The Rudolf Steiner Archive

7. Error and Madness

[ 1 ] This series of lectures, which I had the honor of delivering here before you this winter, was intended to shed light—from the perspective of the humanities, as characterized in the first lecture here—on the most diverse phenomena of human spiritual life and also of life in a broader context. Today we shall consider an area of human life that can lead us deep into human misery, human suffering, and perhaps even human hopelessness. In contrast, the next lecture will address a topic titled “The Human Conscience,” which will lead us back up to the heights where human dignity and human worth—the power of human self-awareness—can be most clearly revealed. And then this year’s cycle will conclude with a reflection on the mission of art, in which the thoroughly healthy aspect of what may appear to us today as the most terrible shadow side of life will be revealed.

[ 2 ] When we speak of error and madness, images of the deepest human suffering—and indeed, images of the deepest human compassion—certainly arise in everyone’s soul. And everything that arises in this way within the soul can, after all, serve as a call to shed a little light—the light we believe we have gained through these lectures—into this abyss of human soul life. Precisely those who are becoming increasingly accustomed to thinking in the manner that has been presented to us here must surely give themselves over to the hope that, through this spiritual-scientific perspective, this sad chapter of human life may, in a certain sense, be illuminated. For anyone familiar with the literature—and I am not referring here to the popular literature that is becoming so widespread, but rather to the more scholarly works—will be able to say, when viewing the matter from a spiritual-scientific standpoint, that the literature is, in a certain respect, extraordinarily extensive and offers a wealth of material for assessing the relevant facts; but that, on the other hand, it is nowhere in literature so evident as here just how ill-suited the various theories, perspectives, and habits of thought of our time are to synthesizing the experiences, lived realities, and scientific observations that have come to light. It is precisely in this field that one has such a clear opportunity to see how the spiritual sciences feel fully in harmony with true, genuine science, with everything that confronts us as scientific facts, findings, and experiences; but also how it must, so to speak, encounter a contradiction at every turn between these experiences and the way in which one attempts to understand them from the standpoint of today’s scientific worldview. Admittedly, we will only be able to sketch out a few broad outlines in this field as well, but perhaps they will still serve as a stimulus to help us gain an understanding in this area that is also suitable for integration into our daily lives, so that we will be increasingly able to find our way in the face of these sad circumstances we are addressing here.

[ 3 ] When we utter the words “error” and “madness,” one thing should strike us: that—whether we are conscious of it or not—the word “error” denotes something fundamentally different from what we call “madness.” On the other hand, a careful observer of a mental life that can truly be described as being in a state of insanity will be able to find expressions and manifestations that do not appear much different from intensifications of what one can also understand in everyday life—in a normal mental life that is still considered healthy—as error in one respect or another. One could also play fast and loose with such an observation, insofar as certain aspirations of the spiritual life tend to blur the individual boundaries and repeatedly emphasize that a fixed boundary between a healthy, normal mental life and one that can be described by the term “insanity” does not actually exist at all.

[ 4 ] There is something dangerous about this statement; this must be emphasized, especially on such an occasion. And it is dangerous not because it is incorrect, but because it is correct. That sounds paradoxical; yet it is true that incorrect statements are sometimes less dangerous than correct ones, which can be interpreted and applied in a one-sided manner, because one fails, so to speak, to recognize the danger of what is correct. One believes one has already said something when, in a certain respect, one can prove that something is correct; but one must realize that every true thing also has its flip side, and that every truth we discover is, so to speak, a truth only in relation to certain facts and experiences; yet it begins to become dangerous the moment we extend it to other areas, when we exaggerate it and believe that it has dogmatic validity. Therefore, as a rule, it is not enough simply to know that a truth exists; rather, it is important that, when we have a correct insight, we observe the limits within which that insight applies.

[ 5 ] We can, however, observe phenomena in ordinary, healthy mental life that, when they exceed a certain degree, also manifest as symptoms of a pathological mental state. Only those who are truly accustomed to observing human life more intimately can grasp the full weight of this statement. Who, for example, would not admit that what can be summed up under the term “insanity”—when a person is unable to link a second concept to a concept they can grasp at the right moment, but instead must remain stuck on that one concept, and must remain stuck in such a way that they cling to it even when they are already in a completely different situation, and apply it where it no longer fits—in other words, when they act on the basis of a concept that was correct for an earlier situation but is no longer correct for the later one. Who would deny that this can border sharply on a pathological state of mind? Indeed, when it occurs to a certain degree, it is nothing short of a symptom of mental illness. But who would deny that there are people who cannot make progress in their work because of their verbosity or their roundabout way of doing things? There, when one cannot break free from a notion—the origin of which lies in normal mental life—is the point where we must stop speaking of error and begin to speak of pathological delusion.

[ 6 ] Let us suppose, for example, that someone suffers from a mental disorder—and this does indeed happen—such that when he hears someone coughing nearby, he does not perceive it as an ordinary cough, but instead forms the illusion that people are saying bad things about him, so to speak, badmouthing him. Anyone who organizes their entire life in such a way that it appears to be a sequence of actions influenced by such an illusion will be regarded as a person whose inner life is pathological. Yet how close to this are certain phenomena of everyday life, where we simply speak of someone overhearing something here or there, interpreting the words to suit themselves, and believing they have heard something entirely different from what was actually said. Or have you not yet heard how infinitely often it happens that someone says, “So-and-so said this or that about me!”—even though there is not a trace to be found that the other person actually said it? It is also sometimes quite difficult, so to speak, to determine where the entirely normal inner life, even in its healthy course, can flow into a pathological inner life.

[ 7 ] It may seem paradoxical, but it might inspire some thought in this area if we consider that, when looking at an avenue of trees, a person has the perfectly normal perception of seeing the nearby trees at their natural distances, while the more distant ones appear to move closer and closer, and that he then decided to tie the trees together with ropes as they stand opposite one another, but wanted to make the ropes shorter and shorter the farther the trees are from him. This would be an example of him drawing a false conclusion from a perfectly sound perception. But sound perception is no different from when someone experiences an illusion. An illusion is also a perception. The unhealthy and harmful aspect of an illusion arises only when the person in question regards it as just as real as, say, the table standing before him. Only when he is unable to interpret the perception correctly does what can be described as pathological arise. Now, one can compare this last case—where someone has a hallucination and regards it as reality in the ordinary physical sense—with what was cited earlier as a paradox: that someone wanted to make the ropes connecting the trees in an avenue shorter and shorter. Logically, we would be unable to find any difference between these two things. And yet: how easy it is to form a false judgment in the case of an illusion, and how difficult it is to form the same false judgment when perceiving a tree-lined avenue! All of this may seem foolish to some. Nevertheless, one must stick to such intimate matters, for otherwise one gets nowhere and would fail to see how often normal mental life can flow into an unhealthy one.

[ 8 ] Now we can cite even more striking examples of people whose inner lives are considered to be of the highest degree of health and insight. I would like to cite an account from a German philosopher who is regarded as one of the foremost figures in his field today among those who have worked in this area. This philosopher recounts the following experience:

[ 9 ] He once struck up a conversation with a man, and this conversation led the two of them to discuss a scholar they both knew. The moment the conversation turned to that scholar, the philosopher’s mind drifted to the image of an illustrated book about Paris—and in the very next moment, to the image of a photo album of Rome. Meanwhile, the conversation about that scholar continued. Meanwhile, the man in question—who happened to be the philosopher—tried to figure out how it was possible that, during the conversation, the image of an illustrated book about Paris could pop into his mind, and then the image of a photo album of Rome. And he figured it out quite correctly. The scholar they were discussing, you see, had a peculiar goatee. This goatee immediately evoked in the philosopher’s subconscious the image of Napoleon III, who also had a goatee; and this image of Napoleon III, which had forced its way into his consciousness, led, via a detour through France, to the illustrated book on Paris. And now the image of another man who also had a goatee appeared before him—the image of Victor Emmanuel of Italy; and this image led, via a detour through Italy, to the photo album of Rome. There you have a curious sequence—one might say a causeless, irregular sequence of images that unfold while something entirely different is being pursued in the fully conscious life of the soul. Now take a person who had reached the moment when the illustrated book on Paris appeared before him, and who could no longer hold onto the thread of the conversation, and immediately afterward had the subsequent image of the photo album of Rome: he would be given over to a chaotic mental life; he would be unable to converse calmly with another person, but would be caught up in a pathological mental state that leads him, without any connection, from one flight of ideas to another.

[ 10 ] But our philosopher goes further and presents another case alongside it, through which he hopes to discern how things relate to one another. — Once, he went to the tax office to pay his taxes. He had 75 marks to pay. And since, despite his philosophy, he is a man who values order, he had also entered these 75 marks in his expense ledger and then gone about his other business. Later, he wanted to recall how much he had paid in taxes. He couldn’t quite remember. He thought about it; and since he is a philosopher, he went about it systematically. He tried to arrive at the idea of the tax amount by working his way back from related thoughts. He tried to concentrate on his trip to the tax office. And then the image came to him of four gold twenty-mark coins he’d had in his wallet, followed by the image of him receiving five marks in change. These two images stood before him, and he was now able to determine through simple subtraction that he had paid 75 marks in taxes.

[ 11 ] Here you have two completely different cases. In the first, the inner life, so to speak, operates as it pleases, without undergoing any correction whatsoever from what we might call the conscious flow of ideas; it produces the image of the illustrated book on Paris and the image of a photo album of Rome. In the second case, we see how the mind proceeds in a thoroughly systematic manner, taking each step entirely at will. This is indeed a considerable difference between the course of these two mental processes. However, that philosopher fails to draw attention to something that will immediately strike the researcher of the mind. For what is essential in the first case is that he is conversing with another person, that he is directing his attention toward the other, that his entire conscious mental life had to be directed toward conducting the conversation with the other, and that the images, which followed one another haphazardly as if emerging from another layer of consciousness, were left to their own devices. In the second case, the philosopher focuses his attention solely on which images are to follow one another. This would again explain only that the images in the first case unfold in a haphazard manner, whereas in the second case they are subject to the correction of conscious mental activity.

[ 12 ] Why are images there at all? Our philosopher offers no answer to this question. Anyone who can observe life, who is familiar with similar cases in general, and who is able to judge a little of the nature of the philosopher in question—in this case, I am familiar not only with the fact but also with the man himself—will, if we are to use the term, be able to formulate the following hypothesis. In his conversation, the philosopher in question was dealing with a person who did not interest him very much. A certain degree of effort was required to focus his attention on the conversation; consequently, he had a certain surplus of inner life that did not find an outlet in the conversation but, so to speak, turned inward. But he, in turn, lacked the strength to control the flow of these images; consequently, they unfolded in a disorderly manner. Because he had to direct his interest toward a subject that did not particularly interest him, images now arose within that surplus of inner life; and because his attention had to be directed precisely toward the uninteresting conversation, the images of that surplus of inner life unfolded in a disorderly manner. — This also provides an indication of how such images, as if in the background of conscious mental activity, could unfold almost as a reflection of that conscious mental activity. We could present a large number of such examples. The example I have chosen was cited because it is very characteristic, and because we can learn a great deal from it.

[ 13 ] But now the question is this: Does not such a process point us toward looking a little more deeply into the life of the human soul? Or we might ask: How can such a division of the soul’s life arise at all, as was evident in the case cited? And this brings us to the point where the experiences and events of that realm of misfortune we are addressing today can be integrated in a perfectly natural way into what we have encountered so often in the course of this winter. Precisely that philosopher mentioned above, when he recounts such phenomena of his own inner life, finds himself more or less faced with mysteries. He is unable to continue speaking once he has taken note of such facts, because our external science—no matter how much it may tell us—comes to a halt when it comes to understanding the essence of things and also the essence of the human being.

[ 14 ] In our exploration of the nature of the human being, we have shown that we must not merely view the human being in the way that external science does, but that we must in fact distinguish between an outer human being and an inner human being. And that this outer human being is no more real than the inner human being. We have shown in a wide variety of fields that we must, for example, understand the state of sleep differently than conventional science tends to do. We have shown how what remains of the sleeping person in bed is only the outer human being, and that ordinary consciousness cannot follow the invisible, higher, true inner human being who, during sleep, departs from the outer human being. Conventional consciousness simply does not see that something real is leaving the body here—something just as real as what remains in bed—and that from the moment of falling asleep until waking, the inner human being is immersed in its true home, the spiritual world. And that from this world it draws what it needs from waking until the next time it falls asleep to sustain its ordinary soul life. Therefore, we must sharply contrast and consider separately the outer human being—who, even in the state of sleep, exists with his own laws and rules—and the inner human being, who is present within the outer human being only during the waking state but is separated from him during sleep. As long as we do not make this distinction, we will not be able to understand the most important phenomena of human life. Those who, out of convenience, see unity everywhere and wish to establish monism lightheartedly in every context will accuse us of being dualists because we divide the human being into two parts—an outer and an inner part. Such people, however, should simply admit that it is a hideous form of dualism when chemists split water into hydrogen and oxygen. One cannot be a monist in the higher sense unless one recognizes that the “one” is something much deeper. But whoever seeks to see the “one” in the most immediate things will close their eyes to the diversity of life—to that which alone can explain life.

[ 15 ] However, we have also shown that we must distinguish between individual parts within both the outer and inner human beings. In the outer human being, we first distinguish the aspect that we can see with our physical eyes and touch with our hands: the physical body. But then we recognize another aspect, which we have called the etheric body—a kind of force-form that is the actual builder and shaper of the physical body. The physical body and the etheric body are what remain in bed during sleep. But what withdraws from the physical body and the etheric body in the sleeping human being and is in the spiritual world—we have referred to this in these lectures as the astral body, which in turn contains within itself the actual bearer of the “I.” We have, however, made even finer distinctions. Within this astral body, we have further distinguished three members of the human being—three members of the soul life. And by carefully distinguishing these three members from one another, a great many aspects of life have become clear to us.

[ 16 ] We have called the lowest member of the soul life the sensory soul; we have distinguished a second member as the intellectual or emotional soul; and a third member of the soul as the conscious soul. So when we speak of the human inner life—of these three aspects of the soul—we do not recognize a chaotic, undifferentiated jumble of all manner of volitional impulses, emotional experiences, concepts, and ideas, but rather we carefully structure the life of the soul into these three aspects. Now, in normal human life, there is a certain interrelationship between the outer and the inner human being. We can characterize this interrelationship by saying: The sensory soul, our lowest soul component, which contains our drives and passions—to which we are slavishly devoted when the higher soul components are underdeveloped—this soul component interacts in a certain way with what we might otherwise classify as the outer human being: that which is similar to this sensory soul but is more external in the human being; and we designate this more external aspect as the sensory body. That is why we say: We have the outer human being and the inner human being. In the inner human being, the sensitive soul is the lowest member; in the outer human being, the corresponding member is the sensory body. Here, the astral body must be distinguished from the mere sensory body. In detail, the three soul members are merely modifications of the astral body—not only formed from it but also separated from it. In the waking state, the sensory soul is in constant interaction with the sensory body; similarly, the intellectual or emotional soul interacts with the etheric body; and what we call the conscious soul is, in a certain sense, in intimate interaction with the physical body. Therefore, with regard to everything that is to become the content of the soul of consciousness, we are dependent on the communications of consciousness during the waking state. What the physical body and the senses convey to us, and what the human being thinks with the brain, becomes, in the first instance, the content of the soul of consciousness.

[ 17 ] Thus we have two threefold entities of human nature that correspond to one another: the feeling soul to the feeling body, the intellectual soul or emotional soul to the etheric body, and the conscious soul to the physical body. Only this interconnection can shed light on those threads that run from the inner human being to the outer human being—threads that can show us how the normal life of the human soul is disrupted when they do not flow properly from the inner to the outer human being. Why is this the case?

[ 18 ] In a certain sense, what we call the feeling soul is entirely dependent on the effects of the feeling body; and if the feeling soul and the feeling body are not in the proper interaction, if they do not correspond to one another in the right way, then healthy soul life is disrupted with regard to the feeling soul. The same is true, however, when the intellectual soul cannot intervene in the etheric body in the proper regulatory manner, when it is not able to use the etheric body in such a way that it can serve as a proper instrument for the intellectual soul. And again, the conscious soul will have to appear to us as abnormal in soul life if the physical body is an impediment and obstacle to the normal expression of the conscious soul. If we analyze the human being in this way, we can recognize the regular interplay that is necessary for a healthy soul life; and we can also understand that all manner of disruptions can occur in the interaction between the feeling soul and the feeling body, the intellectual soul and the etheric body, and the conscious soul and the physical body. And only those who can see through how the threads run back and forth within this complex organism—and what kinds of irregularities can arise within it—will also be able to see through what constitutes an unhealthy state of soul life. An unhealthy state can only arise when there is a disharmony between inner and outer life. Do we not see this in the case we have cited? Let us take that philosopher once more.

[ 19 ] In the life of the soul, which unfolds under the complete control of consciousness, we see what is present within it—on the one hand, in the soul of consciousness, and on the other hand, in the soul of reason. In the sensory soul, however, we see that which strings together images, barely perceptible: the illustrated book on Paris, the photo album of Rome. This unfolds in this way because, by withdrawing his attention—while still being devoted to the person standing before him—he brings about a separation between the sensory soul and the sensory body. It is in the sensory body that we must look for the successive images—the illustrated book on Paris and the photo album of Rome. There, in the sensory body, we find what has been described as that haphazard process. In the conscious soul, in the inner human being, what took place was precisely the content of the conversation between the two people; and the necessity of forcibly maintaining attention on the conversation split, in this case, the life of the sensory body and the sensory soul.

[ 20 ] These are, in fact, transitional states. For the slightest disturbances in our inner life occur when the mere sensory body proves to be independent. At that point, we will still be able to maintain our composure, hold onto the thread within our inner being, and retain the awareness that continues to tell us: We are still here, alongside the compulsive images that arise through the sensory body, which has become independent.

[ 21 ] But when such a split occurs between the intellectual soul and the etheric body, we find ourselves in a much more difficult situation. There we are already delving deeply into those states that are beginning to become pathological. And yet, even there, it is already much more difficult to distinguish where the healthy ends and the pathological begins. We can use a tricky example to illustrate how difficult it is to maintain the experiences of the intellectual soul entirely independently when the etheric body goes on strike—when it refuses to be a mere instrument of what we think. When the etheric body takes on a life of its own and resists the intellectual soul, it prevents what is meant to be a thought from fully coming to fruition, so that the thought comes to a halt halfway and cannot be carried through to completion. This actually occurs even in the so-called most intelligent people. Let us take a grotesque example to illustrate this.

[ 22 ] Everyone will laugh at the logical absurdity and readily see the point when told: “It’s actually a perfectly valid conclusion: What you haven’t lost, you still have.” You haven’t lost your long ears; therefore, you still have long ears! — The absurdity arises because one’s thinking is not in accord with the facts. But following exactly the same pattern—that is, by choosing, so to speak, a premise—“what you haven’t lost, ...” —which then, almost imperceptibly, incorporates something it ought not to incorporate—this leads, in cases where the matter is not so obvious, to the most incredible errors regarding the most important questions of life. —For example, there is a philosopher who constantly repeats a doctrine he once formulated about the human self. We have spoken here quite often about the human “I,” and how it differs, even in its very name, from all other experiences and perceptions we can have. We have said that anyone can call a table a “table,” a glass a “glass,” and a clock a “clock”; but the single little word “I” cannot ring in our ears from the outside when it is meant to designate ourselves. This points to a fundamental difference between the experience of the self and all other experiences. One can perceive such things. But one can also perceive them only partially; and one perceives them only partially when one concludes, as that philosopher does: Therefore, the self can never become an object! Therefore, the self can never be observed! — And it is a seemingly quite witty insight when he goes on to say: Anyone who wanted to grasp the “I” would have to take the “I” everywhere and yet still be there with the “I”; that would be the same as if someone were to run around a tree and tell himself that if he only runs fast enough, he can catch up with himself from behind! — This is the comparison made by the philosopher in question. And how could anyone fail to be convinced of its plausibility when they hear the dogma of the “I”—which can never be grasped by itself—further reinforced by such a comparison! And yet: the whole argument rests solely on the fact that one must not make such a comparison. For one would already have to presuppose the idea that this “I” cannot be observed. If one were to use the comparison with the tree, one could only say: The “I” cannot be compared to a person walking around the tree, but at most to a person coiling around the tree like a snake; then one might perhaps grasp one’s feet with one’s hands. For the “I” is a completely different kind of concreteness than anything else we can experience. It is a concreteness that we can grasp as subject and object coinciding. This is what mystics of all ages, speaking in symbolic language, have always alluded to in the image of the snake that grasps itself, biting its own tail. Those who used this symbol were well aware that, in the object before them, they were nevertheless looking at themselves.

[ 23 ] In this example, we can see how we move from the mere sensation and perception of what is immediately before our eyes—and which can only come into disharmony with the sensory body—to that which operates not only in mere sensation and mere perception, but in the intellectual or emotional soul. When we must process thoughts internally—which is already much less subject to arbitrary choice—it is not merely the images themselves that present an obstacle, but something that offers entirely different kinds of resistance, and which cannot be recognized by thinking that does not follow through to its ultimate consequences. Here we have an example of how a person can become entangled in a logic without realizing that it is merely their own logic and not the logic of facts. A logic of facts can only exist if we retain control over the interaction between the intellectual soul and the etheric body—that is, if we master the etheric body. Thus, in fact, those pathological manifestations of our soul life that primarily manifest as disturbances in the connection between ideas turn out to be caused by the fact that our etheric body cannot serve us as a healthy instrument for the expressions of our intellectual soul.

[ 24 ] But now we may ask: If we have already brought with us in our constitution that etheric body which poses an obstacle to the unfolding of the intellectual soul, what else can we actually say other than that the causes of such a soul life—which passes from mere error into delusion—lie in something over which we have no control? In a certain sense, when we truly understand such an example, we encounter something that has been emphasized here time and again, and which many of our contemporaries—even the most enlightened among them—regard as mere fantasy. We see that, in a very specific way, our etheric body plays tricks on us; that instead of allowing the intellectual soul to proceed undisturbed and carry out its work so that judgments may be brought to completion, it throws obstacles in our path; so that instead of saying, “We are powerless here and cannot go on!”—we end up forming a chaotic, distorted judgment. We see that our judgment, which flows from the intellectual soul, becomes intermingled with what our etheric body introduces into it. Strange: we believe we possess an external physicality, and now the activity of this etheric body intermingles—as something of a similar nature—with the activity of our intellectual soul. How can this be explained?

[ 25 ] If one deals only in words, one can point to inherited predispositions and so on. This is what those do who, due to a certain habit of thought, are completely incapable of thinking logically about the soul. But the philosophers who are capable of reflecting on the life of the soul say: What occurs in this case as a distortion, as a chaotic entanglement of the life of the soul, cannot stem from mere physical heredity. — And now we see a much-cited modern philosopher of our time who, out of his habitual way of thinking, uses a curious term to describe that which takes place within us and yet is not merely physical. One might say it is a charming phrase, were it not a matter of serious science, when Wundt says: “There we are led into the dark infinity of development!” — Anyone accustomed to thinking scientifically finds it strange to encounter such a turn of phrase from a philosopher who is considered famous throughout the world today. Compare this with what spiritual science has to say, as it presents itself in our time with a truth that we have often compared to another truth—one that was first articulated in the 17th century by the great natural scientist Francesco Redi in a different field—namely, the proposition: “Life can only arise from life!” By elevating this principle to a higher sphere, spiritual science reveals the truth of the statement: “The spiritual-soul aspect can arise only from the spiritual-soul aspect!” It does not lead us back to mere physical heredity, but shows us that a spiritual force is at work within every physical entity. And if the counter-effects of the etheric body on the intellectual soul are too great, we must find it plausible that our etheric body must have been prepared and formed by something that is of the same nature as our intellectual soul; only that it must have prepared it poorly. So if we find error in our intellectual soul today, we can certainly—if we remain level-headed—correct that error so that it does not carry over into the physical body. And we need not rashly believe that every emotion must immediately cause an illness. No one can take a firmer stand on this point than spiritual science itself: it is nonsense to automatically attribute it to some external influence when this or that person has become insane or mad. But on the other hand, we must be clear that, even though we have no control over our etheric body, it nevertheless—in the way it presents itself to us—appears to be permeated and imbued with the very same laws of error that we encounter today as mere error, and that we are ill when we see error embodied in the etheric body. Such an error cannot, in the ordinary course of our present life between birth and death, organize itself immediately. It can only do so if it is repeated and becomes a habit; for it is something else entirely when, time and again, we pile error upon error in a certain direction between birth and death, when we repeatedly indulge in certain weaknesses of thought, feeling, and will, and live with them between birth and death. — We have emphasized that in the lives between birth and death there is a limit to the transfer of what occurs in the outer physical body. When we pass through the gate of death, the physical body—with all its good and bad predispositions—is destroyed, and we take with us everything we have prepared, both good and bad, in our thinking, feeling, and willing. And as we build up our outer physicality in our next existence, we bring into it whatever is erroneous, chaotic, or weak in our thinking, feeling, and willing in our present incarnation.

[ 26 ] If, therefore, we must reckon with an etheric body that acts as an obstacle to us, we may say: If we have an error in our soul life in the present, we cannot immediately imprint upon our etheric body what the soul has grasped; but as we pass through death, that which is now merely an error in our soul life exerts an organizing influence on our next existence. What appears as a cause and a certain predisposition in our etheric body cannot be found in this incarnation, but we can find it when we look back to a previous existence.

[ 27 ] We can see, then, that we can only understand a broad range of certain mental illnesses if we do not merely delve into the mysterious “darkness of the infinity of evolution”—which is impossible to conceive of—but rather if we look to a person’s past lives. However, we must not take this truth to extremes either; for we must be clear that, in addition to the qualities acquired in earlier lives, human beings also carry within themselves those that are inherited, and that certain characteristics of our outer being are to be regarded as inherited. This gives rise to the necessity of carefully distinguishing between how a human being lives through existence after existence and how they manifest as a descendant of their ancestors.

[ 28 ] Now, a disharmony can also arise between the soul of consciousness, which forms the basis of our self-awareness, and our physical body. In that case, our physical body will exhibit not only the characteristics we have brought with us from a previous incarnation, but also those found in our hereditary lineage. Yet even here the principle remains the same: whatever is at work in the soul of consciousness may encounter an obstacle in the active laws governing the physical body. And when the consciousness soul encounters these obstacles, all the things that so cruelly manifest themselves in certain symptoms of mental illness arise. It is here, in particular, that we must look for the area where all the negative aspects of a specific organ come to the fore when the situation arises in our physical body that one organ stands out particularly above the rest. When the organs in the physical body interact in a balanced way and none of them asserts itself over the others, then our physical body becomes a balanced instrument of the consciousness soul; we will find no hindrance in it and will not even notice that we possess the physical instrument of the consciousness soul, just as a healthy eye is no hindrance to normal vision. — We might draw attention here to a case recounted by a prominent contemporary natural scientist. A man had a clouding in one of his eyes. This clouding caused him to see abnormally with that eye; particularly at twilight, he saw something like ghostly figures. Because this influence from his eye affected his vision, he often had the sensation that someone was standing in his way. Where such an influence from the eye acts as an impediment, normal vision is not possible. These partial disturbances can manifest themselves in the most varied ways.

[ 29 ] When the conscious soul encounters an obstacle in the physical body, we must always attribute this to the particular prominence of one organ or another. For when all the organs of the physical body function together normally, the body does not oppose the conscious soul. Only when one organ stands out in particular do we notice an obstacle, because we now encounter resistance. If our consciousness soul encounters no resistance, then we express our sense of self in the usual way. But if we encounter an obstacle to this free interaction with the outside world, and we are not consciously aware that an obstacle exists, then delusions of grandeur and persecution arise as symptoms of the actual, deeper-seated illness.

[ 30 ] Thus, when we gain insight into the human being in all his complexity, we see that we can understand both harmony and disharmony in human life. We could only sketch out how these various aspects interact and how spiritual science can bring order and understanding to the marvelous findings now available in the literature.

[ 31 ] If we understand this, we will also be able to gain another insight. Above all, we will come to see the reality of the inner human being, and how the outer and inner human beings interact from one incarnation to the next; how certain faults of the outer human being—for example, faults in the etheric body—reveal only what is the effect of weaknesses and faults in the soul life during earlier stages of existence. This, however, shows us that we will not always be able—when the obstacles are too great—to overcome them through an inner, orderly, and strong soul life. Yet we will be able to do so in many respects. For if, in an abnormal soul life, we encounter nothing more than a kind of resistance from the outer self against the inner self, then we will also understand that what matters is to make the power of the inner self as strong as possible. A weak person who is unwilling to draw clear conclusions from his thoughts, who is unwilling to refine his ideas with precision, and who does not strive to shape his feelings so that they are in harmony with what he experiences—such a person will be able to offer only a weak counterbalance to the resistance of the outer self; and if they harbor a predisposition to illness, they will inevitably succumb, at the appropriate time, to what are called diseases of the soul. The situation will be different if we can counter a sick outer self with a strong inner self; for the stronger will prevail! And from this we see that, while we cannot always triumph over the external, we can do everything possible to gain the upper hand over a diseased exterior by developing a strong, orderly inner life. And we see the benefit of this when we try to shape our feelings and sensations, as well as our will, in such a way that we do not feel affected by every minor provocation; when we try to expand our thinking to encompass the broader context; when we do not merely follow the most immediate trains of thought, but take our thoughts all the way to the finest ramifications of thought; and when we are careful to shape our desires so that we do not want the impossible, but rather act in accordance with the facts. If we develop a strong inner life, we may nevertheless reach a limit; but we will have done everything possible to gain, from within, the upper hand over all external resistance.

[ 32 ] So we see what it means when a person develops their soul life in the appropriate way. Today, people have little understanding of what it means to “develop the soul life.” On similar occasions, it has already been mentioned that today great importance is attached, for example, to gymnastics, walking, and intensive physical training. Nothing is to be said about the principle implied here. These activities can be healthy. But they certainly do not lead to a good end if one focuses solely on the outer human being, as if he were a machine, and performs exercises aimed merely at physiological strengthening. When exercising, one should not at all perform exercises designed with the specific aim of strengthening this or that muscle; rather, care should be taken to ensure that we experience inner joy in every exercise, drawing the impulse for each exercise from a sense of inner well-being. The impulses for the exercises should arise from the soul. The physical education teacher, for example, should be able to empathize with how the soul experiences this or that sense of well-being when performing one exercise or another. Then we strengthen the soul; otherwise, we merely strengthen the body, while the soul may remain as weak as possible. Anyone who observes life will find that exercises undertaken from such a perspective have a healing effect and contribute something entirely different to human well-being than those exercises undertaken as if the human being were merely an anatomical apparatus.

[ 33 ] The connection between spiritual life and physical life is revealed only through a careful study of spiritual science. Anyone who believes that the physical realm can serve as a counterbalance to spiritual exertions is unaware of something essential. Anyone who is a spiritual researcher knows that they can, for example, become immensely fatigued when they are compelled to teach a certain truth to another person and then must listen to that person speak—someone who is not yet able to discuss the subject properly or form clear mental images. In such a case, a spiritual researcher experiences severe fatigue—whereas, for example, no fatigue at all sets in when he engages in spiritual research in the spiritual worlds, no matter how much he does so; this could continue indefinitely. This is because, in the case of listening, one is dealing with physical mediations in which the physical brain is active; whereas spiritual research, although it requires the participation of the physical organs when conducted on the lower levels, needs them less and less as it ascends to higher levels and thus becomes less tiring. When the outer human being no longer has to participate, then what one might call exhaustion or fatigue no longer occurs. Here we see at the same time that distinctions must be made in spiritual activity; that it is one thing when spiritual activity has its impulse within the soul itself, and quite another when it is stimulated from without. This is indeed something that must always be borne in mind: that in the stages of human development, what occurs always corresponds to the inner impulses.

[ 34 ] Let’s take one point that has always been emphasized, and which you can read about in the short treatise *The Education of the Child from the Perspective of Spiritual Science*. It is stated there that, up to the age of seven, in everything the child does, it feels primarily the impulse to act through imitation; that then, during the period from the change of teeth to sexual maturity, its development is characterized by what one might call: orienting itself toward an authority or aligning itself with what makes an impression on us through the way another person lives. Let us suppose that no attention is paid to this; instead, we act contrary to the fact that the soul’s impulse is oriented toward imitation until the age of seven and toward submission to authority from the age of seven until sexual maturity. If this is not taken into account, the outer physical form, instead of developing into a normal instrument for the soul, will develop in an irregular manner, and the soul will then no longer have the opportunity, in the subsequent stages of human development, to act upon an irregular outer form in the proper way and thus interact with it. We then see that when a person enters a new stage at turning points in human life, a certain aspect of the person may have been left behind to some degree if this rule is not observed. And one would easily find that nothing else underlies what commonly appears as youthful folly or dementia praecox other than the failure to observe these laws. By disregarding the proper guidelines in earlier stages of life, what is known as “youthful folly” or “dementia praecox”—a symptom of delayed imitation—then manifests as disharmony in the interaction between the outer and inner human being. It then becomes evident that the lack of harmony between what spiritual science clearly distinguishes from one another is, in many respects, the cause of an abnormal mental life. Similarly, in what appears toward the end of life as senile paralysis, we again see a lack of harmony between the inner and outer human beings, caused by the fact that, during the period of sexual maturity up to the point where the astral body reaches its full development, the person did not live in such a way that harmony could be established between the outer and inner human beings.

[ 35 ] From this, too, we can see that a correct understanding of human nature can shed light on what we might call the nature of error and delusion. And even if we have found only a superficial connection, even if we cannot say that error—insofar as it belongs to normal soul life—can leave its mark on external life, on the expressions of life, we must nevertheless say that, in contrast, the more comforting truth is an important law: namely, that by developing a strong logic and a regulated inner life in harmony with our feelings and will, we can fortify ourselves against the inhibitions that may come from the outer human being. Thus, spiritual science gives us—perhaps not always, but usually—the opportunity to counteract the dominance and supremacy of the outer self. It is important that, as we nurture and strengthen the inner self, we thereby also fortify it against the dominance of the outer self. Spiritual science provides us with a remedy in this regard. It is therefore spiritual science that repeatedly emphasizes the importance of developing orderly trains of thought and a well-structured imaginative life—not to stop halfway through our thoughts, but to think them through to their logical conclusion. This has been emphasized time and again from a wide variety of perspectives. Therefore, spiritual science—with its strict demand that we shape our inner life so that it appears internally disciplined and harmonized—is itself a remedy against the excesses of pathological physicality. And a person can triumph over pathological predispositions if they are able to shed the light of a healthy will, healthy feeling, and self-disciplined thinking over physical weakness and physical deformities. People today often do not like to hear this. Nevertheless, it is important for us to understand the present. And so we can say: Spiritual science even offers us a consolation: that in the spirit—if only we truly strengthen it—we still have the best remedy for everything that may befall us in life. Through spiritual science, we do not learn to theorize about the spirit, but rather we learn to make it an effective force within us, if we try not to stop where philistinism so readily wants to stop—at half-formed thoughts. For it is nothing but half-hearted thinking when people say: “Prove to us what you’re saying about repeated earthly lives and so on!” It cannot be proven to those who are unwilling to think their thoughts through to the end; whole truths cannot be proven with half-formed thoughts! They can be proven only through whole thoughts, and human beings must develop whole thoughts within themselves.

[ 36 ] If you expand upon what has now been presented as a guideline, you will see that it addresses an evil of our time: the evil of unbelief in the spirit; but at the same time, attention has been drawn to where the means lie for transforming this unbelief into faith in true, powerful spirituality. Faith in reason is largely absent from humanity today. Consequently, the kind of rational open-mindedness necessary to grasp the truths of spiritual science is not always present. It is not meant to be said with mockery or irony, but with a certain melancholy, that what a certain character in *Faust* says could also be applied to our present age:

If they had the Philosopher's Stone,
The stone lacked the philosopher!

[ 37 ] Reason can comprehend spiritual science, and a rational understanding of spiritual science leads to healing that extends even into the most physical aspects of being. Incidentally, this is not claimed only by today’s spiritual scientists. It has also always been claimed by those who sought to approach the spirit through paths other than those of modern spiritual science. But even such people are little understood today. Who today would not mock a thinker like Hegel, precisely because he emphasized the existence, efficacy, and necessity of reason everywhere? He emphasized it to such an extent that he imagined the efficacy of reason in contemporary human beings in this way: I imagine this human life as a cross. And for Hegel, the roses in the cross were what reason is in human beings. That is why he places the following sentence at the beginning of one of his works: “Reason is the rose in the cross of the present!” And faith in reason will cause the cross to triumph. Faith in reason and faith in disciplined thinking, in a harmonized life of feeling and will, will hang the roses on the cross. That is why we can say: There is indeed some truth to the idea that we have within us the power to counteract what we call diseases of the soul, at least up to a certain limit; if we have faith in a harmonized life of feeling that we can cultivate, in a harmonized life of will that we can cultivate, and in a life of reason that is disciplined in itself—a life we can and should cultivate. If we cultivate these three, we will make ourselves stronger and more successful in life under all circumstances. And because Hegel synthesizes a harmonious life of feeling and will, a disciplined life of thought, and a rational intellectuality into reason, he makes the statement—which can serve as a guiding principle for us in the cultivation of our inner life—that reason should be for human beings the rose in the cross of the present!