The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Fifth Lecture

[ 1 ] You have seen in the various reflections we have been engaging in for weeks now that these reflections are based on an effort to provide building blocks for understanding our, I would say, the difficult-to-understand times in which we find ourselves—times that demand our understanding—because, as we have repeatedly emphasized, what lies within our time can only develop in a way that is beneficial for humanity if a new understanding of things permeates at least a larger number of people. Now I would like to make these reflections as concrete as possible, in the sense that the word “concrete” and the concept of “concrete” have emerged for us through the discussions that have been ongoing for weeks now. It is indeed the case in human development that the great impulses underlying the course of history work through one personality or another. Thus, it is also evident in one personality or another just how powerful certain impulses are in a given age. Or perhaps to put it another way: how much success one impulse or another can have in taking effect.

[ 2 ] I have referred you to a man who died recently, and to whom I have attempted to relate various points here and in other reflections in order to characterize our time. Today, too, I would like to return to this man; I am referring to Franz Brentano, the philosopher who recently passed away in Zurich, who was, however, not really a “school philosopher” in the narrow sense, but who—to anyone who approaches him, even if only intellectually—must appear as the representative of the struggling humanity of the present, one might say, of the people of the present who are grappling with the world’s mysteries. Nor can one even say that Brentano was a one-sided philosopher; rather, as a philosopher, he truly expressed the essence of the human condition in its entirety. Indeed, there are hardly any profound, perplexing questions that touch the human soul—deeper, more perplexing questions—whose solution Franz Brentano would not have attempted to address. One might say: It was the entire scope of the human worldview that interested him. Little has been published, because he was actually quite reserved regarding everything he had printed. There is said to be a large body of unpublished work; that will surely reveal what Franz Brentano wrote down about his aspirations and struggles. Yet for those who possessed, so to speak, the gift not only of seeing in Franz Brentano’s soul what he expressed in his words, but also what was wrestling and striving there, the publication of his posthumous papers may not even reveal all that much that is new.

[ 3 ] Now I would like to try—I would like to say—in these troubled times, to present to your minds the very nature of the challenges faced by a great figure such as Franz Brentano. Franz Brentano, however, was certainly not a philosopher in the mold of contemporary philosophers; rather, he was—unlike contemporary philosophers—first and foremost a true thinker, and a thinker who did not wish to venture with his thinking, so to speak, into the unknown, but who sought to ground his thinking in the solid foundation of humanity’s intellectual development. That is why one of Franz Brentano’s first publications was a book on psychology—Aristotle’s theory of the soul—specifically on the concept of what Aristotle called the “noûs poëtikós.” This book, which has long been out of print, is, I would say, a magnificent achievement of thought for the broader present. Above all, it shows that Brentano was a person who was truly still capable of thinking—if by “thinking” we mean the elaboration of real concepts, the formation of real concepts. In particular, the second part of this book on Aristotle’s theory of the soul reveals Franz Brentano engaged in a thought process of such subtlety and sophistication that one no longer finds it at all today—and even at the time the book was written, it was very rare. For what is significant is that Franz Brentano’s concepts were still strong enough to truly capture the psychological—I would say—and to truly describe it. Today, when people speak of the soul, they largely have only empty phrases—not real ideas, not real concepts. Empty phrases that one can hold onto simply because they have arisen in the historical process of language, phrases with which one also believes that one is thinking something when using the words; but in reality, one thinks nothing at all when using those words.

[ 4 ] It is very strange that people who still claim to read Aristotle today dare to ignore spiritual science so completely. For in Aristotle, there is a genuine glimmer everywhere of that ancient knowledge which we have often described as a result of ancient atavistic clairvoyance. When we speak today of the human etheric body, the sensory body, the sensory soul, the intellectual or emotional soul, and the conscious soul, these terms are coined to describe realities of spiritual-soul life that are only now beginning to come to human consciousness again.

[ 5 ] In Aristotle’s work, there are certainly expressions that he can no longer make sense of, but which serve as a reminder that he inherited them from a time when these individual parts of the soul were still recognized. With Aristotle, these concepts have become purely abstract. And Franz Brentano strove to gain clarity regarding these concepts precisely in the work of that ancient thinker, Aristotle—in whose thought, I would say, these concepts are precisely disappearing from the history of human development. Aristotle distinguishes the vegetative soul. With this, he roughly corresponds to what we call the etheric body in human beings. He then distinguishes the sensitive soul, the *aesthetikon*, which we call the body of sensation. Then he has the corresponding concept for what we call the soul of sensation, *orektikon*. He also has a corresponding term for what we call the intellectual or emotional soul: kinetikon; and for what we call the conscious soul: dianoetikon. These concepts are present in Aristotle; he simply lacks a precise understanding of these realities. This results in something unclear, something—I would say—abstract at the same time in Aristotle. All of this also applies to the aforementioned book by Franz Brentano, but it is, after all, a book in which genuine thinking still prevails—such thinking that anyone who has once devoted themselves to it, as Brentano did, could no longer arrive at the foolish view that the soul-spiritual realm is merely a function or a product of physical-bodily development. There was, I might say, too much in the concepts that Franz Brentano formulated on the basis of Aristotle to allow him to fall into the vice of modern materialism.

[ 6 ] It now became Franz Brentano’s primary endeavor to gain clarity about the human soul in general. Franz Brentano became, above all, a psychologist and a researcher of the soul; but, starting from the study of the soul, he engaged with the most comprehensive worldviews. I have already pointed out to you that of Franz Brentano’s entire work on the study of the soul—his entire “Psychology,” which was intended to span four or five volumes—only the first volume was published. And anyone who knows Franz Brentano well can certainly understand why the subsequent volumes were never published. Brentano simply did not want to—and, given his entire disposition, could not—turn to spiritual science. Had he, however, wished to answer the questions that arose for him after the first volume of *Psychology*, he would have needed spiritual science. He could not find it. As an honest man, he therefore refrained from writing the subsequent volumes; it remained at the first volume. The entire undertaking thus remained a fragment.

[ 7 ] Now I would like to draw attention to two points that represent puzzles Brentano grappled with, but which at the same time represent puzzles that, in essence, every thinking person today must consciously grapple with—puzzles with which all of humanity—insofar as it does not lead a life as dull as that of an animal—struggles, but unconsciously; unconsciously, either by striving to seemingly find solutions to these puzzles in one direction or another, or by suffering, to a greater or lesser extent, from the inability to achieve anything in the directions pointed out by these puzzles. Franz Brentano reflected upon and investigated the human soul. Now, if one investigates the human soul in the way that science does, and thereby finds the path from the human soul to the spirit, then one can stick to the most self-evident and conceive of the activities of the human soul as a threefold division: thinking or imagining, feeling, and willing; for these are indeed the three members of human soul life: thinking, feeling, and willing. But one can only arrive at any satisfaction regarding thinking, feeling, and willing in the human soul if, through spiritual science, one finds the path into the spiritual reality with which the human soul is connected. If one does not find this path—and Franz Brentano, after all, could not find it—then one feels, in a sense, completely isolated within the soul with one’s thinking, feeling, and willing. At best, thinking can provide images of an external, purely spatial, material reality; at best, feeling can evoke displeasure or pleasure in response to what takes place in spatial, physical reality; and volition can be a source of satisfaction for the physical human being—his desires and aversions. But through thinking, feeling, and willing, one stands in no connection with a reality in which the human being can, in a sense, feel secure. That is why Franz Brentano said to himself: “For the consideration of human soul life, the division of the soul into thinking, feeling, and willing—or into imagination, feeling, and willing—actually gives me nothing; after all, I remain within the soul with thinking, feeling, and willing.” — That is why he structures the life of the soul differently. And the way he structures it is characteristic. He also distinguishes a tripartite division of the life of the soul, but not one based on imagination, feeling, and volition; rather, he distinguishes between imagination, judgment, and the inner world of emotional stirrings. Thus, according to Brentano, the life of the soul is divided into imagination, judgment, and the world of emotional movements. Imagination, at first, does not take us beyond the soul. When we imagine something, what is imagined remains within our soul. We also believe it refers to something, but it is, so to speak, not settled whether what is imagined actually refers to anything. As long as we remain within the realm of representation, a figment of the imagination is just as much a representation as that which refers to reality. Even when I link representations together, this does not necessarily mean that I am in the world of reality. The tree is a representation; green is a representation. “The tree is green” links two representations. But this does not mean that when I imagine “the tree is green,” I am standing within reality, for this green tree could also be a figment of my imagination. I am only standing within reality, Brentano said, when I make a judgment; and in fact, I am already making a judgment—albeit a veiled one—when I link ideas in this way, such as: the tree is green. For I do not mean by this that I am merely linking the representations “tree” and “green” with one another; rather, I actually mean: there is a green tree. But there I move over to existence; I do not remain within my representation. There is a difference between the consciousness: “The tree is green,” and the consciousness: “There is a green tree.” The first is mere imagination; the second is something grounded in the soul’s act of affirmation or rejection, so that in mere imagination one is occupied solely with the soul itself. In judgment, one is dealing with an activity of the soul that, however, relates to the external world by affirming or rejecting. “A green tree is” is not merely the acknowledgment that I am imagining it, but that it exists independently of my imagination. “A centaur is not” is the rejection of the idea of a being that is half human, half animal; that is judgment. This is the second activity of the soul.

[ 8 ] The third thing Brentano distinguishes in the soul is the emotional movement. Just as judgment is based on approval and rejection, so the emotional movement is always based on love or hate, on approval or disapproval. Something is sympathetic to me, or something is unsympathetic to me. And Brentano does not distinguish volition from mere emotional movement. This is very characteristic; it points to the deep mysteries of the Brentanian soul. It would take us too far afield to elaborate on this, but I will simply say that Brentano does not distinguish between the mere feeling of approval or disapproval and volition; rather, for him, the two merge into one another. When I will something, Brentano examines only that I love it; when I do not will it, he examines that I hate it. This, then, is the third distinction he makes within the soul: loving and hating, affirming and rejecting, and imagination in general.

[ 9 ] On this occasion, Brentano truly addressed the two greatest mysteries of human spiritual life: the mystery of truth and the mystery of goodness. What is true? What is good? For when we grapple with the justification of judgment, we must ask: Why is it that we accept one thing and reject another? What we accept, we count as truth; what we reject, we count as falsehood. There we find ourselves caught up in the problem, in the mystery: What is truth, after all? — When we look at the emotions, we find ourselves caught up in the enigma of good and evil, or good and bad. For it is quite clear that in the kind of recognition found in love—whereby Brentano means love as the recognition we bestow upon an action we call good; hatred is the rejection of an action we call evil—it is in this loving and hating, these emotions, that ethics, morality, and all justice lie. The question of good and evil weighed heavily on Brentano’s soul as he set before it the essence of human emotions, of loving and hating.

[ 10 ] Now it is truly fascinating to follow a man like Brentano as he struggles for decades to find an answer to such a question: Where does the justification for true and false, for acceptance and rejection in judgment, come from? — You can go through Franz Brentano’s published writings, and the unpublished ones, which will surely appear later, will offer nothing different —; you will find throughout that the only thing Brentano brings to bear in answering the question: What is true? What, then, justifies acceptance in judgment? — is what he calls the evidence of judgment, the self-evidence; of course, he means inner self-evidence. If, so to speak, I can bring an inner mental fact—for everything I can experience is ultimately expressed in this way—before the eye of my mind in such a way that I can fully grasp it and either agree with it or, having fully grasped it, reject it; in other words, if I judge with inner sight and not with inner blindness, then that gives me truth. Franz Brentano does not arrive at anything else. And it is precisely significant that a person—who is capable of thinking what others currently cannot—struggles for decades thereafter to find an answer to the question: What entitles me to acknowledge or reject something as true or false? Evidence, inner self-evidence. — This is what he arrives at.

[ 11 ] For many years in Vienna, he lectured on what was known in Austrian universities as “practical philosophy.” Practical philosophy was actually understood to mean a kind of moral doctrine, a kind of ethics. And just as Brentano was required to teach it, it was offered to aspiring lawyers as a required course—a mandatory lecture that they were required to attend. In this course on practical philosophy, Franz Brentano usually did not speak so much about “practical philosophy” as, I would say, about the question: How does one come to recognize anything as good or to regard anything as bad in the first place? — Now, with his peculiar views in this regard, Franz Brentano did not have an entirely easy time of it, for, as you know, the concept of the good has always been a subject of philosophical reflection. And there have also been attempts to answer the question: What right does one have to regard one thing as good and another as bad? — or to answer the question: From what does the good flow, from what source does the good flow, and from what source does the bad or evil flow? — It is fair to say that this question has been approached in every possible way. And during the time when Brentano attempted—if I were to express myself in a scholarly, pedantic manner, I would say, to seek the criterion of the good—during that time, a peculiar moral doctrine prevailed around him: the Herbartian one.

[ 12 ] Herbart, who was one of Kant’s successors, held the view—particularly with regard to ethics, a view shared by others, though he expressed it most brilliantly—that everything ethical is actually based on the fact that we find certain circumstances in human life pleasing, while others are displeasing to us. And those circumstances in human life that please us are the good ones; those that displease us are the bad ones. Thus, human beings possess, so to speak, a natural capacity—immediately available to them—to take pleasure in the good and to take displeasure in the bad. Herbart says, for example: “Inner freedom is something that pleases us under all circumstances when it appears in a person.” What is inner freedom? Well, a person is inwardly free when he acts in accordance with the ideas he can form about his actions, when his actions and his ideas are in harmony. So if, roughly speaking, A thinks of B: “You’re actually a bad guy”—but speaks flattering words to him—this is not an expression of inner freedom, nor is there any harmony between action and thought. The idea—the ethical idea—of inner freedom is based on this harmony between imagination and action. —Another ethical idea is perfection, which consists in the fact that when we do something that we could do better, it displeases us. But when we do something in such a way that, compared to every other possible action we could take, it is the better, the more perfect one, then it pleases us. Herbart distinguishes five such ideas, such ethical ideas. What is essential for us is that Herbart bases ethics on the pleasure and displeasure that arise directly in the soul.

[ 13 ] Another foundation of ethics is the Kantian one, based on the so-called categorical imperative. It is said to consist in our considering an action to be good if we can tell ourselves that this action could become a general human law. This categorical imperative leads at every turn to impossibilities—in fact, to empty propositions—and it is very easy to see that even the example Kant himself uses does not actually convey any ethical content. For example, Kant says: If someone entrusts you with something to keep safe, and you appropriate it for yourself, then that cannot become a universal law. For if everyone were to appropriate what is entrusted to them for safekeeping, human coexistence would be impossible. — Now, you can easily see that the good cannot rest on keeping or returning some entrusted property that does not belong to one, but that other sources, other reasons, must be decisive.

[ 14 ] Franz Brentano rejected everything that had come to be regarded as ethical views in modern times. He sought a deeper source, for he said: “Liking and disliking are, in fact, the basis only of an aesthetic judgment.” When it comes to beauty, we can rightly say: that which pleases us is beautiful, and that which displeases us is ugly. But we must certainly sense that ethics and morality require a different impulse than the one that governs our perception of beauty alone. — This is what Brentano told himself, and this is how he intended to ground his ethics for jurists every year. And then he also publicly articulated this foundation of ethics in his very fine lecture. The lecture is titled “On the Natural Sanction for Law and Morality.” The very occasion that prompted Franz Brentano to deliver this lecture is already quite interesting. The famous legal scholar Ihering advocated for the fluidity of legal concepts within an association—the fluidity of legal concepts, that is, the view that law is not actually something about which one can speak in an absolute sense, but rather something that is constantly changing in the course of human history. One would actually have no way of speaking of things other than in a historical sense. If we go back to the time when cannibalism was common, we have no right to say that our concepts of law or morality—that one should not eat people—would have been applicable to that era. That would have been wrong back then. Back then, cannibalism was, in fact, the norm; it is only in the course of time that this has changed. We would therefore have to sympathize in that era not with those who did not practice cannibalism, but rather we would have to sympathize directly with the cannibals. Well, that is the most radical case. But you can already see what Ihering is getting at. According to Ihering, what matters is that concepts of law and morality change in the course of human development—that they are, in other words, fluid. This did not make any sense to Brentano at all. He wanted to find a certain absolute source of morality. He equated truth with evidence; that which is immediately and clearly evident to the mind is true. Thus, the correct judgment is true. What is good? To this question, Brentano—again, truly after decades of struggle—found an answer that is, I would say, equally abstract. He said: Good and evil flow from the emotions. The emotions are rooted in love and hate. The good is that which is loved correctly; what is lovable is the good. Thus, that which is loved by a person in the correct way is the good. And now he endeavors to show how, in certain individual cases, a person can love correctly. Just as one should judge correctly regarding truth, so one should love correctly regarding the good.

[ 15 ] I do not wish to go into details, but I want to emphasize above all that Franz Brentano, after decades of struggle, has indeed distilled the Good into a simple formula: it is that which is lovable; it is that which is done out of true love. An abstraction! For with Brentano, the great insight is really not what he arrived at. For you will say: these are actually meager results: “The true is that which follows from the evidence of judgment,” “The good is that which is rightly loved.” They are meager things, you will say. But what is characteristic is the energy, the seriousness of the striving; for you will truly not find, in any other contemporary philosopher, such Aristotelian acumen in his arguments and, at the same time, such a resonance of his entire inner life in everything he said. These meager results, however, only truly become valuable when one traces them in a person who is wrestling with these very questions. But it was precisely through this kind of inner life that Franz Brentano was a representative of intellectual striving. One could cite many contemporary figures—philosophers—who have already attempted to answer the questions: “What is the true?” and “What is the good?” Precisely among the most highly esteemed of them, one would find that the answers are far emptier than Brentano’s—even though to you, who have been engaged in the study of the humanities for years, Brentano’s answers must seem so meager. Brentano, too, I might say, shared the fate of the struggling thinkers of the present, for he was little understood in his struggle.

[ 16 ] If one now examines Franz Brentano’s struggle to find answers to the questions: “What is true?” What is good?—one finds in him, more clearly and vividly than anywhere else, precisely what must be lacking in a person of the present day who refuses to engage with the science of the spirit; for it is precisely Franz Brentano who has gone the farthest among all those who have refused to engage with the science of the spirit. He has gone the farthest; that is why he is so characteristic. Nowhere within the broad scope of contemporary philosophical endeavor will you find the possibility of answering the questions: What is true? What is good? — You will, of course, find plenty of confusion. Interesting examples of such confusion include those of Windelband. Windelband, who taught for many years as a professor in Heidelberg and also in Freiburg, could find nothing in the soul that leads one to acknowledge something as true or to reject it as false. Therefore, he based truth on assent—that is, in a sense, on love. A judgment that we can, in a certain sense, love is true, and a judgment that we must hate would therefore be false. Hidden love and hate are also embedded in truth and falsehood. Among the Herbartians, you see that what is ethically good and ethically bad is also judged according to pleasure and displeasure, a principle that Franz Brentano applies only to the beautiful and the ugly.

[ 17 ] So there is a great deal of confusion. There is no way to gain any clarity about these fundamental conditions of the soul. It’s enough to drive one to despair. If one engages with contemporary philosophers, one can indeed sometimes despair. Of course, they raise the questions, and they sometimes believe they are providing answers, but it is precisely when they try to provide answers that things are at their worst, because then one realizes everywhere that these are merely superficial answers, regardless of whether they are affirmative or negative.

[ 18 ] Now it is interesting that Franz Brentano stands everywhere—I would say, precisely at the point where, if he were to go just a little further, he would be on the right track. For no one who holds today’s views on human nature can answer the questions: “What is true?” What is false?”—no one who merely holds today’s views of human nature. There is no way to hold today’s views of human nature on the one hand and, on the other hand, answer the question: “What does truth mean in human life?”—Nor is there any way to answer the question: “What is good?”—if one holds the view of human nature that is common today. That is simply not possible. We will see why in a moment. For now, however, I would like to draw your attention to what, I would say, misleads people in both directions: that is beauty.

[ 19 ] For the Herbartians, the Good is merely a subdivision of the Beautiful—namely, the Beautiful as it manifests itself as a characteristic of human actions. If one raises the question: “What, in fact, is the Beautiful?”—then it will be immediately apparent that this Beautiful truly has a rather strong subjective character. Nothing is more hotly debated among people than beauty. What one person finds beautiful, another no longer finds beautiful, and so on. One might say: The most curious aspect of human life actually unfolds in these disputes over the beautiful or the ugly, the artistically justified or the unjustified. After all, the entire judgment of beauty and ugliness, of what is artistically justified or unjustified, is based solely on human nature itself. One will never be able to discover any general law governing beauty. Nor should one seek to discover it, for there could be nothing more nonsensical than a general law governing beauty or ugliness. There could be nothing more nonsensical. One may not like a work of art, but one can come to appreciate what the artist intended—which one had not previously understood—and one can then find it very beautiful and realize that one did not find it beautiful before simply because one did not understand it. This aesthetic judgment—aesthetic acceptance or rejection—is truly something justifiably subjective.

[ 20 ] It would take a very long time if I were to substantiate in detail the validity of the claim I just made, but as you know, there is a certain validity to the saying: “There’s no accounting for taste.” One either has a taste for something or one does not; one either already has it or has not yet acquired it. Where does this come from? You see, it stems from the fact that in every perception of that to which we apply the idea of beauty, there is actually a dual perception at work. This is the crucial fact that emerges from research in the humanities. If you are at all prompted to subsume something under the idea of beauty, then your perception of the object in question is actually a dual perception. You perceive an object that you are looking at in this way, first of all, because it exerts a certain effect on you—on your physical body and your etheric body. This is, I would say, the one current that flows from the beautiful object to you—the current that acts upon the physical and etheric bodies; regardless of whether you are looking at a painting, a sculpture, or anything else, the effect occurs on the physical and etheric bodies. And in the physical and etheric bodies, you experience what is out there. Furthermore, you also experience what is out there through your I and your astral body. But you do not experience it in such a way that you experience the latter in a single act with the former; rather, you actually experience a duality. On the one hand, you experience the impression on your physical and etheric bodies, and on the other hand, you experience the impression on your I and your astral body. You actually experience a dual perception. And depending on whether you are able to bring the one into harmony or disharmony with the other, you find the object in question beautiful or ugly. If you experience one thing for your physical body and your etheric body on the one hand, and another for your “I” and your astral body on the other, and you cannot unite these two things—if they do not resonate with one another—then you cannot understand the work of art in question, and it does not appear beautiful to you. Beauty lies, under all circumstances, in the fact that, on the one hand, your “I” and astral body, and on the other hand, your physical and etheric bodies, resonate together and come into harmony with one another. An inner process, an inner event, must take place for you to experience something as beautiful. Otherwise, you cannot experience beauty. — Consider how many possibilities there are in the experience of beauty, how many different kinds of harmony and disharmony are possible. Thus, beauty is, first and foremost, something subjective, something to be experienced within.

[ 21 ] What, then, is the true reality? In true reality, you are also faced with an object, a thing; but the effect it has is initially directed at your physical and etheric bodies. And then you, for your part, must perceive the effect on your physical and etheric bodies. Please note the difference! When you are faced with a beautiful object, you have a dual perception; beauty acts upon your physical and etheric bodies as well as upon your I and astral body, and inwardly you must establish harmony. Everything that can ever be the object of the True must act upon the physical and etheric bodies, and you must then perceive inwardly this effect that is exerted upon you. In the case of the Beautiful, you do not perceive the effect on the physical and etheric bodies; it remains unconscious. Likewise, on the other hand, you do not bring the effect on the I and the astral body down into consciousness; rather, it resonates back and forth in the subconscious in relation to what is the object of the True. It is necessary that you now devote yourself to the physical and etheric bodies and find in the I and the astral body the reflection of what is taking place within them. So, when it comes to the True, you have in the I and the astral body what you have in the physical and etheric bodies. When it comes to the Beautiful, you have something different in the I and the astral body. Thus, the question of the True is directed toward the human being, insofar as the physical and etheric bodies appear as the lowest members of this being. In the physical body, we experience only the outer world of appearances; in the etheric body, we experience solely that which brings harmony with the entire cosmos. Truth is therefore anchored in the etheric body, and anyone who does not acknowledge the etheric body can never answer the question: Where does truth reside? — They can answer the question: “Where does sensory appearance reside?” — but not the question concerning truth. For the sensory appearance that resides in the physical body is only transformed into truth within the etheric body. Thus, the question concerning truth can be answered only by those who acknowledge the full effect of the external object on both the physical body and the etheric body.

[ 22 ] If Franz Brentano had wanted to provide an answer to the question, “What is truth?”, he would have had to examine the entire relationship in which the human being stands to the world through his etheric body. He cannot do this because he does not acknowledge the etheric body. Therefore, he has no choice but to offer, so to speak, a meager judgment, a meager word: “evidence.” For the exploration of truth is one and the same as the explanation of the relationships between the human etheric body and the cosmos. We are connected to the cosmos by expressing the truth, precisely because we are connected to the cosmos through the etheric body. It is precisely for this reason that the experience of the etheric body must remain with us for several days after death. For if it did not, the truth would be lost to us during the time between death and a new birth. We live on Earth to cultivate our union with the truth, and in a sense we carry the experience of truth with us by living for several days after our death within the great tableau of the etheric body. — Thus, investigations into the human etheric body would constitute the very thing that must answer the question: What is truth?

[ 23 ] The other question Franz Brentano sought to answer was: What is the good? — Just as a human being must allow the external object—which becomes the object of truth—to act upon his physical and etheric bodies, so too must that which is to become the impulse of good or, conversely, the impulse of evil, act upon the “I” and the astral body. They cannot yet be conceived; they must now be conceived by being reflected in the etheric and physical bodies. We have concepts of good and evil only insofar as what takes place in the “I” and the astral body is reflected in the physical and etheric bodies, insofar as we gain images of what is formless in the astral body and the “I.” But the immediate effect that manifests itself as good and evil takes place in the “I” and the astral body. Therefore, anyone who does not acknowledge an “I” and an astral body has no idea at all where the impulse of good or evil acts within the human being. Such a person can therefore only state: “Good is that which is loved in the right way.” But love is something that takes place in the astral body. One has access to the concrete, the real, only by examining what takes place in the human astral body and in the “I.” Now, in its present state of development, the human “I” merely reveals how that which lives in the astral body finds expression in instincts and emotions. As you know, the human “I” is not very far along in its development; the astral body is more advanced. But the astral body does not come to a person’s consciousness in the same way as what takes place in their ego. That is why moral impulses also come so little to a person’s consciousness; or rather, consciousness does not help much if the astral impulses are not present; so that for the present-day human being, the primordial moral impulses are actually located in the astral body, just as the forces of truth are located in the etheric body. Through the astral body, human beings are connected to the spiritual world; and in the spiritual world are the impulses of goodness. It is also in the spiritual world that what constitutes the good and evil in human beings takes place. What we know of these is only their reflection in the etheric body and the physical body.

[ 24 ] So you see, true concepts of the True, the Good, and the Beautiful will only be possible when one takes into account the true essential elements of the human being. For one cannot form a concept of truth without taking into account the essence of the etheric body. And one cannot form a concept of beauty unless one knows how, in the experience of beauty, the etheric body and the astral body—with the “I” and the physical body playing a more subordinate role—vibrate together internally. One cannot form a true concept of goodness unless one knows that this goodness essentially consists of active forces within the astral body.

[ 25 ] One might say, then, that Franz Brentano went as far as the gate, and his answers can really only be understood if one relates them to something higher than what he found. They therefore remained meager in his work. Where he spoke of the truth having to shine forth in inner clarity before the eye of the soul, he should actually have said: One truly perceives the truth only when one succeeds in grasping judgments in such a way that one detaches them from the physical body—that one detaches the etheric body from the physical body. Now, do you recall how I have always maintained the position that every scholar of the spiritual sciences must uphold: The first form of clairvoyance is, in fact, truly pure thinking. Anyone who grasps a pure thought is already clairvoyant. It is just that ordinary human thinking is not pure thinking, but rather thinking filled with sensory images and phantasms. But anyone who conceives a pure thought is, in fact, already clairvoyant, for a pure thought can only be conceived in the etheric body. Nor can one ever grasp the Good without being clearly aware that the Good lives in that which is permeated by the human astral body—or, rather, by the “I.”

[ 26 ] Franz Brentano, in a most insightful way—precisely as he was about to speak of the original source of the good—pointed out a number of significant things, such as the fact that Aristotle had already said: “One can really only speak of the good to someone who has already made the good a habit.” But consider: if this statement were true, it would actually be terrible; for the one who has already made the good a habit does not really need anyone to lecture him about the good in the first place, since he does it out of habit; why, then, should one have to teach him about the good? But if this saying of Aristotle were true, one would have to say, on the other hand: For those who do not have goodness as a habit, it does not help to be lectured on goodness. So all this talk about goodness would actually be nonsensical if Aristotle’s saying were true. Why should we even establish an ethics at all? But that, too, is one of those questions that cannot be satisfactorily answered unless it is posed and answered within the humanities.

[ 27 ] We certainly act—that is, we act as human beings in the world—not on the basis of pure concepts or pure ideas, although, as you can read in *The Philosophy of Freedom*, only action based on pure concepts and ideas is free action. But we do not act on the basis of pure concepts and ideas; rather, we act out of drives, passions, and emotions just as much as we do out of pure ideas and ideals—the latter perhaps even very rarely. One gains insight into this matter by referring to what you will find expounded in the little booklet *The Education of the Child from the Standpoint of Spiritual Science*, which I have subsequently elaborated upon in other lectures.

[ 28 ] In the first stage of life—up to the time of tooth replacement, that is, up to the age of seven—and in the second stage—up to sexual maturity—we actually act primarily under the influence of instincts, emotions, and the like. For it is only upon reaching sexual maturity that we actually become capable of forming concepts of good and evil. One can now say that, in this sense, Aristotle is right, in that one must concede to him: The impulses toward good or evil that we already possess within us during the first two periods of life—that is, up to the age of 14—actually govern us more or less throughout our entire lives; we can modify or suppress them, but they are already there, and they remain present throughout our lives. The question now is simply: What good does it do that, once we have reached sexual maturity, we begin to grasp moral principles—to rationalize our instincts, as it were? What good does that do? — It helps in two respects; and here we enter a realm where, if you perceive things correctly, you will very soon realize how accurate and significant this understanding is in the present. Consider the following: suppose a person, by hereditary disposition, is what one might call well-disposed, so that by the time he has reached sexual maturity, he has, as it were, developed nothing but good dispositions from a state of indeterminacy. He actually becomes a very good person. I do not wish to examine now why he has become a good person, but I merely wish to draw attention to the outward appearance. He was born to two good parents, had good grandparents, and so on; all of this has unfolded in such a way that he has developed nothing but good predispositions, so that he instinctively does what is good. But let us suppose: After reaching sexual maturity, it becomes apparent that he now has no desire to rationalize his instincts for the good or to form concepts about these instincts. Let’s assume this phenomenon arises from some cause, which I do not wish to discuss further. So, up until the age of 14, he has developed good instincts, but now he shows no desire to express these instincts in conceptual terms. He does indeed have a desire to do good; it is not in his nature to “strongly do evil”—he already does good—but if one tries to point out to him, “This is good, that is evil,” he says, “I don’t care whether it’s good or evil.” — He leaves it at that. He has no desire to rationalize his instincts or translate them into intellectual terms. Now imagine: he has reached sexual maturity; he’s having children—regardless of whether he’s a man or a woman—he’s having children. The children will not have the same instincts that he has if he has not transformed these instincts into concepts; rather, the children will already exhibit uncertainties in their instincts. That is the significant point. So, on their own, the person in question could manage with their instincts, but they will not be able to pass on effective instincts to their children unless they consciously engage with what is good and evil. And he certainly will not be able to carry over any instincts for good and evil into his next earthly life if, in his previous earthly life, he did not engage in forming concepts of good and evil. It really is just like this: A plant can become a pretty herb. If it is prevented from blooming, no new plant will be able to grow from it. As a single plant, just as it is, it can certainly serve a purpose in some way; but it must come to bloom and bear fruit if a new plant is to arise from it. In the same way, a human being can be self-sufficient with drives and instincts; but he fails his physical and spiritual posterity if he remains at the level of mere instinct. You see, this is where the matter becomes very significant. And this insight can only arise, in turn, on the foundation of spiritual science.

[ 29 ] It could well happen, then, that a social community might say: “Goodness is based solely on instincts!” — Well, that can even be proven. But anyone who says this and therefore wants to do away with all conceptual understanding of ethics would be like a person who says: “Yes, I’m interested in cultivating my field this year, but why should I save seeds for next year!” — He would let everything that grew this year be consumed. When it comes to the field, people don’t do this because they understand how the present is connected to the future. In spiritual life, in the development of humanity itself, people unfortunately do act this way. And you see, here lie the very things that will lead, time and again, to the most bitter misunderstandings, because people never want to grasp the various points of view; rather, once they have viewed something one-sidedly, they cling to that one-sidedness. Of course, one can prove that the impulse toward the good must lie within the instincts. — Certainly, but these instincts—if they are to be impulses toward the good—act only in the ego and astral bodies. However, if they are to act there as instincts, they must be carried over from a previous life. Therefore, without basing one’s understanding on spiritual science, one cannot form any concepts regarding human coexistence—neither in the present nor in the course of historical development.

[ 30 ] If we move on from these fundamental points I have just outlined to something even higher, it might be the following: For the most part, the people living today are, on average, in their second incarnation since the beginning of the Christian era, so to speak. In their first life, it was sufficient for them to absorb the Christ impulse as it came to them from their surroundings, from their immediate environment. Now that they have returned, this is no longer enough, and so people are gradually losing the Christ impulse. And if the people living today were to return without the renewal of the Christ impulse, they would have lost it entirely. That is why it is once again so necessary for this Christ impulse to take root in the human soul in the way that spiritual science presents it—a science that does not rely on any historical evidence, but rather reveals the Christ impulse on the basis of the principles that have been discussed here repeatedly. In this way, it connects with the human soul so that it can truly be carried over into the ages when new generations of people will come. But precisely for this reason, we are currently in a kind of crisis, even with regard to the Christ impulse. We cannot receive it as we did in our first incarnation, for we are too far removed from the historical context. The tradition is over. Those people are honest who say: There is no historical evidence for the historical Christ. — Spiritual science shows how the Christ impulse is present in human development. Spiritual science can restore the reality of the Christ impulse. But it must emerge within human development in the way that it can emerge from spiritual science. This is simply demonstrated by the outward course of present-day existence.

[ 31 ] After all, isn’t it true that much, much of what people have experienced and lived through over the centuries has been shipwrecked in the last three years? And we are all suffering greatly, especially when we truly reflect on what we’ve had to endure over the last three years. But what, exactly, has suffered the greatest shipwreck? What has suffered the most: surely one is allowed to raise that question. Christianity has suffered the most! As strange as it may sound to some: Christianity has suffered the most. Wherever you look, you see how Christianity is, in essence, being denied today—one might even say so. Some things are a direct mockery of Christianity, even if we are not brave enough to admit it to ourselves. Is it really a Christian idea—one from which so many people today, the vast majority of humanity, expect the greatest good—when we say: “Every people should govern itself”? I do not wish to say anything at all about whether this is justified or unjustified, but only about whether it is Christian or un-Christian. Is this a Christian idea? No, it is not a Christian idea at all. For a Christian idea is that nations communicate with one another through human beings. Precisely what is said about the supposed freedom of individual nations—which cannot be realized anyway—is the most unchristian thing one can imagine today. For Christianity means understanding for all people across the entire earth. It even means understanding for all people in realms that would not be on earth, if they could be found. And yet, not even since the Mystery of Golgotha has it come to pass that people who call themselves Christians communicate with one another across the earth—even in the most superficial sense! This is a terrible shipwreck, especially with regard to Christian feeling and sensibility, which can then lead to something as grotesque as I mentioned recently, where someone speaks of a “German religion” or “German piety”—which makes just as much sense as if someone were to speak of a “German sun” or a “German moon.” But you see, these things are connected to far-reaching social views—or misperceptions. I have told you that there is actually no such thing as a “state philosophy” today, that even the best among those who speak of “state philosophy” today do so as if the state were an organism and people were its cells. Anyone who comes up with such a comparison already shows that they are very, very far removed from real concepts in this field. That is what we need above all else: concepts that truly penetrate reality. I have often said that what we lack—and what has caused our chaos—is that we live in abstractions, in concepts divorced from reality. How could we not live in concepts divorced from reality when we are so alienated from one aspect of reality in the present that we do not acknowledge it at all—namely, the spirit, the spiritual aspect of reality. One will only be able to grasp the concept of reality once one acknowledges the spirit in its life and activity. There is something tragic about having to be a spirit such as Franz Brentano was until his death—something tragic because, so to speak, there was a sense within Franz Brentano’s soul of the directions the human soul of the present should take. Had spiritual science been brought to him, he would have spoken of it in much the same way as he spoke of Plotinus. He would have spoken in such a way that he would have regarded spiritual science as folly, as something entirely unscientific. This is, of course, the case with many whose spiritual flight is hindered by the fact that they still live in the physical bodies of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. But that is precisely why we are in a crisis of our times, one that we must overcome. There is, of course, a good reason for this, for we grow stronger precisely because we have something to overcome.

[ 32 ] And, in particular, what is necessary—I would say—for a revision of all our legal concepts, our moral concepts, our social concepts, and our political concepts will only be able to take root among humanity once the reality-filled concepts of the science of the spirit are understood. For it is precisely a thinker like Franz Brentano who shows us: jurisprudence hangs in the air. For one cannot answer the question: What is law? What is morality? — unless one can address that which lives in the human astral body, that is, in the supersensible part of the human being. The same is true of religious concepts, and likewise of political concepts. Indeed, if one holds unreal concepts in the realm of external nature, in the realm of material reality, this becomes apparent very quickly. Consider what a bridge built by engineers with unreal concepts of bridge construction would look like: such bridges would simply collapse. People would not tolerate that for long. But in the moral, social, and political spheres, one can hold unrealistic concepts without it becoming apparent right away. For even when it does become apparent, people fail to grasp where the connection lies. We are now living with the consequences of these unrealistic concepts; but how far have people come in understanding this connection? Truly, not very far! This is what must so deeply move the mind that is witnessing the present difficult times! One almost considers every moment not devoted to the grave circumstances of the day to be lost. But the more one devotes one’s energy—and time itself—to these circumstances, the more one will realize how little people today are actually inclined to address what really matters. But healing will only come when we address what truly matters: when we come to understand the connection between the unrealistic ideas that humanity has developed for so long and the events of the present. Because the concepts of spiritual life—which find their expression in the social realm—have been so unreal for centuries, much like the concepts of engineers relating to bridges that were bound to collapse, that is why we live in today’s chaotic times. If only we could feel how necessary it is to find concepts rooted in reality—concepts steeped in reality—in all fields that have anything to do with the social, the political, or cultural life in general! If one seeks to build upon jurisprudence, the social sciences, or politics—if one seeks to imbue the human soul with the religious ideas that were commonplace up until 1914—then one will build nothing of significance. Then one will very soon see once again how little can be built with such approaches. To unlearn, truly to unlearn—that is what people must do. But people are so reluctant to unlearn; they are so unwilling to engage in this process.

[ 33 ] Consider what I have just said with regard to Franz Brentano as the expression—I would say—of a genuine admiration for this exemplary figure. It is precisely in such a figure that one sees how one must strive if one is to seek an impulse that will carry us into the future of humanity. For Franz Brentano is an extraordinarily interesting figure, but not one who provides concepts, ideas, feelings, or impulses that could carry us into the future. It is very interesting that Franz Brentano is said to have asserted a few weeks before his death that he would succeed in proving the existence of God. — He regarded proving the existence of God, in a sense, as the goal of his scholarly life. Well, he probably did not succeed, for otherwise he would have had to become a follower of spiritual science before his death. The existence of God was still provable up until the time of the Mystery of Golgotha, up until the 33rd year of humanity’s life, which descended from above. Since that time—since humanity has regressed from the 32nd, 31st, and 30th years, and now down to the 27th year—the existence of God can no longer be proven through thinking, but can only be found by delving into spiritual science. It really cannot be compared in any way to the program of any other movement when we speak of spiritual science as a necessity—I have emphasized this many times—but the facts of human development themselves compel us to embrace this spiritual science. It is a necessity in and of itself.

[ 34 ] That is, above all, what I wanted to present to your souls again today from a certain perspective. Today, as an exception, I have presented you with a structure based on a variety of philosophical concepts. But I believe you would be doing yourselves a disservice if you were reluctant to engage with such things. For what is most urgently needed by humanity today is a commitment to clear concepts. If you wish to pursue spiritual science, or anthroposophy, or theosophy—whatever you choose to call it—in the same way that so many do today, living in concepts that are as unclear and confused as possible, then you will indeed be able to serve selfish needs well: you will cater to many a striving for an inner sensual pleasure of the soul. But that is not what one should strive for in today’s difficult times. What one should strive for in the present age—especially if one is a devotee of spiritual science—is to contribute, above all spiritually, to what humanity needs most of all. If possible, direct your thoughts as much as you can to the very question: What does humanity need? What ideas must prevail among humanity so that we can move forward, so that we can emerge from the chaos? Do not tell yourself: Others will take care of that—those who are more called to do so! Above all, those who stand on the foundation of spiritual science are called to this task. The conditions for cultural human coexistence—that is what must occupy us above all else.

[ 35 ] We'll talk more about that next time.