The Rudolf Steiner Archive

[Handwriting Ita Wegman: How is the coming karma related to the heart?]

ad. I.) The rhythmic human being is the mediator between the nervous-sensory and metabolic-limb human beings.

The nervous-sensory human being of this incarnation is the result of the metamorphosis of the metabolic-limb human being of the previous incarnation.

The rhythmic human being is the result of the supersensible forces that are effective between death and rebirth. These forces change in such a way that they form the middle-ground human being on earth. They are integrated into the outer forces of the air circle, while between death and rebirth they are integrated into the outer forces of the planetary cycles.

Karma is now formed in this way: in the metabolism-limb-organism there is complete unconsciousness during life on earth. Man is (for ordinary consciousness) in a continuous dreamless sleep. Into this sleeping part of the soul, a judgment about the value or lack of value of human actions is recorded by the elemental forces (archai) that permeate this part of the soul. This judgment undergoes a metamorphosis during the time between death and rebirth of the metabolic-limb organism into the nerve-sense human being of the next earthly life. But the metamorphosed impulse (that is, the judgment of the value or worthlessness of the deeds, transformed into the will to be balanced by other deeds) does not consciously enter the human being, but rather into the angelic being that belongs to him. For this reason, karma remains unconscious to the human being (the ordinary consciousness).

The heart is only involved in the formation of karma to the extent that it belongs to the metabolism-limb-organism. Not as an organ of the rhythmic human being.

[Handwriting Ita Wegman: How does the blood process in the lungs relate to that in the heart?] ad II.) Blood process in the lungs and heart.

The lungs absorb cosmic forces with the inhaled air. World thoughts flow into these forces. These are, after all, the same forces that work in the human being as forces of growth and formation. When they enter the organism through the lungs, the world thought forces metamorphose by bifurcating at the same time. That is, one part goes (essentially upwards) into the nerve-sense organization and becomes the physical support of human thoughts; another part goes (essentially downwards, to the heart) into the metabolic-limb organism and is woven into the limbs of the human organization, which are connected in the broadest sense with the forces of the earth.

To see this point clearly, we must consider the following. Through his metabolic-limb system, the human being places himself in the workings of the earth. Observe how the human being walks: He puts his leg in front, that is, he brings it into a very specific position in relation to the earth's gravity. And so the human being moves within the dynamics of the earth. Metabolism proceeds in earthly chemistry. These earthly dynamics and this earthly chemistry cease beyond the rhythmic system. It is a complete illusion to believe that earthly things have an effect on the nerve-sense human being.

It can be seen from this that something extraterrestrial is absorbed into the lungs with breathing. This is then transferred into earthly things. The breathing current is the refined repetition of the descent of the human being from the spiritual into the physical world through birth. Only in this descent into the physical and etheric organization are the forces sent, while in breathing the forces flow in that correspond to the physical and etheric correlate of the astral body and the I.

In breathing, the cosmos forms and shapes the human being. It is different with blood circulation. This comes from what is integrated into the dynamics and chemistry of the earth. But as blood flows from the sphere of earth dynamics and earth chemistry into the heart, it takes up the impulses of the human astral body and the I. And so, in the blood of the heart, the spirit and soul of the human being strive out of the individual being towards the cosmic being. Blood in the heart striving towards the breath in the lungs is the human being's striving towards the cosmos. The air we breathe in our lungs striving towards the blood of the heart is the human being's being blessed by the cosmos. Blood striving towards the heart is the refined process of dying.

Blood as a carrier of carbonic acid from the human body represents the refined process of dying.

In this way, the human being continuously flows into the cosmos through the bloodstream, a process that takes place radically after death, in that it takes hold of the whole physical human being through the blood.

Starting from these considerations, we then find the bridge to the question extension with regard to Christ Jesus and the mysteries. It is true that the southern mysteries were more concerned with the secrets of the bloodstream - the heart - (of man) and the northern mysteries more with those of breathing - the lungs - (of the cosmos).

The Christ Mystery is the unveiling of the great miracle that takes place between the heart and the lungs: the cosmos becomes human; the human being becomes cosmos. The sun carries the human being from the cosmos to the earth; the moon carries the human being from the earth into the cosmos. Transposed into the great: what flows from the lungs to the heart is the human correlate of Christ's descent to earth; what flows from the heart to the lungs is the human correlate of the guiding of the human being after death through the Christ impulse into the spiritual world.

In this respect, the mystery of Golgotha lives in a human, organic way between the heart and lungs.

[Typescript, question from Mrs. Margarete Bockholt: If I imagine that the formative forces of the trunk without the present head are left to the forces of the cosmos without the influence of the earth, then a rounding must occur. If I try this on myself, I bend the spine, the upper end of which meets the symphysis, thus becoming the occiput. The present diaphragm then arises as a partition between the nasal and frontal sinus cavities. The sacrum is pushed forward and becomes the bridge of the nose; if the legs are drawn up, they clearly represent the lower jaw; the arms with the shoulder girdle represent the upper jaw and ear. The internal organs should be transformed in such a way that the kidneys become the eyes and the adrenal glands the lacrimal glands. (The shape of the adrenal glands corresponds to the exhalations from the nostrils, as Dr. Wachsmuth describes it as crescent-shaped and triangular. This is perhaps connected to the transformation of the lacrimal glands.) The lungs would become the lateral lobes of the brain. How the spleen and liver relate to the formation of the brain is not clear to me; the heart would be in the position of the epiphysis, the genital organs in that of the pituitary gland. Perhaps the 20 milk teeth could also be related to the 10 fingers and 10 toes each.

ad III.) Yes, this is based on good plastic representations. But it is best to include the plasticizing forces latent in the organism in the representation in this way:

The head is influenced by the cosmic formative forces; the earthly forces are atrophied in it (how the two relate to each other will be clear when the book we are working on with Wegman is published).

The metabolism-limbs-human being is influenced by the earthly formative forces; the cosmic ones are atrophied in it.

If we now imagine the atrophied earthly powers at the back of the head becoming developed, the back of the head metamorphoses into a metabolic-limb system; the reverse applies to the metabolic-limb system.

The middle organism (associated with rhythm) contains the organs pointing in both directions. This middle part is the head, which strives towards the limb system, and the limb system, which strives towards the head.

One looks for illness in disruptions of the organism, which are caused by all kinds of effects on it, and to which it cannot adapt through its own activity. It is said that in this way, reduced life processes arise and the activities of the body parts are reduced.

As long as one only aims to get to know the phenomena that occur in the human physical body during the course of an illness, such a judgment will suffice. However, this is no longer the case if one wants to proceed to healing the disease. This is because there is nothing analogous to a healing process in the interaction of one physical substance with another. In the physical world, the effect of one substance on the other takes place. A change can then occur in the latter; the concept of healing is completely inapplicable to this.

This is due to the fact that even in a healthy organism, the substantial composition, form and mode of action of the whole and of the individual organs is not exhausted by the effect of the physical.

We can observe the physical body with the means available to us. But we cannot understand it through this. We can only understand it if we see the expression of spiritual processes in physical ones. What can be perceived by the senses through a physical organ is the manifestation of something behind it that can only be grasped spiritually.

A healthy organ is one in which the physical can be the perfect expression of what is behind it spiritually. If physical processes take place in the organ that are not the expression of the spiritual, or if the spiritual in it develops too strongly, so that the physical cannot follow, then illness occurs.

The sick organism must therefore be understood in the same way as the healthy one, in terms of the human spirit. This is not done in today's conventional medicine. Now, however, a medical method is coming to the public's attention that seeks to understand both the healthy and the sick organism in terms of the spiritual. Only in this way can a real understanding of the connection between illness and healing arise.

The prerequisite for this is to be willing to really recognize the spiritual in the human being. This does not mean the “spiritual” that is experienced in the soul. This has a relatively great independence from the body. Its laws are moral, aesthetic and logical. When it comes to these, one does not ask what is going on in the body, but one treats the soul as independent of the body.

But everything physical, human and non-human, is based on something spiritual. The fact that this is either not admitted at all for the physical nature, or that the spiritual in the physical is not considered appropriate for scientific treatment, stems only from the fact that at present scientific knowledge is taken almost exclusively from inanimate (inorganic) nature. And one also stops at this when considering the living, the sentient, the conscious. One simply seeks to recognize how the processes observable in the inorganic continue to work in the plant, animal, and human organism.

This leads to scientific illusions. It is true that in an inorganic substance one cannot initially discover a spiritual element. The inorganic substance alone has come into being. And if one looks in spirit at its origin, one also finds the spirit at work.

Take arsenic, for example. As it is found, it shows no spiritual element. It exists in itself in grape-like and kidney-shaped forms. As it appears there, it proves to be the result of processes that are the expression of a spiritual. This spiritual has been at work in the past in the formation of the earth. Only the physical form of the arsenic remains from this effect. It stands there like the memory of a past spiritual effect.

In the human organism, this spiritual effect is still present as a present one. It is as if the premature arsenic effect had been stored by the earth formation in this organism.

Certain organs, which take shape in the organism with certain outlines, develop out of the liquid and gaseous parts of the organism, in which they do not have fixed outlines. The power by which this happens is the same as that which was at work in the formation of the arsenic. These human organs are on the way to becoming what occurs in the inorganic world as the lifeless arsenic. They do not become such only because they are in the organism and thus do not complete the process of becoming arsenic.

Two things can now happen. On its way to becoming arsenic, an organ can lose its connection with the spiritual part of the organism. It then progresses too far in this process of becoming arsenic. If, under certain conditions, the organism is supplied with substances containing protein, for example, the connection between the physical process in the organ and the spiritual part of the organism can be restored. The protein-containing substance proves to be a remedy.

Or the spiritual can have too strong an effect on the organ. Then the organ does not progress far enough in its processes with regard to becoming arsenic. If arsenic is then introduced into the organism, this supports the becoming arsenic. It is deposited in the organ, so to speak, in a supportive way. The physical process that has been left behind is continued to the extent necessary for the organism. Arsenic proves to be a healing agent again. It pushes the spiritual away from the organ.

Without insights of the kind described above, it is impossible to arrive at an understanding of the disease process, much less at the choice of a remedy. Present-day natural science, which is entirely oriented towards the inorganic, can serve as a basis for technical work, but it cannot be such a basis for the healing of diseases. For the essence of being ill lies where the connection between the spiritual and the physical is. If one wants to claim that science, as the only possible science, cannot approach the spiritual because of its limitations, then one must also declare that there can be no real medicine. The inner courage that expands the passive powers of knowledge through the active ones is part of the knowledge of the spiritual. Present-day natural science has lost this courage because it searches everywhere for the sensory-perceptible foundations on which valid insights are to be developed. It cannot be the science on which medicine is based. Therefore, a medical method is developed here on the basis of an insight into the spiritual existence.

The point is to correctly experience the essence of nature: then we will express knowledge of nature in archetypal phenomena instead of in abstract laws.

In cytology, we have an image of what is experienced in the realm of ideas. Those who are familiar with the real processes in the life of ideas sense that cytology is a related field. Concepts gained through the senses are not applicable here. One feels that they do not encompass the phenomena. Only inspired concepts can penetrate into this sphere. Ed. v. Hartmann remarks:

The preliminary stages of the development of a cell, up to the point where it becomes sexually mature, if such a thing exists, will always remain shrouded in mystery for us, partly because any representatives of

it have long since died out, and partly because they occur at submicroscopic dimensions.

But in the life of the imagination, its macroscopic archetype is given. Imagination is based on a trans-sensual process that is interrupted before the transition into the sensually perceptible, insofar as it remains a life process. If it is continued into the sensual, then it becomes a process of consciousness.

Description of mitotic cell division: It starts from the central corpuscle, seizes the nucleus

and the entire filamentous structure, splits all parts lengthwise, moves them and rearranges them so that instead of a centralized cell content, there are ultimately two, which separate from each other.

Through anesthesia, the life process is prevented from transitioning into cell life by means of paralysis. The supersensible part of a perception has a paralyzing effect; the sensory part occurs as a result of the paralysis.

Just as one is in the sphere of the life of the imagination when dealing with the disputes of the cell physiologist before he proceeds to the fertilization process, so too one is in the sphere of feeling when reading the explanations of this physiologist when he describes division, conjugation, etc. Imagined perceptions serve as orientation here.

As soon as the egg leaves the mother, we run into difficulties of comprehension. We can only get by assuming a process external to the mother for the formation of the egg and conceiving of the full development of this process as impossible under present-day conditions. Then the mother only provides the protective shell through which the process is removed from the conditions that are impossible for the egg under present-day conditions. But all this remains hypothetical if it is not corroborated by the fact that such a process is perceived. But it is perceived in the emotional life. In this, one recognizes an existence within the conditions that are not fulfilled in the physical environment. But this perception is never a presence. Ed. v. Hartmann puts in the place of perception: the principle of minimal effort and the principle of lawful development.

Gustav Theodor Fechner.

I just think that his experimental aesthetics are concerned with the exact measurement of things that are generally accepted as trivial truths; like trying to determine “exactly” how the rising and falling action in tragedy can be expressed in terms of time using numbers. The interesting thing about these things does not go as far as where measurement is possible, because that is where, more often than not, the triviality begins.

The overestimation of achievements such as Fechner's is ultimately based on a fundamental trait of the human mind, which, as a rule, is not satisfied with truths that can be fully understood in their derivation, but which wants truths that are based on deductions where the method is considered correct, but otherwise the result arises from the assumptions with a kind of natural necessity, like the sum of the addends that cannot be seen. The same is the case with all mathematical truths. There is always something like philosophical cowardice and faint-heartedness in such a way of thinking. One does not want to determine the truth from within oneself, from one's own personality, but through something else that is removed from the influence of the subjective: the method. One has too little intellectual backbone, so one creates a staff in the method to hold on to. This is nothing more than a relinquishment, a giving up of the subjective and the personal. The method is a crutch for lame thinkers.

Strong minds of noble thought know no method, only themselves and the object. Nothing comes between the two for them.

1. At present, much good is said in individual fields. But people have no conception of the great elementary facts. They cannot observe there. And so one separates the state of sleep from the state of waking, whereas the state of sleep also accompanies waking life as a partial life, and indeed in feeling and desire (will). Today one can work with microscopes and telescopes, but one does not observe what is immediately there.

2. Only the outside of the body is perceptible. Only the inside of the spirit. The breathing process is only conscious in dreams; but so is the process of imagination by the spirit. The metabolism remains completely unconscious: only its soul correlate in disposition, hunger, thirst, etc. becomes conscious; likewise, the emotional and volitional process from the spirit.

3. The scientific world view demands that people understand themselves. However, it has no means of doing so. Indeed, with its research it departs from the actual human being. Natural science and spiritual science can exchange their gifts.

4. Imagination is the surface of a real process that takes place in the formative forces.

5. Feeling is the surface of a real process that has to do with the coming into being and passing away of the human being itself. 6. Volition (desire) is the surface of a real process that is rooted in the eternal aspect of the human being.

At present, one is not understood when one speaks of the spirit. People believe that one then fantasizes. One fantasizes no more than the physiologist and the anatomist fantasize when they describe the physical processes that underlie the subjectively unconscious respiratory or metabolic processes. Mind, however, cannot be grasped by the microscope; but just as the microscope makes the small visible by enlarging it, so mind comes to perception when the soul powers are so strengthened that the soul makes use of its own being in order to perceive. The spiritual essence of a plant is perceived immediately if one adjusts oneself in such a way that one still experiences something, if one distracts oneself from sensory perception. When you look at the plant, like a word when you read. You can describe the word according to its letter forms. You can learn as little about the spirit through mere inner contemplation as you can learn about the stomach by contemplating the feeling of hunger or satiety. The imagination, feeling, etc. of the mystic is only based on the spiritual. He does not yet have it. The body must be anatomized in order to get to know the processes of metabolism, etc.; the spirit must be condensed, strengthened - in order to get to know it. One must seek how it carries the human being from an 'other' world, how it lets him arise and pass away; how it sustains him throughout physical life. If one gives oneself over to scientific conceptions, then one weans oneself from the contemplation of the spirit. But if the spirit is not paralyzed, it also comes into independent activity through this. Through natural science, human beings have, as it were, overcome their visionary illiteracy. —

Only an unfinished product enters into perception; one could not worry about perception if it produced a finished impression - man describes the unfinished remainder as matter.

Memory contains more than thought; we would have no memories if a physical process did not follow thinking. We speak of consciousness as we speak of a mirror. We mean something through which one cannot see and which yet reflects only the transformed memories like mirror images.

Anthroposophy seeks to understand matter in the human mind; and that of consciousness in the outside world.

An anthroposophical researcher can only be someone who is protected by healthy, realistic, vigorous thinking from falling into dreaming, hallucinating, hysterically indulging in their own physicality; and whose interest in the sensual outside world, cultivated through Goethe, prevents them from tearing shreds out of this outside world to patch together a natural philosophy with them.

[missing part of the manuscript] One is in pictorial-uniformity with heightened experience of one's own self. One experiences a reality that was hidden before. One has one's own self with its part of the world before consciousness. And this self is free of the body, i.e. free of the physical body. One experiences oneself in a reality in which the physical body is not. One experiences oneself in etheric reality. It becomes clear to consciousness that an etheric body underlies the physical body. One has broken through to etheric reality through abstract thinking. One now knows that thinking is rooted in this etheric reality and that ordinary thinking is the imprint of an etheric event in the physical body.

It is important to realize that one should not tap into the ether any more than one should into the dimensions and weight ratios of physical existence. For the latter, external instruments are required. To perceive in the ether, it requires a breakthrough to a reality that is measured, counted and weighed with inner forces. Thinking about the external world is only beneficial if it creates the conditions under which the world reveals itself through measure, number and weight. Likewise, thinking inwardly must be the mediator, not the dogmatist.

Through the development of the ability just described, the whole person becomes a sense organ. One must be completely clear about this fact. One experiences a great deal through the awakening of the imaginative power. But this is not the objective world. In relation to this objective world, everything is only an image. But as an image, it has reality. This reality can only be evaluated through vigorous thinking. Through orientation in the world of images, the inwardly effective and the outward are separated. One cannot keep the outward from the images, but one can distinguish between the inward and the outward through vigorous thinking.

Of the outer world, only the spiritual-soul remains in the human and animal kingdoms; the plants and minerals are lost from the field of vision that now exists. The latter two kingdoms of nature are still there as results of the etheric. The moon ceases to be a reality in the world now being viewed. By contrast, the sun appears to have been transformed. It becomes a force permeating the world.

[missing part of the manuscript]

The impression that a person makes is much more than what is captured by the senses. Think of someone who claims to have seen Bismarck. What is at work there, besides the image, and from within. Interest is aroused. Desires assert themselves. The memory is not caused by the power of the image, but by the power of the impression and by the interest from within.

The development of the imaginative faculty depends on the formation of that which leads to remembering apart from the sensory image. This points to forces of the human soul that lie fallow in ordinary life. They are stimulated by the external world, but not by the power of the will itself. The power of interest, which when heightened to the highest degree appears as love, and the power of allowing oneself to be stimulated by a content, can be aroused by one's own will.

In this way, one develops the ability on which remembering is based; but without remembering itself coming about. But something else comes about. The power arises in the soul to live in images, without external stimulus. This image-forming power must be developed for anthroposophical research.

The first requirement is the realization that in the ordinary life of an average person, inner experiences do not show their reality, but only images of this reality. The actual self, the “I”, does live in our daily life; but it lives as an image – any sleep can convince us of this –; this “I” does not live differently in our daily life than it does in deep sleep. – And thinking, feeling and willing, insofar as they are imagined, are like dreams.

In the world of perception, we experience the effect of an external world on our organism; in the impulses of the will, the inner world – that which is actually real – does not come to light. In the world of perception, reality is hidden from us; in the world of the will, it hides itself from us.

The nature of the world of perception means that science can never arrive at anything other than a view of the world that distances itself from true reality, which makes all its ideas feel like ingredients of reality. The nature of the world of will requires that man cannot understand himself, that he cannot form ideas out of the dark depths of his being; but ideas that cannot free themselves create instability and weakness of the inner being.

It is a matter of leading the hidden world of the inner being through the ceiling of the world of perception – just as the soul world hidden in the sleeping human being is placed in the environment of the outer world through awakening.

An awakening to a more intense soul life is taking place. The thinking consciousness is joined by the seeing consciousness.

It is sufficient for life to be informed of the results of the seeing consciousness, because these results justify themselves to the thinking being.

The ordinary life of the soul must be grasped by the hidden one. The corresponding science is acquired through inner soul work.

The beginnings for this are certainly there. — Goethe:

The blue gives us a feeling of cold, just as it also reminds us of the shade. Blue glass shows the objects in a sad light.

The effect of this color (red) is as unique as its nature. It gives an impression of both seriousness and dignity, as well as of grace and charm. It achieves the latter in its dark, condensed state, and the former in its light, diluted state.

Developing this beginning leads to an awakening of the soul in the external world. And to the realization that in ordinary perception through sense impression, something spiritual is hidden.

In this way, the soul can be pushed into another reality, just as one pushes the unconscious soul into the reality of the day when awakening. Another beginning lies in Goethe's theory of metamorphosis. Blossom transformed plant.

In man, what is only imagined in the external world can be experienced.

Thus, what is hidden in the physical organism is found — supersensible forces that work on its structure —: these forces are the being that, from the moment man turns his senses to the external world, turn inwardly in creation — the not yet born man looks at his inner self a being that does not live in the outer world. Seen from the outside (with the inner self), death intervenes; seen from the inside (with the soul life rooted in the spiritual world), the becoming of the new human intervenes.

The faculties are acquired when:

1. When thinking becomes so strong that it is alive, lives independently, can then, as it were, be sent as a messenger into the world and bring back its experiences. (It must live without perception.

2. When the will becomes so spiritual that it develops its own consciousness, it then observes how the soul arises when the physical passes away.

1. Ordinary thinking lives in the perceptions of the senses with the strength it has discarded when it ceased to animate the organism.

2. The ordinary will develops a consciousness with the help of the organism in order to break away from it. It begins its life in the organism and continues it outside of it. (Thus: thinking becomes stronger to the point of having a life of its own; the will becomes more independent to the point of having a meaningful consciousness).

An inner sense of responsibility develops in thinking. One rejects certain thoughts, just as one rejects certain actions. One feels obliged to others to have them. This (alternately) accommodates: an experience of how one thought is fruitful, bearing, bearing reality; the other cancelling reality.

Learning knowledge: living with connecting in the emergence; living with distinguishing in the passing away. Adding: like an invigoration – subtracting: like a destruction.

Ideal: (valid for the experience of the spiritual world – and for this) – thoughts only for the development of the soul life.

Judging (in which the will lives) in such a way that one lets already existing experiences speak – lets only the facts judge –

1. Thoughts as causes: in this way thoughts lead into the spiritual world.

2. Judgments as results: in this way the spiritual world enters into consciousness.

2. You don't allow yourself any theories at all — you just watch. You switch yourself off: you observe how another judges. —

The point of view of another person becomes important to you – your own recedes. – The manifold points of view. – You learn to see that thinking from the outside must be met with something like speaking – and from the inside: understanding what has been said. –

Common sense: the will not just to dream life instinctively, but to understand it. –

Instinct: If one could let one's present will not speak about a present experience, but rather the matured one from an earlier period of development, which has become calm. —

What one experiences now, one does not know; one only knows what one experienced years ago – what one experiences now, one will only know in later years.

This inner mood gradually brings about that vision which is independent of us, the object of which is what cannot yet be seen, what death covers.

In being born, we are psychically ripe to see the world behind death; but it is only through physical life that we become aware of what can be seen.

With the development of thinking, all powers of imagination strive to unfold. With the development of the will, the powers of egoism and everything that furthers it unfold. When properly developed, thinking stops when it wants to lapse into fantasy. — And the will becomes lonely, alienated from the world.

The world is without the spirit
For man like a book
Written in a language
He cannot read
But of which he knows
That its content is life-determining
And spiritual science wants to strive for
The art of reading
She considers herself necessary
Because she must believe
That she is demanded by the life
Itself
Into which humanity
Through the developmental forces
Of the present
Has entered.

This edition is highlighting Dr. Steiner's letter to Friederich Theodor Vischer (mailed, June 20, 1882). This presentation was translated by Daniel Hafner, August 2005, and revised October, 2011.

Modern natural science regards Experience as the only source for the investigation of truth. And not wrongly, to be sure. Its area is the realm of outer, spatial things and temporal processes. How should one be able to make anything out about an object belonging to the outer world, without having gotten to know it by means of sense-perception, that is, the only manner of coming in contact with things spatial-temporal. First get to know the object,¹ and then theorize about it, so goes the maxim asserted by modern science over against the speculative systems of the philosophers of nature from the beginning of this century. This principle is completely justified, but by an erroneous conception, it has led science astray. The misunderstanding lies in the character attributed by the inductive method, and by the materialism and atomism issuing from it, to general concepts. For the person of understanding, there can be no doubt that the current state of natural science in its theoretical part is essentially influenced by concepts as they have become dominant through Kant. If we want to go into this relationship more closely, we must commence our consideration with him. Kant limited the scope of Recognition to Experience, because in the sensory material communicated by it, he found the only possibility of filling in the concept-patterns, the categories, inherent in our mental organization, by themselves quite empty. For him, sensory content was the only form of such a conceptual pattern. Thereby he had steered the world's judgment into other courses. If, earlier, one had thought of concepts and laws as belonging to the outer world, if one had ascribed to them objective validity, now they seemed to be given merely by the nature of the “I.” The outer world counted merely as raw material, to be sure, yet as that which alone reality was to be ascribed to. This standpoint was inherited from Kant by Inductive Science. It too counts the material world as the only thing real; for it, concepts and laws are justified only to the extent that they have that world as their content and mediate the recognizing of it. It regards concepts reaching beyond this realm as unreal. For it, general thoughts and laws are mere abstractions, derived from the agreements experienced in a series of observations. It knows mere subjective maxims, generalizations, no concrete concepts bearing their validity in themselves. This must be borne in mind if one wants to penetrate from a lot of murky concepts circulating nowadays through to complete clarity. One will first have to ask oneself:what then is Experience, really, gained of this or that object? In works on the philosophy of experience, one will search in vain for a matter-of-fact, satisfying answer to this certainly justified question.

Recognizing an object of the outer world in its essential being cannot, after all, possibly mean perceiving it with the senses, and as it presents itself to them, so drawing up a likeness of it. One will never see how, from something sensory, a corresponding conceptual photograph could come about, and what relation there could be between the two. An epistemology that starts from this standpoint can never get clear about the question of the connection of concept and object.² How is one to see the necessity of going beyond what is given immediately by the sense, to the concept, if in the former the essential being of an object of the sensory world were already given? Why the conceptual comprehending too, if the looking-at were already sufficient? At the least, the concept, if not a falsification, would be a highly unnecessary addition to the object. That is what one must arrive at, if one denies the concreteness of concepts and laws. Over against such pictorial explanations as, say, that of the Herbartian school, too: that the concept is the mental correlate of an object located outside us, and that the recognizing consists in acquiring such a picture, we now want to seek a reality explanation of recognizing. In keeping with the task we set ourselves, we here want to limit ourselves merely to the recognizing of the outer world. In this case, two things come into consideration in the act of recognizing: The confirmation^TR1 of thinking, and that of the senses. The former has to do with concepts and laws, the latter with sensory qualities and processes. The concept and the law are always something general, the sensory object something particular; the former can only be thought, the latter only looked at. The media through which the general appears to us as something particular are space and time. Every particular thing and every particular process must be able to be fitted into the conceptual content of the world, for whatever of it were not lawful and conceptual in nature does not come into consideration for our thinking at all. Hence, recognizing an object can only mean: giving what appears to our senses, in space, a place in the generality of the conceptual content of the world, indeed letting it merge into it completely. In the recognizing of a spatial-temporal object, we are thus given nothing else than a concept or law in a sense-perceptible way. Only by such a conception does one get over the previously mentioned unclearness. One must allow the concept its primariness, its own form of existence, built upon itself, and only recognize it again in another form in the sense-perceptible object. Thus we have reached a reality definition of Experience. The philosophy of induction can by its nature never reach a definition of this kind. For it would have to be shown in what way experience transmits concept and law. But since that philosophy sees these two as something merely subjective, its path to that is cut off from the beginning.

From this, one sees at the same time how unfruitful the undertaking would be to want to make out anything about the outer world without the help of perception. How can one gain possession of the concept in the form of viewing, without accomplishing the viewing itself? Only when one sees that what perception offers is concept and idea, but in an essentially other form than in pure thinking's form freed of all empirical content, and that this form is what makes the difference, does one comprehend that one must take the path of experience. But if one assumes the content to be what matters, then nothing can be put forth against the assertion that the same content could after all also be acquired in a manner independent of all experience. So experience must indeed be the maxim of the philosophy of nature, but at the same time, recognition of the concept in the form of outer experience. And here is where modern natural science, by seeking no clear concept of experience, got on the wrong track. In this point it has been attacked repeatedly, and is also easily open to attack. Instead of acknowledging the apriority of the concept, and taking the sense world as but another form of the same, it regards the same as a mere derivative of the outer world, which for it is an absolute Prior. The mere form of something is thus stamped the thing itself. Atomism, to the extent that it is materialistic, issues from this unclearness of the concepts. We want here, based on the preceding, to subject it to a careful, and—as I believe I can assume—the only possible, critique.

However opinions may diverge in the detail, atomism ultimately amounts to regarding all sensory qualities, such as: tone, warmth, light, scent, and so on, indeed, if one considers the way thermodynamics derives Boyle's law, even pressure, as mere semblance, mere function of the world of atoms. Only the atom counts as ultimate factor of reality. To be consistent, one must now deny it every sensory quality,because otherwise a thing would be explained out of itself. One did, to be sure, when one set about to build up an atomistic world system,attribute to the atom all kinds of sensory qualities, albeit only in quite meager abstraction.³ One regards it, now as extended and impenetrable, now as mere energy center, etc. But thereby one committed the greatest inconsistency, and showed that one had not considered the above, which shows quite clearly that no sensory characteristics whatsoever may be at tributed to the atom at all. Atoms must have an existence inaccessible to sensory experience. On the other hand, though, also, they themselves, and also the processes occurring in the world of atoms, especially movements, are not supposed to be something merely conceptual. The concept, after all, is something merely universal, which is without spatial existence. But the atom is supposed, even if not itself spatial, yet to be there in space, to present something particular. It is not supposed to be exhausted in its concept, but rather to have, beyond that, a form of existence in space. With that, there is taken into the concept of the atom a property that annihilates it. The atom is supposed to exist analogously to the objects of outer perception, yet not be able to be perceived.In its concept, viewability is at once affirmed and denied.

Moreover, the atom proclaims itself right away as a mere product of speculation. When one leaves out the previously mentioned sensory qualities quite unjustifiably attributed to it, nothing is left for it but the mere “Something,” which is of course unalterable, because there is nothing about it, so nothing can be destroyed, either. The thought of mere being, transposed into space, a mere thought-point, basically just the arbitrarily multiplied Kantian “thing in itself,” confronts us.

Against this, one could perhaps object that after all it is all the same what is understood by Atom, that one should let the scholar of natural history go ahead and operate with it—for in many tasks of mathematical physics, atomistic models are indeed advantageous—; that after all, the philosopher knows that one is not dealing with a spatial reality, but with an abstraction, like other mathematical notions. To oppose the assumption of the atom in this respect would indeed be mistaken. But that is not the issue. The philosophers are concerned with that atomism for which atom and causality⁴ are the only possible motivating forces of the world, which either denies all that is not mechanical, or else holds it to be inexplicable, as exceeding our cognitive ability.⁵ It is one thing to view the atom as a mere thought-point, another thing to want to see in it the fundamental principle of all existence. The former standpoint never goes beyond mechanical nature with it; the second holds everything to be a mechanical function.

If someone wanted to speak of the harmlessness of the atomistic notions, one could, to refute him, go ahead and hold up to him the consequences that have been derived from them. There are especially two necessary consequences: firstly, that the predicate of original existence is squandered on isolated substances void of spirit, quite indifferent toward one another, and otherwise wholly undefined, in whose interaction only mechanical necessity rules, so that the entire remainder of the world of phenomena exists as their empty haze, and has mere chance to thank for its existence; secondly, insurmountable limits to our recognizing result from this. For the human mind, the concept of the atom is, as we have shown, something completely empty, the mere “Something.” But since the atomists cannot be content with this content, but call for actual substance, yet determine this substance in a way in which it can nowhere be given, they must proclaim the unrecognizability of the actual essential being of the atom.

Concerning the other limit of knowledge, the following is to be noted. If one sees thinking too as a function of the interaction of complexes of atoms, which remain indifferent toward one another, it is not at all to be marveled at, why the connection between movement of the atoms on the one hand, and thinking and sensation on the other, is not to be comprehended,⁶ which atomism therefore sees as a limit of our recognition. Only, there is something to comprehend only where a conceptual passage over exists. But if one first so limits the concepts that in the sphere of the one, nothing is to be found that would make possible the passage to the sphere of the other, then comprehending is excluded from the start. Moreover, this passage would have to be indeed not of a merely speculative nature, but rather it would have to be a real process, thus permitting of being demonstrated. But this is again prevented by the non-sensoriness of atomistic motion. With the giving up of the concept of the atom, these speculations about the limit of our knowledge fall away by themselves. From nothing must one guard oneself more than from such determinations of boundary, for beyond the boundary there is then room for everything possible. The most irrational spiritism, as well as the most nonsensical dogma, could hide behind such assumptions. The same are quite easy to refute in every single case, by showing that at their foundation there always lies the mistake of seeing a mere abstraction for more than it is, or holding merely relative concepts to be absolute ones, and similar errors. A large number of false notions has come into circulation especially through the incorrect concepts of space and time.⁷

Hence we must subject these two concepts to a discussion. The mechanistic explanation of nature needs for the assumption of its world of atoms, besides the atoms in motion absolute space as well, that is, an empty vacuum, and an absolute time, that is, an unalterable measure of the One-After-Another.⁸ But what is space? Absolute extension can be the only answer. Only, that is only a characteristic of sensory objects, and apart from these a mere abstraction, existent only upon and with the objects, and not beside them as atomism must necessarily assume. If extension is to be present, something must be extended, and this cannot again be Extension. Here, for a proof of the absoluteness of space, one will be able to raise as an objection, say, the Kantian invention about the two gloves of the left and right hand. One says, their parts have, after all, the same relationship to one another, and yet one cannot make the two congruent. From this, Kant concludes that the relationship to absolute space is a different one, hence absolute space exists. But it is more obvious, after all, to assume that the relationship of the two gloves to one another is simply such that they cannot be made congruent. How should a relationship to absolute space be thought of, anyway? And even assuming it were possible, the relationships of the two gloves to absolute space would, however, only then establish in turn a relationship of the two gloves to one another. Why should this relationship not just as well be able to be a primary one? Space, apart from the things of the world of the senses, is an absurdity. As space is only something upon the objects, so time is also given only upon and with the processes of the world of the senses. It is inherent in them. By themselves, both are mere abstractions. Only the sensory things and processes are concrete items of the world of the senses. They present concepts and laws in the form of outer existence. Therefore they in their simplest form must be a fundamental pillar of the empirical study of nature. The simple sensory quality and not the atom, the fundamental fact and not the motion behind what is empirical, are the elements of the empirical study of nature. It is thereby given a direction which is the only possible one. If one takes that as a basis, one will not be tempted at all to speak of limits of recognizing, because one is not dealing with things to which one attributes arbitrary negative characteristics such as supersensible and the like, but rather with actually given concrete objects.

From these mentions, important conclusions will also result for epistemology. But foremost, it is certain that the atom and the motion behind the empirical must be exchanged for the fundamental sensory elements of outer experience, and henceforth can no longer count as principles of the study of nature.

• 1. Compare Vischer, Old and New, Part 3, pp. 51ff.
• 2. Compare with this the keen-minded discourses of John Rehmke in his sound work The World as Perception and Concept, Berlin, 1880.
• TR1. Translator Note: “confirmation” (Bestätigung) could be a mistake for “activation” (Betätigung).
• 3. Here belong the indications Du Bois-Reymond gives about such a system, as well as the experiments performed by Wiessner, Schramm. Translator's Note: “Schrann” is presumably a mistake for “Schramm” (Heinrich Schramm wrote The General Movement of Matter as Fundamental Cause of All Phenomena), and so I have changed it.
• 4. Compare Vischer, Old and New, Part 2.
• 5. This view is advocated by Du Bois-Reymond in Concerning the Limits of the Recognition of Nature and The Seven Riddles of the World, Leipzig, 1882.
• 6. Du Bois-Reymond: Concerning the Limits of the Recognition of Nature (see p. 4, footnote).
• 7. Vischer has repeatedly pronounced the necessity of a correction of our concept of time (Critical Passages, 1873, Old and New, Part 3).
• 8. Compare: Otto Liebmann,Thoughts and Facts, Strasbourg, 1882.

Rudolf Steiner's Original Letter to Friedrich Theodor Vischer:

Nov. 25, 1886

Three years ago, you were so kind as to give me your opinion, an opinion of surpassing value to me, about a short essay in which I treated the mistakes of atomism, and of modern natural science in general. I had submitted to you the mss. of the essay.

This incident encourages me to send you also the attached treatise about the theory of knowledge in Goethe's view of the world.

Though the essay refers to Goethe, I confess that my main concern was to provide a contribution to the theory of knowledge rather than to Goethean research.

In considering Goethe's Weltanschaung—view of the world—my concern was not as much with his positive presentation as with the direction of his way of looking at the world. Goethe's and Schiller's scientific disclosures are for me a middle for which the beginning and the end have to be sought.

The beginning: by an account of the fundamental principles which we must think of as supporting this view of the world; the end: by an exposition of the consequences which this method of viewing the world has for our view of the world, and of life.

If I tell you that I owe much of my philosophic education to the study of your writings, you will understand how desirable it is for me to find your approval of my own thinking.

Commending myself to your benevolence, I am, most sincerely,

Rudolf Steiner

First, we will call to mind the current doctrine of sense impressions, then point to contradictions contained in it, and to a view of the world more compatible with the idealistic understanding.

Current (1890) natural science thinks of the world-space as filled with an infinitely thin substance called ether. This substance consists of infinitely small particles, the ether atoms. This ether does not merely exist where there are no bodies, but also in the pores (pertaining) to bodies. The physicist imagines that each body consists of an infinite number of immeasurable small parts, like atoms. They are not in contact with each other, but they are separated by small interstices. They, in the turn, unite to larger forms, the molecules, which still cannot be discerned by the eye. Only when an infinite number of molecules unite, we get what our senses perceived as bodies.

We will explain this by an example. There is a gas in nature, called hydrogen, and another called oxygen. Hydrogen consists of immeasurable small hydrogen atoms, oxygen of oxygen atoms. The hydrogen atoms are given here as red circlets, the oxygen ones as blue circlets. So, the physicist would imagine a certain quantity of hydrogen, like a figure 1, a quantity of oxygen like figure 2. (See table)

Now we are able, by special processes, not interesting us here, to bring the oxygen in such a relation to the hydrogen that two hydrogen atoms combine with one oxygen atom, so that a composite substance results which we would have to show as indicated in figure 3.

Here, always two hydrogen atoms, together with one oxygen atom form one whole. And this still invisible, small formation, consists of two kinds of atoms, we call a molecule. The substance whose molecule consists of two hydrogen atoms, plus one oxygen atom is water.

It also can happen that a molecule consists of 3, 4, 5 different atoms. So one molecule of alcohol consists of atoms of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen.

But we also see by this that for modern physics each substance (fluid, solid, and gaseous) consists of parts between which there exist empty spaces (pores).

Into these pores, there enter the ether atoms which fill the whole cosmos. So, if we draw the ether atoms as dots, we have to imagine a body like figure 4. (The red and blue circlets are substance atoms, the black dots are ether atoms.)

Now we have to imagine that both the substance-atoms and the ether-atoms are in a state of constant motion. The motion is swinging. We must think that each atom is moving back and forth like the pendulum of a clock.

Now in A (see figure 5) we imagine a body, the molecules of which are in constant motion. This motion is transferred also to the ether-atoms in the pores, and from there, to the ether outside of the body of B, e.g. to C. Let us assume in D a sense-organ e.g. the eye, then, the vibrations of the ether will reach the eye, and through it, the nerve N. There, they hit, and through the nerve-conduit L, they arrive at the brain G. Let us assume for instance that the body A is in such a motion that the molecule swings back and forth 461 billion times a second. Then, each ether-molecule also swings 461 billion times, and hits 461 billion times against the optic nerve (in H). The nerve-conduit L transfers these 461 billion vibrations to the brain, and here, we have a sensation: in this case high red. If there were 760 billion vibrations I could see violet, at 548 billion yellow, etc. To each color sensation there corresponds, in the outside world, a certain motion.

This is even simpler in the case of the sensations of sound. Here also the body-molecules vibrate. The medium transferring this to our ear is not the ether but the air. At 148 vibrations per second we perceive the tone D, at 371 the tone F sharp, etc.

Thus we see to what this whole interpretation leads: whatever we perceive in the world with our senses, colors, tones, etc., is said not to exist in reality, but only to appear in our brain when certain vibratory forms of motion are present in the outer world. If I perceive heat, I do so only because the ether around me is in motion, and because the ether atoms hit against the nerves of my skin; when I sense light, it is because the same ether atoms reach the nerve of my eye, etc.

Therefore, the modern physicist says: in reality, nothing exists except swinging, moving atoms; everything else is merely a creation of my brain, formed by it when it is touched by the movement in the outer world.

I do not have to paint how dismal such a view of the world is. Who would not be filled with the saddest ideas if for example, Hugo Magnus, who is quite caught in that way of thinking, exclaims, “This motion of the ether is the only thing which really and objectively exists of color in creation. Only in the human body, in the brain, these ether movements are transformed into images which we usually call red, green, yellow, etc. According to this, we must say: creation is absolutely colorless ... Only when these (colorless) ether movements are led to the brain by the eye, they are transformed to images which we call color.” (Hugo Magnus, Farben und Schöpfung, 8 lectures about the relation of color to man and to nature, Breslau, 1881, p. 16f.)

I am convinced that everyone whose thinking is based on sound ideas, and who has not been subjected from early youth to these strange jumpy thoughts, will consider this state of affairs as simply absurd.

This matter, however, has a much more dubious angle. If there is nothing in the real world except swinging atoms, then there cannot be any true objective ideas and ideals. For when I conceive an idea, I can ask myself, what does it mean outside of my consciousness?—Nothing more than a movement of my brain molecules. Because my brain molecules at that moment swing one way or another, my brain gives me the illusion of some idea. All reality in the world then is considered as movement, everything else is empty fog, result of some movement.

If this way of thinking were correct, then I would have to tell myself: man is nothing more than a mass of swinging molecules. That is the only thing in him that has reality. If I have a great idea and pursue it to its origin, I will find some kind of movement. Let us say I plan a good deed. I only can do that if a mass of molecules in my brain feels like executing a certain movement. In such a case, is there still any value in “good” or “evil”? I can't do anything except what results from the movement of my brain molecules.

From these causes came the pessimism of delle Grazie. She says: For what purpose is this illusionary world of ideas and ideals when they are nothing but movements of atoms. And she believes that current science is right. Because she could not transcend science, and could not, as apathetic people do, disregard the misery of this belief; she succumbed to pessimism.

(See Rudolf Steiner and Marie delle Grazie, Nature and Our Ideals, published by Mercury Press.)

The error underlying the theories of this science is so simple that one cannot understand how the scientific world of today could have succumbed to it.

We can clarify the issue by a simple example. Let us suppose someone sends me a telegram from the place A. When it reaches me, I get nothing but paper and lettering. But if I know how to read, I receive more than merely paper and printed signs, that is, a certain content of thought. Can I say now: I have created this content of thought only in my brain, and paper plus lettering are the only reality? Certainly not. For the content which is now in me is also present in the place A in the same manner. This is the best example one can choose. For in a visible way, nothing at all has come to me from A. Who could maintain that the telegraph wires carry the thought from one place to the other? The same is true about our sense impressions. If a series of ether particles, swinging 589 billion times a second, reach my eye and stimulate the optic nerve, it is true that I have the sensation green. But the ether waves as paper and written symbols for the telegram in the example above are only the carriers of “green”, which is real on the body. The mediator is not the reality of the matter.

As wire and electricity for the telegram, so the swinging ether is here used as mediator. But just because we apprehend “green” by means of the swinging ether, we cannot say: “green” is simply the same as the swinging ether.

This coarse mistaking of the mediator for the content that is carried to us, lies at the root of all current sciences.

We must assume “green” as a quality of bodies. This “green” causes a vibration of 589 billion vibrations per second, this vibration comes to the optic nerve which is so constructed that it knows: when 589 billion vibrations arrive, they can only come from a green surface.

The same holds true for all other mental representations. If I have a thought, an idea, an ideal, it of course must be present in my brain as a reality. That is only possible if the brain particles move in a certain way, for an entity existing in space cannot suffer any changes except by motions. But we would be deadly mistaken about the content of the idea as compared to the way it appears in the body, if we were to say: the motion itself is the idea. No—the motion only provides the possibility for the idea to gain form and spatial existence.

But there is another aspect. For us men, there is nothing [in] which we are completely present as in our ideas, our ideals and mental representations. For them we live, we weave.

When we are alone in the dark, in complete silence, so that we have no sense impressions,—of what are we totally and fully conscious?—Our thoughts and ideas! After these comes everything we can experience through the senses. That is given to me when I open my sense organs to the outer world and keep them receptive. Aside from ideas, ideals and sense impressions, nothing is given to me. Everything else can only be derived as existing and ideas on the basis of our sense impressions.

Can I make such an assumption about moving atoms? If motion occurs, there must be something that moves. By what do I recognize motion? Only by seeing that the bodies change their place in space. But what I see before me are bodies with all qualities of color, etc.

So what does the physicist want to explain? Let us say color. He says: it is motion. What moves? A colorless body. Or, he wants to explain warmth. He again says: it is motion. What moves? A body without warmth. In short: if we explain all qualities of bodies by motion, we finally have to assume that the moving objects have no qualities, as all qualities originate in motion.

To recapitulate. The physicist explains all sense-perceivable, all sense-perceptible qualities by motion. So, what moves cannot yet have qualities. But what has no qualities cannot move at all. Therefore, the atom assumed by physicists is a thing that dissolves into nothing if judged sharply.

So, the whole way of explanation falls. We must ascribe to color, warmth, sounds, etc., the same reality as to motion. With this, we have refuted the physicists, and have proved the objective reality of the world of phenomena and of ideas.

Dr. Rudolf Steiner's Answers to Six Questions about Some Basic Concepts of Natural Science. (Answered in 1919.)

(The exact questions no longer exist.)

1. Atoms are to be regarded as ideal contents of space. The contents are the results of force-directions meeting each other—e.g., directions of force.
   
   
   abc are active in space, and by their meeting a resultant force is carried which is effective as an atom of tetrahedral character.
   
   Elements are the expression of certain meetings of forces; that they manifest themselves as such is due to the fact that one force, in meeting another, produces a result, while other effects of forces on each other are without result.
   
   Crystals are the result of more complicated meetings of forces, atoms the result of simple meetings.
   
   Amorphic masses result from the neutralization of force-reactions.
2. Force is the revelation of spirit viewed in a one-sided way. One cannot say that force has an effect on matter, since matter consists merely in the affects of the force-rays when they meet. Never does one form of energy pass over into another one; as little as the activity of one man goes into that of another. What passes over is merely the arithmetical expression of measure. If mechanical energy passes over into warmth the real occurrence is as follows: a certain quantity of this revelation which reveals itself in warmth is stimulated in a spiritual being by a certain quantity of mechanical energy. (This is so in a healthy fashion with Mayer. It was only Helmholtz who botched up this matter.)
3. Neither sound, nor warmth, nor light, nor electricity are vibrations, just as little as a horse is a sum of gallop-paces. Sound, for instance, is an essential entity, and the effect of this real quality in its passage through the air is vibration. For man as a sensing being, the vibration is motivation to imitate the essential entity in himself; this constitutes the perception of sound. It is similar with others: light, etc.
4. Light is that by which it is perceived. (See my introduction to Goethe's Theory of Color.) The vibration is the revelation of light in the ether.
   
   The refraction of light is the result of the effect of a certain force-direction upon the light-direction. Newton's color rings (circles), phenomena of interference, are results of light-radiation (effect of light in the ether), and of the effects of other forces found in the path of light (weakening effects, gradually weakening affects of other forces). The same goes for phenomena of polarisation. One should not seek the polarisation figures in the structure of the essence of the light but in the structure of the medium which places itself in the path of light.
   
   The speed of transmission is the result of a kind of friction of the light against the medium.
5. Light is not to be considered as a function of electricity, but the latter is to be considered as a kind of corporeal carrier of light.
   
   Electrically charged matter: certain accumulations of force retain those accumulations of force which manifest as electricity.
6. Mathematics is the abstracted sum of the forces effective in space. If one says, “Mathematical propositions are valid a priori”, this comes from the fact that man exists within the same lines of force as the other beings, and that he can disassociate himself from everything that does not belong to the scheme of space, etc.