The Rudolf Steiner Archive

The Relationship Between the Spiritual Science and the Natural Sciences VI

[ 1 ] Based on Wrangell’s pamphlet on “Science and Theosophy,” we have attempted to explore various ideas that show how even those who wish to stand firmly on the ground of modern science are nevertheless compelled to acknowledge the reality of spiritual life. And as you have seen, we actually have fewer objections to Wrangell’s pamphlet than we have additions to make in the spirit of Spiritual Science. Thus, this pamphlet contains—as it seems at first glance—a subjective assessment of how the modern scientist’s path leads to Spiritual Science; in other words, how one can very well be a modern scientist and still find the path to Spiritual Science.

[ 2 ] It is important to consider this line of thought in particular, because it seems absolutely necessary to me that those who stand on the ground of Spiritual Science clearly recognize that the objections raised by so-called scientists are in fact not truly scientific at all, but stem from the fact that today one can be an excellent scientist who knows how to apply materialistic scientific methods quite well in any given field of science, while at the same time being a complete amateur in all other questions of worldview.

[ 3 ] Today—as a sort of continuation of the ideas developed in the brochure—I would like to explore a few other thoughts that are important to us. I would like to show how the current development of humanity has reached a point that should prompt the discerning scientist—the one who takes science truly seriously and knows how to appreciate it—to engage with the study of Spiritual Science and not to proceed as has generally been the case up to now: that is, to regard it as something to be rejected from the outset.

[ 4 ] As some of you may recall, in my remarks following on from the discussion of Wrangell’s pamphlet, I—in a certain sense—actually sang the praises of the materialist scientific method. I said that it has yielded great and significant results in recent times, and that one need only gain the proper perspective on this materialistic scientific method to appreciate it and not underestimate it. One will familiarize oneself with its results precisely when one necessarily intends to draw connections between it and the Spiritual Science.

[ 5 ] I would now like to begin with a line of thought that is, in a sense, scientific in nature, one that can show us how the thinking natural scientist—precisely when he understands himself correctly—should knock on the door of Spiritual Science. I would like to draw attention to a branch of modern natural science that is also of great significance in terms of social ethics, but which cannot attain this significance in a way that is satisfying to human beings as long as natural science has not found its way to Spiritual Science. I would like to discuss in some detail certain lines of thought in what is known as criminal anthropology.

[ 6 ] One of the great researchers in criminal anthropology is Professor Dr. Moriz Benedikt, whom I have mentioned on several occasions. He was one of the first to examine the brains of criminals in a thoroughly modern, systematic manner by performing postmortem dissections on criminals—particularly murderers—who had been sentenced to death. The results were, in fact, so surprising in light of many of the views that had previously existed that, after the initial examinations, he initially thought he was dealing with a kind of scientific adventure and by no means with anything on the trail of the truth. Thus, whenever he examined the brains of criminals, certain internal structures always became apparent—that is, to anyone familiar with the configuration and morphology of the normal human brain—with very specific characteristics that differed from the structure of the brain of a person who was not a criminal. And so as not to digress too much, I will stick to the main characteristic.

[ 7 ] It was found that a certain part of the human brain, called the occipital lobe and which covers the cerebellum, is too small in criminals, so that it covers the cerebellum—which it would otherwise cover completely—only sparsely or not at all.

[ 8 ] Now just imagine: if you dissect a criminal’s brain and find that it differs from a normal brain in such a way that the occipital lobe does not completely cover the cerebellum, then you must surely come to the conclusion: If one is born in such a way that it is impossible to develop the occipital lobe to the point where it covers the cerebellum, then no matter what one does in life, one will simply become a criminal—and consequently, one cannot help it. And when one examines monkey brains, the same peculiarity becomes apparent: the occipital lobe does not completely cover the cerebellum. So one must say: When considering the various stages of evolution on the path from ape to human, it must also be noted that humans have transcended ape development and become more perfect beings precisely because their occipital lobe has grown to completely cover the cerebellum. This means, therefore, that when a human becomes a criminal, he regresses to the ape’s brain structure. In the case of the criminal, we are thus dealing with a pronounced atavism. This means nothing other than that there are individuals among humans whose brain structure has atavistically regressed to the ape-like state. These atavistic individuals are precisely the ones who become criminals.

[ 9 ] Now consider the ethical and social consequences of such a view, and you will understand what it means—under the auspices of the current materialistic worldview (and I do not mean mainstream science)—to be forced to accept these facts. For the facts are there, and only a fool could deny them. So those who are guided by the materialistic worldview are faced with the challenge: Just take a look at the brains of criminals, and you’ll see that the brain structure regresses to that of an ape. So you can clearly see how what manifests itself morally in human beings is simply a consequence of the physical body’s material organization. There it is, plain as day. The person who had this brain had become a criminal precisely because he had this brain. With the same inevitability with which a clock mechanism serves us—when it runs correctly—to catch the ten o’clock train, whereas a clock mechanism that runs slow, perhaps showing only seven o’clock, causes us to miss the train, with that same inevitability does a brain that has not achieved full development of the occipital lobe indicate a criminal who is mentally retarded. Since you certainly cannot bring yourself to imagine a demon inside the clock driving the hands around, you will also not be able to bring yourself to dream up the demon called “soul” inside the brain.

[ 10 ] To simply reject the well-established findings of criminal anthropological studies of criminals’ brains would amount to adopting a “head-in-the-sand” approach in science—it would simply mean refusing to take into account facts that have been thoroughly researched.

[ 11 ] Now, as you know, there is another philosophy besides materialist science. But if you examine this philosophy—perhaps especially among those who are often counted among its most prominent representatives today—you will find that this philosophy is completely powerless in the face of materialist methods. The concepts that philosophers arrive at ultimately boil down to what I demonstrated to you using the example of Otto Liebmann—a very astute man who says that one cannot go beyond certain points, that one cannot cross certain boundaries. I gave you the example of the chicken egg. Or take the philosophy of Rudolf Eucken in Jena: you can see how they beat around the bush and dress up their words, but how the concepts developed there cannot hold a candle to materialistic methods. They are like the actions of a person standing here on one bank of a river, making every possible effort to cross to the other bank, but unable to do so. ^{1A drawing was apparently made on the blackboard here; however, the drawing has not been preserved.} Over there is the materialist scientific method, but he cannot reach it; therefore, philosophizing remains nothing more than empty talk.

[ 12 ] What exactly are we dealing with here? Well, let’s go back to something we’ve known for a long time; let’s go back to the division of the human being into physical body, etheric body, astral body, and I. Let’s start with this most general division, as it has presented itself to us in the course of our Spiritual Science investigations, and ask ourselves: What happens when we observe something externally perceptible—and a criminal mind is certainly something externally perceptible—what happens then? The external perceptible world acts upon our sense organs. These are located in the physical body. This is where sensory perception takes place. No one denies this. We would be fools if, as scholars of Spiritual Science, we were to deny it. It would be foolishness if we did not engage with findings such as those I have cited from criminal anthropology. Nor must we deny their validity, for they certainly prove that the criminal walks around with an ape-like brain, whereas the normal human being no longer possesses this ape-like brain. So when we philosophize, as today’s philosophers do, what are we doing? In which regions of the human being are we then moving? We are moving in the sphere of the “I.” That is where all philosophical concepts are found today. And especially among those who philosophize most astutely today, you will see everywhere that they are, as it were, merely floating about in the realm of the “I.” You can find scientific proof of this in the introductory chapter of my *The Riddles of Philosophy*, where I have shown how philosophy in our time tends toward the idea that its essence is a floating within the “I.” But there is a wide gulf between the natural sciences and philosophy; this is the river that philosophy cannot cross—that is to say, the philosophical concepts are on one side—inwardly within the human being—and all sensory perceptions are outside, on the other side.

[ 13 ] I once had a vivid, though only symptomatic—and I emphasize, only symptomatic, my dear friends—sense of this chasm between philosophical reflection and scientific observation—but please note that I mean this only in a symptomatic sense—when Ernst Haeckel’s sixtieth birthday was celebrated. I attended the celebration in Jena. A wide variety of people spoke there—Haeckel’s supporters and so on. Now, I was curious to see what would happen if Haeckel’s colleagues in philosophy, including Dr. Rudolf Eucken, were to propose a so-called toast during the luncheon, as is customary. For then one might have gained some insight into how the representatives of philosophy at a university relate to the representatives of the natural sciences and sensory perception. The toast—which was proposed by Eucken—had roughly the following content; I’ll just summarize the main idea. Eucken said something like this: At a birthday celebration such as today’s, it is customary to say what particularly characterizes the guest of honor. Now, I tried to think about what might particularly characterize our honoree, but I couldn’t come up with anything special on my own. So I asked our honoree’s daughter, and she told me that one of his characteristic quirks is, for example, that he can’t manage to put on his tie when he wants to. — The toast continued in this vein.

[ 14 ] Well, as I already said, it struck me as symptomatic what the representatives of philosophy at a university had to say about the representative of sensory, scientific observations. It is truly symptomatic, for there is no real bridge between contemporary philosophy and the natural sciences, because the philosophers’ concepts are quite shallow, and the sensory facts that the natural sciences bring to light lie beyond their reach. One cannot cross over using philosophical concepts.

[ 15 ] I have already pointed out to you that there is a way to set the scientific facts in motion—to truly set them in motion. This way consists in truly engaging with the spirit of Goethe’s scientific observations. Just recall that I explained to you how Goethe came to regard the skull bones—even though their external form differs entirely from that of the vertebrae—as transformed vertebral bones. I drew your attention to this theory of transformation when I spoke to you about how our boiler house is merely a transformation of our main building, in that it has been enlarged on the one hand and reduced on the other. I also pointed out in another lecture that when one ascends from ordinary concepts to concepts of Spiritual Science, one must set the concepts in motion. I recommended reading Goethe’s poems on the metamorphosis of plants and animals. There you will see how fluid the concepts are, and how he shaped it all.

[ 16 ] If you take what I have said on various occasions and combine it with what we must now consider, you will say to yourself: If I take sensory perceptions directly, they are more limited; but when I turn to Goethe’s worldview, a vertebra appears to me as being more elastic and softer, so that it gradually becomes part of the skull. This is how I look into creative nature. I see, for example, how even in fish the individual skull bones are very similar to the vertebrae, and how the evolution toward the human form takes place as the vertebrae are transformed into skull bones... .*

[ 17 ] However, you can only follow this intellectually; you cannot perceive it through the senses. If you wanted to perceive it through the senses, you would have to observe for thousands, even millions of years how one thing transitions into another. Therefore, one must spiritualize perception, that is, sensory perception.

[ 18 ] You see, Goethe instinctively got this spiritualization of sensory perception right. I have often drawn attention to that significant conversation between him and Schiller, which took place when they were once walking out together after a lecture by the botanist Batsch at the Natural History Society in Jena. Schiller said then that he had found everything in Batsch’s lecture merely presented side by side. Goethe then sketched his “primordial plant”—the form one obtains when transitioning from one plant form to another. Schiller then said, “But that is not perception; that is an idea”—and Goethe replied, “Then I have my ideas before my eyes.” — He was aware that he was not merely seeing the individual transformations, but that he saw a single plant in all parts of the plant. Underlying this is the fact that Goethe instinctively viewed everything not only as one can perceive it with the physical senses, but by immediately incorporating physical perception into the contemplation of the etheric body. That is to say, Goethe incorporates the metamorphosing perception—which is a constantly shifting perception—into his view of nature. Through this, the entire sensory world comes to life for him. The individual is then merely a specific expression of something very general, but not of a generality as the abstract philosophers conceive it, rather a generality that winds its way through the individual sensory perceptions. Here you see a lifting of sensory perception into the imaginative realm, which arises in the human being when one does not disdain to include one’s etheric body in sensory perception.

[ 19 ] One cannot understand what Goethe wrote about animals and plants unless one takes into account that he included the etheric body. Now you have taken that a step further. We would have made some progress if we had also brought the philosophical concepts over here, so that they could come closer to [the perceptions] (...).^{2Here, in the original stenographic transcript, there follow a few incomplete lines that do not convey any coherent meaning.}

[ 20 ] Now consider what we have often discussed over the years—this is part of the first stage described in *How to Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds*: that one can elevate physical, concrete perception to a higher level, into imaginative perception. But remember the characteristic I have described time and time again—it is found in countless passages of our lecture cycles—of what this imaginative perception consists. It consists in working back into the etheric body through the “I.” As long as one merely forms concrete concepts, as the philosopher does as well—for the idea that he works in the spirit is merely his delusion of grandeur—one gets nowhere. One must move on to ascending from concrete to imaginative cognition; that is to say, as soon as life enters into the concepts, one returns from the mere “I” into the etheric body. One transforms the astral body into the Spirit-Self; that is to say, one could say that philosophical concepts become imaginative concepts or mental images, if the word “concept” can still be applied here.

[ 21 ] But now things have fallen into place: the imaginative concepts are no longer separated from the metamorphosing perceptions by a gulf; rather, they are directly contiguous.

[ 22 ] We shall now see that, while philosophy and sensory perception are separated by a gulf and cannot come together—because physical perception takes place in the physical body and the philosopher’s process takes place in the “I”— here, however [it was apparently drawn again], the imaginative concepts and perceptions come together, because the concrete concept is in the physical body and the metamorphosed concepts are in the etheric body. There is thus a deepening in both directions. On the one hand, one must approach the world with the whole human being, and on the other hand, one must deepen the concepts by bringing them to life, by transforming them into imaginations.

[ 23 ] This is what philosophers want to avoid. They cannot come to terms with the concept of imagination, and natural scientists cannot come to terms with grasping perception as it undergoes metamorphosis. But this is brought about by Spiritual Science. Our entire Spiritual Science is precisely an answer to the question: How does the rational human being, living in his astral body, perceive the metamorphosing perceptions living in his etheric body? How does he think them? This is what is so important—that we truly know that we are bringing the outer world closer to the inner world, that they are drawing closer to one another, that we are uniting them.

[ 24 ] Only now can we begin to gain some insight into what the “reality” of criminal anthropology is actually all about. Of course, someone who is born with a condition in which, as they grow, the occipital lobe does not properly cover the cerebellum will walk around with such an ape-like occipital lobe their entire life. But where does such an ape-like occipital lobe come from? From a perspective of Spiritual Science, it arises as a consequence of a previous life, for what a person was in a previous life shapes their physical form from within. In this way, they create the structure of their body and brain—and thus also that of their occipital lobe. We can therefore say: If a person walks around with an underdeveloped occipital lobe, it means that in a previous life they did not acquire enough strength to form the occipital lobe normally. This is certainly no consolation, for there always remains the possibility that such a person will become a criminal, since the occipital lobe cannot, after all, grow larger. One might then say: People are thus divided into two groups—those with an underdeveloped occipital lobe, who are born to be criminals, and those with a fully developed occipital lobe, who do not become criminals. — From a materialistic worldview, there is hardly any room for error here; it will inevitably reach this conclusion. For Spiritual Science, there is theoretically no other answer either, but since it knows that the physical body is not the only body—but also contains an etheric body—the situation changes for it. For if a person is born with an underdeveloped occipital lobe—that is, with an unfavorable predisposition—we can still raise that person properly. We can structure their education in such a way that we instill in them appropriate moral and ethical concepts. Although this cannot change the physical body in the present incarnation, it can change the etheric component of the occipital lobe. This can be enlarged through what is imparted to the person by proper education. It is therefore quite possible to help a person who, due to a previous incarnation, has an occipital lobe that is too small, through appropriate education. By educating such a person correctly, we enlarge the etheric part of the occipital lobe, and the person in question can thereby be protected from a life of crime.

[ 25 ] However, given the fact that those who have become criminals are found to have an occipital lobe that is too small, one would also have to conduct the reverse experiment. One would have to dissect normal people and prove that they all had normally developed occipital lobes; in doing so, one might then discover that even among normally developed people, there are those who have an occipital lobe that is too small, yet have not become criminals because, through appropriate upbringing, the etheric occipital lobe has grown larger.

[ 26 ] Ethical education, then, contributes to the etheric constitution, not the physical one. Education must, however, be structured in such a way that it conforms to spiritual laws. If you take what has been developed as an educational principle in the short treatise *The Education of the Child from the Perspective of Spiritual Science*, you will find that the principles of development from age seven to seven have been explored. When one begins to grasp these laws and translate them into appropriate measures, one has a deeper impact than with the purely rationalistic educational methods that have long been the norm. Nor does one get very far with what has emerged as “Fröbelian pedagogy.” With all the educational methods practiced today, one reaches only as far as the “I.” But as long as one reaches only as far as the “I,” nothing can be accomplished; the occipital lobe remains too underdeveloped. But if you listen in on the mysteries of spiritual existence and turn them into educational measures, you enter the etheric body. There you truly normalize the etheric body; that is, through Spiritual Science you gain powerful concepts—concepts that truly have power over the human being and can transform him. If you take the concepts that can be gained today—whether, on the one hand, from the observation of the world of sensory perception, or, on the other hand, from abstract talk that originates solely from the “I”—you will not obtain educational principles, nor principles for social life, that truly take hold in human beings. The concepts remain powerless. You can search through entire libraries—and plenty has been written about education—but all of this amounts to an attempt to impose rules from the “I,” regardless of whether you believe in educating more theoretically or in any other way. As long as these concepts are not drawn from the mystery of human nature and the spiritual principles of education—and thereby made effective down into the etheric body—they remain powerless in the face of what is growing within the human being. Thus, as our concepts become more powerful, we also draw closer to what is becoming and growing in the world, so that we incorporate practically nothing theoretical into our practice. When we move from philosophical to imaginative concepts, as Spiritual Science does, and when you transition from sensory perception to metamorphosing perception, we bring our principles closer to the spiritual, and then we will derive corresponding measures and principles from Spiritual Science.

[ 27 ] From what I have said, you can see how right and how necessary it is in our time — now that, through centuries of development, the world has been directed toward mere sensory perception and thereby pushed back into mere intellectual understanding within the “I” — how necessary it is to bring external perception and inner spiritual life closer together again, both for contemplation and for practical life. Through Spiritual Science, we gain powerful concepts that have a direct impact on life—concepts that truly have something to do with life. Concepts such as those found in Eucken’s philosophy never have a direct impact on real life. Through Spiritual Science, we grasp reality; we grasp it where it is more real than sensory perception.

[ 28 ] When we approach reality using our ordinary concepts and ordinary sensory perception, we look at what is on the surface; we look with our sensory tools. For example, we look at the mountain with its vegetation. And now there are these two kinds of people: some look at the mountain with its vegetation and forget themselves (Haeckel), while others look at nothing in the external world but merely talk in abstract terms and stare into the void; this is what makes philosophy empty (Eucken’s philosophy). Spiritual Science approaches reality through metamorphosing perception and thereby observes something that is not revealed on the surface, but rather something that lies beneath it. But even when it observes human beings, it moves back from mere sensory perception through the physical sense organs to metamorphosing perception (etheric body) and from the mere philosophical concept to a mental image, thereby creating something like an underground channel between mere sensory perception (physical sense organs) and the mere philosophical concept (ego). Now you will also understand that a bleak worldview is bound to emerge if Spiritual Science does not take hold, for philosophy, with its concepts, will naturally become completely powerless in the face of human reality; people will not believe it—and this is already beginning to happen. Sensory perception, after all, cannot be denied; it will become increasingly impossible to deny it. So it goes without saying that the materialistic worldview will say: What can one do about becoming a criminal? What can one do about having an occipital lobe that is too small? — Just imagine what this must do to the concept of responsibility and to legal concepts! One must keep this perspective in mind. It is cowardly not to do so.

[ 29 ] There is, however, a way to go beyond this: by working on the etheric body from within through appropriate education, so that the etheric occipital lobe is developed. This education, however, must be an education of the heart and love, as demonstrated in the book *The Education of the Child from the Perspective of Spiritual Science*. Once one understands this, one realizes: Certainly, a person with an underdeveloped occipital lobe will spend their entire life struggling with this deficiency and will be tempted. But through the development of the etheric occipital lobe, they will always be able to find the necessary balance. Thus, Spiritual Science will become a major factor when those who are familiar only with the achievements of the materialistic worldview knock on the door of Spiritual Science.

[ 30 ] Second, I would like to demonstrate to you another aspect that can be gleaned from spiritual life. Especially in our time, we have the opportunity to see how feelings—such as feelings of hatred—spread throughout entire communities. Now, someone who still holds a naive worldview—if asked, “Why do you hate?”—will, of course, not know exactly why something is hateful, because they still have that naive worldview; they might say, “I hate it because I find it hateful.” Today, however, there is a psychological worldview that goes beyond this naivety, one that knows more than simply that one hates something because it is hateful—just as the criminal anthropologist knows more than the person who believes that a person became a criminal because he was a bad guy and didn’t improve; for the criminal anthropologist knows that the person in question has an occipital lobe that is too small. And so it is also a naïve judgment to say: “I hate this or that because it is hateful.” Well, even in this regard, people have already risen to a correct judgment. Anyone who examines human nature more closely sees how the feelings that develop in the soul are part of the soul’s equipment, part of its conditions of life. And if one observes the inner world of the soul today not naively but through genuine observation of the facts, one comes to realize that a certain amount of the necessity to hate is latently stored within the human being, without it becoming visible. He must hate. And when so much hatred has accumulated that, so to speak, the cup runs over, he seeks out an object for his hateful force. Now consider the way in which a person arrives at a worldview. We strive to show how one should arrive at a worldview based on Spiritual Science in an objective manner. But this is not always how one arrives at a worldview based on Spiritual Science—or even a materialistic worldview; rather, it is because one is emotionally predestined to do so. What speaks logically in favor of a worldview is only considered as a secondary or even tertiary factor. For example, go through the meetings of communists or materialists and examine what they put forward to logically substantiate their worldview; then you will notice that it is not their logic but their emotional predisposition that predetermines it. And so it is with the worldview of Spiritual Science. Perhaps you hold the mystical worldview out of your own feelings, because it makes you feel better than a materialistic worldview. The emotional, the affective factor plays an enormous role here. The same is true of hatred toward the outside world. When a person hates something, the psychologist will not ask, “What is the object like?” but rather, “What is the person like?”—The need to hate lies within them, and the object then presents itself of its own accord. They must hate, just as one must eat at certain times. This is an insight that contemporary psychology has already arrived at.

[ 31 ] I have in my hand an issue of the journal *Die Zukunft* dated September 25, 1915. It contains an essay titled “Truths” by Franz Blei. In it, he discusses something similar to what I have just done. It then explains what Avenarius—Franz Blei is a student of Avenarius—established in his empirical criticism. This is summarized in individual sentences, and in these sentences you will find, expressed very beautifully, what can already be understood today as findings of psychological research: “Pure feelings must be theoretically assumed to preexist feelings laden with ideal components and are not experienceable. In practice, we know of no feeling that lacks ideal components.”—This sentence does not directly address what we need, so we will not dwell on it further. It is not necessary for us to dissect it; otherwise, we would have to delve into the terms used there. But another statement may be more important to us, namely this one: “Pure ideas are to be theoretically assumed as pre-existing in relation to humanly conceived ideas and are not purely experiential. In practice, we know of no idea (thought, image) that has not already served as a component of a feeling.”

[ 32 ] So, when an idea arises within us, we must ask ourselves: What feeling drove us to this idea? One person has the idea: The world can be broken down into atoms. — What feeling drove him to it? Another person has the idea: The world has a hierarchy, a ladder of levels. — What feeling drove him to it? So the emotional component is present everywhere. And when someone hates, what feeling compels him to do so? Blei says: “It is not ideas that evoke feelings, but rather pure feelings that take hold of the ideas that can satisfy those feelings.” For example: The social democrat hates the bourgeois. He hates him because he needs a certain amount of hatred, and he directs that toward the bourgeois. Or the anti-Semite needs hatred, and the Jew presents himself as a target for it. Franz Blei says in Point 8: “It is not the truth of an idea in itself that determines its acceptance by people, but its emotional content.”

[ 33 ] So you see, he already knows that! One does not become a materialistic monist because one recognizes the truth, but because one is predestined to it by one’s feelings; and one does not become a spiritualist because it is true, but because one is predestined to it by one’s feelings.

[ 34 ] The essay goes on to say: “Ideas are accepted whose probability is zero, while others are accepted together with—and at the same time as—those that are the exact opposite of the first. Consider the multiplicity of ‘Thou shalt not kill! ’ Here, only the believer is permitted to raise an objection—one to which Hegel once applied the term ‘the cunning of the Idea,’ which makes use of our passions to bring itself to fruition, causing people to believe they are acting on their own behalf when in reality they are acting on behalf of the ‘World Spirit.’ The Christian believer speaks of the inscrutability of God’s ways.”

[ 35 ] The entire essay, then, is about the fact that it is not ideas—the so-called truths—that move people, but rather the emotional content.

[ 36 ] Anyone who looks at the world today, as it has gradually developed, will find this to be quite true, and it is very significant that a school of philosophy such as Avenarius’s has come to realize that the social democrat does not hate the bourgeois because he finds him hateful, but because he himself needs a certain amount of hatred. The Avenarius school of philosophy has already come to this realization today.

[ 37 ] But let us consider what social consequences this, in turn, has. Just imagine for a moment—and one might say that this perspective, if one still possesses any genuine feeling at all, must turn into the most bitter pill to swallow—that you take these things seriously as truths; then you will have to admit to yourself: Truth no longer decides anything at all; rather, emotions are what decide. I am indeed led into a worldview, but only because I do not know the truth. This then leads into absolute despair. There is no escape. Just as there is no escape in criminal anthropology from admitting that a too-short occipital lobe makes a criminal, so too is there no escape in external psychology from the fact that people are driven by their emotions to what they call truth.

[ 38 ] Friedrich Nietzsche attempted to present this in the clearest, most significant, and most compelling way in the various forms of his worldview. This underlies the entire Nietzschean philosophy. I myself cited this passage in my book *Friedrich Nietzsche, a Fighter Against His Time*. The question at hand is: What is truth? And because Nietzsche did not accept the validity of this statement on the grounds of truth, but rather rejected it because of the entire construction of human subjectivity, Nietzsche therefore wanted to put an end to the fantasy [of the will to truth]—which also meant putting an end to Christianity. That is why he wrote *The Antichrist*; the next work was to be *The Immoralists*, and the whole series was then to be *The Will to Power*.

[ 39 ] Despair and absolute nihilism are precisely what such philosophical schools lead to with their insight that those who are predisposed to believe they can best relate to the world by clinging to matter become materialists; and those who believe they live through a dependence on the spiritual world become spiritualists out of their own inclination.

[ 40 ] — Well, my dear friends, to counter this, one need only do one thing: open the last chapter of *Theosophy*, where the path to knowledge is described, and take the fact on which it is based. For it does not assume at all that one must engage in logical speculation to arrive at these truths, but rather that it is necessary to shape and form the entire emotional world of the human being—the direction of one’s feelings—in a certain way. It addresses what underlies the search for truth. It tackles what psychology points toward but does not know how to handle. Why do we not refute materialism with logical arguments, why do we not justify spiritualism with logical arguments? Because all of that means nothing. Rather, something else must be demonstrated. It must be shown: You must do this and that with your emotions, so that you are no longer guided by the subjective, but... [gap].

[ 41 ] Take this chapter of *Theosophy* and you will see that it all comes down to objectifying the emotional life, and then you can see how this breaks through the impasse of the modern worldview... [The concluding sentences are no longer legible in the stenographic transcript.]