The Rudolf Steiner Archive

3. The Tasks of Spiritual Research for the Present and the Future

[ 1 ] Spiritual science, as understood in these lectures, does not seek to be something that arises from the whims of this or that person, something based, for example, on a subjective idea of one or more individuals; rather, it seeks to be a spiritual worldview that responds with a certain necessity to the needs and demands of our time, insofar as this era emerges as a recognizable product of the history of human development. Only when a worldview is, so to speak, demanded by its time can it, with a certain justification, lay claim to those words of confidence that were spoken in the first lecture of this winter. Only under such a premise can it say: No matter how opposition to it may assert itself from this or that quarter, if it contains even a grain of truth, it may rely on the fact that truth will always—no matter how much it is buried—find the cracks and crevices through which it will spread throughout the spiritual life of humanity.

[ 2 ] We will now attempt—not with general platitudes, but rather with concrete facts—to point out how, over the course of the last few centuries and especially in the very recent past up to the present, the seeking human soul has developed more and more toward what the spiritual science referred to here aims to be for this seeking human soul.

[ 3 ] Who today, when compelled by the promptings of their heart and the needs of their soul to seek answers to the mysteries of the universe for the sake of strength and security in their life, who could not be tempted to first turn to what natural science—which spiritual science certainly does not underestimate, but fully acknowledges in its triumphs and achievements—has to offer? Countless people today believe, after all, that it will depend on the further development of scientific questions and scientific research whether, as it were, by synthesizing these scientific facts and laws, one will also arrive at a worldview that opens up for humanity the perspectives into that which what lies beyond the things that can be perceived by the senses, that can be grasped by the intellect, and with which one feels connected in one’s existence—but which one strives to recognize so that one may know what the destiny of the soul is, indeed, the destiny of its activity throughout the entire world.

[ 4 ] In the face of such longing and such hope, however, it may well be pointed out that, in the course of human development, the relationship of the soul to what external science can be has completely changed; and it is precisely through the example we can cite here regarding questions of the soul in relation to science, it may become clear to us just how our age—in one respect—cannot be described merely with the trivial, often-used term “transitional era,” but rather how it is an age that, in terms of spiritual research in the highest sense, calls for a new epoch. We need only recall the example of a great figure who, like many others of his kind, contributed to advancing our intellectual culture: Kepler, who was the true architect of the Copernican worldview—a worldview from which, nevertheless, many questions regarding our present-day worldview arise.

[ 5 ] Who today—if he lacks a heart and mind for true spiritual science—might not even be led to say: Through achievements such as those of Kepler, humanity has succeeded in understanding the movements of the celestial bodies through purely objective natural science and its laws. And how—one might ask—can the belief persist alongside this that the movements of the celestial bodies are in any way governed by spiritual beings to which spiritual science seeks to point—spiritual beings that stand behind the material world and its laws—since everything can be explained in mechanical, physical terms! Why, then, would there be any need for spiritual forces lying behind these physical laws?

[ 6 ] Such a statement seems extraordinarily captivating, and one might point out that it was precisely the liberation from the long-held prejudices of the old spiritual worldviews that enabled people like Kepler to explain the movements of the celestial bodies in space based solely on physical laws. But if we approach Kepler himself objectively, without the biases of our own time, and study him in terms of his spiritual characteristics, we find the remarkable fact that everything that directed Kepler’s gaze out into the heavens—everything that gave him the actual inner impulses to discover his great, powerful laws— was the awareness of being embedded, with his soul, in the spiritual foundations of existence—in the activity of spiritual beings that fill the realms and work through time. He was fully aware that what he attributed to the planetary motions as “laws” could only have been inspired in him because these laws were the thoughts of divine-spiritual beings. If we investigate what such impulses were based on in Kepler’s case, we must say that they were based precisely on the fact that the entire course of human development has always kept the human soul connected to the spiritual-soul realm, and that what was accepted as a self-evident spiritual-soul reality was still present in Kepler’s time, it was present in tradition, in common belief; it was there to inspire the soul, to set it alight, and to awaken thoughts within it.

[ 7 ] But who could deny that this aspect, which stood so clearly in the background of Kepler’s work, has gradually faded away over the course of the last few centuries—faded away because of what has been made of it—so that today the human soul can very easily come to believe that Kepler’s laws and everything that has come about in this way could be invoked as evidence against the assumption of a spiritual-divine world. If we trace Kepler’s legacy through the centuries up to our own time, we see how that which was indeed born out of an awareness of humanity’s connection to the divine-spiritual is increasingly eroding that very awareness itself, and how an era is dawning, great and mighty through its scientific achievements, great and mighty through the creation of significant insights in the field of natural science—a time in which the human soul is gradually becoming incapable of truly ascending to the spiritual from the abundance of this scientific material, from the abundance of what has been recognized in the material realm. One might say: The course of our spiritual development over the last few centuries is characterized by the fact that the sum of what it has brought about is immense, great, and admirable; yet the human soul’s ability to see through these achievements toward the spiritual has been impaired—indeed, virtually destroyed—precisely by the abundance and nature of these scientific achievements.

[ 8 ] This becomes clear to us, for example, when we consider the way in which even Goethe, with his approach to researching natural phenomena, was embedded in the overall worldview of his time. It is interesting to note how, for example, Herman Grimm—that witty and at the same time profound connoisseur of Goethe—feels compelled to characterize Goethe’s integration into the scientific currents of his time. Herman Grimm asks: How did the centuries preceding Goethe’s era still conceive of the relationship between humanity and nature?

[ 9 ] Anyone familiar with these centuries will agree with Herman Grimm: they differed from later times in that humanity stood upon the earth, and people felt justified, when observing the nature of animals, plants, and other things, in viewing humanity as a kind of culmination of all the rest of earthly creation—indeed, of the creation of the world itself; they felt justified in saying: There is such a meaning in the entire course of development that, when one looks at stone, plant, and animal, one can recognize how an inner being has gradually developed, already with humanity in mind, evolving upward to arrange everything else for the sake of humanity and its purpose. To what extent one might still wish to adhere to the ancient Mosaic account of creation is irrelevant. But this conviction was there: to see in all the realms of the universe something like an impulse that already encompasses humanity and makes everything else merely a preparation to elevate humanity—which has been spiritually present from the very beginning—to the pinnacle of this entire creation.

[ 10 ] What emerged more and more in contrast to this? First—as Herman Grimm also notes—astronomy began. The Earth was made into an insignificant celestial body in the universe, and humankind was thus placed upon the Earth as if, without having been predisposed from the outset in the other realms, it had ultimately emerged as a necessity of nature—so that it would have no right to connect its own meaning to the entire course of events. Geology posits immense periods of time that elapsed before humankind appeared on Earth, and which, from the perspective of natural science, in no way show any traces that everything else existed merely to prepare the way for humankind later on. In a certain sense, Goethe may be called a truly radical natural scientist. I have often mentioned here how, through his own scientific discoveries, he strove to eliminate from conceptions of the human body’s external structure anything that might set humans apart from the rest of Earth’s organisms, and one may call Goethe a proponent of the theory of descent and a proponent of evolutionary theory—long before Darwin and the other evolutionary theorists of our time. But Herman Grimm rightly points out how Goethe nevertheless insisted on seeing, behind what Darwinism regards as nothing more than material processes, a “spiritual” element that develops spiritually within all material processes, so that humanity is indeed situated within them.

[ 11 ] Goethe made a remarkable remark that really brings home how hard he strove—even though he was so scientifically minded—to present human beings as the pinnacle and crown of spiritual existence. He says: What, after all, is the point of all the millions of stars in the world if, in the end, a human eye cannot gaze upon them to contemplate them and take them into its being? — And not without reason. Admittedly, it would take a great deal—and if we go through all these scientific facts and laws—to justify the question: Where do we find anything out there, apart from human beings, that could serve as a point of reference for us, indicating that spirit reigns in all living and non-living things? Where, when we examine human beings themselves from a scientific perspective—once we have come to recognize that mental life is bound to brain processes—where do we find any indication that we might conceive of a spiritual existence beyond the boundaries of birth and death?

[ 12 ] One need only open any of the more significant and famous philosophical works today—for example, that of the world-renowned Wundt—to find, wherever such philosophers draw on scientific research, that certain conclusions and findings are derived from scientific facts, and that the philosophers, for my sake, extend their reach everywhere—even to the spiritual realm—but that the moment it comes to grasping the spiritual, they are forced to stop short. Why is that? For the simple reason that the entire mode of thinking, as it has developed in reliance on scientific research and follows scientific facts step by step, offers no possibility, within these habits of thought, within this entire mode of inquiry, of finding the path out of matter and its laws into true spiritual reality and its essence, because the thread of thought breaks off everywhere. Why didn’t it break away from Goethe? Because Goethe was still imbued with impulses that had emerged as ancient forces in the development of humanity, because something of what had remained from history, of the ancient spiritual views—which we will yet come to know—still lived within him, and because, in a certain sense, his soul had not yet been emptied of what had come to the soul by a direct spiritual path over the course of millennia, whenever that soul looked out upon the events of the material world.

[ 13 ] But our times have evolved rapidly, and as a result of this rapid evolution, those who have modeled their ways of thinking on scientific research today scarcely possess what was still present in Goethe. Consequently, we have seen that although Darwin revealed the interconnections among living beings in greater detail and with greater force than Goethe did, he nevertheless remained confined to the overall spirit and method of his research. Whereas Goethe, in this entire approach and spirit of research, still saw the spirit behind all phenomena, the Darwinists—not Darwin himself!—have had to interpret what did not prevent Goethe from reaching the spirit as an obstacle to reaching the spiritual in any way.

[ 14 ] That is why we can understand that those who place their true hopes for a worldview in contemporary science often find those hopes dashed. However, something that has existed within humanity is not so easily lost. We can see, even in the most recent times, that serious researchers—who seek only science—by no means believe that science must merely present external facts, but rather that it could very well serve to substantiate the ongoing course of a cosmic wisdom that lives within things. It is interesting that even a historian from the Ranke school, Lord Acton, was able to say to his audience as a history professor during a significant university lecture at Cambridge in 1895: “I hope that the entirely objective description of historical facts will reveal the workings of a divine universal wisdom.” — Indeed, Lord Acton even spoke at that time of the workings of the “Risen One” in history.

[ 15 ] Thus we see that even in our own time, the influence of those eras still extends into the present, when the existence of a spiritual world was taken for granted, something like a sense of being carried along in research—as if the entire scientific way of thinking were being carried along by such a mindset—and just as this sense of being carried along from ancient times is still present, so too is the soul’s permeation by the spiritual, such that this sense of being carried along still feels permeated from within by the spiritual. But it is equally true that those who today cling entirely to the habits of scientific thought—and, for example, trace how individual soul activities find their corresponding expressions in brain or other nervous processes—such people, precisely as they trace fact upon fact, can easily say to themselves: “Yes, for what a human being is capable of thinking, feeling, and perceiving in material life, there are indeed clues for the researcher everywhere; but as for what might lie before or after that for the soul, natural science tells me nothing.”

[ 16 ] How widespread is the misconception that, because the natural sciences—based on their observation of facts and laws—cannot extend to the spiritual realm, they must therefore reject the spiritual as well! Admittedly—and this, too, is characteristic of the entire worldview of our time—even those who take the position that we can arrive at a worldview only by synthesizing the facts and laws of natural science are constantly warned against jumping to conclusions and against the habit of formulating hypotheses—which always seeks to synthesize a few facts in order to draw conclusions about how the life of the soul is bound to this or that, what the entire structure of the universe is like, or the like.

[ 17 ] Such a warning was issued once again recently by a prominent figure. At this year’s naturalists’ conference, the highly esteemed naturalist Wettstein delivered a speech on biology—the science of life—and its applicability to worldview, and he cautioned against drawing general conclusions about worldview from the facts as they currently stand. Nevertheless, many believe that, for this reason, one must wait—with regard to the mysteries pertaining to the life of the soul—until natural science has completed its investigation of the facts. Admittedly, what has been put forward here—namely, the assertion that a person who wishes to penetrate the mysteries of the soul and the spirit in order to draw conclusions about them must have thoroughly explored the natural scientific facts all over the world—is reminiscent of a beautiful saying by Goethe: “To understand that the sky is blue everywhere, one need not travel around the world.”

[ 18 ] I would like, however, to show specifically how the human soul’s path to its spiritual mysteries is, in a certain sense, independent of everything that the individual laws of natural science or the individual laws of scholarship in general can offer this human soul. To substantiate this, I would like to point out the following fact: In the nineteenth century, we had a significant philosopher in Munich, Moriz Carriere. He was among those who sought to understand the world and its phenomena not only from a wealth of ideas, but also from a wealth of genuine scholarly knowledge. After all, Carriere demonstrated in his great work on the cultural development of humanity how he had meticulously compiled fact upon fact from ancient times in order to understand the course of the spirit through the development of the world. From all such processes, Carriere has now formed a worldview that I am all the more eager to mention because it predated the emergence of a true spiritual science; a worldview that, through its own development, arrived at the insight into the connection between the soul and a spiritual world that extends across space and time, just as there is a connection between what lies physically within the human body, and the substances and forces that are spread out in space and operate in time.

[ 19 ] One day, Moriz Carriere was shown the manuscript of a simple man—a man who was not at all learned, who possessed none of the wealth of scholarship through which Moriz Carriere had arrived at the understanding of the connection between the soul and the spiritual realm just described. This simple man’s name was Zeuner; he was born in 1813. Through a series of life events—which cannot be described here due to lack of time—Zeuner found himself in a situation where he had to spend many, many months in solitude; he had allowed himself to be swept up by the revolutionary movement, and this had landed him in prison. But although he was not a scholar, he was a soul of the highest order. In the manuscript that he showed to Moriz Carriere in the 1870s, he recounts how he brooded and brooded in his solitary cell, filled only—as was in keeping with the spirit of his time and the people who had surrounded him until then—with materialistic views, but how his soul had grown desolate in solitude, how it suffered from the hunger to possess something in which he could not believe. He goes on to describe how he once heard a strange song rising from outside his cell, a song that reminded him of experiences from his earliest childhood and connected them with other memories; how this, in turn, sparked a glimmer of joy in his soul; and how this impulse—an impulse of inner freshness and vitality—triggered thoughts in his simple, unadorned soul—thoughts that Zeuner then wrote down. And he later sent this manuscript to Moriz Carriere. When one reads it—Moriz Carriere later had it published—one must agree with Carriere: By surrendering himself to the soul that was imperiously emerging from the depths of his breast, Zeuner found something that depicts the soul’s connection to the world spirit in the same way that Carriere was able to depict it, after a lifetime of scholarship and a lifetime of scientific inquiry.

[ 20 ] One does not need to travel around the world to realize that the sky is blue everywhere. The path to the spiritual must simply be found in a different way than by merely summarizing the laws of natural science or by drawing conclusions from scientific research. Rather, our engagement with the natural sciences must take a different form. No worldview can survive today—and no worldview should be allowed to survive, for the needs of the human soul would sweep it away—that is in contradiction to the natural sciences. That is why the first two lectures had to emphasize so strongly what can be said from the perspective of natural science against spiritual research, and how spiritual science must respond to this. And it cannot be emphasized often enough that one should feel one has erred with regard to any insight from spiritual science if, today, it leads one into contradiction with a valid finding of natural science. But when one then looks again at natural science—and if one has a sense and a heart for the necessary authority that must emanate from natural science—one will all the more have to point out what can mislead the soul, what must mislead it precisely because of the abundance of what already exists, if it wishes to set out on the path to the spirit. I would also like to substantiate this with examples.

[ 21 ] Attention should be drawn to two researchers, both of whom were grounded in the history of development and in the natural sciences. Both researchers interpreted the origin of individual living organisms in the same way that Darwinists do, but they excluded human beings from their analysis. They were well aware that the laws applicable to the animal kingdom should not be applied to human beings, but that just as one must derive one’s physical nature from the physical realm, so too must one derive one’s spiritual and psychological nature from a spiritual and psychological realm. They were both completely clear on this point. They were just as skilled as natural scientists as they were in understanding the spiritual realm, but their habits of thought were rooted in the natural sciences. They thought as a true natural scientist thinks. How did one of them, Mivart, and how did the other, Wallace—a contemporary of Darwin—think about the actual processes of evolution?

[ 22 ] Wallace told himself that humans could not simply be placed within the animal kingdom. If only because there is a considerable difference in the external structure of the brain between humans and the most highly developed apes—even if one considers only primitive humans—and because the ape brain is far too imperfect compared to that of a primitive human, if humans are to be considered to have evolved from apes in a straight line of development.

[ 23 ] The other researcher, Mivart, found that the cultural stage of primitive man was not at all outwardly different from the stage of development of the most highly evolved ape. However, if one considers the mental activities of the savage in contrast to those of the most highly developed ape, one must conclude—given that the brains of the two are so similar—that humans do not belong in the animal kingdom. If one again considers the brains, it becomes quite clear that the human brain did not develop from the ape brain through adaptation to external activities, but rather that civilization has already developed all its potential in such a way that it merely appears as if everything were already predisposed so that it could one day become the instrument of civilization.

[ 24 ] Since the monkey brain and the human brain differ so greatly from one another, Wallace felt compelled to assume that humans are not related to the animal kingdom. And it was precisely the similarity in mental characteristics between the two that served as proof for Wallace of what he was saying. For Mivart, his contemporary, the exact opposite was true; he was of the opinion that if one compared the mental characteristics of primitive man with those of the most highly developed apes, such a great difference would become apparent that, because of this difference, one could not assume any ancestral relationship between primitive man and the apes.

[ 25 ] We thus see two naturalists, both accustomed to scientific thinking, who each adopt their respective views for opposite reasons: one because the characteristics of the savage and the most highly developed ape are so similar, the other because they are so different. If even two researchers, both of whom tend to derive humanity from the spiritual, can be so misled in their reasoning by the abundance of facts, how much more so must the one who is even more prejudiced and trapped in the habits of purely materialistic thinking be rendered incapable by that same abundance of facts of arriving at the spiritual realm from these very facts and laws themselves!

[ 26 ] Natural science merely leads us from fact to fact. If we have spiritual science, then it is precisely through this spiritual science that the principles of natural science can be understood and placed in their proper light. But the laws of the humanities can never be derived in any way from the natural sciences. Therefore, the human soul would be increasingly deprived of all spiritual nourishment if it were to rely solely on accepting as “scientific” only what the natural sciences produce. The natural sciences themselves will attain their greatness and significance precisely by remaining within their own limits.

[ 27 ] But anyone who takes even a brief look into the inner life of the human soul will soon discover that, for its security, strength, and work in life, the soul needs answers to the question of the spirit. While in ancient times—as we have demonstrated with Kepler and Goethe and can demonstrate with others—these answers were already inherently contained within humanity’s overall worldview, this is no longer the case today. A new task has thus emerged, one we have already begun to characterize and will continue to characterize in its essence: the task of spiritual science. Precisely what has disappeared as a result of the rise of the natural sciences must be rediscovered in an independent way through spiritual science, by showing the paths along which the human soul can reach its spiritual home. Anyone who truly understands our age will grasp how, given that events have unfolded as described, a strong need—a strong longing—has emerged to understand the world increasingly from a spiritual perspective and to establish an independent spiritual science alongside the natural sciences.

[ 28 ] When we examine the details—even the doctrine of repeated earthly lives, which is perhaps rejected by many spiritual believers today—we see it slowly and gradually emerging and becoming established in modern culture; for example, in Lessing’s treatise on the “Education of the Human Race.” Time and again we see—even though little is known about it today—how, in the nineteenth century, intellectually consistent researchers of the soul were led to the law of repeated earthly lives, which is the only one truly appropriate for the human soul.

[ 29 ] The more natural science celebrates its great triumphs on the material plane, the more the spirit’s longing to follow its own paths blossoms. And once again, using a concrete example, I would like to show how the entire course of spiritual life in our time is shaped in such a way that it flows, as if of its own accord, into what spiritual science aspires to be today. I would like to draw attention to a thinker, a researcher, whom I will discuss further in the course of these winter lectures, and who is particularly interesting in light of this yearning for spiritual science: Herman Grimm, the art historian. A comprehensive spirit—he shows us precisely how, in modern times, the soul is pushing its way out of a purely scientific conception of events, particularly in human life, and how, through the impulses and forces of the age, the soul is held back from taking the final step of breaking free—from breaking into spiritual science.

[ 30 ] Anyone who carefully examines Herman Grimm’s writings will see that he is searching for a universal principle—not a dead one, but a creative law that, for example, the practical historian can adhere to, and which must be something other than so-called historical ideas. Ideas can no more create anything than—to use the image from the last lecture—a painted painter can paint a picture. Ideas are something dead. Only something living can be effective. Herman Grimm sought the living force in history—one capable of powerful creation from epoch to epoch—which, in the primeval epoch of humanity, created the form of the human soul for impersonal reasons, and then, from people to people and from age to age, conjured forth the individual achievements from within itself. And what did he believe he had found as such? The creative imagination.

[ 31 ] A German philosopher, Frohschammer, also regarded the imagination as a creative force not only in historical development but also in nature. Herman Grimm was unable to demonstrate—as he had intended—how imagination is truly a kind of divinity that lives in the will and brings forth deeds in human history, just as the individual human being brings forth the deeds of his or her soul from within. What he did, he created in the light of this view—that behind historical development stands the creative imagination, that everything has come into being out of the creative imagination. But what is imagination to him? Do we not see in a researcher’s urge to understand the facts an approach to something spiritual, which is nevertheless not spirit? For creative imagination remains, after all, merely an abstraction—one that is certainly more alive than historical ideas, but which, for the realist thinker, is nonetheless only an abstraction.

[ 32 ] One might say that a researcher like Herman Grimm ventures right up to the threshold of the humanities. He cannot stop at the external, material “facts” and external events; he sees, behind all external events, that which the imagination creates, and objectifies it within world history. But no one can recognize in the imagination anything that is truly real or that actually creates. It remains an abstraction, and only when one penetrates beyond it to that which is no longer an abstraction—that which is spiritual, that which is as real as a tangible sensory experience—only when one approaches the spiritual facts, which are not merely defined ideas but are essential in themselves, can one understand how what surrounds us truly unfolds in the world. That is why, in a thinker of such depth, we see how the longing of our time is drawing closer to the spiritual, and how the obstacles created by the times are so immense that people cannot pass through the gate to the spiritual. Do we not see the urge to approach this spiritual science? Do we not see how this spiritual science has tasks for the present and the future that correspond to the longing, the urge, and the demands of our time?

[ 33 ] Let’s take a closer look at the causes of the disabilities of today’s souls! From the longing for the spiritual, we can clearly see how people, when they look clearly at the circumstances of our time, cannot help but yearn for the Spirit and its laws—yet they cannot penetrate into the spiritual and are now, so to speak, waiting for something spiritual. Wherever one looks, one notices the urge toward that which one does not yet know. But from the very nature of this urge itself, one can see quite clearly that a time will come—one that is not at all so far off—when people will understand: spiritual science is the answer to the longing and the urge they feel.

[ 34 ] Until recently, one could find a book at every train station in the bookstores that was truly not written by a man who would readily succumb to every passing fad. This book does not originate from a solitary brooder or someone unfamiliar with the intellectual needs of the times. If the science of the spirit is to demonstrate its legitimacy, it must not rely on the often eccentric enthusiasts who, in their sectarian nature, claim to understand what can advance humanity; but it may draw upon what is expressed in the book now under discussion, *Zur Kritik der Zeit* by Walther Rathenau—a work written by a man who is deeply immersed in industrial and commercial life and who understands the workings of our time.

[ 35 ] Not that I wish to agree with everything in it. One could raise objections to every page of this book, but precisely what might be called the spirit of the times’ drive toward intellectual insight is symptomatically evident in a book like this. What does Walter Rathenau present? He presents precisely what I have attempted to substantiate in somewhat greater depth based on the spirit of the historical development of the past century. With Rathenau, the situation is this: Advances in the natural sciences have led to a general mechanization of life. Whereas people used to try to explain what presented itself to their senses from a spiritual perspective, today they explain it from a mechanical perspective. But human relationships have also become mechanized. “Mechanization” is what has emerged from the great advances and significant achievements of our time. And one can sense—and Walther Rathenau senses it—how the soul becomes desolate within the mechanisms of thought and society, how it gradually becomes empty in the face of such goals; for while one can deprive it of nourishment, mechanization cannot quench its hunger.

[ 36 ] What many of the greatest experts of the time have said is also true here: When one suppresses what the soul intellectually craves, one will see that even if the soul is satisfied with something superficial, that very hunger will become all the more apparent. — Thus we see how a person fully immersed in his time writes:

[ 37 ] “The age does not seek its meaning or its God; it seeks its soul, which has been darkened by the turmoil of bloodshed and the chaos of mechanistic thought and desire.

[ 38 ] It seeks its soul and will find it; though, of course, against the will of mechanization. This era had no interest in developing the spiritual aspect of human beings; it sought to make the world usable—and thus rational—to push back the boundaries of the miraculous, and to conceal the beyond. Nevertheless, we are as surrounded by mystery as ever; beneath every smooth surface of thought, it comes to light, and from every everyday experience, it takes but a single step to reach the center of the world. Mechanization could not rob the individual of the three emanations of the soul—love for fellow human beings, for nature, and for the divine—yet for the life of society as a whole, they have been reduced to insignificance. Love for humanity has sunk to cold compassion and a duty of care, yet it still represents the ethical pinnacle of the entire era; love for nature has become a sentimental Sunday pastime; love for God, obscured by the orchestrated machinery of mythological-dogmatic rituals, has been placed in the service of interests both in this world and the next, and has thus become suspect not only to base natures. There is probably not a single path along which it would be impossible for a person to find his soul—even if it were the joy of flying in an airplane. But humanity will take no detours. No prophets will come, nor any founders of religions, for in this deafened age, no single voice will be heard anymore; otherwise, it might still be listening to Christ and Paul today. No esoteric communities will take the lead, for a secret teaching is misunderstood even by the first disciple, let alone the second. No single art form in the world will bring it its soul, for art is a mirror and a play of the soul, not its creator.

[ 39 ] The greatest and most wonderful things are the simple ones. Nothing will happen except that, under the pressure and strain of mechanization, lack of freedom, and fruitless struggle, humanity will cast aside the obstacles that weigh upon the growth of its soul. This will happen not through brooding and thinking, but through free understanding and experience. What many speak of today and a few understand, many will later understand, and ultimately everyone will understand: that no power on earth can withstand the soul.”

[ 40 ] Insofar as such words express longings, and insofar as our time calls for the Spirit, one can certainly agree with them. However, one must add: there is a complete understanding here of what the times require, but a complete lack of knowledge regarding what can satisfy these urges and needs. There is also a clear conviction that the legitimate individualism of our time is no longer suited to accepting a single religious founder or prophet, or to establishing secret schools aligned with any sectarian group that wishes to call itself “esoteric.”

[ 41 ] True spiritual science will seek neither one nor the other. True spiritual science knows that the true esoteric is justified when it does not seek to become exoteric, but remains within itself. For what matters is not what seeks to establish itself as esoteric, but what seeks to establish itself in our time in such a way that it can be received by sound reason. In this respect, the authority of any prophet will not suffice for the age, but only the truth that is entirely independent of human beings and their subjective individuality—a truth to which the human soul can surrender itself, if only it so desires. In this respect, what was meant here by spiritual science is precisely captured by the words of this practitioner, Rathenau.

[ 42 ] But why is it so difficult for our age to return to spiritual science? Why has something like an insurmountable wall risen between the spirit of the times and spiritual science itself?

[ 43 ] This, too, can be demonstrated to reveal where the real obstacles lie. What, for example, would someone say about a natural science that claims to be “science” and seeks to meet the needs of the human spirit, if the person who claims to be a natural scientist were to answer every question about the connection between the physical human body and scientific facts by saying only: “There is this or that structure in the human physical body; this corresponds to what is also found out there in nature.” — Can anyone conceive of a serious natural science that, in response to every question posed to it, would always answer only: “That is nature!” Nature is behind the movements of the stars, nature is behind chemical processes—nature, nature, nature. — Just one word! Can one imagine that someone who acted in this way would be regarded as a serious scholar of nature?

[ 44 ] Now one might say again: The impulses of the human soul to enter the spiritual world have become so weak in recent times that the urge, which manifests itself so vividly, finds no other expression in our time than in what, in spiritual science, would be quite similar to the situation in the natural sciences, where people would simply keep shouting: Nature, nature, nature! After all, we see authoritative voices rising up who vigorously advocate that the scientific approach of our time must direct people toward the spiritual. But in demanding this turning toward the spiritual, they get no further than emphasizing: “Human beings have a soul; there is a soul,” and so on; “Soul, soul, soul—spirit, spirit, spirit,” they say, just as the unsatisfactory natural scientist would say: “Nature, nature, nature!”

[ 45 ] Here we see—and the facts cited are by no means insignificant, but rather quite significant—how a prominent contemporary figure delivered a speech at a ceremony at Harvard University in the United States on how a general worldview that leads to the spiritual must be born out of the natural sciences, Dr. Eliot, a man who stands firmly on the ground of the natural sciences and who is a thorough expert in contemporary natural science. I would really like to quote another passage from a speech that was delivered at an outstanding location on Earth. Dr. Eliot said:

[ 46 ] “People have always assumed that there is a soul distinct from the body, though inherent in it. No one is willing to become one with their body. On the contrary, everyone now believes—and all people have always believed—that there is within man a vital, governing, distinctive being, or a spirit, which is his very self. This is just as real as the body, and just as characteristic... This spirit or soul is the most active part of the human being; it is recognized as such, and this has always been the case.”

[ 47 ] Other than that, Dr. Elliot says nothing except to refer to the “soul”—much as if someone were to keep referring only to “nature, nature, nature.” We simply have not yet reached the point in our time where our habits of thought regarding the spirit have become as comfortable with it as they are with nature. In the natural sciences, we distinguish between oxygen and hydrogen in water, and we do not say: “Oxygen and hydrogen belong to ‘nature’”—there, we go into the details of nature. In the same way, spiritual science must come to the point where it relates what lives in the soul as forces and activities not merely to a “general spiritual realm,” but to a spiritual world—a concrete realm of the spirit that is distinguished and described in detail, just as the individual facts of natural science are.

[ 48 ] Only when spiritual science has reached the same point in its examination of the individual facts of the human soul as natural science has in its examination of the individual facts of nature will it be able to give the human soul what the soul demands. The next lecture is devoted to showing what these paths are. But above all, it should be made clear how, in our time, there is a yearning for something whose significance and essence are not yet fully understood, and how spiritual science in our time is faced with the task of providing an understanding of the spiritual, just as natural science provides an understanding of the facts of nature. And just as natural science regards it as its task to trace the development of a substance—which is also found in the human body—out in the world in order to recognize the entire context, so spiritual science will regard it as its task to trace any activity of the human soul back to the spiritual forces and the spiritual principles of creation out in the universe.

[ 49 ] From this, however, she will also come to understand how that which lives within the human soul relates to the entire universe, to space and time. Only in this way can she arrive at the answers to the mysteries of immortality and the fate of human beings between death and their next birth. Merely referring abstractly to “spirit” and “soul” in general cannot lead to anything fruitful. This will only ever lead to doubt regarding the true answers—for example, concerning the question of immortality. Only when one sees how these matters are connected to something entirely different—something that is not subject to transience over the course of time—will these questions be answered through spiritual science.

[ 50 ] When one considers this, however, it is fair to say that the tasks facing spiritual science today and in the future are similar to those faced by the natural sciences at the very dawn of their development in modern times. Just as, in the time of Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, and others, the old traditions were overcome and the human spirit itself was directed toward scientific facts, and just as the pursuit of this path right up to our own time has given rise to a wealth of scientific achievements, so too must it be the most serious task of our time to establish a science of the spirit in a comprehensive manner and to show the paths the soul must take to reach the individual spiritual beings and the individual spiritual realities.

[ 51 ] The natural sciences did not have it easy. They, too, had to struggle against obstacles similar to those we face today in the humanities. I have often pointed out such obstacles. For example, Galileo sought to explain to the people of his time that throughout the entire Middle Ages it had been believed that human nerves originated in the heart, and he wanted to show that they actually originate in the brain. A friend then told him: “That contradicts everything Aristotle taught.” — “Apart from the fact that Aristotle didn’t mean it that way at all, people did believe that human nerves originate in the heart. Throughout the entire Middle Ages, people did not look to nature itself, but merely preserved old traditions and prejudices.” When Galileo then showed his friend a cadaver to prove that nerves originate in the brain, his friend replied: “When I look at it, it does appear as though human nerves originate in the brain, but that contradicts Aristotle, and if I come into conflict with Aristotle, I believe Aristotle and not nature.”

[ 52 ] That is how deeply people’s prejudices can take root. And when, later on—entirely in the spirit of Galileo—Francesco Redi overturned the prevailing prejudice of his time that living beings could develop from something non-living—that lower animals, worms, and the like could arise from river mud—he uttered the following statement: “Life can only arise from life,” and that it was merely a result of imprecise observation to believe that worms could emerge from river mud containing no germs, he narrowly escaped the fate of Giordano Bruno.

[ 53 ] If, today, a researcher in spiritual science were to say: “If you believe that everything a developing child produces in its soul is determined solely by inheritance from its parents and ancestors, then you are observing inaccurately; rather, it stems from a spiritual seed that has already passed through a previous earthly life, was on Earth, and then underwent a life in the spiritual realm—when spiritual science points to a spiritual seed in the same way that Francesco Redi pointed to the material seed, it once again faces the prejudices of the age. Even though people are no longer burned at the stake today, there are other means available to render such heretical assertions harmless or at least ridiculous. The way in which the times treat their people may change from one epoch to the next, but the nature of prejudice always remains the same. In a similar way, society today stands toward the exploration of spiritual needs as it did toward the scientific needs of the time during the dawn of scientific development. And just as science, through its fruits, has brought about an elevation of external culture for humanity, so too will the fruits of spiritual culture be quite different. Above all, they will be fruits for the life of the soul.

[ 54 ] How many people today actually suffer from scientific prejudices! There stands a person, and if he is a believer in science and one who rejects the spirit, he probably says to himself: I have a certain kind of individuality about me; I look up to my blood relatives and must acknowledge that I am the result of heredity on the part of these blood relatives of mine.” — Then depression, listlessness, and an inability to fight against fate settle into many a soul. For if it were true that a human being were merely the result of heredity, then it would be just as impossible to halt the harmful effects of heredity as it is impossible to stop a bolt of lightning striking a person. But if spiritual science does not remain merely a theory, but becomes a power of the soul, so that we know: a spiritual core lives within us that bears what the hereditary line has given only as an outer shell, and that must seek ever deeper and deeper forces within itself—then courage, hope, and energy grow to master and improve, through the spiritual, that which manifests as weakness in our outer physical existence. Then there is no longer a single moment in human life when, in view of the spiritual forces within the human being, one cannot gain the confidence to overcome external obstacles.

[ 55 ] This is true in many areas. Thus, mere belief in the material world—into which the life of the soul is supposed to be bound—can dampen our happiness and our energy; conversely, spiritual science, when it becomes a living inner force of the soul, can give us security against all mechanization of life. This is another task of spiritual science: to create the conditions in all areas that will enable us to face life with confidence and health. — Dr. Eliot also promises a healthy science in his own way. He, who certainly knows the soul’s yearning for the spirit but behaves like a naturalist who would speak only of “nature, nature, nature” in everything, says: Such a new science will not speak of death and sorrow as the old one did, but of life and joy.

[ 56 ] I readily believe that the soul yearns deeply for a worldview that strives for “life and joy,” that seeks to reject and keep at bay “death and grief”—concepts that often stemmed from ancient worldviews, which above all presented the mystery of death to humanity. I readily believe that people long to reject death and grief. But death and grief—they come of their own accord. People may resist as much as they like and say they want to reject death and grief in their worldviews, that they want life and joy. But death and grief come of their own accord, and then one must come to terms with them. But one can only cope with them if one knows the living spirit that continues life even where external nature brings about death and grief, and that also recognizes the creative principle within pain, suffering, and grief. We shall yet see that spiritual science, as understood here, is capable of viewing that which seemingly hinders development—the evil that contradicts life—as something that propels the world forward and serves life.

[ 57 ] One could say: The truth of spiritual research, as it does not stem from the whim of a single individual, but from what human beings today can recognize when they correctly perceive the environment through the paths of the soul toward spiritual insight—what this truth can mean in the context of the entire world—can be illustrated by comparing the attitude of the spiritual scientist to that of the natural scientist in the dawn of modern times. Let us look to Giordano Bruno, in whom Copernicus’s worldview finds its most concise expression! How does he stand there in his time? He takes up the laws of Copernicanism and directs his gaze out into the vastness of space. Previously, there was a worldview that relied solely on external sensory perception. When one hears today that everything not investigated by conventional science is uncertain, one might object: Let science look back to the time of Copernicus and Giordano Bruno! As long as people relied on what the eye could see when it came to the starry sky, they did not have a correct understanding of the outer world system; but only when they went beyond external sensory perception and devoted themselves to thought did they find, through inner energy, what is recognized today as true.

[ 58 ] It was only when Copernicus and Giordano Bruno had reached the point where they overcame the deception of sensory appearances that they were able to point out how mistaken people’s previous belief had been—that the Earth was a fixed point in space, around which the Moon, the Sun, and the planets, followed by the sphere of fixed stars, and beyond that, as it were, the so-called eighth sphere, which marked the boundary of everything. Giordano Bruno stood up and said to the people: When you gaze out into the heavens, there is no “eighth sphere”—you create that yourselves; rather, there is the blue firmament, and the vastness of space is filled with worlds like our own, and we look out into a sea of infinity, if only we can overcome the boundary we have set for ourselves! — This overcoming of the boundaries of space was the greatness of the Copernican and Giordano Bruno’s worldviews, in that it was recognized: because human vision did not extend any further, people believed in an eighth sphere, whereas in truth the vastness of space is boundless.

[ 59 ] Today, humanity stands on exactly the same ground with regard to spiritual science. Just as Giordano Bruno showed that the blue vault of the sky exists only because the human gaze cannot reach beyond it, so spiritual science shows that human life between birth and death is limited only because the gaze of the ordinary person extends only that far. Just as the firmament is not a boundary for the contemplation of outer space, so too are birth and death not boundaries for human contemplation—boundaries we establish only because the ordinary person’s gaze extends only that far. Just as natural science has removed the spatial limitations of the world and opened up outer space, so today the boundaries of birth and death are being removed for humanity by spiritual science, which teaches us to direct our spiritual gaze outward into the life of the soul in eternal duration, just as natural science, at the dawn of the modern era, directed our gaze outward into eternity—or, rather, into the infinity of space. It is exactly the same today as it was then, only in a different field!

[ 60 ] Just as the natural sciences—which have focused on external human life and the external understanding of human life—have brought infinite benefits and achievements, so too will the human soul’s perspective, which extends beyond birth and death and beyond the temporal, bring infinite value to what the soul needs for its life. For spiritual scientific research, when conducted properly, will penetrate the human soul and become life there; it will become strength and confidence; it will place us within the entire social context and provide the soul with what those souls—which are only just beginning to understand—so deeply long for.

[ 61 ] It is absolutely true—not only in theory, but in life and in power—that spiritual science will accomplish what I once attempted to summarize in a few words, with which I also wish to conclude my remarks today. These words were intended to show what the spirit, meaning, and goal of spiritual science are, and what this spiritual science is meant to be for the human soul. The meaning and purpose of spiritual science—we can summarize them roughly as follows:

They speak to the human spirit
The things in the vastness of space;
They change with the passage of time.
Through insight, the human soul penetrates,
Unbound by the vastness of space
And undeterred by the flow of time,
Into the realm of the spirit.