The Rudolf Steiner Archive

6. Agnosticism in Science and Anthroposophy

[ 1 ] Rudolf Steiner: Ladies and gentlemen! Allow me first to express my heartfelt thanks to the Association for Anthroposophical University Work for giving me the opportunity to speak in an introductory lecture on the relationship between certain scientific characteristics of the present day and anthroposophy. Furthermore, I must ask you—especially today—to bear in mind that there is a certain difficulty inherent in such an initial, introductory lecture. This is because, of course, much of what needs to be said about such a comprehensive topic can only be touched upon; consequently, I can only offer suggestions that will require further elaboration later and that, by their very nature, must leave aside many of the questions that are bound to arise.

[ 2 ] But even from a factual standpoint, there are certain difficulties, particularly with regard to today’s topic. The first is that in very broad circles today, precisely when this topic is discussed—the relationship between science and anthroposophy in any context— a widespread prejudice immediately surfaces, namely, that the anthroposophy referred to here seeks to position itself in opposition to science—to the science that has developed throughout human history over the past few centuries, which reached its peak in the last third of the 19th century, at least in terms of its mode of thinking and methodology. However, it is by no means the case that such a position of opposition exists, for this anthroposophy—as I mean it here—strives precisely to bring to bear the best fundamental principles of modern scientific endeavor. And it strives to further develop precisely what is required in terms of human perception and a scientific human outlook in order to give due recognition, in the true sense, to conventional science.

[ 3 ] And in this further development, one finds that it is precisely from the secure foundations of scientific thinking—if these are properly understood and pursued not merely in their logical but in their living consequences—that the path is also found to those supersensible realms of world existence with which the human being must feel connected precisely in its eternal foundations. Thus, in a certain sense, the path to the supersensible realms is to be found through anthroposophy simply by continuing the fundamental principles of science.

[ 4 ] But of course, when I speak before you about the relationship between anthroposophy and science, I will have to do so in such a way that you do not, so to speak, stray from what you are accustomed to recognizing as scientific rigor and mode of thinking. But I will not, of course, be speaking about individual fields; rather, I will be speaking, so to speak, about the entire structure of contemporary science. And since I must assume that among you, dear fellow students, there are representatives of the most diverse scientific fields, I will naturally not be able to do justice to everyone’s individual needs, and some things will, so to speak, have to operate at a level that is not meant to be abstract but does appear abstract, so that perhaps each of you will have to draw your own conclusions for your respective fields from what I have to say. Agnosticism is, after all, a word that is used less frequently today, but which denotes something that is nevertheless closely connected to the foundations of our scientific way of thinking. It is, in fact, this agnosticism—which I would describe as a justifiable scientific way of thinking, or perhaps more accurately, a philosophical way of thinking—that was established by figures such as Herbert Spencer. It was, after all, primarily he who used this term, and if we wish to seek a definition of agnosticism, we must look to him. But as a foundation—as it were, a fundamental principle—of scientific thought, this agnosticism exists across the broadest fields of knowledge today. If one were to speak in very abstract terms about what is meant by agnosticism, one might say something like the following: One acknowledges the scientific methods that have emerged as reliable over the past few centuries; one uses them to conduct proper science, as we must do today in certain fields—through observation, through experimentation, and through the intellectual processing of both the experiment and the observation.

[ 5 ] By pursuing science in this way—and I fully acknowledge that it is entirely justified in certain fields today—one comes to say to oneself: Certainly, this science enables us to achieve a great deal in terms of understanding the laws that underlie the world. One then endeavors to extend even those laws that one has incorporated in this way to human beings themselves, in order thereby to gain what, after all, everyone who possesses sound thinking ultimately seeks from knowledge: an insight into the place of human beings in the universe, into the purpose of human beings in the universe.

[ 6 ] Precisely when one pursues science in this way, one simply comes to say to oneself in the course of the scientific process itself: Yes, one discovers these laws, but these laws actually refer only to the synthesis of external phenomena as they are presented to the senses—or, if they are not presented to the senses, as they can perhaps be deduced on the basis of the material derived from sensory observation. But what one investigates in this way about nature and human beings can never extend to those realms that, in earlier forms of human knowledge, were regarded as the supersensory foundation of the world—with which the deepest essence of human beings, their eternal essence, if it may be called that, must nevertheless be connected in some way.

[ 7 ] It is precisely through the scientific approach that one comes to recognize what is scientifically unknowable—one reaches certain limits of scientific research. At most, one comes to say to oneself: The human soul, the inner spiritual being of the human being, must be connected to something that cannot be reached by this science alone. What is connected to it in this way simply cannot be investigated scientifically; it belongs to the realm of the unknowable. — One is not faced with Gnosticism here, but with agnosticism. And thus, precisely because of its scientific nature, contemporary spiritual life has placed itself in a certain opposition to what still existed at the time when Gnosticism was the prevailing attitude toward knowledge and was called “Gnosis.”

[ 8 ] Now, what is presented here as anthroposophy is by no means, as some believe, a revival of the old Gnosticism—that cannot be resurrected. It was born out of the way of thinking of its time, out of the entire body of science of its time, so to speak. We live today in an age in which, if we wish to establish a science on a supersensible foundation, we must take into account what has been brought about in the development of humanity through the work of such minds as Copernicus, Galileo, and many others whom I will not name here. And in saying this, one implicitly declares that it is impossible to adopt the Gnostic standpoint, which, of course, had nothing in common with modern science. But it may be pointed out that this Gnostic standpoint was, in a certain sense, the opposite of what today is often regarded as the fundamental principle of scientific rigor. This Gnostic viewpoint held that it is indeed possible for human beings, when they turn to their inner powers of knowledge—which are not utilized in ordinary life—to ascend into the supersensible realms and find that which, while not religion itself, can serve as the foundation of knowledge for religious life as well.

[ 9 ] Well, the easiest way for us to understand what I actually have to say today in this introductory lecture is for me to first remind you of some familiar concepts that can, however, shed light on the transformation that the human process of cognition has undergone in the course of human development.

[ 10 ] You all know, of course, what a transformation philosophy has undergone, at least as far as its external scientific life is concerned. It encompasses—even today, in fact—the entire scope of what constituted scientific knowledge. As a human activity, philosophy was simply something to which the name itself, with a certain degree of justification, alludes. Philosophy was something that did not flow solely from the human intellect, nor did it flow solely from observation and experiment, although philosophy did extend to the results that the intellect, observation, and even primitive experiment could arrive at. Philosophy was truly that which, to a much greater degree than our modern science—again, with good reason—arose from the whole human being. Philosophy arose from a certain emotional and feeling-based relationship of the human being to the world, and in the age that also gave philosophy its name, there was no doubt that a human being could attain a certain objectivity in knowledge even when seeking insights not merely through experiment, observation, and intellect, but by applying other powers — forces that can be expressed with the same word we use to describe “loving” something — that is, when he makes use of these forces.

[ 11 ] And in the age of the Greeks, philosophy did indeed encompass everything that we today subsume under the term “natural science.” Over the course of the centuries, philosophical inquiry eventually gave rise to what we now call natural science. In recent times, however, this understanding of nature has undergone a tremendous transformation—a transformation that has made it, to the extent we see in our lives today, the foundation for practical life in the field of technology. Anyone who lets their gaze wander impartially over contemporary scientific life must surely say to themselves: What has made science particularly great in recent times is precisely that which has now also become the foundation for practical life in technology. Our natural science has finally become what corresponds to a statement by Kant—I do, after all, cite Kant when he has said something I can acknowledge, even though I fully admit that in many areas I am an opponent of Kant. Kant said that there is only as much real science in a discipline as there is mathematics in it. In scientific practice, particularly in the natural sciences, this has increasingly come to be recognized.

[ 12 ] Today we practice the natural sciences with the awareness that we are connecting what we explore in space and time through observation and experiment with what mathematics allows us to recognize through pure inner intuition. And it is precisely through this that we feel the scientific certainty that we are capable of interweaving something as deeply rooted in human inner insight and inner experience as mathematics with what observation and experiment provide us. By encompassing, through the mathematical certainty given to us in pure inner experience, that which comes to us from the outside, we feel that in the process of cognition we are connected to this external world in a way that is sufficient for us to experience scientific certainty. And so we have come to see, more and more, starting precisely from the premises of the natural sciences, that the precision of science lies in the fact that we mathematically justify what we do in scientific work.

[ 13 ] Why do we do this? Why we do it, my dear fellow students, is actually already contained in what I just said. It lies in the fact that, when we engage in mathematics, we are operating solely within our own inner experience; we remain entirely within ourselves. I believe that those who have devoted themselves specifically to the study of mathematics will agree with me when I say: With regard to inner experience, mathematics—the act of doing mathematics—is something that, for those who pursue it out of inner ability and aptitude—out of inner enthusiasm, I would say—can provide far greater satisfaction than any other form of knowledge of the external world, simply because, step by step, one is directly connected to what one has achieved as a scientific result. And when one is then able to connect what one encounters from the outside with that whose entire structure one knows—whose entire structure one has constructed oneself—one senses, in what scientifically emerges from the interweaving of externally given facts and mathematically derived results, something that can be regarded as resting on a secure foundation. Therefore, because our science allows us to connect the external world with an inner experience through mathematics, we recognize this as scientific in the Kantian sense, insofar as mathematics is involved.

[ 14 ] Well, this at the same time opens the way for a very specific understanding of the scientific worldview, and it is precisely the consequences of this understanding of the scientific worldview that are explored by anthroposophical research. For what does it actually mean that we have arrived at such an understanding of our scientific knowledge? It already implies the recognition that we wish to develop our thinking from within and, by developing it from within, arrive at a certainty and then use it to investigate external phenomena and external facts in accordance with the laws of nature. Anthroposophy now pursues this principle—where appropriate—by turning to what I would like to call “pure phenomenalism” with regard to certain areas of external natural science: mechanics, physics, chemistry, and everything that does not initially extend to the realm of life. In the most extreme sense, we uphold this phenomenalism for the realms that lie above the inanimate. But we shall see immediately to what extent it must be supplemented there by something essentially different.

[ 15 ] For by bringing to mind precisely the mathematical relationship to the external world, one gradually comes to realize that in the inorganic sciences, thought can initially have only a subservient character; that we are in no way justified in introducing anything of our own thoughts into the world if we wish to pursue pure science. But this leads to what is called phenomenalism—and in its purest form, even if it can be criticized in many respects, it was Goethe who pursued it most consistently.

[ 16 ] What is this phenomenalism? It consists in perceiving phenomena—whether through observation or experiment—purely as they present themselves to the senses, and in using thought only to view the phenomena in a certain context, to arrange them in such a way that they explain themselves. This, however, initially excludes from pure natural science everything that regards hypotheses not merely as auxiliary constructs, but as if they could provide insight into reality. If one adheres to pure phenomenalism, one is indeed justified in assuming, on the basis of observation and experiment, an atomistic structure—whether in the material world or in the world of forces—but this tendency toward an atomistic structure may only be accepted to the extent that it can be traced phenomenologically, that is, to the extent that it can be described on the basis of the phenomena.

[ 17 ] That scientific worldview that constructs an atomistic theory—one that posits, behind the phenomena perceptible to the senses, a reality that cannot itself fall within the realm of phenomena—violates this principle. The moment one, for example, does not simply observe the world of colors spread out before us by stringing one color phenomenon after another to thereby arrive at the lawful interrelationship of colors, but instead proceeds from the phenomenon to something lying behind it—which is not merely supposed to be an auxiliary construct but is intended to establish a reality—and when one proceeds to to assume vibrations or the like in the ether, then one expands one’s thinking—beyond the phenomenon. One pierces, as it were, out of a certain inertia of thought, through the tapestry of the senses, and one posits behind that tapestry a world of swirling atoms or the like, for which there is absolutely no justification in a self-understanding thought that wishes only to serve the sequence of phenomena, the immanent, law-governed connection within the phenomena, but which, with regard to the external sensory world, can say nothing about what is supposed to lie beyond this sensory world.

[ 18 ] Anthroposophy, however, draws the ultimate conclusion toward which modern natural science is, in fact, tending. Even within modern natural science, we have recently come to a high degree of this form of phenomenalism—one that is still rarely acknowledged theoretically but is applied in practice—by simply disregarding hypothetical atomic worlds and the like and remaining within the realm of phenomena. But remaining within the phenomena has a very specific consequence. It leads to agnosticism. If one merely strings the phenomena together through thought, bringing order to them, one will never, through this ordering and this pursuit of laws, arrive at the human being itself. And that is the peculiar thing: one simply must admit openly that if one draws the ultimate, fully justified conclusion of modern natural science, if one goes as far as pure phenomenalism, if one does not sweep unjustified theoretical hypotheses under the rug of the sensory world—one cannot help but arrive at agnosticism. This agnosticism, however, is something entirely different for cognition than what humanity, in the course of its development and in its history of cognition, has actually hoped for and sought through cognition.

[ 19 ] I do not wish to lead you immediately—though I will allude to this later—into remote, supernatural realms, but I would like to point out something that is intended to show how knowledge was nevertheless—for example, in ancient times—understood as something entirely different from what it can become today when we conscientiously continue to work on the basis of the natural sciences. And here I may again point to that Greek era, which still united all the sciences within philosophy; here I may point out that each of us surely has the deepest reverence for Greek art—let us say, to highlight just one example—for instance, for what lives on in Greek tragedy.

[ 20 ] Now, with regard to Greek tragedy, people have spoken of the catharsis that occurs within it as its most important constituent—of the crisis, the decisive element that animates the tragedy. And an important question—one that can simultaneously lead us deep into the very essence of the cognitive process—arises when we consider precisely what the ancient Greeks experienced in tragedy. If one defines catharsis in such abstract terms—as Aristotle does—it is said that tragedy should arouse fear and pity in the spectator, so that the human soul, as such or similar passions arise within it, may be purified of this kind of passion. Now, however—and I can only mention this here; the evidence for it can certainly also be found through conventional scholarship—it is evident from everything present in Greek tragedy that the conception of this catharsis, of this artistic crisis, was very closely linked in the Greek mindset, for example, to medical thought.

[ 21 ] What existed in the human soul as a result of the tragedy’s effect was conceived merely as a healing process—elevated to the stage—for something pathological within the human being. From this view of the artistic, one can look over to the way the Greeks understood therapy, the healing process. They understood it in such a way that they assumed something pathological was forming within the diseased organism. Whatever forms there—I must, of course, speak quite abstractly in an introductory lecture—the organism takes up the fight against it. The human organism overcomes the pathological within itself by expelling the disease process through excretions. This was the thinking in the field of pathology and therapy. In exactly the same way, but elevated to a higher level, people thought about the artistic process. It was simply thought that what tragedy accomplishes is a kind of healing process for the soul. Just as the remnants of illness are expelled from the organism in the case of catarrh, so too should the soul, through the experience of tragedy, develop fear and compassion within itself, then take up the struggle against these byproducts, and, in suppressing them, undergo the process of recovery.

[ 22 ] However, one can only understand the fundamental nature of this way of thinking if one knows that even in ancient Greece—in that ancient Greek culture, which was sound in certain respects—the view existed that if human beings simply leave their spiritual development to their own nature, it will almost always lead to a kind of illness, and that the spiritual life within human beings must be a continuous process of healing. Anyone familiar with Greek culture in this regard will not hesitate for a moment to admit that the Greeks conceived of their highest spiritual life in such a way that they said to themselves: This is a remedy against the soul’s constant tendency to wither away; it is a way of counteracting death. A revitalization of the soul in accordance with its true nature: that was spiritual life for the Greeks. The Greeks saw in their science not merely abstract knowledge; they saw in it something that stimulated a healing process within them. And this was also the particular way of thinking—albeit in a somewhat different guise—found in those worldviews that are based more on Judaism, where one speaks of the Fall and original sin. The Greeks, too, held this view—albeit in a different way—that it is necessary for the human soul to devote itself to a continuous process of healing throughout life. Within this Greek spiritual life, it was generally the case that human beings by no means viewed the activities to which they devoted themselves and the ways of thinking they cherished as separate from one another. Rather, these flowed together for them, and so, for example, the art of healing was precisely an art—only an art that remained within the realm of nature. And it was precisely art that the Greeks—these eminently artistic people—did not regard as something that is profaned or dragged down into a lower realm when compared to what constitutes a process of healing for the human being.

[ 23 ] And so we see how, in those earlier times, knowledge was in fact not separate from the whole of human nature, but encompassed all human activities. Just as philosophy encompasses knowledge of nature and everything that would later emerge from science as it was developed further and further, it also encompasses artistic life. And in religious life, finally, one saw the great, all-encompassing process of healing for humanity, so that when we conceive of knowledge in the old style, we must in fact say: Here, knowledge is conceived as something that emerges from the whole human being. Thinking was certainly already there, but humanity simply could not remain at this stage of the development of knowledge. What, then, was necessarily connected with this phase of the development of knowledge? This becomes very clear when, equipped with today’s scientific spirit, one delves—I would say tentatively—into any work that was considered science at that time, say in the 13th or 14th century, particularly in the field of the natural sciences. Anyone who wishes to understand such a work must not only first familiarize themselves with the terminology, but must also immerse themselves in its entire spirit.

[ 24 ] I have no hesitation in asserting: If one is imbued with the spirit of modern science and has not first conducted in-depth, honest historical studies, one is bound to misunderstand a scientific work from a period such as the 13th and 14th centuries A.D., for the simple reason that even at that time —and the further back we go in human development, the more this is the case—humanity had not only brought mathematics into the external world, but also a whole wealth of inner experiences in which people believed just as firmly as we believe in our mathematics. Thus, we approach nature quite differently today when, as chemists, we speak of sulfur, phosphorus, or salt, than when people of that time spoke of sulfur or salt. If we apply today’s terms, we do not in the least capture the meaning that was contained in a book—even one intended to be scientific—back then, and this is because, at that time, more and different things than the mathematical or the mathematically similar were brought into the observational findings of the external world. Human beings brought a whole wealth of inner experiences—qualitative as well as quantitative—into the external world.

[ 25 ] And just as we express a scientific finding using a mathematical formula—just as we seemingly link subject and object—so too did people in those days link subject and object even more so; but the subject was of a richness that we today have no concept of, and which we must not allow ourselves to project back into nature in the same way. Back then, people saw in the external world many things that they themselves projected into it, just as we today project mathematics into nature. They did not think about nature in any other sense than we do today, but they projected many things into it. In doing so, however, they also projected morality into nature. People perceived the moral aspect in nature in such a way that, over the course of four millennia, moral laws arose in the same way that the laws of nature arose in their understanding. Humanity, which projected into nature what in earlier times was thought of as salt, sulfur, phosphorus, and so on, was also permitted—because it was not inwardly accomplishing anything else in doing so—to project into nature that which it experienced as moral impulses.

[ 26 ] Now, however, we have rightly—for this development was inevitable—distanced ourselves from such a conception of the external world, through which we project all that has been alluded to into it. We now project only the mathematical into the external world, and our science therefore becomes a very sound foundation for technical practice. But since we now introduce only the mathematical into the external world, we no longer have any justification for incorporating the moral into objectivity through our science. And we must necessarily—precisely if we are truly scientific in the sense that has emerged over the last few centuries—succumb to moral agnosticism, for we have no choice but to view moral principles solely as subjective—as something about which we cannot claim that it arises from nature in the same objective manner as the course of a natural process itself.

[ 27 ] And so we are compelled to ask ourselves: How do we ground the science of morality—and with it the foundation of all humanities, including all social sciences? How do we ground the science of morality in an age when we must, quite rightly, acknowledge phenomenalism with regard to external nature? That was the great question for me at the time when I was writing my Philosophy of Freedom. I stood on the ground—completely on the ground!—of modern natural science, indeed, on the ground of phenomenalism with regard to what can be fathomed through the process of cognition from the external sensory world. But then, if one follows the consequences with complete honesty to their logical conclusion, one must say: If morality is to be objectively grounded, then alongside this knowledge—which leads to phenomenalism and thus to agnosticism—there must be room for another kind of knowledge: one that does not use thought to conjure up hypothetical worlds beyond the phenomena of the senses, but rather a form of knowledge that can grasp the spiritual directly through intuition, since—with the exception of mathematics—it is no longer conveyed to the world in the old style. It is precisely agnosticism that compels us, on the one hand, to fully acknowledge it within its own domain, while at the same time, on the other hand, compels us to rouse our minds to activity in order to grasp a spiritual world from which—if we do not wish to remain merely in the subjective realm—we can, through objective spiritual observation, discover moral principles.

[ 28 ] My Philosophy of Freedom has, with some justification, been called an ethical individualism, but this captures only one side of the matter. We must, of course, arrive at ethical individualism, because what is now regarded as a moral principle must be perceived by each individual in freedom. But just as, in the inner, active process of thought, the mathematical is worked out in pure cognition and yet proves to be grounded within objectivity, so too can that which is the content of moral impulses be grasped in pure spiritual intuition—not merely in faith, but in pure spiritual intuition. And that is why one finds oneself compelled—as was the case for me in my Philosophy of Freedom—to say: The science of morality must be grounded in moral intuition. — And I stated at the time that we can only arrive at a true moral intuition in the modern sense if we recognize: Just as we isolate individual natural phenomena from nature as a whole, we must extract from a spiritually perceived world—from a supersensible, spiritual world—those moral principles that are perceived only spiritually, yet are objectively grasped entirely independently of us.

[ 29 ] So I began by speaking of moral intuition. This sets the process of cognition on a certain course. Through the process of cognition—especially if it is to remain genuinely scientific—the soul is driven to summon its innermost powers and to push this summoning so far that the perception of a spiritual world truly becomes possible. Now the question arises: Is only that which can be grasped as moral impulses to be found in the spiritual world, or is perhaps that which leads us to our moral intuitions merely one realm among many? The answer to this, however, becomes clear when one grasps what has been experienced inwardly in the soul as moral intuitions and then carries this forward in an appropriate manner.

[ 30 ] Exactly the same experience that the soul undergoes when it rouses itself to a purely spiritual grasp of morality—which has only become necessary in recent times through the natural sciences—exactly the same experience that is lived through in that context can now also be lived through in other areas. Thus it can be said that anyone who has once engaged in self-observation of this inner experience—which leads to moral intuition—can in fact now develop this inner experience more and more. And the exercises described in my book How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds? serve to develop this inner experience. And these exercises then lead one not to remain at the level of thinking and form hypotheses through it, but rather to observe this thinking in its vitality and to develop it further—to develop it into what I will now elaborate on in the second part of my lecture and what can be called an exact perception of the supersensible world. What is meant here is not the lost, mystical vision of earlier times, but a precise, scientifically grounded perception of the supersensible world, which can be called precise clairvoyance. And through this, one then gradually arrives at those forms of knowledge that I characterized here only recently in a public lecture: imagination, inspiration, and higher intuition—forms of knowledge that dawn upon the inner human being.

[ 31 ] If one now asks how we can still have an objectively grounded moral science—and thus also a social science—precisely when we stand firmly on the ground of the natural sciences, then in these introductory remarks I have sought first to show you how, by honestly standing on the ground of contemporary science, yet still turn toward life—life as it simply must exist for the human being who is to attain inner wholeness—how one is thereby drawn into spiritual inquiry. This differs from ordinary research in that ordinary research simply makes use of those soul forces that are already present, in order to then extend itself across the broad field of observation and experimentation. In contrast, anthroposophical research first turns to the human being so that he or she may develop higher soul powers which, when precisely developed, lead to a higher form of perception that provides, in the supersensible realm, the complement to what we find in the sensible world through our precise scientific methods.

[ 32 ] How this precise, higher form of perception is developed, and how one can now proceed from the sensible realm into the supersensible realm beyond the realm of morality—that will be the subject of my discussions after the break.

Short break

[ 33 ] Rudolf Steiner: Ladies and gentlemen! The first stage of supersensible knowledge is attained through what might be called meditation, combined with a certain concentration of the life of thought. In my last public lecture here in Leipzig, I described the essential point of this from one perspective. Today I would like to characterize it from another perspective—namely, in such a way that we may thereby find the path to a scientific understanding of the world. The essence of this meditation, combined with concentration of thought, lies precisely in the fact that a person does not simply remain at that inner mode of thinking which has developed through heredity, ordinary upbringing, and so on, but that at a certain point in their mature life, they regard this thinking—which they have acquired—merely as a starting point for further inner development.

[ 34 ] Now, as you know, there are mystical souls today who speak somewhat contemptuously of thinking and who take refuge in all manner of other powers of perception—ones that shimmer down into the subconscious—in order thereby to gain a kind of insight into the world that is supposed to encompass what ordinary thinking cannot reach. What is meant by anthroposophy has nothing to do with this dreamlike, fantastical immersion in an inner spiritual life, which verges on the pathological. It moves in precisely the opposite direction, it moves in the direction of ensuring that every single step taken to further develop thinking—to transform it into a higher capacity—can be pursued with such inner, free, and level-headed clarity as is otherwise possible only for the inner soul experiences we develop through a form of cognitive activity as level-headed as that practiced by the mathematician.

[ 35 ] Thus, one might say: Precisely that which modern man has cultivated through his scientific education—mathematical thinking—is taken as a model, not merely for uncovering external relationships, but for developing a higher thought process itself. What mathematics undertakes on the—if I may speak figuratively—horizontal plane is, in a vertical direction —as I would put it—by carrying out an inner activity of the soul, a spiritual exercise, in such a way that with every single step one gives oneself an inner account, just as one gives oneself an account in the steps of mathematics; that is, by placing a certain mental image at the center of one’s consciousness while checking one’s thoughts, an image that is meant to be simply a thought content. The content does not matter at all; what matters is what one does with it. One should not try to suggest anything to oneself in any way. Of all these more unconscious mental activities, anthroposophical practice is the opposite.

[ 36 ] But if one further develops what one has already acquired as a certain form of thought, by further developing it—that is, by now focusing one’s entire mental activity on a manageable subject matter—and if one repeatedly engages in this focusing of the mind on a specific mental activity, this attentiveness to that mental activity while excluding everything else that might otherwise intrude upon the mind, then the thought process is strengthened. And only then does one realize what was, so to speak, the positive aspect of materialism, of the materialistic worldview. For one now realizes that all the thinking one initially engages in during ordinary life—namely, the thinking that then continues in memory—leads us to the point where what we have experienced in thought can later be recalled through memory. One realizes that all of this can only be accomplished by a human being between birth and death by making use of one’s body as a foundation—I do not mean to say as a tool, but as a foundation. And it is precisely through this—by advancing thinking through inner development—that one realizes that ordinary thinking is indeed thoroughly bound to the human physical organism, to the human body, and that, in particular, the process of memory cannot be explained without resorting to a more refined physiology; for only now does one realize that thinking frees itself from the body, that it becomes ever freer and freer from the body.

[ 37 ] Only now do we rise from thinking that proceeds with the aid of the body to a form of thinking that takes place within inner psychological processes; only now do we realize that we are gradually transitioning into a kind of inner experience that does not yet occur, but—I would say—is in the process of being prepared. When one passes from the waking, ordinary state of consciousness into the state of sleep, our organism simply changes in such a way that it no longer performs those functions that find their expression in imagination and in the perception associated with imagination.

[ 38 ] However, because in everyday life we are only able to think with the aid of our body, thinking ceases the moment it can no longer be carried out with the aid of the body—that is, when we fall asleep. The last remnants remain in the pictorial thinking of dreaming, but if one repeatedly and persistently drives thinking further and further through an inner, precise inner exercise—which is why I speak of precise clairvoyance as opposed to obscure, mystical clairvoyance—if one drives thinking further and further through precise exercise, one learns to recognize the possibility of thinking that is independent of the physical body. It is precisely for this reason that the anthroposophical researcher can point to his developed thinking with such inner certainty, because he—even more so than the materialist—knows the dependence of ordinary thinking on the physical organization and because he experiences how, in meditation and practice, the true soul aspect emerges from its bondage to the body. One learns to think independently of the body; one learns to step out of the body with one’s “I”-being; one comes to know the body as an object, whereas previously it was entirely connected to subjectivity.

[ 39 ] This is precisely what contemporary education finds difficult to acknowledge, because, on the one hand, modern natural science has already recognized—and, in fact, is recognizing more and more precisely through anthroposophical insight—the fact that imagination is bound to bodily functions. But one must be clear about the fact that, despite this insight, one cannot remain stuck in this way of thinking; rather, this thinking can be detached from the body by strengthening it inwardly through meditation. Then, however, this thinking is transformed.

[ 40 ] First of all, this is how it is: When this bodyless thinking flashes into being, when the experience flashes into being—you are now engaged in a soul activity that you carry out as if you had simply withdrawn from your body—when this inner experience flashes into being, then thinking becomes more intense inwardly. It attains the same inner richness that one otherwise experiences only when perceiving something sensory. Thinking takes on a pictorial quality. Thinking remains just as much within the sphere of deliberation as any thinking bound to the body, but in this body-free state it now takes on a pictorial quality. One thinks in images. And this thinking in images was also present in its earliest form in what Goethe had developed in his Morphology. That is why he claimed he could see his ideas with his eyes. He did not, of course, mean the physical eyes, but rather what arose in him, so to speak, from an elemental-natural process—a process that can also be cultivated through meditation. By this he meant that with the “spiritual” eye he perceives what is just as pictorial as sensory perceptions otherwise are, yet which, in terms of its inner quality, is thoroughly thought-like. I say “thought-like,” not “thought,” for it is a further-developed, a metamorphosed thought—it is thought-like.

[ 41 ] In this way, however, one rises to the realization of what one is as a human being in one’s earthly life—at least initially, up to the very moment in which one is currently living. Ordinary consciousness has before it the present moment with all the experiences that are present in the environment. Even in ordinary science, one has before one what comes as a supplement to this—namely, the memories that arise in thought, which we connect with the experiences of the present moment. This body-free, pictorial thinking to which we rise—and of which I have just spoken, and which I call imaginative thinking—not because it is a figment of the imagination, but because it proceeds in images rather than in abstractions—this thinking encompasses our earthly life to date as a unity, as if in a single tableau standing before us. And we now recognize that within us, alongside the spatial organism, there lives a temporal organism—an organism in which “before” and “after” are related in just as organic a way as the juxtaposition within the external, physical spatial organism that we carry within us. One recognizes this organism as a supersensible organism—in my books I have called it the “etheric body”; one can also call it the “life body.”

[ 42 ] What it encompasses is by no means identical with the unfounded assumption of a “life force” by earlier science, which arrived at this life force merely by way of hypothesis, whereas this life-body appears as a real vision before the developed imaginative thinking. Thus one arrives at a state in which, so to speak, what in the inner human being is a thing of the past for ordinary consciousness—as something I experienced, for example, ten years ago and which now surfaces in my memory—no longer appears as a thing of the past, but is experienced as something immediately present; one looks at it with the same intensity with which one looks at something in the present. As a result, however, what otherwise unfolds in time stands before one in an instantaneous unity; the whole of life is an image—an image whose individual parts belong together inwardly. And one realizes that, in reality, the past is a present reality; that it appears as the past only because, at this moment, we have it only as a memory through our cognition, which is attuned to present observation. In objectivity, however, it is something immediately present, something real.

[ 43 ] This, then, leads to the recognition of what lies within human beings as the first supersensible element. But it also leads to the recognition of something that is present throughout the entire world of living beings, something that inorganic natural science—up to and including chemistry—cannot provide: One arrives at the insight that is the further development of Goethe’s morphology; one arrives at the insight that the individual plant form is merely a particular manifestation of that form which also lies dormant in other plants; one arrives at what Goethe calls the “primordial plant,” which is by no means a cell, but rather a concretely formed, supersensible form that can only be grasped by imaginative cognition, yet which can live within every single plant form—can live in a transformed, metamorphosed state. One comes to recognize what we find in the plant kingdom if we wish to fully understand it. And one must say to oneself on this occasion: If one does not develop this imaginative insight, which reveals a supersensible, dynamic aspect in everything plant-related, then one learns to recognize only what takes place in the plant form as a mechanical, physical, or chemical process.

[ 44 ] It is to the credit of modern natural science—insofar as it is, for example, botany—that it meticulously investigates what takes place within the plant form, or rather, within the portion of space enclosed by the plant form, specifically the mechanical, physical, and chemical processes occurring there. These processes are none other than those that also exist out there, but they are apprehended by something that cannot be grasped using the same methods as those of physics and chemistry. They are grasped by what lives as a real supersensible reality and can only be recognized in the imagination—in that imagination in which we simultaneously find ourselves standing before us as human totalities in our experience since birth, as if in a single moment.

[ 45 ] Through this, we come to recognize, on the one hand, why—precisely when we apply modern, exact scientific methods as they have developed—we must arrive at a certain agnosticism regarding our understanding of the plant kingdom. And so we come to understand why agnosticism is necessary in a certain field; and we also come to understand to what extent anthroposophy adds precisely that which must remain unknown to this agnosticism. We see to what extent anthroposophy leads beyond agnosticism, while allowing it to exist fully and rightfully within its own domain. That, ladies and gentlemen, is one point.

[ 46 ] The other point, however, is that at this stage one acquires a closer connection between the human being and the external world. Physics, mechanics, and chemistry are currently taught—and rightly so—in such a way that we avoid introducing anything human into this external world as much as possible, by saying: Only that which is devoid of all subjectivity possesses objectivity. — Certainly, anthroposophy will not dispute the validity of this method in a certain field, but will, on the contrary, acknowledge it all the more. But when we use what we perceive in imagination to grasp and contemplate that which also lives in the plant kingdom, we thereby, on the one hand, arrive at an intimate understanding of our own supersensible being—at least as it exists between birth and death— but through this we also arrive at a perception of the fluctuating, the metamorphosing in the living world of forms. In this way, we as human beings first connect with the external world at an initial stage, in the realm of imagination. We in turn integrate the human element back into our worldview.

[ 47 ] The next stage of supersensory knowledge is inspiration. It is attained by developing more and more—I would say—the opposite of meditation and concentration. Anyone who has acquired a certain degree of practice in meditation and concentration knows that when one strengthens one’s thinking, one simultaneously develops an inner inclination to linger in what emerges as a part of the soul—namely, this strengthened thinking. One must exert more effort to let go of these strengthened imaginative thoughts than to let go of any other thought. But if one manages to actually cast these intensified thoughts—this entire imaginative world that one has initially appropriated—out of consciousness again; in other words, if one can empty consciousness—not empty it from the ordinary standpoint, but empty it after first having intensified it inwardly— then this emptiness of consciousness becomes something entirely different from what the emptiness of consciousness is in ordinary life. There, the emptiness of consciousness is sleep.

[ 48 ] The emptiness of consciousness, however—which arises after one has first attained this state of consciousness—is very soon filled with the phenomena of an environment that is now entirely different from everything one had previously perceived. Now one comes to know a world to which our ordinary concepts of space and time no longer apply at all. Now one comes to know a world that is a true soul-spiritual external world. It is just as concrete as our real sensory world. But it can flow into us only by having emptied one’s consciousness on a higher level. Once one has reached the stage of imagination by concentrating on a spiritual content and can now perceive outside one’s body—because one possesses inner activity, not the passivity present in ordinary consciousness— and having gone through the appropriate preparations, the spiritual external world now penetrates through the developed activity of the liberated consciousness, just as the phenomena of the world of colors or the world of sound otherwise penetrate through the senses.

[ 49 ] Through this spiritual outer world, we come to understand, on the one hand, what we were as human beings before we descended from a spiritual-soul world into the physical world, before we united with what had been prepared in the womb through conception as the physical human embryo. One gains an insight into what first lived in a spiritual-soul world and then united with the physical human being. We thus come to know that which, in essence, is entirely inactive between birth and death—that which is, so to speak, excluded from our sensory human being—but which was active within us and worked in its purity before we descended into physical embodiment. That is one aspect: we gain a deeper understanding of the human being by ascending to this second stage of supersensible perception, which is developed just as precisely as the other, the imaginative stage. And this insight, through which a spiritual world flows into us, just as pure air flows from outside into our lungs and is then further processed—this insight, which we process within ourselves unconsciously for ordinary consciousness but fully consciously for developed consciousness—this inflow, I have taken the liberty of calling “inspirational insight.”

[ 50 ] So this is the second stage. Through it, we first come to recognize our Eternal Self as pre-existing. But this also gives us the opportunity to penetrate into that which not only lives in the external world, but which lives and feels—that which, in the living form of inner life, expresses itself in such a way that this inner life becomes present to itself in sensation. Only through this do we learn to recognize what lives as the animal realm in our surroundings. We supplement our understanding with what we can never attain through ordinary observation, as we have developed it in physics and chemistry. We come to observe what lives within the sentient being as a higher, supersensible reality. We now learn, through direct perception—not through philosophical hypotheses in the modern sense—to actually explore a new, higher world: the world of the spiritual-psychic within the sentient physical realm. In doing so, however, we move a step further away from agnosticism. Agnosticism is inevitable if we limit ourselves to studying only the chemical processes within the sentient living being. We must study these processes, and it is the great achievement of modern natural science that they can be studied; but in doing so, this natural science must become agnosticism. Agnosticism must find its complement in the fact that, precisely now, through free spiritual activity and inspiration, we experience that which must be added in order to attain the full reality of sentient life. Through this, however, we attain something else as well, of which I would like to give you an example. In this way, one comes to recognize that the process taking place, for example, in the human realm—and it is similar in the animal realm—is not merely an ascending process, but at the same time a descending one as well. It is only now, in fact, that one learns to look inwardly at oneself; by rising to this inspired insight, one comes to know more precisely what is actually taking place in ordinary consciousness. Above all, one learns to recognize that when the thought process of ordinary—not imaginative—consciousness is at work, one is not dealing with a process of building up, but with a process of breaking down; that, in essence, our nervous life is a life of breakdown. If our nerves could not be broken down—and, of course, rebuilt again from time to time—we would not be able to develop ordinary thinking. True, vital life, when it appears in excess, is essentially a numbing of thought, as occurs during every sleep. That life which is permeated by feeling and thought must simultaneously carry within itself a process of decay—I would say a differential process of dying.

[ 51 ] One first becomes acquainted with this process of breakdown in healthy life—that is, in the kind of life where it occurs so that human thinking, in the ordinary sense of the word, can take place at all. Once one has grasped the nature of these processes, one also comes to recognize their abnormal manifestations. There are simply certain organs or organ systems in the human organism in which processes run parallel to ordinary thinking. However, when the degradative processes—which otherwise form the physical basis of thinking—spread, so to speak, through an internal infection—the word is not used quite in the strict sense—when these degradative processes extend to those organs to which they are not normally associated, pathological conditions arise in them.

[ 52 ] It is absolutely necessary to structure the study of pathology in such a way that the processes we recognize in physiology are also reflected in pathology. But this is only possible if we can understand the essential nature of these processes in our human organism; in the animal organism, it is similar, yet somewhat different—I say this again so that I am not misunderstood. By tracing the processes in our human organism in such a way that we recognize one polarity as an organization oriented toward breakdown and the other polarity as one that, in a healthy state, cannot be affected by this breakdown, we learn to see through this constructive and this destructive aspect with inspired insight.

[ 53 ] If we learn to perceive this clearly and can then combine this insight into our own organism with an inspired understanding of the external world—the processes in the plant kingdom—and if we learn to perceive the mineral kingdom and the animal kingdom through inspired insight, then we will come to recognize a kinship between human inner processes and the external world that is even more intimate than that which already existed at an earlier stage of human history. I have shown how, at this earlier stage, human beings felt a kinship with external nature by seeing in everything that appears as plant life in its most varied metamorphoses something that they recognized in their own soul life, in their own existence between birth and death.

[ 54 ] But if, through inspired insight, he now comes to see what he was in his pre-existing life, then he simultaneously perceives in the outer realm that which not only lives in sensation but also has a certain relationship, a certain connection, to that which lives within the human organism—an organism oriented toward sensation and thinking. And one learns to recognize the connections between the processes outside and the processes inside, as well as the connections with the life of sensation. One learns to recognize what is brought about in a human being when organs are affected by degeneration—organs that, strictly speaking, should not be affected by it, because degeneration, in this sense, must serve only as the foundation for the processes of thinking and sensation. When, so to speak, the organic activity required for thinking and feeling affects parts of the human organism that should not be affected, then what arises is what we must identify in pathology. But when we perceive the external world with the same kind of insight, we find what must be addressed through therapy. Then we find the corresponding process of polar counteraction, which—to put it this way—is normal internal decay. In short, through inner intuition we find the connection between pathology and therapy, between the disease process and the remedy. In this way, we move beyond medical agnosticism—not by negating modern medicine, but by recognizing what it can be—and thereby we simultaneously find the path to adding, as a complement to it, what it cannot find on its own.

[ 55 ] If one now believes that anthroposophy seeks to foster any kind of dilettantism in the most diverse fields of science, I must say: That is not the case! It consciously seeks to build upon what it fully acknowledges as the achievement of modern science, but it seeks to supplement this with higher methods of knowledge. It therefore seeks to move beyond the shortcomings of purely trial-and-error therapy—shortcomings that are, after all, already sensed by anyone engaged in practical work—toward a therapy derived from intuition that has an inner, organic connection with pathology, which is, in a sense, merely the other side of pathology. If one succeeds, in the manner described, in finding in pathology simply a continuation of physiology, then one also succeeds—by coming to understand the kinship between the human being and their natural environment— to extend pathology into therapy in a thoroughly rational manner, so that in the future these two need not stand side by side as they do today in a science tinged with agnosticism.

[ 56 ] These are merely hints that I would like to offer in the sense that they might shed a little light—I know how incomplete one must be in such an introductory lecture— how far removed anthroposophy is from positioning itself in an amateurish manner in opposition to established science; rather, it is precisely its aim to draw the ultimate conclusion from the agnostic form of science and thereby arrive at an understanding of what must be added as a complement to this science. This is already being sensed, and fundamentally there are many—especially members of the younger generation—who are coming to feel that science, as it currently exists, is not enough; they feel: We need something else, for it does not satisfy us. Precisely when we are otherwise sincere in our approach to it, we must arrive at something else through it. And it is precisely for those who come to know science not merely as an answer, but in a higher sense as a question, that anthroposophy seeks to exist—not to drive them into dilettantism, but to progress, in the correct and precise manner, from science to that which science itself demands, if it is pursued consistently.

[ 57 ] But there is also a third, higher level of insight. This is attained when we extend the exercises to include exercises of the will. Through the will, we initially perform mainly what a person can do in the external world. But when we apply that same energy of the will to our own inner processes, a third level of supersensory knowledge arises on the basis of imagination and inspiration. If we are completely honest with ourselves, we will have to admit at every moment of our lives: We are something entirely different today than we were ten or twenty years ago. The content of our soul has changed, but as it changed, we were actually quite passively surrendered to the external world. Precisely with regard to our inner transformation, a certain passivity prevails within us.

[ 58 ] But if we take this transformation into our own hands, if we manage to radically change—for example—what has become habitual within us in a certain respect —where a change seems possible—, that is, if we behave inwardly toward ourselves in such a way that, through our own will, we transform ourselves in a certain direction into a different person, then we must actively strengthen our inner experience over years, often over decades, for such exercises of the will take time. One resolves: You will develop a certain quality—or the form of a quality—within yourself. — After months, one realizes how little one succeeds in making, in this way, what the body otherwise makes of one, out of oneself. But if one exerts oneself more and more, then one not only looks at one’s inner, supersensory being, but one also comes to make this inner being, so to speak, completely transparent. A sense organ like our eye could not serve as an organ of sight if it did not—if I may use the expression—selflessly withdraw its own substantiality. This is what makes it transparent, physically transparent. In this way, through exercises of the will, we become, so to speak, inwardly transparent in our soul.

[ 59 ] I have only touched on a few points here. You will find a very detailed account of this in my book How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds?. We truly reach a state in which we see the world without ourselves being the obstacle to fully penetrating the supersensible realm. For in fact, because we always live within our physical body in ordinary consciousness, we are the obstacle to immersing ourselves in the supersensible world; for the body conveys to us only the earthly, not the soul-spiritual. Now, by being able to look beyond our body, we gaze into a level of the spiritual world through which what our soul becomes once it has passed through the gate of death appears before our spiritual gaze. Just as we come to know our pre-existent life through the other method I described earlier, so now we come to know our life in the state after death. Now that we have learned to no longer see the physical body, we come to understand—as it appears figuratively before us—the process in which we find ourselves when we completely shed this physical body and enter the spiritual-soul world with our spiritual-soul organism. The passing of our physical existence and the emergence of a spiritual-soul existence: this is what we experience in the third stage of supersensible knowledge, the stage I have called higher intuitive knowledge.

[ 60 ] By having this experience—by being able to immerse ourselves now in a spiritual world without being biased by our subjectivity—we gain the ability to recognize this spiritual world for the first time in its full inner reality. In inspiration, it is still as it flows into us; but now, in higher intuition, we come to know it in its full inner reality. And now let us look back at what first presented itself to us as a necessity: moral intuition. This moral intuition is the only aspect that, for ordinary consciousness, emerges from the spiritual world through proper self-reflection on pure thinking—as I have described in my Philosophy of Freedom. But if we now proceed through imagination and inspiration, if we perform exercises that teach us to completely set ourselves aside, to develop the highest activity of the spiritual-soul aspect, and yet to be objective rather than subjective by living within objectivity itself—that is, if we attain this standing within objectivity—only then is it possible to pursue spiritual science.

[ 61 ] Only then is it possible to perceive even that which already manifests itself as spiritual in the physical world; only then does one gain a true understanding of history. History as a mere sequence of external facts is only the preparation. One can only penetrate what lives in historical events as spiritual driving forces and driving entities through intuitive insight. And it is only at this level of intuitive insight that one truly penetrates what our own “I” is. Our own “I” first appears to us as something we do not fully grasp. Just as a dark room within a bright space appears to us in such a way that we see the brightness from within the darkness with our eyes, so we look back upon our soul, see its thoughts, feel further inner processes, and live within our impulses of will. The true “I,” however, is, so to speak, like a dark room within it. This is now illuminated. We come to know our eternal being. But it is only through this that we come to know the human being in such a way that we can fully comprehend him or her as a social being as well. We now stand at the point where the complement to social agnosticism emerges.

[ 62 ] This is where things start to get particularly serious. What is social agnosticism? It arises from the fact that we, having learned to apply our observations—rightly so—to external, natural phenomena, now wish to apply this trained mode of observation to social phenomena as well. This gives rise to the various compromise theories in the social sciences and in sociology—indeed, all the theories regarding our understanding of social life that we have seen emerge. This also gives rise to approaches that adopt a natural-scientific perspective on social life but must therefore disregard everything knowable, everything that is alien to thought, and everything that exists only in the realm of instinct. The ultimate extreme has thus emerged in Marxism, which views everything spiritual as an ideology and which believes that the impulses of social life are realized only when they develop from the instinctive realm, which belongs to agnosticism. Class consciousness is actually nothing other than the sum of what is not rooted in human cognition but arises from instincts—only those who develop such instincts under certain living conditions can recognize it.

[ 63 ] If you look at our social life with an unbiased eye, you will find that we have arrived at agnosticism precisely in the social sphere. As grotesque and paradoxical as it may still seem to people today, in this field of spiritual science one can only move beyond this type of knowledge—insofar as it is agnostic—by rising to truly intuitive knowledge and thereby to the experience of the human being. We humans today are actually passing each other by. We judge one another in a highly superficial way. Social demands arise precisely because we are developing our old social instincts most strongly. But an inner, social spiritual disposition will come about only when intuitions from a spiritual world permeate us with life. In this agnostic age, we have necessarily come to view everything spiritual more or less solely in terms of ideas. But ideas, insofar as they exist in ordinary consciousness, are not alive. Today’s philosophers speak to us of logical ideas, aesthetic ideas, and ethical ideas. We can observe them all; we can experience them all inwardly in a theoretical sense—but they lack the power to inspire life. Ideas only acquire a reality of life when they rise to the level of an intuitive experience of the spiritual. We cannot achieve social redemption and liberation, nor can we imbue our lives with a religiosity appropriate to us, unless we arrive at an intuitive, life-filled grasp of the spiritual.

[ 64 ] This vibrant grasp of the spiritual will differ fundamentally from what we today call spiritual life. Today, we actually call “spiritual life” the life of ideas—in other words, life in abstract ideas that are not impulses. But what intuition provides us with will restore to us, as humanity, the living spirit that lives within us. After all, we now have only thoughts that, precisely because they are merely thoughts, have completely lost the spirit. We have thoughts as abstractions. We must reclaim the life of thoughts. But the life of thoughts is the spirit that lives among us—and not the spirit of which we merely know. We will develop a social life only if the spirit lives within us once more, if we do not attempt to shape society out of the spiritless—out of that which lives in social agnosticism—but rather if we shape it out of that mindset which, through intuition, understands how to reclaim the living spirit.

[ 65 ] We may look back today on earlier ages—certainly, we have moved beyond them, and it is precisely those who stand on anthroposophical ground who are least likely to wish for their return in their old form. But what these earlier ages had, despite all the faults we can so easily criticize today, is that in certain epochs they brought the living spirit—not merely the spirit of thought—among human beings. Through this, what existed as a foundation of knowledge was able to expand into an artistic grasp of the world, into a religious penetration of the innermost self, and into the social shaping of the world. We will only achieve a new social shaping of the world, a new religious life, and new artistic works—based on the knowledge upon which they have, in essence, always been founded—when we once again attain a living knowledge, so that not only thoughts from the spirit, but the spirit itself lives within humanity. It is this living spirit that anthroposophy seeks. Anthroposophy does not seek to be a theory or a theoretical worldview; anthroposophy seeks to be that which, in human life, can awaken the Spirit in its liveliness—that which can permeate human beings not merely with knowledge of the Spirit, but with the Spirit itself.

[ 66 ] This will enable us to move beyond the era that brought phenomenalism to its highest flowering. Certainly, one can only hope that it will continue to flourish in this way; one can only hope that the scientific way of thinking will continue to thrive with the conscientiousness with which it has become established. But the life of the spirit must not exist merely by continuing to live on in the old traditions. Fundamentally, all spiritual experiences are built upon traditions—upon the spiritual achievements of earlier generations.

[ 67 ] Essentially, our art today is also built upon traditions, founded on what earlier generations of humanity have achieved. Today, we cannot arrive at new architectural styles unless we transform our very consciousness; otherwise, we will continue to build in Renaissance, Gothic, and classical styles. We will not achieve creative production. We arrive at creative production when we first bring knowledge itself to life within us, so that we shape not merely concepts but an inner life that fills us and can form a bridge between what we grasp in thought and what we must create in the fullness of life. We must become productive human beings by seeking, above all else, living knowledge as the foundation of life.

[ 68 ] This, my esteemed audience, my esteemed fellow students, is what anthroposophy seeks to do. It seeks to bring life into the human soul, into the human spirit—not to be, as is often claimed, in opposition to what it itself recognizes as fully legitimate within the modern scientific spirit. It seeks to carry this scientific spirit forward so that it may penetrate from the external, material, and naturalistic realm into the spiritual and soul realm. And precisely those who can perceive human needs in this way today are convinced that in many people of the present there already exists an inner, unconscious urge for such a continuation of the contemporary scientific spirit. Anthroposophy seeks only to consciously shape what lives as a vague impulse within many people. And only those who come to know it in its true light—not in the distorted images that are sometimes projected onto it today—will be able to see it in the right light and in its relationship to science.

Pronunciation

[ 69 ] Walter Birkigt, Chair: I would like to thank Dr. Steiner for the presentation he gave here, and I would now like to note that we will now open the floor for discussion. Please submit requests to speak and questions in writing.

[ 70 ] Dr. Dobrina: Distinguished guests! After such a powerful presentation of the present and past intellectual history of humanity, it is not easy to offer a concise summary in just a few words. But I believe that before moving on to a critique, one must first appreciate the profundity of the entire presentation. One must appreciate and acknowledge that a synthesis is being sought between the natural sciences, with their precise lines of reasoning, and the spiritual sciences, with their forms that are, in part, antiquated.

[ 71 ] Over the past few centuries, the natural sciences have indeed managed to ascend to the throne and, to some extent, to dethrone philosophy itself as antiquated. Now, however, those who cannot be satisfied with philosophy thus dethroned and stripped of its divine status are once again seeking an impetus to restore philosophy to the ancient pedestal on which it stood in Greece. And I believe that anthroposophy, as Dr. Rudolf Steiner has developed it for us, is an attempt to shape this synthesis in such a way that, while it acknowledges natural science only in its preliminary stages and takes care not to object to its precision, it then goes beyond it to penetrate the supersensible realm. However, the step into the supersensible worlds seems to me to rest on a very weak foundation, all the more so because Dr. Rudolf Steiner works with concepts such as pre-existence. Anyone with more time could probe more closely into what he means by this pre-existence or what he has to say about “post mortem” life—that is, life after death.

[ 72 ] Applause

[ 73 ] In any case, I believe that from this standpoint we can and must immediately engage in a vigorous discussion with him, and it will likely become apparent that, fundamentally, Dr. Rudolf Steiner’s entire conceptual framework breaks down into two entirely separate areas. On the one hand, he strives to immerse himself in therapy and to view Greek culture specifically from the perspective of therapeutic analysis; on the other hand, he works with concepts that stem from the old tools of theosophy and are strongly reminiscent of antiquated forms of spiritual life.

[ 74 ] Applause

[ 75 ] For this reason, I would like to say very briefly that the entire picture Dr. Rudolf Steiner has presented, both here and in his previous public lecture, seems to me quite inadequate, and that on this basis one cannot in fact arrive at any critique of modern life, nor of modern economic struggles, nor even of the stance taken today against the spiritual powers that have fallen into decay.

[ 76 ] Applause

[ 77 ] Perhaps Dr. Rudolf Steiner would be kind enough to

[ 78 ] to reply shortly.

[ 79 ] Walter Birkigt: Does the assembly consider this statement to be a question to which Dr. Steiner should respond immediately? If so, I would ask Dr. Steiner to respond.

[ 80 ] Applause

[ 81 ] Rudolf Steiner: Well, ladies and gentlemen, as I said in my lecture, it is intended to be an introductory one. And I said that a lecture intended to provide orientation faces the difficulty of being able only to hint at certain things that would require further elaboration, so that, naturally, a whole flood of unsatisfactory thoughts arises in the souls of the listeners—thoughts that, of course, cannot be dispelled in the first lecture. The issue with the—I cannot call them objections, but rather—remarks of the esteemed speaker who spoke before me is that he felt I had used words that he considers to be outdated terms.

[ 82 ] Well, ladies and gentlemen, we can place all of our words—even the most ordinary ones—into this category. After all, when we want to express ourselves, to speak, we must use words. If, of course, you were to try to take in what is already available today in contemporary literature—which often strikes even me as immense—I mean immense in terms of its sheer volume—if one were to read everything that has been written, for example, by myself...

[ 83 ] Cheerfulness

[ 84 ] ... when faced with such a wealth of material, it goes without saying that in an introductory lecture like this, one can only touch on certain points. So let us take a closer look at what the esteemed speaker just said. He said that preexistence reminded him of old concepts. But the fact is, he was only reminded of old concepts because I used words that had been in use before. Of course, when I speak of how, by elevating the imaginative knowledge—which I have, after all, characterized—to an inspired knowledge—which I have also characterized—I arrive at the concept of pre-existence. If I merely describe how one thus arrives at the concept of pre-existent life, then the term “pre-existence” at all; what matters is simply that I describe how a precise practice takes place in order to arrive at the perception of what was present in the human being before this human being—if I may put it that way—unites with a physical body, with what is being prepared in the mother’s body through conception. So, I have used the word “pre-existence” only to point to something that one can perceive only once a supersensible insight has been attained in the manner I have described. In Gnosticism, one finds a certain attitude toward knowledge. Gnosticism as such has nothing to do with what anthroposophy seeks today, but this attitude toward knowledge—as it existed in ancient Gnosticism and which aims to recognize the supersensible once again—lives on in our age—the post-Galilean, post-Copernican age—in a different form.

[ 85 ] And now I would like to describe to you in more detail what should follow—I will describe it in a few sentences. You see, when we look from a form of knowledge sought on the basis of the methods I have spoken of—when we look from this form of knowledge toward an older one that is very different from it—we arrive at an Eastern form of knowledge that could in reality be called “theosophical.” Only after this had developed in earlier times could a philosophy arise from theosophy, and only then could anthroposophy arise from philosophy. Of course, if one takes these terms in such a way that one grasps them only in their abstractness, rather than in what really matters, then one will confuse everything, and the new will appear to one merely as a rehash of the old. This theosophy was attained through methods of knowledge entirely different from those I have described.

[ 86 ] What was the essence of this method of knowledge? I am not referring to everything here, but only to a specific phase of it. Take, for example, the ancient Indian yoga process, which is certainly not meant to be a mere warm-up for anthroposophy. We can see this because what I am describing seems, at first glance, to be very similar to this yoga process, doesn’t it? But unless you bring that perspective to it yourself, you will not find that what I am describing is similar to the yoga process. This process consisted in the fact that, at a stage of human development when human life as a whole was less differentiated than it is today, people sensed how the rhythmic breathing process was connected to the thought process. Today we look at the matter from a physiological perspective. Today we know: As we breathe, as we inhale, we simultaneously push the respiratory force through the spinal canal—that is, we push the inhaled air into the brain. In the brain, the respiratory process continues in a metamorphosed form, so that—from a physiological perspective—we have a synthesis of the respiratory process and the thought process.

[ 87 ] Yoga was based on this process, which transformed ordinary breathing into a differently regulated form of breathing. Through the altered breathing process—that is, through a more physical process—thinking was transformed. It was shaped into what a certain worldview, in the old, instinctive sense, produced. Today we live in a differentiated human organization; today we must tackle the thought process directly; but today, as a result, we also arrive at something entirely different. So if you examine the concrete details, you will be able to clearly define every single phase of cognition as it has occurred successively in human evolution. And then you will no longer even think that what now exists in anthroposophy—as the form suitable for the present time for attaining higher knowledge—can in any way be lumped together with what existed in earlier times. Of course, we cannot discuss what I have not even spoken about—based on what I have told you in this introductory lecture. I would, of course, have to continue now by explaining what pre-existent life is like. In my introductory lecture, I could say nothing other than that the knowledge of pre-existent life is attained through the processes I have described, which are in fact distinct from whatever has ever emerged in history as inner development.

[ 88 ] And now I would really like to ask: What grounds for criticism exist if I use the word “pre-existence” in the sense that everyone can understand? It means nothing other than what the wording itself conveys. If I understand “existence” as that which is experienced through the senses, and then speak of “pre-existence,” it simply refers to existence in the spiritual-soul life prior to sensory existence. This is not a reference to some ancient form of theosophy, but rather the use of a term that would need to be elaborated upon if one were to go beyond an introductory lecture. Thus, you will find that if you truly take what may be called theosophy—and what I have described in my book, which I have also titled Theosophy—if, that is, you take what may be called theosophy, it leads back in its origins to ancient forms—just as our chemistry leads back to alchemy.

[ 89 ] But what I have described today as a process of cognition is by no means similar to any process of cognition from ancient times. It is therefore by no means possible to make what will follow my lecture today—and what has not yet been said—the subject of a discussion by saying: “Yes, pre-existence—that takes us back to the old framework.” —As you have seen, it does not at all take us back to the old framework, but it does carry forward certain attitudes toward knowledge that existed back when the old framework was in use, and which today exist only in their remnants and intrude into our present as matters of faith, whereas in the past they were attained through processes of knowledge. Now we must once again—through processes of knowledge organized in the same way as our scientific inquiry—arrive at insights that can fill the whole human being, not merely the intellectually oriented one.

[ 90 ] Ladies and gentlemen, if one wishes to offer any criticism at all, one must criticize what has been said directly, not what could not be addressed in the lecture and which one then claims is unfounded or the like. How can something that is merely a simple description be unfounded? After all—and this is precisely what I’ve been doing in the introductory lectures—I’ve done nothing but describe. Only someone who knows what actually happens when one truly undertakes these things could say that something is unfounded. If one actually undertakes these things—that is, if one no longer merely speaks about them from the outside—then one will see that they are grounded much more deeply than any mathematical science, for they come much closer to the soul than mathematical processes do. And so precisely this kind of criticism is an extraordinarily superficial one. And the fact that anthroposophy is always understood only in this superficial way is precisely what makes its presentation so extraordinarily difficult. In no other science is it expected that, when a lecture is given, one must convey everything. Only of anthroposophy is it expected that it convey everything in a single lecture. I have said from the very beginning that I cannot do that.

[ 91 ] Applause

[ 92 ] But the point is not for me to describe the traditional tools that are available—for example, how Gnosticism arrived at such insight through inner soul processes, or how the Eastern school of yoga arrives at insight. If one knows these tools—if one does not merely talk about them...

[ 93 ] Applause

[ 94 ] ... then one will no longer claim that anthroposophy reminds one of the past. One only makes that claim as long as one allows oneself to be influenced by reminiscences in the form of abstract concepts, which arise solely from the fact that one does not compare them with the concrete, with reality. Of course, I could go on at great length, but this may suffice as an answer.

[ 95 ] Lively applause

[ 96 ] Mr. H. Schmidt: Ladies and gentlemen, I would like to offer a criticism—or rather, raise a question: Dr. Steiner said this evening that every scientific worldview is, in a sense, dualistic in that it must add an element of uncertainty to what is immediate and certain. It stands to reason that in anthroposophy, this “other” is the supersensible world. However, the scientific value of a philosophy is revealed to us in the extent to which it succeeds in depicting the inner relationship between the supersensible and the sensible—I deliberately say “scientific” value, not cultural or psychological. Platonism, for example, which in this regard did not always succeed in constructing the relationship between idea and reality, had immense cultural significance.

[ 97 ] Now, in anthroposophy, Dr. Steiner attempts to describe the relationship between the supersensible and the sensible; that is to say, he attempts to demonstrate the necessary transition from the immediate sensory world to the supersensible world, or—from a subjective perspective—from empirical and rational knowledge, from scientific knowledge, to what I would call superscientific knowledge. He has used anthroposophy for this purpose. I am basing my remarks solely on Dr. Steiner’s lecture, specifically the first part—to be honest, I did not have the energy to cover the second part.

[ 98 ] Applause

[ 99 ] Anthroposophy is based on the analogy of mathematics. Dr. Steiner explained how we project mathematics onto nature. As is well known, this was already recognized in Greek science, and in fact the ideal of mathematical natural science consists, at the very least, in “mathematizing” nature, as was already said in antiquity. But in what sense can we even speak of this? That is precisely the problem.

[ 100 ] Dr. Steiner explained the intensity, the passion, and the commitment with which the individual mathematician applies his ideas about conceptual entities to empirical reality. But what, then, are the constructs with which the mathematician deals? They are by no means his mental images. Take, for example, the circle that a mathematician draws on the blackboard to demonstrate his geometric theorems—that is not his mental image. As a human being, he has absolutely nothing to do with the circle—rather, as a mathematician he has nothing to do with it, though as a human being he certainly does, in that he uses his two eyes to perceive the circle. Restlessness

[ 101 ] The concept of a circle, with which mathematicians are certainly concerned, cannot be represented in reality at all; it is never the object of sensory perception. Rather, the concept of a circle is the universal.

[ 102 ] Now, anthroposophy, of all things, needs something personally real, which it seeks to project onto nature. The general concept that I have, so to speak, in my mathematical mind does not exist in reality. So if the supersensible world is to be grounded in the sensible world in such a way that one can infer the object from the subject, then this can never happen by projecting subjective ideas into nature in the manner of mathematics. In my view, the analogy with mathematics is not at all appropriate here, for mathematics deals with conceptual entities that, as such, never occur in reality. In my opinion, this is an objection to anthroposophy in general. On the other hand, however, today’s lecture specifically emphasizes the reality of supersensible things.

[ 103 ] So, here’s the point: I cannot see how mathematics is supposed to serve here in explaining the bridge from the sensible to the supersensible. The main value of the lecture apparently lay in the idea that personal experience, personal excitement, the totality of personal experience, should play an active role in thinking. But this must immediately raise a reservation in everyone’s mind. It is precisely the personal, the individual, that lacks necessity. What I personally imagine—yes, anyone can say to me: “That is your imagination, that is your conception; I have nothing to do with it.”—This, in my view, is an objection to anthroposophy as a whole.

[ 104 ] Applause

[ 105 ] Then, what was particularly important to Dr. Steiner regarding the deep emotional resonance that his lecture evoked precisely at this point—and which was truly moving even for his opponents—was this: For Dr. Steiner, the starting point for higher knowledge is moral intuition. Anthroposophy requires a supersensible realm from which to derive moral principles, and it achieves this derivation by contemplating the supersensible. Frankly speaking, I simply cannot wrap my head around this. Suppose, for a moment, that there were a supersensible faculty of cognition—or rather, such cognitive abilities that we ordinary mortals do not yet possess—and suppose it were also possible to actually contemplate the supersensible with this higher faculty of cognition—the supersensible as something that exists: How can I deduce from this what I ought to do? What I ought to do can never be derived from what is. No bridge can ever be built from the sphere of being to the sphere of ought.

[ 106 ] Walter Birkigt: Since there are no further comments at this time, I ask Dr. Steiner to respond. Rudolf Steiner: Ladies and gentlemen, I would like to begin by saying the following: The very nature of the remarks I made this evening prevented me from speaking of “analogy” at the point where I spoke of mathematics, and I ask you to bear in mind precisely that I did not use the word “analogy.” This is no coincidence, but rather a thoroughly deliberate choice. I could not use the word “analogy” because there was no question of an analogy with mathematics; rather, mathematical thinking was employed to arrive at a characterization of the inner experience of certainty. And by attempting to clarify how one arrives at an inner experience of certainty in mathematics, I wanted to show how, in a completely different field—where one attempts to arrive at certainty in the same way—one can also attain precisely this degree of certainty. It is therefore not a matter of an analogy with mathematics, but rather a matter of citing two real types of psychological experience that are to be compared with one another in no other respect than in pointing to the attainment of inner certainty. Ladies and gentlemen, what the esteemed previous speaker said is not a connection to my lecture, for then he would not have been able to use the term “analogy.” I avoided it because it does not belong here.

[ 107 ] It has also been said that I spoke of the passion of the individual mathematician. I could not have done that either, because I simply drew upon the nature of the mathematical experience as it is known to those who are initiated in and trained in mathematics. How anyone could even think to speak of any kind of personal interference in mathematics is beyond me. In contrast, I would like to make the following observation: It sounds very nice when one says that the inner concept of the circle has absolutely nothing to do with the circle I draw on the blackboard. Nor will I claim that it has anything to do with it, because it would never occur to me to say that the inner concept of the circle is made of chalk. I don’t think that’s a very profound truth that’s being expressed here.

[ 108 ] But when one moves from abstract thinking to thinking grounded in reality, one must tell oneself the following. Let’s take something we construct mathematically in our minds, for example, the following theorem: If we draw the diameter of a circle and draw a line from one endpoint of the diameter to any point on the circumference, and then draw another line from that point to the other endpoint of the diameter, then this angle is always a right angle. I don’t even need to draw this on the blackboard. What I recognize here—namely, that in a circle, every angle across the diameter with its vertex on the circumference is a right angle—is a purely inner experience. I have no need to use the circle here on the blackboard.

[ 109 ] Interjection: That's not true! You can't come up with a theory until you've seen it for yourself!

[ 110 ] But surely what I draw on the board is merely an external aid.

[ 111 ] For anyone capable of mathematical thinking, it is entirely out of the question that they could not construct such mathematical truths—even the most complicated ones—purely through inner experience. That is out of the question. Even if I were forced to draw them with chalk, that would still be meaningless for the simple reason that what constitutes the substantive validity of the theorem is to be illustrated in the drawing, but need not be contained within it. If I use the drawing on the blackboard to illustrate that the angle is a right angle, this illustration does not, however, establish anything specific regarding the inner validity of the theorem. And that is ultimately what matters. There can be absolutely no question of my needing the drawing on the blackboard in the first place. But even if I did need it, that would be completely irrelevant to what I have said about the nature of doing mathematics—not of solving individual problems, but of doing mathematics in general. What matters here lies in an entirely different realm than what has been cited here, for when we consider mathematical thinking, we are simply led to the conclusion that we must say to ourselves: we experience inner truths.

[ 112 ] I did not say, after all, that we already experience realities in mathematics. Therefore, it is completely irrelevant to object that mathematics as such contains no reality. But in the formal sense, it certainly does contain truths, and these can also be experienced. What matters is the path—how one arrives at truth and how one arrives at insights—even if these insights do not yet have any reality within mathematics itself. But when this mathematical experience is transferred to an entirely different realm—namely, the realm where the precision of mathematics is applied to the actual life of the soul—then the character of precision, which is initially experienced in the formal realm of mathematics, is carried over into reality. And only through this am I justified in carrying over into reality that which, in mathematics, is regarded as merely formal.

[ 113 ] I first showed how one arrives, from within, at truths that we—of course, only in an external sense—seemingly transfer to observation and experimentation as unrealities, or with which experimentation is interwoven. And then I also showed how this formal character is transformed into a real one. However, what seems so plausible still does not hold true: that which is mathematical exists only within me; the concept exists only within me; it does not exist out there in reality. What has been mathematically explored and worked out would, as such, have nothing to do with reality. Well, does the concept of the circle really exist only within me?

[ 114 ] Suppose—I’m not drawing a circle on the blackboard, but I have my two fingers here. With them, I hold a string and set the object in circular motion, so that this little lead ball moves in a circle. Those laws of motion that I now recognize through mathematical analysis—do they have nothing to do with reality? After all, I constantly proceed in such a way that I determine behavior in the real world precisely through mathematics. When I move from induction to deduction, I proceed by incorporating what I have initially determined through induction and then further processing it with mathematics. When I incorporate the final term of an empirical induction into a mathematical formula and then simply continue the calculation, I am counting on the fact that what I develop mathematically through deduction corresponds to reality. It is only through this that mathematics becomes fruitful for reality, not through philosophical debates such as those just presented.

[ 115 ] Let us consider the fruitfulness of mathematics for reality. One can see this fruitfulness simply when, for example, someone says: “I see the irregularities that exist compared to the calculated results, and therefore I substitute different values into the equation.” — And so, initially by purely mathematical means, he arrives at the assumption of a reality; reality then emerges—it is there. Thus, by continuing my empirical path purely through mathematics, I have also demonstrated the applicability of what is experienced inwardly to the external world. At least, that is what I expect. And if one could not expect that the actual events, which one has followed in sensory-intuitive reality up to a certain point, would continue in the calculation, then what I just meant—that one feels satisfied in mathematics—would not be possible at all. The point is that one takes the concepts seriously, just as they have been expounded.

[ 116 ] Now, regarding what I said about moral intuition. You may recall that I stated in the lecture that intuition—which I have identified as the third stage of supersensible knowledge—appears last. However, moral intuition is already present even in ordinary consciousness. It is the only aspect of the supersensible world that first appears to a consciousness that has advanced to our level. Moral intuition is simply an intuition projected down from a higher level to our level of knowledge. I clearly illustrated this in the lecture. That is why I spoke of this moral intuition first, rather than later. I described it as the starting point. One learns to recognize it; and once one has grasped it correctly, one possesses a certain subjective prerequisite for understanding what comes afterward as well. For in experiencing moral intuition, one experiences something that—when compared to what is otherwise real—possesses a different kind of reality, and that is the “ought” reality. If one considers what I have said, then the difference between being and ought is explained simply by the fact that moral intuition extends into our ordinary sphere of consciousness, whereas the other intuition is not a projection downward but must first be attained. There was no suggestion whatsoever that moral intuition is merely a special case of the cognitive process of general intuition; rather, it is simply the first instance in which something presents itself to us intuitively within ordinary consciousness, in our current state of consciousness.

[ 117 ] So, the point is to understand the concepts developed here for anthroposophy with the utmost precision. I wanted to offer some food for thought. I fully understand that objections are possible, because, of course, one cannot explain everything in such detail, and so I assume that there are still many doubts and so on in the minds of those present. But just imagine how long my lecture would have been if I had already dispelled all the doubts in the lecture itself in the same way that I am now trying to dispel them in my response. One must expect this even in an initial introductory lecture—not only in anthroposophy, but in all fields. That is what today’s discussion was about. I certainly did not intend to offer anything conclusive, and I must say that some people are simply not willing to engage with anthroposophy at all. But I have found that the best understanders of what anthroposophy is were often not those who fell for it right from the start, at first glance, but rather that the best practitioners of anthroposophy have been those who have gone through very severe doubts.

[ 118 ] Therefore, please do not take what I said with a certain sharpness in my reply as though it were meant with hatred; rather, I am actually pleased with every objection raised, for it is only by overcoming these obstacles of objection that one truly enters into anthroposophy. And I have always derived greater satisfaction from those who have entered into anthroposophy by overcoming the obstacles of rejection and doubt than from those who sailed right in with full sails at the very first attempt.

[ 119 ] Lively applause

[ 120 ] Mr. Wilhelm: I do not wish to offer criticism, but merely to ask a question, and I would be very interested to hear Dr. Steiner’s answer. Dr. Steiner responded to the criticism of the first speaker, who contrasted theosophy with anthroposophy, by stating that the method of knowledge in anthroposophy is entirely different from that of theosophy—especially the older form—and that throughout history there is absolutely no instance, at any point, any echo of the method of knowledge presented by Dr. Steiner this evening. I would just like to ask whether Dr. Steiner is familiar with these passages in The Green Face—a book that has a very strong theosophical flavor and in which this method of knowledge actually forms the foundation of the entire work. I would be very interested to learn Dr. Steiner’s position on this matter.

[ 121 ] Rudolf Steiner: Ladies and gentlemen! I would first like to point out that if there were indeed echoes in The Green Face, which was published a few years ago, of what I have said this evening, they could in principle be traced back to anthroposophy. Shout from the audience: Never!

[ 122 ] I merely said in general terms that this would not be a contradiction, but since people here are exclaiming, “Never!”, I fully agree with that, because I find nothing anthroposophical in The Green Face; rather, I find that what is said about anthroposophy in The Green Face is based on methods of knowledge with which I wish to have nothing to do. That is all I have to say on the matter.