The Rudolf Steiner Archive

1. The Human Soul in the Realm of the Supernatural and Its Relationship to the Body

[ 1 ] Time and again, whenever anthroposophy is discussed—in the sense in which it is meant here in this lecture as an understanding of the spiritual life of the human being—you will hear that it springs from the dreamy, fanciful ideas of individual personalities. At least, that is the judgment of many people who consider themselves competent to make such a judgment. However, it must be said from the outset that this anthroposophical understanding of the spirit seeks to encompass a field of research that includes the deepest and most significant aspects of human inner life. For this reason, attempts have indeed been made time and again—even in more recent times, when such endeavors have been overshadowed by the dazzling advances of the natural sciences—to cultivate this field, albeit in isolated instances, as we might almost say. But it must be said that, especially in recent times, these have for the most part been only flashes of light cast upon this field by this or that outstanding individual who engaged in reflection on human spiritual life—flashes of light that always give one the impression they spring from sources of the human being entirely different from the insights that relate to external nature, to the realm of external sensory perception.

[ 2 ] It is not surprising that something like an unconscious instinct for insight compels people time and again to illuminate this field with such flashes of light, for it is in this field that the most significant questions of the soul, the mysteries of the soul, those mysteries of the soul that human beings must face time and again with their entire sensory life, their entire emotional life, as well as their imaginative and volitional lives. And human beings must realize: If they fail to take a stance on these questions, it has an effect on their soul that can be compared, in the physical realm, to a kind of illness. The life of the soul becomes desolate; it feels permeated by all manner of—one might use the good old word “addiction”—all manner of addictions when the doubts and uncertainties arise that can arise in relation to these questions.

[ 3 ] In more recent times, however—as we have seen over many years—people have sought little satisfaction for the thirst for knowledge that arises from such impulses through what might be called spiritual nourishment. Who is not familiar with that tendency among those who had enough money to travel to the most diverse sanatoriums around the world—though the sad times of the present have, admittedly, deprived many of that opportunity—that tendency to seek out sanatoriums, where, for many, many—all too many—nothing else was meant to be quenched but that thirst for knowledge, which one would so gladly numb in the ordinary life of the present, and which one would so readily satisfy through means other than spiritual ones. What people sought in sanatoriums and similar institutions was, after all, essentially nothing more than stimuli in which they did not, so to speak, have to be present with their souls, and which were intended to cater to those mysterious longings I have just spoken of—longings one is not inclined to satisfy through intellectual means.

[ 4 ] Time and again, whenever I have to reflect on such questions, that image surfaces in my mind—the one that first appeared before me years ago, when I—truly not for rest or recovery, but to visit someone — was staying at a sanatorium at a time when one could, so to speak, take stock of the various residents, and where I subsequently came to the conclusion—through conversations with individuals and based on my observations of them—that the person who most needed rest and recuperation for his nervous system was actually the attending physician. All the others would have needed far less rest for their nervous systems than the attending physician.

[ 5 ] In this field—to which I am now referring—certain individuals who have engaged more deeply with questions of spiritual life, as I said, have shed flashes of insight that arose from the depths of their souls. In doing so, one thing has always emerged—a thread, I might say, that will run through this evening’s reflections even today; it has become clear that within the human being, as he goes through the world today with his ordinary life, there actually lies dormant another human being—one who truly sleeps and rests—a human being who is not actually perceived by the circumstances of ordinary life because he sleeps more quietly within the ordinary person than the dream images that come and go.

[ 6 ] But one thing has always struck particularly insightful people when they realized how such a second human being—essentially dormant—rests within the ordinary human being: They could not grasp the concept of this dormant human being, this unnoticed second human being, without in some way connecting it to what, within the context of our lives, we must call death. And indeed, more or less instinctively, it dawned on one or another individual that just as the phenomena of external, sensory natural life are connected to the laws of existence—which can be discovered through the observation of growth, birth, the emergence of beings from others, and so on, so too is this second human—sleeping within the first—intimately connected with what we must call death within the context of our lives, with passing away. And one realizes that it is a great and significant moment for people of insight when they no longer have to think of the higher human being within the human being in connection with what grows and flourishes, so to speak, but rather precisely with the forces that move toward death.

[ 7 ] One of the figures to whom this connection—I would say—appeared in a particularly illuminating light is the philosopher and psychologist Fortlage. I would like to begin with a significant statement he made in 1869 during a series of eight lectures on psychology—lectures on the study of the soul—that he delivered. The following, highly significant passage can be found in these lectures:

[ 8 ] “When we call ourselves living beings and thus attribute to ourselves a characteristic that we share with animals and plants, we necessarily understand the state of being alive to mean something that never leaves us and that persists within us at all times, whether we are asleep or awake. This is the vegetative life of our organism’s nourishment—an unconscious life, a life of sleep. The brain is an exception in this regard, in that this life of nourishment, this life of sleep, is superseded in it—during the intervals of wakefulness—by the life of consumption. During these intervals, the brain is subjected to predominant consumption and consequently enters a state which, if it were to extend to the other organs, would result in the absolute exhaustion of the body or death.”

[ 9 ] And then, after Fortlage has arrived at this curious statement, he continues this reflection with the following—I would say—profound words:

[ 10 ] “Consciousness is a small and partial death; death is a great and total consciousness, an awakening of the whole being in its innermost depths.”

[ 11 ] One sees that, through such a flash of light—coming from the depths of the human soul—the connection between what one might call death and what constitutes our consciousness—which always accompanies us during our waking life and, in essence, is what actually makes us human—becomes clear to Fortlage. Fortlage arrives at an idea of the kinship between death and consciousness by realizing that what suddenly seizes a person at the moment of death—what suddenly acts in a consuming way upon the human body in death—could be said to when we unfold this blossom of our spiritual existence—consciousness during our waking life. Every conscious act is, on a small scale, the same as what death is in its totality. Thus, in the long run, true death, when it occurs, is the emergence of a comprehensive consciousness that transports the human being into a supersensible world, whereas, when the human being, as a soul between birth and death, needs the physical body for life, he is transported into the sensory world.

[ 12 ] Fortlage has written extensively on the study of the soul—many volumes; such flashes of insight appear only now and then in his writings. The rest of his writings deal only with what one usually finds today in the psychology of the soul: the socialization of ideas, the flow of ideas, the emergence of drives, and so on, in short, with all those questions that psychology today dares to address in the study of the soul—questions that are far removed from what actually interests human beings—the full, whole human being—in the study of the soul, and far removed from the two main questions: the question of human freedom and the question of human immortality.

[ 13 ] Tonight’s discussion will focus primarily on the latter question, while in a few weeks I am scheduled to give a lecture here that will address the question of freedom from the same perspective.

[ 14 ] Even though Fortlage, within the broad scope of his psychological research—his study of the soul—deals only with secondary questions, and in such a way that this line of inquiry cannot lead him to the highest questions, he nonetheless offers flashes of insight. But he was criticized for this as well. Eduard von Hartmann—those esteemed listeners who have heard my earlier lectures know that I by no means underestimate this philosopher—Eduard von Hartmann sharply criticized Fortlage for having strayed from the path of science at a moment when he introduced into rigorous science a connection such as that between human consciousness and death.

[ 15 ] Now one might say: It is not only Fortlage—as anyone who has become familiar with the literature of the spiritual sciences to a greater extent knows—it is not only Fortlage; many individuals have, in isolated flashes of insight, brought forth from their souls a certain insight that relates to this characterized second human being, who lies dormant within the sensory human being. But these have remained—especially in more recent times—isolated flashes of insight.

[ 16 ] Anthroposophy has no other task than to—I would say—systematize, organize, and make methodical that which has otherwise, as if instinctively, welled up in individual flashes of insight like a revelation of higher knowledge from the depths of the human soul, so that what emerges from this may stand as a fully valid science alongside the magnificent natural sciences of modern times. To this end, however, it is necessary that anyone who wishes to form an opinion about this anthroposophy or spiritual science cast aside certain prejudices—prejudices for which one cannot even say that many people who hold them are to be blamed, prejudices that are easily explained precisely by certain advantages of contemporary science.

[ 17 ] I had to say: The human being who is actually at the heart of the matter when spiritual science is considered is something like a sleeping entity within the human being who is ordinarily awake. But this explains why everything relating to this second human being—the one who sleeps within the waking human being—initially proceeds in such a way that one does not notice it; it flows like a separate stream running beneath the currents of ordinary consciousness, yet is drowned out and is outshone by what fills one’s consciousness based on sensory experience and the needs of personal life. And when such flashes of light occasionally surface in this ordinary life, they vanish faster than a dream. No wonder, then, that most people—in accordance with the entirely justified judgment of our time—say to themselves: “Yes, what emerges from the soul and seeks to provide insight, to offer a revelation about this softly sounding, softly glowing, sleeping human being—when it appears among those who call themselves spiritual researchers—gives the impression of something dreamlike, fantastical; it gives the impression of figments of the imagination, whatever ideas are put forward about this human being.” And the present age, of course, does not want to engage with such figments of the imagination. It is quick to pass judgment: “Oh, come on, that’s just something that sprang from the imagination of an individual—something a dreamer has concocted!”

[ 18 ] Yes, but something else might be true. What if it were true that regarding what lives on in the human being beyond birth and death—that which, in contrast to the transitory, is the eternal aspect of human nature—one could initially form only such faint ideas, or, I would say, subdued ideas, as those that exist in the “inner space”? If that were the case, then one would either have to forgo any knowledge of the eternal in human beings—unless one were to take refuge in ideas that appear with the same character as that otherwise associated with fantasy or dreams— or one must carry into this world—which otherwise seems dreamlike—the very logical discipline and methodical spirit of inquiry that one is accustomed to applying to concepts pertaining to the sensory world. And one must, through certain means—inner spiritual means—by arousing certain inner spiritual powers, elevate these images so that they do not merely flit by like a dream, but retain the clarity and receptivity to impressions that the images of ordinary life, of ordinary waking life, and of ordinary consciousness possess.

[ 19 ] Is this possible? Today, it is difficult to make people understand that it is indeed possible—even in a truly scientific sense—because natural science is currently regarded as the only science that has a strictly grounded methodology. And when one distinguishes other sciences, one actually only recognizes them to the extent that they are methodologically grounded according to the model of the natural sciences. One is certainly correct regarding certain fields, and one must even go further. One must say: The ideas that natural science has produced in recent times have shown that they must be this way if they are to master the field assigned to them. But one must also say that these ideas cannot bring us any closer to the eternal life of the human being. These ideas cannot possibly be equally suited to solving the mysteries of nature and the mysteries of the human soul. For the latter, something entirely different must come into play. How many different paths, how many different means must be employed to strengthen the soul and empower it inwardly to the point where it can bring forth concepts that otherwise lie dormant deep within consciousness and apply to them the strict discipline and methodology of thought— I have spoken about this in various writings, notably in my book How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds?. Today I would like once again, as I have done in earlier lectures here, to highlight a few points from these writings. The detailed path that the human soul must follow in order to truly attain, through inner development, the ability to look into the spiritual world just as one looks into the physical world with the physical eyes—this detailed path must be sought in the aforementioned writings; however, today I wish to emphasize a few points in particular.

[ 20 ] One cannot begin to imagine how a spiritual researcher must actually proceed—what he must actually do to look into the spiritual world with his soul—unless one realizes what one can experience as a complete, whole human being, endowed with the corresponding thirst for and need for knowledge, at certain frontiers of knowledge to which modern natural science itself leads us.

[ 21 ] This modern natural science not only provides those who devote themselves to it with insights—which no one can admire more than the spiritual researcher himself—into the external course of nature and into various matters that also have an impact on practical life; rather, this natural science provides those who devote themselves to it wholeheartedly from certain perspectives with an inner education of the human soul life. And more than was possible in earlier stages of scientific knowledge, we are today, in terms of understanding, actually prepared for spiritual research precisely through the natural sciences. One must simply not allow oneself to be restricted by what the natural sciences have to say about the external world within their own domain. Rather, one should be able to rise to a state of inner discipline, to an inner cultivation of the soul’s life, through the very way one conducts research into nature. The concepts provided by natural science itself can only shed light on external nature; in terms of their content, they say nothing about spiritual life. But by using them—by using them with dedication in the study of nature and in gaining knowledge of nature—they cultivate, I might say, incidentally, in the person who is able to pay attention to what is going on within them, certain inner conditions of life that lead them to gain a concept, an inner experience, of what it means to live with one’s soul outside the body.

[ 22 ] I am well aware that this concept—living with one’s soul outside the body—is, for many today, the height of nonsense. But that doesn’t matter. Anyone can see for themselves that inner experience gives them a certain insight into life outside the body if they undergo the kinds of exercises in spiritual life that are hinted at in my writings or that I intend to describe here in principle.

[ 23 ] One can undergo something particularly significant when one reaches precisely that threshold of the life of knowledge to which the natural sciences so often lead us. A threshold! You see, many people speak of the great boundary questions of knowledge. It is said that the human soul reaches a boundary when it seeks to investigate whether the world—in space or time—is infinite or finite, or when the soul seeks to determine whether it is subject to an irresistible compulsion in all its actions or whether it is free. Certainly, these are the highest boundary questions. In his famous speech on the limits of scientific knowledge—on the seven mysteries of the world—Du Bois-Reymond posed other such boundary questions. It can make a profound impression on one when one truly feels—I would say—from the pain of knowledge experienced by a person of knowledge, how such a person stands at such a boundary.

[ 24 ] I could cite many examples of how true seekers of knowledge are placed at such frontiers. One such example is found in the writings of the famous aesthetician and philosopher Friedrich Theodor Vischer, known as “V-Vischer” because he spells his name with a “V.” When reading through his writings, one is often compelled to pause and reflect on what his soul experiences at such frontiers of knowledge. He wrote a beautiful essay on a book about dream imagination written by the philosopher Volkelt, who also once worked here in Basel. In this essay—which, admittedly, earned V-Vischer the accusation (though one should not believe it, for V-Vischer was as far removed as possible from what this accusation concerns; yet even this was possible)—that he had joined the spiritualists, V-Vischer cites a passage in which he reveals what he experienced at the frontiers of knowledge. He said: “That the human soul cannot be within the body is quite certain; but that it cannot be outside the body either is just as certain.” Here we have such a borderline question—a question that is paradoxical precisely because it contains a complete contradiction within itself, the kind of contradiction one always encounters when one devotes oneself wholeheartedly to rigorous natural science, to life itself. It is a contradiction to which one is led: The soul cannot be within the body, yet it cannot be outside the body either! — Why is one led to such a contradiction?

[ 25 ] In such borderline situations, where such contradictions arise, scientific knowledge is of no help, and what is most troubling is when one might believe that it actually does help. Most people today, however, are quick to pass judgment in such cases. They simply say: Well, this is as far as human understanding goes; we can’t go any further. — But that is not the case. Because Vischer was caught up in the prejudices of modern times, he experienced, so to speak, only the contradiction. But he did not experience what one can do to make further progress with one’s soul at such thresholds. Here, ordinary cognition must come to an end, and a very special experience of the soul must begin. Here, one must, in a sense, be able to forget the concepts of ordinary life, because they carry one only as far as this boundary. One must be able to experience this here. Here, one must be able to wrestle as a soul with what confronts one when one enters into what is there— I would say, swirls in such a contradiction as the air swirls, into which we must enter with our lungs. Such contradictions demand to be experienced—they demand to be experienced with one’s whole soul. Then, as if from the depths of the gray spirit, something new confronts this whole soul—something it simply cannot experience without this encounter with such contradictions.

[ 26 ] Concepts have been formed regarding the way in which, for example, lower animals and lower organisms—which do not yet possess senses—develop their senses through interaction with the external world. An inner life existed; this inner life comes into contact with the external world, adapts to the external world, and experiences the impulses of the external world. And while previously life pulsated, so to speak, within the organism and then came into contact everywhere with the external sensory realm, with the spatial realm, a sense of touch, so to speak, emerges from this contact, from this interaction with the external world. At first it is an inner stirring, then a bumping against the boundaries of the external spatial realm. But the being learns to adapt through its interaction with the outside world; from the reactions to the outward impulses—the pressures—there emerges what amounts to a kind of representation of the outside world through the sense of touch; this sense of touch develops through the collision with the boundary. With this conception—we will not now examine to what extent it holds true—of what is at work in lower organisms in the formation of external senses, one can draw a comparison with what the soul experiences when it reaches such boundaries of cognition as those described. In the life of the soul, it is truly as if one were first to encounter, in the dark interior, something that one initially possesses externally. Then what one experiences in such contradictory perceptions—formed at the boundaries of cognition—becomes more specific and differentiated. And just as the sense of touch emerges as a physical sense from the undifferentiated, so too does a spiritual existence emerge from the soul as the soul encounters the boundary of the spiritual world. One truly comes into contact with the spiritual world. But one also adapts to it. And one experiences the significant fact that, in a sense, one first has the soul as an undeveloped soul organism, which is confronted by the spiritual world outside, the supersensible, but then—to use Goethe’s terms—this soul develops, as it were, spiritual tactile organs and, in a further, deeper process, also spiritual eyes and spiritual ears, in order to truly perceive that which it initially merely encounters.

[ 27 ] I am willing to believe that today, people who—perhaps driven by some vague inner instinct—feel the urge to learn something about the spiritual world would prefer it if they could be taught to perceive the spiritual world through a mystical laying on of hands or something similar. Some people do believe that. But that is not the case. What opens up the spiritual world to us is inner, soul-based work. This inner, soul-based work truly leads to what I have hinted at. The person who transforms his or her soul into an organized soul—who comes to realize that he or she can possess such an organized soul within—knows that the moment in which the encounter with the spiritual becomes the perception of the spirit, he or she lives with his or her soul free from the physical body.

[ 28 ] This life free from the physical is entirely the result of inner perception. For even what I have just explained occurs time and again among those who have attained true insight. It is remarkable how precisely the path I have described to you, based on the path of spiritual research, develops in those who have endured the pains and longings of spiritual knowledge. Let me give you one more example from V-Vischer himself—the example of a statement he made in which he shows how he felt, time and again, drawn to those frontiers of knowledge where one cannot help but, as a full, whole human being, perceive contradictions, feel contradictions, but contradictions that are not resolved by logical analysis, rather contradictions that are resolved by immersing oneself in them and developing one’s faculties of the mind.

[ 29 ] In particular, V-Vischer repeatedly encountered the following contradiction: The brain is said to be the organ of the soul, and is supposed, in a sense, to produce ideas; but if one delves into the nature of these ideas, one cannot regard them as products of the brain. This is one of those boundaries of cognition; V-Vischer says in this regard:

[ 30 ] “No mind where there is no nerve center, where there is no brain, say the opponents.” Vischer himself does not say this! “No nerve center, no brain,” we say, “if it were not prepared from below through countless stages; it is easy to speak mockingly of a murmur of the mind within granite and limestone—no harder than it would be for us to ask mockingly how the protein in the brain soars into ideas. Human understanding loses the ability to measure these gradations. It will remain a mystery how it comes to be that nature—under which the mind must surely slumber—stands as such a perfect counterpoint to the mind that we bump our heads against it; it is a distinction of such an appearance of absoluteness that, with Hegel’s “otherness” and “being outside oneself”—however ingenious the formula—virtually nothing is said; the harshness of the apparent dividing wall is simply concealed. The proper recognition of the edge and the impact in this counter-blow is found in Fichte, but no explanation for it.”

[ 31 ] What a strange description! Friedrich Theodor Vischer finds himself confronted with such a limit to knowledge; he describes his experience. How must he describe it? He puts it this way: “We bump our heads against it.” He puts it this way: “A cut and a blow in return.” — One sees the soul striving to differentiate itself in order to develop inner spiritual organs through which it can experience the supersensible outer world in which it is immersed.

[ 32 ] For a long time in the history of human development, there was an obstacle to properly elevating oneself to what I call here “spiritual organs”—through which one perceives a spiritual world, just as one perceives a sensory world through the sensory organs. For a long time, the obstacle was the belief that certain questions—specifically those concerning God, freedom, and immortality—could only be resolved through human thinking, through the kind of thinking that arises from sensory impressions. Now, thinking is important, for fundamentally, a large part of the exercises one must perform to attain spiritual organs consists in the development of thinking—in a higher development of thinking than that required for ordinary natural science. But if one relies solely on the thinking required in ordinary life, it is a form of thinking that arises from the ordinary human being, not from that second human being lying dormant within. This thinking does not lead into the spiritual world; this thinking can only convince itself that it is situated within the spiritual world. Admittedly, no open-minded person would concede that thoughts are something that exist within the sensory world; but these thoughts can contain nothing other than impressions of the sensory world if they are taken out of ordinary human nature. Deeper—I might say, if the expression is permissible—experiencers of human inner life have, in flashes of insight, always sensed where human thinking leads when, emancipated from external sensory perception, it is left to its own devices.

[ 33 ] On the other hand, if one is familiar with the literature of the humanities, one can find such flashes of insight—which are, however, sometimes flashes of darkness—in the works of numerous thinkers who have delved deeply into the nature of the spirit. With them, one must pause and observe the pitfalls to which the human life of cognition leads when this life is sincere, true, and honest with itself—and does not delude itself with all sorts of prejudices or attempt to apply all manner of methods, borrowed from other, established fields, to the life of the soul itself. Here is yet another example among many:

[ 34 ] One man who has truly grappled with problems and mysteries of knowledge is Gideon Spicker, who taught philosophy at the University of Münster until a few years ago. Gideon Spicker began with an education in the spiritual realm. It was through theology that the deepest questions of knowledge took root in his soul. A few years ago, he wrote a lovely little book: Philosophical Confession of a Former Capuchin, in two volumes; one recounts his life, the other his longing for knowledge. There is one passage in particular that deserves special attention, where this former Capuchin—who later became a professor of philosophy—speaks about the experience he had with thinking: although he had detached it from sensory experience, he did not develop it to the point where the power of thought itself awakens spiritual organs— so that one stands before a spiritual world, feeling with one’s soul that one is in the realm of the supersensible. Because he was at such a threshold where he experienced something through thinking, he expressed himself thus:

[ 35 ] “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 behind this necessity. It must be accepted unconditionally and cannot be justified by anything”—he means the necessity of thought—“any attempt to prove its validity 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.”

[ 36 ] However, this is not how someone speaks who has learned only a little—or perhaps even quite a lot—and then uses the concepts they have learned to construct all sorts of philosophies, cobbling together all sorts of monistic or dualistic worldviews; that is how a person speaks who has gone through what the seeker and explorer of knowledge can go through when, with the powers of his soul, he plunges deeply enough into those depths of inner experience—into which one can plunge— into those depths where one encounters the cliffs, the dividing walls, which one can penetrate only when the spiritual organs truly awaken, when they become consciousness.

[ 37 ] I have met a number of such people in my life who, like Gideon Spicker, are striving for insight, and I have tried to portray such seekers of insight in the character of Strader in my Mystery Dramas. However, I have had to experience that I have been most profoundly misunderstood precisely by those who often call themselves followers of the spiritual movement I represent. While the characters portrayed in these dramas—in these, I might say, “dramas of insight”—are drawn from real, far-reaching life, from the very life that is meant to demonstrate the necessity and validity of spiritual science in relation to other areas of contemporary existence, there have been strange people who believed that I intended to tailor such roles specifically to those who were to portray them, whereas I was, of course, nothing further removed from that than from this very notion.

[ 38 ] One could use a comparison to illustrate what a person experiences who does not attain knowledge of the spirit, but does come to understand the necessity of thinking. Those who attain knowledge of the spirit know that if one does not merely reflect on thinking, but experiences it — just as the lower organism experiences it when organs form from an indeterminate life substance — certainly does not experience beyond thinking what Gideon Spicker describes: the bottomless abyss, the terrifying darkness illuminated by no ray of light; rather, beyond this thinking, they experience the spiritual world that sustains sensory reality. He experiences himself with his soul in this supersensible realm. He also experiences that there remains no uncertainty as to whether a merciful God or an evil demon is embedded in reason; rather, he experiences the spiritual that shines into reason—through spiritual experience and spiritual observation—just as the sensory world shines into sensory observation.

[ 39 ] But it must be said, however, that when thought is left to its own devices—when it is merely thought and not experienced—such a development of the inner life can be compared—forgive me for this somewhat strange comparison, but I must make it because it actually follows from the very nature of the matter—to a starving organism. And if one believes that one can achieve something simply by thinking about the highest questions—God, freedom, immortality—then one resembles a person who does not seek to alleviate hunger by taking in food from the outside, but rather by allowing the hunger to develop on its own, to develop by relying on itself. For just as one cannot bring a hungry organism to a state of development where it satisfies its own needs from within, so too, if one devotes oneself solely to thinking, one cannot achieve any spiritual fulfillment of the soul or any resolution of the questions concerning God, freedom, and immortality. Just as, if one does not eat, one can only continue to hunger—for hunger never satisfies itself on its own—so too can one not attain spiritual development by merely continuing to think.

[ 40 ] This is what traditional philosophical metaphysics has often sought. And as harsh as it may be, it is nonetheless true: This outdated metaphysics—which, admittedly, is something new to some people today—people even want to revive it from time to time and regard it as a great achievement to revisit these questions of metaphysics—is nothing other than a science that suffers from malnutrition, from spiritual malnutrition. Philosophical metaphysics is a science starved of the soul.

[ 41 ] But it is not enough merely to arrive at this insight in order to truly understand inner experience. Just as one must understand that mere thinking leads to a “metaphysics of starvation” if that thinking does not rise to the level of inner experience, one must also understand that no matter how many insights into external, sensory reality pertaining to human beings there may be, no matter how many findings from sensory observation and the processing of these observations by the human mind through methodological research, none of these can lead to an understanding of the soul. You will be able to see this for yourselves if you pick up textbooks or other books on the science of the soul that are in common use today; they usually begin by discussing the nervous system. Whatever else is said about the human organism, whatever is then elaborated upon, often stems solely from what has been borrowed about the human organism from physiology and the natural sciences.

[ 42 ] It must be emphasized again and again, lest there be any misunderstanding, that spiritual science is as far removed as possible from misrepresenting the natural sciences; the achievements of the natural sciences—even in recent times—regarding the mysteries of nervous life and the mysteries of the human organism in general should not be devalued. But that value lies in a different realm than that of the understanding of the soul. One can rely solely on mere thinking, but then one starves—one becomes like a starving person; but to rely solely on external observation—as provided by natural science, anatomy, physiology, and biology—for an understanding of the life of the soul is, from the other side, akin to feeding the human organism not with useful nourishment, but with all sorts of indigestible matter. If one fills one’s stomach with indigestible stones or the like, the human organism is simply unable to make anything of this indigestible stuff. Thus, if one simply takes the findings of natural science at face value, without processing them spiritually, one cannot expect them to yield any insight into the spiritual world or into the life of the soul in the supersensible realm. In recent times, people have indulged in the most diverse notions intended to explain the actual relationship between the soul and the body. Not only are the strangest fairy tales circulating in what is often called science. Fairy tales and superstition—which people seek to eradicate from everyday life—often flourish in science as vigorously as they ever have in life, yet they go just as unnoticed in science as they did in everyday life back then. Take, for example, the fairy tale of the telegraph wires: that the nerves themselves are telegraph wires leading to the soul, which transmit external sensory impressions, and then in turn other nerves that direct the impulses of the will to the periphery of the body. One would rather not speak of this fairy tale, of this ever-recurring comparison, for what is meant by this comparison is far removed from the actual facts and stems solely from a scientific superstition that has gone entirely unnoticed.

[ 43 ] However, there are two ideas worth highlighting that remain very widespread even today among those who have reflected on the relationship between the body and the soul. Some believe they must treat the body—and they tend to speak specifically of the nervous system—as a kind of tool of the soul, as if the soul were a sort of actor, a being that makes use of the body as a tool. Others, who cannot see how a spiritual-soul being—which is what the soul is to them—could find a point of contact to act upon something material like the body, have even come to develop—and many contemporary researchers of the soul have come to this conclusion—the peculiar notion known as psychophysical parallelism. According to this view, bodily processes are supposed to proceed on their own—all manner of bodily processes. Without the soul acting upon the body as a cause, or the body acting back upon the soul, the life of the soul is supposed to run parallel to bodily processes, like two parallel currents flowing side by side. One always accompanies the other, yet one does not influence the other. Wundt, Ebbinghaus, a whole host of psychologists, Paulsen—I could name many others—have embraced this peculiar theory of parallelism.

[ 44 ] All of these theories suffer from the fact that they fail entirely to identify the actual basis of the connection between the soul and the body. This connection cannot be expressed by saying, “The body is the instrument of the soul,” nor can it be expressed by saying, “The phenomena and processes of the soul run parallel to those of the body.”

[ 45 ] However, I can only present what needs to be said in this field—which covers a wide range of topics—as I have already announced, as a result and observation of anthroposophy; everyone can find further explanations in my various writings. But I would like to briefly outline here today the essential points to which the questions raised lead anthroposophical research.

[ 46 ] If one wishes to express the relationship of the soul to the body correctly, one must say: Insofar as the human being is concerned, true observation—the kind of observation that penetrates to the point of perceiving the spiritual in the way I have indicated—reveals that everything physical in the human being is neither a tool nor a secondary process, but rather a creation of the soul, on both a small and a large scale, a creation of the soul. And there is nothing physical in the human being that is not a creation of the soul. One must, however, cast aside certain prejudices and adopt certain new concepts from spiritual science if one wishes to grasp this far-reaching idea that everything physical is a creation of the soul.

[ 47 ] This is true even on a small scale, when we form any kind of mental image, when a feeling arises within us. Indeed, it is only because we have not learned to observe truly in a mind-body context that we believe something external is acting upon a fully formed body; that the external influence is transmitted through the eye or ear to the fully formed body, and then the effect continues within. Take a truly unbiased look at the relevant theories that make such claims; you will find everywhere that they are not based on actual observation at all, but are in fact all built on prejudices. For what really happens when we perceive something, when we hear something, is in fact already accomplished in its most essential parts at the very moment the object enters our consciousness, and is always, fundamentally speaking, a formative process within the body. A ray of light strikes us; the ray of light brings about something. It is in the same world in which our body is also situated. Something is happening within our body. What takes place within it is of exactly the same nature—only on a smaller scale, I might say on an atomic scale—as what occurs when our entire organism is formed from forces on a larger scale. Just as our entire organism is formed from the forces of growth and other forces, so too is something formed within us when a ray of light strikes us, when a sound wave strikes us, and so on. What is formed there—what is new formation within us, what has arisen within us, what exists within us as something subtle and atomistic, just as if a new finger had grown on us—only more clearly—is then reflected back into the soul, which is not in the body but always in the realm of the supersensible. And this reflection comes into our consciousness. But the process that must take place there for the waking consciousness must be a process of consumption, a process of decomposition—truly a little death.

[ 48 ] Basically, we cannot fully convince ourselves through physical-spiritual observation of the ordinary processes of consciousness—that is, what we experience as perception, feeling, and volition in everyday life—as to what consciousness and the nature of the soul are actually like. But when we turn our attention to something else—to what also accompanies our ordinary waking life, to the formation of memory images, to memory—then we come closer to what has just been said. Anyone who knows how to observe what goes on within a human being knows this: What actually brings a mental image to our consciousness—what causes me to see, hear, or feel an object—does not immediately lead to memories. No, rather, something must always be happening alongside it; another process must be taking place in parallel. If you have a keen sense of observation, look at a student who is really struggling; see all the supplementary exercises they must do so that what they take in is also retained in memory, so that it passes into memory. For there must always be a subconscious process—an unconscious accompanying process—taking place. What we know does not remain with us; rather, it is what proceeds alongside consciousness in the subconscious. But what happens there in our organism through this secondary current of consciousness is still very similar to the processes that take place when we grow—when we grow from a young age, when we develop. The emergence of conscious perceptions is truly an atomistic growth process on a small scale. Something grows within us, even if it is only something minute. Otherwise, we grow—as if with immense forces in comparison to the small growth process taking place within us—unnoticed in ordinary life, as memories form. Beneath the surface of the stream of conscious perceptions, while we experience through imagination, there flows a process that carries the memories; and this is very similar to the processes of growth. You may ask, why is it that one can train the memory so well precisely during youth? Because at that time one still possesses within oneself those very forces—the forces of growth—fresh and alive, because they have not yet died or withered away. But I can only ever provide such individual examples; what I have said can be substantiated by hundreds and hundreds of individual observations.

[ 49 ] But what constitutes our ordinary imagination—as well as our feeling, our volition, and indeed the entire course of our inner life—already intervenes in such a way that it does not merely reflect itself and thereby bring what is actually happening to consciousness; rather, just as there is an undercurrent to our conscious life for the sake of memory, so there is also an overt current. And just as one does not notice the undercurrent—one notices it, at most, when a student groans and stirs, jostling his brain to do something to stimulate this undercurrent—one certainly does not notice the overcurrent. This upper current, however, belongs above all to what I called earlier the “second human being,” who sleeps within the ordinary human being while we think, feel, and will, and in this way bring forth the blossoms of our ordinary life, which unfolds between birth and death—or, let us say, between conception and death.

[ 50 ] Just as the stream of memories flows beneath consciousness, so too does something purely spiritual flow above consciousness—something that does not in any way intervene in the body through ordinary experience. And because this conscious soul life has, so to speak, a “super-life,” the forces that human beings possess as forces of growth are by no means sufficient for this conscious soul life—indeed, for the entire soul life. The forces that lead a human being to birth are not sufficient. These forces could only bring about in a human being what we perceive in a sleeping organism. At the moment when consciousness, with its characteristic overflowing forces, intervenes in the organism, those forces must also intervene in the organism which, in their totality, will ultimately destroy this organism—that is, bring about death. These are forces of decay—forces that intervene with ever-increasing destructive power, so that the forces of growth must act as a counterbalance during sleep. Only then can one understand the supersensible life of the soul when one knows how far below the sensible realm the purely organic extends.

[ 51 ] I do not like to speak—as my esteemed audience, who have heard me speak here on numerous occasions, knows—about purely personal experiences; however, what I now wish to say about purely personal experiences is, after all, closely related to the main point I have to make.

[ 52 ] I must confess that, through inner work, I have been intensively exploring the problems I am speaking about today—and which I discuss in my writings—for well over thirty years, pursuing them in every way possible. These paths are meant to lead the soul into the realm of spiritual life and into the connection between this spiritual-soul life and physical life. I have found that if one sets to work today honestly and sincerely in accordance with the scientific achievements of our time, one can truly gain an infinite amount of fruitful insight precisely by disciplining oneself scientifically and by training oneself in the natural sciences. In this way—precisely when one engages with the natural sciences—one also encounters exactly those questions and problems for which conventional natural science is insufficient to provide a solution. Indeed, it is precisely through scientific thinking that one arrives at different conclusions and different observational findings regarding what actually exists in the natural sciences.

[ 53 ] I must say: For decades, one of the greatest mysteries in the fields of natural science and the humanities has been, for me, the question of the nature of the nervous system—this nervous system that contemporary scientific psychologists and psychological natural scientists regard as the organ of the soul, imagining that an inner activity takes place within the nerves that is similar to the activities of other organs. Well, yes, such activities do take place in the nerves, but they do not serve to form perceptions, feelings, or the will. The processes that take place in the nervous system serve to nourish the nerves and to regenerate nerve tissue when it is depleted. They certainly do not serve the life of the soul; yet they must be present so that the life of the soul can take place. Allow me to use a comparison that I have already employed here before.

[ 54 ] If one looks at the nervous system and regards it as something that must be present for spiritual life, it is just as if one were to say: The ground must be there so that I do not fall into the abyss when I want to walk. But when I walk, the ground is soft, and I leave footprints behind; then anyone who now examines the ground and searches for the forces within it—in the ground where my footprints were made—from the inside out will be completely mistaken. Just as these forces do not originate from within, neither do any inner forces of the brain and nervous system produce the traces that arise through imagination, will, and feeling. Here the soul is at work, reigning in the supersensible realm. Just as I, when I walk, have nothing to do with the ground—even though I need it—so, too, the soul has nothing to do with the nerves, even though this nervous system is certainly as necessary to me as the ground is.

[ 55 ] Until one recognizes this, until one experiences it as a genuine observation, one cannot even begin to grasp the true nature of the soul. What truly underlies spiritual life in nervous activity is not the processes of nutrition, nor are they organic processes of the nervous system—which, as I said, lead in a different direction—but rather that which I would now like to describe in more detail. I have cited the preceding personal account so that you may see that I am not speaking lightly about something as weighty as what I am about to say, that what I am saying about nervous life has been hard-won: As a person immerses themselves in their nervous ramifications, as organic forces enter into these nervous ramifications, they pass from life into death. A person is continually dying into the nerve networks whenever they use these networks for thinking, feeling, or willing. Organic life does not continue in the same way as growth processes, but rather it dies off as it branches out into the nerves. And as it dies off, as it becomes a corpse, starves itself, and weakens itself, it prepares the ground for spiritual development, for the purely supersensible soul. Just as when I remove the air from the receptacle of an air pump—creating a vacuum—and the air then flows in of its own accord and asserts itself within, so too, when the organism continually sends partial death into the nervous system, continually causing itself to die off, spiritual life flows into the dead part.

[ 56 ] Therefore, death—partial death—is the foundation of consciousness. Once one comes to recognize that a human being does not need to pour his or her organic forces into the body in order to make this body the seat of the soul, but rather that a human being is compelled to set precise limits on his or her organic experience, to constantly bring about the death of the organic interplay of forces, to constantly withdraw this organic life from the places to which the nerves provide access, then one realizes how the supersensory life of the soul can unfold within the physical body, after it has, of course, first built up this physical body for itself. For it is the same soul that thinks, feels, and wills during the period from birth—or, let us say, from conception—until death; it is the same soul that is also present beforehand. The spiritual world—as I have often stated here—is not somehow up in some cloud-cuckoo-land; it is present wherever the physical world is; it permeates and interweaves with it; and wherever there are physical effects, they arise from supersensible, from spiritual effects. This soul, which during life—because it has fully formed the body, because it has transformed it into a mirroring apparatus that reflects back to it the processes that can come to its consciousness—this same soul, which thus consciously shapes itself because it has, so to speak, solidified the body, this same soul lives in the supersensible world before it came into being through birth, or let us say conception, it lives in the supersensible world, and in this life it is connected to the supersensible world. This soul exists—not for decades, but for centuries—before it steps into sensory existence through conception.

[ 57 ] And just as, during the life between birth and death, this soul has created its image within the body and unfolds its life through this image of the body, so, from the other side—from the supersensible world—the life of the soul, through its radiance and flow, unfolds the forces that bring together parents—father and mother—generation after generation, and so on; these forces bring human beings together in such a way that, throughout the generations, those forces develop which then manifest as hereditary forces.

[ 58 ] It is true—and spiritual science in no way intends to challenge the scientific theory of heredity—that what we bequeath arises within the physical line of generations. But our soul already exerts an influence within this physical line of generations. Through the effects of our soul, we imbue our ancestors with the forces that we then receive as an inheritance. Thus, just as we form something in our memory during our early development, we shape our entire organism out of the spiritual world; and only the foundation, the opportunity for this, is provided by what exists in the physical stream of heredity, in the succession of generations. The body is entirely a creation of the soul-spiritual. Just as the individual experience between birth and death is based on a creation of spiritual activity, so too does the entirety of the human physical body rest upon the creation of this physical body from the spiritual-soul realm. But this entire stream of development incorporates not only the forces of growth, not only the forces that propel us forward, but also the forces that, in their totality, manifest as death—which is merely the outer aspect of immortality.

[ 59 ] For insofar as the soul-spiritual, as it were, places the body into the world and reflects itself in it, it experiences its own life in the supersensible realm. But through the development of the overcurrent I described to you earlier, it simultaneously destroys the body and thereby brings death into it. And just as every form of consciousness is based on a partial death, so total death is nothing other than the withdrawal of the soul from the body—which is the beginning of a different kind of experience of the soul. We know: Just as we form our memories for the period between birth and death, so do we form, within the supersensible current described above—the superconscious current—the inner human being who passes through births and deaths, who is eternal.

[ 60 ] What I have referred to as the soul’s experience—the soul’s experience of itself in the supersensible realm—is not something that the spiritual researcher creates; rather, it is something that is always present within the human being as the “characterized second human,” who is otherwise simply overlooked. Spiritual research is nothing other than bringing to consciousness that which is constantly present in the human being—that which is also eternal within the human being, so that it can pass through death. Then, when one is able, in the manner described, to move with one’s soul in the spiritual realm—just as one moves with one’s senses in the physical-sensory realm—one knows that as a human being, as a spiritual-soul being, one lives in a spiritual world just as one lives in a physical world through the senses. And just as one distinguishes realms in the physical world—the mineral realm, the plant realm, the animal realm—so too does one distinguish realms in the spiritual world, filled with beings that, as they ascend, become ever more spiritual; to these realms the human being belongs through his soul, just as he belongs to the mineral, plant, and animal realms through his body. In short, the soul consciously enters the realm of the spiritual.

[ 61 ] I would most like to name this worldview—which arises scientifically in the way I have indicated—after the sources—if I were not to be misunderstood, I would always call it that—after the sources from which it originates for me personally; I would most like to call this worldview “Goetheanism,” just as—if this did not lead to misunderstandings upon misunderstandings—I would most like to call the building in Dornach, which is dedicated to this worldview, the “Goetheanum.” For what I mean by “anthroposophy” is based not on mere daydreams or arbitrary whims, but on the sound foundation upon which Goethe’s worldview is based. Goethe differed in his conception of natural phenomena precisely because of such premises from what later emerged as natural science—albeit with a certain justification, for one can only make progress with concepts if one uses them correctly. Goethe, however, formulated these scientific concepts in such a way that they do not lie heavy in the soul like stones in the stomach, but can be transformed so that one can ascend with these scientific concepts into the realm of the soul. Goethe himself did not yet establish spiritual science; he did not get that far. But he developed his theory of metamorphosis in such a way that one need only consistently elaborate inner experience further from the principles from which Goethe’s theory of metamorphosis flowed; then one also arrives at an understanding of soul-spiritual experience.

[ 62 ] What, then, is the purpose of popular psychology? A very, very significant—indeed, I believe, the most significant—philosopher of our time, Franz Brentano, who passed away this spring in Zurich, had a rich intellectual life behind him; he was a pioneer in this field; he ultimately found refuge in Zurich during the war; he died this past spring. Throughout his entire life, alongside his other profound research into the realm of the soul, he sought to come to terms with what we call thinking or imagination, feeling, and volition. These three concepts, after all, play a very special role in the science of the soul. Well, even Franz Brentano did not get any further than merely a classification; he did not reach the point where, fundamentally, one can first perceive within the soul itself what lives there as a soul-life—where the soul itself can first be grasped as a living entity. If one simply groups them mechanically—imagination, feeling, and volition—one has three categories. To grasp the soul—in which thinking, feeling, and willing are alive—as a living entity, one must grasp the soul—now, however, the spiritual-soul—in the same sense that Goethe sought to grasp the external phenomena of nature in his theory of metamorphosis, as Goethe attempted—whether one agrees with him more or less on this point is irrelevant for now; he may have erred in the details, but what matters is the principle and the method—just as Goethe sought to see green stem leaves transformed into petals, and even into the fruiting organs. Just as he sought to explain all organs through a metamorphic transformation into one another, so too must we not merely leave thinking, feeling, and willing standing side by side, but rather grasp the living transition between them.

[ 63 ] Here, once again, I can only cite the findings of anthroposophical research that have matured over decades: What we call “will” in ordinary life—that which we refer to as our will—is not merely placed externally alongside feeling and imagination; rather, feeling has simply arisen from the will through a metamorphosis, forming out of the will just as a petal forms from a stem leaf; and imagination, in turn, forms out of feeling. The anthroposophist ultimately arrives at the conclusion: What we recognize as “will” is essentially a young, still childlike being that, as it grows older, transforms into feeling—undergoing a metamorphosis—and, as it grows even older, metamorphoses into thought and imagination.

[ 64 ] In what we experience as imagination, the same essence is always mysteriously present as is present in feeling and willing. However, we do not experience—because in ordinary life we experience what the soul experiences with the help of the body, with the help of the image, the creature it has made for itself—we do not experience how all imagination arises from feeling. But when the soul has developed its spiritual organs, it experiences a mysterious feeling in all acts of imagination—not a feeling bound to our body, but a feeling that leads us, by a roundabout path through imagination, out into the expanses of the spiritual world. One then experiences—when one is not led inward through feeling into one’s physical body, but rather, conversely, is led outward into the vastness of the spiritual world—that supersensible realm in which we exist between death and a new birth, in which the soul lives before it proceeds to birth and after it has passed through the gate of death. And one then experiences the supersensible world through a higher form of knowledge than ordinary concepts can provide—through spiritual-soul knowledge.

[ 65 ] Most people, however, would like to experience this supersensible world in the same way as the sensory world—using the same methods and following the same model. They are not content to experience it merely in images—as I have indicated in my writings—or through the imagination. They would like to experience it as tangibly as the sensory world. Yet, just as the body must first die in order to become pure spirit, so too must sensory knowledge first shed what is connected to the material and the physical, and this knowledge must become imagination—imaginative—so that in this imaginative experience, which is as subtle as the life of the imagination, but not in an arbitrary way, rather governed by an inner method, so that in this supersensible experience—which is now no longer a dream—the sensuous-material, which belongs to sensuous perception, is shed, and an image is already gained between birth and death of what reality is when the human being enters the supersensible world through the gate of death. Everything that comes from the body is material in knowledge; this must be stripped away from knowledge if one wishes to lead this knowledge to the supersensible.

[ 66 ] Therefore, no one can hope to truly perceive the supersensible who seeks to introduce it so crudely into the sensory world as the spiritualists do—who wish to hear voices or observe other material effects—while in reality, caught up in a peculiar self-deception, they are essentially trying to attack the supersensible and have set up a sensory substitute for it. That subtle spiritual experience—that experience truly stripped of all material knowledge—which must occur if one wishes to experience the eternal, imperishable human being—is precisely what many people today are not content with. But it is this supersensible experience alone that can lead us to a true understanding of the soul’s nature in the realm of the supersensible, as I have shown—though I could only sketch it out—and which leads us to a true insight into the relationship of the body to the soul and of the soul to the body.

[ 67 ] Just as feeling transforms into imagination, so too does volition. And just as one can mysteriously find a feeling within every image, so too does one discover a will—but a will that does not lead one into human limb movements or human sensory action, but rather leads one out of the life of the imagination into the realm of the supersensible world. If one discovers, within the aged soul-being of imagination, the young soul-being of volition, then one discovers in this volition—which is experienced purely spiritually—those forces that flow over into this earthly life from previous earthly lives that the human being has lived through. And then the repeated earthly lives—the soul’s passage as a supersensible being through repeated earthly lives, with intervening lives in the purely supersensible world—become a genuine object of observation; then the human being enters into true supersensible knowledge.

[ 68 ] This true supersensible knowledge—one might think it exists solely to satisfy the human need for knowledge. Let me just briefly suggest, in closing, with just a few words, that this is not the case.

[ 69 ] What one might believe could satisfy only the human thirst for knowledge—the need for knowledge—has profound practical significance. Certainly, the development of humanity involves progress. The Copernican worldview and modern natural science emerged only after humanity had passed through other stages beforehand. Thus, anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, as intended here, will only emerge when—just as the urge arose at the end of the Middle Ages to view the structure of the world in a different way than in the Middle Ages—the urge to recognize the supersensible becomes strong enough in human beings. Many people who know that a supersensible world exists still believe that human beings today are not yet mature enough to develop those free powers of cognition, to awaken the sleeping human being. The opposite is true! Today, human beings thirst in the depths of their souls for knowledge of the supersensible. They merely numb themselves, as I mentioned at the beginning of this lecture.

[ 70 ] But there are other reasons as well why his numbness will not last much longer. One can understand nature without resorting to laws that explain the life of the soul; indeed, one might even say: The more one refrains from any spiritual-psychological interference when formulating the laws of nature, the more purely one will understand nature. The laws of nature will be all the more suitable for their domain the less they are led astray by laws that relate solely to the soul and spirit. That much must be said. But as soon as it comes to understanding human life in its entirety, to understand it in such a way that our understanding can influence the development of human life; as soon as it comes to understanding social, political, and communal life; as soon as it is simply a matter of finding a proper relationship between human beings, then something else is necessary—the forms of thought modeled solely on the natural sciences are insufficient.

[ 71 ] Oh, humanity has simply become all too accustomed to conceiving of all life according to modes of thought that apply to natural processes, to processes in accordance with nature. And so, I would say, people have instinctively come to conceive of social life—the political coexistence of human beings—and to shape it in the same way as the mind that has simply become accustomed to thinking in terms of natural laws. This has developed more and more over the last four centuries right up to our own time. Just as it is entirely appropriate for the natural sciences to exclude the spirit in order to keep their field pure, so it is completely inadequate for human coexistence—for everything related to society and the social sciences—to develop modes of thought derived solely from the natural sciences. We will never come to terms with the way in which people must live together across the globe if we seek to shape this coexistence according to political, social, and societal ideals modeled on the laws of natural science.

[ 72 ] One example among many: When this tragic war broke out, one heard from many quarters—especially from people who prided themselves on having experience with the laws of human coexistence—well, one heard it said time and again—that this war could not last longer than four to five months at most. — In all seriousness, with the utmost seriousness, people said this based on the way of thinking they had developed through their training in the natural sciences—a mindset that exists even in those who are not natural scientists. It was precisely the “most knowledgeable” who spoke this way. How sadly reality has refuted these notions! No one who perceives the world through the lens of the humanities can succumb to such errors, for the simple reason that they know the difference between notions that are far removed from reality and those that are grounded in reality and penetrate it.

[ 73 ] What fills our souls as a spiritual science, as anthroposophy, brings us into contact with reality; it places us within the whole, full reality. A social science—a science of human coexistence—that has truly grown out of this coexistence of people across the entire Earth, that is not meant to instill instincts, impulses into people that discharge themselves in the same way as today’s terrible, catastrophic events—such a social science, such a science of society, can only arise from the foundations provided by spiritual science, by anthroposophically oriented spiritual science. For it alone is concerned not with a single aspect of life, but with life in its entirety; it alone can therefore produce concepts and ideas that are truly suited to reality.

[ 74 ] And if people are not willing to base their social thinking on anthroposophically oriented spiritual science—this is my deepest conviction—then humanity will not be able to emerge from the calamities that are unfolding so terribly today. I appreciate what comes from people who today call themselves pacifists or something similar, who are enthusiastic about all kinds of peace movements. However, such matters cannot be decided by mere commands; they cannot be decided by decreeing that this or that must be. One can certainly agree with what must be done. But if one merely issues commands or laws based on ordinary thinking, it is as if one were to say to the stove standing there: “Dear stove, it is your duty as a stove to heat the room; so please heat the room nicely.” — It will not heat the room unless you put wood in it and light a fire, even though that would be quite pleasant these days. But that simply cannot happen; instead, you must load the stove with wood and light a fire. Similarly, all the ordinary, conventional ideas about maintaining peace and so on are not enough. What is at stake is not merely saying, “People, love one another,” but—to use a metaphor—bringing fuel into people’s souls. These, however, are concepts that arise from a living grasp of spiritual life. For the human soul does not belong solely to the material world; it belongs to the spiritual life. And in many cases today, people still do not understand at all what it means that this human soul belongs to the realm of the supersensible. People generally believe that the laws they develop today already place them within the realm of the supersensible. That is not the case.

[ 75 ] Especially in the fields of serious scholarship, people are increasingly beginning to realize that it is important not only to test against human experience what scientific prejudice has dictated in recent decades, but also that other concepts and other ideas are necessary.

[ 76 ] We have, after all, witnessed the curious spectacle in recent times that one of Haeckel’s most faithful disciples, Oscar Hertwig—the famous physiologist and biologist—has written a book in which, despite having been one of Haeckel’s most faithful disciples, bids farewell to the entire outward form of Darwin’s theory—that theory which seeks to explain evolution solely through a series of coincidences and chance events, which refuses to acknowledge that forces—unrecognizable through mere external observation—intervene in this process of evolution. Thus we have witnessed the remarkable fact that Oscar Hertwig has recently written a significant book: The Development of Organisms: A Refutation of Darwin’s Theory of Chance. And in this book, in which serious science itself seeks to break free from its fixation on the merely material and to ascend to the spiritual, Oscar Hertwig concludes his arguments—and this is the key point I would like to mention in closing—in the following manner:

[ 77 ] “The interpretation of Darwin’s theory, which is so ambiguous due to its vagueness, also allowed for a wide range of applications in other areas of economic, social, and political life. From it, just as from a Delphic oracle, anyone could, depending on what suited them, derive applications to social, political, hygienic, medical, and other issues and, to reinforce their assertions, invoke the science of Darwinian biology with its immutable laws of nature. But if these supposed laws are not laws at all”—which Oscar Hertwig believes he has proven—“might there not also be social dangers inherent in their versatile application to other fields? Surely one cannot believe that human society can use phrases such as “relentless struggle for existence,” “selection of the fit, the useful, and the expedient,” “perfection through selective breeding,” etc.—applied to the most diverse areas of life, such as daily bread—for half a century without being deeply and lastingly influenced in the very direction of its thought processes! Evidence for this claim could easily be gleaned from many phenomena of modern times. Precisely for this reason, the question of whether Darwinism is true or false extends far beyond the realm of biological science.”

[ 78 ] Here we see how a natural scientist understands it: What people think, and what of their thoughts is transformed into their impulses, prepares the way for and shapes what is then manifested in external reality; in the social realm, too, the spiritual is the creator of the material. And when the material world appears in the form it does today, then—then we must seek other causes in the spiritual realm than those sought by those who form their concepts of the social world solely according to the model of the natural sciences. A spiritual science founded on occultism will be able to influence social life differently; it will not merely speak of a relentless “struggle for existence,” but will see through to what appears as the spiritual in what, in the natural realm, appears only as a struggle for existence; it will not merely view existence from the outside, but in terms of what the spirit has infused into it; it will not merely judge the course of evolution according to expediency, but also according to what is placed within the course of expediency as ethically valuable; it will not merely speak of perfection through selective breeding, but of the creative spirit that flows into the current of evolution and creates selective breeding for itself, just as the soul creates its body. It will seek, above all, the foundations for social laws in the supersensible realm.

[ 79 ] Here we can already see that spiritual science—anthroposophically oriented spiritual science—is not merely a means of satisfying intellectual curiosity, but rather something that is intimately connected with practical needs and with the entire course of life. And the future will demand precisely those foundations of thought for practical life that can flow only from spiritual science.

[ 80 ] Why are people still so reluctant today to take spiritual science into their souls? One can form an answer to this question precisely from what has been said this evening. Our primary focus this evening has been on how spiritual science explores the mystery of immortality. Yet it is death that separates us from this immortality. And as we have seen, it is precisely in the course of life that we must acknowledge the constant encroachment of death. In ancient times, when people spoke—albeit in a different way—of knowledge of the spiritual world, it was always said: whoever enters the spiritual world must symbolically experience death. — Now, that may be a radical way of putting it, but it is true. Between our world of the senses and of the intellect—which analyzes sensory observations—and the world in which immortality dwells, there lies not a world of growth, not a world of blossoming, not a world of flourishing; rather, death lies between them. And one must look death in the eye—one must look the forces of decay in the eye—one must look the forces in the eye that counteract the forces of birth and growth, the very forces that natural science studies. This produces something similar in the realm of knowledge to what the fear of death is in the realm of external life. One can indeed speak of a “fear of death” in the realm of knowledge—of the fact that people lack the courage to penetrate the very realm that must be traversed if one wishes to enter the supersensible. People shrink back. They do not know this. They delude themselves with all manner of theories and prejudices about “limits of knowledge” and about some purely material meaning of life. They would rather delude themselves in this way than boldly step through that gate through which alone one can pass from the sensory into the supersensory world. But this gate is the very one through which one must come to know the essence of death and all that is related to it. For it is true: a human being will find satisfying inner harmony of the soul only when he can take into the innermost depths of his soul the mysteries of immortality.

[ 81 ] But the fruit of knowledge—which can be savored as immortality—can only be attained by tilling the soil of death and all that is akin to death. Yet one must not fear this. To the extent that people overcome this fear of death through knowledge in the realm of cognition, a science of the immortal, a science of the supersensible, will emerge.

[ 82 ] Tomorrow I will speak about how this science of the supernatural—this anthroposophically oriented spiritual science—does not interfere with anyone’s religious beliefs.

[ 83 ] I hope I won't keep you so long tomorrow; but today's introductory lecture simply couldn't be made any shorter.