The Rudolf Steiner Archive

3. Goethe as the Father of Spiritual Research

[ 1 ] I would fully understand if someone were to regard the entire concept underlying my reflections in today’s lecture as an aberration, and I would also find it understandable if someone were to ask how Goethe’s name can be misused by establishing a connection to spiritual science as it is understood here, since it is well known that the distinctive feature of Goethe’s worldview lies precisely in the fact that it is directed purely and clearly toward what is outwardly natural, and that it was bound to express itself with considerable skepticism toward the elevation of the laws of the world to ideal heights, as Goethe encountered this, for example, in Schiller. One might then say: How much more strongly would Goethe have objected if one had sought to connect his concepts and ideas with that which, arising from very specific inner experiences, is inclined to assume a concrete, real spiritual world standing alongside the natural world. I am, after all, well aware of how a mind as rich as Goethe’s can be misused to establish such a connection. For no matter how many of Goethe’s sayings one cites to reinforce this or that personal view, it is of course always possible to cite other sayings of Goethe’s to support the opposite opinion. Yet in light of all this, I must mention from the outset that in my truly long-standing study of Goethe and the Goethean worldview — my first major publication on Goethe appeared nearly thirty-five years ago — my focus has never been on citing this or that specific statement or view of Goethe’s to support the worldview referred to here. My focus has always been on characterizing the entire nature and inner structure of Goethe’s inner life in its relationship to natural events and to world events in general. For it seems to me that it is precisely when one is able to engage in this way with the inner structure, with the entire direction and character of Goethe’s being, that one will also gain an understanding of what is so repugnant to pedantic minds: that a mind such as Goethe’s expressed seemingly contradictory views on one and the same subject. Bringing Goethe into contact with what might be called the study of spiritual life—or, in a strictly scientific sense, the study of world events—will, on the other hand, likely invite objections from a wide variety of quarters.

[ 2 ] To begin with, when it comes to exploring the supernatural as opposed to the sensory, philosophers believe themselves to be called upon to do so by virtue of the development of human thought. It has, after all, been repeatedly pointed out how Goethe characterized his entire approach to the world by saying that everything he had developed as knowledge about the world he owed, fundamentally, to the fact that he had never thought about thinking itself. For many philosophically minded people, this alone seems to condemn Goethe’s entire philosophical outlook. It thus seems necessary to reject Goethe’s approach to the exploration of the world’s interconnectedness, insofar as such an exploration requires going beyond what is immediately presented to the senses. Conversely, religious minds—who seek to turn the soul away from the world that sensually surrounds human beings toward a world that lies beyond the sensory realm—will naturally take issue with a statement as emblematic of the Goethean worldview as the one he himself made. As he clearly indicates, he always found it deeply distasteful to speak of things from another world. He even expresses this once by saying: Just as there is a spot in the eye that actually sees nothing, so there is a hollow space in the human brain. And when this hollow space, which actually sees nothing, dreams all sorts of things into the world, one speaks of such trifles as if they were things of another world. When Goethe made this statement, he also pointed out how a man as spiritually inclined as J.G. Hamann—who was also called the “Magus of the North” because of his spiritual disposition, a contemporary of Herder and Goethe—became restless whenever people spoke of things of another world. Goethe fully agrees with Hamann on this point. Goethe vehemently rejected speaking of things of another world. Indeed, even natural scientists themselves—despite having been strongly influenced by Goethe’s name and great influence—cannot, if they stand entirely sincerely on the ground of modern natural science, according to their perspective, point out that Goethe, for example, in his Theory of Colors, demonstrated how he was never able to penetrate the strictly scientific method of inquiry—which is necessary to understand nature according to its laws—that this method was never suited to him, and that it was precisely through this that he arrived at a view of the world of colors so divergent from the prevailing doctrine.

[ 3 ] Now, it is not my task here to justify Goethe’s natural science on its own merits. I have elaborated on this in a whole series of writings. Today, my task is simply to draw a few threads from spiritual science over to Goethe’s natural science. Above all, I would like to take up what is truly, for anyone who approaches Goethe, an extraordinarily characteristic feature of his spirit: the rejection of thinking about thinking. One has the impression—not only where Goethe makes a statement such as that he never wished to think about thinking, but also wherever one is willing to recognize it—that, in tracing Goethe’s worldview, it was as if something lay within him as a spiritual instinct, causing him to positively shy away from subjecting thinking itself to thoughtful contemplation, as a true philosopher might, as is often assumed. to subject thinking itself to thoughtful contemplation. He shrank from this as from something that would have robbed him of what otherwise constituted his strength and power in his view of the world. At such a point, where Goethe characterizes himself in this way, one must pause, for from here one can look quite deeply into the fabric of Goethe’s mind. If one considers, in particular, philosophically inclined minds that have wrestled with the nature of the human soul’s thinking, one can observe how the redirecting of the human soul’s powers toward thinking—so that one wishes to make thinking itself an object of observation, just like other objects of observation in our world of experience— always evokes something in the soul that appears as an insurmountable obstacle to something. This focusing of thinking upon thinking itself plunges the human being into a whole host of uncertainties. Although one is actually always reminded—whenever one seriously wishes to explore the supersensible—to ask oneself: Is human thinking capable of penetrating the spiritual world?—one nevertheless finds oneself confronted with uncertainty, doubt, and a certain inner wavering.

[ 4 ] As a single piece of factual evidence for this—which could be multiplied a hundredfold—I would like to cite the statement of a more recent thinker, a thinker who, though less well-known, is regarded by those who know him as one of the most compelling, if not the deepest, thinkers of recent times: Professor Gideon Spicker, the philosopher with the remarkable fate of having worked his way from a denominational, ecclesiastical worldview to a free philosophical standpoint. One can trace the nature of this intellectual journey—how a way of thinking once truly rose, through its own power, from a traditional to a free perspective—by reading his book At the Turning Point of the Christian World Period. Philosophical Confession of a Former Capuchin, which was published in 1910 as a kind of philosophical autobiography by Gideon Spicker. There one finds the following sentence, which is the account of a personal experience with thought:

[ 5 ] “Whatever philosophy one professes—whether dogmatic or skeptical, empirical or transcendental, critical or eclectic—all, without exception, proceed from an unproven and unprovable proposition, namely, the necessity of thought. No investigation, no matter how deeply it may delve, ever returns from this necessity. It must be accepted unconditionally and cannot be justified by anything; every attempt to prove its truth always presupposes it. Beneath it yawns a bottomless abyss, a terrifying darkness illuminated by no ray of light. We therefore do not know where it comes from, nor where it leads. Whether a merciful God or an evil demon has implanted it in reason—both remain uncertain.”

[ 6 ] This is a personal experience of thinking—of a kind of thinking that, driven not merely by external scientific endeavors to clarify what thinking actually is, but that struggled to grasp the human being at the very point where it thinks, in order to find, at that point, where the temporal, the transitory aspect of the human being is linked to the eternal. In fact, everyone who wishes to approach the eternal essence within the human being—not in a superficial way, but in a deeper sense—must arrive at this point. But what does Gideon Spicker find? He finds that once one has reached the point where thinking can be observed, the necessity of thinking does indeed reveal itself—but so does a bottomless abyss. For beyond this thinking—what is there? Is it a merciful God or an evil demon who has placed thinking within reason? An abyss, a desolate darkness—that is what Gideon Spicker sees. One can immediately experience that all those who, by pursuing thought, cannot go beyond thought itself, nevertheless cannot find satisfaction within that very thought.

[ 7 ] All of this is like an instinctive spiritual experience within Goethe’s healthy worldview. One cannot say that he ever found himself inwardly prepared to envision, for example, the bottomless abyss of which Gideon Spicker speaks. Yet Goethe sensed—he felt—that such a thing could happen to one if one sought to solve the world’s mysteries through thought alone. That is why he did not approach this point at all; that is why, in a sense, he left the contemplation of thought outside his sphere of interest. We will see shortly what deeper impulses underlay this Goethean instinct. For now, I merely wish to point out that Goethe was indeed at the very point where philosophers stand when they seek to explore the eternal in human nature and in the world, but that he, I might say, circumvented this point rather than approaching it.

[ 8 ] Similarly, one can grasp Goethe directly and intimately in his entire nature by focusing on his rejection of all things pertaining to another world. This is precisely where his opposite impulse becomes evident—one that is contrary to his rejection of thought, and also contrary to his rejection of a purely philosophical worldview in general—that impulse which, arising from immediate spiritual instinct, asserted that one need not step outside the world that presents itself directly to the senses in order to find the spirit. Rather, Goethe was well aware that whoever is capable of finding the spirit need not seek it in another world, and conversely, that whoever perceives nature as so little imbued with spirit that they feel compelled to reflect upon another world could, even in another world, find at most something fantastical or dreamlike, but never the spirit itself. Goethe sought the Spirit so deeply within the things of this world that he had to reject the idea of seeking it in the realm of any other world. He regarded even the very notion that one must leave this world to reach the Spirit as something devoid of Spirit.

[ 9 ] In particular, however, one gains an impression of the nature of Goethe’s observation of the world by focusing on how Goethe related to the phenomena of nature—in other words, how he truly sought the spirit and spiritual life within nature. It is, after all, widely known that Goethe did not approach the various branches of the natural sciences in a strictly academic manner, but only did so in the later years of his life, and that he was compelled, based on his general worldview and the ideas he had developed throughout his life, to come to terms with natural phenomena. Herman Grimm rightly emphasized as a significant characteristic of Goethe’s life that, while others are systematically introduced, step by step and in a certain period of their youth, to this or that scientific approach, Goethe, in many respects, was already brought to scientific pursuits as a mature man through the necessities of life and through practical experience, so that he had to develop his own ideas about this or that natural phenomenon with a certain degree of maturity.

[ 10 ] As a rule, he actually arrived at views that differed very, very significantly from what the leading natural scientists of his time believed about the same matters. It can be said that Goethe’s perspective stands in direct opposition, in a certain sense, not only to the natural research of his time but also to the prevailing natural science of the present.

[ 11 ] It is entirely unacceptable when certain quarters repeatedly cherry-pick individual statements by Goethe in order to support, in a one-sided manner, the views of Haeckel or even his opponents, and the like. After all—as I have already mentioned—one can, if one wishes, use Goethe to substantiate and reinforce absolutely anything. Goethe came to botany because he wanted to take up plant cultivation in the Grand Duchy of Weimar—that is, through practical experience in life. He came to geology through mining in Ilmenau, to physics because he had been entrusted with the natural science collections at the University of Jena, and so on. Thus, out of a practical necessity, he sought to arrive at concepts through which he could penetrate the mysteries of nature, as he perceived them. It is well known that in this way he developed views which, to some extent, found confirmation in the course of the nineteenth century, insofar as they point to external scientific facts. But Goethe did not arrive at these views in the same way as other natural scientists; rather, his comprehensive way of thinking compelled him to conceive of certain natural processes and the essential nature of things in a particular way. One can say that this was the case right from his very first, truly epoch-making discovery.

[ 12 ] I would just like to briefly mention what Goethe's journey through the natural sciences was actually like.

[ 13 ] When Goethe became acquainted with zoology and anthropology in Jena through his study of the anatomical and physiological collections, he also familiarized himself with all manner of theories that were common in the natural sciences of the time regarding human beings as external, sensory beings. At that time, people were still searching for external differences between humans and animals. This search was conducted in a manner that is now completely incomprehensible to today’s prevailing view of nature. For example, people sought to distinguish humans from animals based on a single detail, stating: “The upper jaw clearly shows that humans lack an intermaxillary bone, whereas all higher animals possess this bone.” This went against Goethe’s entire intuition, simply because he could not initially conceive that the entire rest of the human structure—even though it differs fundamentally from that of animals in its overall form—could differ from the animal’s in such an insignificant detail as the absence of an intermaxillary bone in the upper jaw. Goethe then set out—by becoming an anatomical researcher himself, examining skeleton after skeleton and comparing human anatomy with that of animals with regard to the upper jaw—to determine whether what the anatomists were saying actually had any deeper significance. And Goethe was indeed able to demonstrate that there is no difference between the human and animal skeletons in this respect. In doing so, he had already consulted embryological research—which later became particularly important—and demonstrated that in humans, relatively early during embryonic development, the other parts of the upper jaw fuse with the intermaxillary bone to such an extent that it appears not to exist at all in humans, whereas in animals a clear distinction can be observed between this intermaxillary bone and the other upper jaw bones. Goethe had thus come to realize that his initial intuition was correct: that human beings differ from animals not by such a single detail of their structure, but only by their overall posture. This, of course, did not make Goethe a materialist thinker. But it enabled him to draw closer to ideas that were particularly close to his heart, especially through his acquaintance with Herder, who sought to extend a comprehensive way of thinking to all phenomena in the world, so that the development of the world represented an inner necessity that ultimately brings forth human beings at its pinnacle. How can one conceive, Goethe argued in agreement with Herder, that a great harmony, an inner, law-governed necessity, prevails in the development of the world, and that then suddenly a line is drawn somewhere, such that on this side of the line lies the entire development of the animal kingdom and on the other side the development of humanity, which is supposed to differ from animal development by such an insignificant detail? One can see from the way Goethe speaks—after he had been compelled by the facts to accept the existence of this bone in humans—what his actual concern was. Truly, it was not about a single scientific discovery, but about perceiving a harmonious order in the entirety of nature, so that the individual fits into the whole everywhere, so that the individual does not fall out anywhere, and so that no gaps or breaks can be found anywhere in the development of the world. This is evident from a letter to Herder, in which he joyfully shared his discovery with the words, “There it is, the little bone!”—a letter that reveals how Goethe found in this single fact something like a confirmation of the worldview that permeated his entire being.

[ 14 ] He developed this view further, particularly with regard to the structure of animals. Here, too, Goethe came across individual facts, but these were not important to him in and of themselves; rather, they served merely to reinforce his overall worldview. He recounts himself how, during his stay in Venice, he found an animal skull in the cemetery that clearly showed him that the bones of the skull are nothing other than transformed bones of the spine. Goethe imagined the ordinary ring-shaped bones of the spine—which have only isolated protrusions—in such a way that whatever constitutes a protrusion on them can continue to grow, and that what appears merely as a ring can flatten out, so that something seemingly quite simple and primitive can undergo such a metamorphosis that what encloses the brain in an outwardly entirely different form is nothing other than a series of transformed vertebral bones. He thus concluded that what, as a ring-shaped vertebral bone, contains all manner of growth potential in a concealed form, can transform into the skull bone, which then encloses the brain. This led Goethe to the idea that humans and animals—and indeed all the various entities of organic life—are composed of relatively simple structures, but structures that form and dissolve through a living metamorphosis. If one truly delves into what Goethe intended with such research, one immediately gains the impression that Goethe actually wanted to apply this theory of metamorphosis not only to the skeleton but to all other parts of the human being; that he was able to conduct his research in only one specific field simply because—as is obvious—a single person cannot do everything, and he was working with limited research resources. Anyone familiar with Goethe’s scientific writings knows full well how meticulously he demonstrated that the bones of the skull are transformed vertebrae. Yet one cannot help but feel that Goethe’s ideas in this area went much further. Goethe must have held deep within himself the conviction that the entire human brain, as an external physical-sensory organ, is merely a transformed segment of the spinal cord, and that the human formative powers have the ability to transform what is, at a lower level, merely a segment of the spinal cord into the complex human brain. I had this sense when, at the end of 1389, I was given the task of incorporating, at the Goethe and Schiller Archive in Weimar, those of Goethe’s writings on the natural sciences—which had remained in manuscript form until then—into the collection of his works published up to that point. I found it particularly interesting to explore whether such ideas truly lived within Goethe—ideas that gave one the sense they simply had to have been present in him. In particular, I was interested in whether Goethe really held the view that the brain was a transformed segment of the spinal cord. And lo and behold, while working through Goethe’s manuscripts, it indeed turned out that in a notebook, jotted down in pencil as if by intuition, the following sentence was found: “The brain is merely a transformed spinal ganglion.” This section of Goethe’s scientific writings, which forms Volume 8 of Part II of the major Weimar edition, was subsequently edited by the anatomist Bardeleben. There you will find this remark by Goethe on the human brain cited.

[ 15 ] As is well known, Goethe essentially applied this same line of thought to the plant world as well. And there, his views met with just as little opposition regarding external facts as they did in the field of anatomy. Goethe actually conceives of the entire plant as composed of a single organ. He sees this single organ in the leaf. From root to tip, the plant is always nothing but leaf. To him, the colorfully patterned flower petal is the transformed green plant leaf; indeed, even the stamens and the pistil are, to him, merely transformed leaves—everything in the plant is leaf. The formative power that lives within the plant leaf has the ability to take on all manner of external forms. Goethe explained this so beautifully in his 1790 treatise “An Attempt to Explain the Metamorphosis of Plants.”

[ 16 ] Whatever one’s stance may be regarding the details of Goethe’s work in this or that field of natural science, one can identify one overarching aspect in his entire approach to natural science: the very way in which he conducted his research. This approach was, however, somewhat foreign to many people at the time, and remains so to many even today. Goethe himself spoke clearly about this approach. Consider how the human soul, which in Goethe’s sense confronts the external living world, is compelled to conceive of an organ such as a plant leaf transforming into a flower petal, then again into a thread-like stamen, and indeed even transforming into a root. Imagine a simple ring-shaped vertebra, expanded and flattened by inner laws of growth, so that in its development it becomes capable of enclosing not only the spinal cord but also the brain—which itself has been transformed from a spinal cord structure—and how this requires what Goethe himself perceived as the inner flexibility of his thinking. He surely sensed what prevents one from viewing the phenomena of the world in this way. Anyone with rigid thinking—anyone whose thinking seeks only to form sharply defined concepts—forms a fixed concept of the green leaf, the petal, and so on, but cannot move from one concept to another. As a result, nature falls apart for them into mere details. Because their concepts themselves lack inner flexibility, they are unable to penetrate the inner flexibility of nature. This, however, leads one to immerse oneself in Goethe’s soul and to become convinced that, for him, cognition is something entirely different from what it is for many others. While for many others, cognition is the piecing together of concepts that they form separately, for Goethe, cognition is an immersion into the world of essences, a pursuit of that which grows and becomes and is constantly transforming—a pursuit such that his thinking itself is constantly transforming in the process, constantly becoming, constantly passing from one thing to another. In short, Goethe sets in motion that which is otherwise mere thinking. Then it is no longer mere thinking. I will speak about this in more detail in the next lectures. To hint at it briefly, the point is that human beings awaken what is otherwise merely combinatory thinking—as it underlies what is today often called simply “science”—to an inner life of thought. Then thinking becomes a life within thought. Then one can no longer think about thinking; rather, it transforms entirely into something else. Then thinking about thinking transforms into a spiritual contemplation of thinking; then one has thinking before oneself just as one otherwise has external sensory objects before oneself—only that one has those before one’s eyes and ears, while one has thinking before the soul filled with spiritual contemplation. Goethe sought everywhere to move from mere thinking to inner spiritual intuitions, from mere consciousness—as it is permeated by thinking in everyday life—to intuitive consciousness, as I have described it in my book The Riddle of Man. This is why Goethe is dissatisfied with Kant’s assertion that human beings, through their inquiry, cannot approach the so-called “things-in-themselves” or to the mystery of existence at all, and that Kant called it “an adventure of reason” when a person seeks to rise from the ordinary faculty of judgment—which combines—to the “contemplative faculty of judgment,” which in this way awakens combinatory thinking to inner life.

[ 17 ] Goethe said that if one accepts that human beings can rise to a higher realm through virtue and immortality—what Kant called the postulates of practical reason—then why should one not courageously embark on the “adventure of reason” in the contemplation of nature! Goethe virtually demands this contemplative power of judgment from human beings. From this perspective, it is understandable why Goethe harbored such an aversion to what is called “thinking about thinking”—he did not want to indulge in it. Goethe knew that if one wants to think about thinking, one is actually in roughly the same situation as if one wanted to paint painting. One might imagine that someone wants to paint painting—that they even do so. But then one would likely conclude that this goes beyond what actual painting is. Likewise, one must go beyond thinking if it is to become concrete. What I have spoken about here in the lectures already given in this winter series—that human beings are capable of developing the forces and abilities slumbering in their souls in such a way that they attain a contemplative consciousness—Goethe, in turn, carried this possibility, this ability, within himself instinctively, spiritually instinctively. Goethe knew, out of a spiritual instinct, that human beings can awaken hidden capacities within themselves to life. If a person succeeds in this—if what might be called “contemplative consciousness” arises, what might be called the awakening of the eyes and ears of the spirit—so that the spiritual world surrounds one just as the sensory world otherwise surrounds the senses—then, in a sense, one steps not only out of one’s ordinary sensory life but also out of one’s ordinary thinking. Then one beholds thinking as reality. Thinking cannot be thought; it can be beheld. It was therefore always understandable to Goethe when philosophers approached him who claimed the ability to behold thinking through spiritual intuition. It had always remained incomprehensible to him, however, when people claimed they could think about thinking. To him, this seemed just as absurd as if someone had wanted to paint painting. Only a higher capacity allows thinking to appear before a person. Goethe possessed this ability. The fact that he possessed it is simply demonstrated by the nature of his view of nature. For the ability to set thought in lively motion in order to follow the metamorphosis of things is, at a lower level, the same as contemplative consciousness at a higher level. Goethe felt himself thinking while contemplating. Yet there was a particular peculiarity in Goethe’s case.

[ 18 ] There are certain people who possess what one might call a kind of naive clairvoyance, a kind of naive, observant consciousness. Now, it is far from my intention to claim that Goethe possessed only this kind of naive, intuitive consciousness, but Goethe did possess a special disposition that distinguished him from those who are only capable of attaining intuitive consciousness through the fully conscious, deliberate development of the deeper faculties of their soul. Goethe did not possess this contemplative consciousness from the outset, as do the naive clairvoyants; rather, he had the ability to set his thinking, his feeling, and the entire structure of his inner life in motion in such a way that he was truly able not only to investigate externally—and thereby arrive at natural laws formulated in thought—but also to trace the inner life of natural phenomena in their metamorphoses. Now it is a particular characteristic that, when one arrives at a perception of the spirit in a non-arbitrary way by having a certain predisposition from the outset—one could indeed speak of clairvoyance, were the word not so misused, not so easily misunderstood; by which I mean only what I characterize as such in these lectures—that this predisposition is then, if one arbitrarily seeks to develop the capacity for spiritual vision, initially impaired, indeed extinguished. Goethe possessed this natural predisposition to gradually develop within himself a certain contemplative consciousness in relation to natural phenomena. He did not need rules such as those I have described in my book How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds?, which can apply to everyone. Goethe, as I said, was not endowed with this intuitive consciousness from the beginning, but in the course of his own individual development, it came naturally to him to cultivate certain abilities differently from other people, to develop them toward intuition. This innate gift, this instinctive advancement of his soul, would initially have been stifled. If the gift is not present, there is no need to stifle it; then one can calmly and freely develop these abilities. But since they were present in Goethe as an inner spiritual impulse, he did not want to disturb them as such; he wanted to leave them to their own devices. Hence his reluctance to engage with thought—which he wished only to contemplate—through thought itself. Otherwise, one must, of course, attempt to move toward the very heart of thought in order to grasp the thoughts themselves and gradually transform them into powers of contemplation.

[ 19 ] It is a distinctive personal trait of Goethe’s that he sensed the development of those powers that can also be cultivated artificially. He did not want to destroy this naivety by, so to speak, pouring too much consciousness into it. This shows, however, that it is not unjustified, particularly in the case of Goethe, not only to observe how his spiritual powers work internally, but also how they immerse themselves in nature—to attempt, as it were, to relive how he follows the changing nature, the nature advancing from metamorphosis to metamorphosis, with an inner, dynamic spiritual life. Then one will inevitably find in Goethe a model for the development of contemplative consciousness—those spiritual powers that truly lead into the spiritual world, into the eternal.

[ 20 ] Once one immerses oneself in what Goethe experienced through the metamorphosis of nature—not merely observing it from the outside, but attempting to understand what one actually becomes when one awakens such forces within oneself—one then comes to apply what Goethe pursued in his contemplation of nature to the human soul itself. And then it becomes clear what Goethe himself failed to do, because his senses were initially directed outward, toward nature, which he contemplated spiritually in its spiritual essence: that one must also view the life of the human soul from the perspective of metamorphosis. Goethe was drawn to nature by his particular disposition, and because this disposition was particularly strong, I would say that he paid less attention to the life of the soul itself.

[ 21 ] But one can apply one’s way of looking at the world to the inner life itself. Then one is led, of its own accord, beyond mere thinking. Most people who concern themselves with these matters simply do not believe this. They believe that one can think about the soul just as one can think about anything else. But thoughts can only be directed toward what can be perceived externally. If one wishes to look back at the soul itself—at that which animates human thought—one cannot do so with thoughts alone. Then there arises the necessity for a contemplative consciousness that goes beyond mere thinking; one arrives at what I have called “imaginative insight” in my book How to Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and in other books. One cannot apply the same abstract, pale thoughts used to grasp nature to the life of the human soul. One simply cannot grasp it that way. Such thoughts are like a sieve through which the human soul life passes.

[ 22 ] This once came to light during a great moment in intellectual and historical history in Goethe’s correspondence with Schiller. It is precisely on this point that one can see what happens when one seeks to move from Goethe’s view of nature to a view of the soul. Schiller, after all, wrote the “Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man” as one of his most beautiful and significant intellectual treatises. I will only briefly hint at the mystery of the human soul that Schiller had before him there. Schiller wanted to solve the problem of the artistic. He wanted to answer the question: What actually happens in the human soul when a person creates or feels artistically, when he immerses himself in the world of beauty? Schiller believed that when a person is merely surrendered to the world of sensual impulses, he is subject to natural necessity. To the extent that a person is subject to natural necessity, he cannot approach the beautiful or the artistic. But even when a person devotes himself solely to thinking, when he follows only logical necessity, he is just as unable to approach the beautiful or the artistic. But there is a middle state, Schiller argues. When a person permeates their instinctual life—everything that sensuality provides—so deeply with their essence that it becomes like pure spirituality; when a person elevates the sensual into spirituality and brings spirituality down into the sensual, so that the sensual becomes spiritual and the spiritual becomes sensual, and a person experiences themselves within this spiritual-sensual and sensual-spiritual realm, then they are within the Beautiful; then they are within the Artistic. Necessity seems tempered by the instinct, and the instinct appears ennobled by the spirit. Schiller spoke to Goethe at length about this intention of his—to elevate the powers of the human soul, to strengthen what surges and swells within the human soul in such a way that, in the harmonious interplay of the individual powers of the soul, this middle state comes to light, which enables human beings to create or perceive the artistic. In the 1790s, from the time of Goethe’s and Schiller’s deeper acquaintance onward, this was an important mystery of human life that played a major role in the correspondence and personal exchanges between Schiller and Goethe. In his “Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man,” Schiller attempted to solve this problem philosophically. It was precisely because Schiller was so deeply and so energetically preoccupied with this problem that Goethe, too, was prompted to address it. But Goethe possessed the contemplative consciousness that Schiller lacked; this enabled him to dive with his thoughts into the world of things itself, and thereby also to grasp the inner life of the soul more intimately.

[ 23 ] He had the opportunity to see how what lives in the human soul is far more extensive and far more powerful than what can be captured in such abstract thoughts as Schiller did in his “Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man.” Goethe did not want to simply present such bullet points or outlines of thought to characterize this richly structured inner life of the human soul. And so, a small work of a completely different nature emerged on the same subject.

[ 24 ] It is very interesting to take a closer look at this particular aspect of Goethe’s acquaintance with Schiller. What did Schiller actually want? Schiller wanted to show that a higher being lives within every human being, whereas that which ordinary consciousness encompasses is a lower one.

[ 25 ] Schiller sought to proclaim this “higher human being” in the person who elevates his instincts up to the spirit and brings the spirit down to the instincts, so that, by uniting spiritual and sensual necessity, the human being comes to understand himself in a new way and, as Schiller himself says, appears as a “higher human being” within the human being. Goethe did not wish to be so abstract. But Goethe, too, sought to address that which lives within man as a higher human being. And this higher aspect of man appeared to him so rich in its individual elements that he could not grasp it through mere thought, but instead portrayed it in powerful, meaningful images. Thus arose the “Fairy Tale of the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily,” which forms the conclusion of the “Conversations of German Emigrants.”

[ 26 ] Those who focus too much on the symbolism in this fairy tale fail to grasp its deeper meaning. The various characters in this fairy tale—about twenty in all—represent the spiritual powers of the human being, personified in their vibrant interplay, as they elevate the human being beyond themselves and lead them toward a higher state of being. This is brought to life in the composition of “The Fairy Tale of the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily.” Goethe could grasp the problem—which Schiller had philosophically articulated in thought—only through images; but through images that constitute a world in themselves.

[ 27 ] One need not, however, once again pedantically grasp the life of the soul solely in the Goethean manner—that is, strictly through poetic imagery—but rather, precisely when one delves into the inner structure of Goethe’s worldview, and when one applies his flexible spirituality to the life of the soul in the very same way that Goethe applied it in his theory of metamorphosis, one will discover how the metamorphosis of the soul’s powers vividly captures the human being and leads them beyond the transitory—which the human being experiences in the body—to the imperishable, which the human being experiences as that which is within them and passes through births and death. Conventional psychology deals extensively with this question: Should one begin with one soul power or the other? Is volition primary, or is imagination or thinking primary? How should one conceive of the mutual relationship between imagination, thinking, feeling, and perception? If one is familiar with conventional psychology, one can see how much intellectual acuity has been applied to understanding the inner life of the human being, the interplay of the various powers of the soul, in the same way that external natural science grasps the interplay of a green leaf and a petal, or the interplay of the skull bones and the spinal column, without taking into account the inner transition, the inner transformation. Anyone who is able to turn their gaze from the outside to the inside, who is able to view the life of the soul in the spirit of Goethe, must indeed grasp it vividly—and in this respect even more vividly than external natural life, because in external natural life one can, so to speak, rest one’s spiritual gaze. Natural life provides the material; one can move from one form to another. Inner life seems to constantly slip away when one tries to observe it. But if one ever directs one’s active thinking—which then becomes contemplative—inward, then what appears as thinking, feeling, willing, and perception is revealed to be nothing other than an essential being that transforms into one another. Willing becomes a metamorphosis of feeling, feeling a metamorphosis of ideas, imagining a metamorphosis of perception, and vice versa.

[ 28 ] The development of the powers and abilities that lie dormant within the human being—meditative thinking that leads into the spiritual world—rests on nothing other than the active observation of the inner metamorphoses of the soul’s powers. On the one hand, the person who wishes to become a spiritual researcher endeavors to shape his imagination and perception in such a way that he continually directs the will—which otherwise lies dormant in perception and imagination—into this perception and imagination, so that he can deliberately summon to the soul that which otherwise arises as an involuntary image. Through this, what is otherwise pale thinking or forced perception is transformed into imagination, into pictorial vision. For the spiritual can only be seen pictorially. Will and feeling—which can otherwise be imagined but not recognized in their true essence—are transformed by the meditative life itself, so that they become a life of imagination and a life of perception.

[ 29 ] The introduction of imagination into volition, of volition into imagination; the transformation of volition into imagination and vice versa; the transformation of imagination into volition with inner vitality; the transformation of the individual powers of the soul into one another—this is the meditative life. If this is pursued, what cannot be foreshadowed when one merely considers thinking, feeling, and willing side by side begins to reveal itself to inner observation. If one considers them side by side, one perceives only the temporal aspect of the human being—that which is enclosed within the physical body and extends from birth or conception to death. If one learns to recognize how imagination is transformed into feeling and how volition is transformed into imagination and perception, one comes to understand the metamorphosis of inner soul life as vividly as Goethe traced metamorphoses in the realm of external nature. Then, within this soul life set in motion, the eternal aspect of the human soul—which passes through births and deaths—begins to reveal itself. Through this, the human being enters into his or her own eternity.

[ 30 ] What was Goethe aiming for when he sought, in a sense, to dispel the prejudice that humans differ from animals due to a single detail such as the intermaxillary bone in the upper jaw? He did not want humans to stand in opposition to the rest of the world as isolated beings; rather, in complete harmony with Herder, he wanted to view nature as a great whole and to see humans as emerging from nature as a whole. Once Schiller had struggled his way past certain prejudices toward Goethe to arrive at a pure and free recognition of the latter’s greatness, he wrote to Goethe himself about how he had come to view his way of looking at nature. Among other things, he wrote these beautiful words to Goethe: “You take all of nature as a whole in order to shed light on the individual; in the totality of its manifestations, you seek the basis for explaining the individual... A grand and truly heroic idea, which amply demonstrates how deeply your spirit holds together the rich whole of its concepts in a beautiful unity.”

[ 31 ] Schiller noticed how Goethe sought to understand human beings by constructing them from elements that are otherwise separate in the various other natural beings, but which can be transformed through inner formative forces in such a way that human beings appear as a synthesis of external natural phenomena in their own external form—as the crown of external nature.

[ 32 ] One must form a proper understanding of what Goethe actually intended when one now considers the other aspect that arises in relation to the life of the soul. If one considers the metamorphosis of the inner soul forces in the same way that Goethe considered the metamorphosis of the outer physical forms of the human being, it becomes clear that what emerges within the human being as a synthesis of the metamorphosing soul forces appears to take shape just as much from a great spiritual world—the world of spiritual beings and spiritual processes that lies behind it— just as, on the other hand, when one regards human beings externally in the Goethean sense as natural beings, this human natural being emerges as the synthesis of the external physical world—the external physical world elevated to an inner harmony and totality. Just as Goethe’s study of nature connects the outer human form to the rest of the natural world, so a theory of the human soul in his spirit connects the human soul to the eternal, concrete, all-encompassing spiritual world and allows this to be concentrated within the human being. It is not by directly taking this or that statement of Goethe’s to thereby reinforce one’s own view that one can build a bridge between spiritual science and Goethe’s worldview, but rather by seeking—internally, vividly, not abstractly—to solve the problem logically: How does one approach such a way of immersing oneself in nature? In Goethe himself, this ability to immerse oneself in nature—as I have already explained—was naive. If one comes to know it through him and seeks to bring it to life within oneself by delving into his way of viewing the world, then one comes to recognize the necessity of extending what was innate in Goethe’s view of nature to the world of the soul; then, through human soul life, one reaches the eternal spiritual world just as Goethe reached his contemplation of the external natural world through human natural life. One must approach Goethe inwardly; one must try to enter into his intentions, to willingly share in love what his soul willed with regard to nature. Then one comes to will the same with regard to the spiritual world, of which the human soul is a reflection. One comes to look into the spirit from the human soul in the same way that Goethe looked into the rest of nature from human nature. In this sense, it can already be said that one understands little of Goethe if one takes him only as he initially presented himself. Goethe himself certainly did not want to be taken that way. For Goethe was infinitely close to the entire approach that must once again come to the surface through spiritual research; he was also close to it in the non-scientific realms, in the realm of poetry and art in general.

[ 33 ] If one tries to immerse oneself in the mode of perception that I have called “contemplative consciousness,” one finds that, above all, it is necessary that this immersion not be constantly disrupted by all manner of prejudices that are transferred into the spiritual world from the sensory world or from abstract, purely logical thinking. An important aspect of exploring the spiritual world and investigating spiritual beings and facts is the ability to wait. No matter how hard the soul strives to explore anything in the spiritual world—even if it is determined to do so—it will fail; it will be deceiving itself. No matter how hard it tries: if the abilities necessary for perceiving certain beings or certain sequences of facts have not yet matured within it, then it will not yet be able to recognize these beings or these sequences of facts. Maturing, being able to wait until what can be encountered in a particular realm of the spiritual world has developed within the soul—this is something that, in a very special way, is essential for advancing into the spiritual world. Patience and energy—these are the qualities that must be possessed in an exceptional degree by the spiritual researcher. I will describe other laws in later lectures. Goethe was, in his very nature, predisposed—even as an artist—to be someone who waited in all things.

[ 34 ] Nothing is more interesting than following those of Goethe’s works that he was unable to complete—seeing how he got stuck on Pandora, how he got stuck on The Natural Daughter, which was supposed to become a trilogy but ended up as just one play. If one compares this with what was magnificently completed—such as the second part of Faust or Elective Affinities—one comes to understand the very essence of his being. Goethe could not simply “make” something; he could only ever create that to which he had advanced through the maturity of his being, and if his life, as it unfolded, did not reach that level of maturity with regard to a particular matter, then he set it aside—he simply could not go on. The artist who creates purely through artistic combination can always go further. But the one who, like Goethe, allows the spirit itself to take shape within him—especially if he is as great as Goethe—sometimes simply cannot go any further. It is precisely where Goethe had to stop that he becomes particularly interesting to those who wish to penetrate his inner being. If one traces something like Elective Affinities, one finds that what lives within it was already present at a relatively early stage, but the possibility of actually forming characters who could embody this inner mystery of nature and humanity—the Elective Affinities—was not yet there. Goethe set it aside, and thus he bequeathed Elective Affinities to an era in which the people who might still have understood it—because they had lived through those first youthful impulses alongside him—had long since passed away.

[ 35 ] Through this real, this genuine inner experience of the soul, Goethe was, in a sense, close to spiritual science; he was close to it through his urge not to remain stuck in abstract thought, but to move from thought to reality—admittedly as a natural scientist, but as a natural scientist who sought the spirit. That is why he was so immensely pleased when, in the 1920s, the psychologist Heinroth spoke of Goethe’s “concrete thinking.” Goethe understood immediately that his thinking was not one that merely spun along the thread of thought, but rather one that plunged into the things themselves. But when thinking plunges into things, it does not find abstract material atoms within them; rather, it finds the spirit within them, just as the eternal spirit of human being is recognized by looking inward through the contemplative observation of the life of the soul. That is why Goethe’s gaze was directed toward what reveals itself as spiritual within the world of the sensible. From these hints, one can understand that Goethe did not wish to think about thinking, because he knew only too well that thinking can only be contemplated. One can also readily understand that Goethe by no means meant anything irreligious, anything unspiritual, or anything materialistic-sensual when he spoke of his aversion to speaking of the things of another world. For he knew that these so-called things of another world are in this world, constantly permeate it, and must be sought within it; and that whoever does not seek these spiritual things and beings in nature, whoever denies them in nature, does not wish to recognize the spirit in natural phenomena. Therefore, Goethe did not want to search behind natural phenomena, but rather he wanted to search everywhere within natural phenomena. That is why he disliked speaking of an “inner life of nature.”

[ 36 ] To Goethe, the inner nature of things seemed like this: as if someone who has an image in a mirror before them were to take it into their head to search for what is supposed to underlie the mirror images—the “thing-in-itself” that is supposed to lie behind them—by destroying the mirror in order to find what is behind it, but of course not finding it.

[ 37 ] This is more or less how the search for the “thing-in-itself” proceeds among many philosophers. They have before them the world of external sensory perceptions; they recognize that these are merely sensory perceptions, reflections of reality. So they search for the “things-in-themselves,” but not by stepping back from the mirror and seeking what the mind can grasp as mind, but rather by shattering the mirror in order to grasp the world of dead atoms, from which nothing living can ever be apprehended.

[ 38 ] For Goethe, this inner essence of nature lay entirely beyond the reach of his imagination. Hence, when he looked back on all the efforts he had had to make to penetrate the spirituality of natural phenomena, he made that harsh remark about Haller, a highly distinguished naturalist, who had become unsympathetic to him not because of his individual research, but because he had once said:

[ 39 ] “No creative spirit penetrates the innermost depths of nature.

[ 40 ] “Blessed is he to whom she shows only her outer shell!”

[ 41 ] Goethe did not wish to speak of the inner nature of nature at all. He replied to this, having reached the maturity of his worldview:

“Into the heart of nature—”
Oh, you philistine! —
“No creative spirit penetrates.”
As for me and my brothers and sisters
May you never
Even recall such words;
We think: Place by place
We are within.
“Blessed is he to whom she shows
Only the outer shell!”
I’ve heard that repeated for sixty years.
And I curse it, but secretly;
Tell me a thousand thousand times,
She gives everything abundantly and gladly;
Nature has neither core
Nor shell,
She is all at once;
Examine yourself above all else,
Whether you are core or shell!

[ 42 ] This is, in essence, Goethe’s creed: that whoever regards nature as something external to the spirit cannot penetrate to the spirit; that nature, by turning toward humanity in its various metamorphoses, reveals the spirit to humanity along with its outer shell. In this regard, spiritual science seeks nothing other than I might say, to be a child of Goethe; it seeks to extend to the phenomena of the soul that which Goethe so fruitfully introduced into the world of external natural phenomena—enabling him to find the spirit in nature—so that these phenomena themselves come to life and reveal the inner spiritual, that spiritual which lives within human beings themselves as their eternal, immortal core of being. The following lectures will set out to examine this more closely.

[ 43 ] That was what I wanted to show above all today: that when one applies Goethe’s unique approach to nature to spiritual life, one feels drawn toward spiritual science. It is not by grasping Goethe in his individual statements that one can call him a father of spiritual science—for in this way one could make him the patron of all manner of worldviews—but rather by attempting to lovingly immerse oneself in what seemed so fruitful to him. Then one may not say exactly what he has already said, but spiritual science will rightly appear as a continuation of Goethe’s worldview, as something that is entirely in keeping with it. It seems to me that it is entirely in keeping with her spirit to ascend from natural life to spiritual life. Goethe himself, when he sought to summarize his sense of the world and his worldview in his essay on Winckelmann, depicted humanity’s coexistence with the entire universe as an exchange, an interaction from spirit to spirit, by saying: “When the healthy nature of man functions as a whole, when he feels himself in the world as in a great, beautiful, dignified, and valuable whole, when harmonious contentment grants him pure, free delight, then the universe, if it could perceive itself, would exult at having reached its goal and admire the pinnacle of its own being and becoming.” Thus, in the living spirituality of humanity, Goethe conceived of the innermost essence of man in union and interaction with the innermost essence of nature: nature perceiving the world within man, man knowing himself to be eternal, yet expressing his eternity within the temporality of the external world. Between the world and humanity lives the World Spirit—comprehending itself, knowing itself, and affirming itself—in Goethe’s sense.

[ 44 ] Those who have thought in the spirit of Goethe have therefore never been tempted to deny the spirit or, for example, to use Goethe’s worldview itself as a means of affirming a more or less materialistic worldview. No, those who have understood Goethe, who have sought to immerse themselves in Goethe, have surely always believed that when human beings confront the things of nature and dwell among them, they simultaneously dwell in the spiritual realm into which they enter when they pass through the gate of death. These people have thought in the same way as, for example, Novalis did in those of his thoughts that he drew from Goethe’s worldview.

[ 45 ] Novalis, that marvelous genius who, during certain phases of his life, sought to immerse himself in nature in a manner entirely reminiscent of Goethe, knew that in doing so he was immersing himself in the spiritual world. His many statements about the immediate presence of the spirit in the sensory world can be traced back to Goethe’s worldview.

[ 46 ] Therefore, since Goethe is, so to speak, presented as the father of a spiritual understanding of the world, we may perhaps conclude with a statement that Novalis made entirely in the spirit of Goethe—a statement that, in a certain sense, summarizes what should be considered today as Goethe’s worldview in a brief outline:

[ 47 ] “Even here, the spirit world is not closed off to us. It is always revealed to us. If we can make our own soul just as flexible as necessary, then we are, as spirits, right in the midst of spirits!”