The Rudolf Steiner Archive

11. Examples of the Relationship Between the Humanities and the Individual Disciplines I

[ 1 ] Ladies and gentlemen! In these four lectures, I would like to speak about the enrichment that individual academic disciplines can derive from the methods of the humanities. Today, I will offer only a kind of introduction to the actual reflections, which I intend to begin tomorrow. In these lectures, my aim will be less to provide a systematic presentation of the findings of the humanities themselves than to attempt to build a bridge between the humanities and the broader scientific landscape of our time.

[ 2 ] However, by way of introduction, I would like to say a few words about the distinctive character of the method of spiritual science. This method, after all, differs from everything that is commonly regarded as scientific today. First, based on today’s habits of thought and perspectives, the very possibility of penetrating the realm of reality with which this spiritual science seeks to engage is already called into question. Second, based on these same habits of thought and perceptions, it is repeatedly claimed that this anthroposophically oriented spiritual science lacks what are called “proofs” for its insights.

[ 3 ] Now, since some examples of the relationship between spiritual science and the specialized sciences will be provided in the course of these lectures, I will briefly return to these two points. Today I would like to limit myself to saying, by way of introduction, that this spiritual science does indeed differ in its entire approach to research from what is otherwise upheld in scientific life today, but that nevertheless this spiritual science claims to be nothing other than a genuine continuation of precisely the most rigorous scientific methods of our time. It certainly seeks to take into account the progress humanity has made in recent centuries—particularly in the nineteenth century—with regard to the precision and rigor of scientific methods. It has no intention whatsoever of speaking about the spiritual worlds in any layman-like or dilettantish manner, but rather from the same spirit of inquiry and the same cognitive framework from which contemporary science generally seeks to speak. At the same time, however, it is clear that cognitive capacities must be expanded if one is to arrive at an answer—even if only a relative one—to those questions that remain unanswered in all areas of contemporary scientific life. Even more than that, this spiritual science seeks to emphasize, particularly in light of the present age, what is unsatisfactory about our current scientific life; it seeks to show that, while on the one hand this scientific life has been able to influence technical practice in an extraordinarily significant way, on the other hand these great advances in technical fields—which have transformed our entire modern life—are by no means accompanied by corresponding advances in social practice. It is important to emphasize this today precisely because the anthroposophically oriented spiritual science referred to here believes that, from its own perspective, it can achieve a deepening and broadening of our understanding of nature on the one hand, but on the other hand believes it need not remain confined to this, I might say, a contemplative mode of knowledge—because it believes it can move on to insights that engage not only the human mind’s theoretical perspective but the whole human being, above all the life of the will, and this not in general abstractions, but in all its concreteness, in all its nuance, as it is meant to function in the social realm—if we are to learn to conduct ourselves in social technology in a manner just as fruitful and skillful as we do in the mechanistic realm.

[ 4 ] I would like to point out these connections at the outset precisely because we can sense today that humanity is striving more and more toward awareness of all its actions. Our entire scientific development over the past three to four centuries has, after all, been a striving to move beyond certain more or less vague, unclear—though perhaps, in other respects, nevertheless reliable—worlds of ideas, toward fully conscious, clear worlds of ideas. However much may still be lacking in terms of the ideal of scientific knowledge—natural science is undoubtedly on the path to realizing this ideal in a certain way; and it has also proven itself externally through its applications in technology.

[ 5 ] We might say that this validation has not occurred in the same way in social practice. Nevertheless, it has been argued in recent times, particularly by socially minded people, that social life, too, must be examined according to scientific criteria. And broad sections of the proletariat—I do not wish to offer criticism here, I merely wish to describe the situation—are convinced that what they preach as social theories is firmly grounded in scientific principles. Most proud of this scientific foundation are all those ideas that have emerged from the social doctrine of Marxism. But this is something that, on the other hand, should give cause for extraordinary concern, for social conditions within civilized life today already demonstrate how little this social practice can lead to any fruitful results. It can only lead to ever-further steps down the path of social destruction. One must therefore ask: What exactly is so profoundly flawed about applying the scientific perspective to social practice?

[ 6 ] If one considers what has come to be regarded as the scientific mindset in modern times, one must say: The empirical method is accepted. This empirical method, which—in order to become rational—progresses from empiricism to experimentation, adheres to external experience. It applies to this external experience, in essence, only what is regarded as the only true, non-empirical science: the mathematical approach—mathematics in the broadest sense. One must also consider the way in which a person arrives at the empirical facts of the external world, which are given to him through the senses—including the “armed” senses, how he then registers and combines these empirical facts of the external world, and how he attempts to derive laws from them—ranging from the lowest level of statistical classification to the almost mathematically abstract, general laws of nature—must be strictly compared with the way in which one arrives at mathematical truths themselves. These are based entirely on an inner intuition, on an inner construction within the life of the soul itself. And it is through this inner construction that mathematical insights derive their certainty. This certainty is not arrived at in any inductive manner, but is rather regarded as something subject to deductive reasoning, so that one can say: Mathematics and everything associated with it—in mechanics, phoronomy, and so on—is something that human beings construct themselves out of their own inner life.

[ 7 ] Now, it is indeed interesting that even at the dawn of modern scientific development, this approach—which positions itself toward empiricism on the one hand and mathematics on the other—was characterized in a very specific way, namely, as is most clearly expressed in Kant’s well-known formula: that in every true insight, there is actually only as much science as there is mathematics. And even today, we still hear that, fundamentally, the scientific endeavor must consist of unifying natural phenomena into a picture that can somehow be mathematically penetrated and mathematically mastered; we try, for example, to gain a physical worldview through this process, one that we can shape in a certain way to be mathematically transparent. Thus, in this field, we proceed by permeating what we receive from the external world through observations or experiments with that which can be built up from within the soul itself as a self-contained, luminous, and clear science.

[ 8 ] This way of approaching the world through knowledge has gradually become so ingrained in modern consciousness that many regard it as the only possible one. And because, in recent times, great progress has been made precisely in the direction of such knowledge, people have gradually come to adopt a mindset that led them to say: This is how one must proceed, this is how one must conduct research; this is, in essence, how a person must relate, on the one hand, to what he brings from within himself to external observation, and, on the other hand, to what confronts him from the external world. In a certain sense, people have been scientifically educated in this method of research.

[ 9 ] Now, the need arose for modern humanity to introduce the scientific method into the social sciences as well—and thus into the way in which one seeks to understand and master social life. One need only recall a single fact to illustrate the one-sidedness that has resulted from this. Karl Marx and his school have taken the application of the modern scientific mindset to social technique and social practice to its most extreme. And what has come of it? Since I am only offering an introduction, it is not necessary here to delve into the specific mode of deduction characteristic of Marxism’s pseudoscientific method, but attention must be drawn to the kind of results this has produced. It has become a creed, precisely on this basis, that when one considers human life in social terms, one must admit that everything that has occurred in the course of human history can be explained by the various forms of production processes. Thus, the external, material processes were taken as the foundation; and that which developed in human life—that which arose from the human psyche, that which took shape through thought and the like—was accepted as what was called “ideology.” Thus arose the belief that social practice could by no means be shaped by any ideas or impulses of human life, but that it could actually only be understood by engaging with the institutions and the production process itself—that is, by working consciously and directly on the transformation of the production processes; then the content of ideology would naturally emerge.

[ 10 ] It can be said, ladies and gentlemen, that what has been presented as a strictly exact method in the natural sciences has, through scientific education, been transferred to the social sphere, and that this has led to the tendency in this sphere to exclude human beings—with their will, his powers, and his entire being from the historical and social process, and to regard as the only reality in this social process the mode of production and material processes. And today we stand at a very critical turning point in history. Today, the task is to exert a formative influence on social life, starting from the human being, in many areas of our civilized existence. And this cannot be achieved with the view described above—namely, a view that sees what essentially springs from the human inner being as merely an ideology, that is, merely a kind of dream. With such a view, one cannot find the strength to intervene in social life.

[ 11 ] However, what arises today from the distinctive nature of modern scientific thought has a kind of global significance. And it is up to us to reflect on why we are let down by what human beings can bring about from within themselves with regard to social practice. We must begin by asking: Can the scientific method—which is entirely justified in the realm of the natural sciences—also be directly applied to a field such as social practice? This is a question that confronts us today not only as a scientific one but as a major question for humanity—one that, however, must first be resolved scientifically in a certain sense. For everything depends on clarifying whether the methods we apply in the natural sciences today are self-contained, or whether they are capable of development in such a way that we then also gain the possibility to pursue, in a unified manner and in the spirit of science, on the one hand, knowledge of nature, and on the other hand, a social understanding that encompasses human beings—not merely production processes—and that can then expand just as knowledge of nature has expanded into mechanistic practice and technology.

[ 12 ] Thus, as anthroposophical spiritual science holds, scientific questions are connected to the whole of life in our time. And this spiritual science believes it is thus giving voice to the most immediate needs of our time. However, it also believes that it is impossible to find a way out of the turmoil of our times in any other way than by penetrating into the very essence of scientific life itself.

[ 13 ] And this raises the big question: Are there ways to engage with reality other than by structuring one’s inner life according to the pattern of mathematical development and then applying it to empirical reality? This is precisely where the anthroposophically oriented spiritual science referred to here comes into play with its methodology—where it begins by asking: Is it only possible to draw from within the human being what is expressed in recognized mathematical formulas? Or is it possible to draw something entirely different from within the human being than what constitutes the content of modern mathematics? — This is precisely the first methodological finding of anthroposophical spiritual science: that one can draw not only mathematics but also other soul experiences from the human soul. And within these other soul experiences, anthroposophical spiritual science distinguishes three levels. What constitutes mathematical structures is, in essence—and particularly in terms of its quality—already spiritual science; it is simply not recognized as such. What follows is what I have called “imagination” in my book *How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds?* This does not refer to a fantastical content, but rather to the shaping of a soul content that is derived purely inwardly from the human soul in exactly the same way as mathematical content, but which is not merely formal like the mathematical content; rather, it is itself rich in content and relates to reality in a different way than mathematical content.

[ 14 ] I call what is, in a sense, a higher level—a more substantial mathematics derived from within the soul—“imagination” for the following reason: when one delves into mathematical content, one finds no substance of being within mathematics; the content of being must be supplied to the mathematical formulas from empiricism, from the outside. In what is present in our consciousness along with the mathematical formulas, there is no content of being. This has its profound justification in ordinary life and in ordinary science. If, in the mathematical-empirical approach, we were to bring the content of being from within to this external world that presents itself to us in sensory observation, then we would not be able to experience this external world. We would not find it transparent. This being that we attribute to the external world is given to us only because, in what we methodically bring to bear on this external world, we have no substance of being, but rather because we are aware that we are bringing only an image to it. Anyone who is clear about precisely this image-like character of mathematics will find in it the particularly distinctive feature of the contemporary scientific method.

[ 15 ] The moment one approaches spiritual science, one does not remain stuck in the particular state of mind that one has acquired through heredity and upbringing—and which one then applies in ordinary science as well. One proceeds further in the development of the soul. One draws out the latent powers within the soul. Subjectively, this entire process is no different from what occurs when, at a point in time when one has no mathematical concepts in the soul, one transitions to a state where the soul is filled with mathematical concepts, with relationships between figures, and so on. Purely inwardly, considered qualitatively, this development of the soul—which is sought through the anthroposophically oriented spiritual science referred to here—is, in fact, nothing other than a continuation of the process that takes place when one transitions from a consciousness not filled with mathematics to a consciousness filled with mathematics. This process is further developed.

[ 16 ] But if one takes this process a step further, something very significant emerges. One realizes: Only within these peculiar constructs—which we can collectively refer to as mathematics in the broadest sense—is it possible to experience something purely formally. There is no other realm within the scope of our ordinary consciousness where we can experience things purely formally other than mathematics. Therefore, when this process is extended beyond mathematics to what I call the first higher stage of knowledge, then what happens is that we no longer experience merely formally, no longer merely pictorially, but rather that we have a content of being within the experience itself, just as we have a content of being when we feel hunger or thirst, or when we develop within ourselves a volitional impulse that is also linked to some organic process. We cannot, therefore, extend the process of the emergence of mathematical structures beyond this very emergence without entering into Being. But then the following occurs in a polar manner: to the very extent that we enter into Being in our inner life, we have only images of this Being present in our consciousness. That is why I call this consciousness “imaginative consciousness.”

[ 17 ] When we approach the environment mathematically, I would say there is a complete balance between what confronts us from the outside as being and what appears within us as a mere image. And there is even, in the particular back-and-forth movement between external observation and internal construction—in this back-and-forth between the perception of the external world and its spiritualization through constructed mathematical forms—something akin to a spiritual process, something of systole and diastole. That which confronts us from the outside brings us Being. What is brought forth from within in response to the external world brings us the luminous permeation of Being. And in this realm—as a simple reflection on the process of cognition reveals—we would have the feeling that we do not encompass Being if, from within, we ourselves were to project a Being out into the world through the mathematically generated constructs. In a sense, it would fuse Being from within with Being from without, and this would result in something that would remain obscure to consciousness. The full content of the external world could not be mathematically permeated with light.

[ 18 ] At the very moment we ascend to a higher level of knowledge, however, we experience Being within ourselves. In this process, what becomes present in consciousness takes on the character of an image. But we are, in fact, experiencing Being within ourselves. We know that the images we experience are entirely objective, because although we do not now directly experience Being as the external content of the images, we therefore know that our images are not dreams or fantasies, but rather that they are the adequate expression of a reality that we can experience only through the soul. This means that, by undergoing such a continuation of our inner soul process, we rise from the observation of the sensory world to the contemplation of the supersensory world. In this way, we do indeed enter a world that we cannot bring before our consciousness in any other way.

[ 19 ] The first stage of imaginative insight gives us the ability to place a new world before our consciousness—one that, unlike the world we usually have before us, including the one we encounter in conventional science, we experience only inwardly; yet we know that through the image we find objectively set before our consciousness, we have a revelation of being.

[ 20 ] Thus I was at least able to sketch out, in a few strokes, the basis of the method of knowledge through which spiritual science seeks to penetrate the worlds that are inaccessible to ordinary science. They are inaccessible to ordinary science because, in a certain sense, it is true that there is no more scientific content in it than there is mathematics. But this means that it contains only what we can experience in our inner life as imagery—which is not reality in and of itself. The moment we seek knowledge, even as we set aside our own reality, what becomes present in our consciousness takes on an image-like quality as an object, whereas previously it was the subjective aspect that was image-like. Reality is experienced in our interaction with the image. And the question now is simply how we can introduce into this process of knowledge the same freedom of movement that we have in the ordinary, external, empirical process of knowledge—where we make our observations in accordance with our intentions, where we design our experimental setups as we deem appropriate to investigate this or that result, and so on. If the spiritual researcher were to stop at the development of imagination, then all that would remain within him would be the experience of a reality that presents itself to him in an image; but he would not be able to master this imaginative world to which he has risen. This world, which presents itself in the imaginations, is mastered by advancing in a very intimate way within the soul through methods that are truly more difficult than those of laboratory research or astronomical research.

[ 21 ] [The text up to this point has been corrected by Rudolf Steiner]

[ 22 ] Today I would like to touch on the basics of this. You can find more detailed information in my book *How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds?*, in my *Secret Science*, and in other books.

[ 23 ] We attempt to incorporate into human volition that which naturally takes place within us during ordinary perception. By observing the facts of nature, by immersing ourselves in the things of nature, we form concepts of them. These ideas take on a lasting quality, but a lasting quality that is, in a certain sense, modified. We can remember our experiences. We can form ideas of what our experiences were. I ask you to note, my esteemed audience, how I have phrased this sentence. In the field of anthroposophical spiritual science, one must speak very precisely and formulate one’s sentences very precisely.

[ 24 ] Contemporary psychology speaks as if a mental image formed from an experience somehow “walks down” into some sort of psychological depths and then “walks back up” when one recalls it. This is by no means tenable upon closer observation of the soul; rather, something entirely different is at work. When one observes the process by which one forms a mental image in response to an external sensory perception, and when one observes what is taking place within the soul, the same thing occurs, only in reverse. [One can observe this] when one traces the inner process—which is, admittedly, indefinite, but which one gradually learns to grasp as a researcher of the spirit—when one follows the inner process that takes place before a memory, in its development into a mental image. The mental image in recollection arises from an inner process in exactly the same way that, in external perception, the mental image arises from the external sensory perception process. The images as such are not present in the meantime; they do not travel down into our soul and back up into consciousness, but rather we actually remember in the same way as in external perception, only by moving upward from within, whereas in external perception, the image is formed by moving from the outside in. But in a certain sense, we come to make what was a fleeting experience into something lasting. This process is carefully, methodically, and precisely transformed through a certain kind of concentration and meditation, which must be applied long enough and intensely enough to the inner life of the soul. Then this life of the soul takes on a form that allows imagination—imaginative cognition—to enter it. The transformation occurs when, out of fully conscious will, one brings clearly comprehensible mental images into the center of consciousness—that is, images that are entirely clear and comprehensible, so that no reminiscences can form that might produce such effects arising from the subconscious or unconscious. And by giving these images duration and concentrating on the enduring image, what otherwise lives only in the power of memory is further developed; it is transformed into a higher power, which becomes the power of imagination. And one must master this power in order to have, at this stage of insight, something to which one can relate as a human being in the same way that one otherwise relates to one’s surroundings as a human being in ordinary life and in ordinary science. Then it is necessary to introduce something else into one’s will: to suppress the image once again, to send it out of consciousness once more.

[ 25 ] By coming to the point where, with absolute mastery over the inner workings of the soul, one can continuously form a mental image, then interrupt that image, leave the consciousness empty, and practice this transition—fulfilled consciousness, empty consciousness, fulfilled consciousness, empty consciousness— in this way, my esteemed audience, one ascends to what can then be called inspired imagination. Do not take offense at the words; one must have terminology, and nothing else is meant than what I am describing—I do not intend to tie this to any superstitious notions. This inspired intuition then yields a very significant result for human inner knowledge, whereas in imagination the only result is that one can trace the stream of human life one has lived—from the earliest time one can remember—as something that is present now. One has before one a tableau of one’s entire life experience to date. What is otherwise a stream from which memories emerge only like waves is now a unified whole: this is the first result of imagination.

[ 26 ] The result of the second, higher level of knowledge—which develops along the path I have just described—is the recognition of the eternal within our soul, the truly eternal within our soul, which passes through births and deaths. In order to navigate the world of the supersensible just as freely as one navigates the world of sensory experience, one must rise to this level of understanding. And now one is in a position to freely engage the imagination—through which one perceives a higher world—or to suppress it, and thereby truly observe processes in this higher world. Just as someone who could not move their eyes around and would only stare fixedly at something cannot observe the external world, so too could no one observe the supersensible world if they could only imagine and could not arbitrarily suppress those imaginations. Here, it is the movement of the sense organs, which, as it were, glide over the external world, in external empiricism; in the higher worlds, it is the stillness of the soul, but the mobility of the external—of the imaginations themselves—that provides us with orientation in this supersensible world.

[ 27 ] The third stage of supersensible knowledge of the world is what I call intuition in the true sense of the word—not in the ordinary, confused sense. This intuition is achieved when a person gains complete awareness of what fills them once they have extinguished their imaginations—that is, once they have created an empty state of consciousness. Once one has done this, one cannot—of course not—have a content at the same time; but what happens is that afterward, when one returns to imagination, one carries with one the content one experienced in the empty state of consciousness. Do you see, my esteemed audience, how the content of the supersensible worlds now turns, as it were, from the subjective to the objective? First one has imagination; one experiences a being, and this being appears adequately before one’s consciousness in the form of an image. One knows that this is the adequate image, but the being itself does not become present in consciousness. In inspiration, one learns to orient oneself, but the Being still does not become present in consciousness. Now, in intuition—even though consciousness has not directly experienced a Being, but the soul has experienced a Being in reality—what was present during the state of empty consciousness also appears when one returns to imagination. This means: that supersensible Being in which one was, objectively speaking, now enters into the subjective realm. In intuition, one actually has the objective, supersensible world of Being subjectively present.

[ 28 ] That, my esteemed audience, is a description of how one enters this supersensible world. From this description—which, of course, can only be sketchy and, for those who are not yet familiar with the subject through the literature, can certainly serve only as a source of inspiration rather than a source of conviction— you can at least see from it that this is truly not a matter of arbitrary fantasies of a few mavericks or of some suggestions spread within a sect, but rather that it involves sharply defined processes that take place in the soul, processes that can be experienced, enabling one to enter into a reality other than the one one encounters in ordinary life. Through this, however, my esteemed audience, one can see how this anthroposophically oriented spiritual science reveals a relationship developing in human life between the subjective and the objective—specifically, the objective supersensible, which is defined just as precisely as the relationship in mathematical science between what is internally formed mathematically only in a formal sense, and that which is given as being in empirical reality and is illuminated by mathematics. So you see: The very same process through which, for example, theoretical natural scientists—who consider natural science to be so certain that they say, “There is only as much that is scientific in the knowledge of nature as there is mathematics in it”—this very same scientific process is taken as a foundation by anthroposophical spiritual science and developed further accordingly.

[ 29 ] And this shows us, ladies and gentlemen, that we can come to a position where we can penetrate not only the reality that encompasses the external realm of nature, but also other realities. And since human beings originate from a reality other than that of nature, they cannot be understood, nor can any practice relating to human life itself be developed, if one possesses only a science that relates to nature.

[ 30 ] But once we have a science that relates to the spiritual content of the world—and that is anthroposophically oriented spiritual science—we have thereby laid the foundation for understanding what is psychically and what is spiritually present in human beings. This provides a science that can, of its own accord, transition into social practice, into—if I may use the term—social technology, just as conventional natural science transitions from science to external mechanics or technology, to practice. Therefore, this anthroposophically oriented spiritual science believes that impulses for sociology, for the social sciences, and for social action can only be found if, at the same time, the path is sought from the conventional scientific method toward the spiritual scientific method. One might say, ladies and gentlemen, that a true sociology, a true social science, can only be created if one seeks this anthroposophically oriented spiritual science. Therein we see the global significance of this anthroposophically oriented spiritual science.

[ 31 ] But we must be clear about one thing: Once one has learned to apply this humanities-based method, it simultaneously represents a certain continuation of the natural sciences themselves. Consequently, not only will the humanities—which all suffer from one-sided modern scientific methodology—be enriched, but the natural sciences themselves will also be able to benefit from this enrichment. For let us be clear about this: in the dawn of modern times, one can almost touch with one’s hands the way in which this particular mathematical approach to the world came into being.

[ 32 ] Anyone who is truly familiar with the scientific development of earlier centuries knows that, in fact, mathematics has increasingly developed as something rooted in human consciousness; it is not possible to pinpoint the exact moment, but at least an approximate one can be identified. If we go back to Galileo, we find roughly the point in time when, in the consciousness of the European scientific community, the distinct mathematical image became detached from the content with which it had previously been, so to speak, synthetically connected. The object of observation contained both mathematical content and empirical content. Mathematical thinking only gradually separated itself, slowly and step by step; it was already present in the elements earlier on, but it became particularly distinct with the discovery of the laws of falling bodies in Galileo’s time and through what Galileo himself discovered as the laws of the pendulum.

[ 33 ] When one considers the entire relationship between mathematics and empiricism as it presented itself at that time, one realizes: Just as people today have an awareness of the inner connection, it is actually only in the most recent period of human development that humanity has attained this capacity to visualize mathematical content. In the past, we were more closely linked to sensory content. If you look at Aristotle and the Greek thinkers, you will still find the sensory-physical content and the mathematical content intermingled. In my book *The Riddles of Philosophy*, you will find this presented in relation to the human conceptual system as a whole.

[ 34 ] Since Galileo’s time, we have undergone a certain development, and this development manifests itself in two ways today: First, humanity, as if driven by an indefinable instinct, strives beyond mathematics, arriving at all manner of non-Euclidean geometries and the like. It seeks to develop mathematics further in a purely internal way, detached from its empirical content. Today, one can even clearly discern where mathematics comes into conflict with reality. This is the case, for example, in synthetic and projective geometry. But at the same time, we see how human beings become, so to speak, directionless: although they have the urge to further develop mathematics, they do not realize that if one tears it away from that strict interrelationship with sensory experience, one easily falls into the abyss—unless one transforms it into imagination and inspiration. And today, in scientific development, we see this process of the hypermathematical—mathematical hypertrophy, I might say—unfolding before us, particularly in the theory of relativity of Einstein and his followers. There, mathematics is detached, out of an instinct, from what is truly systole and diastole, or at least from what can be compared to them. And as a result, one arrives at a state of aimlessness; one ends up constructing theories that show that one has come to work no longer in accordance with reality, but that one is going too far in this development of the soul toward the mathematical, that one is exaggerating, that one still wants to keep certain aspects mathematical when they should actually transition into imagination, inspiration, and intuition.

[ 35 ] It is precisely in such one-sidedness, my esteemed audience, that one sees how, in our time, the maturity to go beyond mere mathematical science is certainly already present; yet how humanity, in a sort of intellectual inertia, continues along the path that has led to such triumphs in the mathematical treatment of nature—beyond the boundary where mathematics is possible. He surrenders to the law of intellectual inertia; he does not transform what is experienced mathematically into the imaginative, whereby he no longer grasps ordinary empirical reality through what is internally formed, but rather a supersensory, spiritual reality. Today we have reached the point where, even in the realm of the natural sciences, we must reflect on how we are to apply mathematics, but also on how we are to penetrate nature with imagination, inspiration, and intuition. And we have reached the point where the development of the world necessarily demands a rigorous scientific method that can also penetrate social practice and the social life of human beings.

[ 36 ] Therefore, ladies and gentlemen, the anthroposophical movement—which I have had the privilege of representing here in Stuttgart for many years now—has focused not merely on establishing some kind of connection with one aspect of life, namely a deepening into the purely spiritual, but has made it a priority to engage with the individual scientific fields. And I would like to provide you with some examples of this.

[ 37 ] In tomorrow’s lecture, I would like to provide examples of how enriching this spiritual science can be in the fields of inorganic and organic natural science. Even in the realm of medicine and therapy, anthroposophically oriented spiritual science seeks not only to engage with the natural sciences but also to incorporate scientific facts in order to enrich them through new methods and thereby create something for humanity that can lead beyond the purely mechanistic technology to which we have progressed in modern times. In this second lecture, I would like to show how, in the psychological-historical realm—in everything that pertains to what is truly human—spiritual science must first create a genuine science of the soul, a genuine ethnology, and also a genuine jurisprudence.

[ 38 ] In the third lecture, I would like to show how this spiritual science is called upon to actually carry out what is outlined in my book *The Key Points of the Social Question*. I would like to demonstrate what is meant to have a fertilizing effect on social action and on social will itself—what creates social impulses by ensuring that spiritual science fills us not only with ideas that, in a sense, contemplatively surrender to nature, but with ideas that themselves become life forces, so that they permeate human beings like the blood of the soul when they engage in social life. And finally, I want to show how religious and ethical life are enriched, and how ethical life can appear as the highest outflow, the highest flowering of social life, because the human being is filled not merely with abstract ideas or vague impulses, but with ideas that come to life within him, that permeate him so radiantly from within that he can then intervene in social life with powerful forces.

[ 39 ] I would like to show you, at least in broad strokes, the path one can take from the natural sciences up to the humanities, specifically in sociology and ethics. It is precisely through these lectures that it can be shown that this anthroposophically oriented human science—with genuine scientific rigor and a method that approaches the world and humanity just as conscientiously and with just as deep a sense of responsibility as the other sciences—can serve the life of contemporary civilization by enriching all the individual disciplines.