The Rudolf Steiner Archive

7. Knowledge of Nature, Social Science, and Religious Life in the Light of the Spiritual Scientific Perspective

[ 1 ] Anthroposophically oriented spiritual science—which I have been discussing here both last week and this week—is, as may already be apparent from the two lectures, pretty much the opposite of what those who are unfamiliar with it believe it to be. In particular, one will hear from people who have only superficially engaged with this spiritual scientific endeavor that the findings—or, let us say for the time being, the purported findings—of this school are completely ruled out by current scientific insights.

[ 2 ] Furthermore, one will hear how that which is said to have been brought down from the spiritual world—that which is said to be the result of supersensory knowledge—proves to be impractical and meaningless, particularly in relation to the most significant, greatest, and most pivotal questions of our time, all of which, after all, lie more or less in the social sphere. And finally, from a third perspective, it is emphasized time and again how this spiritual science is capable of leading people away from genuine, well-founded religious sentiment and feeling, how it contributes to the irreligiousness of our time, and how it even poses significant dangers from this perspective.

[ 3 ] Today I would like to speak primarily about these three misunderstandings regarding anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, so that the day after tomorrow I can attempt to provide a picture of the historical development of modern humanity from the perspective of this supersensible knowledge.

[ 4 ] If one wishes to penetrate more deeply into the entire intellectual fabric of our time, one must absolutely turn one’s attention to all that has happened over the course of the last three to four centuries—especially the 19th century—that has caused scientific thinking to take on that decisive significance of which I have, indeed, spoken at length in my previous lectures. One must turn one’s attention to the emergence of scientific thinking for the reason that today scientific thinking is not confined merely to the natural sciences, but because throughout the world every question—albeit quite justifiably—is viewed through a certain scientific lens. Therefore, one may well say: Insofar as one recognizes that the historical development of modern humanity has, in a very fundamental way, brought forth a scientific orientation from within the human being, this scientific orientation is justified. In contrast, one may say that the humanities would, from the outset, give themselves a poor reputation if they were to come into any kind of conflict with the scientific thinking of modern times. However, it does not come into conflict; on the contrary: scientific thinking—and with it the entire spiritual orientation of the present, extending into all branches of life—only gains a firm foundation when this scientific approach deigns to build upon the spiritual sciences as its foundation.

[ 5 ] If one wishes to approach the question posed here—I would say, from a negative perspective—one must take a closer look at how it was not modern natural science itself, but rather the particular character of modern thought that emerged in the wake of natural science. And here one must say that those who do not view history from the outside, superficially, but rather view it by asking themselves: How has humanity developed from age to age in its deepest, spiritual capacities as well? — Just as an individual human being develops, and one cannot say that at thirty, forty, or fifty years of age he possesses the same state of mind—so too, how did humanity develop in its conceptions, in its entire way of thinking, to ultimately arrive at those concepts, those ideas, by which it is predominantly governed in the present? — Anyone who traces the spiritual development of humanity without prejudice will find that in earlier times—and one could say well into the 17th century—humanity held different conceptions, both regarding the life of the human soul and regarding the divine in the world and nature. What can be discerned from a deeper examination of this development can also be confirmed externally: if one goes back to earlier times, one will find, wherever the view of nature is discussed, that the consideration of the external sensory world, external nature, and what was called the nature of the human soul is never treated separately. Even in the 16th century and well into the 17th, the writings that deal with the natural order of things always included what was said at that time about the nature of the human soul. Indeed, during this period, alongside the revealed teachings of theology, there existed a Theologia naturalis—a theology that sought to derive its doctrine and worldview from the nature of the human soul.

[ 6 ] This is an outward sign of a significant fact. In earlier times, before the emergence of modern scientific thinking, people held such conceptions that were capable of both providing a satisfactory explanation of nature and saying something about the human soul. The concepts of the soul and the spirit were not as separate from the concepts of nature and the world as has been the case since the 17th and 18th centuries, when scientific thinking became fully established. And these different concepts—and this is the important point—were not arbitrarily established at that time and later altered. The fact that these concepts took on a different character is connected to those forces of human development that are just as necessary to the progress of this development as the change in physical and psychological constitution is to the course of individual human development, as one grows older from childhood to old age.

[ 7 ] Today, through the natural sciences, we have arrived at concepts that—as we saw last week—are no longer directly applicable when seeking to explain the inner life of the human soul. And anyone who is now able to think scientifically—in good faith, honestly, and by drawing the necessary conclusions—must ask themselves: What does the emergence of scientific knowledge actually mean for the development of modern humanity?

[ 8 ] He can only obtain a satisfactory answer to this question if he is able to investigate the very nature of scientific knowledge itself. Anyone who, from the outset, simply relies on the belief that natural science is the be-all and end-all, the one and only thing in the explanation of the world, cannot arrive at a satisfactory answer to this question. Only those who are able to ask themselves: What is the relationship between the natural sciences and human development as a whole? What is its relationship to the deepest needs and questions that can spring from the human soul? — only they can gain clarity about what the natural sciences are capable of.

[ 9 ] One must, so to speak, be able to view the natural sciences themselves from a scientific perspective. And in this regard, it is worth noting that it is significant that even prominent thinkers who have addressed this question have nevertheless come to the conclusion that natural science has, so to speak, limits inherent in nature—limits that we discussed in the first lecture, but which are already so keenly felt by the thinking person of today that, when people gain an overview of what natural science has documented in its various fields, they must then say to themselves: With all these ideas, with all these concepts that natural science provides us on the basis of such rigorous methodological research as we have, with all these concepts—especially when we examine them very closely—we still do not actually penetrate into that which we carry within our souls as a natural need for knowledge. One feels, as it were, that while the natural sciences are there—and cannot be anything other than what they are (apart from errors and exceptions, of course)—precisely when they fulfill their ideal, they cannot satisfy humanity’s deepest need for knowledge, even in relation to nature itself.

[ 10 ] I would like to express what is felt in the following paradoxical way. People have, after all, come to agree—as developments have unfolded in recent times—that our ancestors were at a childlike stage of cognition until modern science brought about a change. The ancients, drawing from a more or less fanciful state of mind, formed conceptions about nature as well—conceptions that posited all manner of spiritual elements in nature and that also conceptualized these spiritual elements in nature. It has been said that people sought the forces believed to lie behind the phenomena of nature. Yet in their childlike conceptions, these ancients found not natural forces, but only natural ghosts. And indeed, taking pride in the achievements of modern natural science, we look back with a certain arrogance on these ancient thinkers, these ancient earthly beings, who sought what lay behind visible nature. And instead of the actual forces of nature—which have now finally been discovered—these ancient people sought all manner of ghosts, personalized entities, and the like behind natural phenomena, entities about which, precisely within the age of natural science, one could only form the notion that they have nothing at all to do with the order of nature, that they arise from a human soul force which simply cannot penetrate the reality of nature, and which therefore, of its own accord, forms all manner of conceptions about this nature.

[ 11 ] But now, even though what I have just said was, until very recently, essentially a self-evident dogma for anyone who thought scientifically, there are already a few individuals today—whose views are, after all, noteworthy—who argue: Yes, if we really examine our concepts of nature, if we do not live under the prejudice that that through these concepts of nature we also grasp the essence of nature itself, but rather if we take these concepts of nature as they are and see how they relate to what we actually experience in nature—if we allow the whole human being, not merely our intellect and our experimental skills, to be at work—then these scientific concepts behave toward an unbiased insight just like the ghosts of old. Scientific concepts have something very ghostly about them. — There are already people today who are so free of prejudice that they say: The ancients imagined ghosts based on the state of their souls; but ultimately, especially if we are true natural scientists, we are doing nothing different. For what we believe we carry in our minds as ideas about nature is just as unreal in relation to nature as the old ghosts were believed to be unreal by natural science.

[ 12 ] There is something very valid about this insight. And one finds its validity when one asks: Yes, how does a person actually come to an understanding of nature? At first, a person does not approach nature with the intent to understand it, but at most to observe it. And as they observe nature, it indeed presents itself to them with a vitality quite different from the vividness of the image they can form in their scientific conceptions. When we face nature with our eyes and ears, as whole human beings, but also with our intellect—and not merely by thinking in terms of natural laws and experimenting in the laboratory—when we simply face nature as it presents itself to us, observing it and thoughtfully processing our observations, then we live with nature. But as soon as we begin to investigate nature, we cannot take life with us from nature. And because we cannot take life with us—because we stand as one with nature, alive, only in the act of immediate, experiential observation—we actually impoverish nature by attempting, as it were, to suck it into ourselves as we seek to grasp it through the natural sciences. And if we want to understand nature correctly through the natural sciences, we turn it into a specter in our very understanding of nature. This is simply a fact that emerges from observation just as anything else does.

[ 13 ] Faced with such a fact, however, what matters is having the courage to admit it to oneself. What will one do when one admits this fact to oneself: By recognizing nature, we actually arrive at a kind of understanding that turns our cognitive image of nature into a specter. — One comes to truly take this truth to heart and say to oneself: Thus, knowledge of nature is something that leads into the spectral realm. — And in humanity’s cognitive interaction with nature in the scientific sense, human beings behave in such a way that, when they distance themselves from nature and from the observation of nature, they nourish a specter of nature.

[ 14 ] There is a figure in the recent history of human development who did not express what I have just said quite so openly, though certainly not in such a paradoxical way, but who felt it deeply—and that is Goethe. Because Goethe, even in his own time, knew how to stand in this way toward nature—in harmony with himself— he was consequently misunderstood and regarded as a dilettante in the field of natural science. Even today, it is still a great struggle—and I may say this because I have been striving for decades to awaken some understanding of Goethe in our contemporary society in this regard—to help people grasp Goethe’s view of nature.

[ 15 ] What is this approach? This approach, which will be developed more and more—which, though perhaps still amateurish and imperfect in Goethe’s work—must be further developed, developed in a truly scientific manner, and which can then lead to a true understanding of nature in all fields—what is this approach? This approach consists in approaching human cognition—insofar as it distances itself from nature, from mere reflection, which I also spoke about last week from a different perspective—in such a way that this reflection is not merely used to give nature the opportunity to present its ghostly essence before the human soul. Goethe did not strive for laws of nature, which are always abstractions, which are always something dead in contrast to living nature. Goethe sought pure phenomena, as he called them: “primordial phenomena.” He strove not to use human thought as if it were meant to provide explanations of nature on its own, as if it were meant to discover laws such as those of the conservation of energy or matter, which are purely conceptual; rather, Goethe strove to use thought to arrange the phenomena in such a way that nothing of humanity itself speaks through these natural phenomena, but that the phenomena speak purely through themselves.

[ 16 ] If we now move from the instinctive approach that Goethe’s thought took to a fully conscious, deliberate understanding, where does that lead us? It leads us to answer the question in the way that only supersensible knowledge can answer it. We come to ask: Yes, what is actually present in what we observe in nature when we observe with our senses? — What is present is that which, in the manner indicated, is a phantom, a phantom-like formation. This is, of course, already contained within nature, for we draw it out of her. But what else is contained in nature, besides this, when we are in living communion with her through our eyes and ears, when we surrender ourselves directly to sensory impressions?

[ 17 ] Anyone who, as we hinted at here last week, trains both the power of imagination on the one hand and the power of will on the other to the point of supersensory knowledge will come to say to themselves: In the sensory world that surrounds us, the supersensible is already present, as far as nature is concerned. —However, on the path of natural science, we leave out the supersensible and must leave it out. Why? Because we human beings—insofar as we are organized here in the physical body between birth and death as we are—have ourselves transformed that which is our spiritual-eternal essence into a sensory body. We are not human because we dwell in a home of the supersensible, which lives within us as the eternal, but we are human because, having entered from a supersensible world into the sensible world through birth or conception, the supersensible, which previously lived in the purely spiritual realm, has been transformed into a physical body that lives out its existence as a physical entity between birth and death and which, through death, returns to the supersensible, as I explained in the previous lecture.

[ 18 ] Because we ourselves, as human beings, are organized through our senses, that which finds its way through us—the observation of nature, when it becomes knowledge of nature—must distance itself from the supersensible. And so, through a truly supersensible contemplation, one arrives at the following. One comes to realize that when we face nature in its colorful diversity of light and colors, in its sounds, and in all its other sensory phenomena, the supersensible reveals itself inseparably united with the sensory—the supersensible within the sensory. However, insofar as we, as human beings, approach nature with a contemplative and explanatory mindset, we can derive from nature only that which we humans—who are sensory beings and who, between birth and death, belong to the realm of the sensory, not to the supersensible that reveals itself within the sensory—can process within ourselves. Because we are human beings organized in this way, our own sensory nature causes what we develop as natural science to become a mere image of the sensory—which must be a phantom—because the supersensible is simultaneously contained within what surrounds us as nature.

[ 19 ] Therefore, anyone who truly develops the ability to observe the supersensible—as described in An Outline of Esoteric Science or How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds?—will find themselves saying: The universe that lies before us contains the supersensible everywhere. And if we go beyond the illusion that we are forced to form of nature, we do not arrive at dead atoms; we do not arrive at force and matter; rather, we arrive at the supersensible spiritual. This supersensible spiritual can and must make it possible for us to recognize a supersensible path of knowledge.

[ 20 ] Anyone who gains insight into the relationship between human beings and the nature that surrounds them does not seek dead atoms, nor molecules, nor a “supersensible-sensible” realm, but rather the truly supersensible. And then, when one investigates the supersensible, one does not find material foundations for what surrounds us in colors and sounds, but rather one finds spiritual beings, supersensible beings, that are present everywhere in nature. Thus, when properly understood, natural science—precisely when it seeks to present phenomena to the soul in the Goethean sense—becomes, in relation to what lies beyond phenomena, not something dead but something living and spiritual. Precisely when one approaches natural research honestly and consistently—when one does not believe, through the intellect or the art of experimentation, that one can determine anything about nature, but rather knows that one can do nothing other than drive nature to the point of phenomenon where it expresses itself— then one knows that with these phenomena—with what Goethe calls “primordial phenomena”—one stands directly before the supersensible, that one then has no need to explain them on the basis of laws of force and matter, but that one is then compelled to explain them from a spiritual perspective. This essentially provides a truly critical, unbiased perspective—I would say a scientific perspective—on the very process of understanding nature.

[ 21 ] How, then, does spiritual science—which seeks supersensory knowledge of its own accord—relate to this? If you take the path to supersensible knowledge, as I described it to you last week, you will say to yourselves: If a person, through those transformations of the power of imagination and the power of will, truly comes to to perceive the supersensible just as one perceives colors through the eyes and hears sounds through the ears—if a person perceives this supersensible realm just as he otherwise perceives the sensory world in ordinary life—then this transition to supersensible perception is truly like an awakening in the soul’s experience. And this experience is indeed undergone by anyone who is a researcher of the spiritual sciences. One might say: Just as in ordinary experience a person awakens from sleep or the dream state and knows that during sleep and the dream state he has lived merely in images, and then—by knowing how to connect his will with external reality—transitions to a world he truly calls “reality” in contrast to the world of dream images, so, from the world in which we are otherwise in our ordinary waking state, the spiritual researcher—the one who delves into supersensory research—awakens by having before him another world that relates to the ordinary sensory world just as the ordinary sensory world relates to the world of dream images. It is an awakening. This awakening can be experienced in the soul.

[ 22 ] Then, in turn, the phenomena we encounter in the world around us become images in relation to the higher, supersensible world, just as, in healthy thinking, dream images are regarded as images of what one experiences in the sensory world. I would like to use an example to illustrate how, for the spiritual knower, the ordinary sensory world is transformed into a world of images. One need only understand these things correctly—not engage in some kind of mystical daydreaming, nor slip into vagueness.

[ 23 ] Conventional natural science, of course, views the human being by placing the head, the torso, the limbs, and the extremities—I mean, in this context, what continues inward—side by side as if they were of equal value; in a morphological way of thinking, everything sexual also belongs to the limbs. To ordinary perception, these three aspects of human nature are, I would say, absolute, something of equal value. From the perspective of spiritual insight, however, the human being—as a sensory being standing before us—becomes an image of his higher, supersensory essence, just as ordinary daily experience becomes an image when we dream about it. But then, too, our understanding of the human being becomes something different as a result of relating the human being to his eternal, supersensory essence.

[ 24 ] By permeating cognition with the nature of the image—that is, through imagination—the whole of human cognition is transformed. Then—if I consider only these two aspects of human nature—the head and the nature of the extremities are no longer of equal value; rather, when one studies the form of the head closely, one sees in it that which, in its shaping, is modeled after the past spiritual life, before the human being entered the world of the senses. And in what constitutes the nature of the extremities, one sees that which is preformed—still embryonic at present, but which will develop into what the human being will become in the future, especially when he enters the supersensible world through the gate of death. It may still sound paradoxical today, but this is what will emerge from Goethe’s theory of metamorphosis in a truly spiritual-scientific understanding.

[ 25 ] Goethe regarded the individual form of the plant, the individual form in animals and humans, in their transformation, as if they were images of a fundamental form. A comprehensive spiritual theory of metamorphosis will regard the head as a metamorphosis of the human extremities, but in such a way that it relates one to the past and the other to the future. Then the human being himself, in his outward configuration, becomes an image of what he is in the spiritual realm. And thus everything becomes an image of the supersensible, just as a dream becomes an image when we fall asleep. What a human being is in the supersensible becomes, during his presence in the sensible world—while he is awake within it—an image of the supersensible, just as the sensible world becomes an image when he sinks into sleep. This insight is a direct—I might say empirical—result of supersensible experience.

[ 26 ] And now let us compare what this supersensible knowledge gains of itself—that is, as an intuition of the world—even regarding human nature, when it strives for knowledge of human nature: Human beings and all of nature become an image that must first be related to a supersensible reality. Now, this does not entirely correspond to what the natural scientist today, when he reflects, finds to be the ultimate consequence. He finds that the natural phenomenon becomes ghostly, becomes an image. Supersensible knowledge shows that everything we perceive in the sensible world must become an image, that it must be related to a supersensible reality. In short, nothing converges so fully into a harmonious understanding of the world as what one finds when one is not a dogmatically believing contemporary natural scientist, but rather a thinking natural scientist who can observe his own natural science scientifically—and who then agrees with what the spiritual researcher must say about nature, insofar as it presents itself to us in observation.

[ 27 ] This is what must come into humanity: that people put themselves in a position to truly see how the path to the supersensible and the path to the sensible—imbued with thought—converge; for only then will a complete picture of the world emerge—one that does not make us mere possessors of a ghostly image of nature, but allows us to recognize and admit that, with the ordinary explanation of nature, we have had to create such a ghostly image, while at the same time showing us how we can penetrate beyond this image of nature into the spiritual and supersensible. This is the direction that scientific thinking must also take in order to move beyond that into which it necessarily leads itself—precisely when it fulfills its ideal. Certain contradictions arise when one believes that, through the study of nature, one has grasped nature itself; yet in reality, one has grasped only something that does not allow one to look down haughtily upon the old “ghosts”—and which is itself merely a ghost, behind which one must seek spiritual reality.

[ 28 ] Thus, knowledge of the spirit, as understood here, is not in contradiction to knowledge of nature; on the contrary, it provides knowledge of nature with precisely what knowledge of nature must seek if it is to understand itself; it provides what is, deep down and unconsciously, contained within every true natural scientist as the goal of his quest; it provides what alone can bring satisfaction, whereas mere natural science, precisely when practiced correctly, must necessarily lead into dissatisfaction by its very nature.

[ 29 ] As people come to recognize more and more the true nature of supersensible knowledge—which has emerged precisely from the natural sciences—they will find that the natural sciences, in the modern sense, can only exist if they are complemented by the spiritual sciences. Natural science itself must call for this supersensible knowledge. Only then will it become true knowledge of nature—that is, a path into the supersensible itself.

[ 30 ] I just wanted to make these brief remarks on the subject. One could give many lectures that would show that the very concept of natural science demands the humanities if it is not to come to nothing, if it is not to fall into misunderstandings about its own research. I simply wanted to show how natural science itself must seek this spiritual science. Natural science has celebrated great triumphs and has achieved tremendous feats in the course of human knowledge; but precisely as it continues on its path, it will transcend itself and lead us into the spiritual realm.

[ 31 ] Today, the situation is such that only those who are capable of thinking scientifically themselves should adopt a critical stance toward the natural sciences—those who do not view the natural sciences negatively, whether out of ignorance or antipathy, but rather view them positively. And if I may make a personal remark—which I am only making because it may be related to the subject at hand—it is this: I have often been accused of having, among my long series of writings, some that deal intensively with justifying 19th-century natural science, which, as far as one can do so with a scientific mindset, stand entirely on the ground of natural science. — Yet I would have nothing to say to you—or to any other audience—about natural science in the manner I have spoken today, were I not able to point out that I have also understood, when it mattered, how to take a wholly positive and approving stance toward natural science—insofar as such approval is justified. I believe that only those who know science and who know how to appreciate its achievements are entitled to speak about it; whereas all the talk by so-called mystics or theosophists about science—if they do not know science—is nothing but idle chatter.

[ 32 ] I believe I have thus addressed, at least in part, the first misunderstanding that arises regarding the anthroposophically oriented spiritual science referred to here on the part of those who speak about it without knowing it.

[ 33 ] The second misunderstanding is this: very often, anything that pertains to supersensory knowledge is considered, in the sense indicated, to be impractical and unsuitable for ordinary life; and this is viewed, especially in the present day, as a criticism, since the present age is compelled to throw itself—in the fullest sense of the word—into practical life. Well, let us consider this from just one perspective—but a very important one—namely, from the perspective of humanity’s social coexistence. Scientific and other analyses of humanity’s social coexistence have, in fact, become the very motto, the watchword of modern times. And what has taken place in this field is, at its core, entirely shaped by the mindset of the natural sciences. I actually attach little importance to the fact that those who today wish to be sociologists in the true sense of the word—contemporary sociologists—and who wish to establish a sociological science, are increasingly striving to adopt scientific concepts and ideas from the natural sciences and apply them to human social coexistence. I would place even less emphasis on this, because theories have, in fact, very little significance for real practical life—as the supersensible perspective in particular demonstrates.

[ 34 ] Just imagine what Lassalle envisioned as he developed within himself that way of thinking, which he later summarized in his famous lecture “Science and the Workers.” He had before his eyes the ideal that human coexistence must be transformed—precisely through modern socialism—from the instinctive to the scientific, and that the proletariat of the modern era had the task of imbuing itself with science in order thereby to bring about this very modern era. It then became apparent that, by thinking in a different way—consciously adopting the same mode of thought as in the natural sciences—Marxism, with its materialist conception of history, sought to establish, on the basis of a theory, what was to take root in people’s minds and what was to lead to a social reorganization of the world.

[ 35 ] Well, those who still fail to see today—after the events of the past four years have swept across the world—that such theories have very little influence on human minds in a social context will certainly come to see it in the coming decades! Theories actually have little relevance when it comes to what is really meant here: social coexistence and the shaping of this social coexistence based on human impulses in the broadest sense. There is, after all, a great deal encompassed by what can be summarized in the phrase: the shaping of social cohesion based on human impulses.

[ 36 ] One could, of course, speak at length about all the attempts—more or less utopian—that have been made to shape this social coexistence in a way worthy of modern humanity. But I attach less importance to that. I would like to place much greater emphasis on the fact that life has indeed taken shape—albeit in a way that has led to what we now see unfolding as a terrible global catastrophe over the past four years. And at least some of the causes that have led to this terrible global catastrophe are to be found in the real contradiction and conflict of impulses into which the social life of humanity across the earth has been driven.

[ 37 ] It has rightly been pointed out that in earlier times—that is, the same period in which people did not yet think in scientific terms in the modern sense, as I have characterized it in this lecture—humanity lived in corporate communities; guilds, trade associations, and communities of the most diverse kinds existed.

[ 38 ] Then came the age of modern individualism with its ideal of human freedom. It was believed that, in the name of this ideal of human freedom—this impulse toward individualism—the old guilds should be gradually dissolved. And anyone who follows history will see how these guilds were indeed gradually dissolved. We then observed the further course of economic life, and we saw how, in recent times, the guilds have come back to life. I neither wish nor am able to go into details; otherwise, one would have to show, step by step, how, on the one hand, corporate societies or cooperatives—such as consumer cooperatives—came into being, and how, in part through a lingering legacy and the revival of old forms of community, people tried to cope with life. The old guilds have not been revived; but new corporate entities—extending all the way to the formation of trusts—have emerged and permeate our social structure. I would place far greater emphasis on this practical organization of social life, as it has developed, rather than on the theories that people have devised about it.

[ 39 ] But however all this has taken shape—even if one must take into account the most diverse interests and the various impulses of modern life—one must still say: the modern corporation has developed in a wide variety of fields; what has been preserved from earlier times is that which corresponds to human instincts and the impulses of the human will. And in the way the world has been shaped—and I emphasize this: not how people thought about it, but how they shaped the world, how they formed communities, how they organized human relationships, even if unconsciously—the scientific thinking of recent times lies at the very core as the innermost impulse, but in a very special way.

[ 40 ] If one looks back with understanding at what used to bring people together when they lived in guilds—I am, of course, not defending this, and I know that they were rightly abolished—and considers what united people back then and how they lived in these communities, one notices a considerable difference from what brings them together today. A truly outstanding characteristic—which every expert must concede—of the old communities is that people understood one another both within the community and from one community to another. Of course, everything in the world happens only to a certain extent; but people did understand one another. Masters and journeymen understood one another because the master knew what was in the journeyman’s soul. They related to one another in a positive way. Why? Because in those instincts, in the impulses of the will from which these communities arose, there was still something spiritual and soulful—something spiritual and soulful that was connected to the physical.

[ 41 ] The very same thing that, in earlier times, made it possible to view not only nature but also the soul through the concepts one held—those same concepts that lived instinctively and unconsciously within human beings and that united nature and the life of the soul into a single whole—also lived in the instincts, and these caused people to be bound together by blood—as a son to his father, as a daughter to her mother, or as a member of a nation or a guild—whether bound by blood or by some other interest—and this, arising from the instincts, which, however, had spiritual and soulful impulses inherent in them, led people to demand community.

[ 42 ] Then came scientific cultural thought. Modern times have been shaped in their very structure—in relation to human beings—by nothing other than scientific thinking. Because human beings have come to adopt a way of thinking about nature that presents phenomena—even if they did not admit it to themselves—as having nothing more to do with them as a ghostly content, human beings are now left to their own devices. The ancient human being was at one with nature. Outside, lightning flashed, thunder rumbled, and rain fell from the clouds: the ancient human saw in these phenomena the expression of a natural force. Within, he felt this or that impulse. He instinctively regarded these impulses as a metaphor for such a natural force. He acted, so to speak, out of nature, because he had not yet set himself apart from nature through the particular nature of the aforementioned scientific understanding of nature.

[ 43 ] In recent centuries, precisely by reducing humanity to a mere natural phenomenon, humanity has been set apart from nature. The study of nature only acquires its true purpose, its true mission in the course of human development, not by providing absolute knowledge—as is still superstitiously believed today—but by setting people free. Only then can one understand the mission of natural science in the course of human development, when one regards nature as a teacher of freedom.

[ 44 ] Because human beings must isolate natural phenomena in modern natural science, and because they distance themselves from nature, they are left to their own devices as individuals. But as a result—before he once again found his way to the supersensible world via that supersensible path I have indicated, in order to re-establish himself within the world—just as he had naturally been a part of it before, so now in a supersensible way—before he arrived at this path, which he must now tread as he looks toward the future—human beings were, so to speak, placed purely at the pinnacle of their individuality. Natural science has placed him at the pinnacle of his personality. Natural science has determined the entire constitution of the soul. It had taken over his instincts. As a result, modern people do not relate to one another as ancient people did—as kinsmen by blood or members of a guild—but rather as individualities, as personalities. They must seek their associations and social communities out of a sense of freedom. And so they have found them, at first, only through instincts—but through instincts that contain a certain contradiction, because the age of instincts is over; on the one hand, human beings can no longer think instinctively but must think consciously, shaped by the education of the natural sciences. And on the other hand, human beings have not yet had the opportunity to re-establish themselves in the world through supersensible knowledge. Consequently, they placed themselves within a new world that they reflected upon, and within the old world in a way that no longer involved reflection. They continued to project the old instincts into a world that, due to modern scientific thinking, no longer lay before their souls at all. As a result, when one grasps more deeply, on a soul level, what is sweeping through modern humanity, that glaring contradiction has entered modern social life.

[ 45 ] Socialism—which is certainly an ideal of humanity—has been founded on inadequate means. Why? Knowledge of nature does not place human beings within the world; rather, it sets them apart as individuals, making their sense of individuality ever greater and greater. Consequently, humans can form communities only out of their self-centered instincts. Their thinking differs from the communities they form based on instinct. A disharmony arises, and the consequence is that a disharmonious social order must emerge if one relies solely on the natural sciences and applies only scientific concepts to the shaping of social life; a contradiction must arise—an inner, living contradiction—that will persist until humanity resolves to say to itself: Modern life, in particular, must create disharmony if it is to establish social order, unless it introduces supersensible knowledge, supersensible feeling, and supersensible will into social coexistence. — As long as people do not relate to one another in such a way that they see in the other human being the image, the manifestation of the immortal human being; as long as, when living with another person in a social context, they see in each person an individual being—but one that is the expression of a supersensible entity; as long as they do not with what is gained through spiritual knowledge, one will, with modern social thought—but mainly with modern social organization and the practical application of these concepts—enter into a way of life that is bound to dissolve itself and lead to conflict and disharmony.

[ 46 ] Anyone who understands this inner connection knows what role what I have just alluded to has played in the last four years. Not that I am claiming it is solely to blame, but it has played a very significant role—an immensely significant role—in this. Anyone who desires and wants socialism—who honestly wants it—must lead humanity to concepts that are not merely scientific, because in life, from person to person, something else lives and exists than what can be grasped by the natural sciences.

[ 47 ] Natural science demonstrates this by having a specific ideal, and this specific ideal is, in turn, justified. Natural science is increasingly oriented toward experimentation; it is moving further and further away from mere description and observation. What is an experiment? An experiment is, first and foremost, something constructed by our intellect, which leads us away from nature—and which, as I demonstrated in last week’s lecture, leads us into the nothingness of the human being. What we represent in an experiment is, in essence, only seemingly related to the life of nature. In truth, it has to do with what dies out in nature. This becomes evident when one attempts to apply what has been gained through experimental thinking to the structure of social life. Anyone who seeks to introduce purely scientific concepts—concepts that are entirely sincere, honest, and, in fact, ideally scientific—into social life is introducing into life something that does not lead to ascent or to life, but rather to social death. And humanity would have to learn—if it does not wish to introduce the supersensible into social life alongside the natural sciences—that all social striving, all socialism, would only create orders that are, in fact, disorder and decay.

[ 48 ] Socialism that leads people away from the supernatural will create social structures of destruction, social structures that lead people astray, and at best it can only go so far as to use the old to realize its decayed ideas. For what, fundamentally speaking, has actually happened so far—not through social theories, but through practical socialism? Has it truly felt itself to be a radical shaper of the world? If so, it would not have settled into the old forms, as it continues to do to this day! In these old forms, it comes across as someone who disapproves of the crinoline but does not seek to overcome it; instead, they pad it out. Similarly, we see that in modern social thought, the old forms are retained and padded out. For what do most leaders of modern socialism want? To seize power where others have seized it—not to shape it, but to exchange it.

[ 49 ] This is, I would say, experimental proof—albeit from a different angle—that one can speak of socialism only if one simultaneously has the will to lead people toward the supersensible, toward those impulses that must be given to modern humanity if it is to emerge from the tendency toward catastrophes into which purely scientific impulses have led it. These impulses must be spiritual, especially in social life.

[ 50 ] Truly, spiritual science is not impractical in this area. For the time being, in many respects, it can only express its regret that there are many people who consider themselves so practical—so terribly practical—that they would like to lick their fingers over their own practical way of life, and who look with contempt upon the impractical people who, out of ideas, out of the spirit, would like to introduce something into the world! Well, we are all familiar with this aspect of philistinism, which today presents itself precisely as the great “practical way of life” and which brutally rejects everything that is supposed to come from the spirit. This “practical way of life” will lead itself into the absurd, into the impossible. For only that which addresses the whole—not half or a quarter—of reality is truly practical. Anyone who has a horseshoe magnet in front of them and, when someone else says, “Hey, you can use this; it attracts other iron—it’s a magnet,” replies, “Oh, come on, all I see in this shape is a horseshoe for shoeing a horse”—such a person is like someone who wants to organize social life solely according to concepts that avoid the supersensible. But the one who knows that true life practice encompasses all of reality—and thus the supersensible—is like someone who does not misuse the horseshoe magnet to shoe a horse, but uses it as a magnet.

[ 51 ] With that, I have addressed the second misunderstanding I would like to discuss today—again, only briefly. The third concerns what now penetrates to the very core of human life, what has to do with what must be most sacred to human beings in many respects; it concerns religious life.

[ 52 ] Well, there are indeed a great many—namely those who are official or unofficial representatives of this or that positive religious creed—who, in turn, of course without clinging to the principle of authority — as one politely says today — denounce this anthroposophically oriented spiritual science as something that will lead people into irreligiousness, something that seeks to give them an apparent knowledge of the spirit instead of that which directly shows human beings the path by which they can enter into the supersensible, the religious, from the very essence of their nature. Today I will not—although it would be very tempting, but time is pressing, and other matters must also be considered—speak about this or that religious creed, but rather about religious feeling as such.

[ 53 ] Anyone who considers spiritual knowledge—as it is meant here—in terms of its true nature will, I believe, very soon come to realize that it is no more irreligious than it is impractical, antisocial, or unscientific; nor is it in any way suited to dissuading anyone from the depth of their religious feeling. For, in the spirit of the remarks I have made here in these three lectures, what exactly is the essence of the newer, supersensory knowledge as sought by anthroposophy?

[ 54 ] The essential point is that the path leading to supersensory research must lead into the impersonal. Just consider how emphatically it had to be pointed out last week that what human beings perceive as spiritual lies either before birth or after death, and that the essence of life between birth and death consists in the fact that the human being has transformed itself into the material world. And one can say that spiritual science, precisely because it leads through supersensible knowledge to the true immortality—to the irrefutably immortal nature of the human soul—can in this respect even agree with materialism. It knows that what a human being lives out materially is a metamorphosis, a transformation of the spiritual, and that the spiritual draws its fruits from the fact that it descends into the abyss of the material and there, precisely through the knowledge of nature, develops into freedom.

[ 55 ] But this does not imply that a person’s inquiry, starting from the personal—from immediate experience here in the body—necessarily leads into the impersonal. If one wishes to perceive something supersensible, it requires a state of mind that penetrates more and more spiritually into the impersonal realm, just as human beings used to be physically present in the supersensible realm—before they had any knowledge of nature.

[ 56 ] Human beings must engage in impersonal spiritual inquiry if they wish for the light of the spiritual to shine into the material, into the physical. However, the further one progresses in this supersensory research, the more one becomes imbued with this supersensory research—this research that demands impersonality—the more one feels how, from the other pole of the human being, the pole of the will, that which is direct religious feeling flows forth. For this direct religious feeling also seeks the supersensible, but it seeks the supersensible in such a way that the personality is not lost in the process, so that everything directly connected with the personal existence between birth and death can unite with that which is supersensible.

[ 57 ] Precisely when one understands, in the true sense, the path into the supersensible through science, one is drawn toward religion by an inner force that manifests itself, in particular, as a need to revere the spiritual. True development along the path into the spiritual world through supersensible knowledge consists in being driven more and more toward a deepening of one’s religious life, in learning to understand precisely what one possesses in one’s religious life. Spiritual science necessarily leads—because this is inherent in human development—from the personal to the impersonal, so that the light of the spirit may once again shine into the sensory world.

[ 58 ] Thus, on the other hand, precisely as a consequence of this spiritual insight, a deeper religious life must emerge, for it is deeply rooted in human nature that the spiritual should not only be contemplated in its radiance and wisdom, but also be revered. This reverence, however, must spring from the individual’s own personality. What is spiritually perceived cannot enter this realm of human experience in its immediate form; rather, it must be renewed, undergo a metamorphosis, be transformed, and be translated into the personal. When a person receives the light of the spiritual on the one hand, they will go forth and revere this spiritual realm, seeking where they can find religious life and religious deepening.

[ 59 ] One must also be able to see things in their proper light from the other side—from the perspective of those who represent religious life. In ancient times, certain circles of religious adherents claimed—and have repeated this time and again to this day—that the old pagan way consisted in seeking to draw closer to the divine through wisdom alone. But one can rightly repeat this statement time and again: Wisdom alone does not reveal the Divine in the world—certainly not the Divine, the supersensible in which human beings find their immortality. But it cannot be recognized as the divine, for the divine must be felt with reverence. The spiritual must first find its way into the personal realm—the realm in which the human being stands as a personality—either by becoming a servant of Jehovah through the process of contemplating nature—by beholding that being which, from generation to generation, works and weaves in the blood as the supersensible— or by looking to that being who stands in a redemptive connection with his soul, to Christ Jesus [postscript incomplete].

[ 60 ] Human beings must find their way into the sensory world, where they stand with their own personality. But on the other hand, there must come an understanding that does not merely say: “The divine cannot be recognized through wisdom alone, because it must be experienced with reverence”—but rather: “The supersensible cannot be perceived through wisdom alone, nor through religion alone.” Religion must be complemented by the perception of the supersensible; otherwise, it will only appear to satisfy a scientific age by perpetuating old views and turning against the new ones. Religion, properly understood, need not fear the emergence of new truths, even those of a supersensible nature.

[ 61 ] And many other misunderstandings arise as well: If religion believes that supersensible knowledge could somehow harm it or hinder it in those endeavors in which it is justified, then the person who believes this is not taking into account the ongoing development of humanity. Have we not, standing in the midst of modern development—in which, on the one hand, we have no possibility of achieving a true social life unless we take the path into the supersensible—have we not also seen how this very same scientific thinking has driven us toward irreligiousness, how the turn toward the scientific has driven the individual’s inner life toward irreligiousness? [Gap in the postscript.] Today’s spiritual science speaks more powerfully to human nature, so that it can be inspired to religious devotion—unless, like some superficial students of nature, one wishes to turn away from religious devotion. Today, the soul must be addressed more powerfully through the supersensible life, for the soul has become more conscious, more individual. The power of religious life must be stronger if it is to develop in its traditional form.

[ 62 ] Another misunderstanding in this very area is the belief that spiritual science, as it is understood here, seeks to act as a force for the formation of sects or religions. Spiritual science has far too clear an insight into the development of the human race for that. It knows that successive active forces are at work in the evolution of the human race, just as they are in the life of the individual. Just as a person in their fortieth year cannot have the same state of mind as they did in their twentieth, so too can humanity in the 20th century not have the same state of mind as it did in earlier centuries and millennia.

[ 63 ] Spiritual science looks everywhere at reality and does not judge this reality according to concepts of the imagination. Therefore, it does not speak, as do so many people today who seek to scientifically establish a religion of the future; rather, it knows that the era of the formation of religions is over, having come to a close precisely with the formation of Christianity. For the state of mind in which humanity could be gripped by that inner religious experience—which must then be perpetuated—is intimately connected with the world order that existed in earlier times. Now, as humanity, we have entered a state of mind that had to be cultivated precisely through the natural sciences, but which also seeks to penetrate the supersensible according to a scientific model, which seeks to create supersensible knowledge, and through this supersensible knowledge to bring ever greater clarity to what was revealed in a religious manner during the religious ages—yet which can no longer itself act as a force for the formation of religion. More and more people are coming to understand what has been given to humanity in the form of religion; true spiritual science will lead to this, and will also liberate this religious aspect from the bonds of those who, driven by all manner of lust for power and other desires, have led it astray. But I can only hint at this. To elaborate further would simply take us too far afield.

[ 64 ] With these remarks, I simply wanted to briefly point out how spiritual science, by its very nature, can neither make people irreligious nor could it, if it wanted to, establish any new religion or the like. These are all claims that do not stem from a genuine understanding of what spiritual science—as understood here—truly strives for, even if they are asserted. And so one can also say: Precisely those attacks that are now raining down on this anthroposophically oriented spiritual science—even from the side of representatives of religious denominations—are in fact based on misunderstandings and misinterpretations that are sometimes quite deliberate. Least of all would those who are serious about the religious life of humanity have any reason to turn against spiritual science. For spiritual science will lead back to true religiosity, whereas the purely scientific age and mere positive religion—which seeks only to preserve traditional customs—must lead people away from true religion. For this positive religion dates back to a time when human beings had a different relationship with the world. But human beings will not allow themselves to be turned back, just as a forty-year-old can no longer become twenty.

[ 65 ] Therefore, any religious creed that resists the supernatural insights of modern times will dig its own grave, no matter how much it may yearn to consolidate its power through external means. And time and again I must recall—as I did last year here in Zurich—how much a better theologian and advocate of religion was the man who, although a Catholic priest, once delivered his inaugural lecture on Galileo as rector of the university and drew attention to how the Catholic Church—his Church—had at that time opposed Copernicanism; indeed, continued to do so until the year 1822; but how he—Professor Müllner, a Catholic theologian and philosopher—had to emphasize, when he assumed the rectorship at the University of Vienna, that true religiosity, and indeed true Catholicism, should not oppose the progress of human knowledge, because every further advance in human knowledge only brings the wonders of the divine in the world into the light before humanity in a more magnificent and glorious way.

[ 66 ] That is truly religious—and truly Christian—thinking! And just as an outwardly scientific understanding of certain matters need not be perceived as antagonistic by those who truly and sincerely feel religious, so too a supersensible understanding—which must, in fact, lead people directly back to religiosity, but to a free religiosity, to that religiosity which is anchored in individuality and personality—need not be perceived as such either. Therefore, it may well be said that one should take a very close look at precisely those attacks directed from these quarters against anthroposophical spiritual science; for they truly do not, in reality, proceed from what they claim to be their starting point. They, too, spring from fear and indifference, as I characterized the general attitude of humanity toward spiritual science in the first of these lectures. One need only read what is said from this side in the right spirit! Admittedly, those who write these things will not be open to conversion, and one should not succumb to the naivety of thinking that one can convert them. A refutation would be entirely fruitless. But indeed, even those for whom they mostly write will not be persuaded to see reason. The course of human development, however, cannot be halted among those who honestly feel what the forces of modern development have instilled in the human soul.

[ 67 ] Through today’s lecture—which I intend to supplement the day after tomorrow with yet another entirely positive perspective on recent historical developments from the standpoint of spiritual science, a perspective that will lead directly into the very immediate life of the human being and into the most pressing questions of the present—I believe I have shown how that search for supersensible knowledge, which is pursued by anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, is neither hostile to the natural sciences nor socially impractical, nor in any way a danger to religious life. On the contrary, I believe I have just shown that for those who perceive the forces that the present must stir up in the human soul—and, in particular, the forces that the future will stir up—it becomes clear that spiritual scientific knowledge is significant for three burning questions of the present and the immediate future.

[ 68 ] For centuries—and especially in the present, and even more so in the future—science has been at the center of human endeavor. The question will arise: What can science do to meet humanity’s highest needs regarding the supersensible world? Only a science that does not ignore spiritual science will be able to provide an answer to this question.

[ 69 ] Another pressing question of the present and the near future will be: How do we find the impulses that can shape social life? The answer must be: Only that which has been gained through the study of the human sciences undergoes a metamorphosis when it finds its way into human life, so that it can lead to a directly conscious social life from person to person and thus also to the social configuration of the human race across the Earth.

[ 70 ] And the third burning question will be: How can the innermost need—the human soul’s need to revere the Divine—be satisfied in an age that has attained individuality and personality through science, by means of forces more powerful than those that have been mobilized since time immemorial? — The answer must again be: Such stronger forces can only be aroused by that supersensible vision which, when it becomes part of the human personality, is transformed into the human personality, and becomes personal within it. Such forces can only be attained through this supersensible realm—through spiritual science, through knowledge and insight sought via supersensible cognition—as required by modern religiosity, the kind of religiosity that is truly meant to satisfy humanity’s deepest spiritual needs—indeed, the very depths of the soul—with regard to the present and the future.