The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Fourth Lecture

[ 1 ] If one turns one’s attention to works such as those by Fritz Mauthner, to which I have repeatedly referred—as you have already seen—one realizes what consequences must result from taking the currently dominant worldview too seriously. Mauthner truly takes the current worldview seriously. He arrives at all sorts of highly peculiar conclusions. For example, in connection with the concept of “stock,” since he is, after all, a linguistic critic, he derives the concept of “vocabulary,” and he divides vocabulary into pseudo-concepts and useful concepts. In his dictionary, he essentially aims to demonstrate throughout how most philosophical concepts belong to the category of useless concepts. Whenever one has read through a Mauthnerian concept, a Mauthnerian word in his “Dictionary of Philosophy”—though this is admittedly a subjective sensation—one has the feeling as if one had tried, like a Chinese person, to spin around to catch one’s own braid. When one has finished reading an entry, one has the feeling that throughout the entire reading one has been striving to grab the ponytail that the Chinese man has at the back of his head, and yet one realizes in the end: The ponytail has gotten stuck at the back; no matter how much one spins around, one cannot reach the ponytail. One will, however, have to go through some very, very difficult challenges to maintain sound thinking when, for example, one delves into the entry on “Christianity.” But this applies to almost all the entries he has written. — He has taken great care to root out all false concepts, and he includes such false concepts in his dictionary solely to “expose” them as such. But in order to address these pseudo-concepts, I will read a few sentences from the introduction that are very characteristic: “What is a pseudo-concept? This dictionary will denounce many concepts that are held in general esteem as pseudo-concepts. I am certainly not lacking in examples. Nevertheless, it is not easy to state in general terms what distinguishes a useful concept from a pseudo-concept, a true concept from a false one, or a living concept from a dead one. With these pairs of opposites, I have already mentioned some of the reasons for the difficulty. The mere appearance of usefulness cannot always be explained by the same cause. Nor is the falsity or death of a concept always so easy to determine. Falsity may have been inherent in the concept from the outset, but it may also have arisen in the course of the word’s history; it need not have been recognized only by a scientifically and critically advanced generation; a concept may have been dead from the start, but its death may also have occurred after a shorter or longer life of the word, unnoticed in linguistic usage. The boundaries cannot be drawn very sharply, because all these concepts are relative. The concepts of the absolute and phlogiston were false from the start, because close attention could have revealed the contradiction with the facts of experience from the very beginning.”

[ 2 ] That’s quite charming, isn’t it? Humanity has taken—one might say—not centuries, but millennia, to replace phlogiston with something else. And when Lavoisier replaced “phlogiston” with the proof of the true nature of “combustion,” it was a momentous achievement of the very highest order. But Fritz Mauthner has this to say on the matter: “The concept was wrong from the start, because close attention could have revealed the contradiction with the facts of experience from the very beginning.”

[ 3 ] It really sounds as if Fritz Mauthner had only needed to be born a little earlier, and he would have ensured that people would not have lived under the false concept of phlogiston for so long! Mauthner goes on to say: “The concept of a witch only became a misnomer once the concept of the devil had died; with the illusory concept of the devil, the godless woman could no longer enter into a carnal union. The concept of the devil, in turn, had been alive long enough and only died once human knowledge had become convinced that neither a devil nor any of its effects could be observed in the real world.”

[ 4 ] It makes one want to be tempted to say:

This little crowd never senses the devil,
even if he had them by the collar!

[ 5 ] That is indeed what comes to mind when such things are said. — Today, much will depend on how people decide to find the guiding—I might even say, the enlightening—perspectives in every situation! Yesterday we pointed out how, precisely with the deepening of the human soul’s nature, there must also be a deepening in relation to concepts such as, for example, the concept of necessity. We pointed out how the sense of the necessity of all that exists—and the individual being’s placement within the necessity of existence—could be fate-determining for a human being such as Faust. Mauthner asks: Necessity—what is that? It is merely a way of looking at things. For him, there is no reason whatsoever to conceive of the concept of necessity objectively in the things themselves. Mauthner believes that the flow of world events simply passes around human beings. People have come along and said: The sun rose today, it rose yesterday, it rose the day before yesterday. From this, we will assume that it will also rise tomorrow, the day after tomorrow, and so on. — From these external observations in the regular succession of facts, they have formed the concept of necessity. “It is necessary for the sun to rise,” they have said. But this necessity is subjective; it is merely a human concept. And Mauthner says very wittily in response to the philosopher Husserl, who held the view that necessity is also objectively present within things: “If only I knew how necessity—a human way of viewing reality—could ever become objective.” “If only I knew that!”—says Mauthner. You see, Mauthner lacks any ability to understand how something subjective can become objective. He is, I might say, a peculiar eurythmist, this Mauthner; he can never dance across from the subjective to the objective, because he has completely lost the ability to perform within himself that movement which leads from the subjective to the objective. And underlying this is the inability to seek out being at the very point where, at a characteristic juncture, the subjective truly transitions into the objective. Let us try to visualize such a point in our mind’s eye.

[ 6 ] When the human soul poses a question within itself, it seeks an answer and will subjectively set in motion all those processes—those external or internal actions—that can lead to the resolution of such a question. Now, as you know, posing a question and finding an answer is truly a subjective process. It is so subjective that one person does it skillfully, another clumsily, with all manner of nuances. This is truly something that takes place within us first. But let’s assume the following. Let’s assume that a person is truly consumed by a thirst for knowledge, filled with a thirst for knowledge, and must therefore pose a question within their soul. Now, they cannot find an answer to this question. Isn’t that subjective? But let’s now assume: Time passes, as they say, and the person continues to live. The subjective process is that the person has experienced the question and has experienced the failure to arrive at an answer, and now they continue to live. It may be that later on they recall the question, remembering with the thought that they did not receive an answer to it. But a completely different scenario may occur. It may happen that the person in question simply forgets the question altogether. But this forgetting does not mean that the question and the absence of an answer are entirely unreal within him, but rather that he has not found the answer. What is purely subjective may later become apparent to those who can see through these connections: that in this, the person in question reveals a certain insecurity regarding the way they conduct their life. If one knows how to observe closely, one will be able to say: This person has a strangely uncertain demeanor, something strangely uncertain in their gaze. At first, when considering an individual’s life, such a connection may seem subtle; but one will be able to discover such connections and will be able to discover that certain uncertain gestures, a certain uncertainty in the gaze, or similar traits in later years can be traced back to the fact that a particular question or set of questions has remained unanswered. That a gesture is present, that there is something uncertain in the gaze—that is an objective fact, a completely objective fact! An objective fact has truly emerged from a subjective one; it has taken shape. In a sense, we can rediscover years later, in the objective processes of our human being, that which we have subjectively experienced,

[ 7 ] If you follow these lines of thought, you will find that this offers a genuine way to answer questions that Mauthner, due to his own limitations, is unable to answer. That is why he says: “If only I knew how necessity—a human way of viewing reality—could ever become objective.” The subjective can indeed become objective! This is precisely what will become clear to us, especially if we thoroughly consider what I already pointed out yesterday: that, fundamentally speaking, memory is a special state of consciousness alongside sleeping and waking. This process of remembering, however, is still in its infancy today and will play a much greater role once humanity has advanced to the next planetary existence; it will manifest itself in the recognition of what has been experienced in the past. In this recognition, what must be recognized appears before us in a completely different form than it did before. For example, when we subjectively experience something, it will emerge quietly in the course of an individual human life after a long time. In the next incarnation, it will emerge more prominently. There, something that was previously a subjective experience may appear to us objectively as a characteristic feature of our outward appearance. And when we ask about many things we have forgotten: “Where has it gone?” — we would discover it if we were only willing to reflect seriously on what Spiritual Science offers us. We would discover in our lives what has been forgotten by us. That which has descended into the depths of the soul and is no longer in the subjective realm reigns and weaves in our subconscious down below. The subjective always becomes objective!

[ 8 ] You see, if one truly wants to engage with an understanding of life, then one must take these matters very seriously and conscientiously. One must try to train one’s thinking in a truly conscientious way. For example, one must pay attention to errors in thinking that are made, because they are intimately connected with errors in living. How easy it is to find people who say at every opportunity: “Well, I’m really not vain”—and yet, the very fact that they say this at every opportunity is an act of vanity. They are so terribly vain that they say at every opportunity just how unvain they are! They simply haven’t considered it deeply enough—considered it in the context of life—that it contradicts itself when a Cretan says: ‘All Cretans are liars’—for if a Cretan says that, and it were true, then he himself would have to be a liar! So what he says—that all Cretans are liars—could not be true. But such things must necessarily be put into practice in life; one must truly pay attention to ensuring that a certain subtlety of thought becomes one of our habits. And so I would like to draw your attention to something that, as a fallacy, is characteristic of Mauthner’s thinking in one of his many reflections. Mauthner has an entry titled “Necessity” in his dictionary. In it, he endeavors to show how necessity is merely a human concept, how necessity does not lie within things at all. In this entry, for a very specific reason, he engages in this peculiar experiment of dancing around the issue, trying to catch the pigtail but failing to do so. For all that has become clear to him is that it is not necessary for necessity to prevail in things; that there is no necessity for necessity to prevail in things. Necessity could, after all, prevail in things without that being necessary! The fact that Mauthner has realized it is not necessary for necessity to prevail in things does not yet prove that necessity does not prevail in things; rather, it is precisely this—that necessity is present—that might not be necessary; that is what one must always take into account.

[ 9 ] But for us, the question arises: How can we seek out necessity? Well, today—I will go into these matters in more detail tomorrow—I will simply try, by way of illustration, to steer your thoughts in the right direction. Consider this idea: What we think subjectively goes down into our memory, becomes part of it, but it also gets lost down there—it becomes objective. And now let’s look out into the world and seek, first of all, the objective. We certainly find the objective within ourselves, even in our individual lives, in gestures, facial expressions, and so on. Just recall what I mentioned at the end of yesterday’s lecture: What was initially subjective in the world, we later find as objective. We then need to ask ourselves: Yes, can we perhaps also connect a subjective element—something that once existed and has become part of this objective reality out there—to this objective reality? — And so we would find in our world out there that everything to which we must ascribe necessity has become necessary precisely because it once fell out of the subjective and became objective. Transport yourself back from earthly existence to solar existence. There we are dealing with the beings who guided solar existence. Just as we now think, feel, and will, these beings must have done something similar; back then, during the Sun-era, they experienced something inwardly and subjectively in their souls, went through something, were active. What they went through back then during the Sun-era, we now find out there in the world. Now it confronts us as a world gesture and a world expression, as a world physiognomy. It has become objective. To put it roughly: During the Sun Era, let us say a being allowed its will to radiate—entirely subjectively—just as our subjective thoughts or feelings descend into memory and then become objective. Thus, this volition, this radiating of the ancient Sun beings, has descended, has become memory, and we now view it from the outside. Just as we look at some past experience of a human being from the outside, objectively, so today we see in the light-spreading of the Sun a volitional decision of beings who acted subjectively during the old Sun era. We see it. We can truly say: Yes, when I see a person who, in old age, has a certain grimness around the mouth, that is certainly something that exists quite objectively out there in the world. If I investigate this, I may be able to trace this grimness around his mouth back to some bitterness he experienced quite subjectively in his childhood. The subjective has become objective.

[ 10 ] When I look upon what today stands as a mountain range, I will be able to trace back this feature of the Earth, which exists for my sake in the towering mass of the entire Alpine system. If I trace it back far enough—perhaps as far as the Saturn existence—I will find there some soul-spiritual experience that was lived through at that time, and which, now preserved in the physical structure of the Earth, represents that subjective experience. Back then it could have been different; back then it could have been the case that those gods who had experienced this or that soul-spiritual reality could also have decided otherwise; then, of course, the Alps would be different today. But just think about it: During the Saturn era, the gods decided to do something specific inwardly; then they passed through the Sun and Moon eras; and then, as the Moon developed into the Earth, they were no longer able to change their minds. It is just as if we find it very difficult to make up for something we had not yet learned by the age of eighteen. We can make it up, but the very fact that we then have to make it up brings about something that would not have occurred if we had gone through it at an earlier time. From this you will see that, although during the Saturnic era the divine-spiritual beings were still free to make any decision, once the decision was made, they were no longer free during the Lunar era to direct it any other way than for the Alpine range to run precisely from west to east. For example, they have committed themselves precisely through what they thought in the past; that cannot be undone. What has happened cannot be undone—if one wishes to remain true to the facts. Subjectively, people can certainly try to erase what they have subjectively experienced and what has become objective; but objectively, what has developed from it will not be erased. If, for example, I committed a lapse of negligence in my youth, or in my later youth failed to educate someone I should have educated, this corresponds to my subjective state at that time. Later, twenty years down the line, I may deny that I was negligent back then, but that does not change the objective reality that emerged from the subjective: the person I failed to raise has become what resulted from my neglect. The objective that has emerged from our subjective takes on the character of necessity; necessity cannot be denied in it. And to the extent that the subjective passes into the objective, necessity creeps into what is becoming objective. And in order to deny necessity, one must actually deny something.

[ 11 ] If one follows the concepts strictly logically from this perspective, one finds an intimate connection between everything that is called necessary and everything that belongs to the past—that is, between necessity and the past. And in everything that confronts us in the present, the past reappears. The past is present in the present. And to the extent that the past is present in the present, to that extent the necessary is present in it. On the one hand, life becomes frozen in the past. But in doing so, the past becomes necessary. — I would like to explain this matter to you even more clearly: It is a superstition to assume that, in the ordinary course of events, what has been recognized as the lawful connection can be broken by a miracle. Why? As much must happen according to necessary rules as there is of the past in the events. And if the gods were to break with what is inherent in a lawful connection, the gods would be lying; they would be denying what they themselves established long ago. And just as we cannot alter the past through a later assertion, so too can we not change that part of the past which is inherent in things as a necessity. And the only thing we cannot change in things is what constitutes their past. The concept of necessity must merge with the concept of the past. This is of immense importance. In all things and in all beings lies the past, and therefore necessity. And there is as much necessity in things as there is past in them. And that is why what is necessary in things is necessity: because it is a recurring past, and what has happened cannot be denied. You can quite easily create a mental image of something that is necessary today; for it happened long ago. It happened long ago, and now it confronts us in the mirror.

[ 12 ] But you can’t change it in the mirror any more than you can, if you have a wart on your forehead and look in the mirror, make that wart disappear in the mirror. It would first have to be removed from your forehead. Nor can you effect a change in what appears necessary today; for what appears necessary today has in reality already happened long ago. That is over. It only appears in its later reflection. Everything that is necessary within us is actually over and merely casts its post-historical reflection into us. And only when people rise to the level of understanding that things which already happened on the old Moon, in the old Sun existence, and in the old Saturn existence are now reflected within us—that they are merely the reflection of those past events within us—only then will necessity be understood.

[ 13 ] And now think back to the fact that a certain perspective leads us to realize that we actually find our conceptual world in lunar existence. I have already explained how, when we view our present-day environment conceptually, we would in fact be looking back at the lunar tableau. Therein lies the connection. It is not at all true that certain things that now seem to be taking place within us are actually taking place right now. They are only taking place in the mirror. In reality, they occurred in earlier stages of our Earth’s development. I have said in previous lectures: We actually have hollow heads. Why do we have hollow heads? Because what constitutes our inner content took place in the past, and now only the reflection of past events—for example, within our own heads—is mirrored. But if we cannot grasp this concept of the reflection, we will always fall into the same error in the face of maya—the outward appearance of reality—that a child falls into, and, forgive me, that modern natural science falls into: One sees objects in the mirror and runs behind the mirror to look for them there. And when one gets behind the mirror, everything has vanished. That which is necessary has passed; and the fact that the past is reflected is the reason why there is necessity in the present. The past cannot be changed.

[ 14 ] I admit there is quite a bit to unpack in these concepts, and so let’s pause here and see how we can work through them on our own by tomorrow. Tomorrow we will then move on to the concepts of chance and providence and relate them to necessity.