The Rudolf Steiner Archive

9. Theosophical Doctrine of the Soul II: The Soul and Human Destiny

[ 1 ] The materialistic worldview has led modern thinking to the grotesque assertion that the magnificent tragedy of *Hamlet* is nothing more than the transformed food that the great poet Shakespeare consumed.

[ 2 ] Well, at first glance, such a claim might be interpreted as ironic or humorous. And yet: anyone who thinks through to its logical conclusion the view of the soul that has developed within the so-called materialist worldview must ultimately arrive at this claim. This view, however, reduces the materialist conception of the soul to absurdity. But if it is true that we must understand the phenomena of the soul as effluents of the mechanical activity of our brain, just as we must understand the workings of a clock from its mechanism, then we have no choice but to see in those causes—in which we must seek the reasons for the functioning of the brain’s mechanisms—ultimately also the causes of mental phenomena, the causes of the highest expressions of the human spirit.

[ 3 ] The German philosopher Leibniz had already found the correct rebuttal to this claim. He said: Imagine for a moment that the entire human brain were understood, that we knew down to the smallest detail how these cells and their surroundings function, that we knew every single movement and could record what is happening spatially in the brain when a thought, a sensation, or a feeling takes hold in a person; let us assume that this ultimate goal of natural science had been achieved. — Then Leibniz continues: Imagine now this human brain infinitely enlarged, so that one can calmly walk around inside it, calmly observe what movements are taking place there. One has a machine before one’s eyes. What will one see? One will see movements; one will see spatial processes. But what one will not see is that which the human being says: I feel pleasure and pain, I feel joy and sorrow, I think this or that thought. That which the human self must regard as its innermost possession, as its innermost processes and experiences, no observer of this vast, this enlarged brain machinery will be able to see. To observe what the “I” regards as its experiences in feelings, sensations, and ideas, a completely different kind of experience is required; human inner experience is required; it requires that we refrain from all spatial observation and immerse ourselves in the soul itself, in order to draw from the soul the explanatory reasons for what is taking place within it.

[ 4 ] One can approach this question in yet another way. I was once present when two young students were discussing this question. One of them was deeply immersed in materialistic thinking. He was convinced that human beings are nothing more than mechanisms, that we have understood human beings once we know how their brain functions and their other bodily functions work. To this, the other replied: But there is a simple fact that need only be stated to make it clear that what we have here is something entirely different from a process resembling a mechanical one. Why does a human being not say: My brain feels, my brain perceives, my brain imagines? — Well, a human being would have to acknowledge this fact as a distortion of his innermost soul experience. We can never explain mental processes through spatial observation, just as we cannot with external phenomena. This is precisely the characteristic difference between physical processes and mental processes: that when we see something happening in a machine, we can say that this or that part of the machine is in motion, is active, and because these parts are active, the machine performs this or that action. One cannot object here that we do not yet know all the movements, all the operations of our brain mechanism. For that is precisely the point of Leibniz’s answer to the question: even if we had understood this entire mechanism, the actual life of the soul would still have remained completely unaccounted for. There is only one thing to do: to look into our inner selves, to ask ourselves, what do we discover there when we let our own self speak? What do we discover when we do not see with our eyes and do not hear with our ears, but when we observe our own soul?

[ 5 ] But once we have made this point clear to ourselves, we must also be clear that all questions relating to the soul and its processes must be treated just as scientifically and impartially as the questions of the natural sciences. No natural scientist will admit that one can learn anything directly about the life of a brain or about the structure of that brain through a mere chemical analysis of a part of the brain. Other methods are necessary for this. It is necessary that we study the structure of any such organic component and that we consider it in connection with the rest of the organic world. In short, we are unable to describe the processes of life if we confine ourselves to mere physics and mere chemistry. Nor are we able to recognize the facts of the life of the soul if we merely observe external phenomena.

[ 6 ] What, then, are these facts of mental life? The fundamental fact of mental life is pleasure and pain. For what we experience as pleasure and pain, as joy and displeasure, is our very own mental experience. We pass by objects around us. The objects make an impression on us. They tell us something about their color and shape, as well as their movements; they tell us what they are in space. But we cannot glean anything from the objects themselves if we want to know what is going on within a person as they pass by these objects. The color of an object affects one person’s eye and affects another’s. The pleasure—or perhaps even the pain—that one person may feel upon seeing this color can be different, quite different from the pleasure and pain of another. What one person perceives as pleasure may stem from the fact that this color reminds them of a particularly cherished experience, that they have often felt joy in the presence of this color. Another person may think of a sad experience when they see this color, which is why they may feel pain. These color experiences are the very most personal experiences of the human being. They belong entirely to them alone. In the joy and pain that unfold in the inner life, the very special essence of the human being is expressed—that essence by which one person differs from another, that essence in which no one is like another. This alone should make it clear to us that how pleasure and pain take shape cannot depend solely on external factors, on what occurs in the sensory world; rather, it shows us that within us, something responds to impressions from the outside world that is different in every human being; so that, just as there are many people standing before us, there are just as many inner worlds standing before us, which we can only comprehend from the very depths of their inner nature—which are something quite special, something real that exists entirely in and of itself, in contrast to everything that manifests itself in space and time before our eyes and ears.

[ 7 ] Human inner life unfolds through pleasure and pain. And linked to pleasure and pain is something that, throughout the ages, ever since humans have been capable of thought, has permeated the human heart like a great question, like an immense mystery. It is connected to the human fate—this human fate that the sensitive Greek spirit perceived as something supra-personal, as something that hovers above humanity, that descends upon people, as something that has nothing to do with what the individual deserves, what the individual has achieved and strived for. We can describe the Greek people’s conception only in the driest terms. It is the soul that bears this gigantic fate, even though it all too often crushes the human being. Just as varied as human joy and sorrow are, so too are human fates, and these human fates, as a simple, trivial observation can show, have nothing to do with what a person, as a personality, works out for themselves or acquires for themselves. What is called fate in the true sense is something that lies beyond personal merit and beyond personal fault. When we speak of guilt and merit, we distinguish that which befalls a person and which is independent of their own efforts. There is the one who is destined by birth to live in poverty and misery, perhaps not only because of the environment into which they were born, but simply because of the gift, the endowment of nature, that they received at birth. Then there is the other, who appears as a child of fortune, for whom pleasure and suffering can lead to the highest peaks, simply because he was endowed at birth with greater, more exceptional gifts than another. How fate and the individual human life are intertwined has, throughout the ages, been the great, anxious question of the thinking human being. Human destiny and the human soul, in their interrelationships, have occupied poets and researchers. And how does human destiny compare to the individual human soul’s experience?

[ 8 ] We find a perfect analogy in nature for the interplay between soul and destiny. We find an analogy in what we encounter in nature as species, as the generic forms of living beings. A living being is not shaped in just any way. Every living being is shaped according to its germ. According to its germ, the lion is a lion, the frog a frog, because the power for its particular form lies within the germ, and because the germ inherits this power from its ancestors. That is why the animal is formed into a specific genus. These laws of heredity govern plant and animal species; they govern according to what they have inherited in terms of limbs in order to be able to act. A life is determined by the formation of the organs that have been inherited by the being. This law of heredity is the great law that determines the species and genera in the animal and plant worlds, and also in the physical human world. This law of species and genera, this law of heredity and development, is the law of destiny for the species and genera. Only in accordance with how the law of heredity operates can the individual being act. In a very similar way, what the individual human being experiences as pleasure and pain is determined by the destiny that governs him. Just as the animal has inherited the form of its genus from its ancestors, so we find that human beings are endowed in a very specific way with predispositions and character traits that determine the measure of their pleasure and pain, that contain the measure thereof, and that measure out their lives.

[ 9 ] Just as the law of nature governs animals, so does fate govern individual human beings. Just as the modern naturalist, when he conducts his research honestly and in accordance with the laws of evolution, asks himself why this animal has a longer or shorter prehensile organ, a sharper or less sharp eye, and just as he does not content himself with accepting the longer or shorter prehensile organ, the more or less sharp eye, as a miracle, but tells himself, I must compare this animal with other animals; I must observe how these organs have gradually developed through the great, ironclad law of nature governing kinship and heredity among all living beings—so too must the researcher of humanity, the researcher of the soul, if he wishes to understand the individual human life, ask himself: How is the great law of fate connected to these individual human lives? How is it possible that fate has ruled over the individual life in such a way as to determine this or that measure of pleasure and suffering? — The question of the connection between the human soul and human fate is entirely analogous to the naturalist’s question. And a completely analogous consideration will provide us with insight into the questions that occupy people in this regard.

[ 10 ] There is a fact that speaks so clearly regarding this question that we need only consider it from every angle, that we need only immerse ourselves fully in it, to arrive at an answer. This fact is not observed in the same manner or with the same intent as the naturalist observes when studying the relationships between species and genera. But this is not because this fact does not speak just as clearly and distinctly; rather, it is simply because modern humanity has become accustomed to overlooking this fact; has become accustomed to disregarding the loud voice, the clear testimony of this fact. It is, however, not as crude and coarse as the facts that speak to our external senses. But can we hope that the subtle life of the soul will provide us with facts of enlightenment regarding the intimate processes within our own inner being that are just as crude and just as conspicuous as the facts perceived by our external senses? Must we not rather assume that the questions embodied in our inner life are of a finer, more subtle nature? It is just as Galileo once discovered the great law of pendulum phenomena when the meaning dawned on him, revealed to him by a swinging lamp in the church, so that the law of nature was revealed to him at that very moment. He achieved this success only because he was able to hold the facts together in the right sense. But in the same way, if we make the facts clear to ourselves in the right sense, they must also enlighten us regarding destiny and the life of the soul.

[ 11 ] Go through the animal kingdom. You will find a wide variety of different species and genera. As a modern naturalist, you explain these species and genera through their kinship with one another and their descent from one another. You are satisfied when you have grasped that a higher, more perfect animal has acquired its species characteristics by descending from ancestors whose organs have gradually transformed into the organs of the animal that stands before us today.

[ 12 ] But what interests you about the animal? It can never be the case that we are interested in the animal beyond its species-specific characteristics. We are completely satisfied once we have described a lion or another animal species in terms of its species-specific characteristics. We are fully informed about a lion once we have understood how the lion species generally lives and behaves; then we know that the same applies to the father, the son, and the grandson within the lion genus. We are clear that individual differences, which do exist in the animal kingdom, do not interest us to the extent that we would now have to approach every single individual to study it on its own. We are clear that what is decisive for the animal is what the father, son, and grandson have in common. The researcher will be satisfied once he has grasped any specimen of the lion genus, the lion species. This fact must be thought through to its conclusion and fully understood in its significance. When one then compares it with the other fact that this is entirely different in humans, the difference between human character and animal character can be stated in a few words; a difference which, once understood, cannot be denied by any naturalist; a difference so great and profound that it sheds light on the very essence of the human soul. The underlying fact here can be expressed in these words: Man has a biography; the animal has no biography.

[ 13 ] It is true that in nature everything exists only in a gradual sense, and there is no objection to this statement, for it is clear that one can record individual characteristics of an animal and thereby produce something akin to a biography. Yet it remains a fact that it is only in the human realm that we have a true biography. This means that we extend the same interest we show toward the animal species to the individual human being. While we are not indifferent in the case of humans as to whether we are describing the father, the son, or the grandson, we call a related group of animals a species because they share the same characteristics, and we have understood them scientifically once we have grasped their form as a species. Here we must state the significant fact: every human individual is a species unto themselves. This is a statement that may not immediately make sense to some, that may seem to some like something contrived.

[ 14 ] But even if the full significance of this sentence cannot be grasped immediately, to those who reflect on it, who think it through to its conclusion, it can only appear in the light I have described. And with that, we have also moved beyond the assertion that, for the researcher of the soul, only the exceptional individual serves as proof that something special occurs in human beings, whereas most people are alike and, fundamentally—merely through higher education—possess the same qualities as animals do.

[ 15 ] Oh no, you can distinguish the simple person, the savage, from an animal by being aware that he has a life story, that his essence is not limited to his species-character as a human being, that what matters is that we grasp this unique individuality in him; that it is not irrelevant whether the father, the son, or the grandson stands before us. If we wish to proceed scientifically, then we must apply the same rules, the same laws to human beings that we apply to animals with regard to their species-character. We would have to regard the individual animal, which stands before us in perfect form, in a very specific shape, as a miracle if we did not understand it in terms of its kinship and descent from other beings. But we would also have to regard the individual human being, who is a whole, a species unto himself, with his particular experiences of suffering and pleasure, as a miracle if we simply presented him as he appears before us. The one who leaves the individual human personality—that which is expressed in the biography—as it is, without seeking to explain it, without distinguishing it from other beings; the one who wishes to leave this being unexplained, is like a believer in miracles. If we hold fast to evolution, then we must say: Just as in the animal kingdom the individual animal form is related to its species, so too must we trace the individual human soul in its particular manifestation back to something else of a spiritual nature. Just as clear as natural science has become since it recognized that life cannot develop from the inanimate, but that every living being is based on a germ, so it is true that it would be scientific superstition today if anyone believed what was believed in the 16th century—that fish, frogs, and the like could develop from mud.

[ 16 ] But this would be the case if someone were to claim that the spiritual does not arise from the spiritual, but from the non-spiritual. Just as living things can arise only from living things, in the sense that natural science assumes, so one must recognize that the spiritual can arise only from the spiritual. And just as natural science regards it as a childish belief that life does not arise from a germ but from the inanimate, so a true doctrine of the soul must regard it as an absurdity that the spiritual could arise from the mechanical. That would be the same as if someone were to claim that the spiritual could arise from any random clump of mud.

[ 17 ] If we take this as our starting point, then we must ask ourselves: Anyone who refuses to believe in a miracle in the realm of the soul must ask themselves, with regard to every single soul: Where does it come from? What are the causes that have shaped it into the state it is in right now? We must, so to speak, ascend from the spiritual being of a human being to his spiritual ancestors, just as we ascend from the physical form of an animal to its physical ancestors in order to understand the origin of its species.

[ 18 ] In my last lecture, I described the culmination to which Aristotle brought his theory of the soul as the downfall of Western psychology. I have shown that, with regard to our physical world, Aristotle stood entirely on the same ground as modern evolutionary theory, in that he allowed beings—up to the highest—to develop naturally. But when Aristotle speaks of the highest soul, he rightly says exactly what we have just discussed. This spiritual aspect cannot be explained by what we have come to know as mere natural processes. No one can ever comprehend the soul as a mere natural process. Therefore, as an honest researcher and thinker, Aristotle resorts to an explanation that clearly and unambiguously acknowledges the miracle in the origin of every single soul. In this way, he appears as an honest thinker, but as one who denies a scientific principle in the face of the soul. When a human being has developed to the point where their physical form has taken on human shape, then the Creator instills the soul into this human form; this is the only consistent position one must take if one does not wish to explain the soul in the same way that modern natural science explains the species of the animal kingdom. If one does not wish to seek the spiritual ancestor, as one seeks the animal ancestor when explaining animals, then one must say that a soul is created within every single human being.

[ 19 ] There is only one other way, and this other way, this way out, is only an apparent one. It consists of the path shown by Herbert Spencer, the great English philosopher who recently passed away. He was well aware—as we have also said—that it is impossible to leave the individual soul to stand on its own, to accept it as a miracle. Therefore, he says, with regard to this soul life we must go back to the physical ancestors of the person in question, and just as he has inherited the shape of his face, his hands, and his feet from his physical ancestors, so too has he inherited his soul qualities from his ancestors. Thus Herbert Spencer equates the development of the soul entirely with physical development. But this is only an apparent solution that can never be reconciled with the facts. That which is to be explained from one must be derivable from the characteristics of the other.

[ 20 ] Now, as Goethe says: “From my father I inherited my stature and a serious approach to life; from my mother, a cheerful disposition and a love of storytelling.” But no one who examines the facts impartially would claim that what constitutes a person’s very essence—that which he regards as the very result of his destiny—is determined by his physical ancestors in the same way that his outward form and appearance are determined by them, for otherwise the development of the mind would have to follow the same laws as the development of the physical. But where could we trace the mental qualities of a Newton, a Galileo, a Kepler, or a Goethe back to their ancestors? Where could we derive Schiller’s qualities? From his father? Certainly, Schiller received his outward form, the typical features, from his father; for what constitutes the general form is determined by physical heredity, just as the physical form of animals is determined by heredity. But if we wish to explain the actual inner qualities of a particular individual—and it need not be Schiller; it could be any Mr. Müller from this or that place—if we wish to explain what goes on in his deepest soul, what makes him this particular person, from what his biography arises, then we can never understand this person by studying his origins in his physical ancestors.

[ 21 ] Study a lion and describe the lion’s father or grandfather instead of this little lion: you will be completely satisfied from a scientific standpoint. But if you describe a human being, you must describe his very own life. The biography of a grandfather or father is something entirely different from his own. Just as species differ in the animal kingdom, so do the biographies of individual human beings.

[ 22 ] Anyone who thinks these ideas through to their full conclusion can never equate spiritual development with physical development. Rather, if we wish to explain spiritual development, we must assume that we must trace it back to spiritual ancestors in the same way that we trace physical nature back to physical ancestors. And the physical ancestor cannot simultaneously be the spiritual ancestor. The development of the soul does not follow the same path as the development of the physical. If I wish to explain a soul, I must seek its origin somewhere entirely different from the physical organism. It must have existed before; it must have a spiritual ancestor, just as the animal species has a physical ancestor. This brings us to the ideas that the deeper soul-researchers of all times have recognized as their own, and which, in the true sense of the word, consider the nature of the soul in a scientific sense. Whoever penetrates this essence of the soul with all the energy of the research impulse—you can see this, for example, in a lucid discussion in Lessing’s *The Education of the Human Race*—comes to the conclusion that every soul must be traced back to another soul. And this brings us to the law of the soul’s development; we arrive at the law of reincarnation, the law of re-embodiment.

[ 23 ] Just as in the animal kingdom species are embodied according to their kind, just as a transformation of the species takes place—a reincarnation of the species—so too does a transformation of the soul take place in human beings. Nothing other than this idea may be associated with what is called the doctrine of reincarnation in the spiritual science of the soul. It is not a fanciful idea; it is a thought that is crystal clear and necessarily arises from the laws of nature. Just as necessary as the idea of species reincarnation—the transformation of species in the animal kingdom—is the idea of the reincarnation of the individual. We have the reincarnation of the species at the level of animality; we have the reincarnation of the individuality at the level of humanity. But if this is the case, then our view expands from the individual human soul, which otherwise stands before us inexplicably with its own life of pleasure and pain, beyond its soul predecessor and from there to further predecessors. Just as we understand a species when we trace it back to its ancestors, so do we understand the soul when we trace it as a reincarnating individuality. What appears to reign within me as inexplicable fate, what seems to be predisposed in my birth as if unprepared, is not to be regarded as a miracle sprung from nothing; it is an effect, just as everything in the world is an effect, but an effect of the soul processes in my spiritual ancestors.

[ 24 ] We cannot go into detail here about how reincarnation occurs. The aim here is simply to demonstrate, using a scientific analogy, how the concept of theosophical soul doctrine is entirely compatible with—indeed, in the spiritual realm, is exactly the same as—the modern theory of evolution in the realm of animal life. It is precisely the natural scientist who should rise from his physical theory of reincarnation to this spiritual theory of reincarnation. The Buddhist, for whom this spiritual theory of reincarnation is what the scientific theory of evolution is to us, does not, in the same sense as the West, know the mysterious development, the mysterious course of fate in the individual life. He tells himself: What I experience is the effect of the soul life from which my own has developed; I must accept it as an effect. And what I myself accomplish today is a cause and does not remain without effect. Again and again my soul will incarnate, and it will determine the fate of this soul as it appears; it will form a whole together with this soul. Thus, destiny and the soul’s being are linked together in a chain. Like beads on the string of destiny, the individual stages of the soul’s development in human life—in the whole of human life—are strung together. And what is inexplicable in a human life will become explicable if we do not accept it as a miracle in and of itself, but rather if we consider it in its recurring manifestations.

[ 25 ] But when we view the development of the soul in this way, we transcend the limitations of Aristotle; and only in this way can we transcend the limitations of Aristotelian soul theory. Anyone who does not subscribe to the theory of evolution must subscribe to the act of creation that takes place with every single human birth. They must accept a special miracle of creation with every birth. The scientific theory of creation is a belief in miracles, superstition. As late as the 18th century, it was said that there are as many species coexisting as were originally created. In the field of the doctrine of the soul, too, there are only these two paths: the miraculous act of creation at the origin of a single human being, or the evolution of the soul. The first is impossible. But that is why there are still honest researchers who cannot bring themselves to accept the evolution of the soul. However, if an honest researcher cannot bring himself to accept the evolution of the soul, he will still, even today, affirm the act of creation in the origin of every single human being. This is not scientific, but it is an honest way of thinking. But those who wish to think scientifically and are capable of viewing the life of the soul in a scientific spirit arrive of their own accord, from the standpoint of modern research, at this doctrine of the reincarnation of the soul, just as a modern philosopher, Professor Baumann in Göttingen, has arrived at it. These will be the two paths we must pursue with clear thinking: either the creation of the soul as a miracle in every case, or the development of the soul in the sense of scientific thinking and the return of the soul.

[ 26 ] From this theory of the development of the soul, however, a clear light is also shed on the great question that has particularly preoccupied modern philosophy and modern thought in general: the question of the value of life. As you know, this question has been answered in the negative by more recent philosophers, such as Schopenhauer, Eduard von Hartmann, and similar thinkers. Life has been denied any value for the simple reason that it offers far more suffering than pleasure. If life were truly exhausted within the individual personality between birth and death, then the question of the value of life would be justified, insofar as one would have to assess this value of life in terms of pleasure and pain. These philosophers simply say that experience teaches us in every single case that pain far outweighs pleasure, that life is painful and full of suffering. For this reason alone, Schopenhauer assumes, we must subscribe to this pessimistic view. We naturally accept pleasure as something that is our due. Who does not—and in this Schopenhauer is right—regard pleasure as something that is self-evident to us? Where is there not some trivial cause that a person perceives as pain, while accepting every pleasure more or less as a matter of course? It is therefore natural, say the pessimists, that people do not feel pleasure in the same way that they perceive the diminution of pleasure as pain and displeasure. Thus, the pessimists draw up the so-called pleasure balance sheet of life and declare that it shows that displeasure dominates life far more strongly than pleasure. Without question, if one seeks to solve this riddle within the scope of an individual human life, one arrives at no other solution. For whoever surveys a human life in its personal particularity will indeed say to themselves: However small the amount of displeasure that has affected this life may be, it remains present as something that has, as it were, been held against this person. Let us try, based on the facts, to draw up this balance sheet of pleasure upon a person’s death. If we do so, we will indeed, in Hartmann’s sense, assess the pleasure value of life as negative. If life now ends with death, then life ends with a negative value factor, with a negative value figure. But then this individual life appears completely inexplicable.

[ 27 ] It is quite another matter when we regard what we retain as the result of a single life as a cause for the next life, when we regard it as that which can be carried over and propagated to another stage of existence. Then what appears in one life as pain or displeasure takes on the character of something that can have a beneficial effect in the next life. And for what reason? For the very simple reason that the feeling of displeasure we experience in this particular life is not the sole determining factor, but because what arises as an effect from this displeasure is also decisive. If I feel a sense of displeasure today, then for today this displeasure will cast a negative shadow over my life. But this displeasure may be of the highest value to me tomorrow. By having felt displeasure or pain in some experience today, I can learn for tomorrow. I can learn, on a similar occasion, to avoid this displeasure, this pain; I can learn to regard this displeasure, this pain, as a lesson, so that tomorrow I may perform the tasks that caused me displeasure more perfectly. From this standpoint, adversity will appear to us in a certain context that has far-reaching significance. Suppose a child is learning to walk. It falls constantly and hurts itself; it causes itself pain in the process. Nevertheless, it would be wrong for a mother to surround her child with nothing but rubber balls so that it would feel no pain when it falls. Then the child would never learn to walk. Pain is the lesson. It prepares us for a higher stage of development. Only because the life of the individual human being between birth and death is not consumed by pure pleasure, but because it causes us the pain arising from our imperfect actions and the resulting displeasure—only through this do we learn. And if life ends with a balance of displeasure, it ends at the same time with a cause that will have an effect on the life that follows. Through the displeasure of one life, we will reach a higher stage in the next life.

[ 28 ] This is how our perspective broadens when we view human life beyond birth and death. The balance of pleasure and pain presents itself as something that must exist so that we can learn from a single life and carry that learning over into another life. If we did not suffer pain, we would be like a child who cannot learn to walk if one spares him the pain. Therefore, we come to view the balance of displeasure, as the pessimist points out, as a factor in development. It drives development forward as a motor. Then the often-repeated statement—that pain is a factor in development—gains its due and takes on a higher meaning. And so we will understand individual life as an effect, as a result of preceding causes. If we understand it in this way as an effect, then we will understand the coexisting degrees of perfection within human beings, just as we understand the coexisting degrees of perfection within animal species. Just as it does not seem strange to us, according to the theory of evolution, that the perfect lion lives alongside the imperfect amoeba—just as this imperfect form is comprehensible to us through the law of evolution—so too will the stages of the soul’s development, from the highest genius down to the undeveloped stage of the savage, appear comprehensible to us through the law of the soul’s evolution. For the genius—as what does it present itself to us? It presents itself to us as a higher stage of development, as a higher degree of perfection of the soul being, which lives in the savage at a subordinate stage of development. Just as the higher animal species differ from the lower forms of animals in the physical realm, so does the soul of the genius differ from the soul of the Hottentot in the spiritual realm. This also explains to us, however, that, fundamentally speaking, genius is not radically different from ordinary human endowment, but is merely a later stage of development.

[ 29 ] Let us compare this with the psychology of Franz Brentano. He emphasizes that genius does not differ in essence from the developmental stage of the imperfect soul, but only in degree. Consider a genius like Mozart. Even as a boy, he displayed a talent that seems quite extraordinary. He wrote down an entire mass—which he had heard only once and had never been able to follow before because it was not permitted to be written down—immediately after hearing it. What a feat of memory it is that Mozart’s soul can encompass a vast array of ideas at a single glance, which the imperfect soul cannot encompass but can only grasp little by little. It is merely the special development of that faculty of the soul that connects and links ideas together. This faculty of the soul may be so underdeveloped that it is not possible to grasp five or six ideas within a certain period of time. But through practice, a person can improve this faculty of imagination and expand their scope of understanding. When we now see how genius appears with far-reaching aptitudes, which can, however, be attained gradually through practice, we should not regard genius as a miracle. We must view it as an effect. And since genius is already born with these qualities, we must seek the cause in a previous stage of the soul’s development, in a previous life. Only in this way can you arrive at an explanation of genius. In this way, you can understand every stage of human development in a spiritual sense. You can trace the human being from the highest genius to the saddest manifestations of human life, which we call insanity. The scientific point of view must be set aside here; only from the point of view of the researcher of the soul can one point to these people in a word. We know that there are deformities and disabilities. If we extend these concepts from the realm of natural science to the realm of psychology, then we arrive, in the realm of the soul’s life, at the abnormal phenomena of the soul’s life.

[ 30 ] In this way, it becomes clear and evident to us that the life of the soul is connected in time just as physical life is connected in space. And those who claim that such ideas contradict the facts of natural science have certainly not fully grasped the full scope of either natural scientific thought or this science of the soul. They have not developed their powers of observation to the point where they have learned to apply the methods of soul research in the same way that natural scientists apply the methods of external natural science. And if it is claimed that the teachings we have presented here seem fanciful, then we may well ask: what do those who laid the foundations for this natural science have to say about this? Surely they must have recognized the scope of scientific thought, just as those who first explore a land directly, with their own original powers, know that land more intimately than those who have merely received a report or description. Thus, the natural scientist who, from the depths of his research, discovers the foundations of the truths of natural science, will have greater authority than the one who comes along later as a follower and tries to convince us that the researchers of the soul speak of soul and spirit beings that exist independently.

[ 31 ] Here are a few examples of how the fundamental natural scientists viewed the researchers of the soul and the spirit. Time and again, it is emphasized that a doctrine of the soul such as the one just explained is said to contradict the law of conservation of energy. This is the great law that governs all physical phenomena for the explainer. It states that no force arises in nature, but that all force arises through development from another, and that we can measure the magnitude of a force by the force that is its cause. When we convert heat into steam in a steam boiler, we have the cause and effect before us, and we measure the effect by the extent of the cause. Now the opponents of the doctrine of the soul in the spiritual sense say: This law contradicts the assumption that specific soul processes take place within. Measure the external impressions a person receives, measure what is going on within them, measure what is going on in the brain, and one will not be able to claim that this allows for any particular conclusion: that there is a soul force. But then this would be born out of nothing, and this would contradict the fundamental law of the transformation of energy. Julius Robert Mayer is the discoverer of this fundamental law of the conservation of energy, which we are told is supposed to contradict the doctrine of the soul. Let us hear from the discoverer of this law, one of the greatest natural scientists and thinkers of all time. In 1842, in the age of natural science, he discovered the most important of the natural laws of the 19th century. Those who are materialist natural scientists—you can see this in their books—say and want us to believe that this law would eliminate all teachings about the spirit and the soul. We hear these natural scientists say that anyone who still accepts inner spiritual teachings does not understand natural science, which is expressed in the law of conservation of energy. Julius Robert Mayer, however, says: If superficial minds, who fancy themselves geniuses, refuse to accept anything further or higher, such presumption cannot be laid at the door of science, nor can it serve its benefit or good.

[ 32 ] This is what the discoverer of this law says. Ask yourself whether those who come after him have the right to invoke his law against what he himself has recognized.

[ 33 ] Another fundamental figure in modern science, who laid the groundwork for the study of living organisms through his geological research on the transformations of the Earth’s strata—and thereby paved the way for Darwin—is Lyell, the great English geologist. He was the first, in the context of geology, to state that we are not proceeding scientifically if we assume miraculous catastrophes in nature, if we assume that upheavals took place in earlier periods that cannot be explained even today by external forces. This researcher, Lyell, to whom materialistic natural science again refers, says the following: “In whatever direction we may conduct our research, everywhere we find creative intelligence, providence, power, and wisdom.”

[ ] And materialist researchers tell us that since the law of the so-called vital force has been overcome, since it has become possible to produce in the laboratory substances that were once believed to arise only in living human beings, since then we no longer have the right to say that what takes place in the chemical laboratory is not the same as what takes place in nature. Jöns Jacob Berzelius, a friend of Friedrich Wöhler, says: Knowledge of nature is the foundation of research. Those who do not adhere to it cannot escape misleading influences. — Wilhelm Preyer has written about the phenomenon of death. It is he who has stated with conviction that death cannot be understood as the end of the individuality incarnated in the body, that death cannot be understood in this way in human beings, because it cannot even be understood in this way in the lower world. Preyer says, only the body dies; matter does not die, nor does force, nor movement, nor life.

[ 34 ] These are the words of genuine, fundamental natural scientists, not philosophical dilettantes who believe that, on the basis of natural science, they can—I will not say—deny the phenomena of the soul, but that they are entitled to explain these phenomena as mere functions of purely mineral processes. So when we see that precisely those who originally rendered outstanding service to the study of the course of natural development do not perceive any contradiction in this natural development with the view of an inner soul development, then we must be in agreement with all of them. And we know that all those who deny inner soul development are struck by Hamerling’s statement, which says: He who seeks the soul appears to him like a dog snapping at its own tail and unable to reach it. — This is a doctrine of the soul in the spiritual-scientific sense, a doctrine of the soul in the modern scientific sense, though not in a formulaic application of the scientific method, but in its application from the spirit. Then, however, the law of destiny reveals itself to us as a great law of evolution. Just as the species is embedded in the evolution of the animal kingdom and appears like a wave on the surface of the sea, raised by the surging tide of evolution, so the individual human life appears like a raised wave, and the successive individual lives appear like individual waves of human destiny itself.

[ 35 ] We will examine the causes of these waves in the next lecture, when we come to understand human destiny from the perspective of the eternal essence. Today, however, I have shown that those who view destiny as the great law of evolution regard it as active, as generating waves, and that each individual wave, in its appearance, is a reflection of the human being. This is how all those who have delved deeply into the subject view the life of the soul in its development. And that is why Goethe speaks of the individual soul as being like a wave that is raised up again and again, and of the wind as the driving force of fate that raises these waves from the water. That is why he compares the soul to the play of waves and destiny to the wind, based on theosophical insight, for Goethe was in the deepest sense in agreement with this doctrine of the soul. He expressed his comparison of wind and waves, of the soul and the destiny of the human being, in these beautiful words:

The wind is the wave’s sweet suitor;
The wind stirs up foaming waves from the depths.

Human soul, how you resemble water!
Human fate, how you resemble the wind!