The Rudolf Steiner Archive

6. Philosophy and Anthroposophy

[ 1 ] Introductory Remarks by Leo Polak: Distinguished guests and Mr. Speaker! As chairman of this local Philosophy Society, I welcome you all here and believe I have both the right and the duty to offer a very brief preamble. Indeed, some have expressed surprise that the Society for Philosophy—a scholarly society—would organize an evening event in the university auditorium featuring Dr. Steiner, whose relationship to philosophy was well known. Some have sought to interpret this as an endorsement and recognition of the scientific and philosophical value or significance of Dr. Steiner’s work. I believe that both sides were mistaken in thinking this way. First, our Society did not spontaneously invite the speaker for this evening on its own initiative, but merely complied with a request that came to us from the anthroposophical side to organize such an evening here as well—and quite rightly so, as I will explain in a few words. Second, organizing this evening in no way implies agreement or unanimity with Dr. Steiner’s work. You know that in the very same lecture halls here at the university where, for example, critical philosophy and Kantian philosophy are taught, dogmatic and Thomistic philosophy are also taught—and rightly so. This does not imply agreement on the part of those who initiated this event, but solely and exclusively the objective stance of science itself, which always and everywhere observes and examines everything and retains what is good, which always and everywhere says: “audite et alteram partem.” It is this idea alone that our philosophical society has sought to express. We have done so in the justified conviction that this evening’s speaker, too, holds exactly the same opinion. For we had previously asked whether there would be an opportunity afterward to account for a differing opinion, and of course—I might almost say—Dr. Steiner gave his consent. Thus, he, too, wished to apply the principle of “audite et alteram partem.” Following these brief but necessary preliminaries, I ask the speaker to take the floor.

[ 2 ] Rudolf Steiner: My dear friends here today! In the various lectures I have had the privilege of giving here in Holland since February 19 on anthroposophical spiritual science and its practical orientation, my main concern has been to emphasize the practical relevance of this spiritual scientific endeavor to everyday life. For this spiritual-scientific endeavor seeks to respond to what, in the broadest circles of practical life today, numerous souls long for based on the realities of the present.

[ 3 ] Today, however, ladies and gentlemen, allow me to speak from an entirely different perspective. While it is true that anthroposophical spiritual science, on the one hand, is destined—precisely because it focuses primarily on practical aspects of life—to find its audience among the general public, it is also certainly the case that the roots of this anthroposophically oriented spiritual science extend, in a serious and, I believe, precise manner, into the philosophical foundations of human striving. And today I would like to speak to you about this connection between anthroposophy and philosophical research, and with philosophical thinking. I will try not to keep my remarks general, but rather to address, as far as possible, three areas that I believe can shed light on the connections between philosophical research and anthroposophical spiritual insight.

[ 4 ] Within philosophical research, we indeed encounter a wide variety of problems and issues. Today I would like to focus primarily on the relationship between anthroposophy and three problem areas: the epistemological problem, the ontological problem, and the ethical problem. It would certainly be tempting to touch on the aesthetic problem as well, but that would take up too much of your time.

[ 5 ] The epistemological problem, as we find it presented today in philosophy in the most diverse forms, is concerned with justifying human belief in the reality of the external world; it is concerned with showing to what extent we may assume a valid relationship between what is present within our cognition in our consciousness and what we can regard as some kind of objective reality existing outside of us. This problem, as well as numerous others, oscillates throughout the history of philosophy—one might almost say, as a matter of course—back and forth between dogmatism and skepticism. And anyone familiar with the history of modern epistemology knows just how extraordinarily tempting it is, particularly when confronting the epistemological problem, to fall into a kind of skepticism. I will have more to say about this later. In any case, however, there is something here that must be of particular interest to anthroposophical spiritual science in relation to philosophy: it leads epistemology, in a certain way, very vividly and very pressingly for human research and cognition, to the limits of knowledge.

[ 6 ] The second problem I would like to discuss is the ontological problem. It is much older than the problem of knowledge. It seeks to bring reality—namely, insofar as this reality extends beyond the sensory realm—into consciousness in a way that is somehow cognizable, based on what human beings can experience in the entities of consciousness. Now, anyone familiar with the history of ontology knows that, fundamentally, a very understandable skepticism has crept into the ontological problem since the time when the ontological proof of God fell prey to criticism—in particular, since Kantianism’s critique of this ontological proof of God. Since that time, there has also been little inclination within philosophical research to find anything in ontology that might provide a foothold for entering, through the development of inner insight, into the sphere of reality itself. Thus, here too, in a certain sense, we are approaching a kind of boundary that is felt much more clearly in relation to ontology than in relation to many epistemological problems.

[ 7 ] With regard to the ethical problem, I would like to begin by simply pointing out that, out of a certain—please forgive the expression; it is meant only in a terminological sense—out of a certain philosophical despair, modern thought has arrived at what is known as “value theory.” But this essentially means nothing other than that one has despaired of being able to grasp the ethical impulses present in our consciousness in their connection to reality, and therefore conceives them as grounded in something—value—that is supposed to have validity in our worldview, but which is nevertheless conceived has been conceived from the very beginning in such a way that one does not even wish to conceive of any connection to reality, to objective being.

[ 8 ] I did not mean to say anything binding by this, but merely to point out certain figures who have taken on these three problems and who provide a reason to address these three issues specifically through anthroposophical spiritual science. Before I can do that, I would like to briefly outline the methodology of anthroposophically oriented spiritual science here; I do this in my public lectures as well, though in those I try to present the material as accessibly as possible, which of course has its drawbacks, but in some respects may also have certain advantages.

[ 9 ] Today I would like to say only this much about the methodology of anthroposophy: the entire research path of anthroposophically oriented spiritual science is based on the development of soul powers that are already present in ordinary life, that are also applied in ordinary science, but which are initially maintained—both in ordinary life and in ordinary science—at a certain level, a level to which they are brought through heredity, ordinary education, and so on. I need not define this level to which certain soul faculties are brought, for they are generally known, and what I actually wish to say on the matter will become clear from what I have to say about the further development of these soul forces.

[ 10 ] Anyone who wishes to become a spiritual researcher must, through careful, inner soul work, further develop certain soul forces beyond the level at which they are applied in ordinary life and in ordinary science. First, they must further develop what is commonly referred to as the “ability to remember”—the foundation of our memory—beyond what is required in ordinary life. This is achieved through the method of systematically ordered meditation and concentration, as I have described in my book *How Does One Attain Knowledge of Higher Worlds?* and in other works of mine within the anthroposophical literature. The essence of this further development—initially of the capacity for recollection—lies in the fact that one forms mental images that are easy to grasp. This requirement for easily comprehensible mental images in the method of spiritual science has profound significance. For nothing may be used in this further development of the soul’s powers that could in any way be a reminiscence of life or that could have an autosuggestive or even merely suggestive effect. It is therefore necessary to make the mental images used during meditation and concentration as simple as possible and easily comprehensible. It does not matter whether such mental images have any truth value in the ordinary sense, for they are not intended, at least initially, to point to any kind of reality; they are to be used solely to develop inner soul powers. Therefore, however, the point is that we must not allow ourselves to be misled by the admittedly questionable nature of the relationship between an idea and reality; it does not matter whether the idea is fantastical or whether it is somehow entirely arbitrary—that is not the point. Rather, the point is that we must be able to grasp its entire content, as it were, much like a mathematical or geometric concept. Then it is a matter of summoning the strength, over a certain period of time—this must be learned; at first one can do it only for a very short time, but gradually one acquires a certain inner practice—to rest with the full intensity of the soul upon such ideas.

[ 11 ] A misunderstanding can easily arise here. For if the process is carried out incorrectly—if one fails to observe all the things I have carefully compiled in my book *How Does One Gain Insight into Higher Worlds?*— then one will not attain that inner state of mind that is absolutely necessary for the spiritual-scientific method to work properly. This state of mind must be exactly the same as the one one has when solving problems in geometry or mathematics in general. Just as one is fully aware of the will at work within the soul when constructing figures or seeking out algebraic or other relationships, so must one remain fully aware of the entire content of consciousness while resting on easily comprehensible concepts. It is therefore of great importance that anyone who is to become a spiritual researcher in a proper sense should, at least to a certain extent, have a mathematical background—and to such a degree that they have specifically mastered the way of thinking required for mathematical problems.

[ 12 ] If I may refer to a personal experience, let it be the following. Whenever I am engaged with problems in the humanities—which can sometimes be quite difficult because they often slip away just when you’ve grasped them—I always think of that event which, decades ago, perhaps about forty years ago, helped me make progress along the path I am now about to describe. It was the moment when, in synthetic geometry, I was first able to grasp the remarkable fact—let us not dwell here on the validity of this assumption—that, based on the premises of synthetic geometry, the infinitely distant point on the right side of a line is the same as the infinitely distant point on the left side. It was not so much this mathematical fact itself, but rather the entire mode of thinking by which this assumption arises from the premises of synthetic geometry, of projective geometry. I point this out here only to draw attention to how the same state of mind, the same way of allowing consciousness to take effect, must occur in what I call meditation and concentration.

[ 13 ] If one engages in such inner soul work for a sufficiently long time—it depends entirely on a person’s inner destiny whether it takes a short time, two or three years, or much longer before the first inner results of this further development of certain soul abilities become apparent— but from the ordinary power of memory—through which we can conjure up past events in our minds—the further development of this power of memory actually gives rise to a new spiritual power, a spiritual power of which we previously had no inkling. This soul power is a developed capacity for memory, and yet it is entirely different from ordinary memory. This soul power enables us to associate certain states of our consciousness with different ideas than we would normally do. In everyday life, a person lives in the alternating states between waking and sleeping. The states between falling asleep and waking up—we are, of course, familiar with the various physiological hypotheses that have been put forward about them, but these are of less interest to us here; what interests us is the reality of ordinary consciousness. This ordinary consciousness is dampened, even paralyzed, as we fall asleep, to the point of complete dullness, and returns to its lucid state upon waking. Of course, a person does not come into being mentally and spiritually only upon waking; they must exist in some way between falling asleep and waking up. The fact is that during this time they do not make use of their senses, nor of their volitional faculties, nor of the intellect that synthesizes sensory perceptions. I do not wish to go into the interruption of sleep by dreams; that would take us too far afield.

[ 14 ] The person who has developed their memory in the manner described is in exactly the same state with regard to their physical organism. When this developed power of memory is awakened within him, he does not make use of his ordinary senses in the states in which he brings about this power of memory. He knows how to shut them off; he knows how to shut off everything that is shut off during sleep. But his consciousness is not dulled. He lives in a conscious state, in a consciousness filled with content, and he knows that this content is of a spiritual-soul nature. Just as we otherwise receive psychological content in ordinary life through our senses and through the reasoning mind, so too is there a psychological content—one that is not mediated by the physical body—when the spiritual researcher makes use of his developed power of recollection. Just as we have a sensory environment around us through our physical organism, so the spiritual researcher has a truly supersensory environment that permeates our sensory environment everywhere around him. This, my esteemed audience, is precisely a fact of that emerging experience that arises in the spiritual researcher; and any notion that one is dealing with some kind of illusion is simply ruled out by the entire context of life into which one is placed by virtue of the method—which I have described to you only in outline and in principle—through which one attains such a developed consciousness. One learns to recognize what it means to have consciousness in a bodiless state.

[ 15 ] I would like to illustrate—so that you can see that anthroposophical spiritual science does not speak from some vague, nebulous realm, but rather from concrete facts—something quite concrete: our ordinary capacity for memory, which is, after all, what allows us to recall to our minds what we have once experienced. If this capacity for memory is further developed in the way I have just described, then it becomes something else, and that is what is peculiar about it. It is indeed a developed capacity for memory, but there is no longer actually a memory there; the capacity for memory has transformed into a direct perception of the spiritual, supersensible environment. This becomes clear from the fact that once you have a spiritual-supersensible event before you and can characterize it, and later you simply want to recall this spiritual-supersensible state into consciousness from memory, you cannot do so directly. It does not rise up directly from consciousness. It is a developed capacity for memory, and yet you do not exactly remember what you experience through this developed capacity for memory. One must do something entirely different if one wishes to bring a spiritual state that one once experienced back into one’s presence.

[ 16 ] One must then recreate the conditions that led to the recall of the event. One can recall everything that led up to the moment of observing the event; then one can have the event again, but one cannot simply reconstruct this event from memory, as is the case with ordinary recollection. That is why it is indeed true to state the paradox: The person who writes books as a spiritual researcher forgets the contents; he transcribes the spiritual facts, so to speak; he records them, but he forgets them. Nor can he repeat a lecture from memory a second time; rather, he must re-create the conditions through which he was first confronted with the vision, and only then can he experience the vision again. It is precisely as with any perception—if it is indeed a perception—that one can only experience it again by approaching the event itself. Memory provides only an image. The developed power of memory must simply return to the event in the spiritual-supersensible world in order to experience it anew. This is, in a sense, the first step toward entering the supersensible world: to develop the power of memory in a certain way so that it becomes a kind of supersensible power of intuition. Through this, one comes to recognize more and more the spiritual-soul aspect as such—the spiritual-soul aspect that underlies the human being, and the spiritual-soul aspect that surrounds us in the outer world, which is, after all, the foundation of the outer facts of nature and the laws of nature as well.

[ 17 ] And I would like to characterize a second faculty of the soul in its further development. I believe that the development of this soul power as a power of cognition must, quite rightly, provoke even more contradiction than the development of the power of memory, because one would certainly not want to regard this second soul power as a power of cognition in any way—it is the power of love. Certainly, my esteemed audience, love is indeed regarded as something subjective. It is so in ordinary life as well. But when one applies certain methods of spiritual research to the capacity for love—as I have just described them in relation to the power of memory—the power of love becomes something else, which in turn is also a power of cognition of the supersensible world. The point is that one first becomes aware of how, in every moment of one’s life, one is actually in the process of transformation, how one is becoming someone else. One need only look once, quite honestly, into the depths of one’s soul, and one will already become aware of how the person one is today was someone different ten or twenty years ago. And one will have to admit: In the vast majority of things, one has simply gone with the flow of life; one has exerted very little influence on the conditions of development that have transformed one from year to year, from decade to decade.

[ 18 ] It is precisely in this area that the spiritual researcher must take action. Through self-discipline, so to speak, he must take the development of his entire soul into his own hands. He must set certain directions for himself without, in doing so, losing the naivety and simplicity of a full life. He must set certain directions for himself and be able to track, through careful self-observation, what is taking shape within him through metamorphosis. Through this, in turn, a certain soul force—which is otherwise latent—is drawn forth from the depths of the soul. And love, which in ordinary life is thoroughly bound to the physical organism, becomes in a similar way independent of this physical organism as a soul force—just as the developed capacity for memory does—except that this developed capacity for memory conjures up before our soul images and imaginings of a supersensible world, whereas the developed power of love enables us to participate inwardly in what is presented to us in these images. An objectification of one’s own soul life, a merging into objectivity—this is what serves as a prerequisite for the knowledge of the supersensible and what is achieved through this path of developing the capacity for love. Through the development of the capacity for memory, we gain the ability to develop higher worlds of imagination—worlds of imagination concerning the supersensible. Through the development of the capacity for love, we gain the ability to experience the inner reality, the essence of the supersensible.

[ 19 ] With this, I have only sketched out what in fact leads to the knowledge of a spiritual world to which we belong with our true inner human being, and in which we find the clues to understanding the eternal nature of this human being. True knowledge of the question of immortality is attained through the path I have just described. In this way, we come to know that which within us passes through births and deaths; we learn to recognize those worlds in which we live as [spiritual-super-sensory beings] before we descend into a birth or conception, and into which we also ascend when we pass through the gate of death. But I want only to hint at this; a more detailed exposition can be found in the literature, as it would take us too far afield now.

[ 20 ] Well, through such a method of spiritual research, two pitfalls of human soul life are, first, properly understood; and second, the conditions for avoiding them are created. The first point is this: Through this path, one gains a genuine insight into what memory actually is, precisely by cultivating it further. We need this power of memory; if we wish to keep our ordinary lives intact, we must be able to conjure up before our inner eye the images of our experiences from a certain, very early point in our childhood. We come to understand this capacity for memory through the insights I have just described, which lead us to say: It actually prevents us from looking into our inner selves. The mystic seeks to look into the innermost depths of the soul through direct experience. The spiritual researcher studies the dangers associated with such mystical insight into the innermost depths of the soul. It is a peculiarity of soul life that what one experiences from childhood onward, between birth and death, can not only surface into consciousness at any given moment in its original form, but that it can emerge in the most varied metamorphoses, so that there is a possibility that some experience—which may be quite trivial—will gradually transform itself in the subconscious in such a way that it later appears before consciousness as a seemingly sublime event. The mystic may then believe that he is immersing himself in some divine depths of the soul and the world, whereas he has nothing more than a transformed memory of life. A precise understanding of the capacity for memory guides us to avoid mystical paths in the proper way. For if one has trained one’s memory in the manner I have described, one naturally remains a perfectly rational person. One applies this developed capacity for memory only when one wishes to do so. However, once one has trained this capacity for memory in this way, one can truly see through ordinary memory as well. One can then take the path that the mystic only believes he can take. For the mystic remains in the very same region of the soul where memory is also present; he essentially sees only sensory, transformed memories. But the one who knows this developed capacity for memory, so to speak, sees right through the ordinary region of memory. Then, of course, he does not see what a Tauler, a Mechthild of Magdeburg, or anyone else of that sort believed they were mystically seeing; rather, he sees—but now from within—the material organs of the human organism. That, my esteemed audience, is the true path to knowing the human being physically from within.

[ 21 ] The mystic comes to know nothing other than, so to speak, the smoke of the soul, the mist of the soul, rising from the seething inner organs. What must be said is that there are by no means any mystical ecstasies present when one arrives at self-knowledge through a developed power of memory; rather, this self-knowledge radiates into the actual human organism, which can of course be recognized from the outside through anatomy and physiology on the one hand, but cannot be penetrated in terms of its inner essence. Here, my esteemed audience, those things are then revealed in which we perceive the inner being of the human being in an inner connection with the nature surrounding us in its various kingdoms. Only when one comes to know the inner workings of the human organism in this way does one come to know that physiology which reveals the relationship between the various organs—in their healthy and diseased states—and what exists in the mineral kingdom, the plant kingdom, the animal kingdom, and the other spheres and kingdoms of nature.

[ 22 ] This is the point where it becomes possible to internalize our medicine—which has indeed advanced so far through external research—and to build a bridge between pathology and a form of therapy based on a genuine understanding of the human being and the world; Last spring, I took the liberty of giving a lecture on this deepening of medicine to doctors and medical students at our School of Spiritual Science in Dornach. And it is precisely in this field that one can demonstrate how the individual sciences, in turn, can be enriched by what is known as anthroposophically oriented spiritual science. Likewise, the college courses in Dornach—held last fall by thirty learned specialists in various fields of science, as well as by artists, practitioners, businesspeople, and industrialists—have demonstrated this for the other sciences. They demonstrated how anthroposophical spiritual science is intended to enrich the individual sciences by adding to what has led to such research triumphs in recent times—to what external research can offer—that which can be perceived inwardly. For just as I have described—that true knowledge of the human being comes about through a genuine understanding of the faculty of memory and its further development—so, too, does a spiritual and supersensory understanding of nature come about in this way.

[ 23 ] The other pitfall that must be avoided—and which can be recognized through such advanced cognitive abilities—is the pitfall of dialectical-philosophical speculation, which, in a certain sense, is also present within our natural sciences—not in our research, but at least in our thinking. We conduct research by observing phenomena and by inducing phenomena through our own experiments. However, we do not apply our combinatory intellect merely to conducting natural science—in a methodological sense—that remains phenomenological; rather, we apply it to speculating beyond the empirical, and thus arrive at those constructs found in atomic theory and molecular theory. By no means is the aim here to criticize the significant, valid, and experimentally substantiated aspects of molecular theory and atomic theory. But that which, in a sense, underlies the phenomena of the natural sciences as atomistic thinking—that is seen through for its lack of justification when one develops the second faculty of cognition, that which arises from the power of love, in the manner described. Then one comes to recognize that one must remain within the external, empirically-sensory environment in the world of phenomena. Further progress then depends on one actually perceiving the spiritual-supersensible realm, rather than merely the sensory aspects of the atomic world reduced to the minute scale.

[ 24 ] Here, my esteemed audience, I would like to draw your attention to something that cannot be overlooked, especially if one is a researcher in the humanities. In philosophical epistemology, we speak of having sensory impressions. One speaks of the entirely valid findings of modern physiology, through which one seeks to form concepts of the formation of an objective reality unknown to us, which then extends to the sensory organ. One speaks of what takes place in the sensory organ, what may be happening in the corresponding region of the brain, and so on. In this way, one ends up, in a certain sense, shifting the epistemological problem toward the physiological problem, but one considers this problem, as it were, at every single point in the world. One seeks to move from a single phenomenon to what lies behind it. In doing so, one proceeds exactly as if one were trying to infer, from a single letter on a written page, something that lies behind the letters. One reads the entire page; the context of the letters across the entire page reveals the reason why the individual letter is exactly as it is. Similarly, the point is that we remain within the world of phenomena, not speculating about anything underlying the individual phenomena—such as a “thing-in-itself”—but rather taking in the interrelationship of the phenomena, studying—one might say—the reality of the phenomena by reading them up to certain totalities. Through this, we then arrive at that which expresses itself spiritually in the phenomena and can be grasped only spiritually through those supersensible powers of cognition of which I have spoken.

[ 25 ] So I attempted to penetrate deeper into the world by further developing the cognitive abilities of anthroposophically oriented spiritual science. As a result, however, the epistemological problem also presents itself to this anthroposophy in a very specific way. This epistemological problem suffers precisely from the very things I have just mentioned. In a certain sense, we are studying that which is supposed to be unknown to us. We then trace it back to the sense organs, all the way to the brain. We find that we cannot find a transition to that which actually lives in the soul. And if I—omitting, of course, much that could be mentioned, but which is certainly well known to the distinguished audience here from the history of modern epistemology—if I were to single out, so to speak, [briefly] the most important points, it would likely be the following: The conscientious epistemologist ultimately comes to the conclusion that he can no longer allow for the possibility, within the world of representations—though upon closer analysis, it is not only the world of representations but also part of the world of sensations that emerges— but let us stick to the world of ideas—the ideas, as they exist internally, cannot be related through logic or psychology to anything real or to anything he wishes to regard as real. In a sense, this leads to a very strong sense of the pictorial character of the life of the imagination within empirical reality; a sense so strong that he [sees] no bridge from this experienced pictorial character of the life of the imagination over into reality. For this reason, many of the more recent epistemologists have given up on building a bridge from the life of the imagination over into reality. They appeal to the will—the will that, in their view, comes into contact with things in a fundamental way; this became, for them, the very thing by which human beings are actually authorized to speak of the reality of the external world, whereas they should never, in fact, be able to infer the reality of an external world from the world of imagination.

[ 26 ] I believe that, in this area of epistemology, work has indeed been carried out with unparalleled diligence in recent times, and that insightful ideas have come to light; the literature on the subject is, after all, one of the richest. But I do not believe that, if one immerses oneself in this literature with a completely unbiased, comparative mindset, one can recognize that within this epistemology one stands on thoroughly uncertain ground, and that one cannot, by any means, build a bridge from anything within the soul to any reality that can justifiably be assumed to exist. The world of the imagination—if one can grasp it, as becomes evident—truly has the character of images. No matter how significant the conclusions one reaches while moving within this pictorial sphere of imaginative life, one cannot actually step out of the realm of images into any reality.

[ 27 ] On the other hand, I also do not believe that the approach of attempting to reach reality through the will can be fully pursued from an epistemological standpoint. For, ladies and gentlemen, in imagination we are at least inwardly filled with the full clarity of waking consciousness; in the world of imagination, we overlook precisely what is taking place—at least as it unfolds in our imagination, in pictorial form. In volitional activity, we are, to a certain extent, asleep. We do not experience volitional activity inwardly; it is not transparent to us. That is why it struck me particularly that a more recent epistemologist—Dilthey—who rejected the validity of attributing objective reality to the world of imagination and who turned to volitional activity to establish a reality, referred not to the experiences of the adult but to those of the child who is still dreaming. It is indeed the case that, with regard to the true inner essence of the will, we never achieve full awakening in our lives between birth and death unless we develop the capacity for love in the way I have shown. But when that happens, the entire inner state of the soul changes. Then one comes to understand the reason why our life of imagination is essentially pictorial in nature.

[ 28 ] If one wishes to grasp something such as the developed faculty of cognition, one must attune oneself to an entirely different state of mind. Then, of course, the usual conditions for understanding are not present. Rather, understanding is an experience, a standing within things. But the knower must fulfill this prerequisite within himself if he is to penetrate the matter at all. If one now approaches the matter with the developed power of memory, with one’s soul experience—setting aside the bodily functions—and observes what prevents the epistemologist, due to its pictorial nature, from building a bridge to it, then one discovers, in particular, why the life of imagination essentially has a pictorial character. One then examines precisely—but now with the developed power of memory—what the actual relationship is between the image and the external, empirical world. And one finds: There is, in essence, no kinship whatsoever between what arises within us as an image—what is, so to speak, reflected back as images of the imagination by our organism in response to the influence of the external world. There is no inner connection whatsoever between these images. That is to say, there may be a connection between the content of the images and what exists within the external world, but not between the essential, the fundamental nature of this world of imagination and what constitutes the external environment. We are faced with an external environment and an inner world that are essentially distinct from one another. One may be reflected in the other, but they are different. Through the development of the power of memory, one learns to recognize what actually lives within the imagination, which is essentially bound to the human being’s primary organization. Essentially, what lives there is not what comes to us from the external world—which we can perceive with our senses—but rather the echo of our pre-birth or pre-conception spiritual existence. That which essentially underlies our life of imagination is like the penetration of a shadow of our pre-birth existence into our life between birth and death. We think essentially with the forces with which we lived in the spiritual world before our conception.

[ 29 ] This analysis is reached through the development of our memory; hence the lack of connection between what is actually an echo of a completely different world and what surrounds us in the external world. It is only in the course of our lives that we establish the connection between what we bring with us from the prenatal world and what we perceive through our senses. This, my esteemed audience, becomes a fact. And now the epistemological problem no longer presents itself to our soul as a mere formal issue, but rather, so to speak, as the shadow of a very real world of facts. Through imaginative cognition as human beings, we learn to recognize what we actually want. Through this imaginative cognition, we seek to bring two worlds into harmony: the purely spiritual world before birth and the sensory world after birth. The purely spiritual world leaves us with a question; the sensory world provides us with the answer.

[ 30 ] I first attempted, in a philosophical manner, to depict this human process of grasping truth in my short epistemological treatise “Truth and Science,” in which I sought to show how the apprehension of reality is not merely a formal matter, but rather how human beings initially confront reality as something incomplete, as something that they themselves render not entirely real; how he then works his way toward reality, particularly in scientific work. This was a theory of knowledge developed purely scientifically and philosophically-formally from a Kantian perspective, which then had to be supplemented by what I have just described—namely, how light is shed by the recognition of the supersensible in the methodology concerning this supersensible, within anthroposophically oriented spiritual science.

[ 31 ] These, my esteemed audience, are a few highlights regarding the epistemological problem. This epistemological problem became particularly close to my heart 30 years ago, when I devoted myself to the study of the problem of freedom. I would like to summarize briefly, in just a few sentences, what I set forth in my *Philosophy of Freedom* in 1892; I do not wish to define freedom now, but merely to point out how it lives within each of us. It would be impossible to comprehend free actions in any way if that which is to serve as the basis for free actions were presented to us as the result of an external, physical-sensory reality or as the result of an internal, organic reality. It is only because we have images in our life of imagination—images that, in a sense, mirror our pre-birth existence—just as mirror images are not real but reflect what is before the mirror—and only because such images, for which there is no external reality with regard to their essence, provide the impulses for our free actions; it is through this alone that free actions are possible. If free actions were not based on image-impulses, they simply could not be free actions. Precisely because a truly real theory of knowledge leads us to the image-like character of the life of the imagination—namely, to the image-like character of pure thought—it is also possible, on the basis of such a theory of knowledge, to establish a genuine philosophy of freedom.

[ 32 ] Well, ladies and gentlemen, how, then, has the ontological problem been linked to skepticism? It is because, in the course of human development—which I have outlined with regard to philosophy in my two-volume book *The Riddles of Philosophy*—humanity has increasingly lost the inner experience of reality, to the point that it has virtually shifted to the pictorial nature of conceptual experience. Why, fundamentally speaking, did the ontological proof of God’s existence become invalid in a certain era?

[ 33 ] In fact, when one studies the true history of philosophy, one finds: This refutation of the ontological proof of God would have had no value at all in earlier times, for back then, the existence of God was not merely derived from concepts using ontological proofs, as Kant imagined, but rather the divine was experienced inwardly within the concepts themselves, and as the concepts were allowed to unfold dialectically, a reality lived within this dialectical unfolding. This reality was lost more and more inwardly. This is the meaning of humanity’s development of the “I”: that the inner connection with reality has been lost more and more, so that ultimately precisely that theory of knowledge became necessary which sought to bridge the gap from the non-existent—or merely pictorial—concept to external reality. In ontology, this confronts us at a higher level. We have mere dialectics instead of content-filled dialectics, instead of the real process that lived as a supersensible process in the world of concepts. Our ontology—we hardly have any left, but the one that has remained in older philosophers—is, I would say, the filtered dialectical product of an ancient, inner experience; an inner experience that has become a mere concept, a mere web of concepts.

[ 34 ] Well, what I described earlier as the experience of a supersensible world through developed powers of cognition leads one, as I have already mentioned, to ultimately rise to the point of recognizing, at the same time, the reality that lies, for example, behind natural phenomena. This is the basis for the enrichment of therapy through spiritual science: that one can relate what lives spiritually and psychologically within natural phenomena to the recognized inner organs of the human being. Because both the external and the objectively spiritual-psychic can be penetrated at the same time, ontology regains its meaning. Thus, what humanity—as a humanity becoming free—has felt in relation to ontology is a kind of intermediate stage. In earlier times, reality was present in the experience of concepts through an instinctive experience of those concepts. Then this was lost—it had to be lost—in the course of humanity’s education toward freedom, toward life in pure concepts. For this is what it means to experience freedom: to experience pure conceptual images and to be able to orient oneself according to them. Now we are once again faced with the possibility of giving ontology substance through the insights into the spiritual-super-sensible that exist simultaneously.

[ 35 ] Ladies and gentlemen, I have thus drawn your attention to two areas of supersensible perception: that which, so to speak, precedes our birth, and that which is the supersensible realm that exists simultaneously with us.

[ 36 ] And a third realm opens up to the human being when, through a developed psychology, he first turns his attention to that which is not his power of imagination but his will; the will and a part—I say expressly a part—of the emotional nature. These realms, even in waking consciousness, lie, so to speak, just as far below the threshold of that consciousness as our nocturnal experiences lie below that threshold for ordinary consciousness. If one analyzes psychological phenomena impartially, one cannot help but conclude that the same intensity of inner experience that one observes in the dullness of sleep consciousness is also present in the experience of what is actually the workings of the will within us.

[ 37 ] A careful analysis of consciousness, as conducted by numerous psychologists, shows that human beings first experience ideas arising from their will; they first experience ideas of what they want and what they should do. They do not, however, experience the entire intermediate stage in which these ideas pass into the organism of the will. Then they experience the other end of this life of the will; they experience the transition of their will into outward action; they observe what happens through them. What lies between these two ends is experienced by human beings with precisely the same subdued consciousness as they have during deep sleep. Emotional life, too, is not experienced with the same intensity as the life of imagination, but rather with the intensity of the dream life. But what is important for now is to observe how the actual life of the will is experienced with the dullness of the sleep life. We do not merely alternate between sleeping and waking in time; rather, even while we are awake, we sleep with a part of our being—our volitional being. The reason why we “sleep” with regard to our volitional being becomes apparent when insight is developed in the manner I have outlined. If one succeeds in developing the capacity for love into that ability through which one experiences the supersensible, then a special experience arises: the crossing over into the volitional process that otherwise does not enter consciousness, in contrast to which consciousness otherwise remains dull. In fact, one comes to not only perceive the organs of the body as I explained earlier, but one also comes to view that aspect of the will—which is otherwise overlooked in the waking state—in the same way one normally perceives an external fact through the senses. One arrives at a self-knowledge of the will. And through this, my esteemed audience, the ethical world is integrated into the rest of the world—the world in which natural necessity otherwise reigns. In this way, we learn to recognize something that is still extraordinarily difficult to describe, even by today’s standards.

[ 38 ] When we consider the contents of our consciousness, we can indeed attribute certain intensities to its individual parts. We can then—and this is particularly true of certain senses—reduce the intensity of certain contents of consciousness down to zero. But we can also—and this is usually given little attention, since the necessity for it only becomes apparent in spiritual research—we can also, in contrast to the intense experience of consciousness, descend from a state of objectivity; [we] must go all the way into the negative. Yes, it becomes necessary not merely to speak of matter; but to speak of matter, of empty space, and of negative matter; that is, not merely of empty space, but of emptied space, bringing the intensity down below zero. This is a concept that inevitably arises for the researcher of the spiritual realm when he attempts a transition from the essence of the life of imagination to the essence of the life of will and the relationship of this life of will to the physical-organic functions. Let us imagine specifically—it could also be the other way around—let us imagine the processes that take place between the spiritual-soul and the physical-bodily during imagination; if we imagine these processes as positive, then we must imagine the processes of the will as negative; in a sense, if the former represents a pressure effect, we must imagine the latter as a suction effect. These are, of course, more or less comparative concepts, but they point toward reality. I would like to briefly characterize the facts of this reality.

[ 39 ] Today’s psychology, which has become increasingly abstract, generally leads one to imagine that there is an interaction between the processes of the brain—that is, the nervous system—and the psychological and spiritual processes. Certainly, such an interaction exists. However, the nature of this interaction becomes apparent to the developed power of memory, as I have described it. For what actually unfolds in the imagination is based not on the progressive growth of the nervous system, but rather, on the contrary, on the erosion of the nervous system. Once one has truly grasped this in the right way—and one will follow spiritual science on this point; I can only sketch it out here, but you will find detailed accounts of the matter throughout our literature—once one has truly grasped this, one will say to oneself: One is succumbing to an illusion when one assumes, in the usual way, a parallelism between mental and soul processes and brain processes; an illusion that I will illustrate with a comparison.

[ 40 ] Let’s suppose someone were walking across a soft road surface; a car drives over the soft surface, and indentations, footprints, and tire tracks form. Now, a being from Mars or somewhere else might come along and speculate about these impressions, and might say: Beneath the surface of the ground there is a certain force that causes these impressions by pulling down and pushing up. There is no force there that causes these impressions; rather, they have been caused by a person who walked over it or a car that drove over it. In the way the spiritual-soul aspect expresses itself, it simply encounters a surface—a resistant surface in the physical organization—and leaves impressions, even to the point of destroying the organic substance. Thus, the organic substance is worn away. The organic processes are reversed. And as space is made in this way within the physical body, the spiritual-soul aspect penetrates. If one conceives of the process as positive, then the process of will is the negative; in this case, the process of will promotes organic growth, albeit indirectly. But just as the imaginative process continues within the organism as a process of erosion, of destruction—in a sense, as a process of excretion of organic substance—so does the will lie in the elevated, enlivened structure of the organic. This is the effect of the willpower. In this way, one learns to perceive, in a positive and concrete manner, the interplay between the physical-bodily and the spiritual-psychic. Through this, however, one also learns to recognize that we are not merely surrounded by a nature that contains naturally necessary laws; rather, just as the will is integrated into our own organism to promote and enliven growth, so too is the spiritual-psychic—which we bring to mind in our consciousness as ethical impulses—integrated into the whole of surrounding nature.

[ 41 ] In this way, precisely through this supersensible knowledge, we find not merely values—or not merely something that corresponds to utility—but we actually find, within the world that surrounds us, on the one hand, natural necessity, and on the other, objective ethical necessity. Ethical impulses are truly integrated into the objective existence of the world. And what emerges—I would have to describe the process at length, but for now I can only characterize it through a comparison—what emerges is this: We live in the world of natural necessity. Moral ideals are absorbed within us. It is like a plant. It develops leaves, a flower, and in the center of the flower, the seed of next year’s plant. The leaves and flower fall off, but the seed—which is inconspicuous—remains and develops into next year’s plant.

[ 42 ] Thus, from this perspective—which I have just discussed methodologically—the relationship between natural necessity, between everything that surrounds us as natural necessity, and that which emerges to us as ethical impulses, appears as follows. Natural necessity will undergo a process that is not to be understood merely as natural necessity—as Clausius, for example, seeks to understand his entropy of the universe—but rather there is a process of the withering away of what appears to us today as physical, and just as the seed lives within this physical realm, so do the ethical impulses that will shape the physical world of a distant future. And we come to realize: Our physical world is the realized ethical world of a distant past, and our ethical impulses of the present are the seeds of a physical world of the future. The ethical problem, as conceived in anthroposophy, is integrated into the cosmological problem. Through this anthroposophical conception, the human being is in turn integrated into the entire cosmos.

[ 43 ] This has an important social consequence. The ethical ideal, the ethical impulse—it is, after all, intimately connected with the social impulse. Social impulses will only truly take hold of humanity in the right way—they will only lead us out of the chaos of the present—when it is realized that what human beings do here on Earth is not just something that vanishes like smoke and mist, something like an ideology based on purely external, purely economic processes, but rather something that has cosmological significance, so that, in fact, albeit with a qualification, the Christian saying is true, which every human being can utter, can repeat after the Christian Master: “Heaven and earth will pass away”—that is, what surrounds us as the physical world will pass away—“but my word,” that is, the Logos that lives within me also as the ethical principle, “will not pass away.” It creates a future world. Thus, that which lives within the human being expands into a kind of consciousness that, in turn, integrates the human being into the cosmological context of the world’s development.

[ 44 ] Today I simply wanted to show you, my esteemed audience, what the relationship is—first, between anthroposophically oriented spiritual science and the epistemological problem; and, second, what it is that makes this epistemological problem so difficult for contemporary philosophy—since, on the one hand, one cannot escape the pictorial nature of the life of the imagination, and on the other hand, one cannot make proper sense of the will because it cannot be brought up to the bright clarity of consciousness—and how this problem, when grasped from an anthroposophical perspective, places the human being within reality. For that which was real before one’s birth or conception takes on an imaginal character in our life between birth and death. Through this, that which is imaginal in the human being is linked to the external reality that he experiences and to which he himself builds a bridge; if one seeks a solution between two present realities—the external environment and the inner world of imagination— one cannot, in essence, arrive at a solution to the problem, because in the actual impulses of the inner world of imagination, one is dealing with a [reflection], an influence of that which was our reality before birth.

[ 45 ] The ontological problem is thus placed on a new footing by the fact that human beings once again experience real spirituality—that is, they do not merely think dialectically, but rather, in thinking dialectically, the spiritual-substantial, the essential, is present within this dialectical thinking.

[ 46 ] From an anthroposophical perspective, the ethical problem places the human being within the whole of cosmic becoming. It elevates what we do as individual human beings to a universal reality by revealing what is ultimately necessary for a comprehensive worldview: that what takes place within a human being is not merely something enclosed within their skin, but—apart from the fact that they experience it subjectively— —that is, a subjective fact—is also an objective event for the existence of the world. We participate in world existence. Something that lives within us—it is our subjective experience, yet at the same time it is an objective experience of the world. By linking ethical impulses in this way to cosmological existence—to the cosmic experience of being—human beings transcend death, just as they transcend birth in another way. By seeing through the power of imagination, one comes to see through existence before birth. By seeing through the will, one comes to know the germinative forces within the human organism—that which cannot fully unfold until death, that which lives within us just as a seed lives within a plant.

[ 47 ] And from there lies the path—which I cannot even begin to describe due to time constraints—to understanding the problem of immortality, namely, life beyond death. In recent times, we have become so unclear about the problem of immortality because we cannot properly see it in light of the other problem. In everyday language, we do not even have a word for this other problem. We speak of immortality, but we do not speak of non-birth, of non-bornness. Immortality is part of non-bornness. Until we are able to think and speak of non-bornness just as we do of immortality, we will continue to grope in the dark when it comes to matters of faith and will not arrive at certain knowledge.

[ 48 ] Ladies and gentlemen, I am well aware of the many objections that can be raised against what I have been permitted to present today. Believe me, the objections that can be raised are ones that the spiritual researcher raises against himself, because he knows into what difficult, questionable realms his research ventures. But perhaps these debates have shown that what emanates from the anthroposophically oriented spiritual science—insofar as it originates from the School of Spiritual Science, the Goetheanum, in Dornach, has nothing to do with wild fantasy, nebulous mysticism, or some kind of fanciful theosophy, but rather that it is concerned with something that at least seeks to continue on the path of serious, even exact, science. To what extent this can already be achieved today is a matter on which I cannot elaborate. But serious research is being pursued precisely because the tremendous scientific advances of recent times point not only to themselves but also, at the same time, beyond themselves. It is my heartfelt conviction that anyone who is a good natural scientist today is driven—not by the results of natural science, but by what one does as a natural scientist with mind and soul—toward the development of those spiritual faculties that are already applied in natural science, albeit unconsciously. They are driven toward conscious development and then toward a genuine, concrete grasp of the spirit. A concrete grasp of the spirit—just as natural science is a concrete grasp of nature, of objective natural facts—is what anthroposophically oriented spiritual science aims to be.

[ 49 ] Discussion

[ 50 ] Leo Polak: Since no one else seems willing to speak, I would like to do so myself; and now that we have heard discussions about anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, I would also like to offer a few words from the other side—that is, from the purely philosophical perspective, particularly from the epistemological perspective. For what pleased me most this evening was at least the effort to provide an epistemological foundation for this anthroposophically oriented spiritual science—as, incidentally, Dr. Steiner also attempted to do in his works, most of which I am familiar with.

[ 51 ] But it then became clear to me that there really is a fundamental contrast—I would even say a contradiction—between anthroposophy and philosophy. In my view, this opposition does not rest on the basis on which Dr. Steiner founded it. He explained somewhere that the real fact of the matter is not that philosophy contradicts anthroposophy, but merely that philosophers—and Kant in particular—do not understand philosophy. Now I believe that the very mindset philosophy adopts toward anthroposophy is different from the reverse. I would say—even if it sounds a bit immodest—that philosophy is somewhat more modest; it would never presume to say, “This clairvoyant knowledge does not exist.” It will not presume to say, if Dr. Steiner believes and maintains that, through the expansion of certain soul forces, one can develop or expand one’s memory to perceive a supersensible environment, to perceive the higher world of ideas, to think with pre-birth spiritual forces, and—as we have heard further here—to perceive the purely spiritual in this sense, and if he thus directly perceives the supersensible non-self, if he perceives the pre-birth and post-death realms, then we can simply say: We do not perceive this; we lack this capacity for knowledge—not gradually, but in principle—and we must therefore remain silent on the matter. The only critical remark we can make here is that it is a mistake to speak here of a mere expansion of the familiar faculties. In each case, the familiar faculty is not expanded, but rather transformed into its fundamental opposite. Remembering is always merely the recollection of one’s own experiences. When remembering becomes seeing—becomes something supernatural—it becomes something fundamentally different: an insight into something that is no longer a faculty of memory and can never be one.

[ 52 ] It is exactly the same with love. We do not believe for a moment—at least I am convinced—that it would be a deficiency in my capacity to love, that I cannot immediately lose myself in that objectivity in which Dr. Steiner can, that I cannot experience the inner reality of the supersensible and thus also resolve the question of the supersensible when a “before” and “after” are experienced. I do not believe that; that is the only thing I can say; and what I can say with certainty is that something new is attained there—not merely an expansion of our power of cognition or our love.

[ 53 ] But even if epistemology and philosophy, for their part, do not and cannot presume to pass judgment on mental faculties over which they themselves admit they have absolutely no control, do not know, and cannot even conceive of, cannot even conceive of the perception of a “non-self,” it will nevertheless feel obliged, on the other hand, when the spiritual scientist turns to epistemology and seeks to judge and pass judgment on epistemological questions, to voice its criticism and say: It is possible that clairvoyance has penetrated into the innermost depths of matter, even if epistemology does not recognize this entire matter as reality at all; this perception may be able to transport itself into the innermost depths of matter, but it has not entered into the innermost depths of epistemology; it has been able to view epistemology—and especially Kantian criticism—only from the outside, without ever being within it.

[ 54 ] It goes without saying that it would be going much too far to elaborate on this further with specific reasons. I would then need an entire evening here, just as the previous speaker would have needed this one—and even more—to express his views on the theory of knowledge. But there are certainly some points I wish to touch on briefly, because they are of the utmost and greatest fundamental importance. In the book *Philosophy of Freedom*, for example, Dr. Steiner addresses the problem of knowledge in particular, and perhaps the most characteristic statement in the book is this: that, based on the concept of cognition as we have defined it, one cannot speak of limits to knowledge. Now, there could hardly be a more fundamental contrast than that between critical epistemology—which I have the honor of representing here at the university and on which I base my lectures— and a statement such as this—which denies every limit of knowledge that the rigorous research of so many of the greatest thinkers, and especially Kant, has taught us—there could scarcely be a more fundamental contrast between a theory that denies the limits of knowledge and one that establishes them. And the rest of the opposition is also based on this denial of the very origin of knowledge. Dr. Steiner has also leveled criticism against critical idealism in this book and elsewhere, but he has always remained outside the actual problem; he has never even touched upon the essence of Kantianism itself. He believes that this “phenomenality” of nature inherent in Kantianism—according to which every natural phenomenon, every material world, exists not merely as a physical world for Dr. Steiner, but there is also an etheric body outside our physical body, and we also have an astral body— we do not have just one spirit, but four kinds of spirit, so to speak, which are then named using these Indian terms: Manas, Budhi, Atma, and so on—but we know nothing of all this. Yet Kantianism denies the physical body as an independently existing reality; it is merely a phenomenon of the thing-in-itself. We also heard this evening that people have even gone so far as to speculate about a “thing-in-itself,” as if that were the most unreasonable thing one could do. And here again, none other than Kant himself said regarding the denial of this thing-in-itself: “I have shown throughout my Critique that what we perceive—the things of the phenomenal world—are not things-in-themselves, but phenomena.” As is well known, this is the essence of Kant’s entire critique of knowledge: that it would be incorrect to regard these phenomena as things-in-themselves; but it would be an even greater absurdity to refuse to admit the existence of any “thing-in-itself” at all. It would, of course, take us far too far afield if I were to elaborate on this point in detail, but I can fully indicate Dr. Steiner’s fundamental errors here in a few words and say: He has partly adopted Hartmann’s critique of idealism and, in any case, the major error therein—which I believe I have demonstrated in my book, and that is this—namely, that the idealism or phenomenality of matter or nature, that one could only arrive at this if one presupposes the reality of nature, the reality of [gap in the text]. This is entirely incorrect and stems from a misformulation of this subjectivity of the content of perception. Not a single critical idealist in this sense says, as Dr. Steiner has him say—and as he himself believes should be said—that colors merely depend on and exist for the eye; rather, every critical thinker knows that the eye is just as much a phenomenon and just as dependent, and is not the eye [the Primum], but is just as secondary. Instead, he says: All colors exist merely for and through the sense of color, the sense of sight as a mental faculty. And in exactly the same way, all sounds in the entire world exist only if, as the [Primum], not the ear or the brain but the sense of hearing is posited. If one makes this single and absolutely necessary change to Dr. Steiner’s entire critique of Kantian idealism, then [it] dissolves into nothing, and Dr. Steiner’s sole argument remains—but it crumbles and reveals itself to have been insignificant. I would like to ask those experts who deal with epistemology to read the relevant passage from Dr. Steiner’s work, and I would like to ask Dr. Steiner to consider the matter in this light and to see whether this change is not sufficient to reveal that what he has brought forth here in an epistemological sense is unfortunate.

[ 55 ] And there is yet another fundamental difference between this merely formal, merely critical idealism and everything that Kant—I believe rightly—called “enthusiastic, mystical idealism.” The previous speaker sought to draw a fundamental distinction between mysticism and his doctrine. I fear that some of those present here have been unable—or barely able—to discern this difference. There was much in his remarks that, from a Kantian standpoint, must be regarded as fanciful, as belonging to that higher idealism. The higher [gap in the text] [is] of no interest to me; for me, it is merely the pathos, the depth of experience. I believe that for some, what was presented this evening will have had a mystical character—and quite rightly so. For one has always designated as mystical those teachings, those supposed certainties, which are based on the immediate content of the transcendent, the non-self, that which is not immediately given in the self—in other words, the non-self. And it is precisely this perception of the supersensible, of the other, of the non-self, of what is not experienced by the self, of what precedes and what follows—all of this mystical aspect—that we have heard [proclaimed] as the elements of anthroposophy. I would like to conclude with a motto from Kant’s *Prolegomena*. It goes without saying that I cannot go into detail on everything; that would, of course, be impossible. Dr. Steiner said: The interaction between the brain and the soul certainly exists. This certainty surprises us greatly, given that the entire critical theory of knowledge—in contrast to the psychology to which Dr. Steiner referred—not only denies this interaction in principle but can also precisely demonstrate the fundamental impossibility of such interaction, because interaction requires two entities, two distinct realities, and for critical idealism, one of these realities does not exist materially as such, but is in itself something else—psychic and ideal in itself—just as we ourselves are, and just as Dr. Steiner’s own deeper conviction is likely to be, which he, however, merely cloaks in this uncritical, dogmatic, dualistic theory of perception, never speaking of images and even of mirror images; whereas criticism—though never Kantian criticism—shows that our perception never yields images, never reproduction, but rather production. That would be the fundamental error; I cannot go into further detail on this even now. The words of Kant with which I would like to conclude—or rather, two words—I would first like to formulate the contrast between this clairvoyance and critical philosophy in Kant’s own words. For “this much is certain, and certain to me: whoever has once tasted criticism will forever be repulsed by all the dogmatic drivel with which he previously had to make do.” And further: “Criticism stands to ordinary scholastic metaphysics”—and I would add, also to this new metaphysics, to anthroposophy—“just as chemistry stands to alchemy, or astronomy to divinatory astrology.” That is the one statement that formulates the contrast in principle. The other is this: “Now assume whatever seems most credible even after the most careful examination of the evidence. Let them be facts or rational arguments; just do not deny reason that which makes it the highest good on earth, namely, the prerogative of being the ultimate touchstone of truth.” Let us measure both anthroposophy and theosophy against this ultimate touchstone of truth. For, as Kant says—and with this I, for my part, would like to conclude—otherwise you will become unworthy of this freedom and will surely forfeit it.

[ 56 ] Rudolf Steiner: I would just like to touch on a few points briefly and not keep you much longer. The first point is the fundamental issue raised by your highly esteemed chairman—namely, that there is not merely a difference of degree between what I have characterized as a developed capacity for memory and mere remembering, but rather a fundamental contrast. Of course, nothing else emerges from my characterization. Perhaps I can attribute it to the difficulty of communication through language that your chairman introduced a word to justify his criticism—a word I did not use and would never use. I spoke of a further development of the capacity for memory, not of an expansion. I would like to expressly draw attention to this. “Expansion” is incorrect. Further development can also lead to a form of the same thing—a metamorphosis—that demonstrates a fundamental contrast to that from which it developed. I mention this simply to point out how easily misunderstandings can arise within a critique. For what I have expounded is, after all, not altered in the least by the fact that this fundamental opposition—which was already clearly implied in my formulation—is specifically characterized. For—my esteemed audience—since there is, of course, an opposition, indeed a fundamental contradiction, between what I have expounded and Kantianism, I will never deny that.

[ 57 ] I have never made any secret of the fact that, based on all my research findings, I had to become an anti-Kantian. And what I have written in my *Truth and Science* and in my *Philosophy of Freedom* is, of course, to be understood as an examination of Kantianism itself, based on years of effort. It matters little whether one might use a somewhat imprecise expression such as “Without the eye, there is no color”—as Schopenhauer has in fact said in various places—or whether one says, “Colors are not objective, but phenomena; the eye itself is a phenomenon.” Of course, all of that is correct. And if one then goes on to say, “Without the sense of color, there are no colors,” then one would really need not only to weave this into a critique in a suggestive way, but one would also need to go into great detail regarding how to characterize what is called the sense of color. For as I see it, the moment one attempts to arrive at clear, sharply defined concepts, the transition into the sense of color leads one deep into the realm of the mystical. For me, Kantianism becomes a rather nebulous mysticism at that point. And in recent epistemology, Kantianism has, in my view, often become a nebulous mysticism. It would be more fruitful—my esteemed audience—to discuss the points I actually raised in the lecture. For it is virtually impossible to single out one idea from my *Philosophy of Freedom*. This sentence is situated right in the middle of a long line of reasoning. It is impossible to grasp its meaning without this long line of reasoning.

[ 58 ] When I say that one should not assume any limits to knowledge, one must bear in mind that the meaning of this statement emerges from the entire discussion. This statement can, in fact, be interpreted in a wide variety of ways. It can be understood to mean that one does not initially speak of fundamental limits to knowledge, as, for example, du Bois-Reymond does in his *Ignorabimus* or as certain proponents of Kantianism do. However, it can also be understood to mean that one should not impose any limits on research whatsoever, but rather view research as an [asymptotic] approach to the truth, so that one should not speak of limits to knowledge in order not to hinder the progress of research.

[ 59 ] I don’t want to take up too much of your time by going into detail on everything that has been quoted from my writings, because that would really take a long time. After all, I could only select certain aspects from the entire scope of anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, and, you see, one really has to approach certain things with a certain understanding. It does not seem right to me, however, when the contrast between this anthroposophy and mysticism is formulated so sharply—not only when it is defined so sharply, but also when it is shown how anthroposophy can help avoid the danger of straying into the murky realms of mysticism—to simply label anthroposophy as mysticism by way of definition alone. One can do that if one has formed a definition of mysticism and subsumes under it everything that does not belong to what one wishes to accept. But the progressive path of knowledge must be allowed to go beyond given definitions; you will also find in my *Philosophy of Freedom* that it is not necessary to reconsider Kantianism. It has been thoroughly examined from all sides precisely through these considerations, which I have attempted to set forth in my *Philosophy of Freedom*.

[ 60 ] Now that I have passed the age of sixty, it strikes me as odd when I am advised to give Kantianism some thought. As a fifteen-year-old schoolboy in history class—because I found the history teacher uninteresting—I stapled the edition of the *Critique of Pure Reason* that had just been published at the time into my school notebooks so that I could read Kant while the teacher was lecturing on history. Since that time, I have been studying Kant, and I have followed the advice I received from various quarters to give thorough consideration to Kantianism. That was forty-four years ago. Had the admonition not come precisely on this point of Kantianism—regarding which I must confess to being somewhat sensitive—I would not have detained you for these few minutes with this purely personal matter, for that is indeed what it is. Otherwise, I would certainly have borne in mind the fact that I have spoken here only as a guest and should therefore, as a guest, conduct myself appropriately. Perhaps I have already gone beyond what is permissible here by making this last personal remark. But sometimes the personal is inextricably linked to the objective and may then be permitted as a personal matter.

[ 61 ] I would like to mention this simply because, in fact, too little attention has been paid to my lecture, and instead, criticism has been directed more at what I have previously articulated in entirely different contexts—which I find perfectly understandable; for anyone who has been engaged with Kantianism for forty-four years also understands the enthusiasm for Kant’s Critique of Reason and for Kantian idealism; understands how one speaks of the “thing-in-itself.” I also acknowledge all the objections that have just been raised, and I thank your chair for them. I do not wish to take up any more of your time, but I would ask that you examine more closely what I presented today in my actual lecture.

Leo Polak: If my words may have given rise to misunderstandings, I am more than willing to acknowledge my error. I see that the discussion here has consistently revolved around “further development”; in my notes, I read this as an “expansion” of the power of memory. If, as the speaker himself says, this does not refer to an expansion but rather to something fundamentally new, then we are in complete agreement on this point. And I have also explained why it would be impossible for me to go into these positive remarks in more detail: precisely because I lack any knowledge in this field. I can only say: I do not possess this ability to see into the future, and therefore I do not speak about something I do not know.

And while I may have been a bit immodest again in the way I phrased my advice—where it appears as though I am telling an older thinker and writer that he should consider this or that—I did not say that he should study Kantianism; I am familiar with his work and know what he thinks about it. But he should reconsider his one argument against Kantianism—eyes, colors, the sense of color—and I must therefore stand by that as well. I know that Dr. Steiner has dealt with Kantianism, has read Kant, and so on; I simply wanted to point out that, in a certain sense, he has nevertheless remained on the surface. Perhaps I may be permitted, as a final point, to cite a statement—which, again, was not made this evening but is taken from another book, *Philosophy and Theosophy*, that is, the treatise that explores the relationship between these two fields—in which it is stated that Kant can conceive of a “thing-in-itself” only in material terms, however grotesque that may sound. That is why I, for my part, understand why Dr. Steiner must deny the “thing-in-itself” if he believes that the “thing-in-itself” must be conceived in material terms. This “thing-in-itself” would then be a “non-thing-in-itself.”

[ 62 ] Rudolf Steiner: That's not what it says.

Leo Polak: Dr. Steiner says it's not there. It's right here!

[ 63 ] Rudolf Steiner: You have the translation there. In that case, the sentence has been mistranslated. It does not say that I defend Kant’s view that he could only conceive of the “thing-in-itself” in material terms, but rather that I believe the “thing-in-itself,” if one wishes to conceive of it impartially, could be conceived of in material terms. This is not an objection I am raising, but one that many have already raised: that Kant’s definition of the “thing-in-itself” does not rule out a material conception.

Leo Polak: Now, this is the fundamental contradiction between Kantianism as a whole and this doctrine: Kant has demonstrated, using all the tools of epistemology and criticism, that the “thing-in-itself”—whatever other properties it may have—cannot, in principle and fundamentally, possess supersensible properties; that sensuous properties belong solely to the sensuous object, that is, to the phenomenon [gap in the text]. So even if I were of the same opinion as Dr. Steiner, so much the better. Then he will realize that what he calls the supersensible world is not so far removed from what Kant says, except that Kant lacks the capacity to vindicate it. I believe I have explained why I cannot address Dr. Steiner’s positive assertions: because I am a layperson in that field, and that was the first precept of spiritual science: one should not speak of what one does not understand. And so if we can all finally agree that we should rely solely on the means provided by the spirit—as Dr. Steiner ultimately intends to do as well, even though he says that one can further develop these forces—if one wishes to grasp and understand the world using the spiritual powers that everyone feels within themselves, and if, in doing so, one takes as a point of reference—just as, on the one hand, Kantianism does with the entire critical philosophy, and, on the other hand, Dr. Steiner does—let me be permitted to emphasize this in a spirit of reconciliation—if one no longer regards the objective, the material, and the mechanical as primary and originally given, as a past period of science did, but rather, on the contrary, emphasizes the “I,” the experience of the “I,” the psychological, the inner life itself—seeing, recognizing, and knowing it as the primary, as the foundational, as the starting point and anchor of all science—then I believe that, even while marching separately, we can still jointly overcome the forces of ignorance, superstition, and fanciful mysticism, which, as I have now heard with pleasure, also find an opponent in Dr. Steiner; marching separately but united, we can overcome these dark forces of ignorance and superstition to attain some light, some understanding, some insight, some comprehension. Let us unite in this joyful hope and, finally, thank Dr. Steiner wholeheartedly for what he has given—with all his conviction, after a long life spanning so many years—as the result of his research. I have considered it my duty not to keep to myself the fact that it does not agree with our results, with the results of our research and that of others—that is, what we object to in principle. Even though Dr. Steiner is a guest, I did not take that into account, nor did Dr. Steiner. Even though the hosts are friends [gap in the text].