The Rudolf Steiner Archive

5. Anthroposophy and Science

[ 1 ] Ladies and gentlemen! Anthroposophy, as it is to be practiced at the Goetheanum in Dornach, still faces a wide variety of opponents today — opponents whose views are rooted in ecclesiastical-theological grounds; opposition has even arisen from the artistic sphere, notably opposition that does not always stem from strictly objective starting points and originates from the most diverse political factions and the most varied spheres of social life. Ladies and gentlemen, I will not address all of these forms of opposition today; rather, the task I have set for myself today is solely to address the misunderstandings and opposition that anthroposophical research faces from the scientific community. For it is my conviction that, although it seems absolutely necessary to address the various other forms of opposition, these will gradually disappear of their own accord once the debate between anthroposophy and science has been brought into the forms necessary for contemporary official science and anthroposophy to truly understand one another. At present, the situation is such that the greatest misunderstandings regarding anthroposophical research come precisely from the scientific community.

[ 2 ] To begin with, however, I would like to emphasize that the anthroposophical research method I advocate—for that is really the only way I would like to call it—aims to stand firmly on scientific ground, and that it seeks to structure all its inquiries in such a way that this scientific foundation becomes possible, while excluding any form of dilettantism and so on. The starting point for the anthroposophical research method is, after all, one that takes into account the scientific requirements and the entire scientific mindset of modern times. Anthroposophy does not, in and of itself, place itself in any real opposition to contemporary science; on the contrary, it seeks to build upon what has emerged over the past three to four centuries, but especially in the 19th century and up to the present day in the course of modern civilization’s development—in terms of scientific rigor and precise scientific methods, as they have emerged particularly within the realm of the natural sciences. Although it must go beyond the findings and even the scope of natural science proper—as it is commonly understood today—it seeks to incorporate what underlies it—scientific rigor and scientific methods—into the inner training in the anthroposophical method. I will not be able to give a comprehensive lecture today, but will merely touch upon certain points in order to draw, so to speak, some connecting lines to the fields that are scientifically recognized today.

[ 3 ] What anthroposophy initially claims to offer are, after all, specific methods of knowledge—methods that differ from what is generally regarded today as ordinary methods of knowledge, yet which grow quite organically out of them. It is widely accepted today that one can only conduct scientific research by standing on the ground of knowledge as it arises in everyday life—after having undergone a standard school education—and then approaching the various realms of external natural existence, including human beings, through experimentation, observation, and materialistic thinking.

[ 4 ] Anthroposophy simply cannot stand on this ground; rather, it assumes that it is possible—just as just as one develops the soul’s faculties from earliest childhood up to what is today called a “normal” state of mind—or what is regarded as such—one can further develop faculties of knowledge by taking one’s soul life—if I may use that expression—freely and independently into one’s own hands from this so-called “normal” state of mind. And through these cognitive faculties, one is then able to gain deeper insights into the nature of the natural world and human existence, into the phenomena of the world, than is possible without such specially developed faculties. Such faculties are not developed through some arbitrary manipulation of one’s inner life, but rather in a thoroughly systematic manner—except that this does not involve training in certain external techniques or the application of the laws of thought recognized by ordinary logic, but rather the development of the inner life itself.

[ 5 ] I can only hint at the methods used to develop such extrasensory soul abilities. In my various books—notably in my book How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds? and in the second part of my Occult Science, I have provided detailed descriptions of how a person can proceed to attain, from the deep recesses of the soul life, such abilities through which one is able—if I may put it trivially—to see more than can be explored through ordinary, intellectual thinking, experimentation, and observation.

[ 6 ] I have called the first stage of such cognition “imaginative cognition.” By “imaginative cognition,” I do not mean that one should develop the ability to cultivate imaginings or phantasms within the soul; rather, I mean a pictorial form of cognition—as opposed to ordinary abstract cognition—that is simply necessary for exploring the true mysteries of existence. This pictorial cognition—as I said, I can only hint at the principles—is attained through prolonged inner work—though this depends on individual abilities; for some it takes a long time, for others only a short time—in which one attempts to apply a meditative practice to the point of enhancing one’s inner spiritual capacities. This meditative life consists, for example—as I said, the rest is described in the books mentioned— taking easily comprehensible mental images—that is, images that one either forms in the moment, so that one can take in all their details, or that one receives from someone knowledgeable in such matters—and allowing these images to be fully present in one’s ordinary consciousness with all one’s strength, thus, in a sense, concentrating all one’s spiritual faculties on such easily comprehensible mental images.

[ 7 ] What is achieved by this? Well, I would like to illustrate what is achieved by means of a comparison. If someone continually exercises the muscles of their arm—especially if they exercise them in a very specific, systematic way—then strength will develop in those muscles. If someone exercises their soul faculties in such a way that they concentrate them on a goal they have set for themselves, on an inner soul content they have chosen for themselves, then the soul powers as such will grow stronger and gain strength. And through this—as I said, one must practice such exercises for a long time—one is enabled to develop, inwardly and without regard to external sensory impressions, a strength of soul that is otherwise applied only in response to the external sensory impressions themselves.

[ 8 ] External sensory impressions are concrete and vivid. Anyone who possesses a certain degree of self-reflection knows that they develop a greater intensity of inner life when they live within external sensory impressions than when they live within abstract ideas or memories—that is, when they live within what remains with them after they turn their powers of perception away from external sensory life and limit themselves solely to their inner life as such, just as it arises—I would say—as an echo, as an aftereffect of the vivid, rich external sensory impressions. What matters, ladies and gentlemen, is precisely that the inner life of the soul is strengthened to such an extent that, through this inner fortification, one can have something that, in ordinary human life between birth and death, one can otherwise only have when one is surrendered to the power of external sensory impressions. Through this, one arrives at a pictorial imagination—an imagination that actually differs from ordinary abstract thinking—let us say, if we wish to speak scientifically, from that kind of thinking through which one gains insight into the laws of nature on the basis of observation and experiment. One comes to be so strengthened inwardly that one possesses not only a mode of thinking and an inner life of the soul such as is found, for example, in the grasping of the laws of nature, but also such as is found in the grasping of external imagery. One attains an inner pictorial quality of imagination. One comes to think not merely in abstract thoughts, but to live in inner images.

[ 9 ] The moment one characterizes such a developed capacity for inner perception, the following objection is immediately raised: Yes, anthroposophy seeks to develop something that is actually known as subordinate soul faculties—faculties that, to a greater or lesser extent—depending on how one views it—border on the pathological. — And it is further said: Anyone who strengthens their inner power of perception in such a way that they develop the ability to arrive at inner images without deriving these images from the external sensory world is indulging in a capacity that is equivalent to the capacity for hallucinations, to the capacity for imagining all sorts of pathological phantasms and the like. — And indeed, representatives of modern science have repeatedly objected that what anthroposophy claims to be its inner vision in images must be attributed to repressed nervous forces, which then rise up from within at the appropriate moment due to an intensified inner life, so that these images are actually nothing more than a repressed nervous life. Those representatives of science who confuse anthroposophical vision in this way with what are commonly called “hallucinations” in everyday life have simply not thoroughly engaged with what anthroposophical vision actually is in reality. First, one could counter such objections by pointing out how anthroposophy consistently insists that, with regard to the subject matter of external natural science, it proceeds just as rigorously as natural science itself and adopts recognized scientific methods as its most important preparatory steps, rising only from these, so that one really ought not to say that someone standing on the true ground of anthroposophy would show any signs of indulging in a form of perception like that of just any medium or any fantasist. One will never see any medium or fantasist strictly grounding themselves in scientific research, taking it as a starting point, and seeking to derive what is to become “vision” precisely from these rigorous scientific methods. But I do not even wish to speak of that; rather, I would like to point out that anthroposophy demands a more thorough and precise method of thinking than is usually evident or applied in such objections.

[ 10 ] The point is that, above all, such objections do not yet stem from a truly thorough study of the soul or psychology. Our study of the soul still leaves much to be desired today. It is by no means on par with the exact methods of external natural science. In many respects, it is actually a chaos of time-honored notions—reduced to mere words—and all manner of abstractions. It is not based on a genuine observation of the life of the soul, on an exact empirical study of the life of the soul. Such precise psychological empiricism must, above all, ask itself the question: What is the nature of our sensory perception? What is actually at work in our sensory perception?

[ 11 ] Imagination, feeling, and volition are at work in our entire soul life. But our soul life is not such that we can separate imagination, feeling, and volition from one another except in the abstract; rather, imagination, feeling, and volition are involved in everything our soul is capable of in any way. One can really only say: When we are engaged in the life of imagination, then feeling and willing play a role in that life of imagination. When we make an affirmative or negative judgment within the life of imagination, our soul life is indeed oriented outward, but the affirmation or negation is carried out by an impulse of the will. This impulse of the will certainly plays a role in our life of imagination. And only those who are clear in every respect about the part that feeling plays in willing—or, conversely, the part that imagination plays in willing, and so on—can gain an accurate understanding of the life of the soul and its various manifestations.

[ 12 ] Now, it is relatively easy to see that the will plays a role in our life of imagination. I have just drawn attention to the process of forming judgments, and anyone who truly studies judgment will already see how the will plays a role in the process of imagining. But also—and this is important, ladies and gentlemen—the will plays a role in our sensory perception. And here I must draw your attention to something that is generally not even recognized in contemporary psychology, or at least not sufficiently characterized. The will certainly plays a role in our sensory perception—in all our seeing, hearing, and other sensory experiences. What actually takes place in sensory perception?

[ 13 ] Through our perception, we are, in fact, inwardly active in every act of the soul—even in those in which we seem to be passively facing the external world. In what we bring to the external world through inner activity—that is, in exposing ourselves to some form of sensory perception—the will is certainly present—albeit, I would say, in a diluted, filtered form—but it is present nonetheless. And the essence of sensory perception lies in the fact that this will—one could certainly elaborate on this in detail for hours; I can only hint at it here—that this will, which we, so to speak, project from the inside out, is repelled by the various natural agents. And we will grasp the nature of the stimulus, the nature of sensory perception as a whole, only if we can take into account this interplay of the will from the inside out and the counterforce of natural agents from the outside in, if we become aware how in every act of sensory perception there is a repulsion of the will, and how everything that remains from sensory perception—whether memories or other representations—is in fact a withdrawn impulse of the will. And so, by exposing ourselves to sensory experience, we can distinguish between that which originates in the will in this manner and that which, proceeding from the entire act and following upon it, continues in the life of the imagination.

[ 14 ] As I have already indicated, the will is indeed present in the life of the imagination; however, it is present in such a way that the inner self of the human being plays a much greater role in the unfolding of the will into the life of the imagination than in the unfolding of the will into the life of the senses. To begin with, our will remains, above all, much more active, much more subjective, and much more personal in imagination than in sensory perception. You see, esteemed audience, everything I have described in my book How to Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds regarding the development of supersensory perception is aimed at raising this will—which plays a role in sensory perception and must therefore be taken into account even by the most precise natural science—to full consciousness. And one must now first organize one’s life of imagination inwardly in such a way that within this life of imagination it is not the subjectively arbitrary will—if I may put it that way—that prevails, as it otherwise does in the process of imagining, but rather the same objective will that is present in sensory perception. Anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, as I understand it, does not aim to bring all sorts of things up from the depths of soul life in a nebulous, mystical way in order, for example, to force a subjective will into the life of the imagination. This subjective will is already present in ordinary life, but it must be separated from the life of the imagination precisely through the exercises for attaining higher insights, and the will—which one carefully trains oneself to perceive and which lives precisely in sensory perception—and only in sensory perception—must permeate the life of the imagination in a disciplining way.

[ 15 ] With this—if I may put it that way—something tremendous has been achieved. What has been achieved is that the entire life of the imagination takes on the character that is otherwise unique to sensory perception. This is something that each individual must discover for themselves. People know that they can imagine all sorts of things; the will can come into play here by turning the judgment one way or the other. How much life there is in the imagination! But when a person uses their senses, the external world imposes discipline on the will—in the very way that the will can be applied in sensory perception—and then it is impossible to assert inner subjectivity in an arbitrary manner. I would like to point out that anthropological psychology has already drawn attention, from a different angle, to how the will is present in sensory perceptions—I need only recall Lotze’s “local signs” and so on. But only when one succeeds in bringing this will—which leaps into objectivity—into the life of the imagination as well does one shape the life of the imagination in such a way that it becomes imaginative cognition, participating in objectivity just as sensory perception otherwise participates in objectivity.

[ 16 ] You see, ladies and gentlemen, in contrast to what I have been able to outline here only in a few broad strokes—in contrast to what is meant in the most precise sense, though not in the sense that one should indulge in all sorts of fanciful notions about inner soul development—as is the case with nebulous mystics— in light of that, all the objections—including those raised today by official science—are, for those who understand the matter, fundamentally extremely amateurish. For in contrast to everything that can ever find its way into hallucinations, into dreams, into all that arises subjectively from the human constitution—in contrast, that is, to situations where a person lives without objective orientation, where they are wholly absorbed only in their inner world—in contrast to this, an imaginative life is developed that mirrors the external sensory life with its objectivity. Thus, in a sense, the objectivity of sensory perception is extended inward through the life of the imagination. In contrast, in all that occurs in mediumship or in pathological clairvoyance, what leads to imagery and to hallucinatory life is drawn up from within the human being.

[ 17 ] But that is not at all the case with the methods used in anthroposophical research. There, one does not proceed from the inside out, as essentially every form of mysticism has done up to now, but rather from the outside in. One does not learn through one’s inner mystical feeling; rather, one learns precisely through external sensory perception how to relate objectively to the world. And then one discovers that, indeed, by learning in this way through sensory perception, one becomes able to shape one’s imaginative life in such a way that it becomes concrete and inwardly rich—just as one otherwise experiences it only through sensory perception. And when one arrives at such an inwardly rich imagination—which now flows into something objective just as sensory perception does, and is thus not merely subjectively oriented—when one arrives at such “imaginative imagination,” as I call it, only then is one able to ascend from one level of knowledge of nature to another level, which I shall characterize shortly.

[ 18 ] For now, however, I would like to say that anthroposophical spiritual science, as I understand it, has made a sincere effort to first establish clarity from all angles regarding the status of such imaginative knowledge. And allow me, my esteemed audience, as one who is, after all, primarily responsible for representing this anthroposophical spiritual science, to make a brief personal interjection—one that is by no means meant personally, but is entirely objective in relation to how I myself came to not only develop such anthroposophical methods, but also to have truly grown weary enough to believe in such anthroposophical methods and to see in them a legitimate basis for knowledge. For do not believe, my esteemed audience, that anyone who takes these matters seriously is uncritical, or that they are unwilling to engage thoroughly with the most rigorous and precise methods of epistemological criticism available today. As I said, allow me to make a personal remark.

[ 19 ] I was about thirteen years old when I came across a treatise that—as was particularly the prevailing trend in the 1870s—was primarily concerned with investigating external natural phenomena in a precise, mathematical manner and, in fact, accepted as a law of nature only that which could be calculated. This treatise sought to eliminate even the last vestiges of mystical concepts from the understanding of nature. The treatise regarded the force of gravity—the force of attraction in Newton’s sense—as one such mystical concept. The treatise was titled “The Force of Attraction Considered as an Effect of Motion.” And rather than using the mystical concept of attraction—in which two material bodies somehow attract each other across space—an attempt was made, in an extraordinarily precise mathematical manner, to explain attraction as follows: Ponderable matter is contained within a cosmic gas, and through this, a certain number of collisions between—let us say—neighboring material bodies can be calculated. If one now compares the number of impacts coming from the inside with the number of impacts coming from the outside, one arrives at a pure, non-mystical explanation of gravity.

[ 20 ] I mention this because, as I said, this treatise came into my life just as I was turning thirteen. To understand this treatise—as you can imagine, that’s not exactly an easy task for a thirteen-year-old boy—I had to make an effort to master differential and integral calculus at the age of thirteen, because that is the only way to truly grasp these concepts. And in doing so, I had the opportunity to gain a starting point for everything that followed—everything one actually needs to critically engage with such concepts, which have always lived within me with an indefinite certainty. One really must gain an understanding of how, in the context of sensory observation as a whole, one actually applies mathematical laws or even the laws of phoronomy; how one actually proceeds; what one brings from within oneself to the external world; and so on. In short, for me this was the starting point for investigating to what extent this strange inner realm of the soul, which we call mathematics, can actually govern external reality.

[ 21 ] Heinrich Schramm, the author of this treatise—which I still consider extraordinarily significant today—was thoroughly convinced that mathematics can take one anywhere; that is, one need only assume the existence of matter, space, and motion, and then mathematics can take one anywhere. He was convinced that one could grasp the most diverse characteristics of the natural world—in classical mechanics, in thermodynamics, in optics, and in the fields of magnetism and electricity—that one could understand all these various phenomena through mathematics, and that one could arrive at the correct understanding of all these phenomena simply by applying mathematics correctly. So when one applies this mathematical research, so to speak, to a hypothetical material process, the magnetic application immediately comes to mind; when applied to another process, the electrical application—in short, one explains all natural phenomena as an effect of motion. One becomes entirely free of mysticism; one limits oneself to what is concrete, what can be grasped through purely mathematical conception. This struggle—one must go through it at least once—this struggle with a form of knowledge that approaches the external world mathematically and now seeks to grasp sensory perceptions mathematically, for the external world must, after all, be grasped in some way, even if one proceeds as mathematically as possible.

[ 22 ] But this line of thought led me to something else. I immersed myself in what is known in mathematics as the probability problem, where one attempts to calculate the probability of—let’s say, for example—rolling a specific combination with two dice, where the faces show one, two, and so on, that is, where one calculates probabilities. This branch of mathematics, the theory of probability, plays a very significant role in the insurance industry. There, probability theory definitely finds a real-world application. Based on the number of deaths among a large group of people, one calculates the probability that a—let’s say—thirty-year-old person will still be alive at age sixty, and based on that, one determines their insurability and also their insurance premium. So here, calculations are used in a way that, in a very curious manner, brings mathematical reasoning into reality. That mathematical reasoning is applied to reality is evident simply from the fact that, theoretically, anyone can calculate their life expectancy in a way that is fully sufficient for the insurance industry. For example, I could have decided at the age of thirty to take out life insurance. It would have been entirely possible to calculate how long my probable lifespan would be—and thus how much I would have had to pay. But no one would believe that, once this probable lifespan has elapsed, they must actually die.

[ 23 ] We certainly have a field here where mathematics is valid for its intended purposes, but where individual life as such does not fit into the system of mathematical formulas at all—where life as such falls outside that system. In this way, in certain areas of the natural sciences, we experience an inner satisfaction of knowledge when we assume that what has been mathematically understood is adequate to what we encounter externally in the sensory world. But precisely in those areas where probability theory comes into play, there is certainly something that compels us to say: Mathematics suffices for external life, for what takes place in external observation, but one can never be convinced that it also masters inner life.

[ 24 ] I would have to recount a great many intermediate steps if I were now to show how, starting from such ideas, I arrived at the chapter in my Philosophy of Freedom—the first edition of which was published in 1893—on the value of life, on the value of human life. There, I was primarily concerned with combating pessimism as such. At that time, this pessimism dominated the philosophical outlook of certain circles to a far greater extent than was later the case. This pessimism originated, in principle, with Schopenhauer, but it was systematically founded by Eduard von Hartmann. Eduard von Hartmann, when it came to the realm of ethical life—specifically, social-ethical life—based his approach on calculation. If you look at his calculations today—they are extraordinarily interesting. He attempts to actually calculate, on the one hand, how to positively quantify everything that brings people pleasure, joy, happiness, and so on in life, and, on the other hand, how to negatively quantify everything that brings people suffering, pain, misfortune, and so on. And he subtracts and actually arrives at a plausible conclusion that, for most people, the unhappy and painful things outweigh the positive ones—that is, the negative factors predominate.

[ 25 ] You may think what you will about such philosophical “trifles”; for those who wish to penetrate to the very foundations of knowledge, these are by no means trifles, nor must they remain so if we are to escape the plight of today’s intellectual life. For me, this became a very important problem, because I told myself: People don’t actually feel the way this calculation suggests. That’s nonsense—you can see that the moment you ask someone: If you were to add up your happiness and your unhappiness, you’d end up with a larger number on the negative side. Would you therefore consider your life to be lost? Would you therefore consider yourself ready for suicide, as Eduard von Hartmann believes every person should do if they were rational? For Eduard von Hartmann, the calculation says yes, but life never says yes. Why not?

[ 26 ] Well, in my Philosophy of Freedom I have shown that precisely this subtraction, which Eduard von Hartmann performed, is not actually performed; rather, if one wishes to apply a mathematical operation at all, one must apply a completely different one. One must apply a fraction or division. The numerator, or dividend, receives everything happy, everything pleasurable, everything that brings satisfaction, and the denominator, or divisor, receives everything that brings suffering, misfortune, pain, and so on. If you apply the calculation as division, then you would have to have an infinite denominator if you are to arrive at a number that signifies zero as the sum total of life. If you have even just a finite number of suffering and pain by which to divide, then you will never arrive at a sum total of life that is zero. For a person does not take their own life as a result of subtraction. And by showing that what is involved here is not subtraction, but at most division—or that a fractional approach must be taken—I was able to demonstrate at the same time that, in certain cases, mathematics requires one to start from life; that is, one must gain access to life, must gain a direct insight into life, before adopting a mathematical approach.

[ 27 ] Here I have the three points together: on the one hand, in the natural sciences, the mathematical approach, which may be adequate to the external facts in probability theory but which nevertheless falls short when confronted with reality; then reality as it is grasped in its actual, individual form; and finally, reality itself, which is directly perceived as the master of the mathematical approach. Therein lies the limit of what is mathematically possible, insofar as one proceeds from mathematics itself. And when one recognizes in this way that there is a necessity to go beyond the mathematical—when one wrestles with this problem—then one finds, once one has gained, on the other hand, that conception of which I have spoken today, that one has now made this leap in reality, where, having gone beyond abstract thought, which confronts us in its purest form in mathematics, and have entered into immediate reality. And only from there did the possibility arise—one might say in an epistemological way that Goethe himself was not yet able to articulate—first to grasp Goethe’s morphology and second to deepen and further develop it. For the point now is that, once one has attained that imaginative conception, one actually begins to grasp what Goethe actually meant when he developed his “primordial plant”—that is, a form grasped inwardly and spiritually that underlies all the various, outwardly diverse plant forms. Once one has grasped this “primordial plant,” he said, one can theoretically invent plants in the most diverse ways with the potential for growth—that is, one can internally recreate the natural process. One has an inner soul process through which—preceding the natural process—one can bring forth the most diverse plant forms from the one primordial plant, can recreate them inwardly, just as nature creates the most manifold plant forms from the one typical primordial plant. Here Goethe had already made the transition from pure abstract thinking to what I would now like to call “thinking in forms.” That is why Goethe also arrived at a true morphology.

[ 28 ] This way of thinking in terms of shapes—perhaps I may characterize it that way. What do we actually usually do in geometry? We deal with shapes, especially in plane geometry as well as in solid geometry. But in reality, we try to master these shapes through numbers, for measurement, after all, can ultimately be traced back to something numerical. So we try to force the forms into the abstraction of numbers. But mathematics, as I have just explained, is limited. We must leave it behind if we want to step out into reality. And we can also find the transition from merely reducing geometric forms to numbers to the direct apprehension of the geometric form. Once one has seriously engaged in this way with an inner apprehension of geometry, one also finds the transition to other forms—to those forms that Goethe meant when he spoke of the primordial plant, which then internally takes shape in the most diverse ways into the most manifold plant forms. Just as a triangle can have one angle larger and another angle smaller, giving rise to various specific triangles, so too do the most diverse plant forms emerge from the primordial plant—once its law has been grasped—forms that one can thus survey within the soul. I would say that Goethe arrived at his morphology in a subjective way and developed it only to a certain extent. But what is developed in a systematic way—by driving the will, which otherwise lives only in sensory perception, into the life of the imagination, and what is developed there as imaginative thinking—that is thinking in forms.

[ 29 ] And we now come to the stage of understanding nature where we have natural laws that can be grasped through abstract thought—we can apply this kind of thinking to the inorganic, lifeless world. The moment we wish to ascend into the organic world of plants, we need a mode of thinking in forms. Ladies and gentlemen, no matter how much one may rail against this thinking in forms, no matter how much one may say that true science can progress only in a discursive manner, can move forward only from one thought to another—that is, according to the method recognized today as the logical method—no matter how much one may claim that this alone is true science. Yes, one may decree at length that this is true science—but if nature does not yield to this science, if nature—for example, the plant world—cannot be shaped into this science, then we simply need a different kind of science. If thinking that is purely discursive, thinking that is purely abstract, is not enough, then we simply need thinking in forms, in inner imagery. And this thinking in inner imagery makes the plant world understandable to us outwardly; it makes the unity of our entire life between birth and death understandable to us inwardly.

[ 30 ] I have often described in my books and lectures that, once one has truly developed this imaginative thinking, it becomes apparent that life—from the moment one learned to say “I” to oneself, when the faculty of memory begins, up to the present moment—unfolds as if in a single tableau. Just as one otherwise regards one’s outer, physical body as belonging to oneself and looks at it at any given moment, so too does one have one’s entire earthly life up to that point spread out before one simultaneously, as in a panorama of images. This is the first achievement of truly anthroposophical science: to survey one’s inner life as a tableau all the way back to birth, so that one can truly take in this organism of time. What is referred to in my various books as the human etheric body or the body of formative forces—what is this, if not precisely what is attained through imaginative visualization? We come to survey our life between birth and the present moment—presenting itself as a unity in the immediate present—at the same time as the impulses that carry us beyond the present moment into our further earthly life. And once we have attained this, the second stage of supersensible knowledge also emerges: the one for which it is even difficult to find a name today; inwardly, as a method, I have called it inspired knowledge. Do not take offense at the expression. It is not meant to refer to anything traditional, but only to what I have just hinted at in my books, and what I also wish to hint at here in principle.

[ 31 ] I have said that imaginative visualization is achieved by bringing certain easily comprehensible images to the forefront of our consciousness, and that this strengthens our consciousness. Just as we, in a sense, mimic the act of remembering when we place such ideas at the center of our consciousness, we must now also develop the act of forgetting as a conscious choice in our lives. Just as we can concentrate all our soul forces on certain images that we bring into our consciousness in the way I have described, so too must we become capable of driving these images out of our consciousness through inner volition, whenever we wish. We must therefore simulate forgetting just as we artificially—if I may put it that way—simulate remembering.

[ 32 ] If we do these exercises as well, we will see that such a concept—which we bring into the center of our consciousness in this way—initially attracts all sorts of other concepts; like bees, these other concepts come in from all sides. We must learn to exclude them; in fact, we must learn to exclude all conceptualization. In a sense, after we have developed such ideas, we must learn to be able to empty our consciousness without falling asleep in the process. Just try it once to see what that means! This requires practice, for as soon as a person—even one with only ordinary mental strength—attempts to empty their consciousness—especially after having first exerted great effort to concentrate on a specific image—they inevitably fall asleep. But that is precisely what must be brought about: an empty consciousness following imaginative perceptions—that is, initially without any subjective content. And at the very moment one has achieved this, the spiritual world pours into the soul life thus prepared. At that moment, one comes to behold a world that is not accessible to external sensory perception, but rather the world that we now perceive not merely—as in imaginative insight, where we look back as far as birth—as belonging to our earthly life, but rather the world that contained us as beings before we descended into earthly life. There we come to know ourselves as spiritual-soul beings in a purely spiritual world. There we come to know that which within us created this organism that lives here in the earthly world. There, through insight, we come to know the immortality of the human being.

[ 33 ] And from there—I just want to mention this—it is only one step to intuitive recognition, to gaining the insight that a person’s earthly lives repeat themselves. But you will have gathered from what I have been able to describe only in broad strokes that the aim is to use strictly systematic inner training to prepare the consciousness—not to conjure up just any world from within, but on the contrary: to free the consciousness, through prior imagination, to perceive the spiritual world. Just as we encounter the external world through our external senses—in which the will lives and enters into a relationship with objectivity—so, after we have made our inner soul life completely free from the physical, we prepare the soul to perceive the spiritual world just as it perceives the physical-bodily world through the senses. There we gain the ability to see which being has formed us—insofar as we are formed out of individuality, not out of the cosmos—and how this being, as a pre-existing being, lived in the spiritual world before we took on the physical body through the stream of heredity across generations. And then we learn to recognize that which, in turn, passing through the gate of death, emerges into the spiritual world when we shed this physical body. We learn to recognize what constitutes this physical body, what undergoes a certain transformation within this physical body through birth, what is rekindled by the experiences of life, and what then, through death, re-enters the spiritual-soul world. Thus, through the development of certain soul forces, we strive not for fantasy, not for philosophizing, not for speculating about human immortality, but for a genuine vision of what lives within us as immortal. And if we deepen our spiritual life in this way, then we stand within a spiritual objectivity, and it cannot be said that this standing within a spiritual objectivity is in any way comparable to the hallucinations arising from the mere inner self or to any subjective, fantastical constructs.

[ 34 ] Now I would like—albeit more in a comparative and suggestive manner—to show how this approach can lead not only to an understanding of humanity, to an anthropology, but also to a cosmology. Time is short, so I can only briefly touch on this.

[ 35 ] How does our ordinary life unfold between birth and death? Here we see, my dear friends, how we have external experiences through our sensory perceptions, how these perceptions trigger and develop our mental images, and how, once these images have been developed, they can in turn be brought to mind through the powers of memory. So when we survey our inner life, we see that within ourselves we possess, so to speak, images of what we have experienced in the external world. I search from the deepest recesses of my inner life for a specific mental image. This mental image brings before my soul, in the present moment, something I may have experienced fifteen years ago: an objective reality, experienced entirely subjectively. But if my entire inner life is healthy—if what I imagine there as a memory image stands in a healthy connection with the rest of my inner life, and especially if I am able to orient myself properly in the external world through the senses at all times— then I am also able—by drawing upon everything externally that relates to what I currently have before me—to tell myself what the external, objective experience was like fifteen years ago.

[ 36 ] Through our soul, between birth and death, we carry within us, first and foremost, the world of our experiences. But, ladies and gentlemen, we also carry something else within us. If we consider our life only as we usually perceive it in our inner life, then we are aware only of what I have just mentioned. But we carry something else within us, and through what I have described to you as supersensible knowledge, we look deeper into ourselves—not through nebulous mysticism, but through exact methods akin to mathematics. We carry within us organs, the organs of our inner being. They are formed from our pre-existing being; they are formed from the spiritual world.

[ 37 ] Whoever, through such precise anthroposophy as I have described, not only surveys the life of the soul that he has gathered within himself between birth and the present moment, but also learns to recognize, through precise methods, the nature of the forces at work in the internal organs, will come to — just as they come to know the world of their experiences through their subjective soul memories — to come to know the world in its development through their organs, which they perceive spiritually. And it is not, my esteemed audience, that there is any reminiscence here of some ancient superstition, some old belief in the stars, or the like, when anthroposophy speaks today of the evolution of the world; rather, it is based on an understanding of the human being that perceives the inner human being just as the mere life of the soul is perceived—as a reflection of the events experienced since birth that are connected with us.

[ 38 ] In this way, we experience a connection with the entire world. Just as our memories are inner reflections of our experiences since birth, so too is our entire inner being—if we learn to understand it—a reflection of the entire development of the world. That is what “reading the Akashic Records” means—not all the confused notions that are held against anthroposophy. It means deriving knowledge of the world from knowledge of the human being, from true knowledge of the human being. But we must not oversimplify the matter, as is so often done today, when people believe they can encompass something that is merely contained within the realm of exact science using a few arbitrary terms. No one today would presume to attempt to grasp—let alone criticize—the system of mathematics with a few arbitrary terms. Yet what has been acquired in a far more complex manner, but through genuine intellectual striving, is today casually attempted to be characterized with a few arbitrary terms. Anyone who strives to employ all internal precautions to avoid falling into subjectivity, but rather to immerse themselves completely in objectivity—that is, to first shape consciousness in such a way that it can immerse itself in spiritual objectivity—will, in the manner I might say, slandered by the claim that, at the relevant moment, only suppressed nervous energy is brought to the surface, giving rise to all manner of hallucinatory images.

[ 39 ] Well, ladies and gentlemen, without wishing to engage in a counter-critique, I would simply like to describe how things are currently being handled and, in conclusion, illustrate this with a small example. A treatise was recently published in which it is argued that what the anthroposophist finds can, to a certain extent, indeed be readily acknowledged—for the simple reason that modern science itself has already discovered that the most remarkable soul experiences can arise from the subconscious. And so, as the author of this treatise argues, one can quite readily concede to the anthroposophist that he experiences all manner of such phenomena—as they are experienced by mediums, as they are experienced when people are put under hypnosis or given suggestions, or even when one creates suggestions for oneself. In particular, this treatise attributes what is most essential to anthroposophy to autosuggestion.

[ 40 ] And now something of even greater value is being done. It is shown how the most marvelous effects are possible through the soul, how even remarkably far-reaching healing processes for tuberculosis, metritis, fibroids, and so on through one’s inner life, and how even tuberculous deformities of the spine can be corrected through the inner life: Why should it not be possible to concede to the anthroposophist that he draws all manner of things from his inner life, especially when he first puts himself into a state of autosuggestion? And now it is shown that such a subjective life exists, and the anthroposophist is also to devote himself to such a subjective life, namely autosuggestion. And there, for example, the following is asserted:

Using his ....

[ 41 ] — that is, through spiritual and psychological development, as I have described it

... enables self-assured action—that is, self-reflection in a trance.

[ 42 ] Well, my esteemed audience, I had not spoken of a trance. I had merely told you that consciousness reaches clearer, brighter levels—not that it is led back into darkness and gloom, as in a trance!

And self-reflection, in turn, is the prerequisite for supersensory perception. In other words: So-called transcendent experiences are the products of a methodically induced state of self-reflection in a trance, under the simultaneous influence of systematic suggestion. The actual agent here is self-suggestion. Evidence for this includes, among other things, Rudolf Steiner’s explicit assertion that “to attain higher insights, one must force the will into the imagination.”

[ 43 ] So, it is claimed here that I said in a lecture in Bern on July 8 that, in order to attain higher knowledge, one must forcefully drive the will into the imagination.

[ 44 ] Well, first of all, here’s something that shows just how remarkably precise the approach in scientific treatises is today! For example, on the very same page, it explains how such suggestions can actually be carried out—how something can be suggested to someone so that an idea is instilled in them, and how, as a result, they become completely absorbed in this idea and even produce all sorts of things of their own accord as a consequence of this absorption. And now the author says:

These successes are primarily due to the fact that Coué once conceived of suggestion as an autonomous force (ideo-dynamic) independent of the will

[ 45 ] — “ideo-dynamic” is in parentheses; this is very important! —

... and that he recognized the significance of this subconscious power.

[ 46 ] So, we are dealing with an ideodynamic force that is independent of the will. Nevertheless, I am supposed to make use of this ideodynamic force—which is, after all, independent of the will—by saying that one must drive one’s will into the imagination. Well, let’s first take the sentence as the author claims I said it in Bern: “One must force one’s will into the idea.”

[ 47 ] I also spoke today about how one must develop the will—which one first becomes acquainted with through sensory perception—into the life of the imagination. This is precisely how one combats purely suggestive influences. In doing so, one acts in exactly the opposite direction. This application of the will is precisely what nullifies all possibilities of suggestive influence. What I have described runs in the opposite direction of suggestive influence. This is actually already evident from the fact that these suggestive influences are referred to here as “ideo-dynamic impulses”—that is, not impulses of the will, but ideo-dynamic impulses. And yet, the author nevertheless senses that he is onto something, even if he is not yet able to express it properly: One must indeed muster willpower when one wants to introduce subjective ideas into one’s mental images, but this happens without the person to whom it happens—the one experiencing the suggestion—exercising their own will.

[ 48 ] Throughout, I have described how the person in question, who wishes to become an anthroposophical researcher, exercises his will—that is, sets himself apart from the possibilities of suggestion. That is why I could not say—I read this in the brochure and said to myself: Did I really, in Bern on July 8, 1920, somehow allow my tongue to be paralyzed for a moment; did I really say that, in order to attain higher knowledge, one must forcefully drive the will into one’s ideas? For anyone can do that, since suggestion can occur even without any active participation on the part of the person being suggested to.

[ 49 ] I have now taken the trouble to check the transcript of my lecture in Bern on July 8, 1920, which I was fortunate enough to find today. And now take a look at what I actually said back then in Bern. Throughout, I made an effort to show how one should take the path that is precisely the opposite of the suggestive one. And then I said:

We have to apply more and more force. And it is the application of this force that matters; what matters is that we drive our will—with all our might—into our life of imagination, into the act of imagining, so that we truly grow stronger through this driving of the will into our life of imagination.

[ 50 ] That is something else entirely. One can only instill ideas into one’s imagination. When one speaks of infusing the will into the life of the imagination, it means precisely not allowing one’s ideas to be influenced by suggestions, but rather taking control of the free, will-governed life of the imagination and the imaginative faculty itself. You see, it is quoted in quotation marks, and the opposite of what I actually said is stated in quotation marks.

[ 51 ] But this is only one example, my esteemed audience, of the way in which anthroposophy is frequently criticized today—particularly from scientific circles—and of how anthroposophy is misunderstood. For this is exceptionally characteristic, and the entire brochure actually reflects this tendency. As for what, my esteemed audience, mediumistic phenomena are, what hallucinations are, and what any kind of visions arising from within are—I have always strictly excluded them from the realm of anthroposophical life and explained that I consider all of this to be pathological, that it descends below the sensory life rather than rising above it. And I have elaborated on this in detail in many places, explaining how what anthroposophy aims for—the descriptions of spiritual and soul worlds that anthroposophy provides—arises from entirely different foundations than what is being asserted here. And now a strange tendency has emerged: precisely what I reject—what I regard as pathological—is being viewed as the legitimate aspect of anthroposophy! In other words, the facts are being turned on their head. People are being led to believe that I am describing something that amounts to hallucinations or the like. “Well,” he says, “those do exist; so we’ll gladly concede that to the anthroposophist—he’s entitled to that. But he must not speak of higher worlds; there he enters a philosophical realm, which must be regarded merely as a theosophical doctrine of faith—as imagination conditioned by theosophical doctrine.”

[ 52 ] But here is something highly characteristic, my esteemed audience: The man who first emerges here as the one who wants to take from anthroposophy—even though it is the opposite of what anthroposophy actually offers—says: “What I acknowledge in anthroposophy, we are already familiar with today; we know about telepathy, clairvoyance, telekinesis, and so on.” — But all of that belongs to the field of pathology, and perhaps also to the field of therapy—after all, these things are interconnected. Here I would have to elaborate on what I have repeatedly said in courses for physicians: how it is entirely possible to derive from anthroposophy a pathology and a therapy that legitimately go beyond what today’s purely materialistic view can offer. — But by first misrepresenting what anthroposophy has to offer, and then by accepting this misrepresentation, people say: Yes, you can certainly suggest all sorts of things to people, but no one has ever actually experienced people in a trance going through something like astral or mental fairy-tale realms.

[ 53 ] But that’s exactly the point! He calls it “fairyland” because he dismisses it as fantasy. He says that such an experience cannot be had through suggestion. Yet it is experienced. What a strange polemic! First, one picks out from the anthroposophical findings whatever one believes one can understand, even though one does not understand it at all. This is then dismissed as a hallucination and so on; that is accepted. The other part, however, is turned into a “fairy-tale land,” yet one claims it cannot be suggested. It cannot be induced, but must be attained through precise inner methods as inner knowledge. Well, my esteemed audience, I do not reproach anyone for misunderstanding in such a grotesque way what anthroposophy has to offer. Nor do I hold it against this esteemed—and rightly so—collection of scientific, medical, and other treatises, published in Munich and Wiesbaden by J. F. Bergmann, that it includes such grotesque criticism of anthroposophy, for in fact the entire little book by Albert Sichler is actually well-intentioned. He wishes to do justice to the subject. He cannot do so, however, because for the time being there remains a gulf between what is recognized today as official science and what is needed to truly make progress; for, after all, there is ultimately an inner connection in spiritual life between our entire civilizational existence and scientific life in modern times. And the bridge must be built across to ethics, to social life. A science that remains stuck in the material realm—or at best merely posits hypotheses about the non-material—will not be able to do this. Only a science that truly penetrates into the spiritual realm can do so, for the spiritual is at work in the social sphere, and social laws can only be discovered by those who also find laws, forms, and transformations of the spiritual in nature.

[ 54 ] Well, in the short time available to me today, I was able to present only a few points of view, my esteemed audience. I wanted to show you how anthroposophy strives to operate entirely in the spirit of true science, how it takes scientific rigor and the critique of knowledge very seriously, seeking to arrive at a method modeled on that of mathematics. On the other hand, however, it still faces many prejudices today, even though our civilization actually needs it as something incredibly essential, because it alone is capable of providing human beings with a genuine and satisfying understanding of their own nature through knowledge.

[ 55 ] Well, ladies and gentlemen, as I have said, I believe that these conflicts will disappear once an objective foundation has been established to create harmony and mutual understanding between today’s mainstream science and the anthroposophical method of research. We must wait and see. Until this is achieved, all manner of partisan, religious, theological, or other opponents will arise, operating precisely on an unscientific basis. But anyone who is deeply immersed in this anthroposophy, anyone who takes it seriously—who takes seriously everything that seeks to emanate from Dornach—will say to themselves—because they know how seriously research is conducted within this anthroposophical field—they will say to themselves: No matter how great the misunderstandings may be, a balance, a harmony, must ultimately be found through the seriousness of modern scientific methods and attitudes. And one may have this awareness if one stands on the ground that, in everything one seeks in anthroposophy, one first subjects oneself to those conscientious standards of scrutiny that are also required in science today. And that is what allows one to expect this external balance. If one proceeds seriously, one can be convinced that a balance and harmony can certainly be found today between modern science and what anthroposophy has strived to achieve so far—at least for those who are familiar with both, modern science and anthroposophy. And this awareness gives confidence that scientific understanding will be achieved. And then the other objections to anthroposophy will disappear of their own accord.

No one has asked to speak.

[ 56 ] Rudolf Steiner: Ladies and gentlemen! Of course, in a lecture—especially one intended to serve as an introductory lecture to a whole series of lectures on anthroposophy—it is always only possible to address a few guiding principles. And so, in particular, I was unable to address what would have been especially close to my heart: to show the bridge that leads from the epistemological side of anthroposophy to its social, practical-ethical, and religious aspects. And on that subject—since we only have time until 10 o’clock—please allow me to say just a few words. If one considers today’s scientific worldview—I am not speaking of natural science itself, but of the scientific worldview—as it is widely held, particularly among laypeople, but also among those who do not consider themselves laypeople, yet who, as members of various monist and other associations, peddle the scientific ideas of thirty years ago as a religious creed today, if one considers what has emerged more or less as a materialistic construct—a kind of worldview—then there is no bridge leading from what many people today regard as the only possible approach to research to the reality of ethical ideals and social ideals as well.

[ 57 ] Today, as we take in all that the natural sciences have to offer, we are faced with the necessity of forming ideas—for a worldview—about, for example, the origin and the end of the Earth. I can only touch upon these matters. We have the theory of the Earth’s origin, established by Kant-Laplace, which posits that the Earth emerged from a primordial nebula governed by the laws of aerodynamics and aeromechanics. One imagines how the planetary-solar system formed from a primordial nebula and how the Earth broke away from it. It then addresses—albeit with a continually critical examination of the question of how living beings might have arisen (a process that will inevitably reach the limits of our knowledge)—how organic life sprang forth from what initially existed only in the primordial nebula, how humanity emerged from this, and how humanity experiences itself today as a self-aware “I.”

[ 58 ] Now I have met people—and, after all, life is the greatest teacher, if only one knows how to take it seriously—I have met people who took this scientific worldview seriously. I recall one individual who is, however, typical and representative of many others. The others often do not realize it, but they are erecting an altar of faith, an altar of knowledge. One who takes scientific ideas seriously cannot do this; such a person inevitably arrives at hypothetical notions about the origin and end of the Earth—for example, based on the theory of heat or the theory of entropy, which leads to imagining how everything will ultimately pass into heat death. One meets very few people who have the inner courage, out of a sense of full humanity, to admit to themselves the predicament into which humanity is placed today—in its innermost being—when it takes these things seriously as the only valid ones.

[ 59 ] Herman Grimm, for example, says—forgive me for quoting this somewhat drastic statement—based on his own intuition, as he reflects on what is supposed to unfold here on Earth between the Kant-Laplacean primordial nebula and the state to which the theory of entropy is supposed to lead us: A carrion bone around which a hungry dog circles is a more appetizing morsel than this worldview, which is already being presented to people in schools today. And future generations will have a hard time explaining how a particularly pathological era ever came to form such notions about the beginning and end of the Earth. People will not be able to comprehend, he says, how anyone could have taken such a thing seriously.

[ 60 ] Well, my esteemed audience, this science, which stands before us today as the natural sciences—as I said, anthroposophy does not in the least find fault with it—is fully recognized by it within its own field. Anthroposophy is grounded in a scientific spirit, for scientifically rigorous methodology and inner discipline, as they have developed, must be recognized as models; they simply need to be further developed in the sense I have described today.

[ 61 ] This, however, also leads to a true understanding of the human being. This understanding of the human being is not, however, as easy to attain as the one gained today from physiological and biological perspectives. This understanding of the human being ultimately shows us how the human being is, in fact, a structure that is organized internally in entirely different ways according to the head and the metabolic-limb system—these are the two poles of the human being. What I am now briefly hinting at, I have elaborated in great detail in long series of lectures. But I want to show right away how wrong it is to say, for example, that our thinking arises from processes in our brain. That would be just as if a car were moving along a road that had become soft and were leaving its impressions there: You can trace the path by the car’s impressions in the softened road. But consider this: someone comes along and says, “You must explain these impressions through forces that exist down there in the earth; you must explain these configurations based on these subterranean forces!”—It is exactly the same with the methods used today to explain the convolutions of the brain and the nervous structure based solely on the forces of the organs. The structure of the nervous system can be explained by the influences of the spiritual-soul aspect, just as the ruts in a softened road can be explained by the carriage driving over it.

[ 62 ] It is only an image. But with complete scientific precision, anthroposophy leads us to recognize how thinking and imagining are spiritual-psychic processes that use the brain merely as a foundation. And it has the brain as a foundation because it does not rest on the brain’s growth processes or on organic processes, but precisely on the brain’s slow processes of dying. The nervous system does not actually have a life, but rather the opposite of life—a retreating of life. Space must first be made for thoughts. The nerve tissues must die off, and a continuous process of dying—that is, the removal of material processes—must take place so that the mental and spiritual processes can take hold. This must be constantly balanced by the metabolic system of the limbs during sleep or other processes. What rises up in this way—the processes that paralyze consciousness, those processes of which physiology speaks today—actually suspend imagination, erase it. Precisely when these processes are subdued, transitioning into a kind of partial dying, then imagination and thought arise, so that we continually carry within us life and death, being born and dying. And the moment of dying is nothing other than—I would say—the integral of the differentials that make up life, of the differentials of a continuous dying, from which human existence is composed.

[ 63 ] If one follows this line of thought further, one comes to recognize something that is virtually denied by mainstream science today, yet which lies at the very heart of the true continuation of that science: that human beings have within themselves actual processes of decay, continuous processes of dying. Ethical ideals develop within these processes of dying, so that these ethical ideals are not tied to the continuation of organic processes, but rather to suppressed, regressing organic processes. This, in turn, leads to the following: When our Earth eventually reaches whatever mineral-biological state it may be—if, for my sake, we accept the hypothesis as valid (it is not entirely so, but in a certain sense it is)—when it reaches thermal death — that is, when no other processes are possible anymore, because everything has, according to the second law of thermodynamics, taken the form of the remnants that are always present when heat is released into the environment, when heat is converted—, when this state has been reached, then what has lived within human beings as ethical ideals will have attained its greatest expression of power. And this carries earthly existence forward toward a new planetary formation.

[ 64 ] In our moral ideals, we discover the seeds of future worlds—worlds founded on our present-day morality. This gives our ideals a real value. Contemporary philosophy is compelled to speak of mere values. But what other option is there—when speaking of values that arise in human beings as mere ideas, yet are not the seeds of future realities—what other prospect is there but to say to ourselves: We come from the Kant-Laplacean cosmic nebula, and somehow moral ideals emerge in our self-consciousness, but these moral ideals live within us only as mist and fog.—That was precisely the personality I referred to earlier, who accepted modern scientific development as law and told himself: Humanity is cheated in the world. Scientific development has brought him this far; then moral ideals rise up like frothy formations, dissolve again, and everything merges into heat death, into the great graveyard, for although moral ideals are experienced, they have no possibility of becoming reality.

[ 65 ] Anthroposophy shows us, by tracing the historical processes shaped by moral ideals, that while these moral ideals exist within us only as ideas, they—as they develop in human beings— are seeds for the future; that we must regard moral ideals as realities that are the first seeds of future worlds, emerging from ideality. Just as we see in the future seed of a plant the very plant being that will take shape in the coming year, so anthroposophy allows us to see in moral ideals the seeds of future worlds. And behind the Kant-Laplacean primordial nebula, we see the idealities of the past as the seeds of the present world. The present world is the realization, the actualization of what was once merely thought, just as the present plant is the realization of last year’s seed. And what is currently experienced merely as a moral value is a real seed of future worlds.

[ 66 ] We are not only part of the cosmos through our natural organic processes; we are also part of the cosmos through what we experience within ourselves as moral and social values. We arrive at a cosmology that does not count only natural processes and natural laws among its agents; we arrive at a cosmology in which our entire moral world also stands as a reality. Through anthroposophy, a bridge is built from the natural world to the ethical and religious world.

[ 67 ] That is what I felt compelled to mention briefly in my closing remarks, since it was no longer possible to do so during the lecture.