The Rudolf Steiner Archive

We lose the human being from our field of vision if we do not fix the eye of the soul upon his entire nature in all its life-manifestations. We should not speak of man's knowledge, but of the complete man manifesting himself in the act of cognition. In cognition, man uses as an instrument his sense-nerve nature. For feeling, he is served by the rhythm living in the breath and the circulation of the blood. When he wills metabolism becomes the physical basis of his existence. But rhythm courses into the physical occurrence within the sense-nerve nature; and metabolism is the material bearer of the life of thought, even in the most abstract thinking, feeling lives and the waves of will pulsate.

The ancient Oriental entered into his dream-like thinking more from the rhythmic life of feeling than does the man of the present age. The Oriental experienced for this reason more of the rhythmic weaving in his life of thought, while the Westerner experiences more of the logical indications. In ascending to super-sensible vision, the Oriental Yogi interwove conscious breath with conscious thinking, in this way, he laid hold in his breath upon the continuing rhythm of cosmic occurrence. As he breathed, he experienced the world as Self. Upon the rhythmic waves of conscious breath, thought moved through the entire being of man. He experienced how the Divine-Spiritual causes the spirit-filled breath to stream continuously into man, and how man thus becomes a living soul. The man of the present age must seek his super-sensible knowledge in a different way. He cannot unite his thinking with the breath. Through meditation, he must lift his thinking out of the life of logic to vision. In vision, however, thought weaves in a spirit element or music and picture. It is released from the breath and woven together with the spiritual in the world. The Self is now experienced, not in connection with the breath in the single human being, but in the environing world of spirit. The Eastern man once experienced the world in himself, and in his spiritual life today he has the echo of this. The Western man stands at the beginning of his experience, and is on the way to find himself in the world. If the Western man should wish to become a Yogi, he would have to become a refined egoist, for Nature has already given him the feeling of the Self. which the Oriental had only in a dream-like way. If the Yogi had sought for himself in the world as the Western man must do, he would have led his dream-like thinking into unconscious sleep, and would have been psychically drowned.

The Eastern man had the spiritual experience as religion, art, and science in complete unity. He made sacrifices to his spiritual-divine Beings. As a gift of grace, there flowed to him from them that which lifted him to the state of a true human being. This was religion. But in the sacrificial ceremony and the sacrificial place there was manifest to him also beauty, through which the Divine-Spiritual lived in art. And out of the beautiful manifestations of the Spirit there flowed science.

Toward the West streamed the waves of wisdom that were the beautiful light of the spirit and inspired piety in the artistically inspired man. There religion developed its own being, and only beauty still continued united with wisdom. Heracleitos and Anaxagoras were men wise in the world who thought artistically; Aeschylos and Sophocles were artists who moulded the wisdom of the world. Later wisdom was given over to thinking; it became knowledge. Art was transferred to its own world. Religion, the source of all, became the heritage of the East; art became the monument of the time when the middle region of the earth held sway; knowledge became the independent mistress of its own field in man's soul. Thus did the spiritual life of the West come to existence. A complete human being like Goethe discovered the world of spirit immersed In knowledge. But he longed to see the truth of knowledge in the beauty of art. This drove him to the south. Whoever follows him in the spirit may find a religiously Intimate knowledge striving in beauty toward artistic revelation. If the Western man beholds in his cold knowledge the spiritual-divine streaming forth below him and glancing with beauty, and if the Eastern man senses in his religion of wisdom, warm with feeling and speaking of the beauty of the cosmos, the knowledge that makes man free, transforming itself in man into the power of will, then will the Eastern man in his feeling intuition no longer accuse the thinking Western man of being soulless, and the thinking Western man will no longer condemn the intuitively feeling Eastern man as an alien to the world. Religion can be deepened by knowledge filled with the life of art. Art can be made alive through knowledge born out of religion. Knowledge can be illuminated by religion upheld by art.

The Eastern man spoke of the sense-world as an appearance in which there lived a lesser manifestation of what he experienced as spirit in utter reality within his own soul. The Western man speaks of the world of ideas as an appearance where there lives in shadowy form what he experiences as Nature in utter reality through his senses. What was the Maja of the senses to the Eastern man is self-sufficing reality to the Western man. What is the ideology constructed by the mind to the Western man was self-creating reality to the Eastern man. If the Eastern man finds today in his reality of spirit the power to give the strength of existence to Maja, and if the Western man discovers life in his reality of Nature, so that he shall see the Spirit at work in his ideology, then will understanding come about between East and West.

In hoary antiquity the humanity of the Orient experienced in knowledge a lofty spirituality. This spirituality, laid hold upon in thought, pulsated through the feeling; it streamed out into the will. The thought was not yet the percept which reproduces objects. It was real being which bore into the inner nature of man the life of the spiritual world. The man of the East lives today in the echoes of this lofty spirituality. The eye of his cognition was once not directed toward Nature. He looked through Nature at the spirit. When the adaptation to Nature began, man did not at once see Nature; he saw the spirit by the way of Nature; he saw ghosts. The last residues of a lofty spirituality became, on the way from East to West, the superstitious belief in ghosts. To the Western man, a knowledge of Nature was given as Copernicus and Galileo arose for him. He had to look into his own inner nature in order to seek for the spirit. There the spirit was still concealed from him, and he beheld only appetites and instincts. But these are material ghosts, taking their place before the eyes of the soul because this is not yet inwardly adapted to the spirit. When the adaptation to the spirit begins, the inner ghosts will vanish, and man will took upon the spirit through his own inner nature, as the ancient man of the East looked upon the spirit through Nature. Through the world of the inner ghosts the West will reach the spirit. The Western ghost superstition is the beginning of the knowledge of spirit. What the East bequeathed to the West as a superstitious belief in ghosts is the end of the knowledge of spirit. Men should find their way past the ghosts into the spirit—and thus will a bridge be built between East and West.

The man of the East feels “I” and sees “World”; the I is the moon which reflects the world. The man of the West thinks the “World” and radiates into the world of his own thought “I”. The I is a sun which irradiates the world of pictures. If the Eastern man comes to feel the rays of the sun in the shimmer of his moon of wisdom, and the Western man experiences the shimmer of moon-wisdom in the rays of his sun of will, then shall the will of the West release the will of the East.

The ancient Oriental felt himself to be in a social order willed by the Spirit. The commandments of the spiritual Power, brought to his consciousness by his Leader, gave him the conception as to how he should integrate himself with this order. These leaders derived such conceptions out of their vision in the super-sensible world. Those who were led felt that in such conceptions lay the main directions transmitted to them for their spiritual, political and economic life. Views regarding man's relationship to the spiritual, the relationship between man and man, the handling of the economic affairs were derived for them from the same sources, commandments willed by the spirit. The spiritual life, the social-political order, the handling of the economic affairs were experienced as a unity. The farther culture progressed toward the West, the more relationship of rights between man and man and the handling of economic affairs were separated from the spiritual life in human consciousness. The spiritual life became more independent. The other members of the social order still continued to constitute a unity. But, with the further penetration of the West, they also became separated. 3y the side of the element of rights and the state, which for a time controlled everything economic, there took form an independent economic thinking. The Western man is still living amidst the processes of this last separation. At the same time, there arises for him the task to mould into a higher unity the separated members of the social life—the life of the spirit, the control of rights and of the state, the handling of economic affairs, if he achieves this, the man of the East will look upon this creation with understanding, for he will again discover what he once lost, the unity of human experience.

Among the partial currents whose interaction and reciprocal conflict compose human history, there is included the conquest or labor by man's consciousness. In the ancient Orient, man labored in accordance with an order imposed upon him by the will of the Spirit, in this reeling, he was either a master or a worker. With the migration of the life of culture toward the West, there came into human consciousness the relationship between man and man. into this was woven the labor which one performs for others. Into the concepts of rights there penetrated the concept of the value of work. A great part of Roman history represents this growing together of the concepts of rights and of work. With the further penetration of culture into the West, economic life took on more and more complicated forms, It drew labor into itself when the structure of rights which this had hitherto taken on was not yet adequate for the demands of the new forms. Disharmony arose between the conceptions of work and of rights. The re-establishment of harmony between the two is the great social problem of the West. How labor can discover its form within the entity of rights, and not be torn out of this entity in the handling of economic affairs, constitutes—the content or the problem, if the West begins to advance toward this solution, through insight and in social peace, the East will meet this with understanding. But, if this problem generates in the West a stand in thinking which manifests itself in social turmoil, the East will not be able to acquire confidence in the further evolution of humanity through the West.

The unity between the spiritual life, human rights, and the handling of economic affairs, in accordance with an order willed by the Spirit, can survive only so long as the tilling of the soil is predominant in economics, while trade and industry are subordinate to agricultural economics. It is for this reason that the social thinking of the ancient Orient, willed by the Spirit, bears with reference to the handling of economic affairs a character adapted to agricultural economics. With the course of civilization toward the West, trade first becomes an independent element in economics. It demands the determination of rights. It must be possible to carry on business with everyone. With reference to this, there are only abstract standards of rights. As civilization advanced still farther toward the West, production in industry becomes an independent element in the handling of economic affairs. It is possible to produce useful goods only when the producer and those persons with whom he must work in this production live in a relationship which corresponds with human capacities and needs. The unfolding of the industrial element demands out of :he economic life associative unions so moulded that men know their needs to be satisfied in these so far as the natural conditions make this possible, To discover the fight associative life is the task of the West. If it proves to be capable of this task, the East will say: “Our life once flowed into brotherhood. In the course of time, this disappeared; the advance of humanity took it away from us. The West causes it to blossom again out of the associative economic life. It restores the vanished confidence in true humanness.”

When the ancient man composed a poem, he felt that spiritual Power spoke through him. In Greece the poet let the Muse speak through him to his fellowmen. This consciousness was a heritage of the ancient Orient. With the passage of the spiritual life toward the West, poetry became more and more the manifestation of man himself. In the ancient Orient, the spiritual Powers sang through man to men. The cosmic word resounded from the gods down to man. in the West, it has become the human word. It must find the way upward to the spiritual Powers. Man must learn to create poetry in such a way that the Spirit may listen to him. The West must mould a language suited to the Spirit. Then will the East say: “The divine Word, which once streamed for us from heaven to earth, finds its way back from the hearts of men into the spiritual world. In the human word mounting upward we behold with understanding the cosmic Word whose descent our consciousness once experienced.”

The man of the East has no understanding for “proof”. He experiences in vision the content of his truths, and knows them in this way. And what man knows he does not prove. The man of the West demands everywhere “proofs”. Everywhere he strives to reach the content of his truths out of the external reflection by means of thought, and interprets them in this way. But what is interpreted must be “proven”. If the man of the West releases from his proof the life of truth, the man of the East will understand him. if, at the end of the Western man's struggle for proof, the Eastern man discovers his unproven dreams of truth in a true awaking, the man of the West will then have to greet him as a fellow-worker who can accomplish what he himself cannot accomplish in work for the progress of humanity.

The course of the year has its own life. With this life the human soul can unfold a feeling-unison. If the soul opens itself to the influences that speak so variously to it week by week, it will find the right perception of itself. Thereby the soul will feel forces growing within that will strengthen it. It will observe that such inward forces want to be awakened—awakened by the soul's ability to partake in the meaningful course of the world as it comes to life in the rhythms of time. Thereby the soul becomes fully aware of the delicate, yet vital threads that exist between itself and the world into which it has been born.

In this calendar a verse is inscribed for each week. This will enable the soul to participate actively in the progressing life of the year as it unfolds from week to week. Each verse should resound in the soul as it unites with the life of the year. A healthy feeling of “at one-ness” with the course of Nature, and from this a vigorous “finding of oneself” is here intended, in the belief that, for the soul, a feeling-unison with the world's course as unfolded in these verses is something for which the soul longs when it rightly understands itself.

—Rudolf Steiner
Foreword to the Second Edition

On the Corresponding Verses by Hans Pusch

It is apparent that the Calendar of the Soul is composed of corresponding verses which divide the year into two halves, from Easter to Michaelmas, and back again to Easter. For the translator, the most important task is to bring the corresponding verses into harmony with each other. By printing them side by side, each verse can be experienced with its ‘octave’ of the corresponding one.

But something else comes to expression in letting them speak side by side. Their relationship follows a certain law of evolution. Out of the whole evolve the parts, and this is the meaning of subtraction. We number the verses from 1 to 52 according to the weeks of the year, Easter to Easter. And now a double subtraction has to take place. We have one verse, say Number 5 for the fifth week; to find its correspondence, we must subtract 1 from our 5, which leads to 4 ... and then subtract the 4 from 52, resulting in 48, the verse we are looking for. It is necessary each time to subtract from the verse number and then from the whole.

This tracing of the related weeks is a gesture akin to the process of evolution. Out of the majestic un-folding of macrocosmic forces, the microcosmic worlds came into being. We ourselves followed this same process of subtraction by evolving by degrees the consciousness of self. It was a process of diminution by which we slowly exchanged our ancient clairvoyant vision, embracing totality, for our present earth-bound sight and mind, geographically conditioned by the existence in a physical body.

Subtracting means, therefore, on the one hand a diminishing, but on the other it creates a new principle of evolution, that of polarity. Not only are the parts a contrast to the whole, but also the parts themselves form opposites. There is no better description of the process than the one Emerson gave in his essay “Compensation:”

“Polarity, or action and reaction, we meet in every part of nature; in darkness and light; in heat and cold; in the ebb and flow of waters; in male and female; in the inspiration and expiration of plants and animals; in the systole and diastole of the heart; in the centrifugal and centripetal gravity ... If the south attracts, the north repels. To empty here, you must condense there. The value of the universe contrives to throw itself into every point. If the good is there, so is the evil; if the affinity, so the repulsion; if the force, so the limitation ... Thus is the universe alive. All things are moral. That soul which within us is a sentiment, outside of us is a law.” What lived in Emerson's mind underlies the style and composition of these weekly verses. And it is the human being who must reach a stage of compensation, of balance between the opposites, enhancing the polarities to forces of inner growth and maturity. It is a most invigorating development when it is practiced year after year in faithful succession. By combining the two corresponding verses in the mind, we gain a new insight into the workings of that which is outside and that which lives within.

The sunlight is gleaming—
What carries its beaming
to crystal and flower
so far down below?

Es leuchtet die Sonne—
Was traget ihr Strahlen
Zu Blüten und Steinen
So machtvoll daher?

The soul has been drifting—
Who yearns for uplifting,
from faith to the power
of vision to grow?

Es wehet die Seele—
Was hebet das Leben
Aus Glauben zum Schauen
So sehnend hinauf?

Seek, soul, to be seeing
in stones the light fleeing,
in blossoms its bower,—
yourself you shall know.

O suche, du Seele,
In Steinen den Strahl,
In Blüten das Licht—
Du findest dich selbst.

The heavens are blueing—
What aims are pursuing,
what secrets outsending
expanses blue-pearled?

Us blauet der Himmel—
Was sendet die Tiefe
Aus Femen zur Erde
Geheimnisvoll her?

The spirit is waking—
What strength is in making,
what will is unbending,
what shining unfurled?

Es wirket der Geist—
Was schaffet der Starke
Aus wollendem Sein
Zur scheinenden Kraft?

So, spirit, be guiding,
remote still abiding,
to vision unending,—
you find all the world.

So lenke, o Geist,
Zur Ferne den Blick,
Zur Tiefe dich selbst—
Du findest die Welt.

The starlight is dancing—
What radiance entrancing,
the centre unsealing,
is sent from afar?

Esfunkeln die Sterne—
Was breitet das Glänzen
Aus Weiten zur Mitte
Enthüllend daher?

And men are still questing—
They strive, never resting,
and anxiously feeling,
to know who they are?

Es fraget der Mensch—
Was rätselt im Innern
Aus bänglichem Streben
Zum Wissen sich hin?

So man, be expanding
your soul's understanding,
your essence revealing,—
you find your own star.

So lenke, du Mensch,
Zur Weite dich selbst,
Zur Mitte das Sein—
Du findest den Geist.

The night is unfolding—
What beings are moulding,
in infinite spacing,
of nothing—sheer weight?

Es waltet die Nacht—
Was dämpfet die Wesen
Im endlosen Raum
Zu lastendem Nichts?

The universe trembles—
What breathing dissembles,
in darkness embracing
mysterious fate?

Es weset das All—
Was waltet, sich hüllend
Im Dunkel der Gründe,
Verborgen atmend?

The spirit inspiring
is thirsting, is firing,
with worlds interlacing,
small beings and great.

Es ahnet des Geistes
Erbrennendes Dursten
In Welten die Wesen,
In Wesen die Welten.

Aries:

How brightly his eyes are blinking;
In his head there stumbles his thinking,
By pleasures of brooding consumed.
Mid storms his fine memories following,
In wonderful images wallowing
That on branches of knowledge once bloomed,
Through mystical fever-nights loomed.

Die Augen leuchten ihm helle,
Im Kopfe stolpert sein Denken,
Vom Glück des Sinnens ganz berauscht.
Im Sturme folgt es der Erinnerung
Des wunderbaren Traumes,
Der Blüte des Erkenntnisbaumes,
In mystisch schwüler Nacht erlebt.

Taurus:

Soon spooks through his whirring brain,
In fooling somnambulem mood,
By heart-felt enjoyment pursued,
A ghostly and galloping train,
A vision, with clarity showing
How out of the cosmos, stridently crowing,
A chorus of spirits wail in refrain.

Schon spukt im wirren Hirne,
Possierlich grüblerisch verträumt,
Vom Herzen aus mit Wohlgefühl begleitet
Im Traumgaloppe geisterwärts,
Gewichtig Schauen, kühn erspähend,
Wie aus dem Kosmos, deutlich krähend,
Ein Geisterchor sich offenbaret.

Gemini:

The Ego resplendent is sailing away
From a thinking based on mere physical clay,
On spiritual wings upborne,
Is kicked by a greatly superior scorn
From the path of ennobled living,
And cosmic ethereal striving,—
Is ousted with little delay.

Entrissen fühlt das helle Ich
Dem Denken sich, das physisch nur
Und drum vom hohen Geistestrieb
Mit einem Seelentritte mächtig
Vom Pfade edlen Strebens
Und kosmisch hohen Lebens
Wird kühnlich weggeschmissen.

Cancer:

Outside the mere body already unfolding,
By spiritual messengers properly led,
By spiritual love conveniently fed,
By wise tomfoolery starkly sped,
Is the tenebrous soul's beholding:
In the wide and infinite expanses
Of cosmical spirit it swims and dances.

Ganz aus dem Leibe fühlt sich schon,
Durch Geistesboten recht geführt,
Durch Geistesliebe wohlgepflegt,
Von weiser Torheit stark gestossen,
Der Seele dunkles Schauen
In den weiten Geistesauen
Ganz kosmisch geistgenährt.

Leo:

What sounds so tremendously gripping,
So pregnant with spirit but void of ideas,
With love universal so splendidly dripping,
That keenly his high heart hears?
Advanced to the grade of the Lion,
There is fine new regalia to try on,
—Up the steep path of knowledge he's tripping.

Was wirkt so mächtig wundersam
Gedankenlos und geistesträchtig,
Von Weltenliebe prächtig triefe>
In kühnem Herzen ihm so ahnungsvoll?
Er ist zum Löwengrade
Auf dem steilen Wissenspfade
Ja klärlich nun schon vorgedrungen.

Virgo:

And now to receive he is really prepared,
From cosmical thinking worthily wise,
From cosmical love with the universe shared,
From zig-zag lightning of spirit skies,
From the region of the hierarchies,
The initiation of his soul,
Deep, undivided, whole.

Nun muss er auch empfangen
Aus Weltgedanken würdevoll,
Aus Weltenliebe gnadereich,
Mit zuckendem Geistesblitz,
Aus der hierarch sehen
Region Die hohe Seelen-Initiation,
Ganz ungeteilt und tief.

Libra:

He lives in harmony already,
The spheric music round him playing;
He feels within his heart unsteady
The world-truth wildly swaying;
He feels inside him cosmic Scales
On which the spirits well are weighing
World problems packed in bales.

Erlebt nun schon in Harmonie
Mit aller Weltenklarheit.
Empfinden kann in seinem Herzen er
Die Schwungkraft aller Wahrheit.
In sich fühlt er die Weltenwaage,
Auf der des Daseins Rätselfrage
Von Geistern abgewogen steht.

Scorpio:

Soon come the scissors snicker snack—
“My spirit's trial,” (so he thinks)
“Explains this pricking of my back.”
“These pricks attack the soul that stinks,”
Replies with smirk a quite non-wiseman,
A mystically undersize-man,
Who at the Mystery just winks.

Da zwickt und zwackt es ihn.
“Des Geistes Prüfung, ” findet er,
“Scheint mir dies Prickeln in dem Leibe.”
“Der Stich, der trifft ihn sicher!”
So grinst verständig jetzt ein Ungelehrter,
Ein ganzlich mystisch Unverkehrter—
Den Mysterien ganz frech entgegen.

Sagittarius:

But he was in world-midnight seeing
How Homer, Socrates and Goethe too
Within his ego's deepest being
Their sharp soul-arrows shot—(at who?).
And their quite undiminished center
By karma into him did enter,
In him into still grander being grew.

Er aber hat in Weltennacht erkannt,
Wie doch Homer und Sokrates, Goethe aush,
In seines Iches Wesensgründen
Die schärfsten Seelenpfeile schossen,—
Und ihre unverfälschte Menschenwesenheit
Verkörpert wie mit Selbstverständlichkeit
In ihm zu neuer Daseinsgrösse sich.

Capricorn:

“And so you feel old Homer's genius move
Most strongly in your conscious reach?"
"Oh, no! such things I do not love,"
Thus spake with pointed speech
The Initiate. "I never for Maya strove;
Old Homer in my present incarnation
Would rest his mind in mystic meditation."

“Erfühlst du denn Homers Genie
In deinem Denken stark sich regen?”
“ O, regt es sich, ich liebt es nicht,“
So sprach mit spitzer Rede
Der Eingeweihte, “ das wäre Maja-Streben.
Homer will in meinem gegenwärt'gen
Leben All sein Genie im Mystenschlafe pflegen!

Aquarius:

“O mystic transformed Socrates, I seek
In vain a trace in you of that great Greek.
He was as wise as you are egoistic.”
“Cease slandering,” (replied the Mystic).
“That man knows most, who knows he naught doth know,”
Said Socrates. And I know nothing, so
I stand securely on Socratic peak.

Dir fehlt, o mystisch umgeformter Sokrates,
Vom klügsten Griechen jede Spur.
Dazu bist du so eitel, wie er weise war.
“ Erdrücke Lasterrede!”, sagt der Myste,
“ Nichts zu wissen, liebte ich als dieser Mann ...
Und da ich jetzo gar nichts weiss und kann,
Erfühl ich dieses Leben ganz sokratisch-mystisch.”

Pisces:

“And which of Goethe's sunbeams then doth lurk
Within you, is at present showing
Your soul the path to riper fruits of knowing?”
The Seer then grasps his sharpest quirk—
“No! Goethe's light, too bright, does but confuse!
Preferring then to dream his art, I choose
The depth of sleep in which to do my work!”

Und welcher Sonnenstrahl von Goethe,
Als Bote führt er deine Seele
Zum Reifen hoher Wissenstriebe?”
Der Seher greift zum schärfsten Redepfeile.
“ Es schuf,” so sagt er, “Goethe viel zu helle.
Drum träum ich Goethes hohe Kunst, und wähle
Des Schlafes Tiefen mir zum Arbeitsfeld.”

Before the presentation I would like to say a few words about how relationships can be seen in everything we are attempting—in everything that we attempt and in everything that emanates from what we attempt. Without doubt there is an intense longing in our time to gain the connection between the material life and the spiritual life. On the other hand, the possibilities for fulfilling such longings are not so easy to find, for, as I have emphasized on other occasions, very few Europeans today have a clear feeling of seeking the essential nature of the other worlds connected with and lying at the basis of our world. If you consider teachings that are offered today about poetry, about art, you will frequently notice how everything artistic leads back to something higher, and yet how difficult it is for people today really to sense the connection with this higher element. For this reason we may hope that as eurythmy becomes increasingly familiar, in the way we are attempting it, it will make more accessible from a totally human aspect what is needed in order to find the relationship between the human being and the spiritual worlds.

You will often have heard from this or that group calling itself theosophical that an essential aspect of the soul life is based on becoming one with the great universal being that fills space and weaves through time. Although this longing for feeling oneself at one with the great universe is emphasized in theosophical circles with great enthusiasm and fervor, there is little inclination to take hold of the reality of this experience. Many today emphasize the form in which the extinction of the self was striven for in the Middle Ages—for example by Meister Eckhardt or Johannes Tauler—the feeling of being at one with the divinely permeated universe. Today, however, we are in a period in which this must be striven for concretely, in reality, a period in which something must really be done to lend confirmation to the great truth that the human being in his doing and his being can harmonize with the doing and being of the world. This is just what is being attempted tonight in what we will come to know through those who are pursuing this in the second phase of our eurythmy. I will only direct your attention very briefly to something that could be gathered from today's presentation.

In the second presentation¹ you have seen how something that moves and is at rest is presented as an image, so to speak, of what is in the universe: the twelve-foldness that exists in the universe as the Zodiac and the seven-foldness that exists in the universe as the sequence of the planets. You have also experienced how the resting quality of the images of the Zodiac in relation to the mobile quality of the planetary nature confronted you during the presentation. Such things are possible, of course, only if this spirit of feeling at one with the universe is inherent in the whole presentation. Thus an attempt has been made to do something in which there is a very intimate consonance between the spoken word—and not simply the spoken word but also the sensations revealed—and every single movement. It will gradually be understand that in this presentation the spoken word will be only one aspect contributing to the whole. Gradually it will be understood that if the movements are done in their fullness it will be possible to recognize from the movements what is being said, just as one can read the meaning in letters of the alphabet one is looking at. One need only have learned to read, and then gradually, when the whole system is developed, it will also be possible to read what is being presented here. One will be able to read not only in accordance with the letter, with the sound, but also in accordance with the meaning.

To that end it is necessary that one have a concept of the inner experience corresponding with the meaning. As an earthly human being—wandering about aimlessly, as man does, with the beings who were cast into the abyss, into the earthly depths—a person generally, as a matter of course, errs with his thoughts and feelings during earthly existence. Yet he is able to raise himself aloft out of this erroneous thinking and feeling, to raise himself to what becomes for him, out of quiet movement, a firmer thinking or feeling. You see, the cosmos that confronts us to begin with as our solar system is only a special case. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was of God.” And in the cosmos we see the word as though congealed, the word at rest and the word in movement. One must feel it in the cosmos, however. I certainly hope that what is presented here will not be taken for all kinds of confused mysticism current today. We are not concerned here with imitating the methods of those modern astrologers who outdo all materialism with their methods, simply adding ignorant superstition to materialistic ignorance. We are concerned here instead with introducing the lawful relationships of a spiritual world that manifest in the human being just as in the cosmos. True spiritual science does not try to find human laws from the constellations of stars but rather to find human laws as well as natural laws out of the spiritual. Although this spiritual science is again and again thrown together with nonsensical mystical strivings of modern times, it has no relationship to them at all. Here, where in certain descriptions of the human being analogies with cosmic relationships are applied as the basis of a way of expression, it must be emphasized particularly that spiritual science does not wish to have anything to do with the dilettantism of modern astrologers and their crude revelations.

Thus an attempt has been made to offer a sequence of feeling, sensing, and speaking, which, as it is presented, gives, as it were, another version of the inner soul-feeling in relation to what has flowed into the movements of our solar system. The structure of twelve verses, each with seven lines, corresponds, you could say, to the outer skeleton. If you take this attempt at a twelve/seven-membered poem, however, you will see that what wishes to reveal itself is present in every detail. If you take the mood in Cancer, for example, in which after the ascent there again follows the descent, where one has the feeling that the sun comes to rest for a moment—let us simply use this picture for now; many pictures could be used—there you will be able to feel something from the way in which the words within the Cancer verse are placed.

Compare this, if you will, with the verse for Scorpio. In every verse you find exactly the mood that corresponds to the constellation in question in the heavens. This is not all that is attempted, however; if you take certain verses you will be able to experience something else as well. I will take one line from every verse, the line for the planet Mars:

Although in every single line the general mood of the verse is maintained, you will be able to discern the Mars mood in each of these lines taken from the sequence of seven lines; you will be able to discern what corresponds with Mars. Thus the ideal would actually be for someone, were he awakened from sleep and had one line read to him—“In becoming activity pauses”—to be able to say, “Ah, yes! Mars in Scorpio!” With another line, he would have to say, “Jupiter in Libra,” and so forth. You see, this is the opposite of any subjective arbitrariness. Being at one with the laws of the universe is really taken seriously. Here we do not merely proclaim that one should be at one with the universe; rather it is this being-at-one. We are attempting, at least, to realize this being-at-one. You will also have noticed that the gesture is held, for example, in a certain instance; you will have noticed how, as the sun circled around, the Libra mood was also beautifully maintained in the gesture, not in an affected way but only by virtue of the fact that the corresponding consonant sound is simply there. In the Libra mood you have seen everywhere the balance of the scales! It happened by itself that the gesture of Libra was maintained just there. These things occur entirely of their own accord if they are done correctly.

What is actually being attempted in something like this? It is certainly something entirely different from mere whimsy! What is attempted is to maintain in real, inner comprehension what was carried out cosmically when our solar system was created. An attempt is made really to enter into it in mood, to enter into it in doing and in everything else; it could be said that what you have seen presented here offers the possibility of creating movement, as well as concepts steeped in movement, out of what can be expressed in the following phrase:

The word weaves through the world,
world-formation holds the word fast.

Das Wort wallt durch die Welt,
Und die Weltenbildung haelt das Wort fest.

In the first presentation a world relationship was also attempted, but in a somewhat different way. There you will have seen that, portrayed precisely in movement, one is dealing with verses of four lines each and that the sun makes its twelve movements along an outer circle. There are also twelve verses, but on the outer circle the sun is represented as moving through the Zodiac.

The eurythmists who stood in the middle circle expressed the planetary element, and the one who stood in the center expressed the lunar element, the moon. Thus you had sun, planets, and moon. And there was also the inner connection of the lines of verse and always the relationship of the first to the last line: the first line is always of a sun-like quality, the last of a moon-like quality. Just as the sunlight is reflected by the moon, so the last line is always a reflection.

Thus it was attempted to develop the form out of the secrets of the universe, which can then be spoken as well as expressed eurythmically in movements. When, therefore, the time comes in which one learns to read these things, it will be known unequivocally, when seeing something like this, just what is brought to expression by such a complete system of movement.

One can certainly believe that it is unnecessary to do something like this, but it is possible to have various opinions, isn't it? It is also possible to have the opinion that the human being could be dumb and need not speak. And if all human beings in this world were dumb and only a few began to speak, the others would consider speaking eminently superfluous. Such views are entirely relative, aren't they? It is only necessary to admit to the relativity of these views; then it will already be noticed that true progress in the development of humanity can be achieved only if a person engages himself in really drawing forth all the possibilities inherent in human nature.

When those working in eurythmy are also in a position to teach what now forms the second phase of eurythmy—in addition to what meets your gaze macrocosmically and had certainly to be developed in that direction—you will see that the Auftakte [Auftakteis a German word which, when used in connection with eurythmy, refers to choreographed, lawful eurythmy movements that create an introductory mood but are done without the sounds corresponding directly to those movements being audible.] that we began with will certainly need to have musical accompaniment; [To accompany performance of the “Twelve Moods,” Jan Stuten composed a piece for small orchestra.] today there was only a silentAuftakt. You will see later that a microcosmic element will be added to the macrocosmic and that there will be presentations in which something will be brought to expression just as lawfully as in human speaking itself. Later you will see compositions of eurythmy in which you will notice that there arises at precisely the right place a labial sound, and then precisely at another right place a dental sound arises; what really takes place is what arises in another way in the human being in speaking, so that the human being comes to know himself in what is accomplished in eurythmy. You will also have noticed today that those working with eurythmy will gradually learn to teach that variations in the words, variations in the significance and meaning, come to expression in various ways. You will have noticed today that a concrete word is danced in a completely different way from an abstract word, that a verb suggesting an activity is danced in a different way from a verb suggesting a passive state or a verb suggesting duration, and so on. This connection, you could say, between the brain and the speech organism you will also find presented in eurythmy.

I hope that the satire that follows will not be misunderstood. The mood coming to expression in it must not be missing where a serious spiritual scientific world view lies at the basis of one's way of life. We are certainly not toying with serious matters if we attempt to bring some humor into what is serious; in some circles that deem themselves mystical, every frivolity that assumes the caricatured mask of “spiritual depth” is considered serious, displaying itself in gestures of physical nobility and with tragically elongated faces that merely represent burlesque somersaults of spiritual life to one who really knows life. Whoever wants to be truly serious in the face of seriousness must be able to laugh about the ridiculous when the ridiculous deems itself serious. Whoever can find no humor in the humorous is also unable to be serious in the true sense when confronting what is serious. Especially where knowledge of the spirit is sought after, laughter must also be possible about the absurdities of certain “spirit seekers.” Otherwise they will make what is serious into something ridiculous among those who laugh because their laughing muscles begin to move whenever they don't understand something; or they will enrage those people who fly into a rage when they encounter something they have never “seen or heard before.”

• 1. This is a reference to the eurythmy presentation of the “Dance of the Planets” (Planetentanz). It was performed on August 23, 1915 in Dornach, according to documentation in Die Entstehung und Entwickelung der Eurythmie, by Rudolf Steiner, Verlag der Rudolf Steiner-Nachlassverwaltung, Dornach, 1965. Both the German and English texts of this poem are included at the end of this article.

Chapters I-VIII missing

IX.

This clearly shows what attracted the poet and primarily occupied him.

When he set about his robbers in 1777, it may therefore have been the following factors that influenced him. 1. A degenerate time - the idea of something better, of freedom and natural morality, gave the piece its content. 2. His suffering, which he had to endure from society, gave the piece the character of the energetic. 3. His reading led him to endow everything with a certain Titanismus. For it is precisely the works of the Sturm und Drang period that are characterized by that last trait, by that Titanismus, which manifests itself in curses and imprecations. 4. Finally, something else influenced the character of his early works. That was his medical studies. Although it is certain that Schiller never achieved anything in law, if these assertions are also extended to his medical studies, then Schiller is very much wronged; he had even studied medicine very diligently. Indeed, he once made a firm resolution to study nothing but medicine for two years and to completely renounce poetry during that time.

Even if we didn't know that, Schiller's striving in relation to medicine is evident in his essay, which he defended upon his release from the Karlsschule in 1780: “On the Connection of Man's Animal Nature with His Spiritual Nature”. This essay had already been written by Schiller a year earlier under the title “Philosophy of Physiology”, but had been unfavorably assessed by one of his superiors at the time; however, in the end the same superior had to admit that “incidentally, the fiery execution of a completely new plan gives unmistakable proofs of the author's good and striking soul powers, and his all-searching spirit promises a truly enterprising [useful] scholar after the ended youthful fermentations.” The duke thought that in order to achieve the last expressed purpose, it would be good if Schiller would remain in the Karlsschule for another year.

After this somewhat longer excursion, the

[breaks off, missing manuscript part]

storm howls your names of the rejected.

A feverish urge to picture out precisely that which the sense of beauty strives to withdraw from view. But even more striking is the imperfect command of expression; almost everywhere where the poet [tries] to present the thought sensually to the eye, he lapses into bombast; his sensuality is confused by brooding, his thought by medical notions.

It is a well-known fact that the destructive urge, the discomfort in poetic feeling, occurs long before agreement with the world. And so our young poet is always looking for destruction first.

In one of his earliest poetic attempts, still from 1775, it says:

We hardly slip out of our casket
Into this great wide madhouse
We greet the sun with a howl,
We feel all the misery ahead.

His first poem to be printed dates back to 1776. It is a beautiful presentation of beautiful thoughts, but where do they lead us? They lead us to that moment when there is no more time, when there is no more thing.

In 1777, Schiller imitated his beloved Schubart, who had quarreled with the conquerors in The Eternal Jew, and also worked these down, which Schubart was not a little delighted about.

Hell had its triumphal song, and Schiller was able to put curses and gruesome words into the mouths of the devils, in which he was so strong. The despotic monarchs were also properly belittled.

But soon something else would follow this destructive urge; after all, great poetic genius never reveals itself in the mere art of destruction. The poetry of love follows. Not of individual love for any person, but of a philosophical principle that he called love. A principle that holds the universe together, worlds with worlds, hope with despair, virtue and vice.

With love's wings, the future rushes
into the arms of the past,
Long seeks the fleeing Saturnus
His bride - eternity.

In his essay “On Naive and Sentimental Poetry”, he sought to enlighten himself theoretically through the theoretical presentation. The idea expressed in it is as follows. The poet either represents nature directly around him, in which case he is a naive poet, or he represents the opposition between nature and idea, in which case he is a sentimental poet. If he is more interested in nature, then he is a satirist, and either pathos-laden satire when he is critical, when he is serious; or, if he is cheerful, more in the realm of understanding than of will, then he is a jesting satirist. If the poet is more interested in the ideal, his poetry is elegiac. If he mourns the ideal, he is elegiac in the proper sense of the word; if he rejoices in the ideal, he is an idyllic poet. This is preceded by a philosophical consideration of the naive.

What is required of the naive is that nature should triumph over art, whether this happens against the knowledge and will of the person or with their full awareness. In the first case, it is the naive nature of surprise and amuses; in the second case, it is the naive nature of attitude and touches.

In an essay “On the Moral Utility of Aesthetic Customs,” he seeks to excuse himself for the earlier, too strongly expressed idea against aesthetic customs “in which taste, if not of genuine morality, is nevertheless beneficial to the legality of our behavior” - and these are [necessary] to consolidate the social classes.

In his treatise on the sublime, he suggests how man should behave in the sensual world without having to come into conflict with his morality.

XXVIII.

At the beginning of this epoch, Schiller had also been led to the study of antiquity. In fact, in his earlier years he had even wanted to learn Greek in order to be able to enjoy the art of this primitive people at the source, but Körner dissuaded him from this. The fruits of this work are translations – namely from the 2nd and 4th books of the Aeneid [and] Iphigenia in Aulis.

But it was also during this time that the artist created works that gave a poetic form to the thoughts expressed in his aesthetic writings.

In 1793, Schiller went to his homeland, where he stayed for several months.

He met Cotta and agreed with him on the magazine Die Horen – it was now the Horen that provided the opportunity for the iron alliance with Goethe. Humboldt had also become close friends with Schiller, and it was for this very reason that he had moved with his wife to Jena.

What Schiller sought in his aesthetic studies, he found in them, namely, where the bridge lies between the world of ideas and reality, in poetry. And to this he decided to return. —

His association with Goethe also contributed to this, and as early as 1795 Schiller wrote to Goethe, “the poet is the only true human being, and the best philosopher is only a caricature compared to him”. He saw Wilhelm Meister emerging before his eyes, and a decisive return to poetry followed. When he began Wallenstein in 1796, the publication of the Horen became a burden to him, and he gave it up in 1797. But he had already been concerned with the publication of a “Musenalmanach” in 1795 and had contacted the most important poets for this purpose. Schiller took charge of five volumes of it, but when he had completed Wallenstein in 1799, he also gave that up, seeing it as nothing more than a disruptive sideline. The Xenien by the two poets appeared in the Musenalmanach, along with Schiller's ballads, which surprised the world in 1797. In 1799, Schiller moved to Weimar to be closer to Goethe and the theater. In 1802, at the instigation of the Duke, he was ennobled by the Emperor.

Let us consider Schiller's shorter poems from the last period.

They were opened with the Reich der Schatten (The Empire of Shadows). This marked the beginning of a large series of poems that have been called philosophical poems. His philosophical research is also laid out in these poems.

But he also set down his historical research in a series of poems called the cultural-historical ones.

The latter include, for example, the walk. Here the poet skillfully manages to hide the fact that he starts from an idea. And we really see a whole series of magnificent landscape paintings in front of us. At the same time, however, we have also wandered through the course of humanity, initially in a united alliance with nature, then degraded by a false culture, and through a revolution, it restores its rights.

The Poem of the Four Ages of Man belongs here, and from there, quite nicely, a few others of Schiller's shorter poems. The third age takes us to the artificially formed Hellas, which is also the subject of the Greek gods. Similarly, only the Knights of St. John follow the Eleusinian Mysteries.

[beginning missing] the color fringes. Those who believe that Goethe did not understand or consider this objection should consider what he says in the History of the Theory of Colors, the author's confession, Hempel volume... p. 416ff. and they will be cured of their error. Goethe considered it very carefully, but found it insufficient. If, after emerging from the prism, the divergence of the light rays were the cause of the color appearance, then only the parallel running of the same can be the reason for their union into white before entering. Now allow the question of whether this divergence is not present in a more extended light source in the same way as in a less extended one. What should be the reason for the mixing of differently colored light rays if the only condition for their occurrence, the divergence, is maintained? There is no other way: if divergence were the cause of the color appearance, it could not disappear even though the divergence is not eliminated. There is no question that for those who are trapped in the Newtonian doctrine, for those who are unable to see that Goethe's views on color theory have uses quite other than interpreting this experiment, the same will always form a weighty objection. The reasons that are being asserted against Goethe here are still the most plausible ones. Incidentally, it should be noted that Newton, who thought of colors as material and their combination into white as a chemical compound, still had some semblance of justification for himself. After all, the combination behind the prism could well happen again when the light substances come together. A positive cause for this is probably not present, but one could imagine the chemical relationship of the substances to be so great that mere contact is enough to combine them.

But how the modern mechanical view, which regards light as propagating vibrations, conceives of this combination both in front of and behind the prism is absolutely incomprehensible. And in no work treating this subject – and the author of this essay dares to claim that he will refute every objection concerning this point in every single case – is an explanation of this union even attempted. [In the margin in pencil:] “Series of archetypal phenomena”.

So Goethe was right in his previous explanation.

While the empirical sciences seek to fathom and explain the context in the world of given objects and to explain the relationships between the individual empirical phenomena, philosophy sets out to explain the given in its entirety itself, to show how the finite, the limited, is connected to the infinite, the unlimited. For the empirical scientist, the world of phenomena is a foundation on which he thinks he stands firmly, but he does not venture to ask further questions about it. The philosopher, however, seeing the conditionality of this foundation, unhinges it in order to rebuild it and let it emerge from the only unchanging and absolute. What the human mind unconsciously created in an earlier period becomes its object in a later one. The inner becomes an outer for it and as such it is taken up and endowed with new life. Whenever the old is taken as an object and given new breath, then the human mind has reached a new level.

When minds inspired by old ideas are awakened and infuse new life into them, a new epoch in human history has begun. The longer ideas reproduce without the infusion of fresh life, the more rigid they become; they appear to be alive, but they are dead. This was the state of German culture in all its branches at the beginning of the last century. But then the time came when a new ray of sunshine warmed the frozen world and new life sprouted everywhere. In the realm of the beautiful there arose a Lessing, a Herder, a Goethe, a Schiller; in philosophy there was a Kant.

In 1746, the death of his father deprived him of the necessary funds to continue his university studies, and he was forced to leave the university. He left by publishing a treatise that already foreshadowed his ingenuity: “On the True Estimation of the Living Forces of Nature”.

Through the spirited [illegible word] Martin Knutzen, who introduced him to Newton, the studies on this great man were the immediate cause of the cited writing. Now he became a private tutor and remained in this position for nine years until he had sufficient material means to be able to pursue his career as an academic teacher. In 1755, he earned the degree of Magister with his treatise “A New Illumination of the First Principles of All Metaphysical Knowledge,” and at the same time he began his beneficial academic work as a private lecturer.

In the aforementioned treatise, he now presents himself to us fully as a philosopher. Although he still starts from the Leibniz-Wolffian direction, he is already standing completely independently, declaring the ontological proof of the existence of God to be fraudulent, showing the impossibility of assuming that a simple being could have the reason for its change within itself.

In 1762, he proves that the four syllogistic figures [two unreadable words] of contemporary philosophy are only false subtleties.

In 1763, he attempts to introduce negative quantities into world wisdom.

1764 he shows that if philosophy is to be more than a dead skeleton of the active and living world view, and correspond to reality, it must emulate the mathematical method, for this is the view that corresponds to reality [and is more true to life].

In 1766, in Dreams of a Spirit-Seer, he regards old metaphysics as nothing more than a form of enthusiasm, which he equates with the musings of Swedenborg, who was well known at the time.

In 1768, he also broke with Leibniz's assumption that space is nothing but the relationship between things that are next to each other; he attributed to it an independent and original significance.

And so the dilapidated house of old metaphysics was demolished piece by piece, and David Hume's skeptical investigations had left a deep impression.

Not as fast as in his inner philosophical views, he progressed in his external career. He had to remain a private lecturer for 15 years. His circumstances were not brilliant; this is proved by the fact that the only coat was so worn out that his friends would have bought him a new one if he had agreed. He had been proposed for a full professorship since 1756. But the then seven-year war was an obstacle to his aspirations. Only in 1762 was he offered a full professorship in poetry.

Those who have had even a small amount of contact with Kantian intellectual products will hardly be surprised when they hear that the philosopher turned down a position in which he would have had the obligation to [illegible word] all possible daily phenomena in the field of poetry, to make occasional poems and the like. He was proposed for a position that was next to be filled. And so he was brought to the royal castle in 1766 as a sub-librarian with an annual salary of - 62 thalers.

Meanwhile, however, his seeds had also found more fertile soil here and there in the rest of Germany, and in November 1769 he was called to Erlangen and in January 1770 to Jena. Already determined to accept the latter appointment, in March 1770 the long-awaited opportunity arose for him to take up the post of full professor in his native Königsberg; he became a full professor of logic and metaphysics.

In August 1770, he then [emerged] with the treatise “On the Principles of the Sensual and the Intellectual World” and in this, the transformation had already taken place, the old dogmatic philosophy was concluded and the foundation for the critical one was laid. Here it is already clearly stated that the conditions under which things can appear to us cannot at the same time provide the conditions of the possibility of things in themselves. And now he sets to work on the most famous of all philosophical works, the work by which he made himself immortal, the “Critique of Pure Reason”.

In February 1772, he writes to Herz in Berlin, the man who, in defense of the aforementioned essay, replied that he hoped to finish his work in three months.

In Nov. 1776, he does not think he will be finished by Easter, and he believes he will have to work all summer long; the systematic development presents enormous difficulties.

In Aug. 1777, he hopes to be finished by winter, and in August of the following year, he speaks of a handbook of metaphysics that is to be published by him soon. However, it is not until 1781 that the work appears under the title “Critique of Pure Reason”.

This was

not a critique of books and systems, but [the] of reason in general, in view of all knowledge to which it may aspire independently of all experience, and thus the decision of the possibility or impossibility of metaphysics in general and the determination of both the sources and the scope and limits of the same, all from principles

given. Wormy dogmatism, together with destructive skepticism, was thrown overboard, mere groping under mere concepts abandoned, the whole world view placed on different feet. Until then, it had been assumed that

all our knowledge must conform to the objects; but all attempts to determine a priori something through concepts by which our knowledge would be expanded came to nothing under this assumption.

Kant tried

therefore tried to see whether we would not get better results in the tasks of metaphysics by assuming that the objects must be based on our knowledge, which [so] better agrees with the desired possibility [of] knowledge of the same a priori, which is to establish something about objects before they are given to us. The situation here is similar to that of Copernicus's first thoughts, who, [after not much success in explaining the movements in the heavens when he assumed that the whole starry sky rotated around the observer, tried to see if he might not be more successful if he made the observer rotate and left the stars at rest. In metaphysics, we can now try a similar approach with regard to the perception of objects. If perception had to conform to the nature of objects, then I do not see how we can know anything about it a priori; but if the object (as an object of the senses) conforms to the nature of our faculty of perception, then I can well imagine this possibility.

[breaks off]

On the Possibility of Experience

Experience arises only through looking at and recognizing (that is, thinking in valid judgments - through understanding) what is given.

Everything that is ever to become the object of my thinking can only do so to the extent that it takes on those forms under which thinking is possible at all. Thus, anything that is not capable of taking on the forms of my thinking could not become the object of my experience at all. Therefore, everything that is ever to become experience must conform to the forms of my thinking.

These forms are therefore the conditions for all possible experience.

An object cannot simply be thought of as being, but must be in a certain way; being in general is substance, the way it is is its accident. Although both are strictly identical, strictly one and the same in reality, thinking separates them here and considers the thing insofar as it is and also insofar as it is somehow and then says that what is cannot perish or arise, only its accidents change. This is quite right, if only we do not think of a persisting thing in itself, because if an object ceases to exist in a certain way and begins to exist in a different way, I used to ascribe being to it and I still do so; it is therefore always being, that is, it persists in its being. To say that the existing ceases to exist is inconsistent and impossible precisely because it is inconsistent, for it means that the existing should not be at a time, which is roughly the same as saying that the beautiful should be ugly at a time.

[missing part of the manuscript]

The ego is absolute in its form, therefore it cannot be asked about an authority to use the above listed forms, it is simply capable of doing so.

But insofar as it applies the forms, it is absolute identity with itself and everything else is only through the absolute ego, and therefore also the imagined ego.

A genuine theory of science, which is supposed to be a science of the pursuit of truth, must start from the absolute ego and tie in with the sentence: The absolute ego sets (i.e. makes into an entity) a conceived ego (relatively consistent with itself) and a conceived non-ego (relatively different from the ego) and sets both through each other.

The explanation and complete exposition of these propositions is a matter for a general theory of science. However, for the purpose of this essay, this proposition is justified insofar as the ego would be conceived as absolute and at the same time a matter determined by a form. This has been critically established as a fact.

If I now repeat the critical result found here, it is presented in the following sentences:

1. There is an absolute form that confronts us in the ego.

2. There is a matter that confronts us as opposed to the absolute ego.

3. The I determines matter through its forms and forms from its totality formed matter - the absolutely unconditional - as idea.

4. Matter is given to us only by observation of experience and there is no other source of experience than this.

Depending on the diversity of forms in which matter appears, it appears either as truth, as beauty or as goodness. The true, the beautiful and the good therefore lie in forms and only in forms.

Notes 5511-5515, undated, c. 1883.

[First page missing] the “principle of the mechanism of nature, without which there can be no natural science at all”, as suggested by Kant, in organic natural science, while du Bois-Reymond's treatise culminates in the sentence: “it is the concept of mechanical causality that Goethe completely lacked.”

If we could be pleased about du Bois-Reymond's dismissive judgments about the esteem that Haeckel has for our great genius, then on the other hand we must admit that the path the latter takes is by no means the right one, simply because an understanding of Goethe's scientific endeavors is impossible in this way. What is most important for the latter is the ability to completely forget opposing views – even if they are one's own – and to immerse oneself objectively in the spirit of Goethe's scientific achievements, because only in this way is it possible to penetrate his way of thinking in a comprehensive and unbiased way. His great friend Schiller has admirably shown us the way to do this (see Schiller's correspondence with Goethe from 1794. Edition by Spemann $. 11-21). What most natural scientists of our time do, however, and what [here a manuscript page is missing] [mannigjfaltigkeit der Erscheinungswelt merely as a sensual side-by-side and after each other, cannot suffice for him. He seeks something higher, in which all diversity appears as unity, an ideal whole that permeates all forms of the sensory world as its expressions, its variously modified manifestations. He perceives this to be lacking in the scientific views of his time. He expresses this deficiency in Faust with the well-known words: “Whoever wants to understand and grasp what is alive — seeks first to expel the spirit — unfortunately only the spiritual bond is missing.” He seeks this spiritual bond, “that which holds the world together at its core”. His later research pursues this goal; but, to speak in his own words, he rose from “belief” to “vision”, from “intuition” to “comprehension”. He later says: (Hempel's edition B [volume] 33. p. 191) “The idea must prevail over the whole and draw the general picture in a genetic way.” And: “Therefore, here is a proposal for an anatomical type, for a general image, in which the shapes of all animals would be included in the possibility, and according to which one describes each animal in a certain order.” ... “From the general [idea of a type, it follows that no single animal can be set up as such a canon of comparison; no single one can be a model for the whole.”]

[a manuscript page is missing here]

The aim of thinking about nature is to find types. In the introduction to Metamorphosis of Plants (Hempel, vol. 33, p. 7), he calls the idea “something that is only held for a moment in experience.” The phrase “the idea is what remains in the phenomena” is often used. This has only a limited validity. It must be defined more closely. Nothing persists in the phenomenon as such; everything is changeable here. The senses know no permanence. “What is formed is immediately reformed” (Hempel, p. 7). The idea is characterized precisely by the fact that it is only held for a moment in the phenomenon. It “actually appears as such only to the mind” (Hempel, vol. 3, p. 5). Nevertheless, it is the object of science. Goethe's view of nature is a truly thinking, reasonable one. Concepts that cannot be thought of in any definite way, such as consanguinity, are alien to him.

The facts that modern natural philosophy presents to establish the doctrine of consanguinity can all be considered correct; indeed, one can go even further and say that one would admit everything that our naturalists assume could still be found to confirm their theory, and yet one must admit that the modern theory of descent is insufficient to explain all these facts, whereas the path taken by Goethe is the more perfect one. Let us delve deeper. What about the famous principle of inheritance? Does it provide a law, a concept? Absolutely not. It merely states the fact that a series of characteristics found in the parents can also be found in the offspring. This is not a law, merely an experience put into words. And does the principle of adaptation say anything? No more: That a series of character traits in a living being can be modified by external influences. Again, not a mental, legal definition. And what does consanguinity mean? That a series of different organisms have developed through procreation from ancestors. All this and more can be admitted by modern Darwinism. But Goethe's way of looking at things goes deeper. He seeks the organic laws of action. He is not satisfied with what our senses convey to us. He seeks that which is independent of space and time, which is determined in and by itself. He does not seek the relationships between two entities in their spatial-temporal relationships, but in the concrete, specific content of the two forms of existence, which can only be grasped through thought. He does not relate the individual organs of the plant in such a way that he traces the spatial emergence of one from the other, /breaks off]

But how does he then conceive of the relationship between the type and the individual form? The correct interpretation of that famous conversation with Schiller, in which he sketched out the concept of the Urpflanze for him on a piece of paper, helps us to answer this question. Schiller could only find an idea in this Urpflanze. He knew [breaks off]