The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Pneumatosophy I

[ 1 ] As you know, over the past two years, on the occasion of our general assemblies, I have given two short lecture series from this podium on anthroposophy and psychosophy. This current short series of three lectures, along with today’s introduction, on pneumatosophy is intended to complement the other two, and together these three lecture series are meant to offer, from a certain perspective, a reflection on the nature of the human being. Two years ago, under the title “Anthroposophy,” we discussed everything there is to say about the physical nature of the human being from the perspective in question—a perspective that will be explored in greater detail, particularly in these lectures. Last year, we discussed what can be said about the soul nature of the human being, and this year we will discuss the spiritual nature of the human being. To that end, today’s lecture is essentially intended to serve as a kind of preparatory introduction.

[ 2 ] First of all, in contrast to what is otherwise customary in this field today, it may be striking that the total nature of the human being is divided here into three parts: the physical nature, the nature of the soul, and the spiritual nature. Of course, this division need not be striking in comparison to what is customary within the field of spiritual science. However, our aim with these lectures is precisely to build a kind of bridge from spiritual science to the mainstream science of these fields today. Therefore, we must also take into account what is customary in contemporary science—outside the realm of spiritual science—with regard to such a view of the human being. And there, for a long time—and in many cases even today—the total nature of the human being has been divided—even in contexts where one does not stand on a more or less overt or covert materialistic foundation—into only two parts: the physical-bodily, that is, the physical nature, and the soul. Speaking of the spirit is not customary in recognized science today. Indeed, where—based on certain premises—one returns to this threefold division of the human being into body, soul, and spirit, as was the case, for example, with the Catholic-leaning Viennese philosopher Anton Günther in the 19th century, it was not only scientific reservations that came into play; rather, in Günther’s case, this threefold division of human nature into body, soul, and spirit essentially provided the grounds for his books—which are interesting from this perspective—to be placed on the Index of Prohibited Books in Rome, because the Catholic Church, contrary to the Bible—both the Old and New Testaments, from which it can be demonstrated that it is entirely biblical: to speak of a threefold human being—body, soul, and spirit—the Catholic Church, relatively early on—as early as the first centuries, so to speak, abolished the spirit; that is, it guided the evolution of dogma in such a way that the structure of the human being was permitted to comprise only body and soul. And, for example, among medieval philosophers it was considered heretical to an extraordinary degree—and among all those who still stand on the ground of this medieval philosophy, it is still considered absolutely heretical even today within the Catholic Church—to accept a threefold human nature. Strangely enough, this development of the Catholic view has, in this case, carried over into our contemporary science. For if one tries to understand why even those figures who today base their views on scientific psychology and the scientific study of the soul speak, in essence, only of body and soul, and not of body, soul, and spirit, there is really hardly any other reason from a historical perspective than that, over the course of time, the spirit has, so to speak, been forgotten, and that today, in the habits of thought within the influential circles, there is no longer any possibility of arriving at ideas or concepts that would make it possible to speak not only of the human soul but also of a spirit in particular.

[ 3 ] In this introduction, which may contain some elements that might sound unfamiliar to those in more specialized theosophical circles—since the relevant literature is unknown there—it is nevertheless necessary to draw attention to the connections that initially link us to what is otherwise known as psychology or the study of the soul. For from what I have just said, you can already see that we can hardly find a true doctrine of the spirit, apart from the doctrine of the spirit found, for example, within Hegel’s philosophy—which, however, is somewhat incorrectly called a doctrine of the spirit there, since even there it essentially refers only to a kind of doctrine of the soul. What we have to address as the study of the soul, we dealt with last year in what we called psychosophy. To what extent it is entirely due to habits of thought—and in a rather curious way at that—that the concept of the spirit has been lost in our present age, we can see if we first consider, by way of introduction, the achievements of the most significant contemporary psychologist or researcher of the soul—even from the perspective of spiritual science—among all non-spiritual-science psychologists. It is precisely in this most significant psychologist—who is not affiliated with spiritual science, and whom I mentioned last year in connection with the Psychosophy lectures—that, as far as is possible from a non-spiritual-scientific standpoint, he comes closest to what spiritual science has to say about the soul from a purely scientific—I mean, non-clairvoyant— — spiritual science has to say about the soul; it is precisely in this psychologist—the most significant one from a non-spiritual-scientific perspective—that we can see how the current habits of thought operate, preventing people from arriving at an idea, at a concept of the spirit. By this “most significant psychologist,” even from the standpoint of spiritual science, I mean Franz Brentano.

[ 4 ] Franz Brentano wrote a remarkable book; but essentially—as I also hinted at last year—he had set out to write a very remarkable book; he had set out to write a work on psychology, a treatise on the soul. The first volume of this work was published in 1874. At the time, it was promised that the second volume would be published that same fall, followed swiftly by the next ones. To date, however, only this first volume, published in 1874, has appeared; the subsequent volumes have not yet been published. Only in the last few days has an interesting new edition been published—not of the entire first volume from 1874, but of a part of it, a specific chapter, namely the one on the classification of psychological phenomena. And this specific chapter has been published simultaneously in Italian and German. In addition to what this particular chapter presented in 1874, some material has been added as an “Appendix.” When we consider that the first volume of Brentano’s Psychology or Theory of the Mind held certain promises, we must deeply regret—especially from the perspective of spiritual science—that further installments of this book have not been published. But as I already stated last year, there is a specific reason—one that is easily understood precisely from the perspective of the science of the spirit—why the continuation of this book has not been published. For those who think in terms of the science of the spirit, it is clear that our current scientific circumstances have made it impossible to continue this book under the same conditions under which its first volume was published. In accordance with all the established modes of thought in contemporary science, Brentano wanted to work on a theory of the soul in the 1870s, and he took particular pride in proceeding not from a materialistic standpoint—for he was the very opposite of that—but from a purely methodological standpoint; he took a certain pride in researching the soul entirely in the manner of contemporary scientific explanations. Thus, a theory of the soul was to be presented in the spirit of contemporary scientific methodology. And when we see that, among the many other highly interesting topics promised in the first volume by Franz Brentano, there is also a discussion of the question of immortality, it is already clear that, particularly from the standpoint of the spiritual sciences, one must find it deeply regrettable that this book was never continued. Do not be surprised that I, standing on spiritual-scientific ground, speak of such a book. I had to consider this book and its fate. Indeed, I find the author’s entire scholarly trajectory to be extraordinarily significant and revealing for our present time and also for what we might call “pneumatosophy” in our present context. For it was promised that the immortality of the soul would be addressed. And if, from the various hints Brentano has given, one knows that he takes the position—at least in a certain sense—that even if he cannot prove the fact of immortality, he can nevertheless prove that human beings can have well-founded hopes for immortality—I ask that this distinction be made!—then one must say: This is an extraordinarily interesting fact regarding the character of contemporary psychological thinking. But Brentano never got around to publishing more than the first volume, which contains nothing more than discussions of other psychological schools of thought, a sort of justification of the scientific methodology of psychology, and precisely Brentano’s interesting classification of the activities or faculties of the human soul. And nothing else has been published except for yet another reprint of a section of that book.

[ 5 ] In these very lectures, we will have to touch upon the reasons—which are of extraordinary significance for our time—why this book could not have a sequel. For within these reasons we will find much that, from the perspective of spiritual science, requires us to engage with contemporary science regarding the soul—since the spirit is not specifically distinguished from the soul. Due to the limited time at our disposal, I cannot revisit the characterization of the human soul that I presented last year. But in order to trace the threads that lead to science as it is practiced according to current habits of thought, I must, precisely today in this introductory lecture, address Brentano’s classification of the faculties of the human soul, which is also included once again in the new edition of the relevant chapter.

[ 6 ] In contrast to the usual classification of human mental faculties into thinking, feeling, and willing, Brentano—who is undoubtedly the most significant contemporary psychologist in this regard, even for the sciences of the spirit—proposes a different classification of the human soul. This is—and you will soon see that, in a certain sense, this classification echoes what was said here in last year’s psychosophical lectures, drawn from entirely different sources—the division of the human soul into three parts: imagination, judgment, and the manifestations of love and hate, or the manifestations of emotional stirrings. Since these matters have been discussed so often in spiritual science, I need not mention here what “imagination” means in our sense, nor do we need to go into the concept of imagination as such in light of what we have to say here by way of introduction to Brentano’s psychology, because, for us, the concept of “representation” is essentially established as long as we know—regardless of how it is otherwise defined—that by “representation” we mean the mental act of bringing to mind some content of thought that takes place within the soul. Any mental content that is present in the mind and that, so to speak, does not in itself involve any emotional movements or anything that constitutes a statement regarding something objective would constitute a representation. Within the psychology under consideration, judgment is distinguished from representation itself. Judgment is usually described as a combination of concepts. For example, one might say that “rose” is one concept in a representation, “red” is another, and “The rose is red” is a judgment. Brentano says—and we will need to consider Brentano’s definition of judgment a little more closely, precisely in light of the scientific foundation of Pneumatosophy— A judgment is not characterized by the combination of concepts; rather, when one utters the sentence “The rose is red,” one has actually either said nothing specific, or—if one intends to say something specific—then hidden within the sentence “The rose is red” lies another sentence, namely: “There is a red rose,” that is, among the things of reality there is a red rose. There is a great deal of truth—as you will already be able to discern from a superficial observation of your own inner life—in such a description. For what have we actually accomplished beyond mere imagination when we say, “The rose is red”? Whether one imagines “rose” and “red,” or whether one combines the concepts, there is essentially no difference between the two. One remains within the realm of imagination. Saying “The rose is red” accomplishes no more than imagining “rose” and “red.” But something fundamentally different is accomplished—beyond a mere combination of concepts—when I make the assertion “A red rose is.” Here I have pointed to something that points beyond the concept, something that is not exhausted within the concept—in other words, a statement regarding reality. “The rose is red” means nothing other than that the ideas “red” and “rose” come together in the mind of some person. Here, one has said nothing other than something about the content of thought. But the moment one makes a statement—when one says “A red rose is” or “The red rose is”—only then does one have a judgment in the Brentanian sense. And in his sense, one has no right to claim that one is somehow going beyond the idea of the representation merely by combining concepts; rather, one goes beyond representation only when something is expressed in the life of representation that constitutes a statement of fact. It is not possible here to go into the extraordinarily insightful justifications that Brentano provided for these distinctions he made between representation and judgment.

[ 7 ] But then, as a third category distinct from representations and judgments, Brentano distinguishes emotional states—or the phenomena of love and hate. These, in turn, are something other than a mere constatation. When I say, “There is a red rose,” that is something different from when I feel something about the red rose. These are mental phenomena that belong to a special class and can be summarized under the term “emotions.” This does not merely state something about the objects we represent through our representations; rather, it expresses something about the subject’s mental experiences. In contrast, Brentano does not speak specifically of the phenomena of the will, because he essentially finds no difference large enough to assume, in the phenomena of love and hate—in the emotions—that there are still separately distinguishable phenomena of the will. What one loves, one wills with love, and the will relating to the object in question is already present in the emotional movement of benevolent feeling. And with the phenomenon of hatred, the non-willing—the repulsion—is also present. Thus, in a certain sense, it does not seem justified to say that one should distinguish specific phenomena of the will from the phenomena of love and hate, just as it is justified to distinguish from the mere phenomena of representation those that relate to an assessment—that is, to a judgment.

[ 8 ] Thus, we have, so to speak, broken down the human soul into perceptions, judgments, and the manifestations of emotional states. It is extremely interesting that a thinker of such great acumen, as he set out to establish a psychology—a theory of the soul—made this classification. For this classification stems—as you may come to see from some remarks today and tomorrow—from the circumstance, from the fact, that a man once appeared who took the disregard of the spirit seriously. Otherwise, what belongs to the phenomena of the spirit has always been, in a certain way, intermingled with the life of the soul. This had actually created a peculiar hybrid entity: a kind of “spirit-soul” or a kind of “soul-spirit.” And one could attribute all sorts of things to this “soul-spirit” or “spirit-soul,” which, of course, anyone who now sets to work properly and carries out the threefold division must attribute not to the soul but to the spirit. But Brentano once set out in earnest to answer the question: What is actually found in the soul when we take the soul as such? — He was astute enough to determine what must be excluded from the concept of the soul when one disregards the spirit. Thus, by taking this tendency seriously, he has, as it were, neatly distinguished the soul from the spirit. It would have been extremely interesting to see how Brentano, had he continued his work, would have discovered that the matter must come to an end somewhere, because in reality the soul must receive the mind, must enter into connection with the mind—or would have had to admit that one must proceed from the soul to the mind.

[ 9 ] Let us consider the two extreme categories—aside from judgment—in Brentano’s classification: representation and the phenomena of love and hate, that is, the emotions. First of all, for Brentano, representation is simply what takes place in the soul. Nothing is established merely by the fact that we imagine something. For if anything is to be established about any reality, judgment must intervene. Thus, the life of the soul cannot be exhausted in imagination alone. In other words, this would imply that imagination, in and of itself, cannot lead to any determination, that one could not step outside the soul at all through imagination; for it is only through judgment that one could step outside the soul, not through imagination. On the other hand, it is interesting that Brentano groups together all phenomena of the will with the phenomena of mere emotional movements. Certainly, there is much to be said for the view that, once the emotional movement in question has occurred, the soul’s relation to the external world is exhausted. — One might very well say: In the soul, there are, in essence, nothing but emotional movements; when these are strong enough, they will will one thing or another. No psychologist can find anything more in the soul than sympathy or antipathy or the phenomena of love and hate, even if a person acts entirely of their own volition: they do so—but while they are doing it, one finds in the soul only the phenomena of love or hate.

[ 10 ] This is true within the soul. But when we move from the soul to reality as a whole, we must say: The soul’s relationship to the external world is not limited to what the soul experiences as emotional stirrings. It is, after all, a step that must be taken—one that is not confined to the soul but must be taken from within the soul—when we move from an emotional response to what is first and foremost a will, a will that is not confined to the soul but is only fulfilled when the soul steps outside of itself. For no matter how much we may love a thing or a fact, no matter how deeply these emotional stirrings take hold within us: nothing has actually happened. And no matter how much may be happening in the soul in terms of emotional stirrings: to the extent that we find emotional stirrings, this is something that must be set aside if anything is to happen. Thus, in such a psychology, imagination stands before us as something that does not emerge from itself at all, that does not enter into any reality at all; and so the emotions stand there as something that is not rooted in any actual will, but is merely exhausted in the psychological preconditions of the will. This is extraordinarily interesting, and we shall see that in the act of imagination, the spirit begins precisely where Brentano ceased his characterization, and that the bridge from the soul to the spirit—in the act of imagination—begins precisely where, if this bridge were not there and no spirit stood opposite the soul, the act of imagination would be confined solely within itself. And on the other hand, we will see that wherever the real transition to the will is made from the emotions, the mind begins anew.

[ 11 ] Here, in a significant scientific achievement of recent decades, we see that a halt has been called precisely at the point—and indeed sharply at that point—where research in the humanities must begin if one is to proceed at all. And it is interesting to consider how even the most astute researchers must set to work within the framework of contemporary ways of thinking. It could not have turned out any other way.

[ 12 ] And when we move from this point to another, what is interesting regarding the connections between contemporary scientific psychology and the science of the spirit becomes evident, once again, in the very same man. Those who are familiar with Brentano’s writings have always known that Brentano engaged intensively—one might almost say throughout his entire long scholarly life—with the Greek philosopher Aristotle. Now it is remarkable for the fate of these lectures that, precisely in these days, a book by Brentano on Aristotle—summarizing his research on Aristotle—has been published, so that today we have—which we did not have three weeks ago—an account by this philosopher of his research on Aristotle, which he conducted over the course of a long life, under the title “Aristotle and His Worldview.” Now, of course, Brentano today, in the 20th century, does not share Aristotle’s point of view, but he is, in a certain sense, close to Aristotle and has presented Aristotle’s philosophy of the mind in a very generous, indeed admirable, manner in this book, “Aristotle and His Worldview.” This is further aided by the fact that a third book by Brentano has also been published, after years of silence: “Aristotle’s Doctrine of the Origin of the Human Mind.” It is now interesting to say a few words about this as well, because in a certain sense Brentano is not only the most interesting psychologist of our time, but also the most interesting—and, in a certain sense, the most significant—scholar of Aristotle, particularly as an expert on Aristotle’s theory of the mind. Let us briefly review this theory of the mind in a few words.

[ 13 ] In Aristotle’s theory of the mind, we have presented a theory which, having been established centuries before the emergence of Christianity, has incorporated nothing from any Christian concept, and which, in a certain sense, nevertheless sums up everything that characterized Western culture in the centuries leading up to the emergence of Christianity—a culture that, in a certain sense, also incorporated what had been contributed elsewhere, namely in the realm of philosophy, had been achieved on this subject, so that it was possible for Aristotle in the 4th century B.C. to think scientifically about this matter, to think scientifically about the relationship of the mind to the soul. Anyone who carefully considers Brentano’s position on Aristotle—particularly as it is presented in the two books Aristotle and His Worldview and Aristotle’s Doctrine of the Origin of the Human Mind, where one senses throughout how Brentano thinks of Aristotle in such a way that, in a sense, he does indeed share Aristotle’s standpoint on the main questions— will find it extraordinarily interesting to see to what extent the non-theosophical theory of the mind is justified in going beyond Aristotle; moreover, it is also exceptionally interesting to compare the Aristotelian and theosophical theories of the mind, insofar as the latter is scientific. I would now like to begin by outlining Aristotelian spiritual philosophy without providing any specific justification.

[ 14 ] Aristotle certainly speaks of the spirit in relation to the human soul and body. And he does not speak of the spirit in the same way as someone who stands even remotely on materialistic ground, but rather speaks of the spirit as something that comes from the spiritual worlds to the human body and soul. This is something we can trace very clearly in Brentano’s work, showing how he, in this regard, stands firmly on Aristotelian ground; for Brentano, too—unless he has some special underlying concept in mind—must, just like Aristotle, speak of the spirit that comes to the human body and soul. So when a human being enters into existence through birth—enters into existence on the physical plane—we are not, in the Aristotelian sense, dealing merely with something that is exhausted in the line of inheritance from ancestors; rather, we are dealing, first of all, with those traits that are inherited from father and mother, grandfather and grandmother, and so on. Within these inherited characteristics lies, in the Aristotelian sense, precisely what Aristotle understands as the soul-like, so that, for Aristotle, the soul-like initially appears to the human being more or less as a kind of force that permeates the physical body, as a kind of force that holds the physical body together. However, what a human being inherits from their ancestors as the physical-soul-nature does not, for Aristotle—nor for Brentano—exhaust the essence of the human being; rather, the spirit is added to this. Thus, in the sense of Aristotle, we must say: When a human being comes into being on the physical plane, the physical-soul-nature derived from the line of descent unites with the spirit. Where, then, does the spirit come from in Aristotle’s sense?

[ 15 ] For Aristotle, before a human being comes into existence in the physical world, the spirit of the individual human being—the individual human personality—did not exist at all as such; rather, the spirit comes into being immediately when a human being is born on the physical plane, as a new creation from the spiritual world. This is something that can only be described as a “creation of the Deity,” which is added directly from the spiritual world to what arises from the father and mother. Thus, Brentano defines very clearly in his book on Aristotle: When a human being enters physical existence, he or she comes into being through the interaction of father and mother and through God. - That is to say, the soul-body is inherited from the father and mother, and through God—even some time after conception—that which constitutes the human spirit is added to the soul-body.

[ 16 ] Now it is interesting to see how, under the premise that—in essence—through a “Creatio,” through a true act of creation, the human spirit is bestowed by God upon the body and soul, Aristotle conceives of immortality. The human spirit, then, as it exists—as we would say—in the incarnation of the human being, did not exist at all beforehand. God creates it. For Aristotle, however—and also for Brentano—this does not imply that this spirit would cease to exist when the soul and body pass through the gate of death; rather, the spirit that has been created remains when the human being passes through the gate of death and, even though it was created specifically for this particular human being, passes over after death into the supersensible world, in the very sense of a “super-sensible world” as we also speak of a super-sensible, spiritual world—into the spiritual world. It is also interesting that Aristotle, in essence—and I can see no other way than that Brentano still stands on Aristotelian ground in this regard today—follows the human being as he passes through the gate of death and allows him to live on in a purely spiritual world; that is, he allows that part of the spirit—which was created by God for the individual human being—to live on. All scholars of Aristotle are now in agreement that there can be no question of the spiritual, which lives on in the spiritual world, returning to a physical embodiment in the physical world. Thus, there can be no question of reincarnation in Aristotle. It would take us too far afield to delve into Aristotle’s various purely logical arguments, which could demonstrate that reincarnation is not a concept he addresses. However, even without delving into those, one need only consider that the very thing Aristotle must posits as the origin of the human being in an incarnation—namely, the creation of the spirit by God—would have to take place with every single incarnation into the human form for all time to come. It would not be a new creation if the old spirits were to reincarnate, and all these theories would be undermined if a spirit that had already existed in a human being could incarnate again. In that case, one could not speak of new creations. It follows from this that the doctrine of reincarnation in Aristotle would contradict his “Creatio.”

[ 17 ] Now it is very strange—and this is a point that emerges clearly in Brentano’s analysis of Aristotle—that Aristotle, in essence, has no other conception of this life of the spirit after death than that the spirit is, in fact, initially in a rather purely theoretical state of existence. For every kind of activity that Aristotle can actually speak of presupposes the physical world and physical corporeality. The mind actually has — indeed, even the eternal Spirit of God in Aristotle’s sense — only a theoretical, that is, only a contemplative activity, so that, on Aristotle’s terms, one can scarcely conceive of any other characteristics for the human life of the spirit after death than the contemplation of life from birth to death, the soul’s looking down from the spiritual world upon life from birth to death. This does not mean, in Aristotle’s sense, that it would rule out the soul’s further development. But since this life, in Aristotle’s sense, has significance for the soul, the soul must constantly look down upon this one life, must find it particularly significant, and must, in a certain way, ground all subsequent progress in this one life. Thus the spirit presents itself after death: looking back on earthly life, observing the events, the shortcomings, and the virtues of this earthly life—one perhaps reflecting on an exemplary life and basing its further development upon it, the other perhaps on a life of lies and crime, and basing its further development upon it. This is roughly how the spirit would relate to the physical-psychic realm in the sense of Aristotle.

[ 18 ] Now let us ask ourselves: How does such a doctrine of the soul appear to an unbiased mind? It is clear from Aristotle that this earthly life is not merely a life in an earthly vale of tears for the entirety of human existence, meaningless for later human development. There is no mention of this in Aristotle. This earthly life has its own positive significance; it is of great importance. Certainly, much remains uncertain regarding how Aristotle conceives of the soul’s further progress after earthly life, but one thing remains certain: that this one earthly life has essential significance for all the soul’s subsequent progress. For even if God has brought this human spirit into being—which then appears in a physical form without reincarnating—He has nevertheless been able to ensure that this spirit continues on its path without entering into new physical forms. It is now evident that Aristotle emphasizes the importance of the spirit assuming a human form, and that it is a goal of the Deity—and serves a purpose for the Deity as well—to guide human beings into a human earthly body. Thus, it is part of the Deity’s intention not merely to create the spirit that dwells within us as such, but to create it in such a way that, for further progress, it requires the garment of a physical earthly body. Thus, from the moment the Deity creates the human spirit in order to bring it down into a physical earthly body, the goal and purpose of attaining an earthly existence is inherent in that human spirit. One cannot, therefore, conceive of a human spirit created by the Deity without it desiring to be incarnated in a human body.

[ 19 ] Now suppose—as Aristotle correctly posits—that when a human being has passed through the gate of death, this human spirit sheds the body, enters the mental world—which we may also call the spiritual world—and looks back upon its physical embodiment. And let us now suppose that, as it looks down upon this physical embodiment, this human spirit finds its physical earthly life to be imperfect. And how could it be otherwise than that, naturally, most human spirits who have passed through death would find earthly life imperfect! For no matter how perfect it might appear, something even more perfect could still have been achieved within this earthly life. We must therefore, in the sense of Aristotle, attribute to these disembodied spirits—as they look back on the earthly life they have lived—the natural desire for another physical incarnation. For since the spirit needs a physical incarnation for its perfection, it must—if the incarnation granted to it was not perfect—naturally have the desire to go through it once more; otherwise, it would have completely failed in its purpose with that single incarnation. Therefore, it is impossible, in the sense of Aristotle, to speak of a purposeful embodiment in a single incarnation if this single incarnation were not, for every human being, a perfect stage of development for the progress of that spirit. The very moment one admits that human life on Earth is not a perfect one, one must also admit that the God-begotten spirit, after death, must once again have the desire for an earthly body.

[ 20 ] And now consider this peculiar divine creation of Aristotle’s: the generation of the human spirit, which belongs within a physical body, which departs from this physical body at death, but can only depart—if one thinks truly consistently in the spirit of Aristotle—with the desire for a physical body, yet one that could not return to a physical body. For Aristotle does not assume reincarnation, so that human spirits would have to live in their spiritual world after death with a constant longing for a new incarnation, a longing that could not, however, be fulfilled. Aristotle’s doctrine requires the doctrine of reincarnation, but it does not admit it. And we shall see that, from another point of view, this doctrine of reincarnation cannot be accepted in Aristotle’s thought.

[ 21 ] We are faced here with a doctrine of the spirit that is by no means materialistic; indeed, even today it remains the most incisive doctrine of the spirit in the Western world—with the exception of spiritual science—and one that extends right into our own time. For read Brentano and feel how firmly he stands on Aristotelian ground: that God, in union with the Father and the Mother, begets the spirit from the physical and the soul, and that the spirit begotten by God in turn enters a spiritual world once the human being has passed through the gate of death; but that God, who creates spirits under this premise, allows them to pass through an earthly incarnation only once and, through this passage through an earthly incarnation, endows them with the enduring desire to shape this incarnation in such a way that it truly fulfills its purpose.

[ 22 ] Here we see how, across millennia, what is still capable today of exerting a great influence on a truly scientific basis continues to shine through. And rightly so! For we shall see that Aristotle is great and significant precisely because of the acuity of his conclusions regarding his doctrine of the spirit, and that it is only possible to go beyond Aristotle once a scientific foundation for reincarnation has been established. However, this scientific foundation for reincarnation has never been established prior to our time, so that we now stand at a turning point in the study of the soul: in essence, it is only through spiritual science that we can truly and fundamentally move beyond Aristotle. And it is again interesting how a man as astute as Brentano had to remain on Aristotelian ground with regard to these matters, just as, on the other hand, his acumen compelled him to remain confined to a mere doctrine of the soul because he took the omission of the spirit seriously. From the errors that have arisen as a result of omitting the spiritual—which has led to the creation of a theory of the spirit or soul that is internally contradictory—we shall see that, even from the standpoint of contemporary science, it is impossible to arrive at a consistent worldview at all if one seeks to reject spiritual science.