The Rudolf Steiner Archive

1. Anthroposophy and the Natural Sciences

[ 1 ] Ladies and gentlemen! This congress was announced to you as a congress on worldviews, and you will likely accept it as such based on the way it was announced. But anyone who wishes to speak today about questions of worldview cannot ignore the natural sciences—and above all, cannot ignore the worldview implications that these natural sciences have brought about. In a certain sense, these natural sciences have, for centuries—one might say since the 15th and 16th centuries—increasingly become the dominant force in human thought within the civilized world.

[ 2 ] There would indeed be much to say if one were to point out the great triumphs of scientific discovery and the transformation of our entire way of life brought about by the achievements of scientific research. But that would mean repeating what is already known to everyone present. From a worldview perspective, there is something else entirely about natural science that is of interest: the role it has long played as an educator of all of civilized humanity. And precisely when one speaks of this educational role in the course of modern humanity’s development, one actually encounters—I would say—two paradoxes. Allow me to begin with these paradoxes today.

[ 3 ] The first thing that has taken place—more in relation to the inner life of the human being, from the perspective of the scientific method of inquiry—is a transformation of human thought life as such. Anyone who is able to view earlier worldview movements with an open mind will have to admit that, within these movements—arising from the conditions of human development in earlier epochs—thought naturally added something from the very essence of humanity to what was yielded by experimentation and observation of nature. One need only recall the branches of knowledge that have now been superseded—astrology and alchemy—to realize how, in such modes of knowledge appropriate to earlier cultural epochs, nature was approached in such a way that human thinking, as a matter of course, added something of its own to what it sought to express, or even to what it allowed itself to be revealed through the things of the world.

[ 4 ] This came to an end with the scientific mindset of modern times. Today, if I may put it this way, we are, in a sense, obligated to accept the perceptions provided by observation and experiment at face value and to process them into what are called the laws of nature. In processing experiments and observations, we do, of course, make use of thought; but we use thought only as a means of organizing phenomena so that, through their very existence, they reveal to us their inner connections and their regularities. And we make it our task not to add anything from thought to what we can observe in the external world. We regard this, quite rightly, as an ideal of the scientific mindset.

[ 5 ] What has become of human thought under such influences? It has, in fact, become a servant, a mere tool for research. Thought as such, so to speak, no longer has anything to say when it comes to investigating the laws governing phenomena in the world.

[ 6 ] This, however, gives rise to a paradox that I would like to point out. As a result, thought is, in a sense, excluded—as a human experience—from the relationship that humans enter into with the world with regard to realities. Thought has become a formal tool for comprehending realities. Within the natural sciences, it is no longer self-revealing.

[ 7 ] This has extraordinary significance for the inner life of the human being. It means that we must regard thinking as that which must wisely and modestly hold back when it comes to observing the external world—something that is, in a sense, a distinct current within the life of the soul.

[ 8 ] And if one then asks oneself: How can the natural sciences themselves approach this way of thinking? — then one arrives at the paradox, and one finds oneself saying: If thought must withdraw into the processing of natural processes, if it may intervene only formally—by clarifying, compiling, and organizing—then it does not lie within the natural processes themselves; it becomes paradoxical when we raise the question—which is, admittedly, justified from the standpoint of natural science—How can we, based on the laws of natural science, understand thought as a revelation of the human organism? — And so today, if we stand impartially and earnestly within the realm of natural science, we can say nothing other than this: to the same extent that thought has had to withdraw from natural processes, the observation of natural processes may indeed strive again and again to reach the realm of thought, but it cannot bring this striving to any kind of satisfaction. Thinking is, so to speak, just as methodologically excluded from natural processes as it is in reality; it is condemned to be a mere image and not reality.

[ 9 ] I do not believe that many people today fully realize the implications of this paradox. But in the subconscious depths of the soul, countless people today already harbor the sense that we walk through the world with that which actually makes us human—for only as thinking beings can we consider ourselves human; in thinking, we see our human dignity—as with something whose reality we cannot yet acknowledge, that we carry through the world as an image. We feel, as it were, as though we were in a state of non-reality when we point to what is most noble in human nature.

[ 10 ] This is something that weighs heavily on the mind of anyone who has seriously engaged with the scientific research methods of both inorganic science and biology and who, in the sense of a worldview, wishes to draw conclusions based more on the implications of these research methods than on the individual results.

[ 11 ] One might say: Here lies something that can lead to bitter doubts in the human soul. Doubts arise, however, first in the intellect, but they flow down into the human heart. And precisely the person who understands human nature in a deeper, unbiased sense — in the sense that I will have to elaborate on in the coming lectures — knows how the state of mind, especially when certain currents within that state become enduring, works its way down even into the physical constitution of the human being, and how the mood of life in turn wells up from this physical constitution or physical disposition to this or that. Whether or not we must banish doubt from our minds determines whether we stride courageously through life, so that we know how to stand upright for ourselves and can also have a healing effect on our fellow human beings, or whether we go through life disheartened, dejected, incapable of taking care of ourselves, and incapable of helping our fellow human beings. I am not saying—and my upcoming lectures will show that I need not say this—that what I have just stated must necessarily lead to doubt; but it easily leads down the path of doubt if the natural sciences do not continue to develop in the directions I am about to describe.

[ 12 ] The magnificent achievements of natural science as they relate to the external world place extraordinary demands on human beings with regard to their souls if they, as the worldview represented here absolutely requires, take a positive stance toward natural science—demands: The ability to counter doubt with something stronger and more forceful than would be necessary if these demands did not stem from the established findings of the natural sciences.

[ 13 ] If, on the one hand, natural science seems to lead to something negative for the life of the soul—though only seemingly so—then, on the other hand, it has brought us—and here I must articulate my second paradox—something extraordinarily positive; and in speaking of this positive aspect, I am again expressing a paradox that made a particularly strong impression on me more than twenty years ago, when I was working on my *Philosophy of Freedom* and attempting to get to the heart of human freedom while maintaining a genuine scientific worldview.

[ 14 ] Yes, natural science, with its laws, theoretically tends to lead to a denial of human freedom. But this is precisely where natural science, in theory, actually arrives at the opposite of what it develops in practice. As we delve ever more deeply into the imaginative nature of thought—especially when, through the pursuit of the scientific way of viewing the world (not scientific theories themselves), we come to experience this imaginative nature of thought, of which I have spoken, in a truly inner and spiritual way—then we say to ourselves: If thinking within us is merely an image, if it is not a reality, then it does not exert a compelling influence like a force of nature. I may then compare this thinking—and the comparison is more than just one—to, say, a collection of mirror images. Images that I stand before cannot compel me. Existing forces can compel me, whether they are conceived as existing outside or within me; images cannot compel me. If, therefore, I am able to grasp my moral impulses within that pure thinking which natural science, through its methods, cultivates within us, I can shape these moral impulses within myself in such a way that I live out their shaping within the very same thinking to which natural science educates me, then I have in these moral impulses—grasped within pure thought—no coercive forces, but rather forces and images by which I can determine myself. That is to say, even if natural science—one might say, even with a certain right—must deny freedom from its very foundations, it nevertheless, by educating us in image-thinking, educates the people of our cultural world toward freedom.

[ 15 ] These are, I would say, the two poles—one pertaining to the life of thought, the other to the life of the will—before which the human soul is placed by contemporary scientific views. But in doing so, we are also pointing out how the scientific worldview points beyond itself. It must, after all, take some position regarding human thought. But it excludes this human thought. In doing so, it points to a method of research that is fully justified in its own right—prior to this scientific approach—and that can nevertheless lead to a comprehensible experience of thinking. On the other hand, it points out that the scientific worldview, because it cannot—in essence—theoretically reach the realm of freedom, must be extended into another realm in order to attain precisely that sphere of freedom.

[ 16 ] What I present here as a necessity arising from natural science itself—the extension of this natural science into a realm that at least the natural science recognized today cannot reach—is what the worldview to be presented here attempts to achieve. Since it is still in its infancy, it can, of course, do so only in a certain imperfect way. But the attempt must be made; for it is precisely the spiritual experiences related to thinking and freedom that I have described that are spreading to more and more souls in today’s cultured humanity. After all, we can no longer believe today that only those who have in some way engaged with science must confront such demands, questions, and mysteries as I have characterized them. Even in circles—one might say, all the way out to the most remote villages—where no significant scientific findings reach, education in the kind of thinking demanded by the natural sciences is taking hold and is bringing with it—albeit still very, very unconsciously today—uncertainty regarding human freedom. Therefore, these matters are not merely scientific questions, but are indeed questions of general human significance.

[ 17 ] So the question is: If one adopts the perspective of a scientific education, is it possible to advance further along the path of knowledge than contemporary science can?

[ 18 ] Ladies and gentlemen! This can be attempted; it can be attempted in such a way that the methods can be justified even to the most rigorous scientist; it can be sought through approaches grounded in a scientific mindset and scientific rigor. Today, as an introduction to my lectures, I would like to speak first about such approaches. But this path to knowledge—although it is already unconsciously yearned for by many souls today—is not even easy to articulate in concepts. Therefore, so that we may understand one another this evening—merely for the sake of understanding—I would like to draw upon descriptions of older paths of knowledge that humanity has taken to arrive at insights that lie beyond the realm currently addressed by the natural sciences.

[ 19 ] One could say: Much of what is today regarded as something that cannot be an object of knowledge at all, but only an object of faith—that which has traditionally emerged in the course of human development, which lives on today as a venerable tradition and is accepted as such as the content of faith—is, when viewed from a truly unbiased historical perspective, does, in fact, stem from older methods of knowledge that are no longer appropriate for our present-day culture. Everything that is believed today to be something that should remain a matter of faith—what is accepted as a time-honored tradition—leads the psychological observer of history back to ancient epochs of human history. And there it becomes apparent that such contemporary beliefs—as insights appropriate to that time—were sought by certain individuals through the cultivation of their own souls and the development of hidden soul forces, and thus constituted genuine insights. People today are unaware of how many things were once discovered—things that emerged historically in the course of human development—but they were discovered through older paths of knowledge.

[ 20 ] When I describe such paths to knowledge, I do so, however, with the help of the methods I will describe later—which means that in many cases, those who depict the earlier epochs of humanity solely on the basis of external historical documents rather than spiritual ones may take offense at my account. However, anyone who examines the external historical documents with an open mind and then compares them with what I will have to say today based on a certain insight will nevertheless find no real contradiction. And secondly, I would like to emphasize that I am not describing these older paths of knowledge simply because I wish to recommend them to anyone today as a means of attaining higher insights. They are appropriate for earlier epochs and can even be harmful to people today if they apply them to themselves out of a misunderstanding. So, simply to ensure that we can understand one another regarding today’s methods of knowledge, I am singling out two older paths, describing them, and using them to illustrate the paths that people must follow today if they wish to go beyond the mere sphere of scientific knowledge as it is understood today,

[ 21 ] First, we have one path—as I said, I could single out others from the wealth of older paths of knowledge, but I will focus on the following two—first, we have a path that, in its pure form, was followed by individuals in ancient times in the East: the path of yoga.

[ 22 ] The path of yoga has undergone many phases, and precisely that which I shall emphasize most today entered later eras in a thoroughly decadent, corrupted state, so that the historian, when considering later eras, will—from a human perspective—have to describe what I am about to describe as something that is even harmful to human beings. Yet human nature itself has undergone the most diverse developments across successive eras. What was appropriate to human nature in ancient times was quite different from what was appropriate in later eras. What might have been a genuine method of knowledge in earlier times was perhaps later used merely to indulge in the thrill of power—the thrill of power that an individual feels over his fellow human beings. This was not the case in the most ancient times, for which I wish to characterize the practice of yoga.

[ 23 ] What did the path of yoga consist of, as practiced in very ancient Oriental times by individuals who—to use today’s terminology—were scholars in higher realms? Well, among other things, it consisted of a special kind of breathing exercises. I am singling out the breathing exercises from a wealth of exercises that the yoga student or scholar—the yogi—had to undertake. When we pay attention to our breathing today, we must say: It is a process that takes place largely unconsciously in a healthy human organism. One must already be carrying something pathological within oneself in some way if one is aware of one’s breathing. The more naturally, one might say, the breathing process takes place in our lives, the more appropriate it is for ordinary consciousness and for ordinary life. The yogi, however, restructured the breathing process for the duration of his practice, during which he sought to develop powers of perception that lie dormant in ordinary consciousness. Why did he do this? He restructured it so that he used a different duration for inhaling, holding his breath, and exhaling than is typical in ordinary, natural breathing. He did this to bring the breathing process into his consciousness. The ordinary breathing rhythm is not conscious. The restructured breathing rhythm, whose durations are determined by human will, takes place entirely consciously. But what happens as a result? Well, one need only speak in physiological terms to understand what the yogi achieved by bringing his breathing process into conscious awareness: When we inhale, the breath enters our organism, but it also travels through the spinal canal into the human brain. There, the rhythm of the breath merges with the processes that are the material carriers of thought life—the nervous-sensory processes. In fact, when we live in ordinary thought, we never experience mere nervous-sensory processes, but always nervous-sensory processes that are permeated by our breathing rhythm. A connection, an interaction, a harmonization of the nervous-sensory processes and the breathing rhythm—these are always taking place whenever we allow our thought life to unfold. By now sending his altered breathing rhythm into the nervous-sensory process in a fully conscious manner, the yogi also linked, for his own consciousness, the breathing rhythm with the rhythm of thought—with the logical rhythm, or rather, with the logical composition and analysis of thoughts. In this way, he transformed his entire thought life. In what direction did he transform it? — Well, precisely because he became fully conscious of his breathing, thoughts now flowed through his organism, so to speak, just as the breath itself does. One might say: the yogi let his thoughts flow along the currents of his breath, and within the inner rhythm of his human being, he experienced himself filled with thoughts living on the currents of his breath. Through this, the yogi distinguished himself from the rest of his fellow human beings, and he was able to proclaim to them insights that they themselves could not possess.

[ 24 ] To understand what actually happened there, one must take a closer look at the particular way in which those earlier insights influenced the common popular consciousness of the masses.

[ 25 ] Today we attach the greatest importance to the fact that, when we look out into the outside world, we see pure colors; that, when we hear sounds, we hear pure sounds; and that we likewise accept our other perceptions with a certain purity—that is, with the purity that the mere sensory process can provide us. This was not the case for the consciousness of people from earlier cultures. Not that, as a certain scholarly circle often mistakenly believes, people of earlier times imagined all sorts of things into nature! The imagination was not that extraordinarily active. But it was entirely natural for this older, cultured humanity—due to the very constitution of human beings at that time—not merely to perceive pure color phenomena, pure sound phenomena, and other pure sensory qualities, but to perceive a spiritual-soul aspect in everything at the same time. Thus, in the sun and moon, in the stars, in wind and weather, in springs and rivers, and in the beings of the individual kingdoms of nature, people saw spiritual-soul elements just as we today see pure colors and hear pure sounds—which we then seek to recognize in their context only with the help of thinking that has become pure. But for the people of antiquity, there was another factor at play: namely, that at that time there was not such a strong, inwardly established sense of self as we have today. By perceiving spiritual and soul elements in all things in the environment, human beings perceived themselves as a part of this entire environment. They did not separate themselves from this environment as an independent “I.” If I were to speak in comparative terms, I might say: If my hand had consciousness, how would it think of itself? It would tell itself that it is not an independent being, but only has meaning within my organism. In much the same way, the human being of earlier times could not regard himself as an independent being, but rather as a part of the whole of nature, which he, however, had to view as imbued with spirit and soul.

[ 26 ] The yogi stood out from this view, which presupposed the lack of independence of the human “I.” By linking his thinking, so to speak, to the process of breathing—which permeates the entire inner being of the human being—he arrived at an understanding of the human self, the human “I.” What, I would say, is taken for granted by us today—as adults—through our inherited traits and our upbringing, namely that we feel ourselves as a self, as an “I”—had to be attained in those ancient times by a roundabout route through exercises. As a result, however, the experience of this self, of this “I,” was something quite different from what we have today. It is quite a difference whether one takes something for granted as a natural experience—and for us, the sense of “I,” the sense of self, is a natural experience—or whether one must first attain it through such paths, through paths of insight, as was the case in an ancient Eastern culture. Back then, people lived in harmony with what surges, undulates, and weaves throughout the universe, whereas today, even when one experiences the same thing at a certain level, one no longer shares in the experience of the universe. Thus, through his exercises, human individuality, the human “I,” and the human soul revealed themselves to the yogi. And we can say: As what could be found on this path of knowledge passed into the general cultural consciousness as revelations, it became the content of the most important spiritual works of earlier times.

[ 27 ] Once again, I would like to highlight one thing among many. There we have the magnificent Bhagavad Gita, shining brilliantly to us from the ancient Orient. In this Gita, in a marvelous way and drawing from the deepest wellsprings of human lyricism, the experiences of the human self are described: how this self—when a person recognizes it through experience and experiences it through recognition—leads the individual to a sense of oneness with the universe, and how it reveals to the individual his true humanity and his connection to a higher world—a spiritual, a supersensory world. In ever-new, wondrous tones, the Gita describes this experience of one’s own self in its devotion to the universe. For those who, as I have said, know how to immerse themselves in these older times with an unbiased view of history, it is clear that the magnificent sounds of the Gita arose from what could be experienced through such exercises in insight as I have described.

[ 28 ] Such a path to knowledge was appropriate for an earlier era of Eastern culture. It was a common belief among humanity at that time that one had to withdraw into a certain solitude and seclusion if one wished to connect with the supersensible worlds. And in a certain sense, those who engaged in such practices condemned themselves to solitude and seclusion. For these practices imbue a person with a certain sensitivity. They make him hypersensitive to the rugged outside world. He must withdraw from life. In earlier times, it was precisely such solitary people who found trust among their fellow human beings. What they had to say was accepted as insights. Today, this is no longer appropriate for our culture. Today’s humanity rightly demands that the person in whom it is to place its trust as a source of insight be fully immersed in life, that he be able to engage with the rugged realities of life, with human labor and human activity, as shaped by the demands of the times. People today simply do not feel the same connection to someone who must withdraw from life as people did in earlier cultural epochs.

[ 29 ] Anyone who thinks this through carefully must conclude: Today’s paths to knowledge must be different—and we will discuss these other paths shortly. But first, again solely for the sake of understanding—and not because I wish to recommend it for people today—I would like to describe, in principle, another path that was also appropriate for earlier times: the path of asceticism.

[ 30 ] This path of asceticism was pursued by suppressing and dampening bodily functions and physical needs, so that the human body did not function in the same robust manner as it does in normal life. Physical functions were also suppressed by subjecting the human external physical organism to painful conditions. All of this led those who followed this ascetic path to certain human experiences that were indeed experiences of insight. I certainly do not mean to say that it is right for the healthy human organism—through which we are born into earthly life between birth and death—to be suppressed when the aim is to effectively integrate this organism into ordinary life. This healthy organism is entirely appropriate for the external sensory nature, which, after all, sustains human life between birth and death. Nevertheless, it remains true that the ancient ascetics, who had subdued this organism, came to experience their soul life in its purity and to know themselves as standing within their soul life in a spiritual world.

[ 31 ] It is precisely because our physical-sensory organism conceals from us what the spiritual world is—as the experiences of the ascetics have just shown—that it is suitable for life between birth and death. And it was simply an experience of the ancient ascetics that one could consciously enter the spiritual worlds by attuning one’s bodily functions downward. This, however, is not a path for the present day. Anyone who attunes their organism in this way renders themselves unfit for working among their fellow human beings; they also render themselves unfit in relation to themselves. Life today calls for people who do not withdraw from it, who maintain their health or, if it is weakened, even strengthen it—but not for people who withdraw from life. Such people could not gain trust, simply given the mindset of our present age. Therefore, this path of asceticism—which certainly led to insights in earlier times—cannot be a path for today.

[ 32 ] But both the insights into the supernatural world provided by the path of yoga and those provided by the ascetic path are preserved in ancient—I would say sacred—traditions and are accepted by humanity today as something that satisfies certain spiritual needs. And people do not ask how what they accept as beliefs was nevertheless sought through a genuine path of knowledge—even if that path is no longer appropriate for our times.

[ 33 ] Today’s path to knowledge must be a completely different one. As we have seen, one path—the path of yoga—attempted, so to speak, to reach thinking by taking a detour through breathing, in order to experience this thinking in a different way than it is perceived in ordinary life. For the reason already mentioned, we cannot take this detour through breathing. Therefore, we must try to achieve a transformation of thinking in a different way, so that through this transformed thinking we may then arrive at insights that are a kind of continuation of our understanding of nature. That is why, if we understand each other correctly, we assume today that we should not work on thinking via the detour of breathing, but rather work on it directly by performing certain exercises through which we make thinking inwardly more powerful and energetic than it is in ordinary consciousness.

[ 34 ] In ordinary consciousness, we engage in a more passive form of thinking that follows the course of external events. If we wish to follow a newer path of supersensory knowledge, we place certain easily comprehensible ideas at the center of our consciousness. We remain within the realm of mere thought. I know that some people would like to find what I am about to describe in later forms of yoga, such as that of Patanjali. But as it is practiced today, it is by no means yet included within Eastern spiritual training; it is not included because even if a person were to perform the yoga exercises today, they would have a different effect—due to the changes the human organism has undergone—than they did for people in earlier epochs.

[ 35 ] So today we turn our attention directly to thinking—specifically by practicing meditation and concentrating on certain thoughts for extended periods of time. We undergo a mental process that can be compared to strengthening a muscle. When we use a muscle repeatedly in sustained work—regardless of the purpose or goal of that work—it must become stronger. We can do the same with our thinking. Instead of always allowing our thinking to be carried along by the course of external events, we bring—through a strong effort of will—clear, well-defined concepts—whether formed by ourselves or provided by an expert in the field—into the center of our consciousness; concepts in which no memories can linger of which we are not aware; we shut out all other consciousness, and concentrate solely on such a content of consciousness. I would like to say, in the words of Goethe’s Faus: It is indeed easy—for that is how it appears—yet the easy is difficult! For this must be carried out by one person for weeks on end, by another for months on end. When consciousness then learns to rest on the same thought—and to rest on it again and again—to the point where it becomes completely indifferent to us, and we direct all our inner attention and inner experience toward the strengthening, toward the spiritual energization of our thought life, then we ultimately arrive at the opposite process to the one the yogi underwent. For we detach our thinking from the breathing process.

[ 36 ] Even today, this still seems absurd to people, something fantastical. However, just as the yogi, so to speak, directed his thinking toward the inner workings of the body in order to connect it with the rhythm of his bodily breath and thus experience his self, his inner spirituality, so too do we detach thinking from the rest of the breathing process, which unconsciously permeates all our ordinary thinking. — The more detailed exercises, described in every detail and constituting a strictly precise system, can be found in my book *How to Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds* or in the other one, *Esoteric Science*, or also in *Mysteries of the Soul* and in other writings of mine. — In this way, one gradually comes to not only separate the thought process from the breathing process but to make it completely free from physicality. Only now does one realize what a great service even the so-called materialistic—or rather, mechanistic—worldview has rendered to humanity. It has made us aware that ordinary thinking is grounded in physical processes. This can serve as the very impetus to seek a form of thinking that no longer rests on bodily processes. But this can only be found by strengthening ordinary thinking in the manner described. Through this, we arrive at a thinking free from the body—a thinking that consists solely of soul processes. Indeed, in this way we come to know what was within us as a nature of images—initially, admittedly, only as images—but as images that reveal to us a life of their own, independent of our physicality.

[ 37 ] This is the first step on a path of knowledge appropriate for modern people today. Through this, however, we arrive at an experience that is hidden from ordinary consciousness. Just as the Indian yogi connected his thinking with what was the inner rhythm of breathing—and thereby also with his spiritual self, which lives within that breathing rhythm—and just as he thus turned inward, so do we turn outward. By detaching logical thinking from the organism to which it is actually bound as logical thinking, we penetrate with this thinking into the outer rhythm of the world; indeed, it is only now that we experience that such an outer rhythm exists. Just as the yogi brought the inner rhythm of his body into consciousness, so an outer world rhythm comes into our consciousness in a spiritual way. If I may speak figuratively: in ordinary consciousness, we stand there in such a way that we logically construct our thoughts and thereby use thinking as a means of gaining knowledge of the outer sensory world. Now we allow thinking to flow into a kind of musical element—which is, however, very much an element of cognition—we perceive a rhythm that exists at the foundation of all things as a spiritual rhythm; we penetrate the world by beginning to perceive it in the spirit. Our thinking transforms from abstract, lifeless thinking—from mere conceptual thinking—into thinking that is animated within itself. This is the significant transition that can be made from abstract, purely logical thinking to living thinking, which we distinctly feel is capable of forming a reality, just as we recognize our own process of growth as a living reality.

[ 38 ] With this kind of lively thinking, however, one can now penetrate deeper into nature than is possible through ordinary thinking. How so? I would like to illustrate this with an example taken from contemporary life, even if it is a much-contested one. For example, today we direct our abstract thought life—through observation and experimentation—toward a higher animal. Through this thinking, we form an inner, vivid mental image of the structure of this animal’s organs—its skeletal system, muscular system, and so on—and of how the life processes flow into one another. We form a mental image of this animal. Then, using the same line of thought, we turn our attention to the human being, forming another mental image of this person; we again visualize the structure of their skeletal system, their muscular system, the interplay of their life processes, and so on. Then we can externally compare the mental images we have formed in each case. If we lean more toward Darwinism, we allow the human being to evolve from animal ancestors through a concrete, sensory process; if we lean more toward spiritual idealism, we conceive of this relationship in a different way. We will not go into that now. What is important, however, is that we are unable, with our abstract, lifeless thinking—once we have formed the image of the animal—to move from the inner life of thought to the human image: we must approach the outer sensory reality of the human being through the life of thought; we must derive our ideas and mental images from sensory realities, and only then can we compare them with one another. But once we have advanced to living thinking, we can also form a mental image—but a living mental image—of the skeletal system, the muscular system, and the interplay of life processes in the animal; and because our thought has now become a living one, we can then follow this thought inwardly as a living entity and, in thought itself, arrive at the image of the human being. I would like to say: The thought of the animal develops into the thought of the human being. I can only hint at how to proceed here by means of an example.

[ 39 ] When we have a magnetic needle in front of us, we know that, if it is magnetized, it will remain at rest in only one position—namely, when its direction coincides with the north-south direction of the Earth’s magnetism. This direction is particularly distinctive; in all other directions, the magnetic needle remains neutral. Everything we see in this example becomes an experience for living thought in relation to the totality of space. For living thought, space is no longer the indifferent juxtaposition that it is for abstract, dead thought. Space is internally differentiated, and we learn to recognize what it means that, in animals, the spinal line runs essentially horizontally. Where this is not the case, we can demonstrate—precisely on the basis of deeper laws—that the abnormality is particularly significant; but essentially, the animal’s spinal line lies horizontally—one might say, parallel to the Earth’s surface. It is by no means irrelevant whether the spinal line lies in this spatial direction or in the vertical direction toward which the human being straightens up in the course of his or her life. Thus, in living thought, we come to recognize that if we were to straighten the animal’s main line—that is, to orient it in a different direction in space—we would have to reshape all the other organs. The idea comes to life simply through the rotation of 90 degrees from the horizontal to the vertical orientation. Thus, inwardly inspired, we make the transition from the animal form to the human form.

[ 40 ] In this way, however, by first immersing ourselves in the rhythm of natural phenomena and thereby accessing the spiritual reality underlying nature, we penetrate further into the innermost essence of those phenomena. We come to have something in our living thoughts with which we can immerse ourselves in the growth and becoming of the external world. We re-enter the mysteries of existence from which we had withdrawn in the course of human development through the unfolding of ego-consciousness, of self-awareness.

[ 41 ] Well, ladies and gentlemen, each of you could raise a very weighty objection. One might say, for example: Yes, certain figures did indeed possess such a way of thinking, which appeared to be alive, but the present age, with its serious scholarly spirit, has rightly turned away from such “living thought” as was developed, for example, by the philosopher Schelling or the natural philosopher Oken. I, too, fully agree with those who raise such an objection at first, for the way in which Oken and Schelling bring to life, internally, the image-ideas derived from external processes and entities, and then apply them to other natural facts and entities in order to see, so to speak, “in the spirit of nature”—this approach has something very fantastical about it, something that distances itself from reality, something that does not breathe reality within itself. As long as one does not, on the path of knowledge, move with this living thought to an element other than the one it is itself, one will not, through living thought, arrive at a guarantee of reality. Only when one adds exercises of the will to the exercises of thought does one come to have, within the living thought, a guarantee of spiritual reality.

[ 42 ] Exercises of the will can be characterized in the following way. Let us be completely honest with ourselves. In everyday life, when we look back ten or twenty years, we must admit: in the very essence of our inner life, we have in many ways become different people; but we have become so by having, as children, more or less passively surrendered ourselves to our inherited traits, our environment, and our upbringing—and, in later life, to life itself. Anyone who wishes to attain an understanding of spiritual reality must take what is experienced—not in the full sense of the word, but more or less passively—into their own hands through inner training of the will, or discipline of the will, if I may use such a crude expression. You will find the corresponding exercises—which are intimate exercises of the soul—described in the books mentioned above. I would simply like to indicate, in principle, what is essential.

[ 43 ] Just as we have certain habits today that we may not have had ten years ago—because life has only recently imposed them on us—so too can we resolve with firm inner determination: You will instill in yourself this or that character trait. The best way to instill such character traits—which require years of inner work to develop—is to repeatedly direct one’s attention to the strengthening and fortification of the will that is associated with such self-discipline. When one takes the development of one’s will into one’s own hands in this way—so that one, in effect, partly creates within oneself what the world otherwise makes of one as a human being—then the living thoughts into which one has entered through meditation and concentration take on something quite special for our experience. For they increasingly become painful experiences, inner experiences of suffering within the soul. And, fundamentally speaking, no one can attain higher insights who has not gone through these experiences of suffering and pain. These experiences of suffering and pain must be endured and then overcome, so that one, as it were, incorporates them and moves beyond them, regaining a neutral attitude toward them.

[ 44 ] You can visualize what is happening inside a human being in this way: Take the human eye—what I am saying could be explained in great scientific detail; however, I can only hint at it in general terms—take this eye. As light and colors act upon it, changes take place within the physical interior of this eye. If we were not so robust—an earlier generation of humanity certainly experienced these changes as suffering, as a subtle pain—we, too, would have to experience these changes in the eye and in the ear as a subtle pain, were it not for the fact that our physical constitution allows us to remain, so to speak, neutral toward them. All sensory perception is, in essence, based on pain and suffering.

[ 45 ] By permeating our entire inner life in this way with living thoughts—painfully, sorrowfully—we subject the body—not in the same way as the ascetic—to pain and suffering; we leave it healthy, allow it to develop in accordance with the demands of ordinary life, but we experience inner, intimate pain and suffering in the soul. The person—and this may be used as a comparison—who has attained a somewhat higher level of insight will always tell you: “Whatever pleasure and joy the course of my life has brought me, I accept gratefully from my fate; but I owe my insights to what I have suffered, to my pains, to my suffering.”

[ 46 ] In this way, life prepares those seeking knowledge, in a certain sense, for the fact that they must undergo part of their true, higher path of knowledge by overcoming suffering and pain. For when we overcome this suffering, this pain, we transform our entire soul being into—if I may use a comparative expression—“a sense organ”; actually, we must say a spiritual organ, a soul organ. And now we learn to look into the spiritual world just as we look and listen into the physical world through our ordinary senses. I need not speak today of epistemological considerations. I am, of course, aware of the objection that the external mode of cognition must first be examined; but that is not our concern today. I simply wish to say that, in the same sense that we find the external physical world to be reliable through our sensory perceptions in ordinary life, we find the spiritual world to be reliable—after having overcome the suffering of the soul—through our soul organ, through our spiritual organ, having become a fully spiritual human being.

[ 47 ] With this form of perception—which I would like to call modern, precise clairvoyance, in contrast to all the old, nebulous forms of clairvoyance that belong to the past—we can also penetrate into the essence of the eternal human being. We can penetrate, in a precise way, into the meaning of human immortality. But that must be reserved for tomorrow’s lecture, where I will speak about the special relationship between this worldview and the spiritual questions of the human being. Today I wanted to show how the human being, in contrast to older paths of knowledge, can arrive at a modern supersensory path of knowledge. The yogi sought to penetrate into the human being toward the Self; we seek to penetrate outward toward the rhythm of the world. The ancient ascetic subdued the body so that, as it were, the soul-spiritual experience might be forced out and exist on its own; the modern path of knowledge is not inclined toward asceticism, refrains from all forms of self-mortification, and turns intimately to the life of the soul itself. Both modern paths, then, allow the human being to remain fully immersed in life. The ancient ascetic and the ancient yogic paths, however, drew people out of life.

[ 48 ] So today I have tried to describe to you a path that can be taken by developing the powers of knowledge that lie dormant in the soul in a way that leads to a deeper spiritual and soul-based understanding than was once the case.

[ 49 ] But this also allows us—and I would like to suggest this in closing—to delve more deeply into the essence of nature. The worldview I am speaking of here is in no way opposed to contemporary natural science. On the contrary, it takes precisely that which constitutes a genuine spirit of inquiry within this scientific research and, through its exercises, develops it into a distinct human capacity. Contemporary natural science seeks precision and finds particular satisfaction when it can achieve this by applying mathematics to natural processes. Why is this the case? It is so because the perceptions that external nature provides us through the senses for observation and experimentation are, quite simply, outside of us. We penetrate them with something we develop entirely within our innermost human being; we penetrate them with mathematical insights. And Kant’s saying is often spoken, but even more often—I would say—practiced by those who think in scientific terms: “In every true insight, there is only as much science as there is mathematics.” This is one-sided if one considers ordinary mathematics. But by applying it to natural phenomena—to inanimate natural phenomena—and even today seeing a certain ideal in it, such as being able to count the chromosomes in germ cells, one demonstrates how satisfied one feels when one can impose mathematics on that which otherwise stands as an external reality beside or before us. Why? Because mathematics is experienced internally with immediate certainty—something we often have to symbolize through drawings; yet the drawings themselves are not essential to that certainty or to the truth. The mathematical is contemplated and discovered internally, and what we find intimately within ourselves, we connect with what we observe externally. This is what gives us a sense of satisfaction.

[ 50 ] Anyone who fully comprehends this process of cognition must conclude: The only things that can truly satisfy human beings intellectually—and lead them to science—are those based on what they can actually experience and perceive through their inner powers. Through mathematics, one penetrates the facts and the essential structures of the inanimate world—and, at most, I would say, in a primitive way, somewhat into the animate world. But one needs an inner intuition, as precise as mathematical intuition, if one wishes to penetrate the higher modes of action of the external world. The Haeckel school itself, through one of its most outstanding representatives, has expressly conceded that one must advance to an entirely different method of research and observation if one wishes to move from the inorganic to the organic realm of nature. For the inorganic, we have mathematics and geometry; for the organic, for the living, we as yet have nothing that is internally structured in the same way as, say, a triangle, a circle, or an ellipse. One arrives at this through living thought: not through ordinary mathematics of numbers and figures, but through a higher Mathesis, through a form of perception that is qualitative, that has a formative effect, that—even if, by saying this, I must utter something that many will find horrifying, I must nevertheless say it—reaches up into the realm of the artistic.

[ 51 ] By using such mathematics to penetrate worlds we cannot otherwise access, we extend the scientific mindset into the biological realm. And one can be convinced that a time will come when people will say: earlier generations rightly emphasized that as much science can be gained from inorganic nature as one can approach it with mathematics in the broadest sense, insofar as mathematics is quantitative; as much science can be gained from living processes as one is capable of penetrating them with an inwardly living conceptual framework, with precise clairvoyance.

[ 52 ] It is hard to believe just how close this modern form of clairvoyance actually is to mathematical insight. And one day, when people come to understand how spiritual insight is to be gained here from the spirit of modern natural science, they will find the spiritual science referred to here to be justified precisely from within this very field of modern natural science. For it does not seek to stand in any opposition to the significant, magnificent achievements of natural science. It seeks to attempt something else: Just as when we have a person standing before us, we can perceive their physical form with our external senses—their gestures, their facial expressions, the distinctive look in their eyes—yet we recognize only the person’s outward appearance unless we look through all of that to perceive the spiritual within them, through which we first have the whole person standing before us, in exactly the same way, without walking the paths of the spirit, we perceive through natural science only the external physiognomy of the world—only, I would say, the world’s gestures, the world’s facial expressions. Only then do we recognize something of that with which we ourselves are related—as the eternal aspect of this world—when, beyond the external physiognomy provided by natural phenomena, beyond these facial expressions and gestures, we penetrate into the soul of the world.

[ 53 ] This is the aim of that humanities-based perspective, whose methods I wanted to outline for you today as an introduction. It does not seek to be an opponent of triumphant modern natural science; rather, it seeks to fully accept it in its significance and essence, just as one fully accepts the outer human being. However, just as one looks into the soul by penetrating the outer human being, so too does it seek—through the laws of nature, not with dilettantism or layman’s ignorance, but with a serious attitude—to penetrate the physiognomy of the laws of nature to reach what lies at the foundation of the world as spiritual and as soul. And so this spiritual-scientific perspective does not seek to create any opposition to the natural sciences, but rather aims to be the soul, the spirit, of these natural sciences.