The Rudolf Steiner Archive

[ 1 ] Our view as to the sources of our knowledge cannot be with out influence upon our view in regard to practical conduct. Man behaves according to thought characterizations which lie within him. What he performs is directed according to purposes, goals, which he sets up for himself. But it is obvious that these goals, purposes, ideals, etc., will bear the same character as the rest of man's thought world. Thus a dogmatic science must result in a practical truth essentially unlike that which follows from our theory of knowledge. If the truths to which a person attains in knowledge are determined by objective necessity residing outside of thought, such also will be the ideals which he sets up as the bases of his conduct. In that case a person behaves according to laws in whose establishment he has no part in any real sense: he thinks a norm for himself which is fore-ordained for his behavior from without. But this is the character of a commandment which man has to obey. Dogma as a practical truth is moral commandment.

[ 2 ] The case is entirely different when the theory of knowledge here presented is made basic. This recognizes no other basis for truths than the thought content residing within these. When, therefore, a moral ideal comes into existence, it is the inner power lying in its content which governs our conduct. It is not because an ideal is given to us as a law that we conduct ourselves according to it, but because the ideal, by virtue of its content, is active within us, directs us. The impulse toward conduct lies, not without us, but within us. If we felt ourselves subjected to the commandment of duty, we should be compelled to behave in a definite manner, because it was so ordered. Here shall comes first and afterwards will, which must unite itself to the former. This is not true according to our point of view. The will is sovereign. It performs only what lies as thought-content in the human personality. Man does not receive laws from an external Power; he is his own lawgiver.

[ 3 ] Who, indeed, according to our world view, should give these to him? The World-Fundament has poured itself out completely into the world; it has not drawn back from the world in order to control it from without, but impels it from within; it has not withheld itself from the world. The highest form in which it emerges within the reality of ordinary life is that of thought and, with this, human personality. If, then, the World-Fundament has goals, these are identical with the goals which man sets up for himself as he manifests his own being. Man is not behaving in accordance with the purposes of the Guiding Power of the world when he investigates one or another of His commandments, but when he behaves in accordance with his own insight. For in him the Guiding Power of the world manifests Himself. He does not live as Will somewhere outside of man; He has renounced his own will in order that all might depend upon the will of man. If man is to be enabled to become his own lawgiver, all thought about world-determinations outside of man must be abandoned.

[ 4 ] We take this opportunity to call attention to the very excellent treatment of the subject by Kreyenbühl inPhilosophische Monatsheften(Vol. 18, No. 3). This paper correctly explains how the maxims of our conduct result directly from the determination of our individuality; how everything which is ethically great is not given through the power of the moral law but is performed on the basis of the direct impulse of an individual idea.

[ 5 ] Only from such a point of view is a true human freedom possible. If man does not bear within himself the reason for his conduct, but must guide himself in accordance with commandments, he then acts under a compulsion; he stands under a necessity almost like a mere entity of Nature.

[ 6 ] Our philosophy is, therefore, in the highest sense a philosophy of freedom. It shows first theoretically how every force which controls the world from without must fall away in order to make man his own master, in the best of all senses of that word. When man acts morally, this is not, from our point of view, the fulfillment of duty, but the expression of his wholly free nature. Man acts, not because he ought, but because he wills. This point of view Goethe also had in mind when he said: “Lessing, who was reluctantly conscious of many sorts of limitations, causes one of his characters to say, ‘No one must, must.' A brilliant and happy man said: ‘He who wills must.' A third—to be sure, an educated person—added, ‘He who has insight also wills.'” There is no impulse, therefore, for our conduct save our own insight. The free man acts according to his insight, without the intrusion of any sort of compulsion, according to commands which he gives to himself.

[ 7 ] It is about these truths that the well known Kant-Schiller controversy revolves. Kant took the standpoint of the commandment of duty. He thought it degrading to the moral law to make it dependent upon human subjectivity. According to his view, man acts morally only when he banishes all subjective motives in his conduct and simply bows to the majesty of duty. Schiller saw in this point of view a degradation of human nature. Must this be so evil that its own impulses must be thus completely set aside if it is to be moral! Schiller and Goethe's world-conception can recognize only the point of view we have set forth. The point of departure for human action is to be sought in man himself.

[ 8 ] For this reason, in history also, the subject of which is man, we must not speak of influences upon man's conduct from without, of ideas which reside in the age, etc. Least of all must we speak of a plan constituting the basis of history. History is nothing but the evolution of human action, points of view, etc. Goethe said: “In all ages it is only the individuals that have been effectual for science, not the age. It was the age that put Socrates to death with poison; the age that burned Huss; the ages have always remained alike.” All a priori constructions of plans which are supposed to form the basis of history are contrary to the historical method as this issues from the nature of history. The goal of history is to learn what men contribute for the advancement of their race; to learn what goal this or that personality has set for himself, what direction he has given to his age. History is to be based entirely on human nature. The will, the tendencies of human nature, are to be grasped. Our science of knowledge excludes all possibility that a purpose should be ascribed to history, as if men were educated from a lower stage of perfection to a higher, etc. In the same way it seems fallacious from our point of view when the effort is made (as Herder does in Ideas for a Philosophy of History of Humanity ) to set historical events in due order like facts of Nature, according to the succession of cause and effect. The laws of history are of a far higher sort. One fact in physics is so determined by another that the law stands above the phenomenon. A historical fact, as something ideal, is determined by the ideal. Here one can speak of cause and effect only when one depends wholly upon the external. Who could believe that he is in keeping with the facts when he calls Luther the cause of the Reformation? History is a science of ideas. Its reality consists of ideas. Therefore devotion to the object is the sole correct method. Every step beyond that is unhistorical.

[ 9 ] Psychology, the science of peoples, and history are the leading forms of spiritual, or cultural, science. Their methods, as we have seen, are based upon the direct grasp of the ideal reality. Their subject is the Idea, the spiritual, as that of inorganic science is the natural law and that of organics is the type.

By the Translator

Date of publication of book: 1886

A. Preliminary Questions

1. The Point of Departure. Philosophy alone, the central and unifying branch of knowledge, is uninfluenced by the great “classic age” of German thought—especially by Goethe. Hence, it fails to provide the inner certitude at present so deeply needed. Goethe possessed a profound philosophical sense. Completely centered and many-sided, he employed the appropriate form of cognition for each object of research.

2. Goethe's Science Considered According to the Method of Schiller. The present inquiry will interpret and justify Goethe's mode of cognition as applied to the living world. It will follow Schiller's method in doing this. It will not deal with mere formulae.—The return to Kant will not benefit philosophy, but the understanding of Goethe will.

3. The Function of This Branch of Science. Each of the sciences seeks to discover the relationships among objects in its special field—these being wholly unrelated in the form of pure experience. But there must be one branch of knowledge which seeks to determine the relationship between experience as a whole and the totality of thoughts, between human thoughts and the objects of reality.

B.Experience

4. Definition of the Concept of Experience. Without our participation, except in passive sense-receptivity, the world appears as if from an unknown source. This, in its first form of appearance, we term experience. It includes our feelings, our impulses of will. It includes also our thoughts. This becomes clear upon adequate observation of our thinking. For thinking is contemplation, an activity directed outward, and it would be directed into a void if an inner object of contemplation did not meet it. This object is a thought.

5. Examination of the Content of Experience. Experience is merely a juxtaposition in space and succession in time of single things, wholly unrelated—different in their impressions on the senses but undifferentiated in significance. Our own personality is, at this stage, one item of experience, also unrelated. Thinking alone establishes relationships and significance.

6. Correction of an Erroneous Conception of Experience As a Totality. The opinion that the world of experience is wholly within us, mere subjective “representations” Vorstellungswelt generated through our senses by an unknown source, is very widespread. This opinion certainly does not come from experience itself, for the untutored person never holds it. It could result only from much reflection. Therefore, it is utterly illogical to postulate such a characterization of the nature of experience, and then proceed from this point to inquire into the nature of human knowledge.

7. Reference to the Experience of the Individual Reader. The characterization of experience in 5, above, is not intended dogmatically. It is only a definition of the use of the term, merely directing attention to the nature of the first appearance of reality in consciousness before any concept arises. The best name for this is “appearance for the senses”—meaning both inner and outer senses. If this is the real nature of things, no knowledge whatever is possible beyond the registering of single unrelated sense impressions. But, if it is only the outer shell of reality, and is capable of being penetrated, knowledge is possible.

C. Thought

8. Thinking As a Higher Experience within Experience. Thought—one item of experience—is the key to all others. It differs from all others in that it appears at once in its completeness and its relationships. (For example, the thought of cause brings with it the thought of effect.) The demand of science that we must limit ourselves to experience, but must discover the inner laws within experience, becomes possible only through this one item. The requirement is fulfilled immediately in the case of this item itself, and is fulfilled in all other cases through the application of this item. Goethe practiced this principle to the full. He declared that it is impossible to get outside of Nature; that all higher views of Nature give also only Nature.—We must bear in mind two aspects of the thought world:—1. the content of ideas, law-conforming, complete in itself; 2. my inner activity, prerequisite to their appearance in consciousness. Since we ourselves permeate thought completely, we can rightly use this one item of experience to interpret all experience.

9. Thought and Consciousness. But thought is not subjective. Evidence is this.—1. We combine thoughts wholly according to their content; not at all according to our subjective nature. 2. We do not create the content subjectively; for, if we did, how could anything else than ourselves determine the combinations. What is essential is not the subjective activity prerequisite to the appearance of thoughts, but their objective content. Each personality, working with the one thought content of the world, brings to manifestation in his own consciousness thoughts which are objectively real. As a mechanic brings natural forces into interaction and produces mechanical effects, so a thinker brings thoughts into connection and creates thought combinations—ideas and whole systems.—Thoughts do not merely reflect their essential nature in their manifestations in consciousness while the essential nature is not actually present. Observation of our thinking will show that the real content is present in the manifestation.

10. The Inner Nature of Thought. Our thought realm consists of a multitude of single thoughts all interrelated. A new thought is disturbing until it is interrelated. The fixing of a harmonious relation among all thoughts creates the assurance of truth.—Thoughts are not mere photographs of experience, for the following reasons:—1. If thoughts completely copy the sense world, this world gives us all we need, and thought is superfluous. We have shown that this is not the case. 2. Thoughts do not copy essential characteristics from the sense world; for experience, as we have seen, gives no clue to what qualities are essential. 3. Nor do thoughts select even identical characteristics—without regard to what is essential—since identical characteristics practically never appear in experience.

    If, for the sake of argument, we should assume that thoughts give only a reflection of real content, while this lies beyond our reach, we should have at least indirect access in this way to real content. As to this detail of the question, we need go no further at this stage.

D. Knowledge

11. Thought and Perception. The perceptual aspect of reality, passively received, is permeated by the conceptual aspect, actively apprehended and elaborated. This union constitutes reality. Thinking is the organ for perceiving something above the level of sense-perception.—The self-sufficing harmony of thoughts seems to separate them completely from the world of percepts. But this is not true, since general thought characterizations can be made particular and concrete only by means of percepts.—Experience comes psychologically before thought, but it is really derivative. The process is as follows:—A percept stimulates me to seek for its inner nature. This seeking is really a concept working its way upward from below into consciousness. Then percept and concept unite to form one item in my thought realm. To discover the inner nature of a percept, we must have the corresponding concept already within us, or be able to evolve it from the world of concepts. In the concept we bring to manifestation the content of the empty form of the percept.

12. Intellect and Reason. Thinking is twofold:—I. It forms clearly differentiated concepts; and, 2. it establishes relationships among these. The former capacity is called the intellect; the latter, the reason. In modern science, the intellect is much more common and more highly valued. Intellectual activity is essential, for the creation of sharply differentiated parts, but only as preliminary to the development by the reason of a harmonious whole.—Kant declared all ideas—combinations of related concepts—to be merely subjective, without content, only regulative norms of our own subjective nature. This is false. Reason does strive for unity, but it can establish this only where unity is inherent in the content of the concepts. Where experience cannot function without the use of certain ideas, Kant admitted the validity of these ideas for merely practical purposes. But Kant's explanation of the creation of such ideas is incorrect; they are intuitive.

13. The Act of Cognition. All reality is in two realms; experience and thought. Experience may be considered from two points of view:—1. to what extent it is inherent in the nature of reality that it can manifest itself only as experience; 2. to what extent it is inherent in the nature of our mind, whose form of action is contemplation, that it requires this form of manifestation. From this point of view, we may consider two possibilities:—1. That the experiential form is only transitional, and is to be overcome in reaching the essential nature of the “appearance for the senses.” 2. That the experiential form is identical with the essential nature of what we experience, but that our minds require an effort in order to discover this fact. The second is true of thought; the first is true of all other items of experience.—The two realms of experience and thought must be united through thought activity. Thinking is an organ of perception. As the eye perceives light and the ear perceives sound, so does thinking perceive concepts, ideas. There is one world of ideas, but many minds.—The external is merely the form; the inner is the real nature.

14. Cognition and the Ultimate Foundation of Things. Kant achieved an important step in philosophy in pointing out that man must seek the reasons for certitude in his affirmations in his own spiritual faculties, and not in any truth imposed upon him from without. But Kant did not adequately differentiate the two scientific trends thus indicated.

    Two kinds of judgment are formed by: 1. the union of a percept with a concept; and: 2. the union of two concepts. Example of 2: “No effect without a cause.” If the content of the two concepts, as this is given to me, does not include the reason for their being united, then I can never reach that objective reason, and the real meaning of the assertion is in a world inaccessible to me. Such judgments would then be dogmas—dogmas of revelation. Moreover, those who insist that we must limit ourselves to pure experience, would condemn us to remain likewise ignorant of reality. But the author's view has shown that there is no Fundament of Being lying beyond the reach of thought: that this Fundament of Being has poured itself out in thought. According to this view, every judgment is a union of two elements in our thought, which means two elements of reality. It has shown also that thought must give a knowledge of experience, not as product but as productive—in its productive aspect.

    The real being of things exists only in connection with man. Truth is anthropomorphic. Not only is the world known to us as it appears, but it appears—to thinking contemplation—as it is.

E. The Science of Nature

15. Inorganic Nature. The simplest action in Nature occurs when two factors are external to each other. Example: a rolling stone setting another stone in motion. The whole system of such occurrences constitutes inorganic Nature. This appears first as one form of our experience. Cognition arises here only when we discover causes through our thinking. The process is the elimination of one factor after another until it becomes evident that one or more specific factors are prerequisite to the occurrence. Or it may be simplification: reducing a complex problem to a simpler form till it becomes transparent.

    An occurrence which must result inevitably and directly from observed factors is called a primal phenomenon. Identical with a law of Nature. All natural laws may be stated thus: “If this is present, that must occur.” This mode of thinking is superior to induction, which requires the observation of innumerable instances, and can never be absolutely certain. Scientific progress demands the discovery of primal phenomena. A primal phenomenon is higher experience within experience.—An experiment creates the conditions needed for discovering prerequisite factors. It is a mediator between subject and object in inorganic science.—The mind raises objects in Nature from “appearance for the senses” to appearance for the mind itself.

    A scientific insight gives satisfaction only when it leads to a self-sufficing totality. In inorganic Nature, only the cosmos is such a totality; therefore, the cosmos must be the ultimate goal in this part of science.

16. Organic Nature. Until the nineteenth century, the determinative forces in living entities were supposed to be in the mind of the Creator. Human minds were considered incapable of understanding living things. This was Kant's view. It was opposed by Goethe, who sought to discover the evolution of organs and organisms. Later came a gradual change of view but the fundamental error occurred of applying the methods of the physical sciences to living things. Scientific methods as a whole were falsely identified with methods in one branch of science.

    Environment does not create living entities. The inner forces create; environment can only modify the result of the action of the inner forces.—The essence present in each specialized form is the general which is manifest in the special. This general thus manifest is the type: the primal organism, either plant or animal. It evolves into all the specialized forms. The type corresponds in the living world to the natural law in the inorganic world.

    The activity of thought in this realm must be entirely different. In the inorganic realm, natural law determines the single phenomenon. In the organic realm, the type actually manifests itself in the single entity. Here we must first apprehend the type; then apprehend all potential modifications of the type; and finally trace the actual living form back to one of the potential modifications of the type. This demands intuitive thinking. The mind must acquire the power of perception in the supersensible realm: it must be able to perceive in thinking and think in perceiving. Goethe called this capacity the “perceptive power of thought.”

    Intuition is generally distrusted, but it is the sole mode of cognition applicable to the living world. According to the author's theory of knowledge—which he considers to be the theory implicit in Goethe's mode of scientific work—it is entirely logical to seek to develop this form of knowledge. For, according to this theory of knowledge, all thinking is a direct apprehension of reality. Limits of proof—required in the inorganic realm—do not constitute limits of knowledge.—Intuition means being within truth.

F. The Spiritual, or Cultural Sciences

17. Introduction: Spirit and Nature.Above the level of “organics” are the cultural, or spiritual, sciences. Here, again, the mind must alter its form of activity. In the natural sciences, the human mind completes the world process by bringing to manifestation (in human consciousness) the reality within phenomena, which otherwise would never reach manifestation. The mind interprets Nature to herself. Human knowledge is the conclusion of the work of creation, the final link in the process which constitutes Nature. In the spiritual sciences, the mind deals with spiritual realities already in manifestation,—human actions, thoughts, creations. Here, the human spirit comes to an understanding of itself.

    These sciences, likewise, arise out of a sense of inner need. Their function is to know the spiritual world in order that the human spirit may freely choose and play its own role. Here the idea of freedom is central. In place of the determining law (in inorganic Nature) and the evolving type (in organic Nature), we have the single personality, who determines instead of being determined.

18. Psychological Cognition. The method in psychological cognition is immersion of the mind in the contemplation of its own activity—that is, self-apprehension; but apprehension of the essential self, not of its casual manifestations. We must seek the fundamental human being in each personality. The individual here is not a specialized form of the general, but is the general. In thought applied to objects observed in external reality, man discovers the highest form of content. In contemplating himself, he finds that he is this highest content.

    Modern psychology fails because it applies in its own field the methods of inorganic science, seeking through observed phenomena to infer the activating being within. This central being is given to us in direct experience just as truly as are the phenomenal manifestations.

    But the single personality acts also partly out of the forces of his people. Hence we must add to psychology the science of folk-psychology, the psychology of a whole people.—The scientific study of any people must be based upon the inner nature of this people—the folk-personality.

19. Human Freedom. Human action is determined by human thinking. Hence a personality will act freely or under compulsion according as he knows the reality in his own intuitions or accepts dogmas dictated from without. The World Fundament has poured itself out into the world. Its highest form is manifested in human thought. Thus the Guiding Power of the world lives in human thoughts. Hence man is in harmony with this Guiding Power when he acts according to his own true intuitions. History also is determined by the thoughts of individuals.

20. Optimism and Pessimism. Since man is the central point of the world process, and his thought its highest manifestation, he is self-sufficing. Only he can determine his own happiness or unhappiness. Happiness or unhappiness bestowed upon him from without would negate his nature.

G. Conclusion

21. Scientific Knowledge and Artistic Creation. The Idea is the content of knowledge. It is the product of the activity of the mind. In cognition, man arises from the phenomenal, the product, to the Idea, the creative reality. He strips all unessentials from the manifested form, and apprehends the essential in the Idea. In art, the human spirit imprints the same eternal Idea upon an object of Nature. In doing this, it is necessary to subdue to the eternal Idea all that is casual and unessential in the object used to receive this imprint. Art is a product of the eternal laws of Nature, as Goethe discovered in contemplating the great masterpieces in Italy. In both science and art, the human spirit masters the sensible characteristics and brings to manifestation the innermost reality.

[ 1 ] When Professor Kürschner did me the honor of intrusting to me the task of editing the scientific writings of Goethe for the Deutsche National-Literatur, I was fully aware of the difficulties confronting me in such an undertaking. It would be necessary for me to oppose a point of view which had become almost universally established.

[ 2 ] While the conviction is everywhere gaining ground that Goethe's poetical writings are the basis of our whole culture, even those who go farthest in recognition of his scientific writings see in these nothing more than premonitions of truths which have been fully confirmed in the later progress of science. Because of his genius—so it is held—it was possible for him at a glance to attain to premonitions of natural laws that were later discovered again by strictly scientific methods quite independently of him. What is admitted in the highest degree as regards the other activities of Goethe—that every well informed person must reach a judgment with regard to these—is not admitted as regards his scientific point of view. It is by no means acknowledged that, by familiarizing ourselves with the scientific works of the poet, something may be gained which science does not also afford us apart from him.

[ 3 ] When I was introduced by my beloved teacher, Karl Julius Schröer, to the world-conception of Goethe, my thinking had already taken a direction which made it possible for me to direct my attention, beyond the single discoveries of the poet, to the fundamentals: to the manner in which Goethe blended such a single discovery with the totality of his conception of Nature; the manner in which he made use of this discovery in order to arrive at an insight into the interrelationships of the entities of Nature, or—to use the striking expression he himself employed in the paperAnschauende Urteilskraft ¹—in order to participate mentally in the productions of Nature. I soon recognized that those achievements which contemporary science attributes to Goethe were not the essential thing, while the really significant matter was overlooked. Those single discoveries would really have been made without Goethe's researches; but his lofty conception of Nature will be absent from science so long as this conception is not derived from Goethe himself. It was thus that the direction to be taken by my introductions for the edition was determined. These must show that each single detailed opinion expressed by Goethe is to be derived from the totality of his genius.²

[ 4 ] The principles according to which this must be carried out constitute the subject matter of the present brief treatise. It undertakes to show that what we set forth as Goethe's scientific views is capable of being established upon its own self-sufficing foundation.

[ 5 ] With this, I have said all that seemed to me necessary as a preface to the following discussion, except that I must discharge a pleasing duty—the expression of my most heartfelt thanks to Professor Kürschner, who has lent me his assistance in this composition with the same extraordinary friendliness that he has always shown toward my scientific undertakings.

Rudolf Steiner
The end of April, 1886

• 1. perceptive power of thought.Cf. Goethes naturwissenschaftliche Schriften, inKürschners Deutsche National-Literatur,Vol. I, p. 115.
• 2. The manner in which my opinions blend with the totality of Goethe's world-conception is discussed by Schröer in his foreword toKürschners Deutsche National-Literatur,Vol. I, pp. I-XIV. Cf. also his edition ofFaust, Vol. II, 2nd edition, p. VII.

[ 1 ] This study of the theory of knowledge implicit in Goethe's world-conception was written in the middle of the decade 1880–90. My mind was then vitally engaged in two activities of thought. One was directed toward the creative work of Goethe, and strove to formulate the view of life and of the world which revealed itself as the impelling force in this creative work. The completely and purely human seemed to me to be dominant in everything that Goethe gave to the world in creative work, in reflection, and in his life. Nowhere in the modern age did that inner assurance, harmonious completeness, and sense of reality in relation to the world seem to me to be as fully represented as in Goethe. From this thought there necessarily arose the recognition of the fact that the manner, likewise, in which Goethe comported himself in the act of cognition is that which issues out of the very nature of man and of the world.

In another direction my thought was vitally absorbed in the philosophical conceptions prevalent at that time regarding the essential nature of knowledge. In these conceptions, knowledge threatened to become sealed up within the being of man himself. The brilliant philosopher Otto Liebmann had asserted that human consciousness cannot pass beyond itself; that it must remain within itself. Whatever exists, as the true reality, beyond that world which consciousness forms within itself—of this it can know nothing. In brilliant writings Otto Liebmann elaborated this thought with respect to the most varied aspects of the realm of human experience. Johannes Volkelt had written his thoughtful books dealing with Kant's theory of knowledge and with Experience and Thought. He saw in the world as given to man only a combination of representations¹ based upon the relationship of man to a world in itself unknown. He admitted, to be sure, that an inevitability manifests itself in our inner experience of thinking when this lays hold in the realm of representations. When engaged in the activity of thinking, we have the sense, in a manner, of forcing our way through the world of representations into the world of reality. But what is gained thereby? We might for this reason feel justified, during the process of thinking, in forming judgments concerning the world of reality; but in such judgments we remain wholly within man himself; nothing of the nature of the world penetrates therein.

[ 2 ] Eduard von Hartmann, whose philosophy had been of great service to me, in spite of the fact that I could not admit its fundamental presuppositions or conclusions, occupied exactly the same point of view in regard to the theory of knowledge set forth exhaustively by Volkelt.

[ 3 ] There was everywhere manifest the confession that human knowledge arrives at certain barriers beyond which it cannot pass into the realm of genuine reality.

[ 4 ] In opposition to all this stood in my case the fact, inwardly experienced and known in experience, that human thinking, when it reaches a sufficient depth, lives within the reality of the world as a spiritual reality. I believed that I possessed this knowledge in a form which can exist in consciousness with the same clarity that characterizes mathematical knowledge.

[ 5 ] In the presence of this knowledge, it is impossible to sustain the opinion that there are such boundaries of cognition as were supposed to be established by the course of reasoning to which I have referred.

[ 6 ] In reference to all this, I was somewhat inclined toward the theory of evolution then in its flower. In Haeckel this theory had assumed forms in which no consideration whatever could be given to the self-existent being and action of the spiritual. The later and more perfect was supposed to arise in the course of time out of the earlier, the undeveloped. This was evident to me as regards the external reality of the senses, but I was too well aware of the self-existent spiritual, resting upon its own foundation, independent of the sensible, to yield the argument to the external world of the senses. But the problem was how to lay a bridge from this world to the world of the spirit.

[ 7 ] In the time sequence, as thought out on the basis of the senses, the spiritual in man appears to have evolved out of the antecedent non-spiritual. But the sensible, when rightly conceived, manifests itself everywhere as a revelation of the spiritual. In the light of this true knowledge of the sensible, I saw clearly that “boundaries of knowledge,” as then defined, could be admitted only by one who, when brought into contact with this sensible, deals with it like a man who should look at a printed page and, fixing his attention upon the forms of the letters alone without any idea of reading, should declare that it is impossible to know what lies behind these forms.

[ 8 ] Thus my look was guided along the path from sense-observation to the spiritual, which was firmly established in my inner experiential knowledge. Behind the sensible phenomena, I sought, not for a non-spiritual world of atoms, but for the spiritual, which appears to reveal itself within man himself, but which in reality inheres in the objects and processes of the sense-world itself. Because of man's attitude in the act of knowing, it appears as if the thoughts of things were within man, whereas in reality they hold sway within the things themselves. It is necessary for man, in experiencing the apparent,² to separate thoughts from things; but, in a true experience of knowledge, he restores them again to things.

[ 9 ] The evolution of the world is thus to be understood in such fashion that the antecedent non-spiritual, out of which the succeeding spirituality of man unfolds, possesses also a spiritual beside itself and outside itself. The later spirit-permeated sensible, amid which man appears, comes to pass by reason of the fact that the spiritual progenitor of man unites with imperfect, non-spiritual forms, and, having transformed these, then appears in sensible forms.

[ 10 ] This course of thought led me beyond the contemporary theorists of knowledge, even though I fully recognized their acumen and their sense of scientific responsibility. It led me to Goethe.

[ 11 ] I am impelled to look back from the present to my inner struggle at that time. It was no easy matter for me to advance beyond the course of reasoning characterizing contemporary philosophies. But my guiding star was always the self-substantiating recognition of the fact that it is possible for man to behold himself inwardly as spirit, independent of the body and dwelling in a world of spirit.

[ 12 ] Prior to my work dealing with Goethe's scientific writings and before the preparation of this theory of knowledge, I had written a brief paper on atomism, which was never printed. This was conceived in the direction here indicated. I cannot but recall what pleasure I experienced when Friedrich Theodor Vischer, to whom I sent that paper, wrote me some words of approval.

[ 13 ] But in my Goethe studies it became clear to me that my way of thinking led to a perception of the character of the knowledge which is manifest everywhere in Goethe's creative work and in his attitude toward the world. I perceived that my point of view afforded me a theory of knowledge which was that belonging to Goethe's world-conception.

[ 14 ] During the 'eighties of the last century I was invited through the influence of Karl Julius Schröer, my teacher and fatherly friend, to whom I am deeply indebted, to prepare the introductions to Goethe's scientific writings for the Kürschner National-Literatur, and to edit these writings. During the progress of this work, I traced the course of Goethe's intellectual life in all the fields with which he was occupied. It became constantly clearer to me in detail that my own perception placed me within that theory of knowledge belonging to Goethe's world-conception. Thus it was that I wrote this theory of knowledge in the course of the work I have mentioned.

[ 15 ] Now that I again turn my attention to it, it seems to me to be also the foundation and justification, as a theory of knowledge, for all that I have since asserted orally or in print. It speaks of an essential nature of knowledge which opens the way from the sense world to a world of spirit.

[ 16 ] It may seem strange that this youthful production, written nearly forty years ago, should now be published again, unaltered and expanded only by means of notes. In the manner of its presentation, it bears the marks of a kind of thinking which had entered vitally into the philosophy of that time, forty years ago. Were I writing the book now, I should express many things differently. But the essential nature of knowledge I could not set forth in any different light. Moreover, what I might write now could not convey so truly within itself the germ of the spiritual world-conception for which I stand. In such germinal fashion one can write only at the beginning of one's intellectual life. For this reason, it may be well that this youthful production should again appear in unaltered form. The theories of knowledge existing at the time of its composition have found their sequel in later theories of knowledge. What I have to say in regard to these I have said in my book Die Rätsel der Philosophie.³ This also will be issued in a new edition at the same time by the same publishers. That which I outlined many years ago as the theory of knowledge implicit in Goethe's world-conception seems to me just as necessary to be said now as it was forty years ago.

Rudolf Steiner
Dornach, November 1923

• 1. Vorstellungen, single concepts corresponding to single percepts.
• 2. in einem Schein-Erleben
• 3. The Riddles of Philosophy—not yet translated into English

When Rudolf Steiner, still a student and tutor in Vienna, published this terse little volume just after his twenty-fifth birthday, he concluded an intellectual struggle in which he had been engaged since childhood. He arrived at a solution of the problem: What is the relation between man's inner and his outer world?

For him the inner world had always been unmistakably a world of reality, not of mere reflections from without and subjective reactions within. His endeavor had been, not to establish the reality of either the inner or the outer world, but—through intense observation of the outer world and intense contemplation of his own mind in its activity—to discover the interrelationship between the mind and the world. Very early—perhaps, by his fifteenth year—he had rejected Kant's theory of the nature of human knowledge, saying to himself: “That may be true for him, but it is not true for me.” When he was later brought into contact with Goethe, first as poet and then as thinker, he discovered that, in the world of living things, Goethe's mode of contemplative, intuitive cognition was identical with his own; and that, through such a direct channel, Goethe had acquired knowledge essential to the innermost nature of plant, animal, and man. Hence, after editing one volume of Goethe's scientific writings, he paused in that task to build an adequate foundation upon which to base Goethe's mode of intuitive thinking and his own interpretation of Goethe.

But he not only solved the central problem with which he had been battling since youth. He also laid foundations deep in the human spirit for all his own creative thinking during the remaining thirty-nine years of his life. The whole wealth of his writings and lectures, dealing with so great a range of themes of deepest human concern, rests solidly upon this foundation. It rests upon this exposition of the reality, the spiritual nature, of human thinking: the truth he had apprehended in inner certitude of experience, and had confirmed under the rigid tests of the intellect, that “becoming aware of the Idea within reality is the true communion of man.” Later writings and lectures which set forth the potential and nascent capacity of the human spirit to rise above the low horizons of our every-day cognitions into a higher and clearer spiritual atmosphere of self-confirming intuitions rests, like everything else he has affirmed, upon the inherent nature of man's cognitive faculties as set forth, explicitly or implicitly, in this first published volume by the still youthful investigator. This compact volume represents a milestone in the history of the human mind, a crucial achievement in the struggle of man to know himself.

In essence, the argument is as follows:

One constituent of direct experience—thought, which appears before our inner activity of contemplation—is unique in manifesting immediately its essential nature and its interrelationships. It thus becomes the only key to disclose the hidden nature of all other experience.

Thought is not subjective in itself, but only as regards the prerequisite activity of our contemplation. This is evidenced by the clearly observable fact that we combine thoughts solely according to their inherent content. Our contemplation, as an organ of perception, only brings to manifestation in consciousness objectively real elements of the one thought content of the world. Through the intellectual cognition of single elements of this reality—concepts—and the rational combination of inherently related elements into harmonious complexes—ideas—we are capable of knowing gradually expanding aspects of the total reality. This knowledge is real, not a mere phantasm of the subjective mind.

But the mode of cognition suited to the inorganic is not suited to the organic. In relation to the inorganic, we possess truth when we grasp the cause of a phenomenon. In relation to the organic, we must apprehend the supersensible type, which manifests itself in the single members of a species of plant or animal. This requires direct, intuitive cognition: the mind must perceive in thinking and think in perceiving. Moreover, when we deal with the human being, we must apprehend the central reality—the ego—manifest as a self-sufficing spiritual being in its uniqueness in each single human personality.

Through this mode of intuitive cognition, we may attain to the knowledge that the universal Creative Spirit is in the single human being; that His highest manifestation is in human thought; that man is in harmony with this Guiding Power of the world when he follows freely, as an individual, the guidance of his own intuitions.

The heartfelt thanks of the translator are due to several competent specialists who have rendered important service in this difficult task: to Miss Ruth Hofrichter, of Vassar College, who painstakingly scrutinized the manuscript in its first form some years ago, in comparison with the German text, and pointed out a number of deficiencies; to Dr. Hermann Poppelbaum and Dr. Egbert Weber for very helpful detailed criticisms and suggestions.

O. D. W.
New York City
July 1940

[ 1 ] When we trace any one of the major streams of present-day spiritual life back to its sources, we always encounter one of the spirits of our classical period. Goethe or Schiller, Herder or Lessing has given an impulse, and from it one or another spiritual movement has taken its start and still continues on today. Our whole German cultural life is so fully based on our classical writers that many a person who thinks himself completely original actually manages nothing more than to express what Goethe or Schiller indicated long ago. We have lived so fully into the world they created that hardly anyone who leaves the path they indicated could expect our understanding. Our way of looking at the world and at life is so influenced by them that no one can rouse our interest who does not seek points of reference with this world.

[ 2 ] There is only one branch of our spiritual-cultural life that, we must admit, has not yet found any such point of reference. It is that branch of science which goes beyond merely collecting observations, beyond information about individual phenomena, in order to provide a satisfying overview of the world and of life. It is what one usually calls philosophy. For philosophy, our classical period does not seem to exist at all. It seeks its salvation in an artificial seclusion and noble isolation from the rest of spiritual life. This statement is not refuted by the fact that a considerable number of older and more recent philosophers and natural scientists have occupied themselves with Goethe and Schiller. For they have not arrived at their scientific standpoint by bringing to fruition the seeds contained in the scientific achievements of those heroes of the spirit. They arrived at their scientific standpoint outside of the world view put forward by Schiller and Goethe and then afterwards compared the two. They did not make this comparison for the purpose of gaining something for their own cause from the scientific views of the classical thinkers, but rather in order to test these thinkers to see how they stood up in the light of their own cause. We will come back to this in more detail. But first we would like just to indicate the consequences for this realm of science that arise out of the stance it takes toward the highest level of cultural development in modern times.

[ 3 ] A great number of educated readers today will immediately reject unread any literary or scientific book that appears with a claim to being philosophical. There has hardly ever been a time when philosophy has enjoyed less favor than now. Leaving aside the writings of Schopenhauer and Eduard von Hartmann, which take up questions concerning life and the world, questions of the most general interest, and which therefore have been widely read, one does not go too far in saying that philosophical works are read today only by people in the profession. Nobody bothers except them. An educated person not in the profession has the vague feeling: This literature ^a1 contains nothing that meets my spiritual needs; the things dealt with there do not concern me; they are not connected in any way with what is necessary for the satisfaction of my spirit. Only the fact we have indicated can bear the guilt for this lack of interest in all philosophy, for, in contrast to this lack of interest, there stands an ever-growing need for a satisfying view of the world and of life. What for a long time was a substitute for so many people, i.e., religious dogma, is losing more and more of its power to convince. The urge is increasing all the time to achieve by the work of thinking what was once owed to faith in revelation: satisfaction of spirit. The involvement of educated people could therefore not fail to exist if the sphere of science about which we are speaking really went hand in hand with the whole development of culture, if its representatives took a stand on the big questions that move humanity.

[ 4 ] One must always keep one's eye on the fact that it can never be a question of first creating artificially a spiritual need, but only of seeking out the need that exists and satisfying it. ^a2 The task of science ^e1 is not to pose questions, (see Note 2) but rather to consider questions carefully when they are raised by human nature and by the particular level of culture, and then to answer them. Our modern philosophers set themselves tasks that are in no way a natural outgrowth of the level of culture at which we stand; therefore no one is asking for their findings. But this science passes over the questions that our culture must pose by virtue of the vantage point to which our classical writers have raised it. We therefore have a science [present-day philosophy] that no one is seeking, and a scientific need that is not being satisfied by anyone.

[ 5 ] Our central science—the science that should solve the actual riddles of the world for us cannot be an exception among all the other branches of spiritual life. It must seek its sources where they have found theirs. It must not just come to terms with our classical thinkers; it must also seek in them the seeds for its own development; the same impulse must sweep through it as through the rest of our culture. This necessity resides in the very nature of the matter. It is also due to this necessity that modern researchers have occupied themselves with the classical writers in the way already described above. But this shows nothing more than that one had a vague feeling of the impermissibility of passing over the convictions of these thinkers and simply proceeding with the order of the day. But this also shows that one did not really manage to develop their views any further. The way one approached Lessing, Herder, Goethe, and Schiller shows this. Despite all the excellence of many of the books about these thinkers, one must still say, regarding almost everything written about Goethe's and Schiller's scientific ^e2 works, that it did not develop organically out of their views but was rather brought afterwards into relationship to them. Nothing demonstrates this better than the fact that the most contrary scientific theories have regarded Goethe as the thinker who had earlier “inklings” of their views. World views having absolutely nothing in common with each other point to Goethe with seemingly equal justification when they feel the need to see their standpoints recognized as being at the height of human development. One cannot imagine a sharper antithesis than between the teachings of Hegel and Schopenhauer. The latter calls Hegel a charlatan and his philosophy vapid word-rubbish, pure nonsense, barbaric word-combinations. These two men actually have absolutely nothing in common with each other except an unlimited reverence for Goethe and the belief that he adhered to their world view.

[ 6 ] And it is no different with more recent scientific theories. Haeckel, who has elaborated Darwinism brilliantly and with iron consistency, and whom we must regard as by far the most significant follower of the English scientist, sees his own view prefigured in the Goethean one. Another natural scientist of the present day, C.F.W. Jessen, writes of Darwin's theory: “The stir caused among many specialists and laymen by this theory—which had often been set forth earlier and just as often refuted by thorough research, but which is now propped up by many seeming supports—shows, unfortunately, how little people know and understand the results of natural-scientific research.” The same researcher says of Goethe that he “rose to comprehensive investigations into inorganic as well as organic nature” by finding, “through intelligent, deeply penetrating contemplation of nature, the basic law of all plant formation.” Each of these researchers can bring, in utterly overwhelming numbers, proofs of the agreement of his scientific theory with the “intelligent observations of Goethe.” It would put the unity of Goethe's thought in a very dubious light if both of these standpoints could justifiably cite it as their authority. The reason for this phenomenon, however, lies precisely in the fact that not one of these views, after all, has really grown out of the Goethean world view, but rather each has its roots outside it. The reason lies in the fact that one seeks an outer agreement of one's view with details torn out of the wholeness of Goethe's thinking, which thereby lose their meaning; one does not want to attribute to this wholeness itself the inner worthiness to found a scientific direction. Goethe's views were never the starting point of scientific investigations but always only an object of comparison. Those who concerned themselves with him were rarely students, devoting themselves to his ideas without preconceptions, but rather critics, sitting in judgment over him.

[ 7 ] One says, in fact, that Goethe had far too little scientific sense; the worse a philosopher, the better a poet he was. Therefore it would be impossible to base a scientific standpoint on him. This is a total misconception about Goethe's nature. To be sure, Goethe was no philosopher in the usual sense of the word; but it should not be forgotten that the wonderful harmony of his personality led Schiller to say: “The poet is the only true human being.” What Schiller understood here by “true human being” was Goethe. There was not lacking in his personality any element that belongs to the highest expression of the universally human. But all these elements united in him into a totality that works as such. This is how it comes about that a deep philosophical sense underlies his views about nature, even though this philosophical sense does not come to consciousness in him in the form of definite scientific principles. Anyone who enters more deeply into that totality will be able, if he also brings along a philosophical disposition, to separate out that philosophical sense and to present it as Goethean science. But he must take his start from Goethe and not approach him with an already fixed view. Goethe's spiritual powers always work in a way that accords with the strictest philosophy, even though he did not leave behind any systematic presentation of them.

[ 8 ] Goethe's world view ^e3 is the most many-sided imaginable. It issues from a center resting within the unified nature of the poet, and it always turns outward the side corresponding to the nature of the object being considered. The unity of the spiritual forces being exercised lies in Goethe's nature; the way these forces are exercised at any given moment is determined by the object under consideration. Goethe takes his way of looking at things from the outer world and does not force any particular way upon it. These days, however, the thinking of many people is active in only one particular way; it is useful for only one category of objects; it is not, like that of Goethe, unified but rather uniform. Let us express this even more precisely: There are people whose intellect is especially able to think purely mechanical interdependencies and effects; they picture the whole universe as a mechanism. Other people have an urge to perceive everywhere the mysterious mystical element in the outer world; they become adherents of mysticism. All error arises when a way of thinking like this which is valid for one category of objects is declared to be universal. In this way the conflict between the many world views is explained. If such a one-sided conception approaches the Goethean one, which is not limited—because it does not in any way take its way of looking at things from the spirit of the beholder but rather from the nature of what is beheld—then it is comprehensible that the one-sided conception fastens onto those elements of thought in the Goethean conception that are in accord with itself. Goethe's world view encompasses many directions of thought in the sense just indicated and cannot, in fact, ever be imbued with any single, one-sided conception.

[ 9 ] The philosophical sense that is an essential element in the organism of Goethe's genius has significance also for his literary works. Even though it was far from Goethe's way to present in a conceptually clear form what this sense communicated to him, as Schiller could, it was nevertheless still a factor contributing to his artistic work, as it was with Schiller. The literary productions of Goethe and Schiller are unthinkable without the world view that stands in the background. With Schiller this is expressed more in the basic principles he actually formulated, with Goethe more in the way he looked at things. Yet the fact that the greatest poets of our nation, at the height of their creative work, could not do without that philosophical element proves more than anything else that this element is a necessary part of the history of humanity's development. Precisely this dependence on Goethe and Schiller will make it possible to wrest our central science [philosophy] out of its academic isolation and to incorporate it into the rest of cultural development. The scientific convictions of our classical writers are connected by a thousand threads to their other strivings and are of a sort demanded by the cultural epoch that created them.

• a1. The attitude lying behind this assessment of the nature of philosophical literature and of the interest shown it arose out of the intellectual approach of scientific endeavor around the middle of the 1880's. Since then phenomena have come to light in the face of which this assessment no longer seems valid. One need think only of the brilliant insights that Nietzsche's thoughts and feelings have given into broad areas of life. And in the battles that took place and are taking place even today between materialistically thinking monists and the defenders of a spiritually oriented world view, there live both a striving of philosophical thinking for a life-filled content, and also a deep general interest in the riddles of existence. Paths of thought, such as those of Einstein springing from the world view of physics, have almost become the subject of universal conversation and literary expression.
  But in spite of this the motives out of which this assessment was made back then are also still valid today. If one were to put this assessment into words today, one would have to formulate it differently. Since it appears again today almost as something ancient, it is quite appropriate to say how much this assessment is still valid.
  Goethe's world view, the epistemology of which is to be sketched in this book, takes its start from what the whole human being experiences. With respect to this experience, thinkingone side. Out of the fullness of human existence thought-configurations rise, as it were, to the surface of soul life. One part of these thought-pictures constituted an answer to the question: What is the knowing activity of man? And this answer turns out to be such that one sees: Human existence reaches its potential only when it becomes active in knowing. Soul life without knowledge would be like a human organism without a head; i.e., it would not be at all. Within the inner life of the soul there grows a content which, just as the hungering organism demands nourishment, demands perception from outside; and, in the outer world, there is a content of perception which does not bear its essential being within itself, but which first reveals this essential being when the cognitive process connects this perceptual content with the soul content. In this way the cognitive process becomes a part in the formation of world reality. The human being works along creatively with this world reality through his knowing activity. And if a plant root is unthinkable without the fulfillment of its potential in the fruit, so by no means only man but the world itself would not be complete unless knowing activity took place. In his activity of knowing man does not do something for himself alone; rather he works along with the world in the revelation of real existence. What is in man is ideal semblance; what is in the world of perception is sense semblance; the inter-working of the two in knowing activity first constitutes reality.
  Seen in this way epistemology becomes a part of life. And it must be seen in this way when it is joined to the breadth of life of Goethean soul experience. But even Nietzsche's thinking and feeling do not connect themselves with this breadth of life. And still less so does that which otherwise has arisen as philosophically oriented views of life and of the world since the writing of what was characterized in this book as “The Point of Departure.” All these views, after all, presuppose that reality is present somewhere outside of the activity of knowing, and that in the activity of knowing, a human, copied representation of this reality is to result, or perhaps cannot result. The fact that this reality cannot be found by knowing activity—because it is first made into reality in the activity of knowing—is experienced hardly anywhere. Those who think philosophically seek life and real existence outside of knowing activity; Goethe stands within creative life and real existence by engaging in the activity of knowing. Therefore even the more recent attempts at a world view stand outside the Goethean creation of ideas. Our epistemology wants to stand inside of it, because philosophy becomes a content of life thereby, and an interest in philosophy becomes necessary for life.
• a2. Questions of knowing activity arise through the human soul organization in contemplation of the outer world. Within the soul impulse of the question there lies the power to press forward into the contemplation in such a way that this contemplation, together with the soul activity, brings the reality of what is contemplated to manifestation.
• e1. Wissenschaft: “science” in the broader sense, from scire, to know. –Ed.
• e2. Again: “scientific” in the broader sense –Ed.
• e3. See also Rudolf Steiner's Goethe's World View, Mercury Press, 1985. –Ed.

[ 1 ] With the foregoing we have determined the direction the following investigations will take. They are meant to develop what manifested in Goethe as a scientific sense and to interpret his way of looking at the world.

[ 2 ] The objection could be made that this is not the way to present a view scientifically. Under no circumstances should a scientific view be based on an authority; it must always rest upon principles. Let us forestall this objection at once. We regard a view founded in the Goethean world conception as true, not because it can be traced back to this world conception, but because we believe that we can support the Goethean world view upon sound, basic principles and present it as one well founded in itself. The fact that we take Goethe as our starting point should not prevent us from being just as serious about establishing the views we present as are the proponents of any science supposedly free of all presuppositions. We are presenting the Goethean world view, but we will establish it in accordance with the demands of science.

[ 3 ] Schiller has already indicated the direction of the path such investigations must take. No one perceived the greatness of Goethe's genius more clearly than he did. In his letters to Goethe, Schiller held up to him a mirror image of Goethe's being; in his letters On the Aesthetic Education of Man, he traces his ideal of the artist back to the way he recognized it in Goethe; and in his essay On Naive and Sentimental Poetry, he portrays the being of true art in the form in which he found it in Goethe's poetry. At the same time, this justifies the statement that our considerations are built on the foundation of Goethe's and Schiller's world view. We wish to look at Goethe's scientific thinking by that method for which Schiller provided the model. Goethe's gaze is directed upon nature and upon life, and his way of looking at things in doing so will be the object (the content) of our discussion; Schiller's gaze is directed upon Goethe's spirit, and his way of looking at things in doing so will be the ideal for our method.

[ 4 ] In this way we believe Goethe's and Schiller's scientific strivings are made fruitful for the present day.

[ 5 ] In accordance with current scientific terminology, our work must be considered to be epistemology. To be sure, the questions with which it deals will in many ways be of a different nature from those usually raised by this science. We have seen why this is the case. Wherever similar investigations arise today, they take their start almost entirely from Kant. In scientific circles the fact has been completely overlooked that in addition to the science of knowledge founded by the great thinker of Königsberg, there is yet another direction, at least potentially, that is no less capable than the Kantian one of being deepened in an objective manner. In the early 1880's Otto Liebmann made the statement that we must go back to Kant if we wish to arrive at a world view free of contradiction. This is why today we have a literature on Kant almost too vast to encompass.

[ 6 ] But this Kantian path will not help the science of philosophy. Philosophy will play a part in cultural life again only when, instead of going back to Kant, it immerses itself in the scientific conception of Goethe and Schiller.

[ 7 ] And now let us approach the basic questions of a science of knowledge corresponding to these introductory remarks.

[ 1 ] Ultimately it is true for all science what Goethe expressed so aptly with the words: “In and for itself, theory ^e1 is worth nothing, except insofar as it makes us believe in the interconnections of phenomena.” Through science we are always bringing separate facts of our experience into a connection with each other. In inorganic nature we see causes and effects as separate from each other, and we seek their connections in the appropriate sciences. In the organic world we perceive species and genera of organisms and try to determine their mutual relationships. In history we are confronted with the individual cultural epochs of humanity; we try to recognize the inner dependency of one stage of development upon the other. Thus each science has to work within a particular domain of phenomena in the sense of the Goethean principle articulated above.

[ 2 ] Each science has its own area in which it seeks the interconnections of phenomena. But there still remains a great polarity in our scientific efforts: between the ideal ^e2 world achieved by the sciences on the one hand and the objects that underlie it on the other. There must be a science that also elucidates the interrelationships here. The ideal and the real world, the polarity of idea and reality, these are the subject of such a science. These opposites must also be known in their interrelationship.

[ 3 ] To seek these relationships is the purpose of the following discussion. The existence of science on the one hand, and nature and history on the other are to be brought into a relationship. What significance is there in the mirroring of the outer world in human consciousness; what connection exists between our thinking about the objects of reality and these objects themselves?

• e1. Theorie. In German, this word still connotes more of the sense of the Greek original: what thinking “sees.” –Ed.
• e2. Throughout this book “ideal” usually means “in the form of ideas.” –Ed.

[ 1 ] We wish to avoid the error of attributing any characteristic beforehand to the directly “given,” to the first form in which the outer and inner world appear, and of thus presenting our argument on the basis of any presupposition. In fact, we are characterizing experience as precisely that in which our thinking plays no part at all. There can be no question, therefore, of any error in thinking at the beginning of our argument.

[ 2 ] The basic error of many scientific endeavours, especially those of the present day, consists precisely of the fact that they believe they present pure experience, whereas in fact they only gather up the concepts again that they themselves have inserted into it. Someone could object that we have also assigned a whole number of attributes to pure experience. We called it an endless manifoldness, an aggregate of unconnected particulars, etc. Are those then not conceptual characterizations also? In the sense in which we use them, certainly not. We have only made use of these concepts in order to direct the reader's eye to reality free of thoughts. We do not wish to ascribe these concepts to experience; we make use of them only in order to direct attention to that form of reality which is devoid of any concept.

[ 3 ] All scientific investigations must, in fact, be conducted in the medium of language, and it can only express concepts. But there is, after all, an essential difference between using certain words in order to attribute this or that characteristic directly to a thing, and making use of words only in order to direct the attention of the reader or listener to an object. To use a comparison, we could say: It is one thing for \(A\) to say to \(B\), “Observe that man in the circle of his family and you will gain a very different impression of him than if you get to know him only through the way he is at work”; it is another if \(A\) says, “That man is an excellent father.” In the first case, \(B\)'s attention is directed in a certain sense; he is called upon to judge a personality under certain circumstances. In the second case a particular characteristic is simply ascribed to this personality; an assertion is there fore made. Just as the first case relates to the second, so we believe the starting point of our book relates to the starting point of other books on this subject. If, because of necessities of style or possibilities of expression, the matter appears at any point to be other than this, let us state here expressly that our discussions have only the intention just described and are far from any claim to having asserted any thing pertaining to the things themselves.

[ 4 ] If we now wished to have a name for the first form in which we observe reality, we believe that the expression that fits the matter the very best is: manifestation to the senses.^a5 By sense we do not mean merely the outer senses, the mediators of the outer world, but rather all bodily and spiritual organs whatsoever that sense the perception of immediate facts. It is, indeed, quite usual in psychology to use the expression inner sense for the ability to perceive inner experiences.

[ 5 ] Let us use the word manifestation, however, simply to designate a thing perceptible to us or a perceptible process insofar as these appear in space or in time.

[ 6 ] We must still raise a question here that is to lead us to the second factor we have to consider with respect to a science of knowledge: to thinking.

[ 7 ] Must we regard the form of experience we have described thus far as how things actually are? Is it a characteristic of reality? A very great deal depends upon answering this question. If this form of experience is an essential characteristic of the things of experience, if it is something which, in the truest sense of the word, belongs to them by their very nature, then one could not imagine how one is ever to transcend this stage of knowing at all. One would then simply have to resort to writing down everything we perceive, in disconnected notes, and our science would be a collection of such notes. For what would be the purpose of any investigation into the interconnection of things if the complete isolation we ascribe to them in the form of experience were truly characteristic of them?

[ 8 ] The situation would be entirely different ^a6 if, in this form of reality, we had to do not with reality's essential being but only with its inessential outer aspect, if we had only the shell of the true being of the world before us which hides this being and challenges us to search further for it. We would then have to strive to penetrate this shell. We would have to take our start from this first form of the world in order then to possess ourselves of its true (essential) characteristics. We would then have to overcome its manifestation to the senses in order to develop out of it a higher form of manifestation.—The answer to this question is given in the following investigations.

• a5. In this discussion there is already an allusion to the contemplation of the spiritual of which my later writings tell, in the sense of what is said in note number a3 in Chapter 4.
• a6. This discussion does not contradict contemplation of the spiritual; rather it points to the fact that for sense perception one can attain its essential being not, so to speak, by piercing the perception and penetrating to an existence behind it into its essential being, but rather by going back to the thought-element that manifests within man.

[ 1 ] Let us take another step toward thinking. Until this point we have merely looked at the position thinking takes toward the rest of the world of experience. We have arrived at the view that it holds a very privileged position within this world, that it plays a central role. Let us disregard that now. Let us limit ourselves here to the inner nature of thinking. Let us investigate the thought-world's very own character, in order to experience how one thought depends upon the other and how the thoughts relate to each other. Only by this means will we first be able to gain enlightenment about the question: What is knowing activity? Or, in other words: What does it mean to make thoughts for oneself about reality; what does it mean to want to come to terms with the world through thinking?

[ 2 ] We must keep ourselves free of any preconceived notions. It would be just such a preconception, however, if we were to presuppose that the concept (thought) is a picture, within our consciousness, by which we gain enlightenment about an object lying outside our consciousness. We are not concerned here with this and similar presuppositions. We take thoughts as we find them. Whether they have a relationship to something else or other, and what this relationship might be, is precisely what we want to investigate. We should not therefore place these questions here as a starting point. Precisely the view indicated, about the relationship of concept and object, is a very common one. One often defines the concept, in fact, as the spiritual image of things, providing us with a faithful photograph of them. When one speaks of thinking, one often thinks only of this presupposed relationship. One scarcely ever seeks to travel through the realm of thoughts, for once, within its own region, in order to see what one might find there.

[ 3 ] Let us investigate this realm as though there were nothing else at all outside its boundaries, as though thinking were all of reality. For a time we will disregard all the rest of the world.

[ 4 ] The fact that one has failed to do this in the epistemological studies basing themselves on Kant has been disastrous for science. This failure has given a thrust to this science in a direction utterly antithetical to our own. By its whole nature, this trend in science can never understand Goethe. It is in the truest sense of the word un-Goethean for a person to take his start from a doctrine that he does not find in observation but that he himself inserts into what is observed. This occurs, however, if one places at the forefront of science the view that between thinking and reality, between idea and world, there exists the relationship just indicated. One acts as Goethe would only if one enters deeply into thinking's own nature itself and then observes the relationship that results when this thinking, known in its own being, is then brought into connection with experience.

[ 5 ] Goethe everywhere takes the route of experience in the strictest sense. He first of all takes the objects as they are and seeks, while keeping all subjective opinions completely at a distance, to penetrate their nature; he then sets up the conditions under which the objects can enter into mutual interaction and waits to see what will result. Goethe seeks to give nature the opportunity, in particularly characteristic situations that he establishes, to bring its lawfulness into play, to express its laws itself, as it were.

[ 6 ] How does our thinking manifest to us when looked at for itself? It is a multiplicity of thoughts woven together and organically connected in the most manifold ways. But when we have sufficiently penetrated this multiplicity from all directions, it simply constitutes a unity again, a harmony. All its parts relate to each other, are there for each other; one part modifies the other, restricts it, and so on. As soon as our spirit pictures two corresponding thoughts to itself, it notices at once that they actually flow together into one. Everywhere in our spirit's thought-realm it finds elements that belong together; this concept joins itself to that one, a third one elucidates or supports a fourth, and so on. Thus, for example, we find in our consciousness the thought-content “organism”; when we scan our world of mental pictures, we hit upon a second thought-content: “lawful development, growth.” It becomes clear to us at once that both these thought-contents belong together, that they merely represent two sides of one and the same thing. But this is how it is with our whole system of thoughts. All individual thoughts are parts of a great whole that we call our world of concepts.

[ 7 ] If any single thought appears in my consciousness, I am not satisfied until it has been brought into harmony with the rest of my thinking. A separate concept like this, set off from the rest of my spiritual world, is altogether unbearable to me. I am indeed conscious of the fact that there exists an inwardly established harmony between all thoughts, that the world of thoughts is a unified one. Therefore every such isolation is unnatural, untrue.

[ 8] If we have struggled through to where our whole thought-world bears a character of complete inner harmony, then through it the contentment our spirit demands becomes ours. Then we feel ourselves to be in possession of the truth.

[ 9 ] As a result of our seeing truth to be the thorough-going harmony of all the concepts we have at our command, the question forces itself upon us: Yes, but does thinking even have any content if you disregard all visible reality, if you disregard the sense-perceptible world of phenomena? Does there not remain a total void, a pure phantasm, if we think away all sense-perceptible content?

[ 10 ] That this is indeed the case could very well be a widespread opinion, so we must look at it a little more closely. As we have already noted above, many people think of the entire system of concepts as in fact only a photograph of the outer world. They do indeed hold onto the fact that our knowing develops in the form of thinking, but demand nevertheless that a “strictly objective science” take its content only from outside. According to them the outer world must provide the substance that flows into our concepts. Without the outer world, they maintain, these concepts are only empty schemata without any content. If this outer world fell away, concepts and ideas would no longer have any meaning, for they are there for the sake of the outer world. One could call this view the negation of the concept. For then the concept no longer has any significance at all for the objective world. It is something added onto the latter. The world would stand there in all its completeness even if there were no concepts. For they in fact bring nothing new to the world. They contain nothing that would not be there without them. They are there only because the knowing subject wants to make use of them in order to have, in a form appropriate to this subject, that which is otherwise already there. For this subject, they are only mediators of a content that is of a non-conceptual nature. This is the view presented.

[ 11 ] If it were justified, one of the following three presuppositions would have to be correct.

[ 12 ] 1. The world of concepts stands in a relationship to the outer world such that it only reproduces the entire content of this world in a different form. Here “outer world” means the sense world. If that were the case, one truly could not see why it would be necessary to lift oneself above the sense world at all. The entire whys and wherefores of knowing would after all already be given along with the sense world.

[ 13 ] 2. The world of concepts takes up, as its content, only a part of “what manifests to the senses.” Picture the matter something like this. We make a series of observations. We meet there with the most varied objects. In doing so we notice that certain characteristics we discover in an object have already been observed by us before. Our eye scans a series of objects \(A\), \(B\), \(C\), \(D\), etc. \(A\) has the characteristics \(p\), \(q\), \(a\), \(r\); \(B\): \(l\), \(m\), \(b\), \(n\); \(C\): \(k\), \(h\), \(c\), \(g\); and \(D\): \(p\), \(u\), \(a\), \(v\). In \(D\) we again meet the characteristics \(a\) and \(p\), which we have already encountered in \(A\). We designate these characteristics as essential. And insofar as \(A\) and \(D\) have the same essential characteristics, we say that they are of the same kind. Thus we bring \(A\) and \(D\) together by holding fast to their essential characteristics in thinking. There we have a thinking that does not entirely coincide with the sense world, a thinking that therefore cannot be accused of being superfluous as in the case of the first presupposition above; nevertheless it is still just as far from bringing anything new to the sense world. But one can certainly raise the objection to this that, in order to recognize which characteristics of a thing are essential, there must already be a certain norm making it possible to distinguish the essential from the inessential. This norm cannot lie in the object, for the object in fact contains both what is essential and inessential in undivided unity. Therefore this norm must after all be thinking's very own content.

[ 14 ] This objection, however, does not yet entirely overturn this view. One can say, namely, that it is an unjustified assumption to declare that this or that is more essential or less essential for a thing. We are also not concerned about this. It is merely a matter of our encountering certain characteristics that are the same in several things and of our then stating that these things are of the same kind. It is not at all a question of whether these characteristics, which are the same, are also essential. But this view presupposes something that absolutely does not fit the facts. Two things of the same kind really have nothing at all in common if a person remains only with sense experience. An example will make this clear. The simplest example is the best, because it is the most surveyable. Let us look at the following two triangles.

[ 15 ] What is really the same about them if we remain with sense experience? Nothing at all. What they have in common—namely, the law by which they are formed and which brings it about that both fall under the concept “triangle”—we can gain only when we go beyond sense experience. The concept “triangle” comprises all triangles. We do not arrive at it merely by looking at all the individual triangles. This concept always remains the same for me no matter how often I might picture it, whereas I will hardly ever view the same “triangle” twice. What makes an individual triangle into “this” particular one and no other has nothing whatsoever to do with the concept. A particular triangle is this particular one not through the fact that it corresponds to that concept but rather because of elements lying entirely outside the concept: the length of its sides, size of its angles, position, etc. But it is after all entirely inadmissible to maintain that the content of the concept “triangle” is drawn from the objective sense world, when one sees that its content is not contained at all in any sense-perceptible phenomenon.

[ 16 ] 3. Now there is yet a third possibility. The concept could in fact be the mediator for grasping entities that are not sense-perceptible but that still have a self-sustaining character. This latter would then be the non-conceptual content of the conceptual form of our thinking. Anyone who assumes such entities, existing beyond experience, and credits us with the possibility of knowing about them must then also necessarily see the concept as the interpreter of this knowing.

[ 17 ] We will demonstrate the inadequacy of this view more specifically later. Here we want only to note that it does not in any case speak against the fact that the world of concepts has content. For, if the objects about which one thinks lie beyond any experience and beyond thinking, then thinking would all the more have to have within itself the content upon which it finds its support. It could not, after all, think about objects for which no trace is to be found within the world of thoughts.

[ 18 ] It is in any case clear, therefore, that thinking is not an empty vessel; rather, taken purely for itself, it is full of content; and its content does not coincide with that of any other form of manifestation.