The Rudolf Steiner Archive

2. Anthroposophy: Its Nature and Philosophical Foundations

[ 1 ] Ladies and gentlemen! At the invitation of the local Free Student Association, I would like to speak to you today about the nature and purpose of the anthroposophically oriented worldview, and in a few introductory remarks, I would like above all to point out that this anthroposophically oriented worldview seeks to be in full harmony, first, with the most essential cultural demands of the present and—as far as one can discern them—of the near future. In particular, however, this worldview also seeks to be in full harmony with what has emerged over the course of the last three to four centuries for the development of humanity through what is called the scientific worldview. It is fair to say: This anthroposophically oriented worldview—which many people today still regard merely as a form of sectarianism, as the eccentricity of a few unworldly individuals—seeks, in the most intense way possible, to listen closely to what moves our time most deeply; it seeks, so to speak, to grasp with great intensity a matter of conscience for our time—and perhaps even more so for the near future.

[ 2 ] May I not say, my esteemed audience, that for the past three to four centuries, through what is called a scientifically oriented worldview, many of the old ways of thinking—which satisfied the human heart and senses—have been brought into conflict with humanity itself; that many things had to be cast aside from what had been sacred for centuries, even millennia; and that science has exposed as illusions many things that older worldviews had counted among their most valuable elements? And is it not clear, in the face of the hardships and catastrophes of our time, that the moment—the moment of world-historical significance—has come in which this scientific worldview must now, in a sense, fulfill what many have long expected of it: that it must once again open up for humanity a path to those spiritual heights without which, after all, human beings cannot live—and to which the old path had been taken away from them? With this question, ladies and gentlemen, the anthroposophical worldview wishes to get down to business in earnest. Now, I certainly harbor no illusion that, in the brief time of a lecture, I could convince anyone in this hall of what anthroposophy actually strives for. I will be able, so to speak, only to hint at some of the paths that are being taken in this field. And I will be able to offer some food for thought regarding the manner in which research and inquiry should be conducted in the realm of an anthroposophically oriented worldview.

[ 3 ] In its very nature, anthroposophy is entirely different from all other contemporary forms of scientific inquiry. And precisely because it differs in its fundamental nature even from what is generally regarded today as the sole form of scientific inquiry, it is misunderstood in wide circles and—one might even say—treated so unfairly. In conventional science—as indeed in life in general—the sources of human knowledge are regarded as being what can be experienced through the senses, and what the mind and intellect can derive through observation from this sensory world in the form of natural laws and the like. In this way, one attempts to gain an overview of what constitutes the human environment. In this way, one attempts to gain insights into humanity’s own position and purpose within the world order. In a sense, one regards human beings as they are born into the world, as they can be raised and educated in the ordinary sense of the word, and as they can then—on the basis of this fact of being born into the world, relying solely on the abilities and characteristics they have inherited as human beings, and on the basis of what ordinary education provides—explore the world scientifically or in other ways in life.

[ 4 ] Anthroposophy does not take this position. It appeals to something within the human being that is still, in fact, a rarity in human nature today and that, when humanity fulfills its next cultural task, will have to assert itself in human culture in a way quite different from how it exists today. Anthroposophy appeals to what I would like to call intellectual modesty. I often use a comparison to clarify what I mean by this intellectual modesty—which immediately leads us into the very essence of what anthroposophy actually aims to be. If we have a five-year-old child and we give this five-year-old, for example, a volume of Goethe’s poems, what will the child do with this volume of Goethe’s poems? It will probably play with it at first and then tear the book apart; in any case, it will have no idea what this volume of Goethe’s poems is actually intended for. If we educate the child and raise it, we will guide it so that, as an adult aged 17, 18, or 19, it will make a completely different use of this volume of Goethe’s poems. One might say: What now lies before the seventeen- or eighteen-year-old is exactly the same as what once lay before the five-year-old child. Yet the seventeen- or eighteen-year-old behaves quite differently from the child, because something within them has matured, because something has been drawn forth from the depths of their inner being—which in turn gives rise to a different relationship to the book than before. Applied to a person’s relationship to nature and to the entire world, this results in what I would like to call intellectual humility—namely, when a person resolves to say to themselves, simply as a human being: No matter how old I become, no matter how I am raised and educated in ordinary life, my relationship to all of nature and to the entire environment is such that I relate to it as the five-year-old child relates to the volume of Goethe’s poetry. And in order to relate differently, I must first bring forth from the very depths of my being something that lies deep within. Then something will be revealed to me that cannot be offered to me through ordinary sensory observation, nor through the ordinary reasoning mind as it operates in conventional life and development. — This is the essence of the anthroposophical worldview: that one does not approach the investigation of things as one is, but must first bring forth something that lies hidden within the human being. And only after one has, in a certain sense, taken one’s own development into one’s own hands—after one has advanced beyond what one is simply by virtue of being born, of having been raised and educated in the ordinary sense, after one has transformed oneself into a different kind of human being—only then does one approach the investigation and exploration of things. Thus, the transformation of the entire human soul life prior to the exploration of things—this is, first and foremost, the essence of what underlies the striving of an anthroposophically oriented worldview.

[ 5 ] And here I must say that the anthroposophically oriented worldview is based on two cornerstones—notably also those of scientific life. One of these cornerstones is the limits of our understanding of nature. With regard to the understanding of nature, anthroposophy is firmly grounded in the kind of conscientious research that sets very specific limits on natural science itself; indeed, the anthroposophically oriented worldview seeks to be in full harmony with everything that natural science legitimately brings to light. But precisely because we delve into any field of the natural sciences not in an amateurish way, but in an objective and professional manner, we inevitably encounter limits.

[ 6 ] And we must, after all, define certain concepts within these boundaries; today—just to cite something as an example, though many other examples could be given—I would like to highlight the two concepts of the atom, on the one hand, and matter and force, on the other. We then come to work scientifically with concepts such as force and matter, force and substance. A great deal of philosophical thought has, after all, been tied to concepts such as force and substance. In more recent times, one has even gone so far as to attempt to establish a philosophy of the “as if”—that is, one told oneself, one cannot, after all, arrive at any completely clear, illuminating concepts of force and substance, and so one should investigate the broad realm of phenomena and perceptions “as if” such concepts corresponded to a reality that one simply does not know, “as if” they had any validity whatsoever. One may well say that this philosophy of “as if” is a desperate worldview, however plausible it may seem to some people today. We have, in fact, arrived at one of the cornerstones of human knowledge when we reach this concept—this boundary concept of the understanding of nature. Pursued purely intellectually, however, these concepts become, in a sense, a cross, a crux, for our understanding.

[ 7 ] The researcher of the spirit, the anthroposophist, now attempts to deal with this concept in a completely different way than ordinary philosophers. Conventional philosophy seeks to continue the intellectualistic approach even at the points where one has reached the limits of natural science. Spiritual science, as I mean it here, attempts to initiate something entirely different within the human soul. When one has reached this limiting concept, one aspect of the methodology of spiritual science and spiritual research emerges. This aspect consists not of a confused or inferior form of mystical meditation, but rather of a systematic, well-structured, thoroughly rigorous, and conscientious meditation. I would like to describe this meditation to you first, at least in principle. You will find more detailed information on this in the literature, particularly in my book How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds?. The point is that one must practice again and again—and I expressly emphasize that patience and energy are essential to this. Conducting research in a chemistry laboratory may seem difficult to some, as may work at an observatory; it may seem easy to them to achieve something through the systematic transformation of the soul. But anyone who adheres to the truly rigorous method in this field knows that all research in the laboratory, in the clinic, or at the observatory is relatively easy compared to those procedures that are imagined to be easier than they actually are—procedures that consist in a transformation of our inner life.

[ 8 ] This begins by placing, at the center of one’s imaginative life, strictly clear and simple concepts—let us say, for now, those one has formed oneself, such as symbols or the like. What matters here, my esteemed audience, is not whether these concepts, these ideas, correspond to the truth, for what matters is what these ideas bring about in our inner life. What matters is that, in a sense, we use these ideas to carry out a rigorous self-education, a rigorous self-discipline, within our intellect. We therefore place at the center of our inner life those concepts that we can grasp clearly, those that we have formed ourselves or that we have been advised to adopt by experienced researchers of the spirit. We first attempt to shut out everything else from our consciousness, focusing this consciousness solely and exclusively on such clearly comprehensible concepts. The point is that the moment we concentrate in this way on such concepts, our physical images and our memories actually fly in from all sides—as if we were in a swarm of bees and the bees were flying toward us—and actually seek to destroy our inner methodology. We must expend ever greater and greater effort. And it is this exertion of strength that matters; what matters is that we drive the will—with all our might—into our life of imagination, into the act of imagining, so that we actually grow stronger through this driving of the will into our life of imagination.

[ 9 ] This is one aspect of strictly scientific—or rather, science-oriented—meditation: that we drive the will into the life of the imagination. Such exercises cannot be completed in a few days. They require years of effort. One must return to them again and again. It is not a matter of performing these exercises for a long time each day. One might say that a few minutes are enough for a day. But returning to them again and again—that is what matters. Then one finally experiences how the soul summons up entirely different forces from its deepest realms than those summoned in ordinary life and even in ordinary science. If one applies them by concentrating every possible effort of will on such a self-created object of will, then after some time, as I said, I can only hint at the principle; you can read the details in my books—the ability to engage with the fundamental concepts of natural science—such as matter and force and the like (I could also cite others)—in a way that is different from a purely intellectual approach.

[ 10 ] Then the following occurs: One no longer speculates or philosophizes at these limits of our understanding of nature, but rather experiences something through these concepts. In the face of these concepts, something takes place in the soul that encompasses experiences we otherwise only have—for example, when we love outwardly or when we are otherwise caught up in the struggles of external life. What matters, my esteemed audience, is that by turning away from the entire external world, we undergo something within ourselves that thus leads us into a reality which is just as intense for us—which manifests itself just as intensely in our consciousness—as the external reality we otherwise touch and work with through our hands and feet. And when we have worked our way through in this manner—through concentration and meditation—to a consciousness that has been strengthened inwardly, in the intellect, and through volition, then what can be characterized as follows finally occurs: Just as one otherwise recognizes red as a color through external observation, just as one recognizes blue, just as one hears the note C-sharp or C—so, when one has worked one’s way through in this manner, no longer making use of the physical, no longer of the nervous system or the like as a tool, but rather by experiencing what pertains solely to the soul—so one recognizes that there is a soul aspect in and of itself — one knows this in immediate consciousness.

[ 11 ] It is at this very moment, ladies and gentlemen, that one says to oneself—based on direct experience—the following; I would like to illustrate this with a comparison. Let’s suppose we’re walking along a path that’s been softened by rain; we see ruts in the path made by carts, and we see footprints. If we’re reasonable people, it won’t occur to us to say: These ruts in the softened path are caused by forces beneath the surface that shape the earth in such a way that these ruts and footprints come into being. — Rather, we will say to ourselves: Something is coming into contact with the earth’s surface that is indifferent to the earth’s surface as such, something that approaches it from the outside; carts and human feet have passed over it, and these are indifferent to what the earth itself shapes from within. — If one truly comes to know the inner configuration of soul life in the way I have described, then one ultimately views everything that constitutes the physical organization of the brain in such a way that one says: This is by no means shaped in any way by the inner forces of the physical constellation, but rather the soul—which one has only now come to know—has worked from the outside just as human footsteps or carts have worked on the softened earth.

[ 12 ] In other words, ladies and gentlemen, one does not come to know the spiritual realm through speculation; one comes to know it only by gradually working one’s way up to the experience of the soul, by, so to speak, allowing that which ordinary life and ordinary science would like to regard as their end—the intellectual, the concepts of perception—to be merely the beginning. Once one has reached the point where one has experienced this spiritual realm in this way through direct perception, then through this method—through this kind of anthroposophical methodology—one stands directly before the experiential, directly perceivable grasp of what I would like to call human pre-existence, the spiritual-soul pre-existence of the human being, for from this contemplation arises not a speculation about what is called human immortality, but a direct perception of pre-existence. One sees, inwardly and soulfully in spiritual vision, that which works upon the body, that which configures the body. One beholds it, and in beholding it, one is also able to trace it back to before birth or, let us say, to before conception. Thus, anthroposophy traces the idea of immortality in a manner that differs in its very essence from that of ordinary philosophy. Conventional philosophy seeks to deduce, from what is experienced between birth and death, that which extends beyond birth and death. Anthroposophy, however, regards even the very act of deduction merely as a preparation; it seeks to immerse itself fully in the exploration of these boundary concepts so that it may experience what figures as the immortal within the human being and is active within them. Subjectively, that which fills human consciousness becomes more active than we usually experience it to be. And this is what is truly important—I will have to return to this point later in the lecture—that, above all, through this method of anthroposophy, the human being becomes increasingly active. He actually ceases to merely passively submit to the course of events, or at most to what he has brought about in recent times through the design of experiments—in which, however, he again passively submits to what the experiment tells him. All of this certainly has its justification, and spiritual science is the last to dispute this justification. But beyond that, anthroposophically oriented methodology rises to a form of active thinking—a thinking that grasps immortal being itself directly in the very act of human thought. I know how much can be said against this experience, which must take the place of ordinary discursive reasoning, but even if it can be philosophically justified—I will return to this point briefly later. I merely wanted to show, on the one hand, how this aspect of anthroposophical methodology—which is based on an evaluation of thinking and on the will’s influence on the intellect—actually leads to a truly essential recognition of the pre-existence of the human being. What is grasped is that immortal aspect which exists in the spiritual worlds before conception and before birth, and which cannot be explained from the physical realm, because it reveals itself as that which works upon the physical, and because it is precisely the physical, the corporeal, that emerges—as I will show immediately with an example—as that which is shaped out of this spirit.

[ 13 ] The second important aspect of anthroposophical methodology consists in approaching one’s own self in a different way than is usually the case. People usually approach this inner self through what is commonly called mysticism in the ordinary sense of the word. Just as the anthroposophist must no longer harbor any illusions regarding the limits of knowledge of nature—and must, through the experience just described, perceive this knowledge of nature in its true form—so too must anyone who wishes to become a true anthroposophical researcher avoid harboring any illusions about the deceptions and illusions of ordinary mysticism. Anyone who believes they can look into the human inner being in the way that mystics of all ages have described it—and as is often alluded to in religion—will not truly attain knowledge of the human self. It is simply not possible, my esteemed audience, to move beyond the element of deception by this path.

[ 14 ] How much does a person really know about what he heard here and there—say, during childhood? He need only have lain in a meadow somewhere once, heard the distant toll of a bell; no sooner had this fact entered his consciousness than he had already forgotten it. Decades later, as a man, as an adult, he encounters some event in the world—and quietly, within this series of events, something emerges that echoes that almost entirely unnoticed sound of a bell. And a whole series of ideas, which we believe spring from within the human soul, are nothing other than a reminiscence of what we experienced in our early youth. Anyone who truly endeavors to explore the human inner life in this way—through a more rigorous psychology than is commonly practiced today—knows how greatly human self-knowledge is subject to illusions. They know to what extent what mystics of all ages believed they were drawing from within themselves as some kind of power is nothing other than the transformed—perhaps now nebulous, but in any case metamorphosed—experience of an earlier stage of life. Just as one must undergo what I have just described in order to approach the limits of knowledge of nature without delusion, so too must one not indulge in nebulous mysticism in the ordinary sense, but must—again in a different way—systematically train the soul in the other cornerstone of human cognition. And one can do this only by approaching something to which one otherwise pays little attention in life.

[ 15 ] We experience our existence between birth and death, decade by decade, year by year. We passively submit to many things. There are few things to which we actively and willingly devote ourselves fully. Anyone who wishes to become a spiritual researcher in the sense intended here must regard as the second stage of the path to knowledge what I would like to call strictly systematic self-discipline. One must resolve, again and again—which is why the path to knowledge takes years, many years—one must resolve, again and again: You want to “incorporate” this or that quality into yourself, as Nietzsche put it. You want to make this or that a part of yourself. — If I thereby gain the ability, as it were, to bridge the gap between the present and a point in time that may lie five, ten, or fifteen years in the past, I have, through my own activity, incorporated something into my soul over the course of five, ten, or fifteen years, then I am in a position to observe how this—which I have internalized over five, ten, or fifteen years, something I have made my own through self-discipline—takes effect; that is, I then perceive how such a thing has become something else today, how it emerges as a new element.

[ 16 ] If I proceed in this way, my esteemed audience, by bringing into the intellect, into concepts and ideas, that which otherwise acts merely as will—just as I have brought the will into the intellect— then I must now bring the intellect into my life, into that volition which otherwise usually just flows past me as I passively surrender to life. I take my life into my own hands. In this way, I try, as it were, to walk alongside myself, to observe myself—one must do this with the necessary naivety, so that one does not lose one’s naivety toward life. Through such processes, one thus becomes, as it were, one’s own doppelgänger. And one comes to make one’s life of will into something that one observes, just as one otherwise merely observes the external natural world. If one succeeds in doubling oneself in this way, so to speak—in becoming both a spectator and an actor at the same time—then one has achieved something that manifests itself in a very peculiar way. In a new way, one now comes to understand what one has, in essence, hitherto regarded merely as memory. Memories bring into the present what one experienced ten, fifteen, twenty years ago, and so on. Now one experiences something entirely new that appears to be a transformation of memory.

[ 17 ] But lest I be misunderstood, I would like to expressly note: Of course—in all other aspects of life, one retains one’s ordinary memory; it is only for the purpose of spiritual research that one experiences the transformation of memory I am about to describe. One experiences something like what one otherwise experiences only in space. In space, let’s say, one walks down an avenue. One turns around once: one sees not only the images of the trees one has passed, no, one sees—albeit from a different perspective than before—the trees themselves. In the same way, it rises up in one’s consciousness. One looks back on one’s life, but now not merely by having the images, the phantasms of the past; rather, one recognizes—just as when one looks around in an avenue in physical space—through this different perspective that one surveys life in the immediate present, as if time had become space. What is otherwise memory becomes a wholly new spiritual power, a looking into time. And only now does one, in a certain sense, gain a true understanding of that mysterious element in our own being, which is otherwise just as unknown to us as the content of sleep—dreamless sleep—is to ordinary consciousness. In this way, one gains insight into the nature of the human will, and one indeed gains the ability to see this nature of the human will at work in the physical realm. And by coming to know the will in this way as transformed memory, one gains a direct insight into the other end of life, into the afterlife, into that which within us carries us out through the gate of death and into a spiritual world. Once again, it is through the development of a very special element of the soul into a direct experience that anthroposophically oriented spiritual science seeks to advance toward a comprehensive worldview.

[ 18 ] Well, my esteemed audience, by approaching the two cornerstones of human knowledge in this way—knowledge of nature on the one hand, and self-knowledge on the other— by penetrating, on the one hand, beyond the limits of knowledge of nature—not through speculation, but through direct experience—into the soul itself, and by penetrating, on the other hand, into the realm of one’s own will—not by engaging in mysticism, but by methodically cultivating one’s power of memory through strict self-discipline— in this way one truly awakens within the human being that which is immortal in that person. And this seems to me to be a continuation of that which, while not the external scientific method of the present day, is nonetheless scientific education.

[ 19 ] I must confess that it seems to me that anyone who does not, out of a blind urge to follow authority or out of convenience, remain content with what natural science currently offers—this admirable natural science—but who allows natural science to pose the great question that it inevitably imposes on the soul, must, just as I have described in my Riddles of Philosophy, feel compelled not merely to speculate or philosophize beyond what natural science provides, but must seek to further develop what he applies through experimentation into a more active intellect, into a more active will. Then he attains that intensity of soul life of which I have just spoken, where immortality is not speculated about but is directly beheld. And then, my esteemed audience, what today still appears to people—when described, for example, in my Occult Science or in some of my other books—as a wild fantasy will also present itself as something self-evident; yet I believe this will gradually emerge more and more precisely from the enigmatic nature of scientific research itself. How, then, do we seek to make sense of the natural sciences? Through rigorous methods! And precisely those who stand on the ground of anthroposophy will be the very last to fail to recognize these rigorous scientific methods. But look, we are faced, for example, with the following situation. We say to ourselves: We develop certain geological concepts; and, starting from the principles of Lyell and other geologists, we attempt to form a picture of the Earth’s geological stratification as it exists today. We then attempt, using the well-known methods, to derive a picture of the past from this picture by going back—more or less, since the time periods are disputed—millions of years; other researchers go millions of years forward by prophetically foreseeing this or that about the end of the Earth based on physical or geological evidence. We form a picture of the evolution of our Earth, and humanity has developed alongside the Earth. However, in the short time allotted for a lecture, I cannot provide a complete overview of the existing findings in spiritual science—if you review the relevant literature, you will see that certain things do exist; I can only offer suggestions and point to the ways in which these matters are being investigated.

[ 20 ] Take, for example, the study of the human heart. We form a picture of how this human heart changes within the organism over the course of five, ten years, and so on. We then infer what this human heart was like thirty years ago; we can do this quite well for a person who is forty years old, but not for one who is only twenty. However, we could take this mere inference a step further and, using a strictly mathematical method, ask ourselves: What was this heart like thirty years ago? — In doing so, we would be employing no other method than that used by today’s geologists when they describe this or that rock layer as it was millions of years ago; for we forget that before those millions of years, the Earth may not have existed, just as human beings did not exist as physical beings at that time. And when we today, based on certain laws of physics or geology, make a prophetic assumption about some end of the Earth millions of years from now, it is as if we were to calculate, based on the degree of change the human heart has undergone in five years, what that heart was like in a person three hundred years ago.

[ 21 ] At first glance, this seems like an enormous paradox. And yet, my esteemed audience, it is entirely justified for those who do not approach it with their intellect or with what authority has instilled in them, but who immerse themselves with their whole soul and with an open-minded human nature precisely in the admirable science of the present. And this contemporary science itself can benefit greatly from precisely the kind of approach I have suggested, for it is indeed still very much the case today that there are few collaborators in the field of the humanities. Those whom one would wish to have as collaborators are certainly not laypeople or dilettantes—the matter is far too serious for that. As collaborators, I would most like to have those who have faithfully immersed themselves in some field of science for years, who have learned to work scientifically, and who, in this scientific work, have retained all the impartiality necessary to then transform the human powers of cognition and the soul in the way I have indicated, so that one may then enter into that which, in a much more concrete and truly realistic way, leads to an understanding of, for example, human nature itself. Anthroposophy will be the best foundation for an anthropology that is useful for medicine as well as for the social sciences.

[ 22 ] That is why it gave me such great satisfaction—I mention this because it is entirely relevant to the matters I would like to discuss today— when, a few weeks ago in Dornach—where we have established the School of Spiritual Science with an anthroposophical orientation at the Goetheanum—I was able to hold a week-long course for forty doctors and medical students—a course on the very way in which the bridge between pathology and therapy can be built, something so many people today, especially medical professionals, long for: how this bridge can be built through an understanding of the human being such as can be brought about when we no longer reflect abstractly on the relationship between body and soul, but rather when we come to look into the concrete reality. I would like to give a small example of this—admittedly a somewhat remote one—but it will serve to illustrate the concreteness with which spiritual science seeks to address specifically scientific problems.

[ 23 ] The fact is that there is speculation about the relationship between body and soul; parallel theories, interaction theories, and so on have been proposed. However, one does not actually have a true insight into, on the one hand, the spiritual-psychic realm—which can only be attained in the way I have described today—and, on the other hand, the physical realm. The more materialistically oriented worldview suffers precisely from the tragic fate of being unable to master matter. After all, we cannot look into material processes since the advent of materialism, because the inner nature of material processes is precisely spiritual, and one must first perceive the spirit if one wishes to understand material processes.

[ 24 ] So I would like to show you, so to speak, the findings that emerge regarding a particular stage of human development when one approaches the subject from a spiritual scientific perspective. We see how, through birth, the human being grows into physical existence. We then see how, in a certain sense, an important milestone occurs when a person goes through the change of teeth around the sixth, seventh, or eighth year of life. Yet this change of teeth is understood in the true sense only when we take into account the whole physical, spiritual, and soul aspects of the human being as they undergo transformation during this important phase of life. And we see—I can only hint at this—when we consider the soul, first of all that which I have already discussed on numerous occasions from this very place in lectures I have given primarily for laypeople — we see how the child, who develops as an imitator up until the change of teeth, becomes a being who is eager to develop under the influence of the authority of this environment; thus, with the change of teeth, the principle of imitation gives way to the principle of authority. But apart from that—if we are now truly able to look closely at this human soul life, if we have learned to deepen our observation of the soul—and one truly learns to deepen this observation when one cultivates within oneself all that I have mentioned today as discipline of the will and intellect— if one looks at everything that happens to a person around the time of tooth replacement, then it becomes apparent how what first develops in a person as the capacity for memory undergoes a specific transformation with the change of teeth. It becomes apparent how, from this epoch onward, our imagination begins to take shape, how it begins to become a series of continuously recallable images. And I could point out many examples! But I would have to speak at length if I wanted to show how the transformation of the entire intellectual element of the soul manifests itself purely empirically around the period of tooth replacement.

[ 25 ] If one then continues to explore what can be investigated in this field, continuing with that concrete empiricism that arises precisely from having sharpened one’s inner eye through the method I have described, one discovers how the process of shedding the second set of teeth reveals something that has been at work within a person throughout the first seven years of life, ultimately pushing itself away and reaching a climax, a culmination, with the change of teeth. Now, as the change of teeth occurs, the soul becomes something different. Concepts take on contours. The entire faculty of memory—which, admittedly, was already present earlier—undergoes a transformation, and by extending the concepts of Goethe’s theory of metamorphosis to such developments, one recognizes how the soul-spiritual life has emancipated itself from the physical-bodily, how that same force—which later acts in the imagination, that is, in the intellectual realm—has had a formative, plastic effect on the body—reaches its culmination in the change of teeth and, after the teeth have erupted, reveals itself in a spiritual-psychic way. There one observes concretely—no longer abstractly, as one otherwise speculates about body and soul—this formative power, which one later observes, observes directly, when the human being draws sharply defined concepts, not phantoms, from memory. One observes how it shapes, how it drives the forces into the process of teething. By extending this observation over time, one sees how the spiritual-soul aspect works within the physical-bodily realm.

[ 26 ] Then again, when one observes people during the stage of life when sexual maturity occurs, one notices how, during this period—from the loss of baby teeth to sexual maturity—the element of will is particularly consolidated. But it is still active within the body, and one can see this in what occurs—in boys it manifests in the change of voice, in girls it manifests in a different way, but it is there nonetheless—namely, how the will, between the change of teeth and sexual maturity, takes possession, as it were, of the human organism. While the intellectual aspect emancipates itself, becomes free with the change of teeth, and acts independently, the volitional aspect becomes free by the time of sexual maturity. I would say that a purely spiritual element unites with the body, so that this change—which manifests in boys as the change in voice—clearly reveals how the life of the will takes shape within the physical body.

[ 27 ] From just these two elements I have mentioned here, you can see how one approaches the human being through concrete observation using spiritual empiricism. What I have shown here, however, leads from the human being out into the cosmos, and one learns to recognize it in the same way that one otherwise comes to know external sensory content through sensory perception. Through this spiritual vision, one learns to recognize a deeper, but also a more essential element of the cosmos. For example, one learns to recognize what, within the cosmic forces in which the human being is embedded, constitutes that which acts, on the one hand, up to the time of the change of teeth, and, on the other hand, up to sexual maturity. In the former case, it acts as an intellectual force, shaping the child until the change of teeth; then it emancipates itself and acts, on the other hand, as a volitional force that intensely takes hold of the human body upon reaching sexual maturity.

[ 28 ] Now one begins to recognize how that which, in a sense, brings forth the teeth—that which is at work in the human organism so that it may then transform into sharply contoured concepts of memory—is the very same thing that can only be called “light” in representation. In fact, however, it is everything that relates to sensory perception in the same way that light relates to the eye. One comes to recognize how light is what actually acts within the human organism, and how, through the power of light—which thus acts in seeing with the eyes (though in reality it is merely representation; we could speak of the same element for all the senses)—that which is otherwise experienced as heaviness is overcome. We see light and heaviness, light and gravity, in conflict with one another—cosmic light and cosmic gravity are active in the human being up until the change of teeth. And then, in turn, one sees how, from the change of teeth to sexual maturity, gravity conversely gains the upper hand, how the light-filled aspect—which, in turn, merely represents the rest of perception— is the content of sensory perceptions—but how, as gravity achieves a victory, an inner victory, over this light-like quality and thereby forces the will into human nature, and through this precisely configures the human being internally with what then makes him sexually mature, directing his organization toward his central elements.

[ 29 ] This learning to see through human nature, my esteemed audience, this direct, concrete, empirical connection of the spiritual with the material—that is what emerges from the anthroposophically oriented worldview. Truly, this is not some nebulous mysticism, but rather a form of research that is not only just as rigorous and methodical as is customary in science, but much more rigorous, because every individual subject one approaches is simultaneously accompanied by what the soul has made of itself, so that it sees something new in the old. Here, in fact, what is recognized in the human being from an anthropocentric perspective is expanded into the cosmic realm—without becoming anthropomorphic—and one will see that this is a rigorous scientific method when something like this is developed, as I was able to outline in my Occult Science.

[ 30 ] It is easy, my esteemed audience, for those who laugh at such a book, because they fail to grasp all the effort that went into it, all the paths that were taken, so that something like this could come into being. But something like this must be spoken of in the present. The materialistic orientation has led us to a point where we can no longer recognize matter itself, but can only speculate about the connection between spirit or soul and body or matter. Anthroposophically oriented spiritual science is meant to teach us to recognize the human being—truly grasping them as they are in spirit, soul, and body—and from there to open up paths out into the cosmos, for the human being is something that encompasses within themselves everything that otherwise exists in the cosmos. After all, we can conjure up an event that long has passed but that we have experienced—an event we carry as an image within us, even though the event itself is long gone—from what is within our soul. Because I was once present at this life event with my senses, my intellect, my emotions, and my feelings, I can conjure it up. Human beings were present in everything that has ever taken place in the cosmos, and through this they can also—when they grasp their entire being—truly grasp the cosmic—and in a different way than if one had to attain it externally. As I described earlier, inner knowledge also provides a certain cosmology, so that anthroposophy expands into a true cosmology, as I have attempted to portray in my Occult Science, which may still seem ridiculous to our contemporaries today, but which is based on a strictly scientific method, having simply emerged from the essence of the anthroposophical orientation.

[ 31 ] Ladies and gentlemen, what may be described as the essence of anthroposophy can, in a certain sense, certainly be justified philosophically as well. And anyone who has followed my writings from the beginning—how I attempted, in the 1880s, while commenting on Goethe, to develop a theory of knowledge; how I attempted, in my short work Truth and Science, to establish the relationship between human inner life and the outer cosmos, and as I then attempted in my Philosophy of Freedom to extend this to a complete worldview of the human being—such a person will find that effort has already been expended, to the extent possible up to the present day, to philosophically justify what, I would like to say, appears in higher, spiritual empiricism—namely, spiritual science, or anthroposophy—

[ 32 ] I must admit that, over the course of decades, I had to wage a persistent struggle against Kantianism—a persistent struggle against Kantianism, which, in my view, has misunderstood the epistemological problem and, with it, the fundamental philosophical problem. In the few minutes I have left, I cannot go into detail about Kantian philosophy or epistemology, but I can briefly point out what, philosophically speaking, is actually at stake if one truly wishes to understand human beings. One can, of course, begin by taking an empirical look at how human beings arrive at this limit of knowledge of nature—that is, how, at this limit of natural knowledge that has not yet been expanded through anthroposophy, they arrive at a cornerstone where they anchor the concepts of matter, force, and so on. Yes, the point is that whoever is now able to investigate this limit of natural knowledge through direct experience will also come to understand why human beings—and please forgive me for using “why” here, it is meant to be merely rhetorical, not teleological—why human beings are organized in such a way that at a certain point they must anchor concepts that are, in a sense, obscure and inscrutable to ordinary consciousness.

[ 33 ] For if we were able to constantly peer into the things of the world, to make them intellectually transparent, so to speak—including human beings—we would not be able to develop within our human nature that which we absolutely must have for ordinary life, and especially for ordinary social existence, that which we must absolutely develop between birth and death: We would lack that which lives within us as the element of love. Anyone who thoroughly studies the connection between knowledge and love from a psychological perspective will realize that this separation from the things that have become intellectually opaque to us—which is brought about by the limits of our knowledge of nature—is necessary. It is necessary so that we can develop the power of love within ourselves, within our entire human constitution. Not what Kant set forth in the Critique of Pure Reason and the like, but rather what we develop within ourselves as the power of love—that is what prevents us from making things intellectually transparent. We attain this intellectual clarity only through the paths I have described today. Human beings are organized in such a way that they must “purchase” the power of love by pushing the boundaries of our understanding of nature. But human beings are, after all, those beings who, through the power of love, maintain their true value and human dignity between birth and death.

[ 34 ] And yet, on the other hand, we have the other cornerstone—one that some would so lightly seek to overcome through a nebulous mysticism, and which can only be methodically overcome through the self-discipline I have described today: that cornerstone which lies in self-knowledge. Yes, my esteemed audience, if we could always look within ourselves, we would attain that insight which, in a sense, transforms time into space—an insight that, from an altered perspective on time, allows us to experience past events in a spiritual vision in a transcendent way—an insight that, as it were, tears away the veil of memories and enables us to look into the past and, through this, in a certain sense, into the future as well— if we always had that, then we would indeed see through it all—but we would lack the power of memory, of recollection. It is this power of recollection that we must possess just as we must possess love in ordinary human life. Whoever knows what a disturbed memory means for the continuity of the “I,” whoever knows that this “I” rests upon the power of undisturbed memory, will also be able to appreciate how this other cornerstone must stand. That power which, between birth and death, makes us beings capable of memory—it alone enables us, through the anthroposophical method of spiritual science, to tear away this veil of memory and, through self-observation, to look into our own inner being. Whoever, therefore, understands this organization—whoever, using true psychology, compares what appears in memory with what self-knowledge is—knows that we must also have this other cornerstone in ordinary human cognition and life. It is therefore due to our constitution—in a somewhat different way than Kant described it—that we must first grow beyond what organizes us in ordinary life if we wish to penetrate the depths of nature that we can aspire to and long for.

[ 35 ] But then, my esteemed audience, if this anthroposophically oriented spiritual science follows this path with inner vitality, it arrives at something that is, admittedly, very daring to articulate today—very daring indeed. But what good is it to leave such things unsaid, when they are precisely what matters? Anyone who looks today at how we must conceive of the world according to the thoughts and ideas that have emerged over the last three to four centuries can never bridge the gap between what arises in the soul as an ethical, moral, social, and even religious ideal, and what arises from the knowledge of nature.

[ 36 ] On the one hand, there are natural phenomena. They lead us—albeit hypothetically or through the philosophy of “as if”—to a beginning, to an earlier state of the physical universe; they then lead us to metamorphoses of this physical universe; they show us how a law—or, let us say, two laws, which are in fact one—prevails in this physical universe. If these laws operate as modern scientific understanding conceives them to, then no bridge can be built to the other realm—to the ethical, the social, or the religious ideal. And these two laws are the law of the conservation of energy and the indestructibility of matter. If the world out there in the universe, in nature, transforms itself in such a way that matter is indestructible and energy, while eternally conserved, merely takes on new forms, then—then our ethical ideals, our religious ideals, are nothing more than smoke rising into the air; then they are our great illusions. And when the world has long since transformed its matter and its forces in a certain way, then those experiences of the world that we encompass within our moral ideals, within our religious ideals, and so on, will have been laid to rest, sunk into nothingness. People usually do not draw attention to these things. But what is internally dividing many souls today, what is internally tearing many souls apart today—that is precisely what exists, more or less unconsciously, as a result of this complete failure to bridge the gap between knowledge of nature and the spiritual grasp of the moral and the religious as a state of mind.

[ 37 ] But, ladies and gentlemen, when we reach the limits of our understanding of nature and experience our own intellectuality as I have described it today, then we realize how our intellect belongs only to a certain phase of external existence, how we must not conceive of the beginning of earthly existence with the intellect that we actually come to know for the first time in the experience I have described—for this intellect belongs to that which lies only after this beginning and before the end. If we apply this intellect to the entire course of events—if we go back millions of years or forward millions of years, as geologists and physicists do—then we are doing the same thing as when we speak thoughtlessly, for example, of the transformation of the heart as it appears in human beings three hundred years ago or three hundred years from now. We must be clear about the nature of this intellect: that it does not measure up to the other powers of cognition, which we must attain in the manner described today.

[ 38 ] Anthroposophically oriented spiritual science does not establish a Rickertian or Windelbandian theory of value, in which values are supposed to assert themselves out of thin air, without any reality; rather, we are concerned with that which we can grasp intellectually. We feel an obligation to integrate value into the currents of being in some way. But this will be entirely impossible as long as we do not overcome the stifling law of the conservation of energy and matter. We must come to conceive of matter and force as transitory. It is merely a world of illusion that has arisen from our intellect and that leads us to believe in the indestructibility of matter and the conservation of force. It is certainly true that nineteenth-century science could lead to nothing else. But for those who see through the world as it has been presented today, what matter and energy are is something that perishes like this year’s plants, and what lives within us as an ethical ideal, as a religious idea, is something we experience as a seed, like the seed within the blossom of present-day plants. We look upon this seed, which at present is perhaps still merely a point; we know it will be a plant next year, once what now surrounds it as blossoms and leaves has faded away. We gaze with spiritual insight upon this external world, to which we apply our intellect. We come to know it not through the principle of the indestructibility of matter and the conservation of energy, but we come to know it as something that is disintegrating, and the seeds within it are what reign in our souls as a moral element, as a religious idea. What surrounds us sensually today—it will vanish! What grows and flourishes within us will be the world of the future, the cosmos of the future. In my conviction, only an anthroposophically oriented spiritual science can lead to this bridge being built between the spirit and nature—under today’s circumstances.

[ 39 ] Ladies and gentlemen, I have been given the opportunity—at the request of the “Free Student Body”—to share these few thought-provoking remarks here today. I know that they cannot be conclusive or persuasive; but they were meant only to be thought-provoking. Yet precisely because I was given the opportunity today—for which I am very grateful—to speak on behalf of the student body, I would like to point out that it is particularly natural for someone who must view the world as he does today—someone who himself is nearing the end of his sixth decade—to look toward today’s youth. In the hearts and souls of those who are young today—such a person truly sees the seeds of promise, for he looks back on his own youth. Four decades ago—and I would like to say this to the esteemed young friends who have invited me here today—people of my age were young. We looked out into the world back then, but we were, in a certain sense, compelled to look into a world of illusions. We had no choice but to do so at the time. True, humanity still had many tremendous achievements in the material world ahead of it, but things also looked different in the civilized Europe that was our reality back then than they do now. Now a witty man—Oswald Spengler—is writing about the decline of Western civilization. Back then—that is, three or four decades ago—back then, my esteemed audience, was the time that was perhaps most strongly dominated by the sentiment, “How wonderfully far we’ve come” — a time that, however, was deeply steeped in illusions. Just how strong those illusions were, many of those of that generation likely only realized when, in 1914, this modern civilization careened into a terrible catastrophe. At that time, an infinite sorrow settled upon the souls of the thinking, vigilant elders, and they likely looked back on that era in which they were not allowed to say—because the illusions were too great—: “We need something that is not merely a Renaissance, but a Naissance, the birth of a new spiritual life.”

[ 40 ] Now that painful years are behind us, now, my esteemed audience, I believe life is different for young people. Now there is great hardship, and now it is becoming clear in every area that we cannot succumb to the illusion—the illusion that we have come so far. But now, I believe, there lives within every awakened person—or within those who are capable of awakening—something that leads them to the inner admonition: “Use your will!” — In the outer, objective world, everything points to decline. But the Spenglers—those who speak only of decline and even seek to prove it— will be proven wrong if that fire asserts itself in today’s youth, if that force asserts itself in youth that seeks to awaken the soul to creation, to will, for only from the creation and the will of people who are fully self-aware can improvement come today—not from speculating about forces we are supposed to believe in. No, it must lie in the activation of the forces that are to be found in our own will, in our own capabilities.

[ 41 ] That is why I would like to conclude this very lecture—for which I am deeply grateful to the esteemed student body for inviting me—with those words of Fichte, which read: “Man can do what he ought to do; and when he says, ‘I cannot,’ it is because he does not want to.” If we become aware of the Spirit that shines toward us from the cosmos through spiritual vision—the Spirit that wages its struggles within us against the forces of gravity—then this Spirit will inspire us to create, and then it is precisely from today’s youth that what every alert person today should hope for, and what every alert person today must long for, will emerge. Yes, we need not merely a Renaissance; we need a rebirth of the spirit. It will come to pass when today’s youth understands and appreciates its mission.