The Rudolf Steiner Archive

The number of writings and treatises currently appearing that set themselves the task of examining Goethe's relationship to the individual branches of modern science and to the various expressions of our intellectual life in general is overwhelming. This reflects the gratifying fact that ever wider circles are becoming aware that in Goethe we are confronted with a cultural factor with whom all those who wish to participate in the intellectual life of the present must come to terms. He who does not find the point where he can link his own striving to this greatest spirit of modern times can only allow himself to be led by the rest of humanity like a blind man; he cannot consciously, with full clarity, head for the goals which the cultural development of the time is taking. But science in particular does not do justice to Goethe everywhere. It lacks the impartiality necessary here more than anywhere else to first immerse itself in the full depth of Goethe's genius before sitting down in the critical chair. One believes oneself to be far beyond Goethe, because the individual results of his research have been overtaken by those of today's science, which works with more perfect tools and a richer experience. But we should look beyond these details to his comprehensive principles, to his great way of looking at things. We should adopt his way of thinking, his way of posing problems, so that we can then continue to build in his spirit with our richer means and our broader experience. Goethe himself illustrated the relationship of his scientific results to the progress of research in an excellent image. He describes them as stones with which he had perhaps ventured too far on the chessboard, but from which one should recognize the player's plan. This plan, with which he gave new, great impulses to the sciences to which he devoted himself, is a lasting achievement to which one does the greatest injustice if one treats it from above. But it is peculiar to our time that the productive power of genius seems almost insignificant. How could it be otherwise in an age in which any going beyond actual experience in science is frowned upon by so many! For mere observation, you need nothing but healthy senses, and genius is a rather dispensable thing.

But true progress in the sciences as well as in art has never been brought about by mere observation or slavish imitation of nature. If thousands and thousands pass by a fact, then someone comes along and makes the discovery of a great scientific law. Many people before Galileo may have observed a swaying church lamp, but it was up to this brilliant mind to discover the laws of the pendulum, which are so important for physics. "If the eye were not sunny, how could we see the light!" exclaims Goethe, and by this he means that only those who have the necessary dispositions and the productive power to see more in the facts than the mere facts are able to see into the depths of nature.

Based on these principles, purely philological and critical Goethe research, which it would be foolish to deny its justification, must be supplemented. We must go back to the tendencies that Goethe had and continue to work scientifically from the points of view that he showed. We should not merely research about his spirit, but in his spirit.

The aim here is to show how one of the youngest and most controversial sciences, aesthetics, must be developed in the spirit of Goethe's world view. This science is barely over a century old. In 1750, Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten emerged with his "Aesthetica" with the certain awareness that he was opening up a new scientific field. What had previously been written about this branch of thought cannot even be described as an elementary approach to a science of art. Neither the Greek nor the medieval philosophers knew what to do with art scientifically. The Greek mind found everything it was looking for within nature, there was no longing for it that was not satisfied by this good mother. It demanded nothing beyond nature, so art did not need to offer it anything beyond that; it had to satisfy the same needs as nature, only to a greater degree. One found everything one was looking for in nature, therefore one needed to achieve nothing in art but nature. Aristotle therefore knows no other principle of art than imitation of nature. Plato, the great idealist of the Greeks, simply declared the fine arts and drama to be harmful. He had so little concept of the independent function of art that he only gave music the benefit of the doubt because it promoted bravery in war. - It could remain so only as long as man did not know that a world at least equal to external nature lived within him. But the moment he became aware of this independent world, he had to free himself from the fetters of nature, he had to face it as a free being who no longer had to create his desires and needs. Whether this new longing, which is not generated within bloße nature, can still be satisfied by the latter remains questionable. Thus the conflicts of the ideal with reality, of the desired with the achieved, in short everything that leads a human soul into a true spiritual labyrinth. Nature stands before us soulless, devoid of everything that our inner being announces to us as divine. The next consequence will be a turning away from all reality, an escape from the immediately natural. This flight shows us the world view of the Christian Middle Ages; it is the exact opposite of Greekism. Just as the latter found everything in nature, this view finds nothing at all in it. Even now, a science of art was not possible. After all, art can only work with the means of nature, and Christian scholarship could not grasp how works could be created within godless reality that could satisfy the spirit striving for the divine. But the helplessness of science never hindered the development of art. While the former did not know what to think about it, the most glorious works of Christian art were created.

For the emergence of aesthetics, a time was necessary in which the spirit, free and independent of the bonds of nature, sees its inner self, the ideal world, in full clarity, and the idea has become a necessity for it, but in which a union with nature is also possible again. This union cannot, of course, refer to the sum of coincidences that make up the world that is given to us as the world of the senses, and of which the Greek was still completely satisfied. Here we find nothing but facts, which could just as well be otherwise, and we seek the necessary, of which we understand why it must be so; we see nothing but individuals, and our spirit strives for the generic, the archetypal; we see nothing but the finite, the transient, and our spirit strives for the infinite, the imperishable, the eternal. If the human spirit, alienated from nature, were to return to nature, it would have to be to something other than that sum of coincidences. And this return means to Goethe: return to nature, but return with the full richness of the developed spirit, with the educational height of the new age. Goethe's view does not correspond to the fundamental separation of nature and spirit; he wants to see a great whole in the world, a unified chain of development of beings, within which man forms a link, albeit the highest. It is a matter of going beyond the immediate, sensuous nature without moving away in the slightest from what constitutes the essence of nature. It approaches reality with reverence because it believes in its ideal content. To survey nature from a unified center of development as a creative whole and to recreate the emergence of the individual from the whole in the spirit, that is the task. What matters is not the finished individual, but the law of nature, not the individual, but the idea, the type that makes it comprehensible to us in the first place. In Goethe this fact is expressed in the most perfect form imaginable. But what we can learn from his attitude towards nature is the incontrovertible truth that for the modern spirit immediate nature offers no satisfaction, because we do not already recognize the highest, the idea, the divine in it, as it lies spread out before our senses as a world of experience, but only when we go beyond it. In the purely ideal form, detached from all reality, the "higher nature in nature" is now contained in science. But whereas mere. While mere experience cannot come to a reconciliation of the opposites of the ideal and the real world because it has the reality but not yet the idea, science cannot do the same for the reason that it has the idea but no longer the reality. Between the two, man needs a new realm, a realm in which the individual, and not the whole, already represents the idea, in which the individual, and not the species, is already endowed with the character of necessity. But such a world does not come to us from outside, man must create it for himself; and this world is the world of art, a necessary third realm alongside that of the senses and that of reason. The task of aesthetics is now to understand art as this third realm and to understand the endeavors of artists from this point of view. It is to the credit of Kant's "Critique of Judgment", published in 1790, that the problem was first raised in the way we have indicated and that all the main aesthetic questions were thus actually brought into flow. The ideas expressed therein, in conjunction with the magnificent elaboration they received from Schiller (in the "Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man"), are the cornerstone of aesthetics. Kant finds that pleasure in an object is only purely aesthetic if it is uninfluenced by interest in the real existence of the object, so that the pure pleasure in beauty is not clouded by the interference of the faculty of desire, which only asks for purpose and utility and judges the world according to these. Schiller now finds that the intellectual activity that lives itself out in the creation and enjoyment of beauty is characterized by the fact that it is neither bound by a natural necessity, to which we must adhere when we simply allow the world of experience to affect our senses, nor is it subject to a logical necessity, which immediately comes into consideration when we approach reality for the purpose of scientific research or technical exploitation of the forces of nature (for example, in the construction of a machine). The artist obeys neither the necessity of nature nor the necessity of reason unilaterally. He transforms the things of the outside world in such a way that they appear as if the spirit were already inherent in them, and he treats the spirit as if it had a direct natural effect.

This gives rise to the aesthetic appearance, in which both the necessity of nature and the necessity of reason are suspended; the former because it is not without spirit, and the latter because it has descended from its ideal height and acts like nature. The works that result from this are of course not true to nature in the usual sense of the word, because in nature idea and reality nowhere coincide, but they must be appearance if they are to be true works of art. With the concept of appearance in this context, Schiller is unique as an aesthetician, unsurpassed, indeed unrivaled. This is where aesthetics should have taken up and built on from there. Instead, Schelling entered the scene with a completely misguided basic view and thus led aesthetics astray, so that it has never found its way again. The doyen of our science of beauty, Friedrich Theodor Vischer, held on to his conviction until the end of his life, despite having written a five-volume aesthetics: Aesthetics is still in its infancy. Like all modern philosophy, Schelling found the task of the highest human endeavor in grasping the eternal archetypes of things. All truth and beauty is contained in them. True beauty is therefore something supersensible and the work of art, which aims to achieve beauty in the sensual, is only a reflection of that eternal archetype. According to Schelling, the work of art is not beautiful for its own sake, but because it depicts the idea of beauty. Art has no other task than to objectively embody and illustrate the truth as it is also contained in science. What matters here, what our pleasure in the work of art is linked to, is the expressed idea. The sensual image is only a means of expression for a supersensible content. And in this, all aestheticians follow the idealizing direction of Schelling. Neither Hegel and Schopenhauer, nor their successors, have made any progress on this point.¹ When Hegel says: "The beautiful is the sensuous appearance of the idea" and even more clearly: "The hard bark of nature and the ordinary world make it more sour for the spirit to penetrate to the idea than the works of art", it is quite clearly expressed therein that the aim of art is the same as that of science, namely to grasp the idea, only science wants to present it to us in pure thought form, but art in a sensuous way through a sensual means of expression. And in the same sense, Vischer defines beauty as "the appearance of the idea". This aesthetic cannot grasp the independent significance of art. What it offers, in its view, can also be achieved in a purer, more unclouded form through thought. And that is why the idealizing science of art has proven to be unfruitful. But it is not to be replaced by a physiology of taste, not by an unprincipled, mere history of art, but by following Goethe's conception of art. Merck once characterized Goethe's work by saying that the latter sought to give a poetic form to the real, while the others sought only to embody the so-called imaginative, which produced stupid things. This alludes to a principle of art that Goethe expresses in the second part of Faust with the words: "Consider the what, consider more how." This clearly states what art is all about. It is not about embodying the supersensible, but about transforming the sensual, the actual. The real should not be reduced to a means of expression, no, it should remain in its independence, only it should be given a new form, a form in which it satisfies our need for the necessary, the archetypal. It is not the idea in the sensual that should be the reason for our pleasure, our elevation in the work of art, but the fact that a real, an individual thing appears here as as the idea. In nature, objects never appear to us as they correspond to their idea, but inhibited, influenced from all sides by forces that have nothing to do with the germ within them. The external does not coincide with the internal, nature does not achieve what it intended. The artist now eliminates all these causes of imperfection and presents the individual thing to our eye as if it were an idea. The artist creates objects that are more perfect than they can be according to their natural existence, but it is only the perfection of the being that he visualizes, brings to representation. The beauty lies in this transcendence of an object beyond itself, but only on the basis of what is already hidden within it. Goethe can rightly say: "Beauty is a manifestation of secret natural laws that would have remained hidden from us forever without its appearance", and "To whom nature begins to reveal its open secret, he feels an irresistible longing for its most worthy interpreter, art". The beautiful should not embody an idea, but rather lend such form to the real that it appears before our senses as perfect and divine as an idea.

Beauty is appearance because it conjures up a reality before our senses that presents itself as such, like the world of ideas itself. The what remains a sensual, but the how of its appearance becomes an ideal. Science provides us with a world of ideal perfection; however, we can only think this; a world endowed with the character of the same perfection, but which is visual, confronts us in the beauty. Eduard von Hartmann, the most recent editor of aesthetics, who has created a very commendable work in his "Philosophy of Beauty", says quite correctly that the basic concept from which all contemplation of beauty must start is the concept of aesthetic appearance. But the world of ideas as such can never be regarded as appearance, regardless of the form in which it appears. It is a real appearance, however, when the natural, the individual, appears in an eternal, imperishable form, endowed with the characters of the idea, for the natural as such is not entitled to such a form. The aesthetics that proceeds from this view does not yet exist. It can certainly be described as the "aesthetics of Goethe's world view"; and it is the aesthetics of the future.

• 1. Even Eduard von Hartmann's comments on Hegel in his large-scale, intellectual aesthetics cannot shake me in this conviction, and the quotations cited in the text certainly speak for me.

Compiled by

PAUL M. ALLEN

1.David Friedrich Strauss, Der alte und neue Glaube, The Old and New Faith, publ. 1872. Born in 1808, appointed professor at the University of Zurich, Strauss became a center of controversy, the intensity of which has been likened to that of the Thirty Years' War. This began with the appearance of his Life of Jesus (1835), in which he questioned the sources of the New Testament, and continued with his Doctrine of the Christian Faith (1840). From this time until his death in 1874, Strauss became world-famous as one of the most frank critics of Christianity.

2.Herbert Spencer, The Principles of Psychology, Part IV, Chapter ix, par. 219. Rudolf Steiner consulted the German edition, translated by Dr. B. Vetter and published at Stuttgart, 1882. Spencer, born 1820, an engineer by training, sought to explain “the phenomena of life, mind, and society in terms of matter, motion, and force.” At first strongly influenced by Coleridge, Spencer placed evolution as the first and most universal principle, influencing all the sciences. To him, evolution was synonymous with progress. In his later development, Spencer championed rugged individualism, and became an outspoken opponent of socialism, upholding what he considered the absolute rights of private enterprise against any form of governmental control. Before his death in 1903, Spencer's optimistic view of human progress collapsed, and he fell prey to marked pessimism regarding the future of mankind.

3.Benedictus de Spinoza (Baruch de Spinoza), born 1632 in Holland of a Jewish family that had been exiled from Spain and Portugal. He early showed great powers as a student, and in 1656 was banned by the Jewish community at Amsterdam because of his views. His chief work, which had a lasting influence upon future generations of thinkers, long after the author's death in 1677, is The Ethics, which has recently appeared in a new edition titled The Road to Inner Freedom, New York, 1957.

4.Eduard von Hartmann, Phänomenologie des sittlichen Bewusstseins, Phenomenology of Moral Consciousness, German ed. p. 451. Born 1842, von Hartmann was originally an officer in the Prussian army. Because of an illness, he retired from military service and took up an intensive study of philosophy. In 1869 his Philosophie des Unbewussten (Philosophy of the Unconscious) appeared, and made him famous almost overnight. Of the many other works he wrote, this book remained his most famous. Rudolf Steiner describes a personal impression of von Hartmann, whom he visited in Berlin in 1888 following a philosophical correspondence with him over some years. This account may be found in Chapter IX of Steiner's autobiography. Steiner's Wahrheit und Wissenschaft (Truth and Knowledge), published in this present volume, was dedicated to von Hartmann. The latter died in 1906.

5.In his Atomistik des Willens, Atomic Theory of Will, Ger. ed., Hamburg, 1891, 2 vols. p. 213. Robert Hamerling, the Austrian poet-philosopher was born March 24, 1830. He early showed ability in poetry, and although from poor parentage, the generosity of friends enabled him to attend the gymnasium in Vienna, and afterward the University there. In the revolutionary movements which swept Europe in 1848, Hamerling joined the student legion in the Vienna revolt. The collapse of the uprising in 1849 made it necessary for him to hide for a long time in order to escape arrest. Later he studied natural science and philosophy. In 1855 he was appointed master at the gymnasium in Trieste. Many years of ill health caused him finally to retire on a government pension in 1866. In comparatively comfortable circumstances, Hamerling spent the remainder of his life in his home near Gratz, devoting himself to writing until his death on July 13, 1889. He is referred to as “one of the most remarkable poets of the Austrian school; his poems are full of life and color.” His most popular work was Ahasver in Rom, Ahasver in Rome (1866), with Nero as principal character. Der König von Sion, The King of Zion, (1869) is generally considered to be his masterpiece. In 1888 his Homunculus appeared, and was reviewed with extensive comment by Rudolf Steiner. His Amor und Psyche was published in 1882; his novel Aspasia (1876), described Greek life in the age of Pericles. In 1870 his drama concerning the French Revolution, Danton und Robespierre, was published. Rudolf Steiner commented on this drama in his Speech and Drama Course given in 1924, and in fact, many references to Hamerling and his work appear in books and lectures by Rudolf Steiner, including the latter's autobiography.

6.Die Illusion der Willensfreiheit, The Illusion of the Freedom of the Will, by Paul Rée, publ. 1885, p. 5. Paul Rée (1849–1901) was a German positivist philosopher, known widely as an editor of the writings of Friedrich Nietzsche. Rée met Nietzsche in 1876, as Rudolf Steiner relates in his Friedrich Nietzsche, Fighter for Freedom, p. 159–60. Steiner refers to Rée in the preface to this book, written in Weimar, 1895: “Such an average brain as that of Paul Rée could make no important impression on Nietzsche.” (op. cit. p. 40).

7.Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831). A voluminous literature on Hegel and Hegelian thought exists in English, including biographical studies, translations, and commentaries on his writings. Consult any standard encyclopedia for details.

8.Goethe's Faust, Part I,—

Zwei Seelen wohnen, ach! in meiner Burst,
Die eine will sich von der andern trennen;
Die eine halt, in derber Liebeslust,
Sich an die Welt mit klammernden Organen;
Die andere hebt gewaltsam sich vom Dust
Zul den Gefilden hoher Ahnen.

(Lines 1112–1117)

The translation is that by George Madison Priest: Faust, Parts One and Two, publ. Alfred Knopf, New York, 1941, one of the best of all English translations of this work.

9.monism: the teaching of one ultimate substance or principle, as mind (idealism) or matter (materialism), or of something which is neither of these, but is the foundation of both; the point of view that there is but one reality.

10.dualism: from a philosophical point of view, the theory which maintains that there are but two fundamental and irreducible principles, for example, mind and body.

11.Here Rudolf Steiner speaks of spiritualism in a philosophical sense, and not in the sense of any relationship or communication with the dead as in mediumism, etc.

12.materialism: the philosophical teaching which sees the entire universe, all creation and its activities, including the human mind, as the result of material causes and powers.

13.Johann Gottlieb Fichte. Born in 1762, Fichte studied at Meissen, Pforta, Jena, and Leipzig with the intention of becoming a clergyman. After a teaching position in Switzerland, and enroute to another in Poland, he met Kant, under whose influence he wrote his Study for a Critique of All Revelation. The printer neglected to place his name on the title-page, and people thought the work had been written by Kant. When the true identity of the author became known, Fichte was hailed as a philosopher of outstanding merit. He lectured at Jena, Berlin and Erlangen. In 1807 he was made Rector of the University of Berlin. His death in 1814 occurred when he was at the height of his fame. Rudolf Steiner made extensive reference to Fichte, basing his doctoral thesis (published in enlarged form in the present volume as Truth and Knowledge) on Fichte's scientific teachings, but perhaps his most memorable study of Fichte's life and thought was contained in a public lecture given in Berlin on December 16, 1915: The Spirit of Fichte Present in Our Midst. See also note 77, below.

14.Friedrich Albert Lange (1828–1875), author of Geschichte des Materialismus, History of Materialism, publ. Iserlohn, 1873–5. When professor at the University of Marburg, 1865, Lange issued his study on the workers' question. This made him famous in the circle of students of social problems in Germany at that time. A friend of the working classes, Lange strove for social justice, betterment of labor conditions, and for universal education. His life, marked by his utter sincerity and devotion to his ideals, is an outstanding example of selfless dedication to the well-being of mankind.

15.Karl Friedrich Hieronymous, Baron von Münchhausen (1720–97). In 1785 a little book of 49 pages appeared in London, titled Baron Munchausen's Narrative of his Marvelous Travels and Campaigns in Russia, and an enlarged edition appeared in 1786. A translation into German by G. A. Bürger was published at Göttingen, 1786. Many editions followed in English, and the book was published in numerous languages, illustrated by a number of famous artists. For some time the identity of the author was unknown, but finally it was established that the book was written by Rudolf Erich Raspe (1737–1794), traveler, scholar and professor at Cassel. While at Göttingen, where he was secretary of the university library (1764–7) he made the acquaintance of Freiherr von Münchhausen of Bodenwerder in Hanover. The latter had been in the Russian service, had fought against the Turks, and finally had retired to his estate in 1760, where he became famous for his “tall stories.” Later, Raspe, in poverty in London, recalled the Baron's tales, and wrote the book in English, which appeared in 1785. Tall tales from other sources were added by publishers of later editions, so that the stories as we have them today are really a composite work, for which, however, Raspe provided the original nucleus from his memory of the evenings spent with his erstwhile friend.

16.Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, born Frankfurt a.M., August 28, 1749. Poet, dramatist, scientist, traveler, state minister, etc., author of Faust, Wilhelm Meister, and many other works. Died in Weimar, March 22, 1832. In August 1781 the Grand Duchess Amalia of Saxe-Weimar founded the Tiefurter Journal, the Journal of Tiefurt, to which Goethe contributed at her invitation. When Rudolf Steiner was active as editor of the natural scientific writings of Goethe at the Goethe-Schiller Archives in Weimar, he published proof that the Fragment über die Natur, The Fragment concerning Nature, which had appeared in the Journal of Tiefurt was definitely to be attributed to Goethe (Schriften der Goethe-Gesellschaft, Publications of the Goethe Society, ed. by Bernhard Suphan, Weimar, Vol. VII, 1892, article by Rudolf Steiner). Thus, just 110 years after the Fragment had appeared, Rudolf Steiner showed its importance and its relationship to Goethe's work. In the edition of Goethe's works published by Prof. Joseph Kürschner (1853–1902) (the volumes of Goethe's natural scientific writings edited by Rudolf Steiner), the Fragment appears at the beginning of the essays “On Natural Science in General,” Vol. XXXIV, p. 1. The Fragment appeared in an English translation with notes by George Adams under the title, Nature—An Essay in Aphorisms, Anthroposophical Quarterly, London, Vol. VII, No. 1, Easter, 1932, pp. 2–5. In his Goethe's Conception of the World, Rudolf Steiner describes this Fragment as “the essay in which the seeds of the later Goethean world-conception are already to be found. What is here expressed as dim feeling, later developed into clear, definite thought.” In similar vein, George Witkowski in his well-known biography of Goethe (Leipzig, 1899) describes this Fragment as “the seed from which came all of Goethe's great thoughts about nature.”

17.See Ziehen, Theodore, Leitfaden der Physiologischen Psychologie, Guide to Physiological Psychology, Jena, 1893, p. 171 of the Ger. ed.

18.Pierre Jean George Cabanis (1757–1808), French physiologist. A precocious child, Cabanis was enrolled at the age of 10 in the College of Brives. Later studied in Paris, afterward traveled widely in Poland and Germany. In 1789 he was appointed administrator of hospitals for Paris, and in 1795 became professor of hygiene and history of medicine in the medical school of that city. In 1799 he was made professor of legal medicine and history of medicine. He was an intimate friend of Mirabeau, and attended him as physician in his last illness. He had a deep interest in medical and psychological problems. Active in the cause of the French Revolution, Cabanis was a member of the Council of Five Hundred. Though Napoleon Bonaparte repeatedly offered him governmental positions, Cabanis declined them, since he was a foe of the former's policies. Cabanis died at Meulan on May 5, 1808, principally honored for his contributions to medical science, and especially for his main work, Rapports du physique et du moral de l'homme, a series of papers read to the Institute in 1796–97. The sentence quoted is probably from Cabanis' book, written in 1802, translated into German, 2 vols., 1808, under the title, Verhältnis der Seele zum Körper, Relationship of the Soul to the Body. The thought has also been paraphrased: “Just as the stomach and intestines receive food and digest it, so the brain receives impressions, digests them, and has as its organic secretion, thought.”

19.Renatus Cartesius, Rene Descartes (1596–1650). The father of modern rationalism, soldier of fortune, scholar, pilgrim, traveler, and firm adherent of the Roman Catholic faith. His philosophical work, which has often been summed up in his words, J pense, donc je suis (Cogito ergo sum), “I think, therefore I am,” was given significant impulse by a dream he had on November 10, 1619. This revealed to him the method of philosophical speculation he was to follow, and his subsequent work is said to have stemmed from this experience. An extensive literature on Descartes and his teachings exists in English translation. See any standard encyclopedia for further details.

20.Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling (1775–1854). Often referred to as the Proteus among philosophers, Schelling was noted for his ever-changing alertness and brightness of mind and expression. Goethe (see note 16, above) had a very high regard for him, and spoke of him as “the most congenial philosopher I know.” Schelling had a profound influence among the thinkers of his time, including philosophers of France and England. His last years were dedicated to what he termed “positive philosophy,” radically different from the philosophy of identity, the transcendental idealism, and the pantheistic tendencies of his earlier time. Rudolf Steiner made extensive reference to Schelling in his writings and lectures, on various occasions praising that philosopher's “important inspirations and suggestions for what must afterwards be said by Anthroposophy, directly out of spiritual vision, on many points of Christianity.” Steiner further spoke of Schelling, “who really always made a significant impression whenever he appeared in public—the short, thick-set man, with the extremely impressive head, and eyes which even in extreme old age were sparkling with fire, for from his eyes there spoke the fire of Truth, the fire of Knowledge.” (From a lecture given at Dornach, Switzerland, Sept. 16, 1924) Perhaps Steiner's greatest study of Schelling is to be found in his Die Rätsel der Philosophie, The Riddles of Philosophy, Vol. I, Ch. 7. For English translations of Schelling and further details on his life, see any standard encyclopedia.

21.Blaise Pascal (1623–1662). Known as one of the greatest of mathematicians and physicists, Pascal's tame long ago spread far beyond the confines of his native France. His contributions to the establishment of the mathematical theory of probability, to the science of hydrodynamics, to the study of gravity and the vacuum, and his elaboration of the theory of conic sections have given Pascal a lasting place among the great men of science. As a Christian thinker, his devotion to truth and piety, and his acceptance of mystical experience have made his name revered. His philosophical speculations and deep psychological insight, as well as his remarkable gifts as a writer of French prose have secured him a leading position among philosophers and literary historians. Pascal's Pensées, Thoughts, is one of the great books of the world. For details on Pascal's very eventful and highly interesting life, as well as an account of his fundamental ideas, see any standard encyclopedia.

22.Archimedes (c 287–212 B.C.) Greek mathematician and inventor. He was born at Syracuse in Sicily, and studied at the famous university in Alexandria. Archimedes spent the remainder of his life at Syracuse, where he engaged in constant mathematical research. He is noted for his many mechanical inventions, but his first love was mathematics. His work as a pioneer in mechanics is illustrated by his famous remark, “Give me a place to stand, and I will move the earth!” During the sack of Syracuse by the army of the Roman general, Marcellus, Archimedes was discovered drawing a mathematical figure in the sand beside his garden bench. Deep in meditation upon the problem before him, Archimedes was instantly killed when he was run through the body by a sword in the hand of a Roman infantryman. For details on the life of Archimedes, see Plutarch's Life of Marcellus. A complete, standard edition of the Works of Archimedes with valuable notes by T. L. Heath was issued by Cambridge University Press, 1897.

23.See note 2, above.

24.Spencer, First Principles, Part I, Par. 23.

25.Note by the Translator: Just as in English one generally means by “perception” not only the perceived object but also the act of perceiving it, so too, in German the word Wahrnehmung covers both these meanings. Rudolf Steiner, however, as stated in the text, uses this word in the specific sense of meaning the object that has been perceived, and NOT the process of perceiving it. When he refers to the activity, the word used in the original is Wahrnehmen, here translated as perceiving.

25a.Johann Christoph August Franz, M.D., eye surgeon, born 1807, took his medical training at the University of Leipzig. From Germany he emigrated to England, establishing his practice at Brighton, where he worked for some 30 years. He was the author of writings on medicine, particularly on the use of baths in treatment of illness. Two of his works were written for the public: The Eye and a Critique on the Art of Preserving the Organ, London, 1839, and Memoirs of the Case of a Gentleman Born Blind and Successfully Operated at the Eighteenth Year of His Age. Physiological Observations and Experiments. The latter appeared in Philosophical Transactions, Vol. VI, 1841, pp. 59–68. It is probable that Rudolf Steiner's reference to the man who had been born blind is taken from this second work of Dr. Franz.

26.George Berkeley, (1685–1753), Irish bishop and philosopher. Made a Fellow of Trinity College, Dublin, 1707, he was strongly influenced by the philosophical writings of Descartes, Newton, and Locke. In 1709 his New Theory of Vision appeared, and in 1710 his great work. The Principles of Human Knowledge, was published. In 1712 he visited England and the following year was presented at court by Dean Swift, shortly before the publication of his most popular work, The Dialogues of Hylas and Philonous. Berkeley's literary fame rests upon this latter work, which has been described as “among the finest philosophical writings in the English language” on the basis of its “exquisite facility of style.” In 1728 he emigrated to America, where he lived in Rhode Island for three years, hoping for a government grant of funds for the establishment of a college in Bermuda. His hopes disappointed, he returned to Ireland and shortly afterward was raised to the bishopric of Cloyne. In 1752 he moved with his family to Oxford, where he died suddenly in January of the following year, and was buried in Christ Church.

The reference quoted by Steiner is from Berkeley's Principles of Human Knowledge, Part I, sec. 6.

27.Immanuel Kant, German philosopher, was born in Königsburg April 22, 1724. He entered the university there in 1740, enrolled for the study of mathematics and physics. His studies were interrupted by the death of his father, which left him in poverty. After he supported himself by tutoring for 9 years, the kindness of a friend enabled him to resume his studies, to graduate as a doctor and to qualify as a privatdocent. He occupied this position for 15 years. His lectures widened from physics to include much philosophy. Finally, after unsuccessful attempts, in 1770 he was given the chair of logic and metaphysics at Königsburg. In 1781 his Kritik der reinen Vernunft, Critique of Pure Reason appeared, and in 1783, his Prolegomena. After the appearance of the 2nd edition of the Kritik in 1787, Kant became famous everywhere in German intellectual circles, and his views were regarded as those of an oracle. From 1792–97 he was engaged in a struggle with the government concerning his religious views. In 1794 he withdrew from society, and gave up all teaching except for one public lecture course on logic. In 1797 Kant terminated a teaching activity that had extended over 42 years. He died in Königsburg on February 12, 1804 near the end of his 80th year. Little more than five feet tall, deformed in his right shoulder, his chest almost concave, Kant had a weak constitution. He never married, and followed an unchanging program of activities from youth to old age. For example, he never failed to rise at 5 o'clock, studied for 2 hours, lectured for 2 more, and spent the rest of the morning at his desk. He dined at a restaurant and spent the afternoon in conversation with friends. He then walked for about an hour—a walk which for years followed exactly the same course—studied for 2 hours more, and retired between 9 and 10. He was a prolific reader, especially in history, science, travel, and philosophy. He knew English history and literature intimately, especially in the period of Queen Anne. He read little of Goethe or Schiller, but often re-read Voltaire and Rousseau. He had little interest in nature, and in 80 years never traveled more than 40 miles from his native Königsburg. For further biographical details, works and translations, consult any standard encyclopedia.

28.Otto Liebmann, Zur Analysis der Wirklichkeit, Contribution to the Analysis of Reality, Strassburg, 1880, p. 28. Otto Liebmann (1840–1912) was well known for his writings on Kant's philosophical world-view.

29.Johannes Volkelt (1848–1930), Immanuel Kant’s Erkenntnistheorie, Immanuel Kant's Theory of Cognition, Hamburg, 1879.

30.See note 4, above.

31.Hartmann, Das Grundproblem der Erkenntnistheorie, The Fundamental Problem of a Theory of Cognition, Leipzig, 1889, p. 16–40.

32.Johannes Peter Müller, German physiologist and comparative anatomist, born in Coblentz, July 14, 1801. He studied at the University of Bonn, and was appointed to a professorship in physiology there in 1826. In 1843 he accepted the call to the chair of anatomy and physiology at Berlin University, which position he held with great honor until his death, April 28, 1858. He did much research in physiology, particularly in relation to human speech and hearing. His great work was the Handbuch der Physiologie des Menschen, 1833–40. (The English translation was made by Dr. William Baly, publ. London 1842). This work opened a new period in the study of physiology, and Müller is considered the main figure in the developments in this field in the mid-19th century. In his Handbuch Müller developed an entirely new principle which he called “the law of specific energy of sense substances.” This he expressed as follows: “The kind of sensation following stimulation of a sensory nerve does not depend on the mode of stimulation, but upon the nature of the sense organ. Thus, light, pressure, or mechanical stimulation acting on the retina and optic nerve invariably produces luminous impressions.” It is to this law that Steiner refers at this point.

33.Hartmann, Das Grundproblem, p. 37.

34.Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860), Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung The World as Will and Representation, Four Books, publ. 1819 by Brockhaus, Leipzig. (English translation by Haldane & Kemp, 1883) Ref. Book I, par. 1, Ger. ed. Biographical data and translations of Schopenhauer's works, as well as extensive commentaries on his ideas have been published in English translation. Consult any standard encyclopedia for details. Rudolf Steiner edited a collected edition of the writings of Schopenhauer, 12 vols. with introduction by Steiner, publ. 1894.

35.J. G. Fichte, Die Bestimmung des Menschen, The Vocation of Man, Berlin, 1800, “a book which for richness of content, beauty of style, elevation of thought reminds one of Descartes' Meditations.” (For data on Fichte, see note 13, above.)

36.Note by Rudolf Steiner: Transcendental knowledge, in the sense of this world-view, is a knowledge by means of which—although no direct insight into the thing-in-itself is believed to be attainable—indirect inferences are drawn from the subjective which is known, to the unknown which lies beyond the subjective (Transcendental). The thing-in-itself, according to this view, is beyond the sphere of the directly recognizable world, that is, it is transcendent. However, our world can be transcendentally related to the transcendent. Hartmann's view is called realism because it goes beyond the subjective, the ideal, to the transcendent, the real.

37.See Weygandt, Entstehung der Träume, Appearance of Dreams, 1893. (Reference given by Rudolf Steiner.)

38.See note 34, above.

39.Schopenhauer, op. cit. supra, Book II, par. 18.

40.Note by Translator: The reader's attention is called to the fact that the word Erfahrung is in this context translated as “practical experience” to emphasize the activity of thinking implicit in it, as distinct from the word erleben which also is usually rendered as “experience.”

41.See note 27, above, on Kant.

42.Emil DuBois-Reymond, German physiologist and educator. Born Berlin, November 7th, 1818, in 1836 he entered the University of Berlin, where his teacher was Johannes Müller, above). In 1840 he became the latter's assistant in physiology. His great work was the study of animal electricity, and his famous book was Researches on Animal Electricity, 1848–84. For many years he exerted great influence as a teacher. In 1858, upon the death of Müller, he was appointed to the latter's chair in physiology. In 1851 he had been admitted to the Academy of Sciences in Berlin; in 1867 he became its permanent secretary. His closest friend after Müller's death was von Helmholtz, who also had been a student of Müller. DuBois-Reymond died in Berlin on November 26, 1896. Rudolf Steiner makes many references to his work in lectures and writings.

43.Note by Translator: The reader's attention is drawn to the fact that the word experience, in relation to the kind of mysticism and philosophy of will referred to in this chapter, is translated from the word erleben (as distinct from Erfahrung, see note 40, above) Therefore, what the mystic experiences in feeling and the philosopher of will in the will-element, are experiences which have not been formed into clear representations by the activity of thinking.

44.Thelism—Voluntarism, i.e., any theory which conceives will to be the dominant factor in experience or in the constitution of the world.

44a.Ger. Erlebnisse.—Tr.

44b.Note by Rudolf Steiner: The passage from page 161 to this point was added, or rewritten for the Revised Edition, 1918.

45.See note 4—on von Hartmann.

46.The German text here reads Faktor der Erfahrungen.—Tr.

46a.Note by Rudolf Steiner: A complete catalogue of the principles of morality (from the point of view of metaphysical realism) may be found in Eduard von Hartmann's Phänomenologie des sittlichen Bewusstseins, Phenomenology of Moral Consciousness.

47.Ger. Welterfahrung.—Tr.

48.Immanuel Kant: Theory of Ethics, transl. by Abbott, p. 180. The Critique of Practical Reason, Ch. III. On Kant, see note 27, above.

49.Note by Rudolf Steiner: Ziehen, Theodore, Leitfaden der Physiologischen Psychologie, Guide to Physiological Psychology, 1st ed., p. 207 f.

Concerning the way “materialism” is spoken of here, and the justification for doing so, see the Addition at the end of the chapter.

50.Hartmann, Phänomenologie des sittlichen Bewusstseins, Phenomenology of Moral Consciousness, p. 871.

50a.Hamerling, Atomistik des Willens, Atomic Theory of Will, Vol. II, p. 201. On Hamerling, see note 5, above.

51.Paulsen, System der Ethik, System of Ethics, 1889, partial English transl. 1899. Friedrich Paulsen (1846–1908), German philosopher and educator. Educated at Erlangen, Bonn, and Berlin, where he was made extraordinary professor of philosophy and pedagogy, 1878. In 1896 he followed Zeller as professor of moral philosophy at Berlin. He was a pupil of G. T. Fechner, developing his teaching of panpsychism in his Einleitung in die Philosophie, Introduction to Philosophy, 1892, English transl. 1895. His German Education, Past and Present (English transl. 1907) is well known, as are his writings relative to the philosophy of Kant.

51a.Note by Rudolf Steiner: When Paulsen (p. 15 of his System of Ethics) says, “Different natural dispositions and different conditions of life demand not only different bodily diet but also a different spiritual-moral diet,” he is very near recognition of the truth, but misses the decisive point. Insofar as I am an individual, I need no diet. Dietetic means the art of bringing a particular example of the species into harmony with the general laws. But as an individual I am not an example of a species.

52.proto-amniotes: The original form of the innermost of the embryonic or fetal membranes of reptiles, insects, birds, and mammals. This membrane forms a closed sac surrounding the embryo and contains the amniotic fluid.

53.The Kant-Laplace primordial nebula. Pierre Simon Marquis de Laplace (1749–1827), was a French mathematician and astronomer who, at the age of 24 was named “the Newton of France” for certain of his discoveries. In the years 1799–1825 his great work, the Mécanique céleste, which, as its author stated, “offers a complete solution of the great mechanical problem presented by the solar system,” appeared in 5 volumes, published in Paris. In his second great work, the Exposition du système du monde, Paris, 1796, appeared his statement of his famous “nebular hypothesis,” the origins of which he seems to attribute to Buffon, apparently unaware that Immanuel Kant had at least partially anticipated him in his Allgemeine Naturgeschichte, General History of Nature, published in 1755. Rudolf Steiner's criticism of the Kant-Laplace theory of the primordial nebula may be found in various places in his lectures and writings.

54.Ernst Heinrich Haeckel (1834–1919), German biologist, originally a physician in Berlin, became Privatdozent at Jena, afterward extraordinary professor of comparative anatomy, later professor of zoology, a chair established for him at Jena. This position he occupied for 43 years with intervals for zoological travels to various parts of the world. When Darwin's Origin of the Species appeared in 1859, Haeckel was deeply influenced by it, so that he became “the apostle of Darwinism in Germany.” Among Haeckel's famous books are his General Morphology (1866), Natural History of Creation (1867) and Die Weltraetsel (1899), English title, The Riddle of the Universe, publ. 1901. By his 60th birthday Haeckel had published 42 works of some 13,000 pages, plus many monographs. Rudolf Steiner knew Haeckel personally, and in his autobiography. Chapter 15, Steiner recorded a very interesting and perceptive impression of the great scientist. The “genealogical tree” of Haeckel to which Steiner refers is set forth in its original form in Haeckel's General Morphology and developed in his later writings.

55.Charles Robert Darwin (1809–1882), English naturalist, whose voyage on the Beagle to the Southern Seas, recorded in his Journal of a Naturalist (1837) prepared the way for his famous work On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life, published November 24, 1859. Next in importance among his books. The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication, appeared in 1868. The Descent of Man, published in 1871, dealt with “the origin of man and his history” in the light of The Origin of the Species.

56.Anthony Ashley Cooper, Third Earl of Shaftesbury (1671–1713) and Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibnitz (1646–1716). For data on their lives and philosophical ideas, consult any standard encyclopedia.

57.For data on Schopenhauer, see note 34, above; on von Hartmann, see note 4, above.

58.See von Hartmann's Phänomenologie des sittlichen Bewusstseins. The Phenomenology of Moral Consciousness, p. 866 f. of the German edition.

59.See von Hartmann's Philosophie des Unbewussten, Philosophy of the Unconscious, 7th German ed., Vol. II, p. 290.

60.Hartmann, op. cit. supra. Vol. II, p. 332.

61.Eudaemonism, derived from a Greek word which indicates the condition of being under the protection of a benign spirit, or a “good genius.” In ethics, this name is applied to those theories of morality according to which the main good of man is to be found in some form of happiness. Eudaemonia was one of the keywords in the ethical teachings of Aristotle.

62.German, Erfahrung.

63.Die letzten Fragen der Erkenntnistheorie und Metaphysik, Ultimate Problems of Epistemology and Metaphysics, publ. in Vol. 108, pp. 55 seq. of the Zeitschrift für Philosophie und philosophische Kritik, the Periodical for Philosophy and Philosophical Criticism.

64.For data on Hegel's “universal panlogism,” see any standard encyclopedia.

65.David Hume (1711–1776), Scottish philosopher and historian. Albert Einstein wrote, “If one reads Hume's books, one is amazed that many sometimes highly esteemed philosophers after him have been able to write so much obscure stuff and even to find grateful readers for it. Hume has permanently influenced the development of the best philosophers who came after him.” Among those influenced by Hume may be numbered Immanuel Kant, William James, George Santayana, and Bertrand Russell. Hume's writings and biographical and critical works concerning him and his ideas can be located by consulting any standard encyclopedia.

66.A note on page 71 of the Zeitschrift für Philosophie (Periodical for Philosophy) Vol. 108.

67.Johannes Rehmke, 1848–1930, philosopher. His principal works are Logik oder Philosophie als Wissenslehre (Logic or Philosophy as Theory of Knowledge) and Die Welt als Wahrnehmung und Begriff (The World as Percept and Concept), Berlin, 1880.

68.Karl Julius Schröer was born in Pressburg in 1825. In 1867 he was made professor of Literature in the Technical College of Vienna. In addition to his lectures on the history of German poetry as such, he lectured on Goethe and Schiller, on Walther von der Vogelweide, on German Grammar and Speech, etc. Rudolf Steiner was a pupil of Schröer, and refers to him in detail in his autobiography and in lectures. It was Schröer who recommended Steiner to Prof. Kürschner for the position of editor of Goethe's natural scientific writings. (See note 16, above) Schröer died in Vienna in 1900, and Rudolf Steiner has left an unforgettable word portrait and estimate of him in his Vom Menschenrätsel, Riddles of Man, publ. Berlin, 1916.

69.From July 1884 to September 1890, Rudolf Steiner was active as tutor in the home of Ladislaus (1834–1905) and Pauline (1846–1916) Specht at Kolingasse 19, Vienna IX. He taught their four sons, Richard, Arthur, Otto, and Ernst. Richard Specht (1870–1932) became a well-known author of many works including biographical studies of Gustav Mahler, Richard Strauss, Franz Werfel, Brahms, and Beethoven. Steiner gives details of this pedagogical activity in his autobiography. Chapter VI.

70.Rosa Mayreder (1858–1938), Austrian writer, also known as a painter. Her entire life was passed in Vienna and surroundings. She was the author of a number of popular novels. In addition, she was active in the movement for woman suffrage in Austria, at one time sharing in the direction of the movement itself, and editing its periodical. She wrote the libretto for Hugo Wolf's only opera, Der Corregidor (1896). Rudolf Steiner refers to Rosa Mayreder in his autobiography. Chapter IX.

71.See Johannes Volkelt's Erfahrung und Denken. Kritische Grundlegung der Erkenntnistheorie, Experience and Thinking. Critical Foundation for a Theory of Cognition. Hamburg and Leipzig, 1886. (Johannes Volkelt 1848–1930, philosopher, professor at Leipzig.) See also note 29, above.

72.Grundlinien einer Erkenntnistheorie der Goetheschen Weltanschauung, mit besonderer Rücksicht auf Schiller, publ. in English translation by Olin D. Wannamaker, New York, 1950, under the title, “The Theory of Knowledge Implicit in Goethe's World Conception—Fundamental Outlines with Special Reference to Schiller.” The first German edition published Berlin and Stuttgart, 1886, revised ed., Stuttgart, 1924, with new Foreword by the author. Other editions: Dornach, 1924; Dresden, 1936; Freiburg i. Br., 1949; Dornach, 1960.

73.Aristotle (384–322 B.C.): Physica Auscultatio, On Nature as Cause and Change, and the General Principles of Natural Science.

74.Raimon Lull (Raymond Lully), (0.1235–1315) Catalan author, mystic and missionary. Born Majorca. In 1266 a series of visions led to a marked change in his life and purpose. Spent 9 years studying Arabic in order to refute the heretical teachings current in his time. At Ronda he wrote his famous Ars Major and Ars Generalis. He made many journeys in France, Italy, North Africa in a burning crusade against the teachings of Mohammedanism. At Bougie, North Africa he was stoned outside the city walls and died on June 29, 1315.

75.biogenesis, the teaching that living organisms come from other living organisms, as opposed to abiogenesis. The author of the modern formulation of “the fundamental law of biogenesis” was Fritz Müller (1864). Haeckel (see note 54, above) called Müller's formulation “the biogenetic fundamental law,” which can be stated briefly as the teaching that in its development from the egg to adult stage, the animal tends to pass through a series of stages which recapitulate the stages through which its ancestry passed in the development of the species from a primitive form. In other words, the development of the individual is a condensed expression of the development of the race.

76.The earliest statement of the law of mechanical theory of heat was formulated by the French physicist, Sadi Nicholas Lèonhard Carnot (1796–1832) in notes written about 1830, published by his brother in the latter's Life of Sadi Carnot, Paris, 1878. Further work in this direction was done by Ségun, Paris, 1839, by Julius Robert Mayer, c. 1842, and by J. P. Joule, who (1840–43) placed the mechanical theory of heat on a sound experimental basis.

Julius Robert Mayer (1814–1878), German physician and physicist, is the discoverer of the law of conservation of energy, which—within limits of the data he obtained from experiments and reasoning—he applied “with great power and insight to the explanation of numerous physical phenomena.”

77.On Fichte, see note 13, above. Rudolf Steiner's Inaugural Dissertation for his doctoral degree before the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Rostock (Defense, beginning of May, 1891; Promotion, October 26, 1891) was titled Die Grundfrage der Erkenntnistheorie mit besonderer Rücksicht auf Fichtes Wissenschaftslehre, usw., The Fundamentals of a Theory of Cognition with Special Reference to Fichte's Scientific Teaching. When the thesis was published in book form, as it appears here in English translation, a Foreword and one chapter were added to the original by Rudolf Steiner. These latter are included in the present translation.

78.John Locke (1632–1704), English philosopher, scholar, chemist, student of meteorology, practicing physician, political advisor, traveler, and author. For details on his life and thought, consult any standard encyclopedia.

79.see reference to Volkelt's book in note 71, above, (p. 20)

80.see note 27, on Kant, above.

81.p. 61 ff. of Kirchmann's German edition of Kant's Kritik. See Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, Introd. to 2nd edition. Sec. vi.

82.Kant, Prolegomena, Sec. v.

83.Kant, Kritik, p. 53 f. of the German ed. Introduction, Sec. iv.

84.Rehmke, Johannes: Die Welt als Wahrnehmung und Begriff, usw., The World as Percept and Concept, etc., Berlin, 1880, p. 161 ff. of the German ed.

85.Refer to title given in note 28, above.

86.Note by Rudolf Steiner: This attempt, incidentally, is one which the objections of Robert Zimmermann (Uber Kant's mathematisches Vorurteil und dessen Folgen, On Kant's Mathematical Notions and their Results) show to be, if not altogether in error, at least highly questionable. (Robert Zimmermann, 1824–1898, was Professor of Philosophy in the University of Vienna, 1861–95. His book on Aesthetics was published in 2 volumes, Vienna, 1870. Rudolf Steiner attended lectures by Zimmermann on fundamentals of ethics at the University of Vienna. Steiner's impressions of this great interpreter of Herbart's aesthetics are contained in the 3rd chapter of the former's autobiography.)

87.Kant, Kritik, Introduction to 2nd edition. Sec. ii.

88.See Kant's Theorie der Erfahrung, Theory of Experience, pp. 90, ff. of the German ed.

89.Kant, Kritik, p. 58, Sec. v.

90.Hermann Cohen (1842–1918), Kants Theorie der Erfahrung, Kant's Theory of Experience, Berlin, 1871, pp. 90 ff. of the German ed.

91.August Stadler (1850–1910), Die Grundsätze der reinen Erkenntnistheorie in der Kantschen Philosophie, The Principles of the Pure Theory of Cognition in the Philosophy of Kant, Leipzig, 1876, p. 76 f. of the German ed.

92.Volkelt, op. cit., p. 21, see note 71, above.

93.Otto Liebmann (1840–1912), Analysis, 1880, p. an ff. (see note 28, above); A. Holder, Kantischen Erkenntnistheorie, Kant's Theory of Cognition, Tübingen, 1874, p. 14 ff.; Wilhelm Windelband (1848–1915) Phasen der Kantschen Lehre, Phases of Kant's Theory, p. 239; F. Ueberweg, System der Logik, System of Logic, p. 380 f.; Eduard v. Hartmann (1842–1906), Kritische Grundlegung, Berlin, 1875, p. 142–172 of the 2nd German ed. (see note 4, above).

94.Note by Rudolf Steiner: Geschichte der neueren Philosophie, History of More Recent Philosophy, 1860, Vol. 5, p. 60. Volkelt is mistaken about Fischer when he says (Kant's Erkenntnistheorie, Kant's Theory of Cognition, p. 198 f.) that “it is not clear from the account by K. Fischer whether, in his opinion, Kant takes for granted only the psychological fact of the occurrence of universal and necessary judgments, but also their objective validity and truth.” For, in the passage cited above, Fischer says that the main difficulty of the Critique of Pure Reason is to be found in the fact that “its basic points rest on certain presuppositions,” which “must be allowed if the remainder is to be valid.” For Fischer, these presuppositions consist in that “first the fact of knowledge is affirmed,” and then analysis reveals the cognitive faculties “by means of which the fact itself is explained.”

95.Gottlob Ernst Schulze (1761–1833), Aenesidemus, Helmstädt, 1792.

96.On Schopenhauer, see note 34, above.

97.On von Hartmann, see note 4, above.

98.Kritische Grundlegung, by Hartmann, Berlin 1875, Foreword, p. 10 of the German ed.

99.Liebmann, Zur Analysis, p. 28 ff. of the German ed. See note 28, above.

100.Kant's Erkenntnistheorie, Theory of Knowledge, Sec. 1.

101.A. Dorner, Das menschliche Erkennen, usw., Human Cognition, Berlin, 1887.

102.Julius Heinrich v. Kirchmann (1802–1884), Die Lehre vom Wissen, The Theory of Knowledge, Berlin, 1868.

103.E. L. Fischer, Die Grundfragen der Erkenntnistheorie, Basic Questions of the Theory of Cognition, Mainz 1887, p. 385.

104.C. Göring, System der kritischen Philosophie, System of Critical Philosophy, Leipzig, 1874, Part I, p. 257.

105.Johannes Müller (1801–1858), see note 32, above.

106.Hartmann's Grundproblem, p. 37 (see note 4, above).

107.A. Döring, article in Philosophische Monatshefte, Vol. XXVI, 1890, p. 390. publ. Heidelberg. Philosophical Monthly.

108.Hartmann, Grundproblem, p. 1. See note 4, above.

109.John Stewart Mill (1806–1873). A stern parent, James Mill taught his son Greek at the age of three, and at seven he studied Plato's dialogues. When he was eight he had to teach his sister Latin. His introduction to the utilitarian teachings of Bentham (the greatest happiness to the greatest number) at the age of fifteen was decisive for his life. His great work, System of Logic, 1843, is the analysis of inductive proof. He was a great champion of human rights, and in the second half of the i9th century his influence throughout Europe was very great. Today it is recognized that—to use Mill's description of Bentham—“He was not a great philosopher but a great reformer in philosophy.” For details on Mill's life and thought, consult any standard encyclopedia.

110.Fichte, Sämtliche Werke, Collected Works, Berlin, 1845, Vol. I, P. 71.

111.For fundamentals of the scientific teaching of Fichte, see his Collected Works, Berlin, 1845, Vol. I, p. 97.

112.Ibid. Vol. I, p. 91.

113.Ibid. Vol. I, p. 178.

114.Ibid. Vol. I, p. 91.

115.Eduard Zeller (1814–1908), Geschichte der deutschen Philosophie seit Leibnitz, History of German Philosophy Since Leibnitz, Munich, 1871–75, p. 605. Eduard Zeller studied and taught at Tübingen, later (1847) becoming professor of Theology at Bern, later (1849) professor of Theology, afterward of Philosophy at Marburg. In 1862 he was made professor of Philosophy at Heidelberg, afterward at Berlin to his retirement in 1895. His masterwork is the Philosophie der Greichen, Philosophy of the Greeks, 1844–52. He was recognized throughout the academic world for his learning and contributions to scholarship, and received many distinctions and honors. His Philosophie der Greichen has been transl. into English by S. F. Alleyne, 2 vols. 1881. In addition, an abridged version prepared by Zeller (1883) also appeared in English in 1896, as did a number of his other writings.

116.Fichte, Sämtliche Werke, Collected Works, Berlin, 1845, Vol. I, p. 94.

117.Ibid. Vol. I, p. 98.

118.Ibid. Vol. I, p. 422.

119.J. G. Fichtes nachgelassene Werke, J. G. Fichte's Posthumous Works, Edited by J. H. Fichte, Vol. I, Bonn, 1834, p. 4 and 16. (Einleitungsvorlesungen in die Wissenschaftslehre, Introductory Studies in the Scientific Teachings.)

120.Note by Rudolf Steiner: See his Christliche Dogmatik, Christian Dogmatics, and edition, 1884–85, the epistemological arguments, Vol. 1. A complete discussion of his point of view has been provided by Eduard von Hartmann; see Kritische Wanderungen durch die Philosophie der Gegenwart, Critical Survey of Contemporary Philosophy, p. 200 ff.

121.opus cit., see note 120, above.

[ 1 ] Besides the current of world conception that, through the idea of evolution, wants to bring the conception of the phenomena of nature and that of the spirit into complete unity, there is another that expresses their opposition in the strongest possible form. This current also springs from natural science. Its followers ask, “What is our basis as we construct a world conception by means of thinking? We hear, see and touch the physical world through our senses. We then think about the facts that our senses supply concerning that world. We form our thoughts accordingly concerning the world at the testimony of the senses. But are the statements of our senses really to be trusted?”

Let us consult actual observations. The eye conveys to us the phenomena of light. We say an object sends us red light when the eye has the sensation of red. But the eye conveys sensations of light to us also in other cases. When it is pushed or pressed, or when an electric current flows through our head, the eye also has sensations of light. It is, therefore, possible that in cases in which we have the sensation of a light-sending body, something could go on in that object that has no semblance to our sensation of light. The eye, nevertheless, would transmit light to us.

The physiologist, Johannes Mueller (1801–58), drew the conclusion from these facts that what man has as his actual sensation does not depend on the external processes but on his organization. Our nerves transmit sensations to us. As we do not have the sensation of the knife that cuts us but a state of our nerves that appears to us as pain, so we also do not have a sensation of the external world when something appears to us as light. What we then really have is a state of our optic nerve. Whatever may happen outside, the optic nerve translates this external event into the sensation of light. “The sensation is not a process that transmits a quality or a state of an external object to our consciousness but one that transmits a quality, a state of our nerves caused by an external event, to our consciousness. This Johannes Mueller called “the law of specific sense energies.” If that is correct, then our observations contain nothing of the external world but only the sum of our own inner conditions. What we perceive has nothing to do with the external world; it is a product of our own organization. We really perceive only what is in us.

[ 2 ] Natural scientists of great renown regarded this thought as an irrefutable basis of their world conception. Hermann Helmholtz (1821–94) considered it as the Kantian thought—that all our knowledge had reference only to processes within ourselves, not to things in themselves—translated into the language of natural science (compare Vol. I of this book). Helmholtz was of the opinion that the world of our sensations supplies us merely with the signs of the physical processes in the world outside.

I have been convinced that it is necessary to formulate the relation between the sensation and its object by declaring the sensation to be merely the sign of the effect of the object. The nature of the sign demands only that the same sign be always given to the same object. Beyond this requirement there is no more similarity necessary between the sensation and its object than between the spoken word and the object that we denote with it. We cannot even call our sense impression pictures, for a picture depicts the same by the same. In a statue we represent one bodily form through another bodily form; in a drawing we express the perspective view of an object by the same perspective in the picture; in a painting we depict color through color.

[ 3 ] Our sensations, therefore, must differ more from the events they represent than pictures differ from the objects they depict. In our sensual world picture we have nothing objective but a completely subjective element, which we ourselves produce under the stimulation of the effects of an external world that never penetrates into us. This mode of conception is supported from another side by the physicist's view of the phenomena of sensation. A sound that we hear draws our attention to a body in the external world, the parts of which are in a certain state of motion. A stretched string vibrates and we hear a tone. The string transmits the vibrations to the air. They spread and reach our ear; a tone sensation is transmitted to us. The physicist investigates the laws according to which the physical particles outside move while we hear these tones. He finds that the subjective tone sensation is based on the objective motion of the physical particles. Similar relations are observed by the physicist with respect to the sensations of light. Light is also based on motion, only this motion is not transmitted by the vibrating particles of the air, but by the vibrations of the ether, the thinnest matter that fills the whole space of the universe. By every light-emitting body, the ether is put into the state of undulatory vibrations that spread and meet the retina of our eye and excite the optic nerve, which then produces the sensation of light within us. What in our world picture appears as light and color is motion outside in space. Schleiden expresses this view in the following words:

The light outside ourselves in nature is motion of the ether. A motion can be slow and fast; it can have this or that direction, but there is obviously no sense in speaking of light or dark, of green or red motion. In short, outside ourselves, outside the beings who have the sensation, there is no such thing as bright and dark, nor are there any colors.

[ 4 ] The physicist expels colors and light from the external world because he finds only motion in it. The physiologist feels that he is forced to withdraw them into the soul because he is of the opinion that the nerve indicates only its own state of irritation no matter what might have excited it. The view that is given with these presuppositions is sharply delineated by Hippolyte Taine (1828–93) in his book, Reason. The external perception is, according to his opinion, nothing but hallucination. A person who, under the influence of hallucination, perceives a death skull three steps in front of him, has exactly the same perception as someone who receives the light rays sent out by a real skull. It is the same inner phantom that exists within us no matter whether we are confronted with a real skull or whether we have a hallucination. The only difference between the one perception and the other is that in one case the hand stretched out toward the object will grasp empty air, whereas in the other case it will meet some solid resistance. The sense of touch then supports the sense of sight. But does this support really represent an irrefutable testimony? What is correct for one sense is also valid for the other. The sensations of touch can also turn out to be hallucinations.

The anatomist Henle expresses the same view in his Anthropological Lectures (1876) in the following way:

Everything through which we believe to be informed about an external world consists merely of forms of our consciousness for which the external world supplies merely the exciting cause, the stimulus, in the language of the physiologists. The external world has no colors, tones and tastes. What it really contains we learn only indirectly or not at all. How the external world affects a sense, we merely conclude from its behavior toward the other senses. We can, for instance, in the case of a tone, see the vibrations of the tuning fork with our eyes and feel it with our fingers. The nature of certain stimuli, which reveal themselves only to the one sense, as, for instance, the stimuli of the sense of smell, is still inaccessible to us. The number of the properties of matter depends on the number and on the keenness of the senses. Whoever lacks a sense loses a group of properties without a chance of regaining them. A person who would have an extra sense would have an organ to grasp qualities of which we have no other inkling than the blind man has of color.

[ 5 ] If one glances over the physiological literature from the second half of the nineteenth century, one sees that this view of the subjective nature of the world picture of our perceptions has gained increasing acceptance. Time and again one comes across variations of the thought that is expressed by J. Rosenthal in his General Physiology of Muscles and Nerves (1877). “The sensations that we receive through external impressions are not dependent on the nature of these impressions but on the nature of our nerve cells. We have no sensation of what exerts its effect on our body but only of the processes in our brain.”

[ 6 ] To what extent our subjective world picture can be said to give us an indication of the objective external world, is expressed by Helmholtz in his Physiological Optics:

To ask the question if cinnabar is really red as we see it or if this is only a sense deception is meaningless. A red-blind person will see cinnabar as black or in a dark yellow-gray shade; this is also a correct reaction for the special nature of his eye. He must only know that his eye happens to be different from that of other people. In itself one sensation is neither more nor less correct or incorrect than the other, even if the people who see the red have the great majority on their side. The red color of cinnabar exists only insofar as the majority of men have eyes that are of a similar nature. One can say with exactly the same right that it is a quality of cinnabar to be black for red-blind people. It is a different question, however, if we maintain that the wave length of light that is reflected by cinnabar has a certain length. This statement, which we can make without reference to the special nature of our eye, is only concerned with the relations of the substance and the various systems of ether waves.

[ 7 ] It is apparent that for such a conception all phenomena of the world are divided into two completely separated parts, into a world of motions that is independent of the special nature of our faculty of perception, and a world of subjective states that are there only within the perceiving subjects. This view has been expressed sharply and pointedly by the physiologist, Du Bois-Reymond (1818–96), in his lecture, On the Limits of Natural Science, which he gave at the forty-fifth assembly of German naturalists and physicians on August 14, 1872 in Leipzig. Natural science is the reduction of processes we perceive in the world to motions of the smallest physical particles of a “dissolution of natural processes into mechanics of atoms,” for it is a “psychological fact of experience that, wherever such a dissolution is successful” our need for explanation is for the time being satisfied. Moreover, it is a known fact that our nervous system and our brain are of a material nature. The processes that take place within them can also be only processes of motion. When sound or light waves are transmitted to my sense organs and from there to my brain, they can here also be nothing but motions. I can only say that in my brain a certain process of motion goes on, and I have simultaneously the sensation “red.” For if it is meaningless to say of cinnabar that it is red, it is not less meaningless to say of a motion of the brain particles that it is bright or dark, green or red. “Mute and dark in itself, that is to say, without qualities,” such is the world according to the view that has been obtained through the natural scientific conception, which

...knows instead of sound and light only vibrations of a property-free fundamental matter that now can be weighed and then again is imponderable. . . . The Mosaic word, “And there was light,” is physiologically incorrect. Light came into being only when the first red eye spot of the infusoria differentiated for the first time between light and darkness. Without the substance of the optic and auditory sense this world, glowing in colors and resounding around us, would be dark and silent. (Limits of Natural Science.)

Through the processes in the substance of our optic and auditory senses a resounding and colorful world is, according to this view, magically called into existence. The dark and silent world is physical; the sounding and colorful one is psychic. Whereby does the latter arise out of the former; how does motion change into sensation? This is where we meet, according to Du Bois-Reymond, one of the “limits of natural science.” In our brain and in the external world there are only motions; in our soul, sensations appear. We shall never be able to understand how the one can arise out of the other.

At first sight it appears is if, through the knowledge of material processes in the brain, certain processes and latent abilities can become understandable. I am thinking of our memory, the stream of the association of our thought pictures, the effect of exercise, specific talents and so forth. But a little concentration at this point tells us that this view is an error. We would only learn something concerning the inner conditions of our mental life that are approximately of the same nature as our sense impressions, but we should learn nothing that would explain how the mental life comes into existence through these conditions. What possible connections can there be between certain motions of certain atoms in my brain, on the one hand, and, on the other, such undeniable and undefinable facts expressed by the words: I feel pain; I am delighted; I taste something sweet, smell the scent of roses, hear the sound of an organ, see red, and also the certainty that immediately follows from all this, Therefore I am. It is altogether incomprehensible that it should not be a matter of perfect indifference to a number of atoms of carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, etc., what their position is and how they move, how this has been and how it will be.

There is no bridge for our knowledge that leads from motion to sensation. This is the credo of Du Bois-Reymond. From motion in the material world we cannot come into the psychical world of sensations. We know that sensation arises from matter in motion, but we do not know how this is possible. Also, in the world of motion we cannot go beyond motion. For our subjective perceptions we can point at certain forms of motions because we can infer the course of these motions from the process of our perceptions, but we have no conception of what it is that is moving outside in space. We say that matter moves. We follow its motions as we watch the reactions of our sensations, but as we do not observe the object in motion but only a subjective sign of it, we can never know what matter is. Du Bois-Reymond is of the opinion that we might be able to solve the riddle of sensation if the riddle of matter were disclosed. If we knew what matter is, we should probably also know how it produces sensations, but both riddles are inaccessible to our knowledge. Du Bois-Reymond meant to check those who wanted to go beyond this limit with the words, “Just let them try the only alternative that is left, namely, supra-naturalism, but be sure that science ends where supra-naturalism begins.”

[ 8 ] The results of modern natural science are two sharply marked opposites. One of them is the current of monism. It gives the impression of penetrating directly from natural science to the most significant problems of world conception. The other declares itself incapable of proceeding any further with the means of natural science than to the insight that to a certain subjective state there is a certain corresponding process of motion. The representatives of the two currents vehemently oppose each other. Du Bois-Reymond rejected Haeckel's History of Creation as fiction (compare Du Bois-Reymond's speech, Darwin versus Galiani). The ancestral trees that Haeckel constructs on the basis of comparative anatomy, ontogeny and paleontology appear to Du Bois-Reymond to be of “approximately the same value as are the ancestral trees of the Homeric heroes in the eyes of historical criticism.” Haeckel, on the other hand, considers the view of Du Bois-Reymond to be an unscientific dilettantism that must naturally give support to the reactionary world conceptions. The jubilation of the spiritualists over Du Bois-Reymond's “Limitation Speech” was so much the more resonant and justified, as Du Bois-Reymond had, up to that time, been considered an important representative of the principle of scientific materialism.

[ 9 ] What captivates many people in the idea of dividing the world dualistically into external processes of motion and inner, subjective processes of sensation and perception is the possibility of an application of mathematics to the external processes. If one assumes material particles (atoms) with energies to exist, one can calculate in which way such atoms have to move under the influence of these energies. What is so attractive in astronomy with its methods of strict calculations is carried into the smallest elements. The astronomer determines the motion of the celestial bodies by calculating the laws of the mechanics of the heavens. In the discovery of the planet Neptune we experienced a triumph of the mechanism of the heavens. One can also reduce the motions that take place in the external world when we hear a tone and see a color to laws that govern the motions of the celestial bodies. Possibly one will be able in the future to calculate the motion that goes on in our brain while we form the judgment, two times two is four. The moment when everything that can be expressed in mathematical formulas has been calculated will be the one in which the world has been explained mathematically. Laplace has given a captivating description of the ideal of such an explanation of the world in his Essai Philosophique sur les Probabilités (1814):

A mind that would know for a given moment all forces that activate nature as well as the mutual position of the entities of which nature consists would, if its power of comprehension were otherwise sufficient, comprehend in the same formula the motions of the largest celestial body and of the lightest atom. Nothing would be uncertain for such a mind, and the future as well as the past would be within the scope of its perfect and immediate knowledge. Man's power of reasoning offers, with the perfection that it has given to astronomy, a feeble imitation of such a mind.

Du Bois-Reymond says in connection with these words:

As the astronomer predicts the day on which a comet reemerges from the depth of world space after years in the firmament of heaven, so would this mind read in its calculation the day when the Greek cross will shine from the mosque of the Hagia Sophia and when England will burn its last coal.

[ 10 ] There can be no doubt that even the most perfect mathematical knowledge of a process of motion would not enlighten me with regard to the question of why this motion appears to me as a red color. When one ball hits another, we can explain the direction of the second ball but we cannot in this way determine how a certain motion produces the red color. All we can say is that when a certain motion is given, a certain color is also given. While we can explain, apparently, as opposed to merely describe, what can be determined through calculation, we cannot go beyond a mere description in anything that defies calculation.

[ 11 ] A significant confession was made by Gustav Robert Kirchhoff (1824–87) when, in 1874, he defined the task of mechanics: “It is to describe the motions occurring in nature in the most complete and simple way.” Mechanics applies mathematics. Kirchhoff confesses that with the help of mathematics no more can be obtained than a complete and simple description of the processes in nature.

To those personalities who demand of an explanation something essentially more than just a description according to certain points of view, the confession of Kirchhoff could serve as a confirmation of their belief that there are “limits to our knowledge of nature.” Referring to Kirchhoff, Du Bois-Reymond praises the wise reserve of the master, who characterizes the task of mechanics as that of describing the motions of the bodies, and places this in contrast to Ernst Haeckel, who “speaks of atom souls.”

[ 12 ] An important attempt to base his world conception on the idea that all our perceptions are merely the result of our own organization has been made by Friedrich Albert Lange (1828–73) with his History of Materialism (1864). He had the boldness and consistency of thought that does not allow itself to be blocked by any obstacle but follows its fundamental conception to its last conclusion. Lange's strength lay in a forceful character that was expressed in many directions. His was a personality able to take up many things, and he had sufficient ability to carry them out.

[ 13 ] One important enterprise was his renewal of Kant's conception that, with the support of modern natural science, we perceive things not as they require it, but as our organization demands it. Lange did not really produce any new conceptions, but he did throw light into given thought worlds that is rare in its brightness. Our organization, our brain, in connection with our senses, produces the world of sensation. I see “blue,” or I feel “hardness,” because I am organized in this particular way. I combine the sensations into objects. By combining the sensations of “white” and “soft,” etc., I produce, for instance, the conception of wax. When I follow my sensation with my thoughts, I do not move in the external world. My intellect produces connections within the world of my sensations according to the laws of my reason. When I saw that the qualities I perceive in a body presuppose a matter with laws of motion, I also do not go outside of myself. I find that I am forced through my organization to add the thoughts of processes of motion to my sensations.

The same mechanism that produces our sensations also produces our conception of matter. Matter, equally, is only a product of my organization, just as color and tone. Even when we speak of things in themselves, we must be clearly aware of the fact that we cannot go beyond our own realm. We are so organized that we cannot possibly go beyond ourselves. Even what lies beyond our realm can be represented to ourselves only through our conception. We become aware of a limit to our world. We argue that there must be something beyond the limit that causes sensations in us. But we can only go as far as to that limit, even the limit we set ourselves because we can go no further. “A fish can swim in water in the pond, not in the earth, but it can hit its head against the bottom and the walls.” In the same way we live within the realm of our conceptions and sensations, but not in the external things. We hit against a limit, however, where we cannot go any further, where we must say no more than that beyond this is the unknown. All conceptions we produce concerning this unknown are unjustified because we cannot do anything but relate the conceptions we have obtained within ourselves to the unknown. If we wanted to do this, we should be no wiser than a fish that would say, “Here I cannot go any further. Therefore, I want to go into some other kind of water in which I will try to swim in some other way.” But the fact is that the fish can swim only in water and nowhere else.

[ 14 ] This is supplemented by another thought that belongs with the first line of reasoning. Lange, as the spirit of an inexorable desire for consistency, linked them together. In what situation am I when I contemplate myself? Am I not as much bound to the laws of my own organization as I am when I consider something else? My eye observes an object. Without an eye there is no color. I believe that there is an object in front of me, but on closer inspection I find that it is my eye, that is to say, I, myself, that produces the object. Now I turn my observation to my eye itself. Can I do this in any other way except by means of my organs? Is not the conception that I obtain of myself also just my idea? The world of the senses is the product of our organization. Our visible organs are like all other parts of the phenomenal world, only pictures of an unknown object. Our real organization remains, therefore, as unknown to us as the objects of the external world. What we have before us is merely the product of both. Affected by an unknown world through an unknown ego, we produce a world of conceptions that is all we have at our disposal.

[ 15 ] Lange asks himself the question: Where does a consistent materialism lead? Let all our mental conclusions and sense perceptions be produced by the activity of our brain, which is bound to material conditions, and our sense organs, which are also material. We are then confronted with the necessity of investigating our organism in order to see how it functions, but we can do this only by means of our organs. No color without an eye, but also no eye without an eye.

The consistently materialistic view is immediately reversed into a consistently idealistic one. There is no break to be assumed in our nature. We must not attribute some functions of our being to a physical nature and others to a spiritual one, but we are justified to assume physical conditions for everything, including the mechanism of our thinking, and we should not rest until we have found them. But we are as much justified if we consider as mere pictures of the really existing world, not only the external world as it appears to us, but also the organs with which we apprehend this world. The eye with which we believe we see is itself only a product of our imagination. When we find that our visual pictures are produced by the structure and function of the eye, we must never forget that the eye with all its contrivances—the optic nerve as well as the brain and the structures we may still discover in it as causes of our thinking—are only ideas that, to be sure, form a world that is consistent and interconnected in itself, but merely a world that points beyond itself. . The senses supply us, as Helmholtz says, with the effects of the things, not with faithful pictures, and certainly not with the things themselves. Among these effects are also the senses themselves as well as the brain and the molecular movements assumed in it. (History of Materialism, 1887.)

Lange, therefore, assumes a world beyond our world that may consist of the things in themselves or that may not even have anything to do with this “thing in itself,” since even this concept, which we form at the limit of our own realm, belongs merely to the world of our ideas.

[ 16 ] Lange's world conception, then, leads to the opinion that we have only a world of ideas. This world, however, forces us to acknowledge something beyond its own sphere. It also is completely incapable of disclosing anything about this something. This is the world conception of absolute ignorance, of agnosticism.

[ 17 ] It is Lange's conviction that all scientific endeavor that does not limit itself to the evidence of the senses and the logical intellect that combines these elements of evidence must remain fruitless. That the senses and the intellect together, however, do not supply us with anything but a result of our own organization, he accepts as evidently following from his analysis of the origin of knowledge. The world is for him fundamentally a product of the fiction of our senses and of our intellects. Because of this opinion, he never asks the question of truth with regard to the ideas. A truth that could enlighten us about the essence of the world is not recognized by Lange. He believes he has obtained an open road for the ideas and ideals that are formed by the human mind and that he has accomplished this through the very fact that he no longer feels the need of attributing any truth to the knowledge of the senses and the intellect. Without hesitation he considered everything that went beyond sensual observation and rational combination to be mere fiction. No matter what the idealistic philosophers had thought concerning the nature of facts, for him it belonged to the realm of poetic fiction.

Through this turn that Lange gave to materialism there arose necessarily the question: Why should not the higher imaginative creations be valid if even the senses are creative? What is the difference between these two kinds of creation? A philosopher who thinks like this must have a reason for admitting certain conceptions that is quite different from the reason that influences a thinker who acknowledges a conception because he thinks it is true. For Lange, this reason is given by the fact that a conception has value for life. For him, the question is not whether or not a conception is true, but whether it is valuable for man. One thing, however, must be clearly recognized: That I see a rose as red, that I connect the effect with the cause, is something I have in common with all creatures endowed with the power of perception and thinking. My senses and my reason cannot produce any additional values, but if I go beyond the imaginative product of senses and reason, then I am no longer bound to the organization of the whole human species. Schiller, Hegel and every Tom, Dick and Harry sees a flower in the same way. What Schiller weaves in poetic imagination around the flower, what Hegel thinks about it, is not imagined by Tom, Dick and Harry in the same way. But just as Tom, Dick and Harry are mistaken when they think that the flower is an entity existing externally, so Schiller and Hegel would be in error if they took their ideas for anything more than poetic fiction that satisfied their spiritual needs. What is poetically created through the senses and the intellect belongs to the whole human race, and no one in this respect can be different from anybody else. What goes beyond the creation of the senses and of reason is the concern of the individual. Nevertheless, this imaginative creation of the individual is also granted a value by Lange for the whole human race, provided that the individual creator “who produces it is normal, richly gifted and typical in his mode of thinking, and is, through his force of spirit, qualified to be a leader.”

In this way, Lange believes that he can secure for the ideal world its value by declaring that also the so-called real world is a product of poetic creation. Wherever he may look, Lange sees only fiction, beginning with the lowest stage of sense perception where “the individual still appears subject to the general characteristics of the human species, and culminating with the creative power in poetry.”

The function of the senses and of the combining intellect, which produce what is reality for us, can be called a lower function if one compares them with the soaring flight of the spirit in the creative arts. But, in general and in their totality, these functions cannot be classified as a principally different activity of the mind. As little as our reality is a reality according to our heart's desire, it is nevertheless the firm foundation of our whole spiritual existence. The individual grows out of the soil of the species, and the general and necessary process of knowledge forms the only secure foundation for the individual's rise to an esthetic conception of the world. (History of Materialism.)

[ 18 ] What Lange considers to be the error of the idealistic world conception is not that it goes beyond the world of the senses and the intellect with its ideas, but that it believes it possesses in these ideas more than the individual thinker's poetic fantasy. One should build up for oneself an ideal world, but one should be aware that this ideal world is no more than poetic imagination. If this idealism maintains it is more than that, materialism will rise time and again with the claim: I have the truth; idealism is poetry. Be that so, says Lange: Idealism is poetry, but materialism is also poetry. In idealism the individual is the creator, in materialism, the species. If they both are aware of their natures, everything is in its right place: the science of the senses and the intellect that provide proofs for the whole species, as well as the poetry of ideas with all its conceptions that are produced by the individual and still retain their value for the race.

One thing is certain: Man is in need of an ideal world created by himself as a supplement of reality, and the highest and noblest functions of his spirit are actively combined in such creations. But is this free activity of the spirit to be allowed repeatedly to assume the deceptive form of a proof-establishing science? If so, materialism will emerge again and again to destroy the bolder speculations and try to satisfy reason's demand for unity with a minimum of elevation above the real and actually provable. (History of Materialism.)

[ 19 ] In Lange's thinking, complete idealism is combined with a complete surrender of truth itself. The world for him is poetry, but a poetry that he does not value any less than he would if he could acknowledge it as reality.

Thus, two currents of a distinctly natural scientific character can be distinguished as abruptly opposing each other in the development of modern world conception: The monistic current in which Haeckel's mode of conception moved, and the dualistic one, the most forceful and consistent defender of which was Friedrich Albert Lange. Monism considers the world that man can observe to be a true reality and has no doubt that a thinking process that depends on observation can also obtain knowledge of essential significance concerning this reality. Monism does not imagine that it is possible to exhaust the fundamental nature of the world with a few boldly thought out formulas. It proceeds as it follows the facts, and forms new ideas in regard to the connections of these facts. It is convinced, however, that these ideas do supply a knowledge of a true reality. The dualistic conception of Lange divides the world into a known and an unknown part. It treats the first part in the same fashion as monism, following the lead of observation and reflective thought, but it believes that nothing at all can be known concerning the true essential core of the world through this observation and through this thought. Monism believes in the truth of the real and sees the human world of ideas best supported if it is based on the world of observations. In the ideas and ideals that the monist derives from natural existence, he sees something that is fully satisfactory to his feeling and to his moral need. He finds in nature the highest existence, which he does not only want to penetrate with his thinking for the purpose of knowledge, but to which he surrenders with all his knowledge and with all his love.

In Lange's dualism nature is considered to be unfit to satisfy the spirit's highest needs. Lange must assume a special world of higher poetry for this spirit that leads beyond the results of observation and its corresponding thought. For monism, true knowledge represents a supreme spiritual value, which, because of its truth, grants man also the purest moral and religious pathos. To dualism, knowledge cannot present such a satisfaction. Dualism must measure the value of life by other things, not by the truth it might yield. The ideas are not valuable because they participate in the truth. They are of value because they serve life in its highest forms. Life is not valued by means of the ideas, but the ideas are appreciated because of their fruitfulness for life. It is not for true knowledge that man strives but for valuable thoughts.

[ 20 ] In recognizing the mode of thinking of natural science Friedrich Albert Lange agrees with monism insofar as he denies the uses of all other sources for the knowledge of reality, but he also denies this mode of thinking any possibility to penetrate into the essential of things. In order to make sure that he himself moves on solid ground he curtails the wings of human imagination. What Lange is doing in such an incisive fashion corresponds to an inclination of thought that is deeply ingrained in the development of modern world conception. This is shown with perfect clarity also in another sphere of thinking of the nineteenth century. This thinking developed, through various stages, viewpoints from which Herbert Spencer (1820–1903) started as he laid the foundations for a dualism in England. Spencer's dualism appeared at approximately the same time as Lange's in Germany, which strove for natural scientific knowledge of the world on the one hand and, on the other, confessed to agnosticism so far as the essence of things is concerned. When Darwin published his work, The Origin of Species, he could praise the natural scientific mode of thought of Spencer:

Mr. Herbert Spencer, in an Essay (1852), has contrasted the theories of the Creation and the Development of organic beings with remarkable skill and force. He argues from the analogy of domestic production, from the changes which the embryos of many species undergo, from the difficulty of distinguishing species and varieties, and from the principle of general gradation that species have been modified; and he attributes the modification to the change of circumstances. The author (1855) has also treated Psychology on the principle of the necessary requirement of each mental power and capacity by gradation. (The Origin of Species, Historical Sketch.)

Also, other thinkers who followed the method of natural science felt attracted to Spencer because he tried to explain all reality from the inorganic to the psychological in the manner expressed in Darwin's words above. But Spencer also sides with the agnostics, so that Lange is justified when he says, “Herbert Spencer, whose philosophy is closely related to ours, believes in a materialism of the phenomenal world, the relative justification of which, within the realm of natural science, finds its limit in a thought of an unknowable absolute.”

[ 21 ] It is quite likely that Spencer arrived at his viewpoint from assumptions similar to those of Lange. He had been preceded in England by thinkers who were guided by a twofold interest. They wanted to determine what it is that man really possesses with his knowledge, but they also were resolved not to shatter by doubt or reason the essential substance of the world. They were all more or less dominated by the sentiment that Kant described when he said, “I had to suspend knowledge in order to make room for belief.” (Compare the first volume of this book.)

[ 22 ] The beginning of the development of the world conception of the nineteenth century in England is marked by the figure of Thomas Reid (1710–96). The fundamental conviction of this man can be expressed in Goethe's words as he describes his own activity as a scientist as non-speculative: “In the last analysis it seems to me that my method consists merely m the practical and self-rectifying operations of common sense that dares to practice its function in a higher sphere.” (Compare Goethe's Werke, Vol. 38, p. 595 in Kürschner's Deutsche National Literatur.) This common sense does not doubt in any way that it is confronted with real essential things and processes as it contemplates the world. Reid believes that a world conception is viable only if it upholds this basic view of a healthy common sense. Even if one admitted the possibility that our observation could be deceptive and that the true nature of things could be different from the picture that is supplied to us by our senses and our intellect, it would not be necessary to pay any attention to such a possibility. We find our way through life only if we believe in our observation; nothing beyond that is our concern.

In taking this point of view Reid is convinced that he can arrive at really satisfactory truths. He makes no attempt to obtain a conception of things through complicated thought operations but wants to reach his aim by going back to the basic principles that the soul instinctively assumes. Instinctively, unconsciously, the soul possesses what is correct, before the attempt is made to illumine the mind's own nature with the torch of consciousness. It knows instinctively what to think in regard to the qualities and processes of the physical world, and it is endowed instinctively with the direction of moral behavior, of a judgment concerning good and evil. Through his reference to the truths innate in “common sense,” Reid directs the attention of thought toward an observation of the soul. This tendency toward a psychological observation becomes a lasting and characteristic trait in the development of the English world conception.

Outstanding personalities within this development are William Hamilton (1788–1856), Henry Mansel (1820–71), William Whewell (1794–1866), John Herschel (1792 – 1871), James Mill (1773–1836), John Stuart Mill (1806 – 73), Alexander Bain (1818–1903) and Herbert Spencer (1820–1903). They all place psychology in the center of their world conception.

[ 23 ] William Hamilton also recognizes as truth what the soul from the beginning feels inclined to accept as true. With respect to fundamental truths proofs and comprehension ceases. All one can do is observe their emergence at the horizon of our consciousness. In this sense they are incomprehensible. But one of the fundamental manifestations of our consciousness is also that everything in this world depends on something that is unknown to us. We find in this world in which we live only dependent things, but not absolutely independent ones. Such independent things must exist, however. When a dependent thing is found, an independent thing is assumed. With our thinking we do not enter the independent entity. Human knowledge is meant for the dependent and it becomes involved in contradictions if its thoughts, which are well-suited to the dependent, are applied to the independent. Knowledge, therefore, must withdraw as we approach the entrance toward the independent. Religious belief is here in its place. It is only through his admission that he cannot know anything of the essential core of the world that man can be a moral being. He can accept a God who causes a moral order in the world. As soon as it has been understood that all logic has exclusively to do with the dependent, not the independent, no logic can destroy this belief in an infinite God.

Henry Mansel was a pupil and follower of Hamilton, but he expressed Hamilton's view in still more extreme forms. It is not going too far to say that Mansel was an advocate of belief who no longer judged impartially between religion and knowledge, but who defended religious dogma with partiality. He was of the opinion that the revealed truths of religion involve our knowledge necessarily in contradictions. This is not supposed to be the fault of the revealed truths but has its cause in the limitation of the human mind, which can never penetrate into regions from which the statements of revelation arise.

William Whewell believed that he could best obtain a conception concerning the significance, origin and value of human knowledge by investigating the method through which leading men of science arrived at their insights. In his History of the Inductive Sciences (1840), he set out to analyze the psychology of scientific investigation. Thus, by studying outstanding scientific discoveries, he hoped to find out how much of these accomplishments was due to the external world and how much to man himself. Whewell finds that the human mind always supplements its scientific observations. Kepler, for example, had the idea of an ellipse before he found that the planets move in ellipses. Thus, the sciences do not come about through a mere reception from without but through the active participation of the human mind that impresses its laws on the given elements. These sciences do not extend as far as the last entities of things. They are concerned with the particulars of the world. Just as everything, for instance, is assumed to have a cause, such a cause must also be presupposed for the whole world. Since knowledge fails us with respect to that cause, the dogma of religion must step in as a supplement. Herschel, like Whewell, also tried to gain an insight into the genesis of knowledge in the human mind through the observation of many examples. His Preliminary Discourse on the Study of Natural Philosophy appeared in 1831.

[ 24 ] John Stuart Mill belongs with those thinkers who are deeply imbued with the conviction that one cannot be cautious enough in determining what is certain and uncertain in human knowledge. The fact that he was introduced to the most diversified branches of knowledge in his boyhood, most likely gave his mind its characteristic turn. As a child of three he received instructions in the Greek language, and soon afterwards was taught arithmetic. He was exposed to the other fields of instruction at a correspondingly early age. Of even greater importance was the method of instruction used by his father, James Mill, who was himself an important thinker. Through him vigorous logic became the second nature of John Stuart. From his autobiography we learn: “Anything which could be found out by thinking I was never told until I had exhausted my efforts to find it out for myself.” The things that occupy the thinking of such a person must become his destiny in the proper sense of the word. “I have never been a child, I have never played cricket. It is, after all, better to let nature take its own course,” says John Stuart Mill as one whose destiny had so uniquely been to live almost exclusively in thinking. Because of his development, he had to experience to the fullest the problems concerning the significance of knowledge. How can knowledge, which for him was life, lead also to the source of the phenomena of the world? The direction in which Mill's thought developed in order to obtain clarity concerning these problems was probably determined early by his father. James Mill had proceeded by starting from psychological experience. He had observed the process by which idea is linked to idea in man's mind. Through connecting one concrete idea to another we obtain our knowledge of the world. We must then ask ourselves: What is the relation between the order in which the ideas are linked and the order of the things in the world? Through such a mode of conception our thinking begins to distrust its own power because man can associate ideas in a manner that is entirely different from the connection of the things in the external world. This mistrust is the basis of John Stuart Mill's logic, which appeared in 1843 as his chief work under the title, System of Logic.

[ 25 ] In matters of world conception a more pronounced contrast is scarcely thinkable than that between Mill's Logic and Hegel's Science of Logic, which appeared twenty-seven years earlier. In Hegel we find the highest confidence in thinking, the full assurance that we cannot be deceived by what we experience within ourselves. Hegel experiences himself as a part, a member of the world, and what he experiences within himself must also belong to the world. Since he has the most direct knowledge of himself, he believes in the content of this knowledge and judges the rest of the world accordingly. He argues as follows: When I perceive an external thing, it is possible that the thing shows only its surface to me and that its essence remains concealed. This is not possible in my own case. I understand my own being. I can then compare the things outside with my own being. If they reveal some element of my own essence on their surface, I am justified in attributing to them something of my own nature. It is for this reason that Hegel expects confidently to find outside in nature the very spirit and the thought connections that he finds within himself.

Mill, however, experiences himself not as a part of the world but as a spectator. The things outside are an unknown element to him and the thoughts that man forms concerning them are met by Mill with distrust. One observes men and learns from his observations that all men die. One forms the judgment that all men are mortal. The Duke of Wellington is a man; therefore, the Duke of Wellington is mortal. This is the conclusion the observer comes to. What gives him the right to do so? This is the question John Stuart Mill asks. If a single human being would prove to be immortal, the whole judgment would be upset. Are we justified in supposing that, because all men up to this time have died, they will continue to do so in the future? All knowledge is uncertain because we draw conclusions from observations we have made and transfer them to things we cannot know anything about, since we have not observed them directly. What would somebody who thinks like Hegel have to say about such a conception? It is not difficult to imagine the answer. We know from definite concepts that in every circle all diameters are equal. If we find a circle in the real world, we maintain that its diameters, too, are equal. If we observe it a quarter of an hour later and find that its diameters are unequal, we do not decide [ 26 ] that under certain circumstances the diameter of a circle can also be unequal. But we say that what was formerly a circle has for some reason been elongated into an ellipse.

If we think like Hegel, this is the attitude we take toward the judgment, all men are mortal. It is not through observation but through an inner thought experience that we form the concept of man. For the concept of man, mortality is as essential as the equality of the diameters is for the concept of the circle. If we find a being in the real world that has all the other characteristics of man, we conclude that this being must also have that of mortality, in the same way that all other properties of the circle allow us to conclude that it has also that of the equality of diameters. If Hegel came across a being that did not die, he could only say, “That is not a man.” He could not say, “A man can also be immortal.” Hegel makes the assumption that the concepts in us are not arbitrarily formed but have their root in the essence of the world, as we ourselves belong to this essence. Once the concept of man has formed within us, it is clear that it has its origin in the essence of things, and we are fully justified in applying it to this essence. Why has this concept of mortal man formed within us? Surely only because it has its ground in the nature of things. A person who believes that man stands entirely outside of the order of things and forms his judgments as an outsider can argue that we have until now seen men die, and therefore we form the spectator concept: mortal men. The thinker who is aware that he himself belongs to the order of things and that it is they that are manifested within his thoughts, forms the judgment that up to this time all men have died; to die, then, is something that belongs to their nature, and if somebody does not die, he is not a man but something else. Hegel's logic has become a logic of things: For Hegel, the manifestation of logic is an effect of the essence of the world; it is not something that the human mind has added from an outside source to this essence. Mill's logic is the logic of a bystander, of a mere spectator who starts out by cutting the thread through which it is connected with the world.

[ 27 ] Mill points out that the thoughts, which in a certain age appear as absolutely certain inner experiences, are nevertheless reversed in a later time. In the Middle Ages it was, for instance, believed that there could not possibly be antipodes and that the stars would have to drop from the sky if they did not cling to fixed spheres. Man will, therefore, only be capable of the right attitude toward his knowledge if he, in spite of his awareness that the logic of the world is expressed in this knowledge, forms in every individual case his judgment through a careful methodical examination of his conceptual connections guided by observation, a judgment that is always in need of correction.

It is the method of observation that John Stuart Mill attempts to determine with cool detachment and calculation. Let us take an example. [ 28 ] Suppose a phenomenon had always occurred under certain conditions. In a given case a number of these conditions appear again, but a few of them are now missing. The phenomenon in question does not occur. We are forced to conclude that the conditions that were not provided and the phenomenon that failed to occur stood in a causal relationship. If two substances have always combined to form a chemical compound and this result fails to be obtained in a given case, it is necessary to inquire what condition is lacking that had always been present before. Through a method of this kind we arrive at conceptions concerning connections of facts that can be rightly considered as being grounded in the nature of things. Mill wants to follow the methods of observation in his analysis. Logic, which Kant maintained had not progressed a single step since Aristotle, is a means of orientation within our thinking itself. It shows how to proceed from one correct thought to the next. Mill's logic is a means of orientation within the world of facts. It intends to show how one obtains valid judgments about things from observation. He does not even admit mathematics as an exception. Mathematics must also derive its basic insights from observation. For example, in all observed cases we have seen that two intersecting straight lines diverge and do not intersect again. Therefore we conclude that they will never intersect again, but we do not have a perfect proof for this statement. For John Stuart Mill, the world is thus an alien element. Man observes its phenomena and arranges them according to what they announce to his conceptual life. He perceives regularities in the phenomena and through logical, methodical investigations of these regularities he arrives at the laws of nature. But there is nothing that leads him to the principle of the things themselves. One can well imagine that the world could also be entirely different. Mill is convinced that everybody who is used to abstraction and analysis and who seriously uses his abilities will, after a sufficient exercise of his imagination, have no difficulty with the idea that there could be another stellar system in which nothing could be found of the laws that have application to our own.

Mill is merely consistent in his bystander viewpoint of the world when he extends it to man's own ego. Mental pictures come and go, are combined and separated within his inner life; this is what man observes. He does not observe a being that remains identical with itself as “ego” in the midst of this constant flow of ideas. He has observed that mental pictures emerge within him and he assumes that this will continue to be the case. From this possibility, namely, that a world of perceptions can be grouped around a center, arises the conception of an “ego.” Thus, man is a spectator also with respect to his own “ego.” He has his conceptions tell him what he can know about himself. Mill reflects on the facts of memory and expectation. If everything that I know of myself is to consist of conceptual presentations, then I cannot say: I remember a conception that I have had at an earlier time, or I expect the occurrence of a certain experience, but I must say: A present conception remembers itself or expects its future occurrence. If we speak, so Mill argues, of the mind as of a sequence of perceptions, we must also speak of a sequence of perceptions that is aware of itself as becoming and passing. As a result, we find ourselves in the dilemma of having to say that either the “ego” or the mind is something to be distinguished from the perceptions, or else we must maintain the paradox that a mere sequence of perceptions is capable of an awareness of its past and future. Mill does not overcome this dilemma. It contains for him an insoluble enigma. The fact is that he has torn the bond between himself, the observer, and the world, and he is not capable of restoring the connection. The world for him remains an unknown beyond himself that produces impressions on man. All man knows of this transcendent unknown is that it can produce perceptions in him. Instead of having the possibility of knowing real things outside himself, he can only say in the end that there are opportunities for having perceptions. Whoever speaks of things in themselves uses empty words. We move on the firm ground of facts only as long as we speak of the continuous possibility of the occurrence of sensations, perceptions and conceptions.

[ 29 ] John Stuart Mill has an intense aversion to all thoughts that are gained in any way except through the comparison of facts, the observation of the similar, the analogous, and the homogeneous elements in all phenomena. He is of the opinion that the human conduct of life can only be harmed if we surrender to the belief that we could arrive at any truth in any way except through observation. This disinclination of Mill demonstrates his hesitation to relate himself in his striving for knowledge to the things of reality in any other way than by an attitude of passivity. The things are to dictate to man what he has to think about them. If man goes beyond this state of receptivity in order to say something out of his own self about the things, then he lacks every assurance that this product of his own activity has anything to do with the things. What is finally decisive in this philosophy is the fact that the thinker who maintains it is unable to count his own spontaneous thinking as belonging to the world. The very fact that he himself is active in this thinking makes him suspicious and misleads him. He would best of all like to eliminate his own self completely, to be absolutely sure that no erroneous element is mixed into the objective statements of the phenomena. He does not sufficiently appreciate the fact that his thinking is a part of nature as much as the growth of a leaf of grass. It is evident that one must also examine one's own spontaneous thinking if one wants to find out something concerning it.

How is man, to use a statement of Goethe, to become acquainted with his relation to himself and to the external world if he wants to eliminate himself completely in the cognitive process? Great as Mill's merits are for finding methods through which man can learn those things that do not depend on him, a view concerning man's relation to himself and of his relation to the external world cannot be obtained by his methods. All these methods are valid only for the special sciences, not, however, for a comprehensive world conception. No observation can teach what spontaneous thinking is; only thinking can experience this in itself. As this thinking can only obtain information concerning its own nature through its own power, it is also the only source that can shed light on the relation between itself and the external world. Mill's method of investigation excludes the possibility of obtaining a world conception because a world conception can be gained only through thinking that is concentrated in itself and thereby succeeds in obtaining an insight into its own relation to the external world. The fact that John Stuart Mill had an aversion to this kind of self-supporting thinking can be well understood from his character. Gladstone said in a letter (compare Gompertz: John Stuart Mill, Vienna, 1889) that in conversation he used to call Mill the “Saint of Rationalism.” A person who practices thinking in this way imposes rigorous demands on thinking and looks for the greatest possible precautionary measures so that it cannot deceive him. He becomes thereby mistrustful with respect to thinking itself. He believes that he will soon stand on insecure ground if he loses hold of external points of support. Uncertainty with regard to all problems that go beyond strictly observational knowledge is a basic trait in Mill's personality. In reading his books we see everywhere that Mill treats such problems as open questions concerning which he does not risk a sure judgment.

[ 30 ] The belief that the true nature of things is unknowable is also maintained by Herbert Spencer. He proceeds by asking: How do I obtain what I call truths concerning the world? I make certain observations concerning things and form judgments about them. I observe that hydrogen and oxygen under certain conditions combine to form water. I form a judgment concerning this observation. This is a truth that extends only over a small circle of things. I then observe under what circumstances other substances combine. I compare the individual observations and thereby arrive at more comprehensive, more general truths concerning the process in which substances in general form chemical compounds. All knowledge consists in this; we proceed from particular truths to more comprehensive ones. We finally arrive at the highest truth, which cannot be subordinated to any other and which we therefore must accept without further explanation. In this process of knowledge we have, however, no means of penetrating to the absolute essence of the world, for thinking can, according to this opinion, do no more than compare the various things with one another and formulate general truths with respect to the homogeneous element in them. But the ultimate nature of the world cannot, because of its uniqueness, be compared to any other thing. This is why thinking fails with regard to the ultimate nature. It cannot reach it.

[ 31 ] In such modes of conception we always sense, as an undertone, the thinking that developed from the basis of the physiology of the senses (compare above to the first part of this Chapter). In many philosophers this thought has inserted itself so deeply into their intellectual life that they consider it the most certain thought possible. They argue as follows: One can know things only by becoming aware of them. They then change this thought, more or less unconsciously, into: One can know only of those things that enter our consciousness, but it remains unknown how the things were before they entered our consciousness. It is for this reason that sense perceptions are considered as if they were in our consciousness, for one is of the opinion that they must first enter our consciousness and must become part of it in the form of conceptions if we are to be aware of them.

[ 32 ] Also, Spencer clings to the view that the possibility of the process of knowledge depends on us as human beings. We therefore must assume an unknowable element beyond that which can be transmitted to us by our senses and our thinking. We have a clear consciousness of everything that is present in our mind. But an indefinite consciousness is associated with this clear awareness that claims that everything we can observe and think has as its basis something we can no longer observe and think. We know that we are dealing with mere appearances and not with full realities existing independently by themselves. But this is just because we know definitely that our world is only appearance, that we also know that an unimaginable real world is its basis. Through such turns of thought Spencer believes it possible to arrange a complete reconciliation between religion and knowledge. There is something that religion can grasp in belief, in a belief that cannot be shaken by an impotent knowledge.

[ 33 ] The field, however, that Spencer considers to be accessible to knowledge must, for him, entirely take on the form of natural scientific conceptions. When Spencer himself ventures to explain, he does so in the sense of natural science.

[ 34 ] Spencer uses the method of natural science in thinking of the process of knowledge. Every organ of a living being has come into existence through the fact that this being has adapted itself to the conditions under which it lives. It belongs to the human conditions of life that man finds his way through the world with the aid of thinking. His organ of knowledge develops through the adaptation of his conceptual life to the conditions of his external life. By making statements concerning things and processes, man adjusts himself to the surrounding world. All truths have come into being through this process of adaptation, and what is acquired in this way can be transmitted through inheritance to the descendants. Those who think that man, through his nature, possesses once and for all a certain disposition toward general truths are wrong. What appears to be such a disposition did not exist at an earlier stage in the ancestors of man, but has been acquired by adaptation and transmitted to the descendants. When some philosophers speak of truths that man does not have to derive from his own individual experience but that are given a priori in his organization, they are right in a certain respect. While it is obvious that such truths are acquired, it must be stressed that they are not acquired by man as an individual but as a species. The individual has inherited the finished product of an ability that has been acquired at an earlier age.

Goethe once said that he had taken part in many conversations on Kant's Critique of Pure Reason and that he had noticed how on those occasions the old basic problem had been renewed, “How much does our inner self contribute to our spiritual existence, how much the external world?” And Goethe goes on to say, “I had never separated the two; when I was philosophizing in my own way on things, I did so with an unconscious naïveté and was really convinced that I saw with my eyes my opinion before me.”

[ 35 ] Spencer looks at this “old basic problem” from the point of view of natural science. He believed he could show that the developed human being also contributed to his spiritual existence through his own self. This self, is also made up of the inherited traits that had been acquired by our ancestors in their struggle with the external world. If we today believe we see with our eyes our opinions before us, we must remember that they were not always our opinions but that they were once observations that were really made by our eyes in the external world. Spencer's way of thinking, then, is, like that of John Stuart Mill, one that proceeds from psychology. But Mill does not go further than the psychology of the individual. Spencer goes from the individual back to his ancestors. The psychology of the individual is in the same position as the ontogenesis of zoology. Certain phenomena of the history of the individual are explainable only if they are referred back to phenomena of the history of the species. In the same way, the facts of the individual's consciousness cannot be understood if taken alone. We must go back to the species. We must, indeed, go back beyond the human species to acquisitions of knowledge that were accomplished by the animal ancestors of man. Spencer uses his great acumen to support this evolutionary history of the process of cognition. He shows in which way the mental activities have gradually developed from low stages at the beginning, through ever more accurate adaptations of the human mind to the external world and through inheritance of these adaptation. Every insight that the individual human being obtains through pure thought and without experience about things has been obtained by humanity or its ancestors through observation or experience. Leibniz thought he could explain the correspondence of man's inner life with the external world by assuming a harmony between them that was pre-established by the creator. Spencer explains this correspondence in the manner of natural science. The harmony is not pre-established, but gradually developed. We here find the continuation of natural scientific thinking to the highest aspects of human existence. Linnaeus had declared that every living organic form existed because the creator had made it as it is. Darwin maintained that it is as it is because it had gradually developed through adaptation and inheritance. Leibniz declared that thinking is an agreement with the external world because the creator had established this agreement. Spencer maintained that this agreement is there because it has gradually developed through adaptations and inheritance of the thought world.

[ 36 ] Spencer was motivated in his thought by the need for a naturalistic explanation of spiritual phenomena. He found the general direction for such an explanation in Lyell's geology (compare in Part 2 Chapter I). In this geology, to be sure, the idea is still rejected that organic forms have gradually developed one from another. It nevertheless receives a powerful support through the fact that the inorganic (geological) formations of the earth's surface are explained through such a gradual development and through violent catastrophes. Spencer, who had a natural scientific education and who had for a time also been active as a civil engineer, recognized at once the full extent of the idea of evolution, and he applied it in spite of Lyell's opposition to it. He even applied this idea to spiritual processes. As early as 1850, in his book, Social Statistics, he described social evolution in analogy with organic evolution. He also acquainted himself with the studies of Harvey and Wolff in embryonic development (compare Part I, Chapter IX of this book), and he plunged into the works of Karl Ernst von Baer (compare above in Part II Chapter II), which showed him that evolution proceeded from the development of a homogeneous uniform state to one of variety, diversity and abundance. In the early stages of embryological development the organisms are very similar; later they become different from one another (compare above in Part II Chapter II). Through Darwin this evolutionary thought was completely confirmed. From a few original organic forms the whole wealth of the highly diversified world of formations has developed.

From the idea of evolution, Spencer wanted to proceed to the most general truths, which, in his opinion, constituted the aim of all human striving for knowledge. He believed that one could discover manifestations of this evolutionary thought in the simplest phenomena. When, from dispersed particles of water, a cloud is formed in the sky, when a sand pile is formed from scattered grains of sand, Spencer saw the beginnings of an evolutionary process. Dispersed matter is contracted and concentrated to a whole. It is just this process that is presented to us in the Kant-Laplace hypothesis of world evolution. Dispersed parts of a chaotic world nebula have contracted. The organism originates in just this way. Dispersed elements are concentrated in tissues. The psychologist can observe that man contracts dispersed observations into general truths. Within this concentrated whole, articulation and differentiation take place. The original homogeneous mass is differentiated into the individual heavenly bodies of the solar system; the organism differentiates itself into the various organs.

[ 37 ] Concentration alternates with dissolution. When a process of evolution has reached a certain climax, an equilibrium takes place. Man, for instance, develops until he has evolved a maximum of harmonization of his inner abilities with external nature. Such a state of equilibrium, however, cannot last; external forces will effect it destructively. The evolutionary process must be followed by a process of dissolution; what had been concentrated is dispersed again; the cosmic again becomes chaotic. The process of evolution can begin anew. Thus, Spencer sees the process of the world as a rhythmic play of motion. [ 38 ] It is certainly not an uninteresting observation for the comparative history of the evolution of world conception that Spencer, from the observation of the genesis of world phenomena, reaches here a conclusion that is similar to one Goethe expressed in connection with his ideas concerning the genesis of life. Goethe describes the growth of a plant in the following way:

May the plant sprout, blossom or bear fruit, it is always by the same organs that the prescription of nature is fulfilled in various functions and under frequently changing forms. The same organ, which at the stem expands as a leaf and takes on a most differentiated shape, now contracts again in the calyx, spreads out in the petal, epitomizes in the organs of reproduction and finally once more swells as fruit.

If one thinks of this conception as being transferred to the whole process of the world, one arrives as Spencer's contraction and dispersion of matter.

[ 39 ] Spencer and Mill exerted a great influence on the development of world conception in the second half of the nineteenth century. The rigorous emphasis on observation and the one-sided elaboration of the methods of observational knowledge of Mill, along with the application of the conceptions of natural science to the entire scope of human knowledge by Spencer could not fail to meet with the approval of an age that saw in the idealistic world conception of Fichte, Schelling and Hegel nothing but degeneration of human thinking. It was an age that showed appreciation only for the successes of the research work of natural science. The lack of unity among the idealistic thinkers and what seemed to many a perfect fruitfulness of a thinking that was completely concentrated and absorbed in itself, had to produce a deep-seated suspicion against idealism. One may say that a widespread view of the last four decades of the nineteenth century is clearly expressed in words spoken by Rudolf Virchow in his address, The Foundation of the University of Berlin and the Transition from the Age of Philosophy into that of Natural Science (1893): “Since the belief in magic formulas has been forced back into the most backward circles of the people, the formulas of the natural philosopher have met with little approval.” And one of the most significant philosophers of the second half of the century, Eduard von Hartmann, sums up the character of his world conception in the motto he placed at the head of his book, Philosophy of the Unconscious: Speculative Results Obtained by the Inductive Method of Natural Science. He is of the opinion that it is necessary to recognize “the greatness of the progress brought about by Mill, through which all attempts of a deductive method of philosophy have been defeated and made obsolete for all times.” (Compare Eduard von Hartmann, Geschichte der Metaphysik, 2 part, page 479.)

[ 40 ] The recognition of certain limits of human knowledge that was shown by many naturalists was also received favorably by many religiously attuned souls. They argued as follows: The natural scientists observe the inorganic and organic facts of nature and they attempt to find general laws by combining the individual phenomena. Through these laws processes can be explained, and it is even possible to predetermine thereby the regular course of future phenomena. A comprehensive world conception should proceed in the same way; it should confine itself to the facts, establish general truths within moderate limits and not maintain any claim to penetrate into the realm of the “unknowable.” Spencer, with his complete separation of the “knowable” and the “unknowable,” met the demand of such religious needs to a high degree. The idealistic mode of thought was, on the other hand, considered by such religiously inclined spirits to be a fantastic aberration. As a matter of principle, the idealistic mode of conception cannot recognize an “unknowable,” because it has to uphold the conviction that through the concentrated penetration into the inner life of man a knowledge can be attained that covers not merely the outer surface of the world but also its real core.

[ 41 ] The thought life of some influential naturalists, such as Thomas Henry Huxley, moved entirely in the direction of such religiously inclined spirits. Huxley believed in a complete agnosticism with regard to the essence of the world. He declared that a monism, which is in general agreement with Darwin's results, is applicable only to external nature. Huxley was one of the first to defend the Darwinian conceptions, but he is at the same time one of the most outspoken representatives of those thinkers who believed in the limitation of that mode of conception. A similar view is also held by the physicist Johaan Tyndall (1820–93) who considered the world process to be an energy that is completely inaccessible to the human intellect. According to him, it is precisely the assumption that everything in the world comes into existence through a natural evolution that makes it impossible to accept the thought that matter, which is, after all, the carrier of the whole evolution, should be no more than what our intellect can comprehend of it.

[ 42 ] A characteristic phenomenon of his time is the personality of the English statesman, James Balfour (1840–1930). In 1879, in his book, A Defense of Philosophical Doubt, Being an Essay on the Foundations of Belief, he expressed a credo that is doubtless similar to that held by many other thinkers. With respect to everything that man is capable of explaining he stands completely on the ground of the thought of natural science. For him, there is no other knowledge but natural science, but he maintains at the same time that his knowledge of natural science is only rightly understood if it is clear that the needs of man's soul and reason can never be satisfied by it. It is only necessary to understand that, in the last analysis even in natural science, everything depends on faith in the ultimate truths for which no further proof is possible. But no harm is done in that this trend of thoughts leads us only to belief, because this belief is a secure guide for our action in daily life. We believe in the laws of nature and we master them through this belief. We thereby force nature to serve us for our purpose. Religious belief is to produce an agreement between the actions of man and his higher needs that go beyond his everyday life.

[ 43 ] The world conceptions that have been discussed under the title, “The World as Illusion,” show that they have as their basis a longing for a satisfactory relationship of the self-conscious ego to the general world picture. It is especially significant that they do not consciously consider this search as their philosophical aim, and therefore do not expressly turn their inquiry toward that purpose. Instinctively as it were, they permit their thinking to be influenced by the direction that is determined by this unconscious search. The form that this search takes is determined by the conceptions of modern natural science. We approach the fundamental character of these conceptions if we fix our attention on the concept of “consciousness.” This concept was introduced to the life of modern philosophy by Descartes. Before him, it was customary to depend more on the concept of the “soul” as such. Little attention was paid to the fact that only a part of the soul's life is spent in connection with conscious phenomena. During sleep the soul does not live consciously. Compared to the conscious life, the nature of the soul must therefore consist of deeper forces, which in the waking state are merely lifted into consciousness. The more one asked the question of the justification and the value of knowledge in the light of clear and distinct ideas, however, the more it was also felt that the soul finds the most certain elements of knowledge when it does not go beyond its own limits and when it does not delve deeper into itself than consciousness extends. The opinion prevailed that everything else may be uncertain, but what my consciousness is, at least, as such is certain. Even the house I pass may not exist without me; that the image of this house is now in my consciousness: this I may maintain. But as soon as we fix our attention on this consciousness, the concept of the ego inevitably grows together with that of the consciousness. Whatever kind of entity the “ego” may be outside the consciousness, the realm of the “ego” can be conceived as extending as far as the consciousness. There is no possibility of denying that the sensual world picture, which the soul experiences consciously, has come into existence through the impression that is made on man by the world. But as soon as one clings to this statement, it becomes difficult to rid oneself of it, for there is a tendency thereby to imply the judgment that the processes of the world are the causes, and that the content of our consciousness is the effect. Because one thinks that only the effect is contained in the consciousness, it is believed that the cause must be in a world outside man as an imperceptible “thing in itself.” The presentation that is given above shows how the results of modern physiological research lead to an affirmation of such an opinion. It is just this opinion through which the “ego” finds itself enclosed with its subjective experiences within its own boundaries. This subtly produced intellectual illusion, once formed, cannot be destroyed as long as the ego does not find any clues within itself of which it knows that they refer to a being outside the subjective consciousness, although they are actually depicted within that consciousness. The ego must, outside the sensual consciousness, feel a contact with entities that guarantee their being by and through themselves. It must find something within that leads it outside itself. been said here concerning thoughts that are brought to life can have this effect. As long as the ego has experienced thought only within itself, it feels itself confined with it within its own boundary. As thought is brought to life it emancipates the ego from a mere subjective existence. A process takes place that is, to be sure, experienced subjectively by the ego, but by its own nature is an objective process. This breaks the “ego” loose from everything that it can feel only as subjective.

So we see that also the conceptions for which the world is illusion move toward a point that is reached when Hegel's world picture is so transformed that its thought comes to life. These conceptions take on the form that is necessary for a world picture that is unconsciously driven by an impulse in that direction. But in them, thinking still lacks the power to work its way through to that aim. Even in their imperfection, however, these conceptions receive their general character from this aim, and the ideas that appear are the external symptoms of active forces that remain concealed.

As previously announced, I do not intend to give you a Theosophical lecture this evening, but rather a more or less purely philosophical lecture. And if any of our esteemed Theosophical listeners find that the matter is too philosophical and, shall we say, too difficult, I would ask you to bear in mind that I did not promise anything easy, but rather something philosophical for this afternoon.

The reason why I like to insert such an extraordinary lecture as this one is the following: It is not unfair to realize that in fact within our Theosophical consciousness, within our entire Theosophical worldview and the current zeitgeist, as it is practiced in the world – not as it is in its essence – there is far too little thoroughness, far too little conscientiousness, with regard to what can be called the thinking, the philosophical principle in the human soul.

Now anyone who wants to look more deeply into what Theosophy really is can see – and they will see it with every step they take into Theosophy, where it presents itself in its true form – that in the field of Theosophy nothing, absolutely nothing, is said that does not comply with philosophy, with scientific conscientiousness and intellectual thoroughness. Theosophy can be justified philosophically, scientifically, and logically in every respect. But Theosophy is not always cultivated and advocated with the necessary seriousness. Therefore, this lecture is intended as an admonition to have a sense of responsibility when speaking of the highest things that Theosophy has to say, as an admonition to have a sense of responsibility towards the intellectual, towards that which is called the scientific mind, the scientific spirit.

This is not to say that this scientific sense should be demanded of every follower of Theosophy; that would be going too far. Theosophy wants to be something that can penetrate into the hearts of the broadest masses of humanity, and with an unbiased sense of truth, it can always be received. But he who represents Theosophy under full responsibility must always be aware of the sense of scientific and intellectual conscientiousness envisaged here, in addition to all the other factors that come into play in the field of Theosophy.

From the wide range of material available to a theosophist, I would now like to give you a summarized overview of the inner principle of the development of modern philosophy, from Fichte to Schelling to Hegel. In doing so, we put ourselves in a position similar to that explained yesterday from a theosophical point of view, namely that with the philosophers Fichte, Schelling and Hegel, something significant for human spiritual development has been given, but which is not yet understood in our present time.

Those who are able to consider what was at stake in the grandiose intellectual struggle of this triumvirate of thinkers, Fichte, Schelling and Hegel, are not in the least surprised. For the intellectual weapons that our present age produces and that are sufficient for the great, admirable achievements of natural science, these intellectual weapons are not sufficient to achieve what was at work in the minds of Fichte, Schelling and Hegel at the turn of the eighteenth to the nineteenth century. And why should we be surprised at this? It can be fully justified and understood in terms of the history of philosophy.

If we want to understand Fichte, Schelling and Hegel in their position within the spiritual development of humanity, we must consider this development from its starting point with Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. For anyone who sees into things, everything in between is of little importance for the spiritual development of humanity. If we look at the matter historically, we see how, in the Middle Ages, Catholicism assimilated philosophy in the spirit of the medieval world view. Aristotle, that great thinker of the pre-Christian era, had to be forgotten first, then remembered again and applied according to the method of medieval philosophy, the medieval world view. The compromise had to be reached: justification of spiritual revelation with the help of Aristotelianism. These two things were brought together in the Middle Ages by trying to do justice to both, by combining them in scholasticism; most decisively in Thomas Aquinas, who was called the Doctor Angelicus because he undertook the task of justifying the revelation of Christianity with the help of Aristotelianism.

The extent to which today's thinking is inadequate to the tasks of that time is best illustrated by the fact that one of the newer thinkers has completely misunderstood the matter. An understanding of Aristotelian thought is the prerequisite for understanding the philosophy of Fichte, Schelling and Hegel. The theosophist need not be surprised. He can say to himself: It was necessary that in Christianity the decisive philosophy should speak differently than it did in the eighteenth century.

In particular, it is difficult to understand that Aristotle, in his psychology, gives a shadowy, because merely philosophical, reflection of what we encounter again in Theosophy. We are speaking, first of all, of the physical body. Aristotle begins only with the etheric body. He speaks of these things as one had to speak three to four centuries before the Christian era. What he calls “treptikon” is nothing other than what we call the etheric body, and what he calls “aestheticon” is nothing other than what we call the sentient body or astral body. Basically, it is quite the same. It is just that for Theosophy it is something grasped from the living intuition, while for Aristotle, it is something held in the realm of the shadowy, out of the logical philosophical tradition. Then he also has the “Erektikon”, what we call the sentient soul. Then the “Kinetikon”, the mind or soul of mind.

But there is one thing that is not found in Aristotelianism: there is no adequate expression for the consciousness soul. But how can you be surprised that you do not find it? In those days, thinking had not yet progressed and developed to such an extent that one could also speak of a consciousness soul. But it is only in the consciousness soul that the I comes to an inner, thinking perception of itself. At that time, one could not yet speak of the I as in more recent philosophy. Therefore, one had to speak of something else, of that which pours into the sentient soul and the mind soul from the outside, from the spiritual outside. What rules in it, what we today call the consciousness soul, can be found in the way that Aristotle looks up to the divine, which works into the human being from the outside and spiritualizes the two soul members, the sentient soul and the mind or feeling soul. Aristotle calls this the “nous”. What Aristotle calls the Nous is what was felt at that time as an external spirit. The Nous is experienced in two ways: in the sentient soul and in the mind or feeling soul, as a stimulator of the sentient soul (Nous poietikos), and as a stimulator of the mind or feeling soul (Nous pathetikos). Here we have something from the ancient traditions of the Greek mysteries that is coming to us again today from spiritual research.

Aristotle's psychology was then used in the Middle Ages to delve into Catholic truths of revelation. However, an actual teaching of the I, as it arises from the perception of the I in the consciousness soul, is not included in Aristotle's psychology. But it would be good for our present time if it were to take up a slightly different concept of Aristotle and incorporate it into its conceptual world. Our entire conceptual world lacks a concept that Aristotle had and which, if it were understood, would be enough to simply sweep away what modern Darwinism asserts with its natural philosophy.

Philosophy has lost this concept. Aristotle is aware that, in the case of humans, we are initially dealing with what we call the animal nature of man, and Aristotle certainly speaks of this animal nature of man and its similarity to the animal nature in the animal kingdom. However, Aristotle speaks differently of the animal nature of man than of the animal nature of animals. Aristotle certainly speaks of the soul in animals, but he is clear about the fact that although this soul of animals is still present in the entire human organization, it undergoes something there that it must undergo through the penetration of the animal soul with the Nous. And this penetration of the animal soul with the Nous is what Aristotle refers to with a term that has been little understood. This is evident from the way in which it has been translated in the usual philosophical histories and translations of Aristotle. . This is a concept that is extremely difficult to convey today because it has not been further developed. If we want to describe it, we can say something like the following would convey the concept: something of the soul is horrified by something higher, so that what happens to the animal soul through the nous of Aristotle is what one could call a horror, a conquest of the violence of the animal soul by the nous. But only through this is the human soul brought forth from the animal soul in a metamorphosis. And once this concept is grasped again, then one will indeed understand the relationship between the human and the animal in a corresponding way in terms of natural philosophy.

I have presented some of the ideas that were passed down philosophically throughout the Middle Ages and preserved into modern times and used to justify the Catholic Church's revelation. I have tried to characterize this with a few terms. These are only a few selected things. I wanted to pick this out because I wanted to give you an idea of the fact that it is not so easy to grasp the meaning of the Aristotelian concepts precisely and succinctly, since today's concepts no longer coincide with Aristotle's concepts. Even in the Middle Ages, the philosophers who understood him had the greatest difficulty in saving him from misunderstandings. While the Greek word nous was correctly translated as intellectus agens, the pantheistic philosophers of Arabism made the wildest leaps with concepts that can only be correctly interpreted if one sees their full significance for human nature and which are terribly distorted if one reads into them a nebulous pantheism.

If we now turn to the second epoch of philosophical development, as indicated, it can of course only be adequately characterized if we show the whole course of philosophical development from the first wrestling of Aristotle, then show how in German philosophy, in Leibniz and Wolff, a remarkable elaboration of this struggle came about, and how, in Kantianism, a skepticism arose out of opposition to Wolffianism. It would be necessary to show this if one wants to characterize the struggle of thought of Western humanity, if one wants to understand the triumvirate of Fichte, Schelling and Hegel from the perspective of German philosophy, if one wants to have an idea of what Fichte, Schelling and Hegel attempted philosophically at the turn of the eighteenth to the nineteenth century. Fichte attempted to provide his philosophy of the ego out of Kantianism. However, anyone who studies the emergence of Fichteanism out of Kantianism sees that Kantianism was not the actual cause, but that the actual cause lay in Fichte's nature. Thus, I would like to characterize Fichteanism as a separate entity. In line with the now self-aware humanity, Fichte sets out to grasp the self. It is not easy to descend into this abyss. Therefore, do not think that it would ever occur to me to be harsh to those who do not understand Fichte and distort him. I understand every misunderstanding, I understand every objection, however many there may be, I understand Schopenhauer, who called Fichte a windbag and a charlatan. This can be somewhat understandable, because what one needs to understand Fichte is so infinitely deep and abysmal that one can always find it forgivable when misunderstandings arise.

Human thinking does not always behave logically towards the self, and in this regard one can sometimes encounter grandiose illogic in literature, especially in scientific literature. Even today we can see the most fantastic leaps being made where it is a matter of finding the transition from an assertion that the ego makes to the application of this assertion to the ego itself. That is the logical foundation that matters. The transition from an assertion that the ego makes to the application to the ego must be grasped. Take the old school example: a Cretan says: all Cretans are liars. — If all Cretans are liars, then it cannot be true. Therefore, what the speaker asserts can only be taken into consideration if he himself is excepted, if he is left out. The moment you apply an assertion that an ego makes to the ego itself, you can no longer even get by with formal logic. Only, all these things that are repeatedly mentioned are not understood. Where the transition is from an assertion of the ego to the ego itself, people do not realize that this is a leap.

There is a philosopher and psychologist who traces everything a person does out of desire and passion back to ordinary sensual urges, more or less. He has also written about suicides among students. He tries to show that it was not the reasons imagined by the student that drove him to suicide, but that the real reasons lie in sensual and sexual life. This philosopher and psychologist now differentiates between the motive for an action and the pretext for it in countless areas, and he says that the pretext can be something quite different from the motive, that the motive lies in the sensual life. If only this world view could realize how it appears when applied to itself, if one were to say to this psychologist: Your reasons, everything you use to prove your point, are mere pretexts. But if we look at your sensual life, at your sinful desires, we see the real motives for what you write. You have grossly characterized the transition that is not brought to consciousness.

I wanted to give you a rough example to show how people today actually have so little logic in their bodies that they do not understand the Cretan. That was an example of the lack of understanding of this sentence. I wanted to show that one enters into very special areas when one penetrates from the entire remaining sum of our world view to what is the content of our I.

But now Fichte said to himself: Within the consciousness that man has at first, nothing can actually live, there can be nothing of which man is aware without his ego being involved. Whatever objects enter this consciousness must first take hold of this ego, they must touch the ego in some way. Without the things, beings or whatever entering into a relationship with this ego, the ego cannot know anything at all of what appears in the field of vision of our consciousness. Fichte therefore said to himself: the ego must be everywhere present, therefore there is nothing that we can find within our consciousness, within our thinking organism, that can lie outside the ego. Thus, for Fichte, a thing like Kant's “thing in itself” is an un-concept. And it is easy to see that this thing in itself is an un-concept. One would have to try to imagine this thing in itself. So one should imagine that which lies outside of imagination. Can you imagine that which lies outside of your imagination? It is impossible to imagine that.

What I have said in a few words was what Fichte felt as a powerful impulse in his soul. Everything must be grasped by the tentacles of the ego, the ego is the great agent—and there can be nothing else within our experience—that must grasp everything. But then the question arises, and Fichte is aware of it: How is it that the ego constantly has things around it that it is clear it did not create itself? Nothing should enter the field of consciousness in which the ego is not involved. And yet the ego finds that there are a lot of things that it has not made. These are the fundamental points where Fichte has drawn attention to something that only modern theosophy can fully understand. He draws attention to this by saying: There is an activity of the ego that we usually overlook. In somnambulism, we have an activity that originates from the I but is not encompassed by conscious thinking. In somnambulism, we see an activity of the I that is more comprehensive, more all-encompassing than what one can initially grasp with the ordinary waking consciousness of the I. Fichte descends to an activity that is an activity of the ego but does not fall into the realm of thinking, and which can be imagined, while an 'ego in itself' cannot be imagined as it is an absurdity. But that which corresponds to the ego and is of the same nature as the ego activity is that which can also be grasped inwardly by the ego because it is of a nature more akin to the ego. Thus Fichte points to an external world of which the ego is aware that it did not make it, but in which it can still recognize itself as a comprehensive ego, as an absolute ego - in contrast to the relative ego - that it is part of this external world. In this way, Fichte points beyond the ego to the I. This is the great advance in the field of philosophy, and with this advance something has happened that goes beyond Cartesius, beyond the “cogito ergo sum”. The “cogito ergo sum” is something that proves the existence of the ego in thinking, whereas in Fichte's characterization, the existence of the ego arises from the will, and that is the essential thing. Everything that Fichte could muster of cognitive powers is compressed into the point of the ego. And that is why he was the one who could understand that everything in the world can be grasped starting from the ego.

What I have outlined here is what Fichte presented in Jena in 1793/94. If you want to understand his philosophical struggle in statu nascendi, the best way to do so is to take a look at the first version of his “Wissenschaftslehre” (Science of Knowledge), the 1794 edition, which still shows his entire philosophical struggle. Thus the philosophical horizon was established, so to speak, and the mind was raised to a certain height. The starting-point was there, the vanishing-point of the perspective was established.

The next person to stand at this point and attempt to sketch out a picture of the world was Schelling. Schelling did something that is quite understandable for anyone who can see into the essence of this matter, but which cannot be understood for our present time with the usual concepts. Schelling said to himself: Well, our great teacher Fichte — Schelling was his most brilliant student — has led us up to this point, but now the soul must be given content. Schelling had to go beyond the one-sided psychological understanding of the “I am”; he had to expand the “I am” into a world, as it were. He could only do this by showing that in the way one perceives the “I am”, one can perceive even more. He referred to the so-called “intellectual intuition”. What is this intellectual intuition? This so much misunderstood intellectual intuition is nothing more than the awareness that one can stand at the location of the “I am”, but does not have to remain there, but that one can see something that is perceived in the same way as the “I am”, and the content of this perception is present in intellectual intuition. This intellectual intuition has been very much denied.

Thus, in Schelling we have a knowledge of nature and spirit worked out in the manner of the knowledge of the ego. One must indeed have an organ for it if one wants to go into such things as those expounded by Schelling. This applies in particular to his thoughts about light. It is easy to refute everything that can be found in Schelling; it is much easier to refute him than to understand and justify him. It is the same with Hegel. It is easy to refute Hegel, but for those who want to understand Schelling and Hegel, the point is not to refute them, but to understand what they wanted. Hegel was a student of Fichte and a contemporary of Schelling. He tried, in his turn, to continue what emerged on the horizon to which Fichte had raised people, only in a different way than Schelling. Hegel did not allow for an intellectual view. He wanted to present what every person can find without an intellectual view, just by honestly and sincerely taking this point of view. It became clear to Hegel that everything that underlies a thing, a being, is given to us in the way of “I am”. Let us understand correctly what was going through Hegel's mind. He wondered why concepts and ideas should have any significance for the nature of things, correspond to any truth, if what we experience in our minds, what our minds go through in developing concepts, is not what things are originally based on, if that is not the objective way of things? So Hegel's point of view becomes one that must be characterized in such a way that one says: Man can initially approach things in such a way that he forms all kinds of opinions and thoughts about them, and then go from the opinions that he forms about external sensuality to the pure subject.

Hegel set down these thoughts in his monumental work “Phenomenology of Spirit”, published in 1807. This work was completed in 1806, at the moment when the cannon thunder of the Battle of Jena was heard around Jena. There Hegel was in Jena and wrote the last sentence. There Hegel knew how to find the way to such a point of view where everything subjective is no longer considered, where subject and object are no longer considered, but the spirit manifests itself everywhere in the objective course of things. In the ideas and concepts, the spirit has made itself identical with the inner course of things.

Those who cannot bring themselves to understand that these things must be understood in this way will not be able to understand Hegel's philosophy, Hegel's logic. For Hegel, it is a matter of excluding all “subjective reasoning”. You should not add anything to how one concept is linked to another, but rather let the concepts fit together, as they naturally grow out of one another and are linked to one another. It is a surrender to the structure of the conceptual world that Hegel's logic wants to be. How one concept develops from another is the essence of Hegelian dialectics.

To enter into Hegel's logic is to take on one of the most difficult endeavors of human thought. And that is why the usual result occurs when people tackle Hegel's logic: it is too difficult for them. And I can assure you: in the days before the critical edition of Hegel's works was published, when only the old Hegel edition was available, you could tell from the library that this edition had been read very little. The fruit of it could then be found in the lectures; the lecturers knew nothing. It is difficult to study Hegel's logic, but I would like to say a few words about what you get out of it if you study it. I can't give an overview of Hegel's philosophy today, but I can hint at what you get if you engage with it. If you have engaged with it, you have been educated to be rigorous in the application of concepts.

When you follow the steps from the abstract concept of being through the nothing, the becoming, the existence, through unity, number and measure in Hegel's logic, when you let all these concepts, which are strictly and organically structured in Hegel's logic, take effect on you, then you get into your soul that you say to yourself: Oh, how powerless much of what is said within humanity about spiritual things is. One learns to use the concept in the sense in which it really belongs in logic. That is what one gets used to through becoming acquainted with this logic. Consider how all kinds of concepts are used, picked up from our literary and scientific work. In the field of theology, something should be felt of this rigor in thinking. Here, the arbitrariness of “subjective reasoning” prevails the most, the arbitrariness of concepts that have been picked up here or there.

Hegel then moves on from the “Science of Logic” to what he calls natural philosophy. This has been much ridiculed, but little understood. If you look at things spiritually, you come from logic to natural philosophy. You should let the phenomena speak for themselves, no longer speculate, but let the phenomena express themselves as they are mirrored in the concept. Therefore, one cannot help but let nature itself speak. One must unfold the inner activity, just as one has unfolded it for logical dialectics. But this is a book with seven seals, and I can fully understand that Helmholtz – whom I admire as a natural scientist – when he read Hegel's natural philosophy, said: This is pure nonsense.

It is part of the process that one first acquires the conscientious logical-intellectual responsibility towards the spiritual facts, as one can develop it through Hegel's logic. Hegel has achieved many things that modern philosophy has no understanding for. The mechanical concepts into which one brings ordinary earthly events are to be used only for earthly processes in the sense of Hegel's natural philosophy; the finite mechanical concepts lose their meaning when we ascend to the regions of heaven. There Hegel moves from finite to absolute mechanics and shows in a thorough, astute manner how this is something completely different from what must be called Newtonian mechanics.

A great deal could be gained by wanting to understand Hegel. Of course, from the point of view of the time, his views are sometimes highly contestable, but even then one can be clear about how each individual point is meant. However, it must be clear that most of it was published from notes taken by students. I would therefore like to emphasize that from the outset one should bear in mind the principle that much of what is in it has been said differently by Hegel. Regarding what goes out into the world from notes, I can say that I myself have experienced what can come out of transcribed lectures! Nevertheless, anyone who is able to do so will recognize a great achievement in Hegel's natural philosophy.

From this outpouring of the spirit into the individual things of nature, Hegel then moves on to the spirit's return to itself. He distinguishes three areas: the “spirit in itself,” the beginning; the “spirit for itself,” the spirit that is spread out in nature and must be perceived for itself; and the “spirit in and for itself.” This is the actual philosophy of mind, the “philosophy of mind”.

From the field of political philosophy, Hegel particularly developed the philosophy of law. If you consider what has been achieved later, you can say that there is still much to be gained from this Hegelian philosophy of law. Hegel was a personality who had an intense Aristotelian sense and therefore wanted to understand everything in Aristotelian reasonability first. That is why he placed at the forefront of his philosophy of law the proposition that there is a rational starting point for all problems. It is easy to refute Hegel, even by action; someone need only do something stupid, and he has the refutation. But then you can see that Hegel is not interested in clever refutations. Hegel developed philosophy in the strictest, most disciplined thinking, and this discipline of thought can be acquired through Hegelism. It is also understandable that the height of this point of view cannot be grasped so easily. Therefore, it is understandable that the great, in many respects extraordinary poet Grillparzer, when he received Hegel's philosophy, was terribly horrified. He said:

“You may teach us the divine thinking prophetically,
but, my friend, you are surely destroying the human thinking.”

You can see that the spiritual things here are so elevated that great minds who do not understand Hegel can be excused. They need not be thought of as idiots. But it must be retorted that the greatest discipline can be found in Hegel's philosophy. The lack of this intellectual discipline can be found in all subsequent philosophers. It is painful for anyone who has a concept of this difficult thought activity to see the arbitrariness of scientific and especially philosophical literature. It is terrible what impossibilities are experienced by those who have been educated in Hegel. It is terrible what those who have studied the highest thought structures that Hegel has created must go through.

We can be sure that humanity will one day grasp what was presented yesterday in the theosophical lecture. Hegel will be forgotten, as Aristotle was. Hegel is forgotten today. What is presented today as a renewal of Hegelianism is a chapter we prefer not to talk about. Even if the intellectual struggles of the triumvirate of Fichte, Schelling and Hegel are forgotten today, the mind will have to be worked through with this intellectual struggle, just as in the Middle Ages Catholic Revelation was worked through with Aristotle. Hegel's philosophy is something that must be grasped from the starting point of our present into the near future. Those who have realized this can withstand all the devastating things that can come from the present, they can see that these devastating things are only the reverse side of what is emerging today as the future and how the seed of what must come is revealed in this reverse side.

It is truly distressing to see how quickly the level of thinking has fallen. It behoves the theosophist to cast his gaze on the fields of pure thinking. I would love to give lectures of this kind everywhere to establish a firm, secure basis for Theosophy, if only there were time and I could justify it to the necessity of Theosophy progressing more quickly.

When we approach the great theosophical truths that speak to the most fundamental human feelings, as given in spiritual science, we should be aware that we must not shirk rigorous thinking. We should be aware that there must be nothing theosophical that cannot stand up to the strictest scrutiny of a philosophical consciousness. We should make it our ideal not to say anything that cannot withstand the strictest necessity of reason.

With a shrug of the shoulders, our present-day generation remembers the time when a philosophical wave swept through the whole of German intellectual life. The powerful current of the times, which seized the minds at the end of the last century and the beginning of this century and boldly set itself the highest conceivable tasks, is currently regarded as a regrettable aberration. Anyone who dares to contradict the "fantasies of Fichte" or the "insubstantial thoughts and word games" of Hegel is simply portrayed as a dilettante "who has as little idea of the spirit of modern natural science as he does of the solidity and rigor of the philosophical method". Only Kant and Schopenhauer find favor with our contemporaries. The former succeeds in seemingly deriving from his teachings the somewhat sparse philosophical chunks on which modern research is based; the latter, in addition to his strictly scientific achievements, also wrote works in a light style and about things that need not be too remote even for people with the most modest intellectual horizon. But for that striving for the highest peaks of the world of thought, for that impetus of the spirit that paralleled our classical artistic epoch in the scientific field, there is now a lack of sense and understanding. The alarming aspect of this phenomenon only becomes apparent when one considers that a permanent turning away from that intellectual direction would be for the Germans a loss of their self, a break with the spirit of the people. For that striving arose from a deep need of the German essence. It does not occur to us to want to deny the manifold errors and one-sidedness that Fichte, Hegel, Schelling, Oken and others committed in their bold undertakings in the realm of idealism, but the tendency that inspired them should not be misjudged in its grandeur. It is so appropriate to the people of thinkers. Not the lively sense for the immediate reality, for the outside of nature, which enabled the Greeks to create their magnificent, imperishable creations, is characteristic of the Germans, but instead an unrelenting urge of the spirit for the basis of things, for the seemingly hidden, deeper causes of the nature that surrounds us. While the Greek spirit lived in a wonderful world of forms and shapes, the German, who withdrew into himself and had less contact with nature and more with his heart, with his own inner being, had to seek his conquests in the realm of pure thought. And that is why it was German how Fichte and his followers approached the world and life. That is why their teachings were so enthusiastically received, that is why the whole life of the nation was gripped by them for a time. But that is also why we must not break with this school of thought. Overcoming the errors, but natural development on the foundation laid at that time, must become our watchword. It is not what these minds found or thought they found, but how they faced up to the tasks of research that is of lasting value. They felt the need to penetrate into the deepest secrets of the mystery of the world, without revelation, without experience limited to chance, purely through the power inherent in their own thinking, and they were convinced that human thinking was capable of the impetus necessary for this. How different are things today? We have lost all confidence in thinking. Observation and experience are regarded as the only tools of research. What is not tangible is considered uncertain. There is no understanding for the fact that our thinking can look deeper into the workings of the world than all external observation is capable of, without hanging on the shackles of the senses, relying purely on itself. One renounces any solution to the great riddles of creation and wastes endless effort on detailed research, which is of no value without great, guiding points of view. The only thing we forget is that with this view we are approaching a point of view that we believe we have long since overcome. For the rejection of all thought and the insistence on experience is, more deeply understood, quite the same as the blind faith in revelation of the religions. For what is the latter based on? But only on the fact that truths are handed down to us ready-made, which we must accept without having to weigh up the reasons in our own thinking. We hear the message, but we are denied insight into the reasons. It is no different with blind faith in experience. According to the naturalists and the strict philologists, we should merely collect and organize the facts and so on, without going into the inner reasons. Here, too, we should simply accept the finished truths without any insight into the forces behind the phenomena. Believe what God has revealed and do not search for the reasons, says theology; register what takes place before your eyes, but do not think about the causes behind it, for that is in vain, says the latest philosophy. And only in the field of ethics, where have we got to! The common thread that runs through the thinking of all the minds of the classical period of our science is the recognition of free will as the supreme power of the human spirit. This recognition is what, properly understood, makes man alone appear to us in his dignity. The religions which demand of us submission to the commandments which an external power gives us, and which see in this submission alone the moral, diminish this dignity. It is not appropriate for a being at the highest stage of organic development to submit without volition to the paths marked out for it by another; it must prescribe for itself the direction and goal of its activity. To obey not commandments but one's own insight, to recognize no power of the world that would dictate to us what is moral, that is freedom in its true form. This view makes us the masters of our own destiny. Fichte's meaningful words are borne by this conception: "Break down all upon me, and you earth and you heaven, mingle in wild tumult, and all you elements, - foam and rage, and in wild struggle wear away the last little sun-dust of the body which I call mine: - my will alone with its firm plan shall hover bold and cold above the ruins of the universe; for I have seized my destiny, and it is more lasting than you; it is eternal, and I am eternal like it." What was the basis of German idealistic philosophy: breaking with dogma in the field of thought, breaking with commandment in the field of action, must be the unalterable goal of further development. Man must create happiness and satisfaction from within himself and not let it come to him from outside. Pessimism and other similar diseases of the times arise purely from the inability to rely on an energetic self and to work powerfully from there. One does not know how to set oneself specific tasks in life that one could cope with, one dreams oneself into vague, unclear ideals and then complains when one does not achieve what one actually has no idea about. Ask one of today's pessimists what he actually wants and what he despairs of? He does not know. Don't think that I'm referring to Eduard von Hartmann's pessimism, which has nothing in common with the usual lamentation about the misery of life. (How highly I regard Hartmann's world view can be seen from the introduction to the second volume of my edition of Goethe's scientific writings. Kürschner's German National Literature.)

In spite of all the progress we have made in the most diverse fields of culture, we cannot deny that the signature of our age leaves much, very much to be desired. Our progress is for the most part only in breadth and not in depth. But only progress in depth is decisive for the content of an age. It may be that the abundance of facts that have penetrated us from all sides makes it seem understandable that we have momentarily lost our view into the depths over the view into the breadth; we only wish that the broken thread of progressive development will soon be tied up again and that the new facts will be grasped from the spiritual height once gained.

What we are about to consider now is completely outside the scope of anthroposophical considerations. It is only indirectly related to it, and is intended to be a purely philosophical consideration. The direct connection is that it is often claimed that anthroposophical spiritual science cannot stand up in the forum of science, that it appears like pure dilettantism that a serious philosopher should not engage with. It will now be shown that it is not anthroposophy that is amateurish, but philosophy.

At present, philosophy is a wholly unsuitable instrument for elevating oneself to anthroposophy. Let us first orient ourselves in philosophy. Let us see how philosophy has developed historically. Then we want to subject the hereditary evil to a certain consideration. We want to show how philosophy today suffers from the fact that at a certain time all philosophical thinking became entangled in a spider's web, and is therefore incapable of gaining a broader perspective in relation to reality.

We must face the fact that all the history of philosophy begins with Thales. In more recent times, attempts have been made to extend philosophy backwards, that is, to go beyond Greek philosophy. People speak of Indian and Egyptian philosophy. Those who do not construct an arbitrary concept of philosophy say that an important period did indeed begin with Thales. If we ask what it is that intervenes in human evolution, what was not there before, we must say: it is conceptual thinking. It was not present before. This is characteristically different from everything that was there earlier. In the past, only what the seer had seen was said. In Plato, the gift of prophecy still predominates. The first conceptual thinker, whose system is no longer based on the old gift of prophecy, is Aristotle. In him we have the purely intellectual system. Everything else was preparation. The gift of living and thinking in pure concepts begins to find its most outstanding expression in Aristotle. It is no mere coincidence that Aristotle is called the “father of logic”. To the seer, logic is revealed at the same time as seeing. But to form concepts, one needed not only his logic, but also the fact that in the following period the revelations of Christianity were re-shaped into thought formations with Aristotelian logic.

This Aristotelian thinking spread both to the Arab cultural area in Asia, to Spain and to Western Europe, as well as to the south of Europe, where Christianity was influenced by Aristotelian thinking. Anyone observing the 7th to 9th centuries can see that Christian teachers, like anti-Christian elements, expressed their teachings in Aristotelian form, and this remained so until the 13th century.

We will see in a moment what the focus of Aristotelian thought is. In the middle of the Middle Ages, Thomas Aquinas spread the so-called Thomistic philosophy; it is based on Christian revelation and Aristotelian logic. The Christian teachings were not taught in a strictly adhered form of thought, but it was intended to show that these teachings could also be defended in Aristotelian forms of thought, against the Arabs and their students, such as Averroes, who also thought in these forms of thought. They wanted to show how one could use the correctly understood Aristotle not for Arab teachings, but for Christianity. They wanted to refute the objections of the Arab thinkers; hence the zealous study of Thomas Aquinas. At that time, Aristotle dominated all of science, including, for example, medicine.

Now we have to characterize what the earlier scholasticism had of Aristotle. The thinking at that time was quite different from today's. If you compare it with what was done at that time, you have to say: in terms of content, life was poor then. The tremendous inventions were only made later. The essential thing about that time is the strictly trained thinking. Today people laugh at the strict definitions of scholasticism. But when you compare it to today's arbitrary understanding of all concepts, then you first feel the benefit of that view that there must be an understanding of the concepts. It takes a long time to define the concepts, but then you are working on solid ground.

In order to be able to orient ourselves further, we have to go into a few of Aristotle's concepts. He was a good interpreter for Christianity, even from the point of view of anthroposophy. A few concepts should show how sharply Aristotle thought. Aristotle distinguishes knowledge according to sense and intellect. The senses perceive this rose, this person, this stone. Then the intellect enters. It breaks down into an understanding of matter and form. All things contain matter and form. These two concepts take us a long way. Aristotle sees matter and form in every single natural thing that the senses perceive: consider a wolf. It eats nothing but lambs; then it consists of the same matter as the lambs, but a wolf will never become a lamb. What makes the two different is the form. We have the form of the lamb and the wolf. He identifies the underlying form with the genus lamb and the genus wolf. Aristotle makes a clear distinction between the genus and the generic concept. When we are confronted with a flock of lambs, we form the generic concept. What our concept determines in its form is an objective thing outside us, just as if we were to imagine the prototypes of the forms spreading invisibly throughout the world, spurting out the individual genera into which the indifferent matter is poured. Everything around us is based on the generic; for Aristotle, the material is indifferent.¹

With the scholastics, Albertus Magnus, we find what underlies the external entities. The earlier scholastic distinguishes universals before things, in things and after things. Albertus Magnus says about this: the universals before the thing are the thoughts of the divine entities. There we have the genus. These thoughts have flowed into the things. When man encounters things, he forms the universals according to the thing, which is the conceptual form. In this whole description of the development of thinking, there is only talk of sensible things. He identifies the outer sense with the “sense”. Everything else that is there is a concept to him. The generic concept is not identical to the genus. The whole thing is because people had lost the ancient gift of seeing, so that a philosophy could arise.

An old sage would not have understood at all how to make distinctions in this way, because he would have said: With the gift of prophecy, one can perceive the genus. It was only when the gift of prophecy dried up that the actual science emerged. It was only when man was left to his own devices that the necessity arose to develop a thinking art. Scholasticism arose under the influence of this important principle. In ancient times, the spiritual worlds were still accessible to man. Now the scholastics could refer all the more to Aristotle, because he spoke of the gift of prophecy: Ancient reports tell us that the stars are gods, but the human intellect can no longer make anything out of them. But we have no reason to doubt it.

Scholasticism replaced what was seen with revelation. It placed what was to be taught in the once inspired word. At first, humanity must become accustomed to developing the theory of thought in relation to external things. Where would it end if it were to roam into all possible supersensible things? We want to deny ourselves that; we want to educate ourselves in the things that are around us. So says Thomas Aquinas. When objects come to us, they are given to us for the senses. Then we are compelled to form concepts of them. Behind the things, divine powers rest, which we do not dare approach. We want to educate ourselves from thing to thing. Then, by strictly adhering to the sensual, we finally come to the highest concepts. So we adhered to two things: to the revealed teaching material, which is given in the scriptures, to which thinking does not approach. It has been taken over by the seers. Furthermore, they adhered to what was being worked out in the sensory reality. With this, we only just reach the Bible and Revelation. For a time, the higher world is withdrawn from human thought. But there is no final renunciation of the supersensible worlds. When man has conquered the sensual world, he can get a presentiment of the supersensible worlds. Man can free himself from the physical body and have revelation directly. But first the intellect must be trained. When the human being forms concepts about external things, these concepts depend on the human organization in form, but not in content. In scholastic epistemology, it is never considered that something unrecognized may remain. The objective enters into knowledge; only the form in which concepts are formed depends on the organization of the human mind.

This earlier scholasticism is called realism. It believed in the reality of content. Scholasticism then became nominalistic. People have lost touch with the objective external world. They said: the mind forms concepts; they are not real. The concepts became mere names; they were only abstractions. What is to be achieved with the concept is lost. Therefore, the nominalists had to say to themselves: Sensual reality is spreading before us. We summarize it as our minds will. Nothing real corresponds to our concepts. One must guard the actual revelation against human thinking and renounce all understanding. This view reached its climax in Zuther's saying that human reason is powerless, the deaf, blind, foolish fool who should not presume to approach the teaching material.

This is an important turning point. Luther condemns Aristotle. From this point on, the suggestion that gave birth to Kantianism goes. Kant was a Wolffian until the end of the sixties, like almost all philosophers at the time. Wolff taught: Reason is able to make something out about the supernatural worlds. He distinguishes between rational and empirical science. It is possible to gain a certain amount of human knowledge. The a posteriori knowledge has only relative validity.

[Gaps and deficiencies in the transcript. For a description of Wolff's philosophy, see the lecture of March 14, 1908 in this volume.]

At first, Kant also followed in Wolff's footsteps. Hume disturbed him. Hume developed skepticism. He said that no wall should be built between a priori and a posteriori knowledge. All knowledge is knowledge of habit; there is no rational knowledge. Kant awoke from his dogmatic slumber. But he could not completely go along with it. He said: Hume is right; we gain everything from experience. Only mathematics is an exception; what it says has absolute validity. He therefore advocates two things. First, there are absolutely certain judgments a priori. Second, all knowledge must be gained from experience. But experience is governed by our judgments. We ourselves give laws to experience. Man confronts the world with his organization of thought. All experience is governed by our form of knowledge. Thus Kant linked Hume with Wolff.

Now man is ensnared in this philosophical web. Fichte, Schelling and Hegel are exceptions. Individual natural scientists also follow this path. Helmholtz says: What man has before him is spun out of his organization. What we perceive of the thing is not even an image, but only a sign. The eye makes only perceptions on the surface. Man is completely ensnared in his subjectivity. The thing in itself remains unknown. – It had to be so. Nominalism has lost the spiritual behind the surface. The human interior has been enervated. The inner working becomes purely formal. If man wants to penetrate behind reality, his inner being gives him no answer. The whole of 19th-century philosophical thinking does not find its way out of this. Hartmann, for example, does not go beyond the idea. A simple comparison can clarify this. A seal contains the name Müller. Nothing, not even the smallest material thing, can come from the brass of the seal into the sealing wax. Consequently, nothing objective can come from the seal; the name Müller must form itself out of the sealing wax. The thinker is the sealing wax. Nothing passes from the object to the thinker. And yet the name Müller is in the sealing-wax. Thus we take the content out of the objective world, and yet it is the true content that we take out. If one takes only the material, it is true: nothing passes from the seal to the stamp and vice versa. But as soon as one sees the spirit, the higher principle, which can embrace the objective and the subjective, then the spirit passes in and out into the subjective and the objective. The spirit carries everything over from objectivity into subjectivity. The ego is objective and subjective in itself. Fichte showed that. -²

The entire epistemology of the 19th century resembles a dog chasing its own tail. You end up with: I have created everything. The world is my imagination. Everything has spurted out of my inner being. I also have the right to kill everything.

Kant uses very convoluted terms. Kant says: I have destroyed knowledge to make room for faith. He has limited knowledge and established a practical faith because everything is spun out of the subjective.

Kantianism is the last result of nominalism. Today the time for it has expired. Man must train his thinking again in reality in order to form real concepts; then we can recognize the supersensible truths again. The scholastic attitude is time-bound, the spiritual had to be withdrawn from thinking for a time. Now the revealed teaching material must again become teaching material to be examined. We must again examine everything with reason. It is a light with which one can penetrate everywhere. One can investigate, understand, grasp everything. Reason is the lowest form of clairvoyance, but it is a seeing, hearing, and intelligent power. Thus we extricate ourselves from the net. Philosophy must free itself from this net and allow itself to be fertilized by logic to achieve true thinking.

• 1. See note
• 2. The rest of the lecture was only recorded by the transcriber in fragmentary notes, as the following sentences show.

A journey through the most recent German poetry

Yesterday I set about to show how far from reality present-day thinking is, when in circles working on international questions it is already forgotten that the founding of a League of Nations was, in accordance with Wilson's ideas at the time, deemed possible only if peace were concluded without victory on either side. That you may see how exactly Wilson, on 22nd January, 1917, set out these conditions for the League, I should like today to read you the relevant passage from his speech. He said: “The chief thing in what has been said is that there must be peace without victory. It is not pleasant to have to say this. I may perhaps be allowed to state my own views about it and to emphasise that no other conception has entered my mind. I am trying merely to face the facts and to do this without shielding myself by hiding anything. A victory would mean that peace would be forced upon the vanquished, that the vanquished have to bow to the conditions of their conquerors. Such conditions could be accepted only with profound humility in circumstances of necessity and with insufferable sacrifice, and there would remain a smarting wound, a feeling of resentment, a bitter memory. A peace resting on such foundations could not be lasting, it would be like the house built on sand. The only lasting peace is a peace established between equals, a peace that in its whole essence rests on equality and the common benefit derived from a common act of good-will. The right attitude, the right mood of feeling, is as necessary between the different nations for enduring peace as for the just settlement of obstinate strife over questions of countries, races or peoples.” [ Note 1 ]

At that time this was held to be the condition for the founding of a League of Nations. And if we think clearly, it must be said that the moment this peace without victory is not forthcoming, all talk at present of founding a League ought to be abandoned, for it can no longer offer any prospect of success. But this has not happened. People do not think in accordance with reality, they think abstractly, letting their thoughts run on in the way they have begun, quite indifferent as to whether these thoughts have been based on suppositions likely to come true or not.

This is simply an outstanding example of the thinking that has brought the world so much misery. And unless we see that in place of this thinking estranged from reality there must be one that can penetrate reality, the situation will certainly not change in a way that is healing for mankind. This must be understood both in the great concerns of the world and also in the ordering of everyday life. For the measures affecting the daily life of individuals are closely connected with the most important affairs of mankind. The mention, therefore, must continually come before our souls: What then, today, could produce real change?

We know that what we call men's acceptance of Spiritual Science, is not merely a question of being convinced that there is a supersensible world. That is the what. But the important thing is that whoever in the true sense takes into his thinking what today can be told in the right way about the supersensible world, out of present spiritual revelation, should arrive at a certain how in his thinking. By this his thinking should gradually be transformed, in such a way that he really gets a sense for, an interest in, what truly and actually takes place in the world. It does not merely depend on what we acknowledge through Spiritual Science, but on how through it our thinking is transformed. The question therefore must touch us particularly closely why at present there is so strong an opposition to Spiritual Science.

Now yesterday I asked you to notice how everything that can be said about this opposition has to be related at the sane time to all that can arise under the influence of the threefold social organism. I said that once it has come about that the spiritual sphere has been placed on its own feet, so that it becomes independent of the economic sphere and of the life of the State, then in a comparatively short time Spiritual Science will become widespread. But one might go deeper into the question and ask: Why are people so little inclined to recognise necessity for the proper emancipation, of the life of the spirit and for its being placed on its own foundation? The reason is that this spiritual life has in recent times taken on a certain form that holds men back from directing their gaze to the supersensible world. One might say that the present sad experiences are in a certain way a kind of punishment for the necessary misunderstanding of spiritual life which has recently arisen. It must be realised that unless future human thought is led in a social direction, man will never get anywhere. We are taught this by facts against which it is foolish to contend. On the other hand it must be realised by penetrating deeply into things that any kind of socialism that is not at the same time spiritualised will prove the undoing rather than the salvation of mankind. The best groundwork for this penetration is a thorough understanding of the fact that socialistic thinking has proceeded out of modern thinking as a whole.

I have already given indications of this. Today we will gather up many of the things we have already heard. I have pointed out that there is something lurking in spirits like Fichte, when they direct their thoughts to the social sphere, that leads to an outlook quite similar to what is found today in Bolshevism. I tried to express this by saying that Johann Gottlieb Fichte would have actually been a genuine Bolshevist had he put his social theory into practice. He himself had so much spirituality that he could let his Bolshevist ideas appear in print (Der Geschlossene Handelsstaat) without becoming dangerous for mankind.

So little inclination exists today to penetrate into the real content of things that it is never noticed how in this book Fichte is a true Bolshevist.

Nevertheless it is in Hegel that modern thinking comes to expression with its particular characteristics. And Karl Marx isis again dependent upon Hegel though in a most remarkable way. Even if it leads us into the heights of abstraction I should like just to speak of what is characteristic in Hegel's mode of thinking. In the confusion of the last four-and-a-half years many inapt things have been said about Hegel. Why should we not for once be able to go objectively into the matter of his thinking?

Now let us consider how Hegel thought about the world, how he tried to direct his gaze to the revelations of the mysteries of the world. Hegel put what he had to say about his actual fundamental being of the world quite distinctly in various places—most distinctly of all in his Encyclopedia of Philosophical Knowledge. Let us observe in a quite ordinary way what sort of world-outlook we here find expressed. Hegel's world-outlook falls into three parts. The first part he called Logic. Logic for him, however, is not the art of subjective human thinking but the sum of all ideas active in the world itself. Hegel sees indeed in these ideas not only what flits ghostlike through human heads. That for him is only the perception of the idea. Ideas for Hegel are in a way forces working in the things themselves. And for the being of things Hegel goes no farther back than to the ideas, so that he wishes in his logic as it were the sum of all ideas contained in things. The ideas not appearing creatively in nature, the ideas that do not come to reflection in man and are not recognised by man, are ideas in themselves which are working in the world as ideas. I know quite well that perhaps you may not become much wiser from what I am saying; but people have long been maintaining that they do not gain much wisdom from Hegel, for they are unable to imagine the existence of a pure tissue of ideas. In this pure tissue of ideas, however, Hegel sees God before the creation of the world. For Hegel, God is a sum, or better, an organism, of ideas in the form in which these ideas existed before nature arose and before man was evolved on the foundation of nature. Thus Hegel tried to represent ideas in pure logic—that is, God before the creation of the world. God before the creation of the world is therefore pure logic.

Now we might say that it would be very profitable for man's life were someone to set forth all the ideas there were, irrespective of whether they are ideas of a living God or ideas only hovering in the air like a spider's web—but at that time there was no such thing as a web—that this would be of great advantage to the human soul. If, however, you take this pure Hegelian logic, you again find nothing but a web of ideas; and this is the reason it is so seldom done. A beginning is made with the most meagre concept, that of pure being. Then it rises to the non-being, then to existence, and so on. You come therefore to the sum of all ideas man has had about the world, about which he does not usually reflect. He finds it tedious to place before his soul all that follows from pure being up to the appropriate building-up of the organism, apart from any external world. You then get a sum of ideas but only of abstract ideas. And man's living feeling will naturally take up a certain attitude towards this sum or this organism of abstract ideas. How anyone might protest that this is a pantheistic prejudice of Hegel's, this belief that ideas as such are there. I take up the standpoint that before the creation of the world a God would have been there who might have had these ideas and created the world in accordance with them. Try, however, for once to imagine the reason and the soul-life of a God who would have nothing in Him but these Hegelian ideas, and would have reflected only about what lived between being and suitable organisation, who would have had in Himself only ideas of the most external abstractions. What would you say on being expected thus to picture the soul-life of a God? You would never be able to understand how a God could be so poor in His divine reasoning as to think only in such abstractions! Nevertheless for Hegel the sum of these abstract ideas is God Himself, not merely God is understanding but God Himself before the creation of the world. The essential thing is that Hegel in reality never gets beyond abstract ideas, but looks upon these abstractions as divine.

Then he goes on to his second point—nature. Here too, I might give you certain opinions as a kind of definition of the way Hegel progresses from the idea, that is, God before the creation, to nature. Probably, however, you would not gain much here either, were you to keep to your ordinary way of thinking. According to Hegel, logic contains the idea in itself; nature contains the idea in its external form. What therefore you contemplate as nature is also idea, actually nothing but what is contained in logic, in the form, however, of being outside itself or having a different being. Then Hegel examines nature in its pure mechanism to the point where it displays its biological, plant, animal relations. He tries everywhere, as far as nature is an open book to man, to point to ideas in her, in the light, in warmth, and in other forces, that of gravity and so forth. Hegel makes up for the significance lost through his abstractions, by his own powers of perception and imagination. But this perception and imagination of Hegel's sometimes endanger the understanding of what he actually wanted. I once tried to vindicate Hegel to a university professor, a philosopher with whom I was an friendly terms. I defend Hegel, you know, because I count it fruitful to defend everything positive rather than always to swear by one's own opinion, roundly criticizing everything else. Anything at all good I always defend. That is the positivism of Spiritual Science. But that time, in the defence of Hegel, I went to work the wrong way. The friend in question said: “O leave me in peace about Hegel. One can't take a man seriously who has nothing to say about the comets except that they are an eruption in the sky!”—Naturally such a statement, that the comets are some sort of rash in the heavens rather like measles, must be taken in its whole context.

Now after Hegel has given a sort of catalogue of all the concepts and ideas incorporated in nature, he goes on to his third point, the spirit. In the spirit he sees the idea in its own being, that is, not only as it was before the creation of the world, not only in itself, but as it is apart from all else. The idea lives in the human soul, then objectively outside, and then for itself apart, for man. Since man is the idea because all is idea, this is the idea for itself alone. Hegel again tries to follow up the idea as it is present first in the souls of single human individuals, then—if I skip over something—in the State. In human souls the idea is inwardly active; in the State it is again objectified, living in laws and administration. In all this the idea lives, having become objective. It then goes on developing objectively in world-history, State, world-history. Thus in world-history everything is registered as ideas which brings about the further evolution of mankind on the physical plane. Nothing living as ideas in souls, in the State, in world-history, goes beyond the physical plane, nor does it make man aware of there being a spiritual world. For the spiritual world is for Hegel only the sum total of the ideas living in everything, first in the being in itself before the creation of the world., then apart in nature, and in the separateness of the human soul, in the State and in world-history.

After this the idea is developed to its greatest height, in the last moment of its development comes, as it were, to itself, in art, religion and philosophy.

I Logic: Idea in itself
II Nature: Idea in its external being
III Spirit: Idea in its separateness

Soul—State—World-history
Art—Religion—Philosophy

When the three, art, religion, and philosophy, arise in the life of man they stand above the State and world-history; nevertheless they are simply the embodiment of pure logic, the embodiment of abstract ideas. Those ideas existing before the creation of the world are represented in art in a physical image; in religion through a conception in accordance with feeling; and in philosophy the idea in its pure form appears finally in the human spirit. Man comes to fulfillment in philosophy, looks back on everything else that mankind and nature have produced in the way of ideas. He now feels himself filled with the God who is indeed the idea that looks back on the whole of its previous becoming. God sees Himself in men. Actually in man the idea is contemplating itself. Abstraction contemplates abstraction.

Nothing more ingenious can be imagined than these thoughts about human abstraction, if one bears in mind that this ingenuity is in the sphere of abstraction. And one can conceive nothing more inwardly daring than what holds good in the following—Ideas are what is highest, there is no God beyond ideas, ideas are God, and you, O soul of man, you are also an idea, only in you the idea is brought to its separateness, it contemplates itself.

Thus you see that we swim in ideas, we are ourselves ideas, everything is idea—the world in its extremest form of abstraction! It is of very great importance that just at the turn of the eighteenth century, and on into the nineteenth, there should have arisen a spirit who had the courage to say: It is only one who grasps the abstract idea who grasps reality; there is no higher reality than the abstract idea.

In the whole of Hegel's philosophy, from beginning to and, there is no path that leads into the supersensible world. For Hegel there is no such path; and if amen dies, because he is actually idea, in the sense of Hegelian philosophy he goes into the universal stream of world ideas. It is only about this stream of world ideas that anything can be said. There is no single concept that deals with the supersensible—this is just what is so great-minded about the Hegelian philosophy. Everything that meets us in Hegel's philosophy—in icy abstraction, it is true—is itself supersensible, even though abstractly supersensible. This proves itself entirely unsuited. to take up anything supersensible; it shows itself to be fitted only to enter into what is physical. The physical is spiritualised by the superphysical but only in a truly abstract form. At the same time everything supersensible is rejected because the sum of ideas given from beginning to end is related only to the physical world. Thus, I might say, the supersensible character of Hegel's ideas does not become very apparent, for this superphysical is not related to what is superphysical but only to what is physical.

I should particularly like to draw your attention to how the tendency of modern thinking is expressed. in its fundamental rejection of the supersensible; not, however, in superficial materialism but in the highest force of spiritual thinking. Hegel is therefore no materialist; he is an objective idealist. His objective idealism upholds the view that the objective idea is itself God, the founder of the world, the founder of everything.

Whoever thinks out a spiritual impulse of this kind, experiences in his thinking a certain inner satisfaction, which makes him overlook what is lacking. But what is lacking is felt all the more strongly by anyone who is not the original conceiver of the system but only reflects upon it. I have indicated this in my book Vom Menschenrätsel (The Riddle of Man).

Now imagine that a man—not like Hegel—spins thoughts in this way, with an inner supersensible impulse, but that this thinking is taken up by a different head having a sense only for the material—as was the case with Karl Marx. Then this idealistic philosophy of Hegel's becomes the motive for rejecting everything supersensible, and with it everything idealistic. And so it happened with Karl Marx. Karl Marx adopted the form of Hegel of thought. But he did not consider the idea in the reality; he considered the reality as it goes on shinning itself out as mere external material reality. He continued Hegel's impulse and materialised it. Thus the basic nerve of modern socialistic thought has its roots in the very pinnacle of modern idealistic thought. This personal contact that at the same time had to do with the history of the world, this contact of the most abstract thinker with the most material of all thinkers, was an inner necessity but also the tragedy of the nineteenth century; it has been in a certain way the change over of the spiritual life into its opposite.

Hegel continues in abstract concepts. Being is changed into non-being, cannot reconcile itself with non-being and therefore merges into becoming. Thus the concept progresses through thesis, antithesis, synthesis, to a certain inner triad, dealt with by Hegel in a grandiose way in the field of pure idea. Karl Marx carries over this inner triad, sought by Hegel for logic, nature and spirit in the inner flexibility of ideas, into outer material reality. He says, for example: Out of the modern economic and capitalistic form of human community, under private ownership, there has developed, as there developed with Hegel nothingness, non-being out of being, the formation of trusts, the capitalistic socialisation of the economy of private capital. With the increased amassing of industrial plant by the trusts, the private ownership of capital changes into its opposite. There arise associations that are the reverse of individual economy. This is a changing over into the opposite, the antithesis. Then comes synthesis. Once again the whole is changed as nothingness is changed into becoming; and the merging of private economy into the economy of trusts changes into something still greater—the trust economy ands in the communal ownership of the means of production. This purely external economic reality progresses in the triad. Here Karl Marx has been thinking exactly after Hegel's model, only Hegel in his thinking moved in an element of ideas while Marx lived in a weaving and living of external economic reality. So, side-by-side we find the extremes, one might say like being and non-being.

Now you can argue as long as you like about idealism and realism, spiritualism and materialism, but nothing comes of it, you get nowhere. What sustains man can be found only by thinking in the sense of the modern trinity, with man in the centre, the luciferic extreme on the one side, on the other the ahrimanic extreme. Ahrimanic materialism, luciferic spiritualism, as the two extremes, man keeping the balance. If you wish for the truth you can neither be idealist nor realist; you must be one just as much as the other. You must seek the spirit with such intensity that you find spirit even in the material; you must penetrate what is material so that through the material you find the spirit. That is the task of the modern age; no longer to wrangle about spiritualism and materialism but to find the balance between the two. For the two extremes of the luciferic in Hegel and the ahrimanic in Marx are outlived. They were there, they were manifested. Now there must be found what will bring agreement, and this can be done just by Spiritual Science. Here, it is true, we have to rise as did Hegel to the heights of pure thought, but this pure thought must be used for breaking through to the supersensible. We do not have to find logic, that is, an organism of ideas, which can be related only to the world of the senses; but at the point where logic has been found we must pierce through what belongs to the senses and reach the supersensible. Hegel was unable to succeed in thus breaking through, and because of this men was thrown back.

In a certain way it depends upon the heights and purity reached by modern thinking that socialism should have appeared without any reference to what is to any degree spiritual. And the present—day difficulty in adding spiritual thinking to socialistic thinking is bound up with the very ground of mankind's inner path of development. The whole connection must be seen into, however, for us to gain the strength to find the way out of the situation. The pursuit of science as it is now carried on in our universities has certainly not led to this.

Not physically, but where thinking is concerned, Hegel has squeezed out man as a lemon is squeezed till it is dry; and this squeezed out lemon of a man is then only another idea. You sit there in your chairs; in the sense of Hegel's philosophy you are pure ideas; there are not bodies sitting there, not souls, but ideas, for each of you bears en idea within him. And this was already there an abstract idea before the creation of the world. Then each one of you in yourself is body, nature—the idea outside itself is sitting there on those chairs. Then again within you is the idea in its separateness. You yourself grasp this idea that id you. Think what a shadow you are: Only think how squeezed out you are while you sit there as the idea in itself, outside itself, and apart from itself—but always just idea!

Now in the sense of Karl Marx you are quite different from ideas. Just because he has passed through Hegel's method of idealism you are for him an animal that has become two-legged, as you appear outwardly in the order of nature. The other extreme!

In face of what exists in man's evolution must we not make an attempt to give him back his manhood again even in our outward view of him? This means not taking man's nature to be merely universal idea nor animal-men, but really individual man in his own envelope, man who stands at the highest point in nature, who has within him a soul-being and is the goal of a spiritual world. The conception of man must be brought back to this real man. I have tried to do this in my The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity. That is the actual historical statement of the problem which I had before me when I was constrained to write The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity. The most highly developed animal enveloping man cannot be free, neither can there be freedom for the shadowy man—the idea in itself, outside itself, the idea in its separate being, for that is built up by the necessity of logic. Neither of these is free. Only the real man is free, the man who is the balance between the idea that breaks through to the actual spirit, and external materiel reality.

Therefore in the The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity an attempt was even made to base moral life not upon any kind of abstract principle, but upon inner moral experience, which at the time I called moral imagination, that is, upon what, expressed figuratively, individual man draws from the well of intuition. Kant set up the categorical imperative that runs: Act in such a way that the maxim of your action can be a guiding line for all men: Put on a coat that will fit every man.—The maxim of the philosophy of freedom runs: Let your action be such that it flows to you in a precise concrete moment, in an individual concrete moment, out of your highest human forces, out of the spirit.

Through moral philosophy in this roundabout way we arrive at spirituality. And for modern mankind it might be a way of coming to an understanding of the spiritual world, were men first to see into something that, after all, is not hard to grasp, namely, that what is moral has no support if it is not conceived as part of the supersensible and spiritual. From beginning to end Hegel's logic is a sum of abstract ideas. But ultimately what harm is there in my looking upon the whole of nature, upon every visible thing, as simply a scheme of ideas? It becomes harmful, however, when what spurs us on as an impulse to the moral, does not come from the spiritual world. For if it does not come from the spiritual world it has no true reality and is more noise and smoke issuing from animal-man. When animal-man dies nothing is left. In Hegel's philosophy there is no single concept related to anything that would still be there for man when he has gone through the gate of death, or that could have been there before he came through the gate of birth. Hegel's philosophy is great, but great as a point of transition for the nineteenth century. To recognise Hegel in his greatness leads us to carry him further, to make a passage through what stands in our way when we come to pure thought, to pure logic, to the idea in the abstract—a passage through to the supersensible world. Being still a follower of Hegel, can only be represented as the personal enjoyment of a few twisted minds who, at the beginning of the twentieth century set out to prove their great spirituality by going as far as it was permissible to go in the first decade of the nineteenth century. For we have to learn not only to wish to live abstractly as men, but to live wholly with the times, to live in the evolution of the time. We come to what is really living by refusing, to be absolute, otherwise we cannot cooperate in the sense of human evolution. The important thing is that we should work together for human evolution.

Raphael was great. The Sistine Madonna is a very important artistic creation. Actually it could be estimated justifiably only by someone who, if a painter produced a Sistine Madonna today, would consider it a bad picture. For it is a question of not taking anything as absolute, but of understanding how to place oneself into the great association of all mankind. And the necessity lies before us today of not simply taking up an absolute attitude in the world, as might be done formerly, but of feeling ourselves consciously in the epoch into which we are placed in a certain incarnation. Strange as it may sound, a right estimation of the Sistine Madonna could be made only by someone who was able to condemn the picture out of the modern attitude of mind, had it been painted today. For nothing has an absolute value; things derive their value from the place where they stand in the world. Up to now people have been able to make do without this insight; but from now on it is essential. It is not so particularly profound. In his epoch the discoverer of the Pythagorean theorem was a great man. Today should anyone invent or discover this theorem it would be interesting but nothing more. It would also be interesting were anyone to paint the Sistine Madonna today. It is however not the time for this; it in not what must happen at the point of evolution in which we now stand.

You see what a new form thinking must take, what a socialising of thought there must be to experience jointly with other men is the important thing for today. To most people this will seem distinctly strange. Today however we find ourselves compelled to make a fundamental change in our thinking, to come to really new thoughts. We are no longer able to live with the old thoughts. If men go on spinning these old thoughts, the world will simply tumble about their ears. The salvation of mankind depends on men being able to free themselves from the old thinking and really wish for new thinking. Spiritual Science is a new thinking. The very reason it is so shunned is that fundamentally it is at variance with the old habits of thought. It is only those men who perceive the necessity for a new thinking who will be able to have a true feeling for Spiritual Science generally, and also for its revelations concerning individual spheres of the life of soul, for example, concerning the social question.

Something else is making the present age unhealthy, namely that men have come to think differently in their subconscious, but out of historic obstinacy they suppress this different thinking sitting in their subconscious, and for this they will have to suffer the consequences. Present historical evolution is in many respects the punishment for man's obstinacy in suppressing what lies in his subconscious and clinging in an artificial way to what for centuries he has maintained. We should not take those thinkers who are illogical and love the easy way, we should take the logical thinker of the epoch that is past and gone and learn from him where we have gone astray. It is not the thinker who makes concessions who is characteristic of this period that is past, but the thinker who clings fast to the standpoint of what is old. When, many years ago in the Austrian Upper Chamber, all the lovers of abstraction and the advanced Liberals were speaking of progress and liberalism, and of how religion was to be transformed to suit modern demands—when they used the cliches of all those who take up the cudgels, from Gladstone down to the valiant parliamentarians of the continent—the following rejoinder was made by Cardinal Rauscher, a Churchman keeping fast to the old, with nothing modern about him. He said: The Catholic Church knows no progress; what was once true is true for all time; nothing opposing it in the way of innovation that claims validity, has any right to it!—This was no modern spirit but a finished product of bygone times. And the same is true of Pobedonosceff (Russian Jurist and Statesmen) the only man who in an intelligent way partaking of genius has condemned the whole modern culture of the west, because in his opinion it really led to nothing. It was only possible to uphold the old order to which the bourgeoisie of today have become accustomed if people were willing to believe the world to be formed as Cardinal Rauscher, and Pobedonosceff himself, would have it. Had the world not been fed on the twaddle of Nicolas II but with the stark Principles of Pobedonosceff, it goes without saying that the present war would not have taken place. But on the other hand there is this to be said: One could no have built on Pobedonosceff's ideas, because the reality went in another direction. And now it is a question of following the reality, not by making concessions, not by behaving in the way most spirits have behaved during the second half of the nineteenth century or in the first two decades of the twentieth, but by resolving to think something as different from the earlier thought as the devastation of the world war, in its other negative side, is different from what went before. From this terrible calamity, of which it is constantly said that there has never been anything like it in the course of history, we should learn to grasp thoughts of which we can say that there has never been anything like these in the course of history.

Thus you see it is incumbent upon man to make a great resolution. What out of instinct will unconsciously bring this resolution to fruition makes itself felt as socialism. The world will never get out of chaos till a sufficient number of men combine material socialism with the socialism that is ideal and spiritual. This is the existing condition of things. Salvation cannot come to historical social evolution so long as man fails to reach the point of being able to see the immediate reality beneath his nose. This should become the inner practice, as it were, of the soul which can originate from the impulses of Spiritual Science. I should like to try to point you continually to this inner practice of the soul. The more strongly you feel the importance for our time of what I have been trying to put forward in these considerations, the more freely will you move in the spiritual stream which receives its life from the Spiritual Science of Anthroposophy.

Notes:

1. Not Wilson's original English. Translated from the German.

When my “Philosophy of Freedom” was printed in 1894, I personally handed the book over to Eduard von Hartmann. At the time, I was very keen to engage in a scientific discussion with this man about the fundamental views on which the structure of ideas in my book was based. My expectations in this regard seemed justified, since Eduard von Hartmann had been truly friendly in his approach to my literary work from the very beginning. Every time I sent him my writings published before the “Philosophy of Freedom,” he delighted me with often extensive written responses. In 1889 I had the opportunity of a long conversation with him, the subject-matter of which was the epistemological questions agitating the philosophical world at that time. And I expected much from a discussion of my book, particularly because, on the one hand, I was a warm admirer of the idealism of his philosophy, an attentive observer of his treatment of important vital questions, and, on the other hand, his decided opponent in all essentials of the epistemological foundation of a world view. In one important point, however, I was in complete agreement with him: the philosophical ethics of unselfish devotion of the human soul to the historical process of humanity as an ethical motive. Of course, I could not be taken in by the naive belief that I could convert the creator of the “Philosophy of the Unconscious” to my points of view in fundamental matters. But Eduard von Hartmann was always inclined to respond in a truly loving way to views that were contrary to his own; and his responsiveness led to those fruitful confrontations that are desirable in the field of world-view striving. Besides, even then it was far from my mind to make the estimation of a personality dependent on the extent to which I could be an opponent or a supporter of his ideas. The esteem in which I held Eduard von Hartmann led me to ask him in 1891 to accept the dedication of my small writing: “Truth and Science. Prelude to a Philosophy of Freedom”. He agreed. And so I was able to have the words printed on the second page of this writing in all sincerity: “Dr. Eduard von Hartmann in warm admiration dedicated by the author.” This happened despite the fact that Eduard von Hartmann had to completely reject the content of the writing from the point of view of his worldview.

I was not mistaken in my expectations regarding a discussion of the “Philosophy of Freedom.” For a few weeks after the presentation of the book, Eduard von Hartmann not only honored me with a friendly letter, but he also sent me the copy of the book that he had received, with his comments and objections, some of which went into great detail. He had entered them almost page by page into the book. At the end he had summarized his overall impression in a few sentences. He had been so sharp in his judgment that I could see in his words the fate that my world view would have to meet within contemporary thought. By concluding the present remarks with a discussion of this judgment, it will be possible for me to show how, from the beginning of my literary career, I strove to establish the epistemological foundation for what I later attempted to present in a series of writings as “spiritual science” or anthroposophy and on whose development I continue to work to this day.

In the 1880s, when I began my writing career, people were confronted with a world view that had basically blocked any access to a world of true reality for human cognition. It seemed necessary to me, above all, to strive for a scientifically sound epistemological basis in matters of world view. The opinions one encountered in this field at that time could be characterized from a myriad of contemporary writings. The one of the poet and philosopher Robert Hamerling shall be cited here. This again for the reason that I found myself in the most fundamental epistemological questions in complete opposition to this personality, whom I highly revered and esteemed. Robert Hamerling was writing his significant “Atomistik des Willens” (Atomism of the Will) at that time. Right at the beginning of this book, we encounter the following thought: “Certain stimuli produce a smell in our olfactory organ... Thus a rose has no scent unless there is a smeller to smell it. Certain vibrations of the air produce a sound in our ear. Thus a sound has no existence unless there is an ear to hear it. The shot of a gun would not resound if no one heard it... Anyone who grasps this will understand what a naive fallacy it is to believe that in addition to the view or idea we call “horse”, there is another, the real “horse”, of which our view is a kind of image. Outside of me there is only – let me repeat it – only the sum of those conditions which cause an idea to arise in my mind that I call a “horse.” Hamerling adds to these sentences: “If this does not make sense to you, dear reader, and if your ‘mind’ rears up before this fact like a shy horse, then do not read a single line further; leave this and all other books dealing with philosophical and scientific matters unread; for you lack the necessary ability to grasp a fact impartially and hold it in your thoughts.” The thoughts that Hamerling expresses were so much a part of the thinking habits of epistemologists in the second half of the nineteenth century that as early as 1879 Gustav Theodor Fechner wrote about them in his book “Die Tagesansicht gegenüber der Nachtansicht” (“The Day View Compared to the Night View”): “They are the thoughts of the whole thinking world around me. No matter how much and about what they may quarrel, philosophers and physicists, materialists and idealists, Darwinians and anti-Darwinians, orthodox and rationalists all join hands in it. It is not a building block, but a cornerstone of today's world view... What we think we see and hear in the world around us is all just our inner appearance, an illusion that one can praise oneself for, as I read recently; but it remains an illusion. Light and sound in the external world, ruled by mechanical laws and forces and not yet penetrated by consciousness, are only blind, mute waves that cross the ether and the air from more or less agitated material points, and only when they reach the protein coils of our brain, or rather only when they reach a certain point of it, do they become visible through the spiritualist magic of this medium. and air, and only when they encounter the protein coils of our brain, or rather only when they encounter a certain point of it, are they transformed by the spiritualist magic of this medium into luminous, sounding vibrations. The reason, essence, and details of this magic are debated; the fact is agreed upon; and of all the theories of thought and knowledge, in which philosophy now wants to exhaust and empty itself, as if it wanted to give birth to another philosophy, , none of them leads to doubting the correctness of this fact, unless it is to declare the doubt insoluble or to shatter the world into tiny specks of dust that illuminate only themselves but not the world."

For anyone who has kept his thinking far removed from such considerations, they may appear to be worthless fantasies. In the individual sciences and in activities more closely related to everyday life, they do not arise in such a way that one would have to take them into account. But anyone who wants to have a say in matters of world view must deal with them. In the second volume of my book “The Riddles of Philosophy” – in the section “The World as Illusion” – one finds a detailed presentation of the most essential forms in which these considerations have been expressed in recent times. Thirty years ago it would have been fruitless to place oneself in the current direction of thought with a Weltanschhauung without taking a stand on these considerations. For it was on this ground that judgments were formed as to whether a world-view had a legitimate starting-point or not. Gideon Spicker, who wrote a stimulating work on 'Lessing's World-View' and then published the two significant volumes 'From the Cloister to the Academic Chair' and 'At the Turning-point of the Christian World-Period', wrote to me wrote to me in 1886, after the publication of my “Epistemology of the Goethean World View”, that it would be necessary to finally stop constantly pondering the question of how and within what limits man can know. It would be better to start to really know something. But the observation of the time conditions in this field made it seem hopeless to come up with a worldview that did not advance its secure epistemological foundation.

The most diverse formulations of Schopenhauer's sentence: the world is my representation, presented itself at that time in all possible variations. Volkelt, the subtle dissector of Kant, the judicious author of the epistemological book “Erfahrung und Denken” (Experience and Thought), wrote at that time: “The first fundamental proposition that the philosopher must clearly realize is that our knowledge extends to nothing more than our ideas. Our perceptions are the only things we directly experience; and precisely because we experience them directly, not even the most radical doubt can rob us of the knowledge of them. By contrast, knowledge that goes beyond our perceptions – I am using this term here in the broadest sense, so that it includes all mental activity – is not protected from doubt. Therefore, at the beginning of philosophizing, all knowledge that goes beyond the representations must be explicitly presented as open to doubt.” Such assertions had become self-evident truths for philosophers in the last third of the nineteenth century; they still are for many today who are to be heard when it comes to judging whether a world view is based on legitimate ground or not.

One must familiarize oneself with the way of thinking that leads to such assertions if one wants to have a say in matters of world view in our time. It seemed to me that such familiarization showed that the fundamental questions about the process of knowledge must be posed quite differently from the way they are by many epistemologists, if the train of thought that is taken in such questions is not to lead to one standing at the end before a self-dissolution of that train of thought. To seek clarity in this area, clarity about the value and justification of the ideas under consideration, was the task I sought to solve through the research presented in my booklet “Truth and Science” and in my book “Philosophy of Freedom”. “Truth and Science” was intended as a ‘philosophizing consciousness coming to an understanding with itself’. This is also the title of the work as printed in the doctoral dissertation, which already contains its essential content.

At the time when I wrote these writings, I believed, and I still believe today, that the fundamental error of many epistemologies is to be found in the fact that the process of knowledge is viewed quite wrongly at its very root. One first thinks of the opposite: man and the world. One imagines that the world has an effect on man. The latter receives impressions from it. From these impressions, the world view in which he lives imaginatively is formed. From this thought, it is an almost natural progression to the opinion that everything that occurs within human consciousness is only a product of consciousness. Any thing or being of an external world lies beyond consciousness; for only when that which remains unknown, unconscious, of the external world is taken up by consciousness does it become a human world view. What things or beings are like outside of consciousness is a question that goes beyond the human capacity for knowledge. This mode of thought appears in various philosophies, tied up in tangles of concepts that are often thought of in such an unoriginal form, so far removed from their source, that some who have become accustomed to them cannot help but consider anyone who wants to reduce these concepts to their simple form to be a dilettante.

It cannot be denied that the train of thought described appears so firmly established from a certain point of view that an objection becomes almost impossible, and that Hamerling could say with some justification that anyone who does not accept this view lacks the ability to perceive a fact impartially and to retain it in thought. My aim was not to refute or criticize this way of thinking in the usual sense. I did not ask the question: to what extent is this line of thought incorrect? Rather, I tried to answer the other question exhaustively: to what extent is it correct? And it became clear to me that the epistemologists had made the mistake of not completing the answer. They had stopped halfway. A further progression leads from their starting point to different results than those asserted by them. Anyone with a sense for certain more subtle laws of human logic and psychology knows that one very often fails to recognize the truth value of a thought by allowing oneself to be captivated by refuting ideas that arise prematurely in the soul. In this way, fatal traps arise for an unbiased way of looking at things, which can prevent one from arriving at the right cognitive goals. In contrast, it is often better to immerse oneself in a train of thought and follow its course. If one does not lose sight of the scope and range of the individual thought processes, and does not allow oneself to be overwhelmed by the striving for one-sidedness that so many trains of thought entail, then even one-sided and imperfect thoughts can lead to the realm of truth.

Starting from such premises, I tried to arrive at epistemological results. What I found seems to me to be completely certain even today. The way man is placed in the world, he must admit to himself that his world picture is given to him as the essence of his organization demands. In this fundamental idea one can know oneself to be in agreement with Kantians, neo-Kantians, physiologists and their followers. One can profess with them: what appears to human consciousness occurs in such a way as the conditions of the perceiving human being demand. If one now clings to this idea and develops it one-sidedly in thought, without connecting with the reality of the human being in the progression, then one blocks access to a true grasp of the capacity for knowledge. I have tried to explain this in detail in my two aforementioned writings. The first form in which man's world view is given can be followed by a spiritual process in man's inner being that transforms this world view in that it deprives it of its subjective character and allows cognition to submerge into the objective. One can, of course, be of the opinion that this process is only a continuation, a kind of mental or methodical revision of the given world view. If one holds this view, then one will be able to see nothing in all that can occur within consciousness other than a kind of effect of consciousness of the true reality that remains beyond knowledge. I have now endeavored to show that cognition, in its further progress, overcomes the form given to the world picture by the human organization at its first appearance. However, in order to be aware of this fact, cognition must reach an activity that I have called that in pure thinking. This activity is denied from the outset by many epistemologists. But one could, to paraphrase Hamerling, say: anyone who does not accept the idea that an activity is possible in the inner thought process that moves only in inner, living thought processes and that uses the ideas of the sensory world no longer as images but only as illustrative images, lacks the ability to grasp a fact impartially and to hold it in thought. My epistemological research led to the conclusion that man, through his organization, first cuts himself out of true reality into an incomplete one, so to speak, and that he reintroduces himself into this true reality in the further progress of his knowledge, in the elevation to pure thinking. The aim of the books I have mentioned is to show that human knowledge remains unrecognized if we try to view it as an image that is indifferent to the objective process of the world, and then have to admit that it cannot be one. Knowledge presented itself to me as a developmental process rooted in the human being, leading this being from one stage to another. In his cognitive interaction with the external world, the human being initially experiences his own nature incompletely, in that his organization presents him with an incomplete picture of reality. In the further inner experience, he transforms the first form of his world view, which is an incomplete image of the external world, so that he stands in the true reality with his inner experience. Seen in this light, the process of knowledge appears different at its very root than it does to many epistemologists. A comparison can clarify what is being considered here. It is, of course, meant with all the limitations that apply to all comparisons. One can examine the substantial nature of the cereal plant with regard to the extent to which cereals are suitable as human food due to the substances they contain. This investigation can be carried out in a very scientific way. And yet, from a certain point of view, it can be said that such an investigation says nothing about the nature of the plant, insofar as this is expressed in the processes that lead to growth, flowering and fruit bearing. However, the inner nature of the plant is revealed in these processes. And what the plant becomes as human food is, in a sense, a side effect of the plant's nature. The human cognitive process is, by its very nature, a link in human development. What happens through it has its significance within this development. The fact that at a certain stage of this development, a reflection of the external world also comes to light in the activity of thoughts and ideas is not peculiar to the cognitive process in a similar sense to the entry of grain into human nutrition. If one thinks one must pose the main question of epistemology in such a way that one only looks at it: to what extent is cognition a reflection of an external world, then one shifts the consideration just as one would shift the main botanical question if one wanted to seek the essence of the plant through food chemistry.

In the final section of the second volume of my “Riddles of Philosophy” one finds a “sketchy presentation of an anthroposophy” (written in 1914). In it I attempt to show that a completely organic progression must be conceived, from the basic epistemological views of my writing 'Truth and Knowledge' and my 'Philosophy of Freedom', to the content of 'spiritual science' or 'anthroposophy', as I have further developed them. But anyone who reads these earlier writings of mine with an open mind will be able to see that the results developed in them have been obtained through purely philosophical research, and that therefore agreement with what is asserted in them is not dependent on the position that someone takes on the “spiritual science” I represent. In those books I consciously used only the means of thought and methodology that one is accustomed to finding in philosophical works. Thus it seems to me that the kind of research I call “spiritual science” has a secure philosophical foundation in my epistemological presentations, but that the philosophical judgment of this foundation can be kept quite independent of the spiritual-scientific superstructure. But for me there is a clear path from my epistemology to “spiritual science”. Anyone who is able to see without bias what kind of research underlies the content of my later books or the brief presentations in the first and fourth books of this journal will find that the possible epistemological difficulties are cleared up by my earlier writings.

In my spiritual scientific writings, I present those cognitive processes that lead, through spiritual experience and observation, to ideas about the spiritual world in the same way that the senses and the mind bound to them lead to ideas about the sensory world and the human life in it, then, in my opinion, this could only be presented as scientifically justified if it could be proved that the process of pure thinking itself proves to be the first stage of those processes by which supersensible knowledge is attained. I believe I have provided this proof in my earlier writings. I have tried to show in the most diverse ways that man, by living in the pure process of thinking, does not merely perform a subjective activity that is turned away from and indifferent to world processes, but that pure thinking is an event that leads beyond subjective human activity, in which the essence of the objective world lives. It lives in it in such a way that man, in true knowledge, grows together with the objective essence of the world. Anyone who is willing to consider my earlier writings impartially, including the introductory essay I wrote in the 1880s about Goethe's scientific writings in Kürschner's German National Literature, will feel the weight of the sentence I wrote in 1897 in my book 'Goethe's World View'. “He who speaks of the coldness of the world of ideas can only think ideas, not experience them. He who lives the true life in the world of ideas feels within him the essence of the world at work in a warmth that cannot be compared with anything.” In my recently published book, ‘The Riddle of Man,’ I have described the ‘seeing consciousness’ — in reference to Goethe's idea of the ‘contemplative power of judgment.’ By this I understand the human being's ability to bring a spiritual world to immediate contemplation and observation. My earlier writings treat pure thinking in such a way that it is evident that I include it among the activities of the “contemplative consciousness”. In this pure thinking I see the first, still shadowy, revelation of the stages of spiritual knowledge. Everywhere in my later writings one can see that I regard only those as higher spiritual powers of knowledge that a person develops in the same way as pure thinking. I reject as belonging to the domain of the spiritual powers of cognition every human activity that leads to mere thinking, and I recognize only that which leads beyond pure thinking. No supposed form of knowledge that does not recognize pure thinking as a kind of model and that does not, in the same sphere, possess the same level of deliberation and inner clarity as thinking that is sharp in its ideas, can lead to a real spiritual world. My position regarding the spiritual powers of human cognition, which presupposes the lawfulness of pure thinking for all cognition, placed me in a special position with regard to the kind of thinking that is sometimes called mysticism. If we define mysticism as a form of knowledge through which a person experiences their own being as connected to the essence of the world, then I must apply this definition to my own understanding of true knowledge. I must say that genuine mysticism can only be attained if the epistemological foundations that I believe I have developed are recognized. On the other hand, when I look at what is often referred to as mysticism and what precisely avoids the composure and clarity that characterize the thought process, then I see myself compelled to characterize such mysticism as I did in my book “Goethe's Worldview”: “Mysticism aims to find the source of things, the Godhead, in the human soul. The mystic, like Goethe, is convinced that the essence of the world will reveal itself to him in inner experiences. Only, immersion in the world of ideas is not considered the inner experience that matters. He has roughly the same view of the clear ideas of reason as Kant. For him, they stand outside the creative whole of nature and belong only to the human mind. The mystic therefore seeks to attain the highest knowledge by awakening special powers. He seeks to develop unusual states, for example through ecstasy, to achieve a higher kind of insight... The mystic immerses himself in a world of unclear sensations and feelings; Goethe immerses himself in the clear world of ideas. The mystics despise the clarity of ideas. They consider this clarity to be superficial. They have no inkling of what people feel who have the gift of immersing themselves in the living world of ideas. It freezes the mystic when he surrenders himself to the world of ideas.” This mysticism, which I have to characterize in this way, I must place far outside the realm in which I seek the powers of knowledge that open up the spiritual world. This mysticism drives the life of the human soul into a realm in which it becomes more dependent on the human organization than it is in ordinary sensory perception and in intellectual activity. But the true spiritual faculties of knowledge lead the life of the soul into a realm in which it acquires greater independence from the organization than in sensory perception and imagination, and which is entered with pure thinking even in its simplest form. The cognitive activity by which I think I am building the “spiritual science” has nothing in common with the dreamy, half-conscious soul-life of false mysticism. Unfortunately, the opponents and also those who want to be followers of this spiritual science all too often confuse it with false mysticism, although this confusion is that of a thing with its opposite. Those who do not cling to words and fashion arbitrary creations out of them will see everywhere in my writings where I am aiming at the relatively justified part of the definition of mysticism and where I am rejecting the confusions of false mysticism.

If the process of cognition is recognized as an experience of human development, then one can no longer admit the possibility of pointing to a reality that lies beyond all consciousness by means of mere logical conclusions or hypotheses, through concepts and ideas derived from the perceptions of the senses. One can then speak of a world that lies beyond the senses only in the sense that such a world reveals itself to the “visionary consciousness” in the same way as the world of the senses reveals itself to sensory perception. By making this view my own, I found myself in complete opposition to those philosophies that reject any experience of the realms of reality that lie beyond the sensory world and at most want to admit that there is a logical necessity to hypothetically assume a reality that is alien to consciousness. Within these philosophies, Eduard von Hartmann's “transcendental realism” occupies a particularly characteristic position. From his point of view, the given world picture of man, including all experiences attainable in thinking, appears as the result of the subjective human organization. But Eduard von Hartmann emphasizes the necessity, following from the nature of this world picture itself, to hypothetically conclude from the subjective, conscious to an objective reality, which, however, must be decidedly thought of as remaining in the field of the unconscious. In my “Philosophy of Freedom” I try to show that this is a mistaken way of arriving at a metaphysics. I strove for a unified world view and attributed the apparent dualistic form of it to the fact that man, in mere sensory perception, separates an imperfect form of this image from its whole essence, only to overcome this imperfection in the further progress of cognition. Eduard von Hartmann asserts an epistemological dualism that cannot be overcome by human consciousness and that makes all ideas about the nature of the world those that are conceived in terms of dualism. From my point of view, the metaphysical is that which is not unconscious by nature, but is only not seen by the bearer of consciousness as long as the powers of perception are not laid bare, which allow that which lies beyond sense perception to be experienced just as physical reality is for the senses. It hardly needs to be emphasized that the one who speaks in this way of the supersensible does not claim that with the exercise of the “seeing consciousness” all the secrets of the spiritual world are suddenly revealed to man. It is only that knowledge is extended beyond the sense world into a realm that offers explanatory foundations for this sense world and for human life in this world. The essential thing is to enter into the mode of existence of the spiritual, even if one must be convinced that the part of the spiritual world that can be recognized first is only a small area in its wide expanse. Nor should it be overlooked that the investigation of the details of the spiritual world truly requires no less care and scientific conscientiousness than that of the physical world.

In elaborating my two works based on epistemology, it seemed to me that the rejection of any metaphysics that was merely imagined and filled with content that could not be spiritually experienced was to be linked to Eduard von Hartmann's transcendental realism because I warmly approved of the way in which, regardless of this epistemological point of view, this philosopher was able to demonstrate the spirit in the form of the idea in all phenomena of the world and of life. What compelled me to always recognize Hegel's philosophy in its full value, and yet to lead my own understanding beyond it, applied to me in another respect to Eduard von Hartmann as well. In Hegel I saw how he had grasped the content of thinking in its spiritual reality, but was only able to hold it in such a form that thinking could not become the living initial link in a spiritual process of knowledge that opens up the supersensible world. In Hegel's system, the idea is spiritual reality; but as such it is only a means of expressing the sense-perceptible world and the life in it. Therefore, Hegel's philosophy has nothing to say about a spiritual world; its content is only the world of nature and history.

My position in relation to Hartmann's philosophy was that I was able to agree with his idealistic illumination of the sensory world and human life in it in many things; but that I had to see in his fundamental epistemological views not only a only a theoretical contrast to what I consider to be truth, but also a way of thinking that practically deprives human thought of the possibility of discovering and applying the cognitive powers of the “visionary consciousness” that lie dormant in the soul. That is why, in the second volume of my exposition of Goethe's scientific writings (in Kürschner's German National Literature) in 1887, I was able to write the following sentences about Eduard von Hartmann's idealistic illumination of the sensory and historical world with the utmost sincerity: “With his objective idealism, Eduard von Hartmann stands squarely on the ground of the Goethean worldview... He does not want to be a mere idealist. But where he needs something positive in order to explain the world, he does call on the idea for help... But not much is achieved by distinguishing between the conscious and the unconscious... But one must tackle the idea in its objectivity, in its full content; one must not only see that the idea is unconsciously effective, but what this effectiveness is. If Hartmann had stopped at the idea that the idea is unconscious, and had explained the world from this unconscious, that is to say from a one-sided characteristic of the idea, he would have added a new monotonous system to the many systems which derive the world from some abstract formal principle. And his first major work cannot be said to be entirely free from this monotony. But Eduard von Hartmann's mind is too intense, too comprehensive and penetrating to have failed to recognize that the idea cannot be grasped merely as unconscious; rather, one must delve into what one has to address as unconscious, one must go beyond this quality to its concrete content and derive the world of individual phenomena from it.

Since I was in such a frame of mind and in such scientific opposition to Eduard von Hartmann, his overall judgment of my “Philosophy of Freedom” seemed significant to me in 1894. Given the position that Hartmann's philosophy occupies in the intellectual world, it cannot seem offensive that I share this judgment, which was intended only for me at the time, here and discuss it. This may be considered all the more justified since it is clear from the above that I have a high regard for the personality and philosophical significance of Hartmann. At the time, I already foresaw in this judgment the difficulties that my world view would have to face within contemporary thought. All the confusion with other ways of thinking, which I myself reject and which my striving for is also thought to meet with in the unintentional – and now also intentional – combating of it: they were all basically anticipated in Hartmann's judgment. But I had before me the judgment of a personality whom I esteemed and whose scientific seriousness I could acknowledge, despite her rejecting my way of thinking. Eduard von Hartmann wrote: “In this book, Hume's phenomenalism, absolute in itself, is not reconciled with Berkeley's phenomenalism, based on God; nor is this immanent or subjective phenomenalism reconciled at all with Hegel's transcendental panlogism, nor is Hegel's panlogism reconciled with Goethe's individualism. There is an unbridgeable gulf between any two of these components. Above all, however, it is overlooked that phenomenalism leads with inevitable consistency to solipsism, absolute illusionism and agnosticism, and nothing is done to prevent this slide into the abyss of unphilosophy, because the danger is not recognized at all.” - What is it in my ‘Philosophy of Freedom’ that Eduard von Hartmann seeks to attack with this judgment? Absolute phenomenalism, as it was realized in Hume's philosophy, appears to have been overcome by the attempt to characterize thinking in such a way that, through this, the phenomenal character of the sensory world view is lost and it is made into an appearance of an objective world; Berkeley's subjective phenomenalism loses its justification in the face of this view , in that it is shown that in thinking man grows together with the objective world and that therefore the assertion loses all meaning that world phenomena do not exist outside of being perceived; in contrast to Hegel's Panlogism, thinking is seen as the initial link for purely spiritual human cognitive abilities, not as the final link of ordinary consciousness, which only reflects the sensory world in shadowy ideas; Goethe's individualism is developed by showing how the understanding of human freedom is only possible through a world view that is based on the epistemological foundations of the “Philosophy of Freedom”. Only when the objective essence of the world of thought is recognized and the soul connection of man with ethical motives as a supersubjective experience comes to light, can the essence of freedom be grasped. It is this understanding that I also tried to make culminate in the presentation of my book. The accusation of solipsism against my world view is unfounded because it assigns thinking its place in the objective course of the world, thus directly pointing to the means of knowledge that makes the fall into solipsism impossible. Only someone who misjudges the reality value of the living thinking that I characterize can fall prey to the mention of the danger of absolute illusionism and agnosticism in relation to my “Philosophy of Freedom.” And this happens unconsciously, because they are foisting their view of thinking onto me. If one sees only what Eduard von Hartmann sees in thinking, then, upon rejecting transcendental realism, illusionism and agnosticism do indeed result, whereas my view of thinking leads precisely to making all illusionism and agnosticism impossible through the power and scope of thinking. And at the end of his judgment Eduard von Hartmann senses that my fundamental epistemological view leads out of the conceptual as a mere reflection of the sensible and historical world. For him, all philosophy and all possible striving for a worldview ends at this point; for me, it is the point where human cognitive powers enter the world of spiritual science. He calls this the “slide into the abyss of unphilosophy”; I characterize it, as I did in my book “Vom Menschenrätsel” (The Human Riddle), as the ascent from ordinary to “visionary” consciousness.

I shall explain later on that my arguments concerning the world view of Friedrich Nietzsche and Haeckel, as they appear in my writings from the 1890s, are a direct continuation of the path that leads from my “Philosophy of Freedom” to the “spiritual science” or “anthroposophy” that I advocate. Anyone who is bent on finding contradictions and then constructing a system of contradictions — perhaps a very spiteful system — will easily find contradictions in the structure of a world view if that world view itself is not based on words and word definitions in a formulaic way, but seeks to draw from the fullness of life with all its contradictions. Such a contradiction-fisherman could indeed reproach the world itself with its contradictions. However, some opponents of my world view are clearly prevented from properly assessing what they call contradictions by their obvious lack of knowledge of the development of philosophical science. Attacks on my world view, even from dubious quarters, cannot appear incomprehensible to me, since I was confronted a long time ago with the judgment in question from a serious and highly esteemed source, and I saw myself confronted with all the difficulties that this world view must face in many circles.

It will be nothing strange to many among you that one can find if the word theosophy is pronounced nothing else than a smile with many of our contemporaries. Also it is not unknown to many that just those who demand scholarship or, we say, philosophical education in the present look at theosophy as something that one must call a dilettantish activity, a fantastic belief. One can find in particular in the circles of scholars that the theosophist is regarded as a type of fantastic dreamer who bears witness to his peculiar image worlds because he has never made the acquaintance with the bases of knowledge. You find particularly in the circles which consider themselves as the scientific ones that they presuppose easily that the theosophist is basically without any philosophical education, and even if he has also acquired it or speaks of it, it is a dilettantish, a picked up matter.

These talks should not deal with theosophy directly. There are enough others. It should be a discussion with the western philosophical education, a discussion how the scientific world behaves to theosophy, and how it could behave, actually. They should disprove the prejudice, as if the theosophist is an uneducated, dilettantish person with regard to science. Who has not heard often enough that philosophers of the most different schools—and there are enough philosopher schools—state that mysticism is an unclear view filled with all kinds of allegories and feeling elements, and that theosophy has not achieved a strictly methodical thinking? If it did this, it would see that it walks on nebulous ways. It would see that mysticism could root only in the heads of eccentric people. This is a well-known prejudice.

However, I do not want to begin with a reprimand. Not because it would not correspond to the theosophical conviction, but because I do not consider theosophy as anything dilettantish from my own philosophical education and speak, nevertheless, out of the depths of its conviction. I can understand absolutely that somebody who has taken up the western philosophy in himself and has the whole scientific equipment has it hard to see something else in theosophy than what is just known. For somebody who comes today from philosophy and science it is much more difficult really to familiarise himself with theosophy, than for that who approaches theosophy with a naive human mind, with a natural, maybe religious feeling and with a need to solve certain riddles of life. Because this western philosophy puts so many obstacles to its students, offers them so many judgments which seem to be contradictory to theosophy that it makes it apparently impossible to get involved with theosophy.

Indeed, it is true that the theosophical literature shows little of that which resembles a discussion with our contemporary science and which one could call philosophical. Therefore, I have resolved to hold a series of talks on it. They should be an epistemological basis of theosophy. You will get to know the concepts of the contemporary philosophy and its contents. If you look at this in a real, true and deep sense, you see—but you must really wait till the end—the basis of the theosophical knowledge following from this western philosophy. This should not happen juggling with expert dialectic concepts, but it should happen, as far as I am able to do it in some talks, with any equipment which the knowledge of our contemporaries provides us; it should happen with everything available to give something that can be experienced of a higher world view also to those who do not want to know it.

What I have to explain would not have been possible in another age to explain in the same way. But it has been necessary to look around, maybe just in our time, at Kant, Locke, Schopenhauer or at other writers of the present, we say at Eduard von Hartmann and his disciple Arthur Drews, or the brilliant theorist of knowledge Volkelt or Otto Liebmann, or at the somewhat journalistic, but not less strictly rational Eucken. Who has looked around there who has familiarised himself with this or that of the shadings which the philosophical-scientific views of the present and the latest past took on understands and conceives—this is my innermost conviction—that a real, true understanding of this philosophical development does not lead away from theosophy, but to theosophy. Just somebody who has argued thoroughly with the philosophical doctrines has to come to theosophy.

I would not need to deliver this speech unless the whole thinking of our time were influenced just by a philosopher. One says that the great mental achievement of Immanuel Kant gave philosophy a scientific basis. One says that what he performed to the definition of the knowledge problem is something steadfast. You hear that anybody who has not tackled Kant has no right to have a say in philosophy. You may examine the different currents: Herbart, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, from Schopenhauer up to Eduard von Hartmann—in all these lines of thought only somebody can find the way who orientates himself to Kant. After different matters were striven for in the philosophy of the 19th century, the calling resounds from Zeller in the middle of the seventies, from Liebmann, then from Friedrich Albert Lange: back to Kant!—The lecturers of philosophy are of the opinion that everybody has to orientate himself to Kant, and only somebody who does this can have a say in philosophy.

Kant dominated the philosophy of the 19th century and of the present. However, he caused something else than he himself wanted. He expressed it with the words: he believes to have accomplished a similar action like Copernicus. Copernicus turned around the whole astronomical world view. He removed the earth from the centre and made another body, the sun, to the centre which was once imagined to be movable. However, Kant makes the human being with his cognitive faculties the centre of the physical world view. He really turns around the whole physical world view. It is the opinion of most philosophers of the 19th century that one has to turn around. You can understand this philosophy only if you understand it from its preconditions. One can understand what has flowed from Kant’s philosophy only if one understands it from its bases. Who understands how Kant came to his conviction that we can never recognise the things “by themselves,” because all things we recognise are only phenomena who understands this can also understand the development of the philosophy of the 19th century, he also understands the objections which can be made against theosophy, and also how he has to behave to them.

You know that theosophy rests on a higher experience. The theosophist says that the source of his knowledge is an experience which reaches beyond the sensory experience. You can see that it has the same validity as that of the senses that what the theosophist tells about astral worlds et cetera is as real as the things which we perceive with our senses round us as sensory experience. What the theosophist believes to have as his source of knowledge is a higher experience. If you read Leadbeater’s Astralebene (Astral Plane), you think that the things are as real in the astral world as the cabs and horses in the streets of London. It should be said how real this world is for somebody who knows them. The philosopher of the present argues immediately: yes, but you are mistaken, because you believe that this is a true reality. Has the philosophy of the 19th century not proved to you that our experience is nothing but our idea, and that also the starry heaven is nothing else than our idea in us?—He considers this as the most certain knowledge which there can only be. Eduard von Hartmann considers it as the most natural truth that this is my idea, and that one cannot know what it is also. If you believe that you can call experience “real,” then you are a naive realist. Can you decide anything generally about the value experience has facing the world in this way? This is the great result to which Kantianism has come that the world surrounding us must be our idea.

How did Kant’s world view come to this? It came from the philosophy of the predecessors. At that time when Kant was still young, the philosophy of Christian Wolff had the mastery over all schools. It distinguished the so-called knowledge of experience which we acquire by the sensory impressions and that which comes from pure reason. According to him, we can get to know something of the things of the everyday life only by experience, and from pure reason we have things which are the objects of the highest knowledge. These things are the human souls, the free will of the human being, the questions which refer to immortality and to the divine being.

The so-called empiric sciences deal with that which is offered in natural history, in physics, in history et cetera. How does the astronomer get his knowledge? He directs his eyes to the stars; he finds the laws which are commensurate with the observations. We learn this while opening our senses to the outside world. Nobody can say that this is drawn from mere reason. The human being knows this because he sees it. This is an empiric knowledge which we take up from life, from the experience in ourselves, not caring whether we order them in a scientific system or not; it is knowledge of experience. Nobody can describe a lion from his very reason. However, Wolff supposes that one can draw that which one is from pure reason. Wolff supposes that we have a psychology from pure reason, also that the soul must have free will that it must have reason et cetera. Hence, Wolff calls the sciences which deal with the higher capacities of the soul rational psychology. The question whether the world has a beginning and an end is a question which one should decide only from pure reason. He calls this question an object of rational cosmology. Nobody can decide on the usefulness of the world from experience; nobody can investigate it by observation. These are nothing but questions of the rational cosmology. Then there is a science of God, of a divine plan. This is a science which is also drawn from reason. This is the so-called rational theology, it belongs to metaphysics.

Kant grew up in a time when philosophy was taught in this sense. You find him in his first writings as an adherent of Wolff’s philosophy. You find him convinced that there is a rational psychology, a rational theology et cetera. He gives a proof which he calls the only possible proof of the existence of God. Then he got to know a philosophical current which had a stupefying effect on him. He got to know the philosophy of David Hume. He said that it waked up him from his dogmatic slumber.—What does this philosophy offer? Hume says the following: we see that the sun rises in the morning and sets in the evening. We have seen this many days. We also know that all people have seen sunrises and sunsets that they have experienced the same, and we get used to believing that this must take place forever.

Now another example: we see that the solar heat falls on a stone. We think that it is the solar heat which warms up the stone. What do we see? We perceive solar heat first and then the warmed up stone. What do we perceive there? Only that one fact follows the other. If we experience that the sunbeams warm up the stone, then we have already formed the judgment that the solar heat is the cause that the stone becomes warm. That is why Hume says: there is nothing at all that shows us more than a sequence of facts. We get used to the belief that there a causal relationship exists. But this belief is only a habituation and everything that the human being thinks of causal concepts exists only in that experience. The human being sees a ball pushing the other, he sees that a movement takes place through it, and then he gets used to saying that lawfulness exists in it. In truth we deal with no real insight.

What is the human being considered from the knowledge of pure reason? This is nothing else—Hume says—than a summary of facts. We have to connect the facts of the world. This corresponds to the human way of thinking, to the tendency of the human thinking. We have no right to go beyond this thinking. We are not allowed to say that it is something in the things which has given them lawfulness. We can only say that the things and events flow past us. But the things “in themselves” do not show such a connection.

How can we speak now of the fact that something manifests itself to us in the things that goes beyond experience? How can we speak of a connection in experience that is due to a divine being, that goes beyond experience if we are not inclined to turn to anything other than to the ways of thinking?

This view had the effect on Kant that it waked up him from dogmatic slumber. He asks: can there be something that goes beyond experience? Which knowledge does experience deliver to us? Does it give us sure knowledge? Of course, Kant denied this question immediately. He says: even if you have seen the sun rise hundred thousand times, you cannot infer from it that it also rises tomorrow again. It could also be different. If you inferred only from experience, it could also turn out once that experience convinces you of something different. Experience can never give sure, necessary knowledge.

I know from experience that the sun warms up the stone. However, I am not allowed to state that it has to warm up it. If all our knowledge comes from experience, it can never exceed the condition of uncertainty; then there can be no necessary empiric knowledge. Now Kant tries to find out this matter. He looks for a way out. He had made himself used through his whole youth to believe in knowledge. He could be convinced by Hume’s philosophy that there is nothing sure. Is anywhere anything where one can speak of sure, necessary knowledge? However—he says—there are sure judgments. These are the mathematical judgments. Is the mathematical judgment similar to the judgment: in the morning the sun rises and sets in the evening?

I have the judgment that the sum of the three angles of a triangle is 180 degrees. If I have given the proof with one single triangle, it suffices for all triangles. I see from the nature of the proof that it applies to all possible cases. This is the peculiar of mathematical proofs. For everybody it is clear that these must also apply to the inhabitants of Jupiter and Mars if they generally have triangles that also there the sum of the angles of a triangle must be 180 degrees. And then: never can be two times two anything else than four. This is always true. Hence, we have a proof that there is knowledge which is absolutely sure. The question cannot be: do we have such knowledge? But we must think about the possibility of such judgments.

Now there comes the big question of Kant: how are such absolutely necessary judgments possible? How is mathematical knowledge possible?—Kant now calls those judgments and knowledge which are drawn from experience judgments and knowledge a posteriori. The judgment: the sum of angles of a triangle is 180 degrees; however, is a judgment which precedes all experience, a judgment a priori. I can simply imagine a triangle and give the proof, and if I see a triangle which I have not yet experienced, I can say that it must have a sum of angles of 180 degrees. Any higher knowledge depends on it that I can make judgments from pure reason.

How are such judgments a priori possible? We have seen that such a judgment: the sum of angles of a triangle is equal 180 degrees, applies to any triangles. Experience has to submit to my judgment. If I draw an ellipse and look out into space, I find that a planet describes such an ellipse. The planet follows my judgment formed in pure knowledge. I approach the experience with my purely in the ideal formed judgment. Have I drawn this judgment from experience?—Kant continues asking. There is no doubt, forming such purely ideal judgments, that we have, actually, no reality of experience.

The ellipse, the triangle—they have no reality of experience, but reality submits to such knowledge. If I want to have true reality, I must approach experience. If, however, I know which laws work in it, then I have knowledge before all experience. The law of the ellipse does not come from experience. I myself build it in my mind. Thus a passage begins with Kant with the sentence: “Even if all our knowledge starts from experience, nevertheless, not everything does arise from experience.” I put what I have as knowledge into experience. The human mind is made in such a way that everything of its experience corresponds only to the laws which it has. The human mind is made in such a way that it must develop these laws inevitably. If it moves up to experience, then experience has to submit to these laws.

An example: Imagine that you wear blue glasses. You see everything in blue light; the objects appear to you in blue light. However the things outdoors may be made, this concerns me nothing at all provisionally. At the moment when the laws which my mind develops spread out over the whole world of experience the whole world of experience must fit into it. It is not right that the judgment: two times two is four is taken from experience. It is the condition of my mind that two times two must give always four. My mind is in such a way that the three angles of a triangle are always 180 degrees. Thus Kant justifies the laws out of the human being himself. The sun warms up the stone. Every effect has a cause. This is a law of the mind. If the world is a chaos, I push the lawfulness of my mind toward it. I conceive the world like a string of pearls. I am that who makes the world a knowledge mechanism.—You also see how Kant was induced to find such a particular method of knowledge. As long as the human mind is organised in such a way as it is organised as long everything must submit to this organisation, even if reality changes overnight. For me it could not change if the laws of my mind are the same. The world may be as it wants; we recognise it in such a way as it must appear to us according to the laws of our mind.

Now you see which sense it has, if one says: Kant turned the whole theory of knowledge, the whole epistemology. One assumed before that the human being reads everything from nature. Now, however, he lets the human mind give the laws to nature. He lets everything circle around the human mind like Copernicus let the earth circle around the sun.

Then, however, there is something else that shows that the human being can never go beyond experience. Indeed, it appears as a contradiction, but you will see that it corresponds to Kant’s philosophy. Kant shows that the concepts are empty. Two times two is four is an empty judgment if not peas or beans are filled into it. Any effect has a cause—is a purely formal judgment if it is not filled with particular contents of experience. The judgments are formed before in me to be applied to the observation of the world. “Observations without concepts are blind—concepts without observations are empty.” We can think millions of ellipses; they correspond to no reality if we do not see them in the planetary motion. We have to verify everything by experience. We can gain judgments a priori, but we are allowed to apply them only if they correspond to experience.

God, freedom and immortality are matters about which we can ponder ever so long about which we can get knowledge by no experience. Therefore, it is in vain to find out anything with our reason. The concepts a priori are only valid as far as our experience reaches. Indeed we have a science a priori which only says to us how experience has to be until experience is there. We can catch as it were experience like in a web, but we cannot find out how the law of experience has to be. About the “thing-in-itself” we know nothing, and because God, freedom and immortality must have their origin in the “thing-in-itself,” we can find out nothing about them. We see the things not as they are, but in such a way as we must see them according to our organisation.

With it Kant founded the critical idealism and overcame the naive realism. What submits to causality is not the “thing-in-itself.” What submits to my eye or my ear has to make an impression on my eye, on my ear at first. This is the perception, the sensations. These are the effects of any “thing-in-itself,” of things which are absolutely unknown to me. These produce a lot of effects, and I order them in a lawful world. I form an organism of sensations. But I cannot know what is behind them. It is nothing else than the lawfulness which my mind has put into the sensations. What is behind the sensation, I can know nothing about it. Hence, the world which surrounds me is only subjective. It is only that which I myself build up.

The development of physiology in the 19th century agreed apparently completely with Kant. Take the important knowledge of the great physiologist Johannes Müller. He has put up the law of the specific nerve energy. It consists in the fact that any organ answers in its way. If you let light into the eye, you have a beam of light; if you bump against the eye, you will likewise have a light sensation. Müller concludes that it does not depend on the things outside, but on my eye what I perceive. The eye answers to a process unknown to me with the colour quality, we say: blue. Blue is nowhere outdoors in space. A process has an effect on us, and it produces the sensation “blue.” What you believe that it stands before you, is nothing else than the effect of some unknown processes on a sense. The whole physiology of the 19th century confirmed this law of the specific nerve energy apparently. Kant’s idea seems to be thereby supported.

One can call this world view illusionism in the full sense of the word. Nobody knows anything about what has an effect outside, what produces his sensations. From himself he spins his whole world of experience and builds up it according to the laws of his mind. Nothing else can approach him, as long as his organisation is made in such a way as it is. This is Kant’s doctrine motivated by physiology. Kant calls it critical idealism. This is also that which Schopenhauer develops in his philosophy: people believe that the whole starry heaven and the sun surround them. However, this is only your own mental picture. You create the whole world.—And Eduard von Hartmann says: This is the most certain truth which there can be. No power would be able one day to shake this sentence.—Thus the western philosophy says. It has never pondered how experience basically comes about.

Somebody is only able to stick to realism who knows how experiences come about and then he comes to the true critical idealism. The view of Kant is the transcendental idealism, that is he knows nothing about a true reality, nothing of a “thing-in-itself,” but only of an image world. He says basically: I must refer my image world to something unknown.—This view should be regarded as something steadfast.

Is this transcendental idealism really steadfast? Is the “thing-in-itself” unrecognisable?—If this held true, then could not be spoken of a higher experience at all. If the “thing-in-itself” were only an illusion, we could not speak of any higher beings. Hence, this is also an objection which is raised against theosophy: you have higher beings of which you speak.

We see next time how these views must be deepened.