The Rudolf Steiner Archive

1. Humanities, Natural Sciences, Technology

[ 1 ] Ladies and gentlemen, fellow students! As I attempt today to present to you some insights into the field of what I have for a number of years referred to as “anthroposophically oriented spiritual science,” I do so fully aware that, in this first lecture of sorts this evening, I will be able to offer nothing more than a few suggestions, and that I am under no illusion that such a presentation will immediately bring about any conviction. However, it may be possible that, following the general overview I will provide, the ensuing discussion will allow for specific requests to be addressed and specific questions to be answered.

[ 2 ] In order not to take up too much of our time, I would like to get straight to the heart of the matter, which is to provide a description of what spiritual science, in the anthroposophically oriented sense, actually aims to be. It differs from what is commonly called science in its method of research. And it is convinced that it is precisely a serious, honest striving within modern science, pursued consistently, that must ultimately lead to its method. I would like to speak to you in a thoroughly scientific sense, for I myself have truly not set out from any theological perspective, nor from any questions of worldview or philosophy in the sense in which they are usually pursued, but rather I have set out from technical studies. And it was precisely from these technical studies that this spiritual science emerged for me as a necessity of our historical period of development. That is why I am particularly pleased to be able to speak to you specifically this evening.

[ 3 ] When we engage in the natural sciences, in the sense of contemporary thinking, we first encounter something that extends around us as the world of sensory facts. And we then use our thinking—specifically, our methodologically trained thinking—to derive laws from a systematic investigation of these sensory facts. We seek what we are accustomed to calling laws of nature, historical laws, and so on. This way of approaching the world is by no means something that the humanities reject; rather, they seek to stand on the firm ground of this research. Only, standing on this solid ground, it conducts its research—I would say—by proceeding from the standpoint of human life itself. Precisely because it seeks to take natural scientific research seriously, it simply reaches that limit of natural scientific knowledge which is fully acknowledged by level-headed natural scientists. And with regard to what natural science can be, it stands entirely on the ground of those who say: In the synthesis of external facts, we advance to a certain level using scientific methodology, but we cannot go beyond a certain limit if we remain on the ground of this natural scientific research itself.

[ 4 ] But once what is sought in ordinary life and also in ordinary natural science has been achieved, only then does what spiritual science—as understood here—aims for truly begin. By thinking through and understanding the facts around us, we arrive at certain limit concepts. I am referring here only to such boundary concepts—regardless of whether one regards them as mere functions or as realities—boundary concepts such as the atom, matter, and so on. We operate with them, at the very least, even if we do not seek demonic entities behind them. These boundary concepts, these boundary ideas—which confront us particularly when we pursue the branches of natural science that form the foundation of technology—stand, so to speak, like pillars. And if one wishes to remain within the realm of ordinary science, one stands precisely before these boundary pillars.

[ 5 ] For the spiritual researcher—as I understand the term here—the real work only begins at these boundary markers. The point is that, in what I call meditation—please don’t take offense; it is a technical term like any other—the spiritual researcher enters into a certain inner struggle, an inner battle of life with these concepts, more or less with all the boundary concepts of natural science. And this inner struggle is not fruitless for him.

[ 6 ] I must recall a man who taught here in this city, at this university, during the second half of the last century, and who repeatedly emphasized the struggle that a person faces when they reach the limits of conventional science. It is Friedrich Theodor Vischer, who knew something of what a person can experience when they encounter concepts such as matter, the atom, natural law, force, and so on. What I mean here is not merely brooding over these things, but rather that everything within our soul that has led to these concepts is brought into consideration, so that we may try to live meditatively with these concepts.

[ 7 ] What does that actually mean? It means establishing inner discipline within oneself, being able to look—just as one would otherwise look at external objects—at what one ultimately has within one’s soul when one arrives at such a boundary concept; I could name many others besides the ones I just mentioned. Then, when one attempts to strictly concentrate the entire scope of the soul on such concepts, abstracting from all other experience, one makes an inner discovery. And this inner discovery has something profoundly moving about it. Namely, it shows us that, from a certain point in life—from inner life—our concepts become something that grows of its own accord within our soul, something that behaves differently after such inner meditative work than it does when we take it merely as the result of external observation. Just as we observe in a growing child how certain organs, which at first appear more undifferentiated, become more differentiated—just as we perceive how organs grow—so, in such meditative devotion to the results of scientific experience, we feel an inner growth of the soul taking place. And then comes the startling realization: one goes beyond what is called the limit of natural knowledge not through speculation or speculative philosophy, but through direct experience—that is, by transforming what has been gained through thinking into an inner experience of contemplation.

[ 8 ] That, my esteemed audience, is the first step that is taken. One can indeed clearly sense how the method becomes something entirely different and how, in contrast to the ordinary scientific method—which I, like anyone else, can objectively acknowledge—something entirely new emerges, in that mere thinking and mere comprehension give way to inner experience. And then, through consistent, patient, and persistent experience in this direction, what ultimately emerges can be described as nothing other than the experience of a spiritual existence. From the perspective of anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, one cannot speak of the experience of the spiritual world in any other way. For this experience of the spiritual world is not something that is innate to human beings. It is something that must be attained by the human being. When one reaches a certain level of this experience, one realizes that this thinking, which we otherwise engage in—which is otherwise our tool for grasping the environment—stands in a different relationship to our entire physical being than one is actually compelled to assume based solely on the knowledge of nature.

[ 9 ] Simply by observing nature, one can see how mental states also change alongside physical changes and transformations—such as those associated with youth, old age, and so on. With scientific thinking, one can go further physiologically. One can demonstrate how, in fact, the nervous system and the brain reflect the structure and configuration of our thinking. And if one pursues the matter consistently from one angle, one can say: Yes, what we call thinking—what life in thought is—arises from something that, of course, could only be established hypothetically today.

[ 10 ] Anyone who has experienced inwardly to this extent what I have described as something that can be experienced speaks differently; they say: When one walks—say, on a muddy road—or when a car drives over a muddy road, one gets the impression of ruts, of footprints. It would obviously be quite wrong to now—simply because one does not know—put forward the theory that an extraterrestrial being must have been responsible for creating these footprints and ruts, or to propose the hypothesis that there are certain forces beneath the Earth’s surface that act in such a way as to have caused these footprints and ruts.

[ 11 ] From a scientific perspective—and I say this explicitly, with some justification—what constitutes the physiological structure of the brain is ultimately what finds expression in the function of thought. Anyone who has experienced what I have described does not speak this way; they say: Just as these tracks and furrows are not formed from within by the Earth’s internal forces, but rather as if something had driven or walked over them, so too has the physical brain been set into its furrows by thinking independent of the body. And that which, in a certain sense, continues to alter these furrows even after we have entered physical existence through birth—that is also what, descending from the spiritual worlds, performs the work of shaping these furrows in the first place.

[ 12 ] In this way, one comes to the conclusion that the soul is indeed the active force, indeed that which gives form to the body in the first place. I know, my dear friends here present, that of course hundreds of objections can be raised against what I am saying if one proceeds solely from an intellectual-theoretical standpoint. However, spiritual science must point to experience; it must point out that, until one has this experience, one is justified in believing that the life of thought arises from the physical brain as a function, whereas when one actually experiences this life of thought oneself, one knows how it is active in and of itself, how it is essential and in motion, and how it is the truly active force in contrast to the passivity of the physical body.

[ 13 ] Thus, what stands, so to speak, as an initial experience is something that is not obtained through a straightforward continuation of ordinary scientific methods, but only through a metamorphosis—only through a transformation of the ordinary scientific method into a method that can only be experienced, one that does not consist of speculation but of an inner experience.

[ 14 ] That is one side of the story. The other side of this inner experience relates more to the development of a person’s inner will. By reflecting on our lives, we can look back on the transformations we have undergone. We think back to what our inner, spiritual state and our outer, physical condition were like one, five, or ten years ago, and we tell ourselves: We have undergone changes and transformations. — These changes, these transformations that we undergo—how do we go through them? In a certain sense, we passively surrender ourselves to the outer world. After all, we really need only ask ourselves honestly: To what extent are we actively involved in what we have initially become through the external world? The external world—heredity, upbringing, and so on—shapes us; and what shapes us within continues to have an effect. As a rule, we are actually the passive ones in this process. If one now transforms this into activity, if one develops from it what one might call, in the most eminent sense, self-discipline—specifically in the way I am about to characterize it—then this second element is added to what we have characterized as the first element on the path of spiritual research. For if one brings it to that point—and this can only be achieved through methodical training in the sense described in my book How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds? and in other books—if, through methodical training, one brings oneself to say, “I will set myself the task, even if only a small part of what is to arise within me; I will set out to make this or that a quality of my own, and if I succeed in truly bringing about such a quality within myself—perhaps only after years—through a strong stirring of the will; if I take what I would otherwise only passively become in life make it my own, when I take my will—if I may put it somewhat paradoxically—into my own hands and take full control of my development—to a certain extent, of course, one can only do so—then it also comes to pass that what is otherwise merely memory, merely recollection, coalesces in a certain way into a real realm. One surveys one’s life, as it were, like something one surveys in a series, and one then comes to know the will in its true character.

[ 15 ] As one comes to understand thinking as something that, in fact, detaches itself from the physical body the more one enters into life, one comes to recognize one’s will in such a way that it actually encompasses the physical body more and more, permeates us more and more, flows through us, and that, fundamentally, death is nothing other than a struggle of the will with the bodily functions, such that that the bodily functions have reached a certain limit when we pass through death—whether sooner or later—and that then what can no longer act upon our body—the will—is completely absorbed into what the body does, so that this will detaches itself and an element of the soul actually enters a real, spiritual world when we pass away through death.

[ 16 ] The point, then, is that what is commonly referred to as the “idea of immortality” is not pursued by the spiritual science meant here through any kind of speculation; rather, this spiritual science fundamentally breaks completely with the way in which the world usually approaches this idea. The point is that spiritual science, as a continuation of scientific research through the discipline of thought and will, arrives at a point where it grasps what we carry within us—thinking and willing—in its form in such a way that it is grasped even when this soul aspect, which lives in thinking and willing, exists in a disembodied state in a way that can no longer be reached by the senses.

[ 17 ] Certainly, it is simply a fact that what I have briefly outlined here is regarded by the broadest circles of our time as something fanciful and idealistic. But how could it be otherwise? Everything that first enters the world and appears to contradict what was already there is initially regarded as fanciful and idealistic. But I do not believe that it will always be the case that people will fail to recognize that what has been described here as the method of spiritual science—at least in two of its characteristic elements—is merely a continuation, albeit a vibrant continuation, of what natural science actually achieves, but with which natural science reaches a certain limit.

[ 18 ] When one speaks of the spirit in general today, people no longer take offense at it all that much. That was still the case in the last third of the 19th century, when, in a certain materialistic way, people formed a worldview based on scientific findings—a worldview that actually sought only to draw the ultimate conclusion from scientific thinking itself. Today, it is once again permissible to speak of the spirit, at least in a speculative sense. But people still take great offense if one speaks of the spirit in the way I just did, for that has certain implications.

[ 19 ] Once one has assimilated what I have called in my book The Riddle of Man as “contemplative consciousness”—once one has mastered what arises from such developed thinking and willing—then one truly knows oneself to be in a spiritual world through this contemplative consciousness—just as one knows oneself to be in a world of colors and sounds through one’s eyes and ears. In a sense, one’s surroundings become filled with spirit. Just as the world of colors opens up to a person who was born blind, undergoes an operation, and begins to see colors from a certain point in their life—just as the world that previously existed in their surroundings is now filled with something else—so it is when this “contemplative consciousness” takes hold. The world that one had previously been accustomed to viewing as the realm of the senses and the reasoning mind becomes imbued with spirit. And the spirit becomes something concrete. The spirit becomes something that one can also trace in its concrete form. People no longer speak of the spirit in general terms. When someone speaks of the spirit in general terms, it is as if a person were walking across a meadow where flowers grow. If one asks him, “What kind of flower is this, and what kind of flower is that?” he replies, “They are all plants, plants, plants.” — In the same way, people today are permitted to say: Behind the sensory world lies a spiritual world. — But spiritual science cannot stop there; rather, it must investigate spiritual realities in concrete terms—precisely because the spiritual world surrounds us just as the world of colors and sounds does—in the same way that we otherwise investigate this world of colors and sounds with our senses and our reasoning mind. And in doing so, we acquire, above all else, a very specific way of relating to the world. After all, it is also true that when one is born blind and suddenly regains sight, one develops a different relationship to the world. One must first find one’s bearings; one knows nothing about spatial perspective and must first learn it. In the same way, one must naturally also develop a certain relationship, a certain stance toward the world, when one transitions into intuitive consciousness. Then certain things appear to one in a peculiar way. That is why the spiritual researcher is still misunderstood by his contemporaries.

[ 20 ] You see, the spiritual researcher never claims that what has been gained through the methods of rigorous natural science—or even the conclusions drawn from the results of rigorous natural science—is in any way logically flawed or anything of the sort, but he is compelled to add something derived from his spiritual insight—which, however, is not merely an addition but rather something that completely alters the results of natural science in many respects.

[ 21 ] Take geology, for example. I want to single out one example. It’s better to discuss specific questions than to speak in generalities. I fully understand this and have been able to follow this method myself: If you examine the superimposed geological layers based on what is happening around us today in rock formations, in river and lake sediments, and so on, and then calculate—even if the calculation isn’t always an exact one, but only an approximation— if one calculates how long these respective rock layers have existed, one arrives at the familiar figures. And one then arrives, as you all know, at that beginning of the Earth’s development where the Earth—as is hypothetically assumed—formed out of something, out of a kind of primordial nebula or the like. I don’t need to go into further detail. You are all familiar with this.

[ 22 ] But for the spiritual researcher—simply because he has experienced such things as I have described to you—albeit only in outline form, to stimulate thought rather than to convince—for the spiritual researcher, it is the case that he must say to himself: Let me suppose that someone is studying the changes in a human organism—let’s say the changes in the heart every five years. I observe how the human heart or another organ changes over the course of five or ten years, and what happens there. And now I calculate—by simply reasoning backward consistently from what I have calculated—what that human heart was like three hundred years ago. I arrive at a specific result—albeit purely mathematical—regarding what this human heart was like three hundred years ago. The only objection to this, however, is that this heart did not even exist back then. Just as valid as the geological approach would be this approach of inferring, from the small changes in the human heart, what that heart was like three hundred years ago—only it wasn’t even there back then. Equally valid—for I fully acknowledge that what geology reveals has at least a relative validity—is everything that is deduced from geological facts regarding the Earth’s development. But we then project what results from our calculations into times when the Earth did not yet exist in its present form. Or, by calculating a final state and speaking of entropy or the like, we project what we derive from our observations—made over a limited period of time—into an epoch that lies millions of years in the future. For the spiritual researcher, this is just as if he were to calculate what the human heart will be like in three hundred years.

[ 23 ] This is what one arrives at when one transforms the ordinary scientific method into something that can be experienced. For, you see, human beings are in fact like an extract of the entire cosmos. In human beings, one finds—somehow transformed, somehow extracted, compensated, or the like—what exists in the cosmos as law. You will ask me: “Well, how can you, a dreamer, claim such a thing—that the Earth did not yet exist in its present form? You must show us a way to arrive at such a claim.”

[ 24 ] I would like to outline—albeit only briefly—how one arrives at assertions such as those I have put forward. By experiencing volition and thought as I have described to you, one discovers that human beings are truly a kind of microcosm. I am not saying this as a cliché, as those nebulous mystics do, but with the awareness that it has become as clear to me as any solution to a differential equation, arising from complete logical clarity. One discovers that the human being is, inwardly, a synthesis, a compendium of the entire world. And just as in our ordinary lives we do not merely know what surrounds us sensually at that very moment—just as, when we look beyond what surrounds us sensually at that moment and turn our gaze to the image of something we experienced about ten or fifteen years ago, it appears before us as something that no longer exists —yet something of it remains within us, enabling us to reconstruct what existed back then—so it is also with the expanded consciousness that arises through the transformation of ordinary thinking and willing. Since the human being was in fact connected to everything that belongs to the past—but connected to it in a more comprehensive, entirely different, and more spiritual sense than he was connected to experiences from ten or fifteen years ago that he can recall from within himself— it is possible, when consciousness is expanded, that we simply discover how, from a cosmic memory—one in which we were indeed present—that which does not live on within us for ordinary consciousness, but which does live on for the consciousness that has arisen through the metamorphosis I have described.

[ 25 ] It is, therefore, nothing other than an expansion, an intensification of that power which is otherwise our power of memory, through which human beings, inwardly and simply by virtue of their own nature—which is a synthesis of the macrocosm—constructively bring to life what actually existed on our Earth during a specific period of time. Human beings then look back to a state of the Earth when it was not yet material. And whereas he would otherwise have to construct something from the present-day observations of geology that is supposed to have existed in the past, he now looks back to a time when the Earth did not yet exist, when it was in a much more spiritual form. By constructively recreating what lives within him, he sees that which actually underlies the formation of our Earth.

[ 26 ] And the same is true of what, in a certain sense, can emerge within us as something constructive from a future state of the Earth. I know how unsatisfactory such a sketchy description must be, but you can see from it that what I characterize as spiritual science is not drawn from thin air or from the imagination.

[ 27 ] It is, of course, something unusual. But once one has undergone this metamorphosis of consciousness, what one constructively represents inwardly stands before one’s consciousness with just as much inner clarity as what one conjures up in mathematics or geometry—which, after all, is also constructed from within the human being.

[ 28 ] And if someone then comes along and says: “Yes, but you have to make a claim that everyone can understand”—then I say: “Yes, that is true, but the point is that whoever wants to understand something must first go through everything necessary to do so—just as whoever wants to solve a differential equation must first go through the process that enables them to solve it.”

[ 29 ] And if, on the other hand, someone objects: “Yes, but mathematics and geometry merely present to consciousness something that we apply when we observe the reality of the external world”—then I say: Yes, that is true, but when we constructively set it before us, we come to the conviction that it is merely a formal matter. When one has the characterized thing in consciousness, one knows: it is a reality. And if someone says that this might be self-suggestion, then I say: Everything that gives us the possibility of saying at all that something is real is merely a result of experience. And when some people object that someone might be mistaken—that someone might, for example, form a vivid mental image of citric acid that they are drinking, and if they are sensitive, they might even taste the lemon flavor—I say: That is possible. But just as in ordinary life one can distinguish between merely imagined heat and the heat that affects one when one actually touches a hot iron, so too, through inner experience—if one possesses a contemplative consciousness—one can distinguish between what is merely fantasy, what is merely suggestion, and what is reality; for the apprehension of all reality is an inner experience. And it is necessary to pursue things to the very end, not to stop halfway. Whoever stops where the path should actually continue may fall prey to suggestion. I therefore say: It is certainly possible for someone who is sensitive and gives in to autosuggestion to say, “I have the thought of lemonade; I can even taste it”—but the imagined lemonade will not quench their thirst. The point is to move from the sensation of taste to quenching one’s thirst—that is, to consistently follow the path. The experience simply must be consistently pursued; then the fact that one designates something as reality in a spiritual sense is entirely the result of that experience. The designation of a sensory reality cannot, in essence, be theorized, but is rather the result of experience.

[ 30 ] Well, my esteemed audience, I have now described for you that spiritual science one arrives at when, as a modern person grounded in the natural sciences, one goes through what life offers today. This life has indeed changed extraordinarily over the last thirty to fifty years, particularly as a result of technological upheavals. When I think back to the years when the first chair of engineering was established in Vienna in the early 1880s, and consider all that has happened since then, I get some sense of how greatly modern humanity has changed as a result of everything that has found its way into our cognitive, our moral, but especially our social life. Anyone who has honestly engaged with this—who does not say out of some prejudice, “Oh, come on, natural science can’t possibly offer us anything!”—but who instead takes the position: ‘Natural science can give us a great deal!’—and who is fully engaged, heart and soul, in the triumphs of modern natural science—may come to realize that what lies at the spiritual foundation of the world must be grasped in the way I have attempted to describe to you today.

[ 31 ] Then one looks back on earlier periods of human development and says to oneself: In those earlier periods of human development, people hardly ever spoke of the Spirit. And the way in which they spoke of the spirit has been preserved in various religious creeds, which—if one is completely honest and does not wish to lead a double life—cannot truly be reconciled with the findings of conventional natural science. These spiritual experiences, it must be said, sprang from an entirely different state of human consciousness. What we have learned over the course of the three to four centuries in which scientific methods have come to the fore—what has become our state of mind through the Copernican and Galilean ways of thinking, through Kepler, as we have, in more recent times, worked our way through everything that has distilled the technical laws from the laws of natural science— through this we have not merely attained results; through this, the whole of civilized humanity has also been shaped in a certain way. The entire configuration of the soul has changed—truly not because we have become more theoretical, but because we have become more conscious, because we have necessarily had to leave behind certain instinctive states of earlier ages through the development of humanity. And we look back on what earlier ages perceived as spirituality—which has been preserved in religious traditions—and we say to ourselves: What existed as spirituality back then was grasped by human instinct. It could not be said that this necessarily required such an elevation of consciousness arising from the methods of natural science or from the methods of social experience in more recent times. People spoke in such a way that, as they observed natural phenomena, these phenomena, so to speak, imparted to them the spirit of which they spoke. How, for example, did an ancient civilized Egyptian relate to the world? He looked up, traced the course of the stars, and observed the configuration of the starry sky. He saw in this starry sky not merely what Copernicus, Galileo, and Kepler saw, but he saw something that simultaneously revealed a spiritual dimension to him. Just as when I move my arm, a spiritual-active force underlies this hand movement, so too did people of earlier epochs sense, instinctively, in what happened externally, that which, as a spiritual reality, underlies these external events.

[ 32 ] Then came the modern era, the era of natural science. I would like to say that we are looking back on a long period—one that actually did not come to an end until around the middle of the 15th century—a long period of human development in which people had no choice but to perceive the sensory world around them as something spiritual as well. When we speak today of states of matter—solid, liquid, and gaseous forms—we do so in a way that focuses on the material. For people of the past, when they spoke of what we today call states of matter, these were indeed elements to them, but these elements were not merely material; it was the spiritual that revealed itself in them. What surrounded human beings as the material world was for them just as much the outer physical-spiritual expression of the spiritual-soul aspect as the physical organism is for us an expression of the spiritual-soul aspect—but all of this was instinctive. This path has necessarily been abandoned over the last three to four centuries, as humanity transitioned to something entirely different, which then became the guiding principle of civilization. Humanity transitioned to what the contemplation of nature distinguished from mere observation—which is, after all, always linked to the instinctive, to the spiritual contemplation of nature, as is still implied in the term “contemplation.” Humanity moved from the mere observation of nature to what one might call the experimental grasping of nature.

[ 33 ] Since the time of Bacon and others, the mere observation of nature has been replaced by the experimental understanding of nature. We conduct experiments in the laboratory and in the physics cabinet, which we then apply to technical work. In the conditions we ourselves create for any natural phenomenon, we are able to grasp precisely those conditions. Through experimentation, we find ourselves in a different position than we are in mere observation of nature. In nature, I cannot know whether what is revealed to me—be it to my intellect or to my imagination—constitutes some kind of totality, or whether I must delve much, much deeper than the matter initially presents itself to me. In short, despite all careful observation, what I observe in nature remains an unknown to me. When I conduct an experiment, I establish the conditions myself; I track how one thing is brought about by another, and what remains unknown is, in essence, what is actually of interest. Anyone who designs an experiment and ultimately observes what can be observed actually has in mind the result of what follows from the conditions that are comprehensible to them. In an experiment, everything is transparent in a completely different way than what I observe in nature.

[ 34 ] And so people have gradually become accustomed to having nature as their interpreter in this manageable experiment—to observing the laws of nature, as it were, in a setting where they can themselves observe the conditions under which those laws manifest. This experimental method, however, is still linked to a certain inner longing that once underpinned knowledge through and through. In those ancient times, when there was still no technology, no natural science as we understand it, what was regarded as science had arisen above all from the longing for knowledge—from the longing to understand, to explore “what holds the world together at its very core,” if I may put it that way. Now, since the experimental method has emerged, it is no longer the longing for knowledge alone, but the longing to recreate what nature creates. Yet the old longing for knowledge still lives on. One recreates what one wishes to have before one in the experiment in order to unravel nature itself through what one has there within one’s grasp. Thus, in more recent times, technology has emerged quite naturally from this experimental method, and with technology we have entered a new phase.

[ 35 ] We can therefore say: In the history of human development, we first have research driven by a longing for knowledge, then the experimental method, which, however, still combines within itself the longing of the old quest for knowledge with the recreation of nature. But as we moved on—one need only trace what actually happened, from what can be experienced through experimentation to what then emerges from experimentation, based on the recognized laws of nature, through technical designs that so profoundly intervene in human and social life—we must say to ourselves: There is a third element present that transitions from what we still have in the recreation of nature to what is now creative within human beings themselves. This creative force—I do not believe I am speaking to entirely insensitive souls when I say the following about it: Anyone who is undergoing technical training with that distinctive style, with that distinctive state of mind, experiences this training differently than someone undergoing, say, theological training—which is a reproduction of the oldest methods of knowledge—or experimental scientific training. Those who undergo experimental scientific training apply mathematics, geometry, theoretical mechanics, photometry, and so on to what they observe there. They calculate nature, so to speak.

[ 36 ] One stands on an entirely different level of consciousness when one is first confronted with what is, in a sense, completely transparent from within: the mathematical, the geometric. And when one applies this not only in experimentation—that is, in replicating nature—but also in completely free creative work to the design of machines. When one sees that what one has experienced as mathematics and as theoretical-mechanistic chemistry extends into the design of a technical structure, one experiences the world in a completely different way than the mere natural scientist or the theorizing engineer does.

[ 37 ] What is the actual difference? There is one thing that is often overlooked. Just think about it: in our ordinary, everyday lives, we call all sorts of things “real,” even those that, in a higher sense, are not really real. We call a rose “real.” But is a rose really real in a higher sense? When I have it here in front of me, torn from the rosebush, it cannot live. It can only be shaped the way it is when it grows on the rose stem, when it grows from the rose root. By cutting it off, I actually have before me a real abstraction—something that, as I see it before me, cannot possibly exist. But this is true, in a certain sense, of every natural formation. When I look at a natural formation—even a crystal, where this is least the case—I cannot understand it merely by looking at it, because, fundamentally, it can no more exist on its own than the rose can. So I would have to say: This crystal is only possible within its entire environment, having perhaps grown out of a druse in the mountain formation.

[ 38 ] But when I have before me something I myself have shaped as a technical construct, my attitude toward it is different. One can sense this—indeed, perceive it as something radically significant in the experience of modern human beings, who, drawing on their technical education, look upon what technology has become in modern life. When I have a technical structure that I have constructed from mathematics and theoretical mechanics, I have before me something that is self-contained. And if I live within what is, in essence, the realm of all technical creation, then I have before me not merely a reflection of the laws of nature, but in what has emerged from the laws of nature to become technical constructs, there is in fact something new standing before me. It is something different that underlies these technical constructs as laws than what underlies inorganic nature as well.

[ 39 ] It is not merely that the laws of inorganic nature are simply applied, but rather that the entire meaning of the structure in relation to the cosmos changes, in that I, as a freely creative human being, incorporate into the technical structure what I otherwise experience through the process of physical or chemical investigations.

[ 40 ] But this leads us to say: Since modern humanity has succeeded in separating technology from the entire realm of nature, and since we have had to learn in recent times to live within the realm of technology in such a way that our human consciousness stands in a completely different relationship to technology than to what nature produces, we say to ourselves: Now, for the first time, we stand before a world that is, in a sense, spiritually transparent. The world of natural science is, in a certain way, spiritually opaque; one cannot see to the bottom of it. The world of technology is like a transparent crystal—understood in a spiritual sense, of course. With modern technology, a truly new stage in humanity’s spiritual development has thus been reached. With this, something new has entered the history of human development. That is why even modern philosophers have been at a loss to deal with what has arisen in this modern consciousness precisely through the triumphs of technology. I might perhaps point out how little the purely philosophical, speculative way of thinking has been able to cope with what has seized modern human consciousness precisely through technology. After all, we are far more influenced today by the leading currents of human development than we realize. What is now part of general consciousness did not yet exist when there were no newspapers, when the only form of intellectual exchange was people listening to the pastor speak from the pulpit on Sundays in church. What constitutes general education today flows through certain channels from the leading currents into the broad masses without people being aware of it. And so, essentially, what has come about through technical consciousness has, in the course of a very short time, shaped the thought patterns of the broadest masses; it lives within the broadest masses without them knowing it.

[ 41 ] And so we can say that something entirely new has emerged. And where consciousness has become entirely one-sided—which, fortunately, we have not yet reached in Europe—where consciousness has become entirely one-sided, downright obsessed with this abstract concept, a curious philosophical movement emerged: the so-called pragmatism of William James and others, which asserts: Truth, ideas that merely seek to be truth—these are, in general, something unreal. In truth, only that which we see can be realized is truth. — As human beings, we set certain goals for ourselves; we shape reality accordingly. And when we say to ourselves: This or that is real according to a law of nature, we form a corresponding structure from it. If we can realize in machinery, in mechanics, what we imagine, then its application in life proves to us that it is true. But there is no other proof than that of its application in life. And so only that which we can realize in life is true. — So-called pragmatism, which denies any logical, internal pursuit of truth and in fact accepts only the validation of truth through what takes place externally, is regarded today in the broadest circles as American philosophy. And this is something that has also taken hold of some people in Europe for decades, even before the war.

[ 42 ] All those who are philosophers and still wish to continue thinking along the old lines know of no other way to deal with what has emerged as modern technology—and as the awareness of modern technology—than to abandon the concept of truth altogether. By stepping out of the instinctive grasping of nature, out of the experimental recreation of nature, into the free shaping of nature, they have been left with nothing but free external shaping. The inner experience of truth—that spiritual experience within oneself of what, as something spiritual, can permeate the soul—is thereby effectively denied, and only that which can be realized in external, functional structures is regarded as truth. This means that the concept of truth, which is self-sustaining within the human soul, has in fact been set aside.

[ 43 ] Well, another development is also possible; it is possible that we will experience how, within the very substance of technical structures, something becomes distinct from the natural—in which there is now nothing left that we can intuit, but only what we can grasp. For if we cannot grasp it, we cannot shape it. As we experience this—as we allow ourselves to be thoroughly imbued with what can be experienced in it—a certain need must awaken within us all the more. This new external world reveals itself to us without the inner verification of ideas; it reveals itself to us without the inner experience of ideas. Therefore, this new experience prepares us for the pure experience of what spirituality is—that which the human being, stripped of all external observation, must experience within, as I attempted to sketch out for you at the beginning of my reflections today.

[ 44 ] And so I believe that, because we have advanced in the history of human development to a view of that reality which we can survey from the outside—where we can no longer perceive anything demonic or ghostly in the external world—because we have finally reached the point where we can no longer interpret the external sensory world in such a way that we say, it is opaque to us and we can suspect something spiritual lying behind it—we must therefore seek within ourselves the powers for the spirit through the soul’s own development.

[ 45 ] It has always seemed to me that a truly honest experience of that consciousness which comes to us precisely through technology calls upon us—because otherwise what is intimately linked to our human nature would be virtually lost—to experience that which is spirituality —so as to add to the one pole of transparent mechanics and transparent chemistry that which can now be attained through spiritual insight, that which can stand before humanity in the spirit. It seems to me that in our time it is necessary for the spiritual insight of anthroposophy to be revealed, precisely because we have reached a certain stage of development in human history.

[ 46 ] And there is another point, distinguished guests: Along with this newer technology, a new social life has emerged. I need not describe how modern technology in particular has created modern industrialism, or how this modern technology has brought forth the modern proletariat in the form it takes today. But it seems to me that if one insists on adopting the standpoint of the earlier scientific method—the standpoint of what emerges from observation—then our thinking falls short. We fail to grasp what truly manifests itself in social life. To comprehend what emerges from the human condition in social life, it is necessary for us to arrive at truths that are revealed only through human nature itself. And so I believe that Marxism and other similar quackories, which are causing such turmoil among people today, can only be overcome if we apply specific methods—which are found to be a necessary counterpoint to technology—to what constitutes human social life, and if, through this, one is able to bring spirituality into outer life, into the broad masses, because one has oneself found this spirituality through inner experience,

[ 47 ] It is therefore no coincidence that from the very same soil from which my anthroposophically oriented spiritual science sprang, there also arose—truly unsought by me—what I attempted to present in my book The Key Points of the Social Question. I simply tried to draw the conclusions from what spiritual scientific knowledge means for social life. And what I presented in this book emerged quite naturally for me.

[ 48 ] I do not believe that, without the human sciences, one can find the methods that capture how people relate to one another in social life. And I believe that, because we have not yet succeeded in understanding social life, this life itself cannot be mastered by us, and that we have therefore, in the moment when—following the terrible catastrophe of war—people are faced with the necessity of rebuilding, initially found ourselves in a state of chaos. It is necessary to carry out what is to be accomplished on the basis of spiritual laws, not on the basis of that law which a misguided understanding believes it can ground in natural laws, as is the case in Marxism and other radical forms of social science.

[ 49 ] So, my esteemed audience, I have just had the opportunity to explain to you something that, for me, is actually quite personal. And I must say: Having spoken before you, I feel transported back at this very moment to an earlier time, to the 1880s, when we in Central Europe were living through a period that was perceived by all as a time of ascendancy. We—those of us who, like me, have grown old—have now reached a point where what once emerged as hopes of spring now stands before our mind’s eye in a certain, rather tragic form. Those who look back on what once seemed like an invincible ascent now look back on something that, for many people, reveals itself to have been, in many respects, a mistake.

[ 50 ] As I speak to you, I am speaking to fellow students who find themselves in a different situation. Many of you are likely at the age when I experienced those hopes of spring; now you are experiencing something very different from the fantasies that once emerged from those springtime hopes and presented themselves to the human soul. But anyone who is as filled with the possibility and necessity of spiritual knowledge as the one speaking before you can never be pessimistic about the power of human nature; such a person can only be optimistic. And that is why it does not at all strike me as something I cannot hold before my soul as a possibility: that once you have reached the age at which I am speaking to you today, you will have gone through the reverse path—that reverse path which, drawing on the power of the human soul, above all on the spiritual power of the human soul, now leads upward once more. And because I believe in humanity out of spiritual insight, I believe that one cannot speak, as Spengler does, of a decline, of a death of Western civilization. Rather, because I believe in the power of the soul that lives within you, I believe that we must once again achieve an ascent. For this ascent is not brought about by an empty phantom, but by the human will. And I believe so strongly in the truth of the spiritual science I have described to you that I am convinced: this human will can be sustained, can bring about a new ascent, can bring about a new dawn. And therefore, my esteemed audience, I would like to conclude with the words that rang in my ears as a young student, when the new dean of Mechanics and Mechanical Engineering in Vienna delivered his inaugural address—at that time to people who also believed in a new rise, and rightly so, even if what followed was ultimately only a one-sided technological advancement—not a social one, nor a political one. But now we find ourselves in a time when, if we do not wish to despair, we can—and must—think only of progress. That is why I say what that man said to us young people back then: “Fellow students, I conclude by saying that anyone who sincerely cares about the development of humanity in light of what is to emerge from all science and all technology can only say: Always forward!”

Pronunciation

Question: What gives us the right, when we go beyond the limits of thought, to leave the unity of thought behind and move from thought to meditation?

[ 51 ] Rudolf Steiner: Ladies and gentlemen! It seems to me that this question concerns something very significant, which, however, can only be fully understood through a thorough epistemological and critical examination of knowledge. I will, however, attempt to point out a few aspects that are relevant to answering this question.

[ 52 ] Perhaps I should draw your attention to the final chapter I added to the second edition of my book The Riddles of Philosophy, in which I outlined the course of philosophy’s own development and in which I then attempted to show how, precisely at this moment in human development, philosophy has reached the point where—as it were, of its own accord—it demands that thought go beyond the very standpoint of thought that arises precisely when one has reached the limits of knowledge of nature. At that time, I attempted to demonstrate the following:

[ 53 ] If people study the methods of knowledge closely, as the great physiologist Du Bois-Reymond did, they can arrive at the very same point of view that Du Bois-Reymond expressed in his speech “On the Limits of Natural Knowledge,” delivered in the 1870s at the famous Congress of Natural Scientists in Leipzig, and which he also reiterated in his speech on “The Seven Mysteries of the World.” I would just like to briefly point out that at that time, Du Bois-Reymond spoke of how, by applying what has been called here “unified thinking,” leads to the development of the so-called Laplacean mind—that is, a way of thinking about matter that is possible when one seeks to grasp the motion of the planets in a solar system using astronomical and mathematical methods.

[ 54 ] If, through a certain inner insight, one directs one’s gaze toward what is taking place within oneself—that is, if one attempts to turn the subject into an object—then it becomes apparent that this thinking, which one is developing, cannot simply be defined as existing merely to represent some external world or to combine the facts of an external world. In what is thought about thinking in this way, I must still see a final remnant of that old teleology, that old doctrine of finality, which everywhere asks not “why” but “for what purpose,” which does not ask how it is that the entire organization of a human being or any other organism or an organ such as the hand is structured in a certain way, but rather asks how this hand ought to be structured for a certain purpose. — Even if people are no longer aware of this today—or are not yet aware of it—this line of thought is extended to the consideration of thought itself. One asks: What is the actual purpose of thought? — One does not always make this clear to oneself, but one asks it unconsciously. Thinking, it is believed, and cognition in general, exist so that one can, as it were, draw the external world into oneself—so that what is initially outside can be held within, even if only as an image. Now, however, one can realistically—though, of course, in a spiritual-realistic sense—explore what thinking actually is. Then one realizes that this thinking is indeed a real force that shapes us.

[ 55 ] You see, this spiritual science I am speaking of here is not an abstract theory, nor is it merely a worldview consisting of ideas. Among other things, I have recently held an educational course here in which I attempted to apply spiritual science to education. It was a course for teachers, before the Waldorf School was founded. In addition to this educational course, I also taught a course that sought to draw on spiritual science to address the therapeutic aspects of medicine and to show how spiritual research in particular can shed light on precisely those areas that one can never fully grasp when relying solely on today’s methods of physiology and biology. Now, I do not wish to discuss anything specifically therapeutic with you, but I would like to mention one thing to characterize the method: namely, that in contemporary philosophy, there is actually almost always only speculation about the relationship between the spiritual-psychic and the physical-bodily. There are all sorts of theories about interactions, parallelism, and so on—all sorts of materialistic interpretations of psychological processes. But in a certain sense of abstraction, one always has, on the one hand, the observation of the spiritual-soul aspects and, on the other hand, that of the physical-bodily aspects, and one then speculates on how these two might relate to one another. Spiritual science studies—truly methodically, but precisely with the kind of thinking that is awakened there—how the spiritual-soul aspect works within the physical-bodily realm. And even if I may be exposing myself to some misunderstanding, in that what I say might be taken as a paradox, I want to emphasize one thing:

[ 56 ] When we observe a child growing up until the change of teeth around the age of seven, we notice that not only does this change of teeth take place, but that the configuration of the spiritual-soul aspect also undergoes a significant change. If you now reflect on your own life, you will find—even without conducting systematic research—that the sharply defined thoughts, which then solidify into memories and carry forward into the course of life, can only first take shape out of the power of thought during the time when the organism is pushing forth what are the permanent teeth — for this is, after all, something that comes from the entire organism, not merely from the jaw. If one pursues this methodically further, one comes to say to oneself: Just as, for example, in physical processes, a certain type of force—such as mechanical force—can be transformed into heat, and one then says: Heat is released, heat appears—so, in the course of human life, one must trace what remains in the organism—we have completely lost this expression—during the change of teeth, and what is then released as the change of teeth gradually takes place, what then passes from a latent state into a free state, what at first acted only internally. The permanent teeth have appeared; a certain interplay of forces, a system of forces within, is at work until these permanent teeth emerge. Then this interplay of forces is set free, and in its liberation it appears as that spiritual-soul aspect which then gives rise to the sharply defined thoughts of memory.

[ 57 ] With this example, I simply wish to show how this spiritual science is in fact applied to areas that do not come to mind today. It is a continuation of the natural sciences. It is precisely this same form of thinking that is applied when one speaks of the release of heat. The very same form—which one has only just developed—is then applied to human development, and one says to oneself: What appears as memory, as the power of thought, is what brings in the second set of teeth—if I may put it in trivial terms.

[ 58 ] Here, one does not engage in speculation about the relationship between body and soul, but rather, in a wholly empirical manner—as a natural scientist is accustomed to doing, albeit with more highly developed methods of thought—one investigates only what is actually observable. However, the entirety of one’s surroundings is also observed intellectually. And so one comes to no longer speak in an abstract, nebulous way about the interaction of body, soul, and spirit, but rather one describes how, at a certain stage of life, a force acts physically, which then emancipates itself as a spiritual-soul force at another stage of life. And one arrives at the point of entering into the material realm with the spirit, of understanding the material spiritually. This is the peculiar thing: that materialism has failed to understand the material realm precisely because it approaches matter in such a way that it remains incomprehensible to it. Materialism has failed to understand matter itself. Spiritual science, as referred to here, advances through its spiritual method precisely toward an understanding of the material realm. And it was indeed extremely interesting to the doctors and medical students attending the course for medical professionals that they were shown how one can actually succeed in effectively representing the spiritual-soul aspects within the physical body—how, for example, one can demonstrate that the heart’s function can be understood in a completely different way through spiritual science than through the methods of modern physiology or biology.

[ 59 ] So this is what it is all about: that thinking develops not merely through some fanciful elaboration, but through a genuine progression—one that must, however, pass through a borderline state or a state of critique. It is precisely in this passage through the borderline state that thought becomes something else. You must not say that the unity of thought is thereby somehow destroyed. For example, the force at work in ice does not become something that is no longer permitted to exist when the ice melts and turns into water. And the force at work in water does not become something else when the water passes through its boiling point and evaporates. The point is, therefore, that at the point I have characterized as a point of development for thinking, this power of thought passes through such a limit state and then indeed appears in a different form, so that the experience differs from the earlier experience just as steam differs from water. This leads one, however, to understand the power of thought itself—I could demonstrate the same thing with regard to the will—as something that acts realistically within the human being. One then sees in the power of thought that one possesses later in life that which was at work within the body during childhood. Thus, in a remarkable way, everything becomes a unity.

[ 60 ] I readily admit that the humanities may be mistaken on certain specific issues. They are still in their infancy. But that is not the point. Rather, the point is the direction in which it is striving. And so one can say: An attempt is being made to observe what reveals itself in thinking as it shapes the human being—to observe it as a real force that shapes and permeates the human organism. Thinking is considered in its reality. That is why one ultimately concludes: Those who still view thinking from a critical epistemological perspective—asking only after a purpose: Why is thinking such that it combines external sensory perceptions?—are succumbing to a certain error, an error that I would now like to characterize for you.

[ 61 ] Let us assume that the grain of wheat or the ear of wheat grows out of the rootlet through the stalk; the plant-forming power manifests itself and can shape a new plant from the seed, which in turn develops into a seed, and so on. We see what acts as a formative force in the plant, continuously and in a closed cycle within the plant itself, from one form to the next—as Goethe says: from metamorphosis to metamorphosis. Thus, in spiritual science, one attempts to trace thinking—as it manifests in human beings—as a formative force, and one comes to say: Since thinking in human beings is a formative force, a side effect also arises, and this side effect is, in fact, what we ordinarily call cognition. But if I want to characterize thinking in its essence based on this side effect, I am doing exactly the same thing as if I were to say: I am not interested in what is at work in the plant as a formative force, shooting up through the root and the stalks into the ear of grain; that does not interest me; I start from the chemistry of nutrition and investigate what appears in the grain of wheat as a nutritional substance. — That, of course, is also a valid way of looking at the grain of wheat. One can view it that way as well. But when I do so, I am disregarding what actually flows continuously in the plant’s formation. And so it is with cognition. In what is usually conceived by epistemologists, by philosophers, and by those who wish to ground the natural sciences in various considerations, the same effects occur as when thinking—which actually seeks to shape us—manifests itself outwardly as a side effect. It is as if what grows in the wheat plant were conceived solely as a basis for the nourishment of another being. But it is wrong to examine the wheat solely from this perspective. That has nothing to do with the essence of the grain of wheat. Here I introduce a different point of view.

[ 62 ] Thus, philosophy today is on the wrong track when it examines cognition solely in terms of the perception of the external world. For the essential point is that cognition is a formative power within human beings, and the former occurs merely as a side effect. And the approach that seeks to confine thought solely to the state in which it abstracts natural laws and gathers perceptions is in precisely the same position as someone who would claim that one should not study plant biology to understand the nature of plants, but rather nutritional chemistry.

[ 63 ] These are things we don’t think about today, but which play a major role in the further development of the scientific future—that scientific future which is at the same time the future for a form of social organization through which human beings, by grasping social life through the spirit, can truly intervene in this social organization. For it seems to me that this is precisely what has led to the catastrophe: that we no longer master life because we fail to realize that we have entered a stage of human development in which life must be mastered by the spirit—by that spirit which is recognized from within and thereby also recognizes what confronts us in the external world.

[ 64 ] Yes, ladies and gentlemen, in the broadest circles today, such views make one an eccentric, a dreamer, and in any case, one does not expect such a person to truly understand the external world in a realistic way. But I believe I am not mistaken when I say: The application of spiritual science to the entire external world can be compared to the following. If someone lays out a horseshoe-shaped piece of iron, a farmer comes along and says, “I’ll use this to shoe my horse.”—Another person, who knows what that object is, says to him: “That’s not a horseshoe; it’s a magnet, and it serves a completely different purpose.” — But the farmer replies: “What’s that got to do with me? I’m going to shoe my horse with it.” — This is how the scientific approach of today appears to us—one that absolutely refuses to acknowledge that the spiritual lives everywhere within the material. Anyone who denies the spiritual in the material is like the farmer who says: “What’s a magnet got to do with me? I’ll shoe my horse with this iron.” — I do believe, however, that we must come to realize that in all material things we are to recognize not merely an abstract spiritual element, but a concrete spiritual element; and that we must then take the trouble to study this concrete spiritual element in detail just as we do the material, and that this will mean progress for the future, both in terms of knowledge and in social relations.

[ 65 ] But it is easier to express speculative conclusions and all sorts of philosophies about what the mind is, it is easier to be a pantheist or the like out of speculation than to continue scientific research according to the model of rigorous natural science—but using the experiential method, just as I have described it—and then to arrive at finding the spiritual within the material—just as one brings heat, even when it does not manifest itself, nevertheless brings it to manifestation by showing under what circumstances that which is latent reveals itself. If one applies this method—which is usually applied to the external world—and extends it to the inner world, and specifically to the whole human being, then one will comprehend, from within, precisely the spiritual within the material. And above all, what has actually been echoing to us since time immemorial—and what is nevertheless a profound necessity for humankind to fulfill—will gradually be fulfilled: that which still echoes to us from the Apollonian temple at Delphi into the ears of the spirit: “Man, know thyself!” — And just as philosophers and theologians have spoken of this “Know thyself,” so too has the natural scientist Ernst Haeckel—who leaned more or less toward materialism—spoken of it. This “Know thyself” is deeply rooted in human nature. And modern times have now reached a point where this “Know thyself” must be addressed in a concrete way.

[ 66 ] With these remarks, I believe I have demonstrated that this is not a transgression against the unity of thought, but rather a continuation of thought beyond a boundary. Just as it is not impossible to bring the forces in water to a completely different manifestation after passing through the boiling point, so too is there no violation of what is experienced in combinatory thinking with perception when one extends this thinking beyond the threshold. It goes without saying that a metamorphosis of thought is then achieved. But this in no way constitutes a violation of any kind of unity of thought. You will find that spiritual science does not lead to a rejection of the natural sciences, but rather to a deeper understanding of them. One arrives precisely at what I consider particularly important for human development: a life-enriching integration of scientific insights into the entire worldview—which, however, can only be achieved by ascending from the spiritual contemplation of the natural to the pure experience of the spiritual, which can then also flow into our will and become a living force within us. Because this is possible—because living knowledge makes us not only wiser but also more capable—I believe in a future for humanity, in human progress, if in the future, more than has been the case so far, attention is paid to the spiritual within the material, when the spiritual is sought within the material—which can then also be applied to the social sphere—so that in the future the solution to the social question will appear to us as the spiritualization of social life, as spiritualization with that very spirit which we can attain precisely through scientific research.

[ 67 ] Professor Dr. Th. Meyer: I fully agree with Dr. Steiner that the limits of scientific knowledge are not the limits of being and reality. I have also listened, with a warm and moved heart, as he spoke of the hopes that the German people may harbor for the future, even in spite of their collapse. But I do have some doubts as to whether the anthroposophically oriented spiritual science will in fact possess the capacity to lead Germany to the new heights toward which it should strive. Specifically, my reservation lies in the following: Dr. Steiner has repeatedly emphasized that the path to the higher worlds of which he has spoken is attained through vision, through a visionary consciousness, through experience, and that this path is indeed science, not fantasy. This inner vision, of course, possesses what in logic is called evidence. That is to say, one cannot dispute what I have seen with my outer or inner eyes. I see a tree and do not need to prove that the tree must be there. There is no metaphysical proof for it; it is evident that the tree is there. Dr. Steiner now claims this evidentiary status for his inner vision. That is to say, he sees the higher world and perceives the interconnections within it, and precisely because he sees it, this higher world exists; it is indisputable. Nor do I wish to dispute that the higher world is evident to the one who beholds it. The question is, however, whether it is evident to everyone, and that is where I have reservations. Ever since I became acquainted with anthroposophy, it has maintained that this inner vision, this contemplative consciousness, is ancient—that there have long been people who have risen to the heights of this contemplative consciousness, and that they have long since risen to those heights in India. For this reason, anthroposophy also draws upon a whole range of terms from Indian sources. It requires Indian terms to describe the various spiritual insights it conveys. The fact is, however, that Dr. Steiner now claims once again that he is bringing something new. Yet even before Dr. Steiner, there were a number of theosophical societies in Germany, as well as in England. Dr. Steiner originally belonged to these theosophical societies, but then he came into conflict with them and withdrew from them. Precisely because he found himself in inner conflict with them, he no longer referred to his view of things by the name “theosophy”; rather, precisely because his inner vision differs from that of the other theosophists, he has given it the name “anthroposophy.”

[ 68 ] Now I would like to say: If the earlier intuitive consciousness was mistaken, and if it was only Dr. Steiner who presented the correct view, who can guarantee that someone else won’t come along and say: “This higher, intuitive consciousness that Dr. Steiner has presented has not reached its ultimate goal. Someone else might arrive at a completely different goal.” This makes Dr. Steiner’s insight subjective. It is the perspective of a single individual. Whether one can rely on it is therefore doubtful.

[ 69 ] My concern regarding the transcendental nature of the entire movement is that there is a diversity of inner vision. There really ought to be no conflict whatsoever among the various seers. However, I do not wish to conclude without expressing my sincere and heartfelt thanks to Dr. Steiner for the many subtle insights he has offered in his speech this evening.

[ 70 ] Rudolf Steiner: Ladies and gentlemen! I will not need to keep you here for very long, for I merely wish to point out that the distinguished speaker who spoke before me has, in fact, made a few errors precisely regarding the most important points he raised as concerns.

[ 71 ] First of all—and I’d like to start, so to speak, from the end—I need to correct a few misconceptions. It is not the case that other theosophical societies to which I belonged preceded what I have presented to you here with their teachings. That is not the case. Rather, I began writing my interpretations of Goethe’s worldview in the 1880s. At that time, they were published as an introduction to Goethe’s scientific writings in Kürschner’s Deutsche National-Literatur in Stuttgart. Anyone who follows them will find that the seeds of everything I have presented to you today are indeed to be found in those introductions. You will then find that in the first edition of my Philosophy of Freedom (1894), I attempted to describe how human beings gradually reach a certain level through the development of their thinking, and how this is then followed by that which leads discursive thinking into intuitive thinking.

[ 72 ] Then, around 1902 in Berlin, I was once asked to present my views on the spirit to a group that called itself theosophical. I had met various Theosophists at that time, but what they had expressed did not really prompt me to follow with any attention the Theosophical literature that was common within this Theosophical Society. And so, at that time, I simply presented what had emerged for me from my own contemplative research. This led to people in England who had read my book Mysticism at the Dawn of Modern Spiritual Life very quickly having these lectures translated into English and published in an English newspaper. I was then invited to give lectures to a number of people in the Society, which called itself the “Theosophical Society.” I have never hesitated to speak to those who invited me—regardless of what they called themselves—about what I have to say. However, I have never advocated anything other than what I have to say based on my own research. Thus, even during the time I belonged to the Theosophical Society, I advocated nothing other than what I had to advocate based on my own research.

[ 73 ] The fact that I already referred to what I presented as “anthroposophy” at that time should be evident to you from the fact that, during the same period—not just later, after I had perhaps arrived at a different viewpoint than that of this society—I also gave lectures to another group of people in Berlin, and there I presented not a jot different from precisely what I had to present based on my research. And there I announced my lectures—so that people would not be misled in any way—as anthroposophical reflections on human evolution. So for as long as anyone can associate me with theosophy, I will continue to call my worldview “anthroposophy.” There has never been a break in this. That is all I wish to say on the matter for now, so as not to keep you too long.

[ 74 ] Well, ladies and gentlemen, some people say that when one studies the history of philosophy, one finds that philosophers—starting with Thales and going all the way up to Eucken or others—have put forward all sorts of views and that they have often contradicted one another; how, then, can one arrive at certainty in knowledge? — That is precisely what I set out to do in my Riddles of Philosophy: to show that this is not the case, but that what appear to be discrepancies among the various philosophies worthy of the name always stem solely from the fact that one person views the phenomena of the world from one standpoint, while another views them from a different standpoint. If you photograph a tree from one side, what you see in the picture is only from a specific angle. If you photograph the tree from another side, you get a completely different image—and yet it is the same tree. Once you realize that many truly valid philosophies do not differ in that one diverges from the other, but rather that they simply view one and the same thing from different perspectives—because it is impossible to arrive at a single truth in the first place—then you realize that it is a prejudice to say that philosophies contradict one another.

[ 75 ] I have shown in my book The Riddles of Philosophy that it is a prejudice to say that philosophers contradict one another. There are, however, some who do contradict one another, but these are simply the ones who were mistaken. One cannot conclude, simply because two children in a class solve a problem differently, that it is therefore unclear who has found the correct answer. One already knows what is correct once one understands the correct solution. Therefore, the fact that things differ does not imply that they are wrong. That could only be deduced from the inner workings of the matter itself. One would have to look at the inner workings of the matter itself. And it is an external observation to say: “Steiner has resigned from the Theosophical Society.” — First of all, I did not resign; rather, after I was initially dragged in with all my might to present my own worldview—and nothing else at all—I was—and perhaps I may use the sometimes frowned-upon expression before you—thrown out, and for the reason, my esteemed audience, that the “other kind of truth,” namely the madness of those Theosophists who finally went so far as to present an Indian boy whom they claimed was the newly appeared Christ; they said he would be brought to Europe and that the reincarnated Christ had appeared in him. — Because I, of course, characterized this folly as folly—and because at that time this folly found thousands of followers all over the world—these followers took the opportunity to expel me. I didn’t let it bother me. In any case, I did not believe that what one has attained through inner research appears uncertain simply because a society that calls itself theosophical expels one—a society that claims that Christ has once again incarnated in the Indian boy.

[ 76 ] Such matters should not be viewed in such a superficial way, by simply overlooking the specifics and saying: “Well, there are different points of view.” — One really must take a closer look at what is happening. And so I would like to suggest to you, when you have the time—though it would take a great deal of effort—to compare all the quackery that has occurred in the so-called theosophical societies with what I have always sought to present on the basis of sound scholarship. I say this not out of immodesty, but out of a realistic understanding of the matter and out of intellectual struggle. And bear in mind that I myself said today: One can be mistaken in individual details, but the point is to point the way in a new direction. It is by no means necessary that every single detail be absolutely correct. After all, someone might very well say that they look at a right-angled triangle and derive all sorts of things from it. Then someone comes along and says: “The square of the hypotenuse of a right-angled triangle is equal to the sum of the squares of the two legs.” — You can’t know for sure whether it might be generally true, because he’s the only one saying it. No, if—based on internal reasons—it has become clear to me from the contemplation of mathematics that the square of the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares of the two legs, then even if a million people say it’s otherwise, I know better and will contradict a million people. For the truth does indeed have not merely an external justification of agreement, but above all a justification in its inner substantiality.

[ 77 ] Certainly, anyone can verify this. And I have never claimed anything other than that anyone who wishes to do so can become familiar with the method of spiritual science just as they can become familiar with the methods of chemistry. But once things have been researched, they can be verified by any thinking person. And so what I say or what I write—and have written—based on spiritual science can also be verified by any thinking person. There will certainly be various errors in it, of course, but that is just as it is with other fields of research. It is not a matter of these individual errors, but rather of the fundamental character of the whole.

[ 78 ] Have I used a single Indian expression today? And if something is sometimes referred to by using some old expression, that is simply a technical term used because no such expression exists in current usage. Even if I can prove the Pythagorean theorem on the blackboard—or anything else for that matter—can one really be criticized for that just because it existed centuries ago? For me, it is not a matter of presenting ancient Indian ideas or the like, but of presenting what arises from the matter itself. Just as today, anyone who grasps and understands the Pythagorean theorem does so from the nature of the matter itself, even though it is found to have first appeared at a specific point in time, so naturally some things—though only seemingly—must correspond to what was already there. But it is precisely against this that I have always protested most vehemently—that what is being attempted here, arising from the present stage of human consciousness, has anything to do with some ancient Indian mysticism or the like. There are echoes, of course, because instinctive insight in ancient times discovered many things that must resurface today. But what I mean is not drawn from ancient traditions. It is truly such that what I wrote back then, when I authored the first edition of my book Theosophy in 1904, is true—true for me: I wish to communicate nothing other than what I have come to know through spiritual scientific research—just as one comes to know any other scientific truth through external observation and deductive reasoning—and for which I myself can personally vouch. — Certainly, some may disagree, but I present nothing other than that for which I can personally vouch. I say this not out of immodesty, but because I wish to appear as a person who seeks to establish a new spiritual science not from any spirit other than that of modern natural science and modern technology, and because I believe that this new consciousness can only be understood—precisely in its natural-scientific and technical character—when one is driven by both of these to a contemplation of the spirit.

[ 79 ] Please do not take my words to mean that I was trying to evade what the distinguished speaker before me said. No, I am grateful that I have been given the opportunity to correct some factual errors that have become very widespread. But some things—in fact, quite a lot—of what is being said today about what I have been lecturing on in Stuttgart for decades is entirely based on errors. And it seemed necessary to me—as the previous speaker commendably did—to address the points raised, because this is not merely a matter of correcting what affects me personally, but also of correcting, through historical context, what the previous speaker linked to the substance of the issue.

Question: If Dr. Steiner can prove even one point of spiritual science to me in the same way that the teachings of Pythagoras can be proven, then I will gladly follow him; then it is science.

[ 80 ] Rudolf Steiner: Ladies and gentlemen, who can truly prove the Pythagorean theorem? The Pythagorean theorem cannot be proven by my drawing a right-angled triangle on the blackboard and then carrying out the proof using one of the usual methods. That is merely an illustration of the proof. The point is that whoever wishes to prove the Pythagorean theorem is compelled to have before them, in inner vision, that which is mathematically constructible—even if only within the inner vision of geometric spatial perception. So imagine a consciousness that lacked this spatial perception. It would not have the essential nature of the Pythagorean theorem before it, and it would make no sense at all to prove the Pythagorean theorem. We can prove the Pythagorean theorem only by having the essential nature of spatial perception and spatial configuration before us. The moment we ascend to another form of consciousness, something else is added to the ordinary conception of space [gap in the stenographic record]. Thus, if the Pythagorean theorem is to be proven, it is essential that this perception of space form the basis. For this, however, it is first necessary to find one’s way, as it were, into this new configuration of consciousness. But as long as one has no perception of spatial configuration, one cannot arrive at the very observation that leads to the proof of the Pythagorean theorem. And one will continue to believe that the results of spiritual scientific research cannot be proven in the same way as long as one has not yet made that transition from ordinary consciousness to the experiential consciousness I have described.

[ 81 ] I have assumed that the experiencing consciousness exists only then. And just as someone who lacks a spatial conception cannot speak of the Pythagorean theorem, so one cannot speak of the proof of any proposition in spiritual science unless one accepts the entire mode of perception. But this way of perceiving is something that must first be attained. It does not arise of its own accord. Our time, however, demands that one commit to something entirely new if one wishes to move toward this progress in science. And I do believe that much still needs to be overcome before something similar to what occurred with the Copernican worldview—in contrast to all earlier conceptions of the infinity of space—toward spiritual science takes hold in wider circles. In the past, people imagined a blue sphere up there. Now people imagine that there are limits to our understanding of nature that cannot be overcome—or, that we cannot go beyond ordinary thinking. — Such things are well known to anyone who follows the history of human development. And I can only say: Either what I have attempted to present is a path to the truth—not the finished truth—and then it will be followed; or it is a path to error, and then it will be overcome. But that does no harm. What must not be allowed to die within us, what must not be swept away by premature criticism, is the ever-present striving upward and forward. And it is this striving alone that actually animates what I have tried to characterize for you today as the path that anthroposophically oriented spiritual science seeks to follow.

[ 82 ] Question: We must have the firm belief that the effort we put forth will be worthwhile. Is it even possible to recognize spiritual life in and of itself? Dr. Steiner says it is possible to recognize the spirit of the world, the spirit of all life and all nature, and to come into contact with it. Is that possible with our spirit, with our thinking? I have to doubt that. Thinking consists of mental images. I think in images.

[ 83 ] Rudolf Steiner: If I were to address this question, I would have to keep you waiting for quite a long time. I do not want to do that, and I will not. I only regret that this question was not asked earlier; then I could have answered it more thoroughly.

[ 84 ] Throughout my writings, you can find the very points I raise as hypothetical objections, which are also discussed there, so that you can already find answers to your doubts in the literature. Here, however, I would like to say only the following: It is the case with certain people that, through preconceived notions, they make it impossible for themselves, as it were, to move beyond appearances. They point to the appearances and then say: We do not recognize what lies behind them. — The whole of Kantianism is, in essence, based on this error. And my entire endeavor began with my attempt to combat this error. I would like to use an analogy to explain to you how one can gradually resolve these doubts.

[ 85 ] When someone looks at a single letter, they can say: This single letter refers to nothing other than its form, and I cannot relate this form to anything else; it tells me nothing else. — And when I look at, say, an electrical phenomenon, it is just as if I were looking at a letter that tells me nothing. But it is different when I look at many letters in succession and form a word, so that I am led from looking to reading. I also have nothing else before me but what is being observed, but I penetrate to the meaning. There I am led to something entirely different. And so it is also true that, as long as one grasps only individual natural phenomena and individual natural elements—elements in the sense of mathematical elements—one can rightly say that one does not penetrate to the inner essence. But if one then attempts to bring everything to life within its context, to engage with it through a new activity—just as in the transition from the mere individual letter to reading the word—then it becomes something entirely different. Therefore, what aspires to be spiritual science is nothing other than phenomenology, but a phenomenology that does not stop at merely assembling individual phenomena, but rather reads them within the context of phenomena. It is phenomenology, and there is no fault in going beyond the phenomena in a speculative manner; rather, one inquires of them whether they have something to say—not merely in detail, but in context—for a certain inner activity.

[ 86 ] It must be understood that, if one considers only the individual phenomena, one may adopt the standpoint that Haller held when he said: “No creative spirit penetrates into the innermost being of nature; blessed is he to whom she reveals only her outer shell.” But one also understands, when someone grasps phenomenology as Goethe did—and spiritual science is merely advanced Goetheanism—that Goethe, in response to Haller’s words, says: “Into the innermost depths of nature—oh, you philistine!—‘No creative spirit penetrates; blessed is he to whom she reveals only the outer shell.’” I’ve heard this repeated for sixty years; I curse it, but secretly; I tell myself a thousand thousand times: She gives everything abundantly and gladly; nature has neither core nor shell—she is all at once. Examine yourself above all else to see whether you are core or shell.”