The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Anthroposophy I

[ 1 ] Here in Berlin and in other places where our Theosophical Society has a presence, we have heard so much in recent years from the entire field of theosophy—drawn, so to speak, from the higher realms of clairvoyant research—that the need has arisen, or rather, must arise, to do something to lay a serious and dignified foundation for our spiritual movement. And this current General Assembly, which brings our dear members together after seven years of our German Section’s existence, will surely be a fitting occasion to contribute to a more solid foundation and to establish a more stable order for our cause. I shall attempt to do this in the four lectures titled “Anthroposophy” that I will be giving over the next few days.

[ 2 ] The Kassel lectures on the Gospel of John, the Düsseldorf lectures on the hierarchies, the Basel lectures on the Gospel of Luke, and the Munich lectures on the teachings of Eastern theosophy—all of them have given us cause to ascend to lofty realms of spiritual research and bring down spiritual truths that are difficult to access. That was what always occupied us there; theosophy was, at least in part, an ascent to the lofty peaks of spiritual human knowledge.

[ 3 ] And now, as we stand at the beginning of a new cycle of our movement, we must bear in mind that—if one gradually develops a sense for it—one can rightly perceive something deeper in what is called the cyclical course of world events. It was precisely during the days of our very first general assembly, when we were establishing the German Section, that I gave lectures before an audience consisting only of a very small number of Theosophists; at that time, these lectures were also referred to as a chapter of anthroposophy—a historical chapter of anthroposophy. Now, seven years later, the time seems to have come once again when, so to speak, a cycle has been completed in this regard as well, and when we may once more speak in a broader sense of what is meant by anthroposophy.

[ 4 ] Let us first clarify what anthroposophy is by drawing a comparison. If you want to get to know a region, you can look at everything that lies there—villages, forests, meadows, roads, and so on—by walking around on the ground, from village to village, through street after street, through meadows and forests, from place to place. Each time, depending on where you happen to be, you will always have only a small, very tiny part of the entire region in view. But one can also climb to the summit of a mountain and, from that high peak, survey the entire landscape. To the ordinary eye, the details will appear only very indistinctly; in return, however, one will have an overview of the whole. This is roughly how one might describe the relationship between what is commonly called human knowledge or human science in everyday life and what Theosophy is. Ordinary human cognition moves through the world of facts, from one detail to the next.

[ 5 ] Theosophy ascends to a high mountain peak, and the higher it climbs, the wider the expanse it surveys. However, it must then employ special means to see anything at all of the lower realms. The means that must be employed have been described time and again, including in my work How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds?. There it is shown how it is possible for a person to ascend to this ideal summit without losing the ability to see anything at all below.

[ 6 ] But there is—as this comparison makes immediately clear—a third possibility: one does not climb all the way to the mountain’s summit; one stops, so to speak, halfway up. When one is at the bottom, one sees nothing but details; one has no overview, and one sees what is above from below. When one is at the top, there is nothing above one except the divine heavens, and one sees everything below only indistinctly, blurred, and shrouded in mist. When one is in the middle, that is a special vantage point: one has something below and something above, and one can compare the two views.

[ 7 ] Of course, every comparison is imperfect, but the intention was simply to illustrate to you how Theosophy differs from Anthroposophy at first glance. Theosophy is like standing on a mountaintop; Anthroposophy is like standing in the middle, so that one looks both up and down. The vantage point is simply different. But now the comparison is no longer sufficient to describe what follows. When one surrenders to theosophy, it is necessary to rise above human perception, to ascend from the lower self to the higher self, and to be able to see with the faculties of the higher self. For the summit from which Theosophy is able to behold lies above humanity, whereas ordinary human cognition actually lies below humanity, and humanity itself stands right in the middle, within the world of nature and the world of the spirit. The higher realm reaches into it, for it is permeated and filled with the spirit. He can see the spirit above him; yet his point of departure is not the spirit, the summit, but rather the fact that he has the summit above him. At the same time, however, he sees what is merely nature below him, for it reaches up into him from below. Theosophy runs the risk that, unless the means described, for example, in my work How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds? , the human aspect is overlooked, and that the human being loses the ability to perceive anything adequate at all. In theosophy, the danger is ever-present of no longer seeing reality at one’s feet. Of course, it need not lose this ability if the proper means are applied to develop those organs through which one sees by means of the higher self.

[ 8 ] But then we can say: Theosophy is what is explored when God speaks within the human being. — That is, in essence, the true definition of theosophy: Let God speak within you, and what He then tells you about the world is theosophy. Anthroposophy can thus be characterized by saying: Place yourself in the middle between God and nature; let the human being within you speak about what is above you and shines into you, and about what reaches into you from below; then you have anthroposophy, the wisdom spoken by the human being. - This wisdom spoken by the human being, however, can serve as an important foundation and key to the entire field of theosophy. And once you have been studying theosophy for some time, there is hardly anything better you can do than to gain this firm foothold by truly seeking it. Therefore, I will ensure that a brief outline of what anthroposophy is will be available as soon as possible following these lectures.

[ 9 ] What I have said here can also be historically substantiated from a wide variety of perspectives. We don’t have to look very far. We have, for example, a branch of science—you can read about it in a wide variety of popular handbooks—that is commonly called anthropology. As it is practiced today, it encompasses not only human beings but—if the term is understood correctly—everything that pertains to human beings, everything that can be experienced in nature, everything needed to understand human beings. But how does anthropology proceed? This science takes as its starting point a wandering among things; it is itself at the very bottom. It proceeds from detail to detail. It is the research that observes the human condition through the senses with the aid of the microscope. This science—anthropology, which is today widely regarded as the sole science of humankind—truly takes its standpoint below the level of human capabilities. It does not make use of all the capabilities humans possess for research. Compare this anthropology—which, so to speak, remains rooted to the ground and cannot penetrate to any answer to the burning mysteries of existence—with what is presented to us as theosophy. There, one ascends to the highest heights; there, the aim is to find an answer to the most pressing questions of existence. Yet you will have found that people who have not slowly and gradually found their way into it—who have not had the patience to follow along with everything we have been able to say in recent years, who have not been able to keep up step by step—that people who have remained at the level of anthropology perceive Theosophy as a flimsy edifice, as something entirely lacking a foundation. They cannot comprehend how the soul ascends from step to step, from imagination to inspiration to intuition. They cannot rise to the summit, cannot grasp what the goal of all human and cosmic development is.

[ 10 ] Anthropology, so to speak, stands on the lowest rung of the ladder; theosophy stands on the highest, where many lose the ability to discern; and anthroposophy stands in the middle.

[ 11 ] To aid our understanding, let us consider a historical example that illustrates what happens to theosophy when it seeks to ascend to the summit but is unable to do so using the methods described in the book How to Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds. We find such an example in the German theosophist Solger, who lived from 1780 to 1819. His views certainly contain what, in concept, constitutes theosophy. But by what means did Solger seek to ascend to the highest heights? Through the concepts of philosophy—the drained and exhausted concepts of human thought! It is truly as if someone were to climb to a mountaintop to look around, only to forget their telescope and then be unable to make out anything below. In this case, the telescope is a spiritual one; it is imagination, inspiration, and intuition. Thus, Solger sought to ascend to the summit with inadequate means.

[ 12 ] For a long time, people have sensed that, over the course of the centuries, human faculties have become increasingly incapable of ascending to this summit. Throughout the Middle Ages, people sensed this and admitted it to themselves. In more recent times, people still sense it, but they no longer fully admit it to themselves. It has long been felt that human faculties were once able to ascend to the summit from which one could speak as an ancient theosophy in fact did. Such an ancient theosophy did exist. But then what was revealed there on the summit was to be brought to a close. It was to be protected from being received through the ordinary means of knowledge. This ancient theosophy became theology, which regarded revelation as complete. And so, alongside anthropology—which, using ordinary means of knowledge, proceeds only from detail to detail—stands theology, which, while it seeks to ascend and know something of what can be seen in the heights, but in turn relies on something attainable by ordinary human means—namely, historical tradition, that which has once been revealed and is not meant to be revealed anew, time and again, to the aspiring human soul. Anthropology and theology stood opposite one another throughout the Middle Ages without coming into conflict. Even in modern times they stand opposite one another, only in a different form. From the standpoint of anthropology, modern thought generally rejects theology as a scientific discipline outright. If you do not get bogged down in the details but rise up, ascend to that center I have described to you, then you can place anthroposophy alongside theosophy, just as anthropology stood alongside theology in the Middle Ages.

[ 13 ] Attempts have also been made to establish a foundation for anthroposophy within modern intellectual life, but again with entirely inadequate means—namely, merely through the abstract, stripped-down concepts of philosophy. If one wishes to understand what this is all about, one must first understand what philosophy actually is. Today, only theosophists can truly understand what philosophy actually is; philosophers themselves, however, cannot. What is philosophy? One can only understand it by first considering its historical development. An example will illustrate this. In ancient times, there were the so-called mysteries, which served as sanctuaries of higher spiritual life. There, students could be guided to spiritual vision through the development of their abilities. One such mystery was, for example, in Ephesus, where the mysteries of Diana of Ephesus were explored. There, the students gazed into the spiritual worlds. Whatever could be publicly communicated of what was received there was, in fact, communicated. Others then received it as something beheld within the Mysteries, as something communicated to them, as a gift. There were people who were conscious that they had received the higher mysteries communicated to them from within the Mysteries. One such man, for example, was the great sage Heraclitus. The secrets of the Mystery of Ephesus—the truths that the clairvoyant people there were able to fathom—had penetrated his being in a special way. He proclaimed what he had received there as a revelation and what he owed to his partial initiation in such a way that it could be understood by all. Therefore, anyone who reads the teachings of Heraclitus, the so-called “Obscure One,” can see that something “deeper” underlies them, so that one can still perceive shining through these original teachings the direct experience of the higher worlds. Then came Heraclitus’s successors. They no longer had any inkling that what had been communicated to them stemmed from direct experiences of the higher worlds. They began to speculate with their intellects; they believed they could find errors here and there using their mere philosophical intellect, and they set about correcting them. This was spun out further into concepts and passed down from generation to generation. And when we look at any philosophy today, we see nothing more than a relic of ancient teachings from which life has been blown out and squeezed out, leaving behind only a dead skeletal framework of concepts. Philosophers are unaware of where these concepts originate. Philosophies are abstractions, heirlooms of ancient wisdom that have been reduced to drained-of-life concepts. There is no philosopher who can conceive of anything on his own. This requires a journey upward into the higher worlds.

[ 14 ] And it was essentially only such a skeletal framework of philosophy—such stripped-down concepts—that were available to the philosophers of the 19th century when they set out to tackle what might be called anthroposophy. The term has been used before. Robert Zimmermann wrote a work titled Anthroposophy, but he undertook it with highly inadequate means, much like Solger did with theosophy. He spun it out of the most hollow, most abstract concepts, and this web of concepts then became his anthroposophy. What we have here is truly the most abstract, the driest web of concepts, one that no longer even touches the subject matter. This is, in fact, the defining characteristic: that whatever in the 19th century sought to go beyond external, individual experience and beyond anthropology—and aspired to be anthroposophy—has become a dry web of concepts.

[ 15 ] Theosophy, in turn, by providing the means to recognize reality within spiritual life, also deepens the understanding of humanity, which can be called anthroposophy. Anthroposophy is a spiritual understanding of the world that takes a purely human, middle-ground perspective, rather than a subhuman one, as in anthropology, for example. Solgers’ theosophy stands on a superhuman standpoint, but it has no substance. The concepts there merely seek to skim over humanity. Because such people, from their world up above, cannot see anything, they spin their fine webs on the loom of concepts. We do not wish to spin on the loom of concepts in this way. We want to turn to reality. And you will see that the reality of the entire human life will come to meet us. You will recognize the old friends, the old objects of our contemplation, but illuminated from a different perspective—namely, the perspective that looks both upward and downward.

[ 16 ] Human beings are truly the most important subject of our consideration. Even when we turn our attention to the first aspect of the human being—the physical body—and reflect on what we have gained through theosophy and examine it more closely, we come to realize just how complex a structure this physical body actually is. To help you gain at least an intuitive understanding of what anthroposophy actually aims for, consider the following: What we today call the physical human body is, so to speak, an ancient product. We know that its first embryonic form arose on the ancient Saturn and underwent changes on the ancient Sun, the ancient Moon, and on Earth. The etheric body was added on the Sun, and the astral body on the Moon. These aspects of the human being have constantly changed in the course of evolution. What we encounter today as the complex human body—with heart and kidneys, eyes and ears, and so on—is the product of a long evolutionary process. Everything arose from a form that existed in embryonic form on ancient Saturn in a most simple state. Over millions of years, this has changed and transformed time and again, so that it could finally ascend to its present perfection and complexity. If you look today at any part of this physical body—the heart or the lungs—you cannot understand it unless you have that deeper insight into how these parts arose and took shape. Naturally, nothing resembling what is now the form of the heart or the lungs existed on ancient Saturn. Little by little, these organs have taken on their present form. One formed earlier, another later, and each was incorporated into the physical body. We can refer to one organ specifically as a solar organ because it first became attached and manifested itself during the ancient solar state. We can refer to another as a lunar organ, and so on. In this way, we can derive these concepts from the universe as a whole, from the observation of the entire world, if we wish to understand how this complex structure—the physical human body—actually came into being and what it signifies today.

[ 17 ] This is a theosophical view of human beings. What, in contrast, is the anthropological view of human beings? When one views a person anthropologically, one takes the heart and considers it on its own; one takes the stomach and considers it on its own. One examines them in their juxtaposition, as if it were irrelevant which organ is younger and which is older. No account is taken of this; everything is mechanically placed side by side as individual details. Theosophy ascends to the highest heights and explains every individual detail from the spiritual perspective. Anthropology remains at the very bottom, proceeds from the individual, and has now reached the extreme: it examines individual cells side by side, as if it were irrelevant that one cell complex arose during the time of the Old Moon and another during the time of the Old Sun. The individual cell complexes did indeed arise at different times. One can cite the details externally, but one will not understand them unless one views them from a spiritual perspective. Thus, anthropology wanders about at the very bottom, while theosophy occupies the highest summit.

[ 18 ] Now, you might think that matters become even more complicated. The human heart is one of the oldest organs, at least in terms of its embryonic origin. As things stand today, however, it clearly developed only at a later stage. And now let us consider the ancient Sun era. For example, the embryonic form of the human heart was dependent on the forces that prevailed on the ancient Sun. Then development continued. In the first period of the Lunar Age, the ancient Moon was united with the Sun, and the heart underwent further development. But then the great event occurred: the Sun separated. It now acted from the outside, so that from that point on, the heart underwent a completely different development. From that time onward, the development proceeded in such a way that there was a solar and a lunar component, and one can only understand the heart if one can distinguish between the solar and the lunar components. Then the Sun united with the Moon once more. During the Earth’s evolution, the Sun first stepped forward again and exerted a more intense influence on the development from the outside. Then the separation from the Moon occurred, and the Moon began to act from the outside, so that we have a new phase in the development of this ancient organ.

[ 19 ] Thus we see the most diverse forces shining into the human physical body from the most diverse perspectives. Because the heart is one of the oldest organs, it truly contains a solar component, a lunar component, a second solar component, and a second lunar component—and, following the separation of the Earth, an additional Earth component. When all these components in an organ or in the human physical body are in such harmony with one another as they are in the harmony of the cosmos, then the human being is healthy. As soon as one of these components predominates—let’s say, for example, that the solar component becomes too dominant relative to the lunar component in relation to the heart—the heart becomes ill. And you can understand this illness if you know how, through certain circumstances, the lunar component has, so to speak, fallen behind. All human illness stems from the fact that these various components become disordered and irregular. All healing consists in restoring this harmony. But merely speaking of it is not enough; one must truly understand this harmony; one must truly delve into the wisdom of the world in order to identify the various elements within each organ.

[ 20 ] Thus, the physical body is an immensely complex structure. You can already surmise this from what we have considered so far. You can begin to grasp what a truly occult physiology and anatomy is—one that must take all these factors into account and that understands the human being within the context of the entire cosmos. It speaks of the solar and lunar elements in the heart, larynx, brain, and so on. But since all these elements are at work within the human being himself—as he stands before us today—he is, so to speak, the solidified, crystallized product of all the processes that have taken place from Saturn to the Sun, the Moon, and the Earth. Thus, what stands before us in the human being is something in which all these elements are solidified.

[ 21 ] If, instead of looking out into the world, we look within the human being itself and understand the individual organs—the physical body, the etheric body, the astral body, the soul of sensation, the soul of understanding, and the soul of consciousness—as the human being is today, then that is anthroposophy. In anthroposophy, too, we must begin with the lowest level in order to gradually ascend to the highest. For human beings, the lowest level is the sensory-physical world—that which is given through the senses and the sensory-physical intellect. In Theosophy, we consider this world, starting from the whole of the universe, within the cosmic context of the physical-sensory, external phenomena. That is the Theosophical approach. The Anthroposophical approach, with regard to the physical-sensory world, must start from the human being; it must consider what is physical-sensory in the human being. It must start with the human being and consider him insofar as he is a sensory being. That will be the first step. Then we will have to consider the human etheric body, then the astral body, and the “I”—that which is to be found within him.

[ 22 ] What should be of particular interest to us when considering the physical-sensory world? What pertains to the human being himself. First and foremost, these are the senses, for it is actually through them that he gains knowledge of the physical-sensory world. In anthroposophy, when starting from the physical plane, one must first speak of the human senses, for they are what enable human beings to know anything at all about the physical-sensory world. And we shall see how important it is, in order to truly understand human beings, to begin by examining their senses. Let this, then, be our first chapter. Then we shall move on to an examination of the individual spiritual realms within human nature.

[ 23 ] When one considers the human senses, as an anthroposophist one inevitably comes into conflict with anthropology, for anthroposophy must always proceed from what is truly perceptible to the senses, but it must be clear that the spirit acts from above. Anthropology deals only with what it can investigate from below and confuses everything. Especially in the chapter on the human senses, everything in conventional anthropology is thrown into disarray, and important aspects are specifically overlooked because people lack a guide to truly and correctly identify the relevant facts. If the thread that is meant to lead through the labyrinth of facts is missing, then it is impossible to find one’s way out of this labyrinth. Spiritual research must spin the ball of thread that, in the legend, guides Theseus out of the Minotaur’s labyrinth. Ordinary anthropology remains trapped inside the labyrinth and falls prey to the Minotaur. Thus, we shall see that anthroposophy indeed has something different to say about the senses than ordinary external observation.

[ 24 ] But it is also interesting to see how modern science is already being compelled by external facts to examine things a little more thoroughly and seriously than was done in the past. The most trivial thing, of course, is that we speak of the five human senses: the sense of touch, smell, taste, hearing, and sight. We will see that in this entire enumeration of the five senses, everything is really already in a state of confusion. To these senses, modern science has, however, already added three other senses, though it does not really know what to make of them. Today we will lay the very first foundations for an anthroposophical theory of the senses. We will list the senses insofar as they truly have significance in light of the thread of thought discussed above.

[ 25 ] The first sense of the human being that comes into consideration is what can be called, in spiritual science, the sense of life. This is a real sense, and just as one speaks of the sense of sight, one must speak of the sense of life. What is the sense of life? It is something within a person that, when everything is in order, they do not actually feel, but only feel when something within them is not in order. A person feels fatigue, which they perceive as an inner experience, just as they perceive a color. And what is expressed in the sensation of hunger or thirst, or what one might call a special sense of vitality—you must also perceive this inwardly, like a color or a tone. One usually perceives this only when something is not right. The first human self-perception is provided by the meaning of life, through which a person becomes aware of their physicality as a whole. This is the first true sense, and it must be taken into account just as much as the senses of sight, hearing, or smell. No one can understand the senses who does not know that there is a possibility of feeling oneself as a whole from within, of becoming aware of oneself as an internally coherent, physical whole.

[ 26 ] The second thing—which is entirely distinct from this sense of the meaning of life—is what you can discover when you move any of your limbs. You move your arm or your leg. You would not be a human being if you could not perceive your own movements. A machine does not perceive its own movement; only a living being can do so, by virtue of a real sense. The sense of what we move within ourselves—from the blink of an eye to the movement of the legs—is a real second sense: the sense of one’s own movement.

[ 27 ] We become aware of a third sense when we consider that humans distinguish between up and down. If a person can no longer perceive this distinction, it is very dangerous for them; they can no longer maintain their balance and fall over. We can point to an organ that has a great deal to do with this sense, namely the three semicircular canals in the ear. If this organ is damaged, a person loses their sense of orientation. This sense can also be observed in the animal kingdom, where it manifests as certain organs of balance. When certain small, pebble-shaped structures—known as otoliths—are positioned in a specific way at a particular location, we maintain our balance; otherwise, we experience only a sense of staggering. This is the sense of balance, or the static sense.

[ 28 ] Through these senses, which we have listed so far, a person perceives something within themselves, feels something within themselves. Now let us step outside the human being, where he begins to interact with the external world. The first interaction with the world is that in which the human being unites with a substance and perceives that substance. This is possible only if the substance can actually be united with the human body. This applies only to gaseous substances. Such substances are taken in through the organs of the sense of smell. This is where interaction with the outside world first begins. A body cannot be smelled unless it emits gaseous substances. The rose must emit a gaseous substance in order to be smelled. The fourth sense is therefore the sense of smell.

[ 29 ] The fifth sense arises when a person no longer merely perceives matter, but takes the first step into matter—that is, enters into a deeper relationship with it. At that point, the matter must already be exerting some effect within the person. This is the case when a solid or liquid substance comes into contact with our taste buds. Here, we do not perceive the material directly; rather, the substance must first be dissolved by the saliva in the mouth. Here, only an interaction between the tongue and the substance can be perceived. Things tell us not only what they are as matter, but also what effects they can produce. The relationship between humans and nature has become a more intimate one. This is the fifth sense, the sense of taste.

[ 30 ] The sixth sense is the one in which what a person perceives in things reveals the essence of those things even more intimately. Here, things reveal more to a person than they do through the sense of taste alone. This happens because special arrangements have been made so that things can reveal themselves to a person in a very specific way. With smell, the human body perceives things as they are. The sense of taste is already more complex; in this case, things reveal a little more of their inner nature. With the sixth sense, however, we can penetrate even deeper into the world. This is the case when we distinguish whether something external and material transmits light or not. The fact that it transmits light in a certain way is revealed by whether and how it is colored. An object that allows green light to pass through thereby reveals that its inner nature is such that it can allow this light to pass through. While the outermost surface reveals itself through the sense of smell, the sense of taste already reveals something of an object’s inner nature to us; the sense of sight, on the other hand, reveals something of the very essence of things. This is the essence of the sixth sense, the sense of sight. The eye is such a marvelous organ precisely because it allows us to penetrate much deeper into the nature of things than the sense organs just discussed. The sense of sight presents us with something very peculiar. When we see, for example, that a rose is red, its inner nature reveals itself through its surface. We see only the surface, and because it is determined by the inner nature, we come to know that inner nature to a certain degree through it.

[ 31 ] With the seventh sense, a person must become even more intimately acquainted with the object. When we touch a piece of ice or a piece of hot steel with our hand, we penetrate even deeper into the interior of a thing. With color, we have only what takes place on the surface. Ice, on the other hand, is cold all the way through, and even with hot steel, the heat permeates the entire body. With heat and cold, then, we have an even more intimate understanding of the nature of things than with the sense of sight, which informs us only about the surface properties. The sense of heat penetrates more deeply into the inner nature of things. Such would be the sense of heat, or the seventh sense.

[ 32 ] Now let’s see how this will play out. Can a person, through their senses, penetrate even deeper into the inner nature of things? Can they come to know the intimate inner essence of things even more precisely than through the sense of warmth? Yes, they can—by the way things reveal their inner nature when they begin to resonate. Heat is distributed quite evenly throughout things. Sound, however, is not distributed evenly. Sound causes the inner nature of things to vibrate. Through this, a certain inner quality is revealed. You perceive how a thing moves internally through the more intimate sense of hearing. It provides us with a more intimate understanding of the external world than the sense of warmth. This is the eighth sense, the sense of hearing. Through sound, an object reveals to us its inner nature when we strike it. We distinguish objects according to their inner nature, according to the way they can vibrate and tremble internally when we cause them to sound. In a certain sense, the soul of things speaks to us there.

[ 33 ] Are there senses even higher than the sense of hearing? Here we must proceed with even greater caution in our exploration of the higher senses; for we must not confuse the senses with anything else. In everyday life, where people remain at a lower level and confuse everything, they still speak of other “senses,” such as the “sense of imitation,” the “sense of concealment,” and so on. But the word “sense” is used incorrectly here; a sense is that through which we gain knowledge without the involvement of the intellect. When we gain knowledge through judgment, we do not speak of a sense, but only when our capacity for judgment has not yet come into play. When you perceive a color, you use a sense. When you want to judge between two colors, you do not use a sense.

[ 34 ] In this sense—though the word “sense” is not even used correctly here—are there other senses besides the eight mentioned so far? Yes, there is a ninth sense. We discover it when we consider that there is, in fact, a certain capacity for perception within human beings. This is particularly important for the foundations of anthroposophy. There is a faculty of perception that is not based on judgment, yet is present within it. It is that which we perceive when we communicate with our fellow human beings through language. In the perception of what is given to us through language lies not only an expression of judgment, but also a genuine sense of language underlying it. This sense of language is the ninth sense. One must speak of it just as one speaks of the sense of sight or smell. The child learns to speak before it learns to judge. The entire people have a language; judgment is the responsibility of the individual. What speaks to the senses is not subject to the soul activity of the individual. Hearing reveals to one an inner trembling. The perception that a sound signifies this or that is not mere hearing. The sense, which expresses itself here as the sense of language, reveals itself to another sense—the sense of language. That is why a child can speak or understand what is spoken long before it learns to judge. It is only through language that it learns to judge. What a teacher the sense of language is—just as the sense of sight and the sense of hearing are such teachers during the first years of life! One cannot change what the sense perceives; one cannot corrupt it. This is just as true for color as it is for the perception of the inner nature of speech sounds. The sense of language must necessarily be designated as a distinct sense. It is the ninth sense.

[ 35 ] Then we come to the tenth of the senses. This is the one that is the highest in ordinary human life. Through it, human beings become capable of perceptually understanding the concept that is not clothed in linguistic sounds. The sense of concepts is just as much a sense as any other. In order to judge, we must have concepts. If the soul is to be stirred by concepts, it must be able to perceive them. It is able to do so through the sense of concepts. Thus, we have identified a tenth sense in it.

[ 36 ] But one sense has been completely forgotten, you might say—the sense of touch. Indeed! The sense of touch is usually conflated with the sense of heat. The fact that people speak this way stems from the confusion caused by those who lack spiritual insight. To begin with, the sense of touch, of course, is significant only as the sense of warmth. As such, the entire skin can be described, so to speak, in broad terms as this sense. The skin also serves, in a certain way, the sense of touch. Yet, viewed correctly, touching is not limited to what we do when we touch an object and feel its surface; it is also touching when we search for something with our eyes. The senses of smell and taste can also “feel.” When we sniff, we are feeling with our sense of smell. Up to and including the sense of warmth, “feeling” is a shared characteristic of senses four through seven. We can therefore speak of these senses as senses of touch. It is only our crude, simplistic view of physiology that attributes to a single sense something that actually pertains to a whole series of senses: the sense of smell, the sense of taste, the sense of sight, and the sense of warmth. With regard to the sense of hearing, we can hardly speak of “tactile perception” anymore; it is present only to a very limited extent; even less so with the sense of speech, and even less still with the sense of understanding. These senses are therefore referred to as the senses of comprehension. While the sense of touch remains on the surface—unable to penetrate into things—the sense of warmth first penetrates into things and then goes deeper and deeper. These higher senses provide us with an understanding and comprehension of things in their innermost essence, and they are therefore referred to as the senses of comprehension.

[ 37 ] You can now see from this that, before we get to the sense of smell, we must list three other senses that inform us about our own inner human being. It is from within this inner being that they draw their knowledge. Then we reach the boundary between the inner and outer worlds, first through the sense of smell, and then, through the higher senses, we penetrate deeper and deeper into the outer world.

[ 38 ] Is there anything above and below this? What has been listed here is only a fragment. Above and below this lie other senses. From the conceptual sense, we could ascend to the first astral sense and would then arrive at the senses that can penetrate into the spiritual realm. There we would first find an eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth sense. These three unknown senses will be mentioned here only in passing for now. We will speak of them in more detail when, tomorrow or the day after, we ascend from the physical to the spiritual realm. They will lead us deeper into the depths of spiritual life, into regions where the concept cannot penetrate. Concepts come to a halt at a certain point. Beyond concepts lies that which can only be perceived through the higher senses. The sense of smell stops at our own inner being. Just as you have three senses below the sense of smell, so too are there three higher senses above concepts, through which we penetrate the outer aspects of spiritual things, just as we do with those lower senses into the outer aspects of physical things.

[ 39 ] But today we will remain on the physical plane. That is why we have listed what pertains to the perception of the physical. It was not unnecessary for us to delve into the foundations of these matters in this way. Because these foundations have been forgotten, everything in the sciences has been thrown into the most appalling confusion, extending even into philosophy and epistemology. People generally ask: What can a human being perceive through the individual senses? — One cannot specify the difference between the sense of hearing and the sense of sight. People speak of sound waves just as they do of light waves, without taking into account that the sense of sight penetrates less deeply into the essence of things than the sense of hearing, which reveals something of the spiritual nature of the external world. Through the three even higher senses—the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth senses—we will also penetrate into the spirit of things. Each sense has a different nature and essence. This must be taken into account first and foremost. Therefore, you can regard a great many of the explanations offered today—particularly in physics—regarding the nature of the sense of sight and its relationship to the environment as, from the outset, having never taken the nature of the senses as a whole into account. Countless errors have arisen from this misunderstanding of the essence of the senses. This must be emphasized because popular accounts do not do justice to what is being said here. Indeed, popular books may say precisely the opposite. There you read things written by people who cannot even begin to grasp the inner nature of the sensory essence. We must realize that science, from its own standpoint, must speak differently; that it is bound to fall into error because developments have unfolded in such a way that the truth has often been forgotten. This is the first chapter of anthroposophy: the true nature and essence of our senses.