, he immerses himself in its inner life, the inner effects of the picture, the image. And he does this in such a way that he does not look to its content, but to the forces that develop in it, and he does this when his consciousness has been completely brought to rest and becomes alive in the activity of his imagination and thinking.

Normally, a scientist starts with nature as it is in the world and ends up with his ideas. The scientist of spirit has to start with the inner activity of his ideas, with a kind of meditative activity, but which is not at all the same as the kind of meditation normally described and which is nothing more than brooding on something that is on one's mind—no, what we are concerned with here is that the soul is brought to rest, its activity is stilled, so that the life of the soul approaches certain ideas that can be grasped and surveyed like a calm sea. They should then become active in the life of the soul, active solely in the life of the mind. After a great amount of meditative work which is certainly not less than work done in the laboratory or observatory, we arrive at a stage where we perceive remarkable things happening, affecting the life of the soul in this inner life of the mind. One of the most important and significant faculties of the soul that we develop in our normal consciousness is our memory, our ability to remember. What is it that our memory, our ability to remember brings about? It enables us to call up at a later time mental images that we have formed at an earlier time. First of all, we have an experience and this is taken into the mind. The resulting image is like a shadow of the original experience. The experience disappears, but the fact of its existence continues.—We carry the image of the experience in us. Years later, or whenever it might be, we can recall it. What we recall out of the total organism of our spirit, soul and body as a memory image is a shadow-like copy of what was imprinted on the memory in the first place.

If we pursue the methods actively and energetically that are given and described in my books for the cultivation of the mind, we acquire a much stronger kind of activity in the soul working in the memory. However paradoxical it may appear, I have to describe it, because I do not want to speak about the generalities of the science of spirit, but to deal with the positive and concrete aspect of it, upon which it is based. The scientist of spirit experiences that a mental image is brought alive, and by bringing the peace of his consciousness constantly to bear upon this image he gets to the point where he knows: Now you have exercised the powers of your thinking to such an extent that you can continue no further.—Then something shattering happens. The moment arrives when we know that we cannot continue to use our thinking in the same controlled way, but have to let it go, just as we let an idea or image go that then sinks into forgetfulness and that later can be recalled out of this by our memory. But when an image that we have as a result of an energetic meditative life is let go, it enters into much greater depths of our life than an image that is taken into our memory. The scientist of spirit then experiences—this is only one example, other experiences have to be linked to this, but now I only wish to give a few examples—that he has strengthened an image by the powers of his thinking to such an extent that he can allow it to sink into his being so that it is no longer present. But then it appears later, according to the images we have—this has all to be regulated—these images remain present. We acquire views in the course of time in which these images have to remain present, deep down in the unconscious. Some images remain for a longer period in the subconscious, others a shorter period and we acquire the power to recall them again and again. We do not do this by exerting ourselves in trying to remember an image. Images are recalled by peaceful immersion in ourselves; It is not like the way our ordinary memory works, for here we are dependent upon a mood of expectancy that we bring about at the right moment. We become aware of this mood of expectancy by other things which cannot be described here. We have a mood or feeling of expectancy; we do not do anything to bring about an image or an experience. We simply have this peaceful expectancy, this purely selfless immersion in ourselves and only after hours, weeks or even only after years does there come back what we have perceived in the very depths of our being, as if in a kind of abyss. And then the opposite happens from what takes place in our normal consciousness.

With our normal consciousness the experience comes first in all its vividness and then the shadowlike image is produced. Here something quite different happens. We start with something which leads at the same time to self-discipline and self-education, and this is an image which we put before our souls and let it be present in the soul for weeks or months until the moment comes when it can be completely immersed. Then it emerges again—but how it emerges is the surprising thing, for it is not anything as shadowlike as the normal image.

This experience is brought about by working on the image in a certain way and we know full well, if we are familiar with things that lead to such results as these, that we are dealing here with something sound and not morbidly introspective. These are not the same forces that lead to hallucinations or visions, or that produce morbid or unsound states of any kind, but they are the forces that produce precisely the opposite and, in fact, have the effect of banishing everything in the nature of hallucinations and visions.—It is the opposite process. The soul, in undergoing this, is not as it is in everyday life with its normal, healthy understanding, but it has to be much healthier and sounder if the exercises which belong to this whole development and which have to be done regularly are to overcome everything that would lead one astray. What this leads up to is something we have not known before—something spiritual, something super-sensible, that we now perceive in ourselves. What is it that perceives? It is what Goethe called the eye or the ear of the spirit, of which he had an instinctive presentiment.

From the moment onward when we have had an experience such as I have just described, we know that we do not have only a physical body, but that we have a finer, more inward body that is in no way made up of physical substance. However paradoxical it may appear to many people today when in the science of spirit or anthroposophy we speak of a fine etheric body, a soul body, it is nevertheless a truth—but a truth that can really be investigated only in this way I have described. We now know that we have something in ourselves in which spiritual perception can arise, just as perception can arise in the physical organism in the physical eye. We know that the eye or the ear of the spirit, as Goethe called it, becomes something from which there springs something out of the etheric world, out of the super-sensible body. We cannot use this super-sensible body like a physical body, but we know that it exists and we know that there has to be a science of spirit for us to find it. It does not come into being by means of any arbitrary act of the will, but it comes into being with the help of the most recent philosophical thought.

Let me cite a few facts that are especially important in this connection for the formation of a judgment about anthroposophy. The philosophers of more recent times who inherited the work of their predecessors done around the turn of the 18th to the 19th century and in the first half of the 19th century, pointed out, albeit instinctively and not as a result of method, that man does not have only a physical body, which provides the basis for his being, but he also has what one can call an etheric, a soul body. Only the terminology for this fine body was different, a body which exists as a fact for the science of spirit.

This kind of assumption led Immanuel Hermann Fichte (1797-1879) to his conception of the process of death, which he expressed in the following way: “For we hardly have to ask how the human being acts in regard to himself” when “going through death ... With this concept of the continuing existence of the soul we are not therefore bypassing our experience and laying hold of an unknown sphere of merely illusory existence, but we find ourselves in the midst of a comprehensible reality accessible to our thinking.” And now Fichte says—and this is what is important—this consciousness points to something beyond itself. “... Anthroposophy produces results founded on the most varied evidence that according to the nature of his being as also in the real source of his consciousness man belongs to a super-sensible world. Our ordinary consciousness, however, which is based on our senses and on the picture of the world that arises through the use of sight, and which includes the whole life of the sense world, including the human sense world, all this is really only a place where the super-sensible life of the spirit is carried out in bringing the otherworldly spiritual content of ideas into the sense world by a conscious free act ... This fundamental conception of man's being raises `Anthropology' in its final result into `Anthroposophy'.”

Into an “anthroposophy!” He uses the expression, anthroposophy. We can see from this the longing for the science that today has to become a reality.

To cite another example—owing to lack of time I can only quote a few examples—I would like to bring in the important German thinker, Vital Troxler (1780-1866), who also did some important teaching in Switzerland. He speaks out of the same approach, but still instinctively, because the science of spirit or anthroposophy did not exist at that time: “Even in earlier times philosophers distinguished a fine, noble, soul body from the coarse body ... a soul, which contained within it a picture of the body which they called a model and which for them was the inner higher man ... More recently even Kant in his Dreams of a Spiritual Seer dreams seriously as a joke about a wholly inward soul man, that bears within its spirit-body all the limbs normally to be found outside ...”

And now Troxler says: “It is most gratifying that the most recent philosophy, which ... must be manifest ... in anthroposophy, climbs to greater heights, and it must be remembered that this idea cannot be the fruit of mere speculation ...”

I do not need to quote the rest. He means that there must be a science which leads to the super-sensible, to the qualities of this super-sensible body, just as anthropology leads to the physical qualities and forces of the physical human body.

I have dealt with characteristic thinkers on this subject in my book, The Riddles of Man. They did not work out these things as the present-day science of spirit can do, but they spoke out of instinctive longing for a future science of spirit that has now to become a reality through this present science of spirit. Thus also the son of the great Johann Gottlieb Fichte, the important philosopher, Immanuel Herman Fichte.

In his Anthropology, the second edition of which appeared in 1860, Fichte says that there can be nothing that persists in matter: “In the elements of matter it is not possible to find the unifying form principle of the body that is active during our whole life. We are therefore directed to a second, essentially different cause in the body. Insofar as this contains what persists in the digestion it is the true, inner, invisible body that is present in all visible matter. The outer manifestation of this, formed out of the never-ceasing digestion may henceforth be called `body' which neither persists nor is a unity and which is the mere effect or image of the inner bodily nature, which casts it into the changing world of substance in the same way that an apparent solid body is made out of the particles of iron filings by a magnetic force, but which is again reduced to dust as soon as the binding force is taken away.”

Thus we see that Immanuel Hermann Fichte instinctively finds himself in the position of having to accept a force-body which holds the material components together in a material body in a certain formal structure like a magnetic force.

You notice, too, that Fichte also longs for an anthroposophy when he deals with the super-sensible in man and draws our attention to it.

Anthroposophy does not appear at a particular time without reason, but it is something that has long been anticipated by the really deep core of our soul life. This can be seen quite clearly in the examples I have given.

Now I must turn to the other aspect of the development of our soul life, the development of the will. What I have said so far was concerned with the development of the mind. The will, too, can be led beyond the condition it has in our normal consciousness. If you imagine that someone—I only want to mention the most important things, the rest can be read in my books—that someone were to look at his inner life in the same way that we look at our ordinary life between human beings under normal conditions, the life of the human community, we can notice our reaction when a desire or impulse awakens when we say: Conditions allow this impulse, this desire to take its course; another time the conditions do not allow us, or we do not allow it. We see that we evolve a certain responsibility toward outer life that is rooted in our conscience. We develop quite definite feelings, a particular configuration of our soul life in our conscience, concerning what we do or do not do. Our normal consciousness is subject to our soul life in developing such inner demands or standards—we obey logic, but when it comes to thinking or not thinking, to whether thinking is clear or restricted, how cool and logical our relationship is to this as compared to our relationship to outer life! We accept the one because we can, as it were, grasp it in spirit, as a mental image; we reject the other. But one cannot experience the intensive life that we feel in our human responsibility when it comes to our purely logical and scientific thinking.

The second kind of exercise consists in pouring out a certain kind of inner responsibility over our thinking, over our mind, so that we reach the point of not only saying: This opinion is valid, this opinion is properly conceived, I can give it my assent and so on, but also that we manage to preserve a mental image in the same duty-bound consciousness as we have when we do not go through with the one or the other action. Morality—though quite a different kind of morality from the one we have in normal life—is poured out over our mind, over our mental images. Inner responsibility poured out over the life of our mental images results in attitudes where in dealing in certain experiences we allow ourselves some mental images and reject others, in the one case accepting them, in the other rejecting them by a justified but temperate antipathy. From this new aspect, sympathy and antipathy activate our inner life. This again has to be practiced for a long time. I will give an example of how this can be supported by accustoming ourselves to allowing a mental image to be present in our souls in as manifold a way as possible.

In ordinary life one person may be a monist, another a dualist, the third a materialist, the fourth a spiritualist and so on. If we learn to immerse ourselves in the life of our mental images our concepts take on a different aspect in the living inner experience of the world of our mental images so that we come to recognize: Of course, there are concepts of materialism, they can be used for a particular province, for a particular sphere of the world. In fact, they must be available, for one can only get something out of immersing oneself in a particular sphere of the world if one has grasped materialism in all its many aspects. For another sphere of the world spiritualistic concepts are needed, for a third, monistic, for a fourth, the concept of idealism and so on. Monistic, dualistic concepts—they enrich the life of our minds and we know that such concepts mean no more than do different photographs of a tree taken from different points. We learn now to immerse ourselves in an inner element, an inner tolerance, that once again is an outpouring of moral substances over our inner life. It is just like someone receiving a picture of a tree that he has actually seen, who would never say, if he received a picture of the tree taken from a different angle, that it was not the same tree. Just as we can have four or even eight pictures which all portray the same tree, so we learn to look at all sorts of ideas, which singly would represent a one sided picture of reality, and to learn about them, to look into them with great care and immerse ourselves in their manifoldness. This is normally underrated when it comes to doing the exercises which have now to be undertaken. This is something that is not much understood today, even by the best, but it does lead to the further development of the will in a way similar to the development of the mind that I have described. We then experience that the will liberates itself from being bound to the body.

Just as oxygen can be extracted from water, so the will is released by means of the energetic pursuit of these various exercises that are described, and it becomes freer and freer, and more and more spiritual. By these means we awaken a real, higher man in ourselves that is not just an image of an ideal nor something thought out. We make the discovery which is still a paradox to most people today, but which is quite real for the science of spirit, that a second, more subtle man lives in us, having a quite different consciousness from our normal consciousness. And this consciousness that we can awaken in this way shows us that it is a much more real man than the one that we live in the physical body and move around in. This man in us can make use of the eye of the spirit, as I called it earlier, in the etheric body, in the way I have described.

The acceptance of such another consciousness of another more all-embracing man—this has a far more intimate connection with nature and its beings and to the spiritual world than our normal consciousness.—The acceptance of this also was instinctively foreseen by the more penetrating scientists of the 19th century. Here, too, the science of spirit brings about a fulfillment. I would only like to point out how Eduard von Hartmann worked in this direction, though I do not wish to advocate his philosophy in detail in any way. In his really controvertible work, The Philosophy of the Unconscious, Hartmann referred to the fact that an unknown soul quality is to be found behind the normal consciousness of the human being that—as Eduard von Hartmann describes it—comes to expression painfully in a way, and which has a kind of underground telephone connection with the unconscious spiritual nature of the outer world, and which can work its way up, and does work its way up, through the astral nature and pours out of the unconscious or subconscious into our normal, everyday consciousness.

Eduard von Hartmann really pointed instinctively to what the science of spirit teaches as a fact. Only he believed that this other consciousness of the human being could only be arrived at by theoretical hypotheses, analytical concepts and inferences. This was what he was lacking because he never wanted to take the path which is appropriate to his time: not just to formulate the life of the soul theoretically, but to take it actively into training in the two ways that have been described.

It has been possible to see from this that the acceptance of this spiritual nature in everything is much more helped by the solution of the mystery of the human being—even from a philosophical viewpoint, if it really remains philosophical—than all that can be done by the rest of science in the ways described above. And this can be proved by what has happened. Just in these matters Eduard von Hartmann proves a remarkable figure.

In 1869 he published his Philosophy of the Unconscious. Here he discussed how the spiritual that lives in the soul, hidden, as it were, in the spiritual soul, also lives in nature, and how the materialist today has only a one-sided idea of how the spiritual that lives in the soul also permeates and invades nature. In was 1869 that The Philosophy of the Unconscious was first published. It was the time when people had the greatest hopes of gaining a new view of the world on the basis of the new Darwinian approach, the laws of natural selection and the struggle for existence. Hartmann energetically opposed everything connected with this approach from a spiritual viewpoint, and naturally enough the scientists who were full of materialistic interpretation of Darwinism reacted to what Hartmann said. They said: Well, of course, only a philosopher can speak like that who is not at home in real scientific research and who does not know how conscientiously science works!—And many works were published by various scientists attacking Hartmann's Philosophy of the Unconscious. They all wrote basically the same thing—Hartmann was a dilettante and one should not bother to listen to him any further. One only had to protect the layman who always fell for such things; that is why Hartmann's position should be exposed.

Among the many works that appeared there was also one which was anonymous. From start to finish everything was brilliantly refuted. It was shown how from the viewpoint which a scientist had to have, he understood nothing about how science works in its approach to the great mystery of the world!—The scientists were tremendously enthusiastic and were in full agreement with what the anonymous author had written, and it was soon necessary to reprint this ingenious, scientific work. Oskar Schmidt and Ernst Haeckel themselves were full of praise and said: It is a pity that this colleague of ours, this significant scientific thinker, does not say who he is. If he will only say who he is we will regard him as one of ourselves.—In fact, Ernst Haeckel even said: I myself could have said nothing better than what this anonymous author has marshaled from the scientific viewpoint against Hartmann.

And lo and behold, a second edition was needed just as the scientists had wished, But now in the second edition the author revealed himself. It was Eduard von Hartmann himself who had written the work! This was a lesson that could not have been executed more brilliantly for people who constantly believe that those who do not adopt their own attitude could not possibly understand anything about their learning and knowledge. It is a lesson from which we can still learn today, and particularly those could learn who, when it comes to opposing what the science of spirit teaches, approach it with a similar attitude.

The scientist of spirit or anthroposophist knows quite well the sort of things that can be leveled against anthroposophy, however well it may be presented. He is fully aware of what can be said against it, just as Eduard von Hartmann was able to present what the scientists found to be excellent and to their liking. Such lessons, it is true, are soon forgotten, and the old habits soon return. But we can recall them, and we should learn from them. It is not only with Eduard von Hartmann but also with others that an instinctive feeling has arisen that quite a different kind of consciousness is at work in the depths of the human soul.

I would remind you of Myers, the English scientist and editor of the reports of psychic experiments which were published in many volumes and which set out to show how there is something hidden in the human soul that exists alongside our ordinary experience,—what James, the American, called the year of the discovery of one of the most significant facts, namely the discovery of the unconscious in 1886. Today scientists on the whole know very little about such things. They know nothing of Eduard von Hartmann's arguments, nothing about James, nothing about 1886 when Myers discovered the unconscious, the part of us that is of a spirit-soul nature and is connected with the spirit-soul nature of the world, and that rises into and awakens our normal consciousness. It is the same as I have described as awakening as if out of our everyday consciousness, out of a dreaming state, and makes our ordinary consciousness into a perceptive consciousness.—But in Myers and James it is to be found in a chaotic and immature state, rather like a hope or promise.—It becomes a real fact for the first time with the science of spirit or anthroposophy.

And so we see—however paradoxical it may appear today—that the development of the inner powers of the soul emerges on two fronts. I can only indicate how what I have described in its first beginnings, when systematically carried out, eventually leads to our being increasingly able to learn to use the spiritual eye in the etheric body by means of the other man that lives in us, and we discover this world of inner processes in ourselves and are able to feel ourselves as belonging to it. How we then learn not only to overcome our conception of space, but also of time. We come to look at time in quite a different way. And, as I have said, we become able not only to carry ourselves back in our memories into the past, but also to gain experience of ourselves at earlier points of time and also to carry ourselves back beyond the time that we normally remember.

You all know that we can remember back only to a certain point in our childhood. This is as far as we can think back to. What we experienced in the first years of our childhood we can only be reminded of from outside. But now we can carry ourselves back to the time in our earliest childhood when as human beings we were not yet able to recognize or perceive our powers, to the time when the forces we need for our ordinary consciousness were needed for the initial growth of the body. That is to say, we learn to perceive not with the ego of our earliest childhood, but the ego that has brought our spiritual nature out of the spiritual world and united itself with what has been inherited in the way of physical forces and substances from our father, mother and ancestors. We go back to this spiritual human being. From the present moment we look back with an awakened consciousness and see through the sense world into the spiritual; we have a spiritual world before us. Similarly, when we carry ourselves back in time we then have a qualitative experience of the life that we live in the body and that comes to an end with death. On the one hand, our ordinary perception cuts us off in our normal consciousness from spiritual reality; on the other, our bodily experience cuts us off in our normal consciousness from what exists beyond the gate of death. The moment we reach the time which we can remember back to, we see on the other hand life bordered by death, and we see what death makes of us. What is beyond death is revealed, together with what is beyond birth, only divided, kept apart by our life in the body. The spiritual man, the eternal in us, is experienced in that we see our physical life as a river; the one bank is birth and the other bank is death. Death, however, is revealed together with what exists before birth.

We also see maturing in us what leads from this life to a further life on earth. For if we have gone through the gate of death we then see what lives in us. Just as we can say that there is something that lives in the plant which, having gone through the dark and cold time of year, develops into a new plant, so we see how our spirit-soul nature that is within us in this life goes through the spiritual world between death and birth and appears again in a new life on earth. All this becomes accessible to our perception when we develop the powers of the soul in the way that it has been described. Just as we grow accustomed to a physical world through our open eyes and open ears, so we accustom ourselves to a spiritual world, really become concretely aware of a spiritual world that exists around us. We live together with spiritual beings, spiritual forces. Just as we recognize our life, our body, as the expression of our spiritual being which begins at birth, or rather at conception, so we also come to know our physical life on the earth, our physical earth, as a further condition or state of something that has been preceded in planetary existence.

We come to see our earth as a metamorphosis, a transformation of an earlier planet, in which we existed as human beings at an earlier stage, not yet with the present-day physical body, but in a spiritual state and with the nature we have today in a spiritual form. The animals have undergone a downward evolution, the human being has evolved in such a way that the point at which man and animal meet is to be found in the spiritual and not in the physical. Man's evolution on the earth is a continuation of the life on an earlier planet, which has been transformed into the present earth, and which will similarly be transformed into the next stage and will enable the human being to take into himself an ego that today is still slumbering in him, but which will become more and more awake in the further course of evolution. The whole world will be spiritualized.

When we speak about nature we do not content ourselves with referring to a vague pantheism existing in the outer world, but in looking at the being of the earth we speak of rising stages that we get to know. Nor do we enter into a spiritual world with a vague pantheism, but as a concrete individual and real human being.

Today one is forgiven least of all for saying such a thing as this. Nevertheless it is true that a real, concretely spiritual world is opened up to us, the spiritual world that we belong to with our spiritual man, just as with our physical man we belong to ordinary physical reality.

And so in bringing about a methodical awakening of inner life the science of spirit or anthroposophy adds knowledge of spirit to natural knowledge and introduces a different picture of the world from the one we have in our ordinary consciousness. In this connection the science of spirit will gradually have to be taken into the hearts of those who are longing for it, but who for the most part do not know that this longing exists in their hidden feelings. But it is there, and it will come to be more and more recognized.

It is remarkable how even the most eminent thinkers of our time and of the immediate past have not yet been able to grasp the details of the kind of experience I have been describing. I wanted to cite the great philosopher Eduard von Hartmann who had an idea of what it was about, but who was only interested in reaching another consciousness in the human being theoretically, and who was unable to discover that one cannot find one's way into the spiritual by theories or hypotheses, but only by experience, by working upon one's thoughts in such a way that they are sent out as messengers into an unknown world, from which they return as experience, and that leads one into the spiritual world, as I have described. But the experience of it must be based on accepting the existence of a world of ideas and images as real.

Forgive me if I say something personal once more, but it is very much connected with this whole subject. I do not particularly wish to do so, but you will see why I refer to it.

In 1894 I attempted in my Philosophy of Spiritual Activity to provide the world with just such a philosophical approach as a preparation for the science of spirit, where the individual human viewpoints, which sometimes have such remarkable names, could be understood, not as a choice of mutually exclusive views, but that they could be seen like photographs or different pictures of the same object and that these concepts could be allowed to speak for themselves so that one has a many-sided picture.

Eduard von Hartmann studied this Philosophy of Spiritual Activity in 1894, and he sent me his copy in which he had made notes. I would like to read a passage from the letter he sent me. It contains singular, philosophical expressions but what he means is quite clear even without going into what these expressions mean.

In the first place he says, for instance: “The title should be `Monism based on the theory of knowledge—ethical individualism,' and not `Philosophy of Spiritual Activity'.”

But he has an instinctive feeling for the fact that these two aspects are supposed to throw light on one and the same thing. He thinks, however, that they cannot be brought together. They are in fact brought together in the life of the soul and not by means of empty theories. This is what he meant. And similarly in other points.

Eduard von Hartmann therefore says: “In this book neither Hume's absolute phenomenalism nor Berkeley's phenomenalism based on God are reconciled, nor this more immanent or subjective, phenomenalism and the transcendental panlogism of Hegel, nor Hegel's panlogism and Goethean individualism. Between these two aspects there yawns an unbridgeable abyss.”

Because all these views exist in such a living way, they all testify to the same thing, they characterize one and the same thing from varying viewpoints!

Hartmann has an inkling of this, a feeling for it, but he does not see that what is important is not a hypothetical and theoretical way of putting them together in thought, but a living way of experiencing them as a unity.

He therefore goes on to say: “Above all, the fact is ignored that phenomenalism leads with absolute inevitability to soliphism [this may be a coined word, a `typo,' or the translator really meant solipsism - e.Ed] (that is, to a doctrine of being one, a doctrine of the ego), to illusionism and to agnosticism, and nothing is done to prevent this plunge into the abyss of un-philosophy, because the danger is not even recognized.”

This danger certainly has been recognized! And Eduard von Hartmann once again instinctively uses the right expression: “plunge into the abyss of un-philosophy.”

This is precisely what I have described today! Of course, this plunge into the abyss is not prevented by un-philosophy or by any hypotheses setting out to be philosophical, but only by our real life being led into the other existence, by the unconscious being made conscious, so that what is experienced objectively and independently in the soul can be guided back again into the conscious.

You can see here how the science of spirit or anthroposophy has gradually to get to grips with the longings and hopes for such a science, that exist at the present time, but which in themselves cannot get as far as what has to be achieved in the science of spirit, because for this to happen it is imperative to see that intimate work on the soul has to be done which does not remain mystically subjective, but is just as objective as ordinary science and knowledge.

What then has been done about this up to now? I have cited Oskar Hertwig to you. Oskar Hertwig is one of those who felt the significance of Eduard von Hartmann!

Ernst Haeckel is one of those who mocked most at what Eduard von Hartmann published in his Philosophy of the Unconscious.

Oskar Hertwig still cites Eduard von Hartmann continuously and does so in full agreement with what he says, even where Eduard von Hartmann says that the way in which the idea of natural selection is treated as a modern superstition is like a childhood disease, a scientific childhood disease of our times. This is cited by Oskar Hertwig, himself a pupil of Haeckel, as an appropriate statement about natural science by Eduard von Hartmann. And there is much more like this. It all adds up to a clear statement as to what science is unable to recognize and what it would really have to recognize. But what has happened is that the pupils of the great teachers of science of the 19th century have already started to refute everything that existed earlier in the nature of the hopes I have been talking about.

Oskar Hertwig is extraordinarily interesting because he shows that science today cannot have any objection to such a philosophy as Eduard von Hartmann's.

If the scientists find their way to Eduard von Hartmann, they will also find their way to the science of spirit. But then the general consciousness of humanity too will be able to find its way.

The science of spirit will encounter opposition enough from other directions as well. To conclude, I would like to mention briefly the objections that are constantly brought by the adherents of various religious organizations against the science of spirit. It is remarkable how it is just from the religious viewpoint that the science of spirit is attacked. It is said, for instance, that what the science of spirit has to say contradicts things in the Bible or that are held according to tradition.—But is this really what we should be concerned about? Could we think of not wanting to discover America because it cannot be found in the Bible or in Christian tradition?

If anyone believes that the power of the greatest thing in the world—Christianity—could be endangered because of some discovery, he cannot have much faith in it!

When I hear of how objections can be made by Christians, I recall a theologian, this time not Protestant, but Catholic, a teacher of Christian philosophy, member of a Catholic faculty of theology, who gave his inaugural lecture on Galileo—and we know how the church dealt with Galileo. This really genuinely Christian and Catholic priest, who up to the time of his death never denied that he was a true son of the church, said in his lecture on Galileo: It is with injustice that a really perceptive Christianity turns against the progress of natural science as brought about by such people as Galileo. It is with injustice that Christianity declares certain ideas which are falsely said to be derived from Christianity, to be irreconcilable with natural science. For modern science, thinks this priest and professor of theology, only appears to be irreconcilable with the more limited view of the world held by the ancient peoples, but not with the Christian view, for this Christian view, properly understood, is bound to confirm the discoveries of more and more wonders in the world, and is bound to confirm the glory of the Godhead and the glory of the Christian view; it is bound to confirm the wonders that divine grace has instituted upon the earth.

We can say the same about the science of spirit, for there is no contradiction between it and Christianity, properly understood. But contradiction exists only between it and a false teaching that unjustly purports to originate from Christianity. The only thing that the science of spirit cannot be reconciled with is a narrowly conceived scientific view of the world and not with a broadly based Christian view. And the discoveries of the science of spirit, the wonders that it finds in the spiritual world, will not mean an end to the wonders that Christianity teaches us about, but on the contrary will confirm them.

Laurenz Mueller, also a genuinely Christian theologian and professor, speaks in a similar vein: Christianity does not contradict and is not intended to contradict a doctrine of evolution properly understood, as long as it does not set out to be a purely causal evolution of the world and to place man only within the framework of a physical causality.

The science of spirit does not clash with Christianity, because it does not lead to the deadening of religious life and vision, but, on the contrary, it encourages and fires religious life and vision.

And those today who still believe that their Christianity would be endangered by the science of spirit will gradually have to realize that whereas wrongly understood science has driven away more and more souls, both outwardly and inwardly, anthroposophy or the science of spirit, because it kindles religious life, will bring even educated people back to the great mysteries, not only of Christian teaching, but also of Christian deeds and ceremonial services. This will largely be the work of the future, in fact, of the relatively near future.

Just in this connection one could wish that things would be better understood and that above all there were more willingness to understand the matter, that one would not formulate a picture without really going into it and then setting up this picture as something contradictory to Christianity.

I can only mention this very briefly. I would have to speak for a long time if I had to go into everything in detail—but this could be done—to show that Christianity has not the slightest grounds for turning against such ideas as repeated lives on earth.

To finish with, allow me to say a few words about the teachings of natural science.

Today natural science has arrived at the point of realizing what it cannot attain. Oskar Hertwig—to keep to our former example—hits upon something in a remarkable way in his book Das Werden der Organismen. Eine Widerlegung von Darwins Zufallstheorie.

In a remarkable way he comes to the conclusion that it is not any objective research, nor analytical research into scientific facts, that has led to the materialistic philosophy of Darwinism, but it arises from the fact that the people of this age have borne this materialistic outlook in themselves, have borne the belief in the unspiritual nature of the outer world in themselves, and have applied this to nature.

And here it is very interesting to feel the weight of Oskar Hertwig's own words to show the real nature of the situation.

Hertwig says: “The principle of utility, the conviction of the necessity of unrestricted commercial and social competition, materialistic tendencies in philosophy, are forces that would have played an important part, even without Darwin. Those who were already under their influence greeted Darwinism as a scientific confirmation of the ideas they already cherished. They could now look at themselves, as it were, in the mirror of science.”

“The interpretation of Darwin's teaching,” Oskar Hertwig continues, “which is so ambiguous in its uncertainties, also allows for a varied application in the other spheres of economic, social and political life. Each person can get what he wants from it, just as from the Delphic oracle, and can draw his own conclusions concerning social, hygienic, medical and other questions, and can call on the scientific learning of the new Darwinian biology with its unalterable laws of nature, to confirm his own views. If however these laws of nature are not what they are made out to be”—and Oskar Hertwig sets out to prove, and does prove, that they are not really laws of nature, “could there not also be social dangers when they are applied in various ways to other spheres? We surely do not believe that human society can use for fifty years such phrases as bitter struggle for existence, survival of the fittest, of the most useful, the most expedient, perfection by selection etc., without being deeply and substantially influenced in the whole direction of this kind of ideas.”

This is what a scientist is already saying today. He is not just saying that these materialistically formulated ideas of Darwinism are wrong, but that they are injurious, that they inevitably lead to difficulties in the soul life, and to social and political harm. Only the restricted and one-sided views of certain scientists could maintain otherwise. And sometimes this works out in the most terrible way.

A great scientist of the present day for whom I have great respect—and it is just because I have respect for him that I cite him now—hints in a remarkable way at how the scientist does not perhaps wish to be understood, but at how he must be understood on the basis of his attitude toward what can be expected of a purely naturalistic view of nature. The scientist, for whom I have the greatest respect, says at the end of a significant book—and these are now his own words that I am quoting: “We live today in the best period of time”—this is what he maintains, it cannot be proved with full validity, but he asserts: “we live today in the best period of time, at least we scientists, and we can even hope for better,” he says, “for in comparing the science of today with the achievements of earlier scientists we can say with Goethe who knew so much about nature and the world:

The pleasure ... is great, to cast

The mind into the spirit of the past,

And scan the former notions of the wise,

And see what marvelous heights we've reached at last.”

—Thus speaks a first class scientist at the end of an important book!

I do not know whether many people notice and think about the person whom Goethe makes say this. Is it really Goethe, the one who knew so much about the world and nature, who says this? No, he puts it into the mouth of Wagner

And Faust replies to Wagner:

“How strange, that he who cleaves to shallow things

Can keep his hopes alive on empty terms

And dig with greed for precious plunderings,

And find his happiness unearthing worms!”

This is the real view of the one who knew so much about the world and nature!

And if scientists today do not yet realize what can be built on the basis of the sound foundations to be found in a view of the world, such as also shone through Goethe, one can understand what Oskar Hertwig so rightly says: The materialistic conception of the world and Darwinism with its materialistic bias have arisen out of the general materialistic attitude of the times, their naturalistic methods, their materialistic impulses and feelings, and which have then been applied to nature. But the facts disprove this.

The scientist of spirit replies to this out of what he believes to be a deeper knowledge of the world and of man: No, it is not such a narrow view like the one prevalent around the middle of the 19th century that should affect our study of nature, but our views should be formulated according to the highest possible content that spirit and soul can attain, and they should then be applied to nature to see if nature really confirms them. We can then expect that the resultant view will not be anything like Darwinism. This latter believed the world to exist according to certain laws and, as we have seen, nature herself has disproved this belief.

The science of spirit strives to study the human soul in its depths, and to draw out of these depths the spirit that exists in the broadest and most embracing sense as the foundation of existence in spiritual beings and forces. It is not a one-sided but a many-sided path that it takes, for there is not only one path it follows, but it follows all the paths on which the human soul is led, from out of its own rich inner life. The science of spirit may be allowed to hope that the questions, the mysteries, which nature has put to it will not be refuted by nature, but that the spirit in nature will affirm them because the spirit that lives in nature also lives in man, and not, as in the other case, to deny what the science of spirit or anthroposophy envisages the real nature of the human mystery to be.

The situation of someone who wants to say something about the nature of the soul on a spiritual scientific basis, insofar as it can be described as immortal, is perhaps characterized for a very long time by the fact that I am talking about the publication of a book as an introduction. This book is entitled “Athanasia or the Reasons for the Immortality of the Soul”.

I would like to make it clear, so as not to be misunderstood, that today's spiritual research cannot consider this book as written in the spirit of this spiritual research. Spiritual research in the modern sense did not yet exist at that time, as I was able to sufficiently demonstrate in many lectures that I have given here. However, I would like to say that, in view of the fate that has befallen all those long-standing disputes that push towards what today wants to develop into spiritual science, I believe that what happened with the publication of this book is not without significance. So in 1827 a book entitled 'Athanasia or the Reasons for the Immortality of the Soul' was published. The person who published this book wrote a remarkable introduction to it, a remarkable preface, as they say. He writes that he was with a dying person and found the manuscript of this book at his bedside, that he then took over this manuscript with the consent of the dying man, that it could no longer be said to him exactly how the dying man came by this book, which apparently had a great, profound significance for his soul in the last days of his life. Then the person who publishes the book waited because the content seemed so significant to him, seemed to contain such important information about the soul's life after the detachment of the physical body that he could not imagine that this book would not be destined to make its content accessible to wider circles. But since he had waited long enough and had not seen the content published anywhere, he decided to publish the book himself.

What can legitimate research into the origin of this book tell us? There is the strange fact that the person who published this book, with this preface in which he recounts the book's remarkable fate, wrote this book himself, from beginning to end and published it without his name; that he only found it necessary, if one may say so – it is meant in the very best sense of the word – to invent a fairy tale about the book, as it has just been mentioned. It becomes somewhat more understandable why the writer of this book resorted to this fairy tale when one knows that he was a well-known personality in the broadest philosophical circles of his time, a philosopher who dealt with the most profound questions of philosophical thought : the Prague philosopher Bernard Bolzano, who had a large number of students, students who worked for many decades at Austrian universities, who always confessed what a profound influence they had drawn from Bolzano's teachings. So, a famous, influential philosopher, Bernard Bolzano, publishes a book in which he discusses the reasons for the immortality of the human soul, and in this book he has to present himself to the public in the manner described. Why did he do this? Well, the reasons are very obvious. In this book it is not merely stated, as it is so often the case in philosophical writings, that the human soul is immortal for these or those reasons that are derived from human logic. Rather, this book speaks of how man finds within himself a being that can perfect itself between birth and death, perfecting itself in terms of its thinking, perfecting itself in terms of its feeling , perfects itself in relation to its volitions; how this being, when it is rightly grasped by man, shows, however, that it not only bears within itself the powers that lead to its perfection up to death, but that it bears within itself powers that further perfect this soul-being, further develop it, that can be further filled with content even after the human being has passed through the gate of death. This book then explains how one must imagine, when one grasps the human soul, that the human soul must live in a certain environment when it has passed through the gate of death. It also indicates how this human soul, after its death, associates with other spiritual entities, which cannot be perceived as long as the human being dwells in the body. It is hinted at what relationship the human soul, after passing through the gate of death, can have with the relatives and friends left behind, with the souls attached to it in love. As already mentioned, all these details of the soul that has passed through the gate of death are not spoken of from the standpoint of today's spiritual science, but with fine, delicate reasons that a philosopher has developed who not only philosophizes with abstract concepts, but who is involved with his whole soul, with his whole human being, when he develops thoughts, especially the thoughts about that weaving and being in the human being himself, which we call the soul. But Bolzano knew only too well that as long as one remains a logician and discusses how one concept is linked to another, what logical reasons there are for the truth or probability of a judgment, as long as one discusses how attention in the human soul, possibly even the reasons for memory and for the will; in short, as long as one expresses everything that the soul performs while it dwells in the body, one can have the reputation of a scientific philosopher. But if one speaks about the human soul as Bolzano did in his Athanasia, then one's reputation as a philosopher is ruined. Then one is an unscientific person. Then you are a person who talks nonsense and can no longer be taken seriously by those who understand how to think scientifically. Even those who have not learned to think scientifically but swear by the authority of those whom they have heard of or of whom it has been publicly stated that they can think scientifically believe that they can thoroughly dispute the scientific value of such a personality. If Bolzano wanted to save his reputation as a philosopher, he had to resort to the maneuver described above, and then leave it to later researchers to recognize that the book was written by him. And no Bolzano expert today doubts, for the very best reasons that can be proven scientifically and historically, that the book in question is by Bolzano himself. This shows something that was true then and is true today: if you want to openly and frankly advocate something that does not belong to the physical-sensory world or cannot be said about the physical-sensory world, you have to expose yourself to being seen as a completely unscientific person. And as a rule, the 'fact' does not apply either, that one could recognize from the way such things are spoken about, that the person speaking is not an unscientific person.

And yet, just as spiritual science has to speak about the question of immortality today, so this speaking, as I have often emphasized here, is in the fullest sense a continuation of that human spiritual work which, especially in the field of natural science, has led to such great results of human life and striving, which are fully recognized by spiritual science.

Therefore, today I would like to begin by hinting at some of the things that can show how the study of immortality is approached from the point of view of spiritual research, so that everything that can be called spiritual research in this sense today is in fact the direct, immediate continuation of what scientific thinking has contributed to a world view in the course of the nineteenth century and up to the present.

In my book “The Riddles of Philosophy” you will find a chapter entitled “The World as Illusion”. This chapter is not intended to show that the world as it presents itself to the outer senses and to human thinking, which is connected to the brain, should be seen as an illusion, but it does show how many thinkers of the nineteenth century have come to the conclusion that everything perceived by the senses, and also what thinking has to say about the perceptions of the senses, does not flow into the human soul from the outside, but is, as it were, first constructed within the human soul. As far as it can be done in a popular way, I would like to touch on these thoughts in my introduction, even though they may be far removed from many of the esteemed listeners.

We see with our eyes, we hear with our ears, we perceive the world with our sense organs in general. Now, someone who is grounded in the latest natural science and physiological research says that what the senses perceive actually arises only through an interaction of the senses with something completely unknown in the external world. The researcher says: When the eye perceives a color, when the eye receives some impression of light, one must consider that what acts on the eye from the outside remains completely unknown to perception. With his soul, the human being experiences only the effect that the external world has on his soul. That is why, when we go through the world in our ordinary lives, we see things in color, as an expression of their light effects. But if, for example, we strike the eye, we may also have an impression of light in the eye, even if it is vague. Or if we can somehow otherwise evoke that which can occur internally in the eye, say, somehow with an electrical device, then we also get a light impression. That is to say, the eye responds to everything that acts on it from the outside with a light impression. So whatever happens out there, if it somehow acts on the eye, a light impression arises in the eye. The eye creates the impression of light from the effect of a completely unknown external world. It is the same with the ear. It is the same with the other senses. Therefore, for example, the philosopher Lotze, an outstanding philosopher of the nineteenth century, is in complete agreement with Schopenhauer when he says: Everything that we perceive as the effect of light, as color, has actually only come into being in our eye through the effect of an unknown world. What we hear as sounds is created by the effect of an unknown world in the ear. If there were no people with eyes and ears, the world would be dark and silent, and one could never say that something similar to what eyes see and ears hear prevails in this dark and silent, unknown world.

In other words: In the nineteenth century, under the influence of Kant's philosophy, it was concluded that in order for man to gain knowledge and perceptions of this environment, he must engage in an inner activity, and that only through this inner activity does that which he calls his environment come into being in his mind. In reality, one can say that for these people, who are genuine thinkers grounded in natural science, the world is like an illusion. For if out there, where we see pillars and all kinds of pictures on the walls, there is something completely unknown that affects the eye and from which the eye creates colors and shapes, then one can only say that what appears to us as our environment is an image created out of man's own being. And what is behind it can only be constructed by hypothesis, as modern physics does, which assumes all kinds of vibrations in the ether and the like behind our perceptions. So that man, as he goes through the world, in interaction with an unknown external world, simply by the nature of his being, builds up what he calls his world.

Taken as it has just been explained, there is absolutely nothing, absolutely nothing to be said against this line of thought. This train of thought is completely in line with everything that scientific research has delivered in the nineteenth century. One can say: Such a statement as that made by Hermann Helmholtz, the famous physiologist and physicist, is perfectly understandable: by perceiving an external world, man does not perceive what is, what is really happening, but only perceives signs. Not even images, says Helmholtz, are perceived of what really is, but only signs. For what our eyes and ears create of the external world are only signs for the external world. As I said, there is nothing to be said against the seriousness and logic of this line of thought. Taken directly, as they present themselves, that is so.

You have to go much, much deeper into the nature of man if you want to know what is actually behind this train of thought. I have tried to show the philosophical world what is behind this train of thought and how it offers the possibility of finding one's way with it in relation to the human concept of reality. I have attempted to show the way to do this in a lecture I gave at the last philosophers' congress. But these arguments today only lead to general misunderstandings, if not to something much worse. The one who has the task of finding his way in the train of thought just outlined must indeed advance to spiritual science. And then it certainly becomes apparent that one can truly say: The human soul creates by perceiving through the senses that which it must initially call its world. It creates this. It really does create it. But why does it create it, despite the fact that creation prevails in the real? Well, it creates it for the reason that the human soul, that which is the human soul, is not connected to the human being in such a way that one can say: There is the human body, and in this human body the immortal soul dwells within, just as any person dwells in his dwelling and influences the outside world in some way from his dwelling or looks at the outside world through windows. The connection of the human soul with the human body must be imagined quite differently. It must be imagined in such a way that the body itself, as it were, holds the soul in itself through a process of knowledge. In the sense that colors and light, like sounds, are outside of us, in the same sense the human soul itself is outside of the body, and in that the reality carries colors and sounds in through the senses, in the same sense the contents of the soul live, as it were, on the wings of sensory perception. The soul must not be imagined as just a finer physical being that dwells in the coarser outer body, but as a being that is so connected to the body that the body exercises the same activity that we otherwise exercise in cognition when holding on to the soul. Only when we understand how, in a certain sense, that which we call our ego, the bearer of our self-awareness, is outside the body in the same way as sound or color, only then do we understand the relationship between the human soul and the human body. By pronouncing “I”, the human being, as a bodily human being, perceives this “I” from the same side of reality from which it perceives colors and sounds. And the nature of the body consists in being able to perceive precisely this I, that is, the soul's own nature. In order to fully experience the reality of what has just been said, it is necessary for the human being to carry out the exercises that have often been discussed here, that is, to perform inner acts with his soul.

Today, too, I will not repeat what I have said so often, since everyone can read it in my books “How to Know Higher Worlds,” “Occult Science,” or in the brief sketch at the end of “Theosophy.” Today, too, I shall not describe these inner soul-searchings in detail, but rather I should like to give again certain points of view which can show what man arrives at when he, in the sense often described here and in the books concerned, undertakes inner work with his soul , so that what otherwise takes place in the soul as thinking, feeling and willing develops further through inner impulses given by the soul in the meditative life; that it becomes something other than what is in the ordinary life of the body.

When a person undertakes the mental processes – this too has already been discussed in the last lectures – that lead thinking beyond the kind of thought life that one has to have in ordinary life and also in ordinary science, then one comes to think, that is, to perform the inner activity of thinking, but no longer to have a specific thought. Meditation consists in the fact that, while one otherwise thinks, as it were, under the influence of the external world and reflects on things, one evokes thinking as an inner arbitrary activity of the soul, that one does not direct one's attention to what is being thought, but to the activity of thinking, to that fine activity of the will that is exercised in thinking. I have already described this in the last lecture. In a sense, one thinks with a thought-content that one has moved into one's consciousness, into one's soul, through one's own will. One thinks so intensely, so strongly, so powerfully inwardly that one really achieves what one does not want to achieve at first, but what is achieved under the influence of such inner thought-work: thoughts fall away and one lives only in the inner weaving and working of an - well, let the expression be used - an ethereal world. The word “ethereal” is used here in a different way than modern physics uses the term. One lives in a weaving, in a pulsating, and one knows, if one has pursued this experience long enough: What one has discovered in one's thinking, what one has detached from one's thinking, just as the chemist separates hydrogen from water so that he can show the properties of hydrogen that cannot be shown while the hydrogen is still in the water, - one knows, when one has detached the activity of thinking from thinking, that one is now really in an experience outside the body. By continuing such inner soul work, one must then become clearer and clearer about what the experience actually is that one has evoked in this way in the soul. When we perceive colors and sounds in our ordinary life — as I said, this can already be considered a result of natural science — then we know through natural science: an unconscious activity is carried out in our human being; because the fact that the world of color and sound is evoked through the eye and the ear is an unconscious activity. An unconscious activity is carried out through which something that is outside speaks into the soul and reveals itself to the soul. What one experiences in the inner grasping of thinking when one does the corresponding soul exercises is not experienced in the same way as if it were rising up from our muscles, from our blood, but it is experienced as if it were coming in from the whole surrounding cosmic space , as if it were a spirit-being entering us and having a certain attraction to our body, so that it recognizes our body as the vehicle through which it wants to reveal itself to the sensory world. By meditating as described, one steps into the external world itself. One immerses oneself in this external world, from which colors and sounds come to us. That is to say, one frees one's experience from the body. This freedom of experience from the body must be inwardly experienced, must be lived. Through soul exercises, the human being must come to know that he is living and pulsating in an element that is not bound to his body as an instrument. But will, inner arbitrariness, is now present in everything, which thus leads the human being to freedom from the body – inner activity, but inner activity on a higher level. Let us just consider for a moment what it would mean for the human being: suppose – assuming the truth of what I have presented to you as a result of more recent physiology, of more recent natural science – the human being were aware: there must be something unknown, a silent, dark world. I stand in it, I open my eyes. Through my eyes I create color, through my ears I create sound. I place the sounds and the colors into the world. What would a person have to say? He would say: Well, then the whole world is a dream, of course it is a dream. Then nothing of what I see and hear is real. Only because this inner activity, which is there, remains unconscious, because one does not know that one does it — evoke colors through the eye, evoke sounds through the ear — only because of that, one is at all undisturbed in one's outer experience. For if human beings were always aware that they do what recent natural science ascribes to them, then they would certainly speak about the whole world of the senses in exactly the same way as they now speak about what way, and what human thinking, trained in this way, experiences through a world that is just as real as the sense world, but which must be voluntarily placed before ourselves through the effort of free will born of thinking. One might say that it is good for most people that they are blessed with not knowing how they create colors and sounds for themselves, otherwise they would already be able to speak about this colored and sounding world exactly as they speak about the world that the spiritual researcher presents to them. For that is indeed the characteristic of the world that the spiritual researcher presents to the soul: that one now exercises the activity, which one otherwise performs unconsciously for the sensual world, consciously, fully consciously, on this higher level of the act of will, which is detached from thinking. Otherwise, however, there is no difference at all in relation to the sense world. But people are not strong enough to hold to that, to have confidence in that which they must first call into existence inwardly. One would like to say that it is good that a kind God has withheld from people the knowledge that they create the light of the sun for themselves, otherwise they would deny it, as they deny the essence of the spiritual world. People depend on the outside world, on the authority of the outside world, to dictate what is, what is inherent in being. If they are to do something to allow this being to come to the fore, then they are not strong enough, not trusting enough in this inner activity of theirs to allow what they now have to co-create themselves to be recognized as a reality, as a truth.

When, through the indicated exercises of thinking, one has truly grasped the will in thinking, that reality which does not express itself in thoughts of a sense world, then at first – and this too has often been hinted at from a different point of view – — one does not have a spiritual reality before one, but one has only an experience that consists of a weaving and being and becoming; one has, so to speak, an expanded self before one, a self that now knows itself connected to the whole world, from which sounds and colors otherwise reveal themselves to it. But one weaves and lives in this becoming. One only knows that the way one lives in this becoming is reality, spiritual reality, spiritual reality free from the body.

One cannot be careful enough in describing such things, because it can, of course, be objected lightly by someone who believes they are allowed to think they are very scientific: So the spiritual researcher claims that he is immersed in the world through the result of this one exercise; he must actually know everything when he lives in that weaving element. Now, what works from within instead of approaching the person from the outside does not have to reveal all the secrets it contains. One can say that it can be compared to the fact that a person also eats and drinks and yet truly does not know the processes that take place in his body. One gets to know another world in its nature and essence, but naturally one does not get to know all the secrets of that world, which in turn must first be explored in detail, a research that requires exactly the same care and seriousness as the exploration of the physical-sensual world, yes, more. But this experience of living in a weaving world can be compared to when a physical person in the body has acquired the ability to grasp all kinds of things, but cannot grasp anything when he reaches out. In that case, one would know that one has organs to grasp, to make grasping movements, but one does not grasp anything. One would be in this situation if one only had the practice results that have just been described. One would live and weave inwardly in the spiritual element, but one would feel as if one were stretching out the spiritual organs in all directions, and it would be certain: you have grasped yourself in the spirit — but one would still perceive nothing of a spiritual environment. It would only be a general living and weaving and becoming of one's own self in the spirit. A tremendous loneliness, even a sense of apprehension, could seize a person if he only came to these conclusions. Therefore, the exercises that the soul performs when they are taken from true spiritual research are designed not only to develop the life of the mind, leading to such experiences as have been described, but also to develop the life of the will. And this training of the life of the will is something that arises in the most natural way from the ordinary life of the will in man. You can find more details in the books mentioned. But I will again characterize the effect, the results of the exercises of the will, which are already interwoven into meditation in proper meditation, from a certain point of view. Exercises of the will lead a person to the point where he can observe his own volition. Ordinary self-observation, even that which is called self-observation in trivial mysticism, does not yet lead to the point where one really observes the content of one's own volition as one otherwise observes external natural phenomena. It certainly does not lead to the point where one could, as it were, become one's own spectator. But the real exercises that spiritual research can indicate allow the human being to see what otherwise takes place as will in his life and flows into actions or even just lives in desires as otherwise things and processes around us can be observed; that man can truly put himself outside of himself, that he observes himself by wanting this or that, by setting goals in life. One only acquires this ability – and this, of course, cannot fill the whole life, but only claim very short, snatched moments of meditation on life – by so directing one's volition – and every true meditator already directs the volition by doing the right meditations – by so directing one's volition that one does not merely will as one wills in ordinary life. In ordinary life some desire arises. It is prompted by some inner bodily disposition, or it is prompted by an external impression, or the will performs this or that action, and thereby something is brought about in the external world. This volition that lives there can indeed be observed, but observation is made easier if one tries to will that – and as I said, it is willed in meditation – which advances the soul itself; if one makes oneself, so to speak, the object of one's volition, if one want something so that, through what one does in the soul, one gradually becomes a different person; that the soul is organized more finely, that the soul becomes more receptive when one carries out acts of will in such a way that one develops, that one consciously advances in life. Anyone who does meditation exercises knows how, after years of doing meditation exercises, the whole way he thinks about the world becomes different from what it used to be. He knows how he connects passion with desires, and these in turn with thoughts, and so on. He knows that he has become a different being, albeit in a more subtle way, and that this must be perceived. Otherwise, the I is always the center of will. The rays of will emanate from the I, as it were, and pour into the feelings and into the actions. In this kind of willing, the person effectively places himself outside of his ego and advances the ego itself through willing. Therefore, true meditation is particularly suitable for becoming the spectator of one's own willing, for knowing how to place oneself outside of one's own will and, just as one learns to observe natural processes, to observe one's own willing with composure. Otherwise, one is completely absorbed in one's desires, with all one's passions, all one's wishes, all one's emotions. One overcomes this for certain moments in life, and one learns to become a spectator of one's desires.

Let us just consider: when we want something else, we are present in what we want, we are so immersed in it that we instinctively defend it, at least inwardly, as our own. In any case, we do not look at wanting in the same way as we look at, say, the formation of a rainbow. But this is the path that the soul can follow: to observe the activity of the will, as one observes the formation of a rainbow or the rising of the sun; to become so objective, so calm. At first, one strives out of oneself in thought – for at first it is a mental striving out of oneself – in order to become a spectator.

But then one makes a discovery that one must take into account if one wants to become immersed in the reality of these things. One makes the remarkable discovery that although one must strive for what one strives for, one achieves something completely different. And with that I characterize an essential aspect of the spiritual research path in general. On the path of spiritual research, one must, if I may say so, set out on the path. One sets out on the path with the first exercises that I have described by meditating, by putting thoughts into the soul. But if one were to believe that holding on to these thoughts, drilling oneself into these thoughts, is also the goal, then that would be wrong. For the goal consists precisely in overcoming what one has initially undertaken: that thoughts cease to be thoughts in the strict sense, that the activity of thinking, free of the thought, now takes hold of us in becoming and weaving. That is the characteristic of the spiritual research path: that something must be undertaken and something else comes out. And precisely because something is undertaken, something else comes out.

And so it is with this second one I have to describe. You make an effort in the way described—but as I said, you can find details in the books mentioned—you make an effort to become your own spectator, that is, to step out of yourself in your imagination and watch your own volition as you would watch external natural phenomena. But the result of these exercises is different from what it would be if you were to follow a straight line. One might think that one would now become such a being by making a being out of oneself that looks at its currents of will. This is not the case. Rather, the result is that the more one goes out of oneself in this way, the more that which goes out disappears within oneself. In the development of thinking, one becomes more and more inwardly absorbed. The self expands, becomes more intense, more powerful. In the process I have just described, one does not enter into oneself, but one's own self is, in a sense, laid aside. Instead, however, a will remains in the spiritual field of vision, an act of the will. And as it were, out of the plane of these acts of the will, rising up from below, through the acts of the will, there rises a real being, which is a higher human being in the human being. That which one has always carried within oneself through one's whole life, but has not carried in consciousness, that rises through the will, that breaks through it. Just as the depths of the sea would appear if they were to break over the surface, so now a being appears, a conscious being, a being of higher consciousness, which is an objective spectator of all our acts of will, a real being that always lives in us and that breaks through the will in this way. And this being, which one discovers in the currents of will, this being connects with what one has made out of thinking. These two beings, which one has found in oneself, unite with each other. And through this one is now not only in a working and weaving, but in a real spiritual world with real spiritual entities and facts. In it now stands one's own being, which is also born out of the will - but in the company of other spiritual beings - and which goes through birth and death. The human being who, through birth or conception, has connected himself with what materially descends from father and mother, the human being who sustains himself when he steps through the portal of death, is discovered in such a way that what lives and works in us is brought to life in himself from two sides.

In the thinking that one gradually develops, the main thing is that in this thinking we really develop something different from what lives in our ordinary soul, and that is precisely what is difficult. Man is so attached to the habits that he has acquired in his soul through his dealings with the sensual world. Therefore, all these qualities that he acquires through this spiritual path, as it has been described, actually initially unsettle him. A sense of apprehension, loneliness, and restlessness can come over him. If everything is done correctly, as indicated by true spiritual science, this does not happen. I spoke about this a few weeks ago in the lecture I mentioned, 'A Healthy Soul Life and Spirit Research'. But everyone knows that when you enter into the spiritual world in the way I have described, a certain restlessness can arise, a certain inner anxiety, and even distinct feelings of fear towards the spiritual world that want to overwhelm you. And to avoid this, there are already enough clues in true meditation. But if someone expects that what his soul then does in these newly evoked abilities is directly similar to what the soul does in relation to the external physical world, which it must have around it all day, then he is subject to the most severe deceptions and also disappointments. Then he becomes restless because he says to himself: “I am living in something indefinite and unfamiliar. I have always thought in a different way. My thinking was so secure in the other way; it clung to a certain being that was given to me. Now my thinking is supposed to live in a becoming and not, so to speak, forget itself.

But in the true spiritual path this is avoided by the fact that this true spiritual path brings with it — it brings it with it quite naturally when it is followed in the right way — that what we can call interest, inner soul interest, manifests itself for the human being in a completely different way than the soul interest usually manifests itself in the physical world. It is really true: one acquires a new interest, a quite new kind of interest, when one leads a meditative life. It must be emphasized again and again: one does not want success for the inner life alone. Those spiritual exercises are of no value from the start and must be decidedly rejected, which make man unfit for the outer life. A person who practises true spiritual exercises remains as firmly rooted in the outer life as he was before. No, he will become even more firmly rooted in this outer life. If he has to pursue a particular occupation wherever fate has placed him, he will fulfil this occupation no worse than before if he has true spiritual science. And one can be sure – forgive the trivial expression – that the person who gets all kinds of raisins into his head by going through spiritual exercises, and then thinks he is too good for what he was before, is most certainly on the wrong track. But through that in the soul which is the actual spiritual research activity, one acquires new interests, which take the soul in a different direction, in addition to the old interests, which become even more intense for the outer world.

I will give an example of what it is like for someone who is a philosopher. Perhaps it is useful to give this example for the very reason that most philosophers believe from the outset – well, that they can judge everything from spiritual science much better than the spiritual researcher himself. But those who are not philosophers themselves become restless when faced with the many philosophies that exist. Isn't it true that one should just take a look at all the “ians” (Kantian, Hegelian, Schopenhauerian, Hartmannian) just once, all of them, and then one will see, even if one adds others to that, that one should not allow oneself to be unsettled: Well, everyone thought differently, but I want something certain in my thinking! This tendency will then take on a different expression in the philosopher. The philosopher who wants to be a “ianer” himself now develops a certain train of thought; he then swears by it, and the others are of course all fools, whom he can refute, or at least people who are going astray. But the person who has developed his thinking in the way described, who has included the process of thinking in thinking, reads Hartmann with the same interest as Schopenhauer, as Hegel, as Schelling, as Heraclitus. He does not even get around to refuting one and becoming a follower of the other, because he takes a certain interest in the movement of thinking, in being inside thinking itself, because he takes a certain joy, a certain pleasure simply in the act of thinking and because he knows that this thinking does not lead to reality in such a way as is usually believed — that thoughts can simply be reflections of reality — but that one only comes into a life and weaving in the work of thinking. Yes, when one can do this, then one can take the standpoint: Certainly, the one philosopher has viewed the world from one point of view, the other from another! And the philosophical world view that one then gets cannot be seen any differently than a tree that has been photographed from different sides, where one also does not say: I declare the one photograph to be wrong, that is not at all true with the other, that is a completely different tree! Because it is only a different tree because it has been photographed from a different side. If you look at the activity of photographing, and not at the abstract reproduction, then you will see for yourself what is right. And so it is with thinking. You become interested in the mobility of thinking, and you know that you live in spiritual reality when you live and move in thinking itself. And there is something else that is introduced into your development through the exercises of the will, and this goes much deeper. It can disturb many people, and would even appear very disturbing if you were not sufficiently prepared, as is the case in every true schooling of the spirit. I would like to say again: for ordinary life, people are familiar with the fact that what lies within their will actually only appears to them in such a way that when they have done something they call good, they rub their hands together; then they are very satisfied with themselves. If they have done something they call bad in some way, they reproach themselves. But it remains with these inner soul processes. Man oscillates back and forth between rubbing his hands together out of satisfaction with what he has done and blaming himself. But when the volition is trained in such a way that the inner spectator emerges, then a greater seriousness permeates the matter. Then it is no longer just reproaches or inner satisfaction that arise, but you get to know a very real being in what permeates the will as a spectator and shoots up through its surface. You get to know: That which otherwise appears to you as reproach and as inner satisfaction is a real power. This real power is there in the world, it will continue to have an effect. In the further course one learns to recognize how this power develops into a further destiny and influences the next life on earth as a fact, after one has passed through the life between birth and death. What one experiences there as will, would follow the one who is not well prepared like a shadow, like something one always drags along, like one's shadow, like a real being. Everything depends on whether one also learns to understand the full significance of these things; that one learns, for example, to recognize: what follows one around as a shadow need not lead one to hypochondria, but one must look at it calmly. For it is not at all what has significance for the present life, but what passes through the gate of death with us, what is among the forces that will help determine the configuration, the nature, of our next life.

In short, the interests associated with these developed inner soul activities are different from the interests of the outer life, but they do not detract from these interests of the outer life at all. They merely put everything in its proper place, so to speak. When someone comes to an awareness of what goes through birth and death, what is immortal about the soul, as I have described it, then he will not become less interested in the external physical facts that directly surround him, but rather he will come to the conclusion that there is a spiritual world. In this spiritual world there are just as many concrete spiritual processes and entities as there are in the physical world, and he can see them. But that which exists as a physical world can only be seen in the physical world. What surrounds us as a physical world naturally ceases to exist after death. Only because we carry an immortal being within us, which is a reality in itself and belongs to a reality that goes beyond the physical, do we carry something through the gate of death, enter into a spiritual world, into a world that we live through between death and a new birth, and then enter into yet another earthly life.

Especially when one knows, not in the abstract but in a living sense – and it is only through spiritual research that one really gets to know this – that one can only get to know this sensual world in its full inner essence through one's senses and through the mind that is connected to the brain – then, under this life-filled self-development — not through some theory, but through what life absorbs, under the influence of the exercises that awaken our lively interest in everything that is obvious; the interest for the smallest details in the world is increased. Only one particular interest, and this we must take with us, grows ever smaller and smaller: the interest in that which is already able to appear in the sense world as so-called 'spiritual' and to reveal spiritual reality in and out of the phenomenon itself. It is known that spiritual things can be grasped when the organs, the spiritual eyes and spiritual ears, are developed first, to use Goethe's expression. It is known that one must rise to the spiritual world, and it is known that in the world of the senses, this world of the senses must be grasped out of itself, that it stands as that which must be grasped through the world of the senses. Therefore one loses interest in all those events that seek the spiritual out of the world of the senses itself. And while interest in everything that takes place in the spiritual world increases, especially in true spiritual research, interest in the sense in which it exists for many in the spiritual world is purely sensational and all kinds of superstitions and belief in miracles disappears completely. Interest, let us say, in spiritualistic events, in mediumistic performances, completely fades away. The spiritual researcher is not interested because he knows that only something abnormal can come to light in these things, which is indeed based in the sense world, but which cannot lead beyond the sense world into the true spiritual world. Of course, he can take an interest in it, as one takes an interest in some theatrical performance, in some experiment that otherwise appears in the world. Nothing should be said against such events, provided, of course, that they are not frauds, in that they allow a variety of otherwise inexpressible natural connections to be expressed. But they are natural phenomena, and we know that we do not live in these things in any other way than we live and move with our ordinary senses, however abnormal it may seem. For everything that belongs to this area, which I have just touched upon, interest wanes, as I said. It becomes a mere witnessing — well, of all sorts of events. And it is the duty of every true spiritual researcher not to allow superstition to grow in him, but to uproot superstition completely.

It would be very easy to believe – and because it is possible, it must be emphasized – that a person who experiences spiritually what I have indicated, and who basically experiences nothing less than what he can call his immortal soul, and that he is actually experiencing life after death; that he is already experiencing what will be experienced after death. In this abstract form it is not the case, and one must think very carefully about these things if one wants to get an idea of them. What the soul experiences after death, or let us say, from death until birth, is experienced in much the same way as a plant would consciously experience everything that is in its germ, which represents all the forces for the new plant. One experiences everything that must necessarily be gone through in the spiritual world after death in order to prepare one's entire life with the new body and the new experiences as a new destiny in the coming earthly existence. It is the germinal being in us that is suited to experience in the spiritual world between death and new birth that which then prepares a new life on earth, so that we then have the body that we need to have the abilities that we have previously prepared within us, so that we put ourselves in the position in which we need to be when our destiny is to be fulfilled according to our previous life on earth. That this potential lies within us, we experience that. But to have this experience before us, to have the spiritual world before our own soul, for that it is necessary, of course, to go through the experiences ourselves between death and a new birth, which one can at most look at and develop in knowledge, but in a living knowledge that is an inner reality, while the knowledge of the external world, of the physical external world, is only mental images.

You see, I would of course need a great deal of time to discuss in more detail what I have only touched upon. This will be possible in the coming lectures. But, as you can see, there is a certain path that can be described as the path of spiritual research, which leads to the development of a life that is inwardly different from the life of the soul in the external, sensual reality. And in this experience, the soul takes hold of itself in such a way that it lives and breathes in the inner power that passes through the gate of death.

Fichte only sensed the truth when he said: Immortality is not only there when we have passed through the gate of death, but it is there when we are still living in the body. For the being that passes through death can be attained by human knowledge while it is still alive in the body. How is it attained? In a remarkable way, we have to form ideas ourselves from spiritual science as to how it is attained.

You may well ask how can a person achieve all that has been described as a result of soul exercises? How can soul exercises lead to something like this? You see, people very often complain – especially when they have a keen cognitive drive – that you can't really see through reality, that there are limits to knowledge. How often have I pointed out in these lectures the famous Ignorabimus of Da Bois-Reymond, where it is said that man can indeed come to an observation of the processes of the world and their limits, but cannot penetrate into the interior of matter; that he cannot, as it were, submerge himself in the interior of matter with his thinking. It is said of all knowledge that all these powers of knowledge are actually insufficient to fully penetrate nature.

When one begins to strengthen the soul inwardly as it has been described, one notices something very definite. One notices how tremendously good it is that there are such limits to external knowledge. For if the powers that one has for external knowledge were to make one see through all nature through themselves, these powers would prevent one from attaining spiritual knowledge. Only because one cannot use everything that is in the soul for external knowledge is something left that can be developed in the way I have explained it. Only because the full, immortal soul does not enter into bodily life, but still retains something, whereby not everything is transparent in the outer bodily life, are inner forces preserved, which can then be developed in the way described. By connecting ourselves with the physical material given by our ancestors through birth or, let us say, through conception, we retain so much of the immortal soul that, on the one hand, we are prevented from seeing through the full nature in the bodily life, and have to make hypotheses and all sorts of things about what lives in nature. But as a result we have in the background of our being forces that we can develop within us and that allow us to enter into a spiritual world in a spiritual way. The immortal soul lives in man. In order for it to live, some things must be taken away from man in a sensual way. This, in turn, is such an important connection that one must look at it.

There is therefore a spiritual research that introduces us directly to the immortal being of man. This spiritual research is different from the external research. In the external research, one can remain as one is. That is exactly what suits people. The same abilities that they have acquired once, they retain when they go into the laboratory, when they do experiments, and can learn something about the external nature. And then these people also demand that the spirit should be explored in the same way, by retaining the same abilities. One cannot approach the spirit without first making oneself spiritual, that is, seeking out that which is in every human soul but which must first be raised to consciousness in the manner described. But there is much, much that, I might say, still thwarts people's paths to spiritual science in the present time. That is why the chapter 'immortality question and spiritual research' is still so little recognized today, one that people are so reluctant to get involved in.

You can already see from what I have said that it is necessary for man to learn to think and live in a subtle inner way. That is to say, when he becomes a spiritual researcher, he must not become a lesser thinker than those who believe, let us say, that they have mastered thinking, who claim that they stand on the firm ground of external natural science, which is not to be challenged in the slightest. They do not love that in the present. In the present, one loves to develop, I might say, that very tangible thinking that does not even broach the subject of the finer things that live and move in the world.

I do not like to do this: to make personal references. Those of you who have been to these lectures often will know that I actually avoid going into all the opposition from the outside world and all the misunderstandings regarding what I am presenting here as spiritual science. I would prefer to ignore it and not talk about it at all. But when things keep coming up that do have an effect and are believed, they do harm to the cause. Personally I would prefer not to talk about these things at all, but harm is done to the cause because printed paper still has tremendous authority today, because it still has a tremendous effect. And so, for the sake of the cause, one must sometimes, when occasion is offered by some topic, go into what stands in opposition to spiritual science. If coarse thinking is opposed to it, which, because it cannot engage in the finer weaving in the life of thought, can see nothing but fantasy, nothing but a form of madness in what spiritual science indicates as the right path for spiritual research. Let me give you an example. And, as I said, please excuse me if it is a personal example, but I only mention it in so far as it is opposed to spiritual science, which is expressed in it as a typical phenomenon.

I gave a lecture in a certain city about the relationships that prevail in the nature of the individual European peoples, relationships that, as many listeners know, I had already presented long before this war gave rise to talk about them; insights that were found quite independently of this war, but which, as they are presented, should actually be obvious. For when it is said in the course of the lectures, which are now often combined with the lectures on spiritual science, that the peoples of the West, the peoples of the European center, the peoples of the East differ in this or that, one should believe that no reasonable person could actually be led to say anything other than: Well, yes, he may be mistaken about individual characteristics, but there really are differences. There really are different character traits, different ones in the Germans, different ones in the Russians. To deny this can only arise from the crudest thinking. And yet, as I said, I also gave a lecture on this in a certain city. In a daily paper of the town in question, this was discussed and said in the most derogatory way, that these differences were constructed only out of the war, as it were. But one could ignore that, following the example I gave recently, for what is being achieved in this area. But now think, that was not enough for one man, but the man even turned to a magazine, and in a magazine what appeared in the newspaper at the time was printed, and the following nice comment was attached to it: “The accusation of the speaker” - that is, the critic of the Tagblatt of the city in question - “of having reconstructed opposing cultures from the current constellation of powers, rightly applies to Steiner. With the best will in the world, I am unable to perceive, as Steiner does, a difference in essence between Central European and Western and Eastern European culture. In my opinion, European culture is completely the same in essence.” And so it continues. This appeared in a Central European journal. You can see from it what a crude thinking is confronted with spiritual science as such. For what I have read to you here is further developed in a detailed article that extends over several issues. The thought — well, I need only hint at it, then you will see how crude such a person's thinking is: “Intellectual life, too, has developed in this direction and is absorbed in this pursuit. The wild greed of the European cultured man for the possession of earthly goods would degenerate into a predatory struggle of all against all, were individuals not forced into iron state forms.” So this crude thinking does not even notice how these ‘iron state forms’ are initially more involved in what is happening in this war. It is thinking like this that one has to deal with. Such thinking is in contrast to what must be demanded in the light of an understanding of such a question, and so also of the question of the immortality of the soul. And such a thing does not appear in a materialistic magazine, but in a magazine - it even bears the heading “42nd year” - that calls itself “Psychical Studies”. That I am not speaking out of personal resentment, I can prove to you from the magazine itself. You know, or at least many people know, that I have dealt with the main ideas which this gentleman here attacks in such a way in a small pamphlet. This pamphlet is called “Thoughts During the Time of War”. In this pamphlet, though perhaps in a popular way, are exactly the same thoughts, written at least from the same spirit, from the same attitude. In the same issue as the article from which I have just read the characteristic passages, there is a review of this work, “Thoughts During the Time of War”. In this review, the work is highly praised and it is shown how meritorious it is to express such thoughts. It goes without saying that I am just as indifferent to being praised as I am to being criticized. But I must characterize what already lives in the formation of the times, so that it is not believed again and again when diatribes appear here and there, simply through the suggestive power of what is daubed with printing ink on dirty paper, since that always forms a kind of obstacle for those who might otherwise find their way to spiritual research. One must point out the grotesque nature of the experience that can be had in our time in such a way. And it is only for this reason that spiritual science must be kept free, so to speak, in the context in which it is found, in the light in which it must appear as true, genuine, honest spiritual science. In order to keep it free in this light, I must also touch on other matters.

I have already pointed out in the lecture before last, where I spoke about misunderstandings regarding spiritual science, also in the lecture “Healthy Soul Life and Spiritual Research”, that spiritual research is not only opposed by what comes from the more or less materialistically minded side. On this side it is extremely difficult to achieve something for the reason that the things that are put forward from this side are so terribly plausible. When I have to characterize something, such as this magazine, I do it reluctantly. When I seriously oppose something, I turn to those whom I actually hold in high esteem. So I also hold in high esteem the actual father, I might say, of modern materialism, Lamettrie. He is an astute man, and his reasons are plausible. But one can acknowledge the plausibility of these reasons, one can assert them and one should still, when the spiritual research path is asserted alongside them, acknowledge the significance and essence of this spiritual research path alongside the validity of what comes from the materialistic side. Lamettrie is, as I said, an astute man, and in his book 'Man a Machine' he has put together everything that can prove how man is dependent on his physicality. Now it might seem as if spiritual science would have every reason to contradict such things. No, it agrees with everything, as I even proved in my last lecture, in a more forceful sense than materialism itself. For it is indeed easy to understand and irrefutable when Lamettrie points out how man's mental state depends on what he is. Of course it is very easy to prove, because it is so terribly obvious that man depends on whether he likes something or whether something agrees with him. Think of the mood of the soul that results from it. Lamettrie describes all this, and in doing so, he basically anticipated everything that can be said about this matter. Isn't it extremely interesting – especially in this day and age – to read what Lamettrie said in his book 'Man a Machine', because if you read it somewhere else, it would not make a good impression. But here in Central Europe, this passage can perhaps be read with greater composure than in Western Europe. Lamettrie wants to prove what man actually is - really prove how man, in terms of his mental state, indeed in terms of his character, in terms of what lives in him in terms of soul, depends on what he eats, what his food is. And there Lamettrie says – but as I said, it was more than a century ago since it was said – in his book 'Man a Machine', Lamettrie says: 'Raw meat makes animals wild; humans would become wild from the same food. How true this is,” says Lamettrie, the Frenchman, ”can be seen from the fact that the English nation, who eat meat less cooked than we do, eat it entirely raw and bloody, and show a wildness that is partly brought about by these foods, but partly also by other causes, which only education can suppress. This savagery engenders in the soul arrogance, hatred, contempt for other nations, unruliness and other feelings that corrupt the character, just as coarse food produces a heavy and clumsy mind, whose main characteristics are laziness and dullness.” It is perhaps not uninteresting, especially in Central Europe, to hear the judgment of a Frenchman, even if it is more than a hundred years old, about the English, so that one can see how circumstances change and how people have not always felt and thought in the same way from one place to another and from there to there. This same Lamettrie also says other things that are quite natural, for example, he says - and he believes that this is enough to refute everything that can be said from the spirit about the spirit - he says, for example: “A small fiber would have made two fools out of Erasmus and Fontenelle.” One can, of course, admit this and still stand on the ground of spiritual science, as it has been characterized today. For there is much more that can be admitted and that will not shake spiritual research. Let us assume, for example, that if only a small fiber were different in the case of Erasmus, then, from the point of view of pure materialism, this would mean that his life would perhaps have become that of a drip instead of that of a genius. But now, if it had happened that the mother, before he was born, had been murdered by a bandit and Erasmus had been killed before he was born, what would have become of Erasmus' soul? Only a true spiritual researcher is able to see through such things. For it seems even more compelling that man is dependent on matter; for it would only have been necessary for him to have died as a small boy, then he would not have been there.

That spiritual research has anything to deny that comes from this side should not be believed by those who, with their blunt considerations, want to stand in the way of spiritual research. But even today, on this ground, one still sees much that is unclear and imprecise. The characterized coarse thinking is primarily to blame for this; but there is more to it than that: spiritual science has to suffer not only from those who oppose it, but it also has to suffer from those who often want to be seen as adherents of a certain spiritual-scientific direction and who, in turn, are connected with all kinds of strange social elements of the present day. And as a result, spiritual science is lumped together with all kinds of stuff by those who do not know how to distinguish — I have already pointed this out, but I have to go into it in more detail today with reference to something else. Spiritual science does not build — as you can see from a characteristic of my lectures, which is often criticized, namely that they are too difficult — spiritual science does not build on the gullible crowd, does not build on those who, in a comfortable frame of mind, want to gain some kind of conviction, does not build on those people who, as if in a 'dream, go through life and believe everything that is conveyed to them through their certainly subjective power of persuasion. Spiritual science does not build on that which lives in the world of superstition, and because certain things are rightly discussed in public on the materialistic side as nonsense, a sharp line must also be drawn in spiritual science itself between honest, true spiritual research, which follows only the truth, and that which so often likes to its coattails and what comes from a side where one counts on the superstition of mankind, which is present as well as insisting on one's own judgment; where one pretends to people all sorts of things, because even today one finds enough people who believe everything possible, if it is only proclaimed to them from an alleged spiritual world - unknown whence. What can be confused with spiritual science from this side – as I said, it must be pointed out in order to shake it off – true science, and that is spiritual science, has little to do with it.

I will only point out a few things, because these things are now being discussed publicly on the materialistic side and, certainly under the influence of the serious and serious events of the times, there will be more and more discussion. I want to show how wrong those are who associate spiritual science with some form of ordinary or higher superstition, that higher superstition that pursues all kinds of goals in the world and actually only works in such a way that it first puts people into the world who are said to have higher abilities, a clairvoyant gift. True clairvoyance consists in what has often been described and is again described today. But what people call clairvoyance today is actually subconscious, but is often also just a fraud. But we are not reckoning with what is in the subconscious, but with the effect. Therefore, one must reckon with what the fraudulent clairvoyance is able to do with superstition. And there it is possible that all kinds of dishonest endeavors and currents arise, where one wants to achieve something completely different from what lies in the realm of truth. What people need to know, what is achieved by this, is that first of all — allow me to use a harsh expression — people are made stupid, befogged, by showing them all kinds of occultism, which has an effect on their superstition, and then, with the people made stupid, all kinds of things are carried out that do not belong in the realm of sincerity and honesty. Spiritual science has the same duty and necessity to point out these excesses of modern life as materialism does. And if it proves materialism right in its field in such cases, as I have shown with Lamettrie, then it may also prove it right when it turns against all excesses of an apparent spiritual experience, which is nothing more than life in blind superstition.

In 1912, an almanac was published, a yearbook, edited by a personality who is revered in a city in the West as a higher clairvoyant by many who are clouded in the way just described. This yearbook appeared in 1912 for 1913, in advance. In it, the following note appears about Austria: “The one who is destined to govern in Austria will not govern. A young man who has not yet been appointed to the government will govern.”

And with even greater clarity, the almanac for 1914, which was published in 1913, returns to this matter. There may be gullible people who believe nothing more and nothing less than that a great prophecy has been fulfilled, and it is impossible to make clear to them in their blind faith that dishonest currents living in the European world have been at work here, using superstition and all kinds of dark occultism to bring something into the world. How this is connected with all kinds of underground currents can be seen by considering that a Parisian newspaper, “Paris at Noon,” long, long before the current turmoil and at about the same time as the appearance of the aforementioned note in the aforementioned almanac of an alleged clairvoyant in – a Parisian newspaper that makes no claim to be occult in any way, but can be compared to other newspapers that appear at noon – that this newspaper also expressed its wish long months before that the Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand would be murdered. One can see certain underground connections. And this same paper wrote at the time of the three-year anniversary of his term of office: “Among the very first to be murdered if mobilization occurs will be Jaurès.

The same personality who publishes this almanac travelled to Rome in the first days of August 1914 to influence certain people who are open to such influence, in a direction that I will not say is linked to the main causes of Italy's position, but which had already taken effect in this matter.

I only discuss these things because they are discussed by others, from a materialistic point of view. But they must be discussed so that it can be seen that true spiritual science has nothing to do with such things, with superstition in general that relies on the credulity of the masses, and with what is done under the guise of superstition, both in large and small matters. Spiritual science will only appear as a real science that can be placed alongside other sciences when it is kept free from everything that can still be easily confused with it today and that is often confused with it, not only under the influence of limited judgment, which simply cannot distinguish, but also out of ill will. And in the literature that is thrown at spiritual science, a lot of work is done precisely with the fact that what one has to lie about when one wants to characterize spiritual science is so lied about that spiritual science is thereby put on the same ground as those things that spiritual science must of course fight as fiercely as they are fought by materialistic science.

But just as we recognize such things, spiritual science will emerge ever more clearly in its purity in what it can be for the human soul. Does not the latest book by Ernst Haeckel, that is, by a serious researcher, “Thoughts on Eternity”, shows how utterly at a loss mere natural science is in the face of such great events that have such a profound impact on the development of humanity, since it knows of nothing better to say than this:

Not that such a time would provide the reasons for spiritual science, but one must recognize what spiritual science can become for human life in the spiritual realm: that which sustains the human being, which holds the human being, because it makes him acquainted with that with which no natural science makes him acquainted. Natural science can only make man acquainted with that through which his body is connected with the sensual universe. Spiritual science makes man familiar with this through the fact that it shows him, by means of research, that he has an immortal soul, so that one can know: This soul of man is connected with eternal becoming. Man is anchored in eternity through his soul and spirit, as he is anchored in temporality through his body.

If one asks whether man needs something like this, it must be said that there can be no proof for it, any more than there can be for the fact that he needs to eat and drink. But just as man experiences through hunger and thirst that he must eat and drink, so he experiences over and over again in his soul that he must know. And the more one demands knowledge and not mere belief, one will recognize that he must know about the immortality of his soul. One can deny that man demands this knowledge, but the denial is only a theoretical one. The time will come more and more – and we are already at its beginning – when, just as hunger asserts itself in the healthy human body, the thirst for knowledge of the spiritual world, for knowledge of the immortal character of the soul itself, will assert itself in the human being who lives beyond himself into the time that begins with the present. And it will be an unquenched thirst if there is no spiritual science. This will show in the effects. Theoretically it will be possible to deny it – but it will show in the effects. It will show in the fact that people will find themselves desolate in their souls, will not know what to do with their lives, that they will perform their external tasks but will not know what the meaning of life is, and that they will thirst for this unraveling of the meaning of life. Little by little it will extend to the intellect; little by little it will show how man's thinking becomes coarser and coarser. We have already found enough coarseness in one example today. In short, the development of man would experience a descent if it could not be fertilized by spiritual science.

May the times we are living through today, which call upon man to be earnest in so many fields, also be a sign that the time is beginning when people must have knowledge of immortality and that spiritual research is the way to achieve it. The spiritual researcher himself knows that he is in harmony with all those who, even if they have not yet done spiritual research, have nevertheless been living and breathing in the spiritual world through the very nature of their soul activity. The spiritual researcher knows himself to be in harmony with those who simply knew what it means to live in the spiritual world. When Goethe was asked why he wanted to recognize the plant through ideas, since ideas are something abstract, he said: “Then my ideas, which I believe I experience within myself, are direct reality, because I do see my ideas within reality.” Therefore it was Goethe who, even when he had not yet spiritual science, knew what to say in a poetic but accurate way about the character of the spiritual world, where he was spiritually and soulfully transported by the poetic genius.

Today we have to say: the person who, through the development of his thinking, lives into the spiritual world, lives and moves in the emerging soul entities. And when man is freed from the body, he is also a spiritual-soul entity that lives in the becoming. That which has become, that which is solid, exists only in the outer sensual world in which man lives as long as he is in the body and then only when he perceives through the body. As soon as man ascends to the spiritual being, he is seized by the becoming. Goethe knows this. He also knows that just as man, through his own feeling, lives into his inner well-being, he can also live into a feeling that may well be called love. That is the surprising thing and always will be when one comes to spiritual people, that they even know how to say the right thing with the right word from their life in the spiritual world. That is why Goethe also says: one lives in the becoming. And when one develops oneself into this becoming, then the thoughts live in this becoming itself. Not the ordinary thoughts — these must first be overcome, they can only be incorporated into the world of becoming as something lasting, something enduring. Only when that which can be grasped in the process of becoming is held fast in thought, can the thought become fixed and we can carry it with our immortal soul through the portal of death. That is why, towards the end of his prologue in Heaven, written at the height of his life, Goethe speaks the beautiful words with which I want to conclude these reflections today, because in them, in a time that lies before the development of spiritual research as we understand it today , a poet speaks of the spiritual world out of poetic genius in a way that one must speak of it out of realization, by first pointing, or having the Lord point, to that which man needs as long as he lives in the sensual body. So that he does not degenerate into comfort and convenience, the Lord points out to Mephisto those who are spirit beings. And when free of the body, the human being is such a spiritual being. Goethe points out the peculiarity of the spiritual world with words that are sure to hit the mark. For you will recognize in these words what I myself had to recognize in them. After I had developed everything that I have presented today, I was surprised by the wonderful correspondence of these Goethean words, which I had not recognized before, the wonderful correspondence of these few Goethean words with the fundamental character the world to which the immortal human soul belongs: “But you, the true sons of the gods” - spiritual beings are meant, just as man is a spiritual being as an immortal soul -,

“But you, the true sons of the gods,
Rejoice in the living, rich beauty!
Embrace with love's sweet barriers what is becoming, what lives and works eternally,
And what floats in a wavering appearance,
Secure with lasting thoughts.”

Attention is drawn to that which lives in the pure spirit as its very own, but which is recognized in the human soul as its immortal part. In these words, which are directly a characteristic of that which can be grasped in the human soul, even when it is still living in the body, as the immortal, and of which one can know that it passes through the gate of death, when it enters the realm of the developing and takes with it to the pure realm of the spirit that which it has experienced here in a fluctuating appearance, in order to transform it into thoughts that can then become permanent and be taken through the gate of death. And what lives in fluctuating appearance affirms the soul, which passes through the gate of death, as an immortal, as an eternal being, in lasting thoughts, which henceforth make up its life in the same way that the body makes up the soul's life in the physical world.