The Rudolf Steiner Archive

4. The Essence of Anthroposophy

[ 1 ] Ladies and gentlemen! Anthroposophy is regarded by many people who have only a superficial familiarity with it as a more or less fanciful attempt to penetrate, through the path of knowledge, into a realm of the world with which a serious scientist ought not to concern himself. For in fact, by its very nature, anthroposophy seeks the means to penetrate, through genuine knowledge, those supersensible worlds in which the immortal seed of the human soul is rooted, and from which the human soul can come to know its true nature. Now, it is well known that even thoroughly serious scientists today are already studying all manner of abnormal soul faculties that appear in many individuals—faculties that indicate that, within the human being, entirely different cosmic realities are indeed revealed than those that can be grasped through recognized scientific methods.

[ 2 ] It is precisely these individuals—who focus primarily on the extraordinary capacities of the human soul and body, and who then record what their observations reveal in a strictly scientific manner—who seek laws to explain these phenomena, laws that are provided only by the anthroposophical spiritual path. [The anthroposophical spiritual path] appears to them—since it seeks nothing more than to lead the ordinary, normal human faculties of cognition beyond their usual limits—in many cases as mere enthusiasm, as something fanciful, and they sometimes even classify it as superstition. However, one cannot exactly say that dreamy, nebulously mystical types would find particular satisfaction in what is today regarded as anthroposophy.

[ 3 ] Anthroposophy is determined to take its scientific approach and conscientiousness in carrying out its tasks no less seriously and methodically than the established sciences themselves. And while it is true that there are many people today who, simply out of a certain dissatisfaction with life, gravitate toward anything that is in any way labeled “occult,” it must nevertheless be said that very soon such individuals in particular would find that the rigorous, methodical thinking—which is sought just as thoroughly in anthroposophy as in other fields of science—simply fails to satisfy them. Of course, this does not prevent some people—because something unfamiliar arises in anthroposophy—from wanting to dismiss it with a casual wave of the hand, as if those interested in anthroposophy were all neurasthenic or hysterical individuals! And so it is somewhat difficult to speak briefly about the true nature of anthroposophy in an introductory lecture. I would like to do so by attempting to examine the research paths of anthroposophy before you today and then hint at some of the essential findings.

[ 4 ] First of all, it will be clear to you from these words alone that, at least in spirit, this anthroposophy seeks to strive toward and embody the ideal of that rigorous scientific approach that has emerged over the last three to four centuries of scientific research. Anthroposophy does not seek to stand in opposition to the legitimate methods of scientific inquiry; it merely wishes to extend what natural science provides for the realm of the senses into those realms that can be described as the supersensible world—a task that, however, if it is to avoid an amateurish approach, confronts it with two immense obstacles that hinder human cognition.

[ 5 ] The first shows how rigorous scientific inquiry reaches certain limits; how, when it operates within the realm of facts, it can indeed yield satisfactory results, but how it immediately runs into unsatisfactory situations when it attempts to go beyond the realm of facts that can be perceived by the senses or combined by the human mind. We know, after all, that even the most serious natural scientists attach great importance to ensuring that these limits are not crossed by all sorts of fanciful speculations. It is precisely in this regard that anthroposophy initially stands firmly on the ground of scientific thinking. It is clearly aware, however, that the thinking which human beings apply in ordinary life and in science is by no means suited solely to the realm of external facts. Now, some do indeed attempt to turn to pure thinking in order to fathom what lies behind the sensory world. But human thinking does not merely dwell on facts; rather, having been shaped by the social culture of the past centuries to engage with the world of facts, it has acquired its own character through these facts, and, by abandoning philosophical speculation, it strays into uncharted territory—a kind of void. This is precisely the source of the many disputes among philosophical worldview systems. And this gives rise to the feeling that, when one philosophizes one’s way into the world with thinking that has strayed from the facts, one can subjectively direct the course and flow of thought, and therefore what can be achieved must remain unsatisfying, because it must contain an element of human subjective arbitrariness. This is one of the pitfalls of philosophical speculation on worldviews.

[ 6 ] There are, however, people who, stemming from the deepest longings of those who seek knowledge of the Eternal, feel unsatisfied by the mere understanding of nature; who recognize the inadequacy of philosophical speculation left to its own devices; and who therefore turn to a more or less obscure form of mysticism, believing that through inner contemplation they can penetrate the depths of the human soul and, through this inner contemplation within human nature, recognize the eternal aspect of the human soul that transcends death and birth.

[ 7 ] Anyone who looks at these mystical endeavors—which are often fundamentally sincere—with an open mind will also be able to see through the illusions into which people fall precisely because of these mystical absorptions. What a person takes in through their ordinary consciousness are, after all, only external impressions and perceptions. These are communicated to the soul; they are represented. They give rise to sensations and feelings, and their results spark impulses of the will. But ultimately, everything that exists in the soul through ordinary consciousness is a result of external perceptions. And those who believe they can already, with this ordinary consciousness, draw something eternal from the depths of the soul cannot examine the inner life of the human being with an unbiased mind. Only those who know how impressions—which the human soul experienced decades ago, impressions of which it was not even fully aware—are processed internally, transformed in the realm of the imagination, and imbued with emotional content; and how these images, when brought forth from the soul many years later, have undergone a complete transformation. If one were not to proceed conscientiously, one might succumb to the illusion that one could draw something divine from the depths of the soul, when in fact one has merely brought to the surface something transformed that had long lain dormant within it.

[ 8 ] I had to address these two pitfalls first because, in an introductory lecture, I can only give you a sense of the rigor with which anthroposophy seeks to penetrate the supersensible world, and how it aims to avoid the illusory paths on both sides. Thus, anthroposophy recognizes that one cannot penetrate supersensible worlds in a satisfactory manner either through the path of unguided philosophical speculation about worldviews or through the path of mysticism. By clearly recognizing this prerequisite as its own task, anthroposophy comes to say: Human beings, with what sometimes guides them so surely through the practical affairs of life from birth to death—and what leads them into the triumphs of science—cannot, through all of this, believe that they are capable of penetrating the supersensible worlds, provided they understand themselves correctly. Therefore, anthroposophy does not appeal to these ordinary powers of cognition, nor to abnormal ones, but rather asserts that there are dormant cognitive abilities in every human soul that can be brought to the surface through conscientious, strictly regulated, methodical inner exercises of the soul. One must indeed possess intellectual humility. One must be able to say: I look back—how I was when I was a very young child, with the world passing before my soul like a dream; how, week by week, year by year, I had to develop my abilities, had to draw them forth from the depths of the human being.

[ 9 ] Anthroposophy shows that it is possible—if one takes charge of one’s development as a mature human being—to elevate all the soul faculties that have developed since childhood to higher levels. In this way, anthroposophy differs from other fields of knowledge: while those rely on ordinary cognitive faculties, anthroposophy begins where these sciences end, by developing these faculties into supersensory cognitive faculties.

[ 10 ] This does not happen through some fanciful method, nor through external measures, but rather in such a way that, from the very beginning of their training, the same rigorous method prevails that one otherwise encounters only when one truly understands the nature of science. Anthroposophical development is no easier than research at an observatory or a medical clinic. The exercises require years of spiritual training on the part of the individual. I have described these in more detail in my books *How Does One Attain Knowledge of Higher Worlds?* and *Esoteric Science*. The main point is that the human life of thought in ordinary life is further developed, that it is strengthened from within. Just as one can strengthen a muscle by using it actively, so can one strengthen the soul’s imaginative life by directing it actively in a certain direction. The strengthening of the human imaginative life should be brought into the center of one’s consciousness so that it forms a coherent whole. It is necessary for a person to experience this imagination in the same way that they would otherwise regard an external sensory perception. We must view this external perception impartially, objectively; we must take it as it is. Exactly the same attitude must be present in the soul toward that which is practiced as meditative, concentrated thinking.

[ 11 ] For this reason, it is best for a person not to draw on any random images from their memories for these spiritual exercises—since these have become intertwined and transformed—but rather to take a completely new sentence or saying from some source. Then the content of the thought is incorporated into the life of the soul, and the entire activity of the soul seeks to concentrate on this single thought. All the powers one possesses in the soul are directed toward this content, and this applies to all exercises. They must be subject to human will; there must be nothing suggestive or dreamlike in the activity; just as one is fully and consciously absorbed in a mathematical operation, so must one concentrate on a specific thought. Through this, we come to be able to concentrate on a specific thought in the same way that is otherwise possible only with external sensory impressions, so that the inner mental image gains precisely the same vividness and clarity as an external experience. Through these deliberate mental efforts, one comes to relate to thought in a completely different way. Only now do we begin to recognize that ordinary thought life, which is devoted to external facts or memories, is bound to the human organism, yet that it is increasingly breaking away from the body; and we now learn to perceive that which is no longer bound to the body. This new way of thinking is inwardly pictorial. One’s soul life flows into an imaginative experience—an experience I have called “imaginative,” not because the goal is to produce mere figments of the imagination, but because the human soul can indeed enter into an inner, plastic world of images, and because within it the soul feels how it is becoming increasingly free from the physical and is increasingly attaining a disembodied soul life.

[ 12 ] But one thing must be clear. To begin with, everything one attains is an inner, subjective experience. Anyone who approaches anthroposophy with sincerity will see the enormous difference that exists between this new way of thinking and a pathological, hallucinatory state. Those who familiarize themselves with anthroposophy only superficially misleadingly suggest that the much-vaunted higher soul faculties can be nothing other than what prevails as dreamlike soul experiences in visions and the like. In truth, anthroposophy turns toward the opposite pole of what is pathological. There, the person loses their ordinary consciousness; the hallucinator lives within their hallucinations; the person subject to suggestion lives solely in the experience of this dreamlike, illusory state. The person who directs their inner life toward true imagination knows that at first they experience only imagery, but they constantly have, alongside themselves like a second personality, the consciousness they also possess in ordinary life and in science. They subject their human personality—with its everyday, sound common sense, which can constantly monitor and critically evaluate whatever arises as a second, imaginative consciousness—to scrutiny.

[ 13 ] However, such exercises must be accompanied by the opposite activity—exercising the same degree of free will—so that one does not merely practice concentrating on thoughts or directing the soul’s faculties toward some complex of ideas in order to gain inner strength. One will soon notice, when concentrating in this way, that these thoughts take hold of one, that one can become absorbed in them. Now one must learn to use free will in such a way that one can bring such images out of consciousness again and suppress them just as arbitrarily as one took them in—that is, one must be able to return to a state of empty consciousness at any moment. On the one hand, we see the energization of the soul life in the absorbed complex of ideas; on the other hand, the redirection of that same complex. This empty consciousness, however, is not a state of sleep, but rather a state of full consciousness that has consciously set aside the content of its ideas.

[ 14 ] Once we have completed these exercises, we will be able to survey our earthly life from birth onward—but from within. We do, after all, have a stream flowing in the depths of our soul, from which we can draw up one thing or another from memory, but usually only in fragments and scattered moments in time. But by attaining an imaginative life of the soul, we grasp the individual elements of that life all at once in a single tableau; we have before us the fundamental forces that constitute it, as they have been at work within the human being since birth. It is as if the span of time during which we normally survey our memories had been condensed into a single moment. This is the first supersensory experience we have. We look right through the entire stream of our earthly life. The human being senses within themselves a second supersensible physicality that cannot be developed alongside the physical body; it can only be recognized through imagination. Furthermore, it is not something limited to a single form in space, but rather something that unfolds over time, even though it can be surveyed in a single tableau. I would like to call this second supersensible physicality of the human being the body of formative forces, or the etheric body. Through this, one comes to see within oneself how one directs one’s inner abilities, how one attains one’s moral powers, and so on. One learns to recognize oneself as a whole human being unfolding in time. One cannot depict this body of formative forces any differently than a flash of lightning, which can be captured only in an instant—just as everything in constant motion allows for representation only for a moment, and just as one cannot philosophically speculate about what one perceives directly when one proceeds in the manner described.

[ 15 ] Once one has strengthened the faculties of the soul, one reaches a state in which one can suppress the whole of what has been surveyed in the same way as one previously suppressed the individual, pictorial components, so that one now creates empty consciousness and becomes capable of opening oneself to a world and waiting to see what now enters this world. What enters the human soul is entirely different from what is present to the senses in the world we are accustomed to. For what now enters this empty consciousness is the supersensible, the eternal-spiritual aspect of the human soul; one has gained the power to survey the spiritual-soul aspect! One experiences the moment of every single memory as it was before the soul had become connected to a body through conception or birth. One experiences the spiritual-soul aspect as it was when the human being was still rooted in the spiritual-soul realm. In this way, one gains an insight into what in the human being is not merely a result of the physical body, but what is given to the human being physically through hereditary forces—that which extends into physicality but was already there before it took possession of the body, before the body first appeared in a spiritual-soul world. One arrives at the creative aspect of the spiritual-soul realm by juxtaposing in this way the transitory human body and that which works into the hereditary forces. Then one will come ever closer to the knowledge of the immortal part of the human being. This level of knowledge is the inspired one. Just as the breath is first in space and is then processed within the body, so the spiritual-soul aspect penetrates into the human mortal physicality, and as we recognize this, we speak of inspired knowledge.

[ 16 ] In this way, the human being has gained the preparation not only to strengthen his world of thought, but also to advance his world of will through spiritual training beyond what is possible in ordinary life. Just as one must point out, on the one hand, that one can penetrate the supersensible worlds only by transforming the thinking of ordinary life into something else, so one recognizes that anthroposophy begins where ordinary science must end.

[ 17 ] But this leads only to one side of the supersensible realm. Just as the life of feeling is situated between the will and thinking in the complete human soul, so too must this life of feeling and will be further developed in a similar way. Once again, one must practice with strict conscientiousness how to detach the will from the human physical body. Through this, we then reach the other side—the side of death—which leads the human soul “beyond death.” The exercises of the will strive toward the supersensible realm and must therefore connect with those aspects that already extend from the supersensible into ordinary life. This, in turn, can be achieved in a wide variety of ways; I refer you to the books already mentioned. I would like to cite just a few examples here through which the liberation of the human will from its bondage to physicality can be achieved.

[ 18 ] In human life, the impulse of the will is interwoven with our instinctual life. But it is precisely by contemplating how everything in the soul—which is separate in the intellect—becomes a unified whole that we can engage in exercises of the will. When we think, the element of will is indeed alive in our thinking. If we consider how our inherited way of thinking unfolds in everyday life, we find that it follows the sequence and course of events. With our thinking, we surrender ourselves—more or less passively—to the course of events. Even when we use logic to free this thinking from that course, we do so in such a way that we seek to penetrate the course of events through the laws of logic, yet we do not actually distance ourselves from it! Only when we tear our thinking away from its usual mode of operation—for example, when we imagine a play scene by scene, from the last to the first, or when we retrace the day’s events in the evening backward to the morning, going into as much detail as possible so as to fully engage the inner life—or when, for instance, while climbing several flights of stairs, we trace the steps backward to the first one, and thus gradually turn such a strong effort of will into a habit—only then do we also detach the will from ordinary life and achieve a transformation of the inner will, until we reach the point where we learn to observe our own actions just as we might observe those of a stranger. One must acquire a certain skill in walking, as it were, alongside oneself and observing oneself as if one were a stranger, exercising the will to set one’s mind on things and then carrying them out conscientiously. In this way, one succeeds in detaching this will from the physical body to such an extent that one knows: You now will outside your body! One’s emotional life then connects in both directions; it transforms just as the life of thought and will does.

[ 19 ] But since it is the most intimate aspect of the human soul, it should not be artificially developed further; rather, this emotional life follows human development into the supersensible world.

[ 20 ] For seemingly objective reasons, we also learn to develop the necessary enthusiasm for what we encounter in the spiritual worlds. When one frees the will in the manner described above, one reaches the third stage of supersensible knowledge, which is called the intuitive stage. This term is applied when the soul is truly able to transport itself, free from the body, into the spiritual world. By ascending to this intuition, the human being comes to know what continues to work within them after it has passed over into the human body as their spiritual-soul aspect through conception and birth. They come to understand how that which is spiritual-soul—which is independent and immortal—detaches itself from the human, and how it passes through the gate of death when the body is left to decay; then what has been intuitively perceived enters the spiritual-soul world.

[ 21 ] In the 1990s, in my *Philosophy of Freedom*, I attempted to address the problem of freedom and to show that the question is not properly framed. The truth is that human beings are dependent in a great many of their actions, but that they distinguish themselves and develop into free personalities by learning to shape their impulses of will, grasped in pure thought. Only in these areas—in the impulses that underlie our truly free actions—do we have a premonition of that which already lives objectively within the human being and which, after death, enters the spiritual-soul world. In *The Philosophy of Freedom*, I called this “moral intuition.” A higher stage of development is cognitive intuition, in which we fully grasp immortality—that the spiritual-soul realm passes through the gate of death onto further paths into the spiritual-soul world. Once we recognize the eternal nature of the human soul in this way, we also come to know the soul’s surroundings both before it enters the body and after it has left it. Not only does the outer sensory world reveal itself, but the further-developed sensory powers can penetrate into the human soul. They are capable not only of bringing forth nebulous, mystical elements, but also of beholding the truly eternal aspect of the human soul. Once we have the human spirit and soul concretely before us, we can distinguish between the two worlds—what belongs to the spiritual-soul realm and what belongs to the physical-bodily realm. By becoming acquainted with these two worlds, one learns—precisely through characterized intuition—to recognize something further within the human being: that which is connected to human feeling and is recognized as the essence of human feeling. Then one’s gaze into the past expands, so that one no longer merely beholds the soul before birth. Rather, one looks toward the repeated earthly lives and what the spiritual world has undergone. One gains the confidence that, even in the future, through repeated earthly lives, worlds of progressive development will be experienced. This confidence arises for those who perceive the human soul’s connection to the supersensible world.

[ 22 ] And he recognizes that which rises to a higher existence of power, that which carries the achievements of both worlds from life to life. But he perceives not only the human being but also the spiritual-soul being—free from illusion—which lies within the sensory world but is not perceptible to ordinary faculties of perception.

[ 23 ] By developing these abilities over time, one learns to look at this physical-sensory world—not as if one could no longer fully trust common sense, but by developing, alongside it, a second personality that possesses spiritual-soul senses capable of perceiving what it sees physically and sensually on a soul level as well. One also learns to view the cosmos differently. However, this brings me to a point where anthroposophy attracts even more antipathy!

[ 24 ] In everyday life, for example, we perceive the sun as a limited spatial entity; we describe it in science in the familiar way. If we now acquire higher cognitive abilities, the sun appears to us in a different form. We learn to speak of something that is not confined within any boundaries. We come to know the solar essence that permeates everything that belongs to the human environment, that fills the world, that imparts vitality to the world, and that penetrates human life; we can also clearly recognize this transformed solar essence within ourselves. It proves to be as closely related to us as any external object of perception. We come to understand how much of the solar quality works its way into the human being, how it strengthens all forces of growth, how it makes us young, keeps us young, accompanies us through life, transforms our nourishment into a process, and permeates us in our upward development—this is the result of the spiritual-solar quality.

[ 25 ] We recognize the lunar as the opposite of this. It permeates everything that is already inherent within us from birth—the forces of aging, withering, and dying—as a descending life force. From the mid-thirties onward, the decomposing forces within the human being gain the upper hand: decay, regression, and disease—all of this lies within the lunar aspect. We learn to recognize how everything that exists in the cosmos works its way into the human being. In this way, we can see beyond what we perceive from the relationship between the human being and the cosmos, beyond the stars. We arrive at a spiritual-soul cosmos through direct observation, not through analogical conclusions! There are no illusions here. Life immediately distinguishes reality from fantasies. Just as one can philosophically distinguish between the mere idea of the heat of steel and the concrete sensation of touching a hot iron rod, so too does experience in the spiritual realm distinguish between what is merely conceivable and what is real. And just as one progresses from imagination to inspiration, so one knows that one is advancing toward a real world.

[ 26 ] Thus, through the systematic development of the human powers of cognition, the spiritual-soul cosmos—with its immortal aspects—joins the ordinary world of the sensory cosmos. Through this, by perceiving the deeper forces of the world and of human nature, one also comes to understand how that which is within human nature is transformed. As supersensible knowledge is attained, what otherwise appears in sharp contours dissolves. The human heart, the lungs, and so on dissolve into processes. One can only speak of the brain-lung-heart process. What is otherwise sharply defined in space becomes fluid. In this, we see the solar and lunar forces at work, and here the scope of what anthroposophy is capable of expands to enrich the individual sciences.

[ 27 ] By looking in this way into the process of development and formation of the human organism, into the emerging and decaying plant and animal beings, and by discovering the forces of the supersensible in the inanimate mineral kingdom, we find the relationships between the inner human being and the inner forces of the cosmos. Here lies a path through which anthroposophy can have a fruitful influence on the medical field. This is why we were able to begin our work in pathology and therapy. In Stuttgart and Dornach, we have a therapeutic institute founded on the anthroposophical perspective. And this opens up the possibility of gaining insight into irregular processes of decay and recognizing how this pathological condition can be healed through constructive forces. In place of medicine that merely experiments, we now have a form of medicine that, on the one hand, surveys what is healthy and what is diseased, and on the other, focuses on the healing process. Thus, we have here an example of how anthroposophy can have a constructive influence on the individual sciences. [There is also a physical and biological institute in Stuttgart.] On the basis of scientific research, the supersensible is incorporated into the findings. These forces, too, take on new significance for technology and for practical life.

[ 28 ] Anthroposophy also has a stimulating effect on the artistic side. This is demonstrated by the Goetheanum, the School of Spiritual Science near Basel. Since anthroposophy draws upon the deeper powers of the human soul, it works through and from the whole human being. Just as the nut is governed internally by the same forces as those in its shell, so too must that which provides the artistic framework for the work of anthroposophy be like the shell around the kernel—arising from the same impulses from which ideas flow, ideas that come from spiritual insight. This is how that new architectural style emerged in architecture, sculpture, and painting. It brings to fruition, in a further progression, what Goethe felt in his soul when he said: “To whom nature begins to reveal her true secrets, that person then feels the deepest longing for her deepest interpreter, art.” — Art is a secret manifestation of the deepest laws of nature. It is not through allegories or abstract symbols, but through the creation of genuine art forms that it becomes evident that anthroposophy is not a theory, but immediate life that can have a fertilizing effect in all fields.

[ 29 ] The Free Waldorf School in Stuttgart demonstrates what can be achieved by recognizing the whole human being—body, soul, and spirit. The great educators are not in opposition; rather, by recognizing the whole human being already present in the child, the highest educational achievement is attained. The Waldorf School is not an ideologically based school; religious instruction is provided for various denominations as well. The Waldorf School is an institution in which the practical conduct of classes from morning to evening is carried out with pedagogical and didactic skill, based on anthroposophical insight. We know what develops at every stage of human life; we can derive the curriculum and educational goals from the human being; we do not force anything upon the child, but rather develop within the child what already lies dormant within the human being.

[ 30 ] Finally, I would like to point out how the scientific worldview, due to its one-sidedness in social matters, has reached a kind of dead end. What is meant to have an effect in social life cannot, as Marx says, operate according to abstract laws; one must look at the whole person, the complete human being. Today, this one-sidedness—which stems from the human being defined solely by the senses and the intellect—has already become a reality; we see it in Eastern Europe. This is what drives us to yearn for an understanding of the whole human being—body, soul, and spirit. Only that which acts within the social realm as a genuine way of life can have a healing and restorative effect.

[ 31 ] Anthroposophy will seek to develop further in this direction. During the various presentations at the Anthroposophical Congress in Stuttgart in the summer of 1921, it was demonstrated how experimental pedagogy must be supplemented by the findings of spiritual anthroposophical research, and how only through this can a comprehensive pedagogy take shape. Director Leinhas demonstrated the failure of national economics. He showed where the truly practical forces for a healthy social order must flow from. Anthroposophy does not seek to lead people into a mystical, nebulous fantasy world inhabited by those who despise ordinary, everyday life; rather, it seizes the spirit with such power that we can also act creatively in the physical and practical realm, for the spirit that created matter must not flee from it; it, which is the practice of life, can immerse everything in physical-material existence so that this may become ever more perfect as it continues to develop.

[ 32 ] And so anthroposophy seeks to offer the insight that a large portion of our contemporaries yearn for, even if unconsciously. I would like to summarize everything that has been said in order to characterize the essence of anthroposophy.

[ 33 ] When we have the whole person, the complete human being, before us, we perceive him through our senses—based on his outward form—as a sensory being. Yet he does not stand before us as a one-sided manifestation of a new being. Within him lives a soul permeated by the spirit. Human beings need a view of life that permeates them from the spirit. In recent centuries, we have attained a great natural science. It is far from having achieved its ideals. Its achievements are fully recognized, but anthroposophy knows that this natural science deals with the outer forms of the world. Just as the soul is the life-giving, spirit-infusing force within the human being, so too does natural science need something imbued with spirit; anthroposophy further develops it. For, at its core, it seeks to be nothing other than the spiritual, life-giving element for the body of natural science. And just as we encounter human beings in life with souls permeated by life and spirit, so too does anthroposophy strive for a form of knowledge in natural science that can gradually become a soul permeated by spirit!