The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Third Lecture

[ 1 ] If one expands the considerations I spoke of here yesterday more and more, one will notice that, in fact, the modern explanation of the world must come to a halt when it comes to the human being, that it becomes powerless when it comes to explaining the human being itself. And one will find confirmation of what I could only hint at here precisely by delving into the details. It is precisely when one examines the individual questions of life with particular precision that one will increasingly find that what I have had to express in this way holds true.

[ 2 ] However, this peculiar fact—that the current worldview cannot reach human beings—is countered in a peculiar way by the worldview itself; it refuses to acknowledge this fact in its full significance. It refuses to admit that there is an imperfection in the modern worldview in this area. But it is precisely through recognizing this imperfection that one also gains insight into the validity of anthroposophical research.

[ 3 ] What I said becomes particularly evident when we examine representative examples. I cited Herbert Spencer not to prove anything, but to illustrate the contemporary way of thinking.

[ 4 ] Well, Herbert Spencer had already developed his most important, his fundamental ideas before actual Darwinism had emerged. But it is precisely in the emergence of this true Darwinism that we see how a scientific-intellectualist way of thinking confronts those questions and problems that ultimately owe their origin to a deep longing of the human soul.

[ 5 ] It is fair to say that Charles Darwin’s work, *On the Origin of Species*, published in 1859, marked a decisive milestone in modern intellectual life. The entire manner in which observations were made, how the observations were linked through deductions, and how the whole—the observations and the deductions derived from them—was then incorporated into the work *On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection* is exemplary for the modern way of thinking. One can say that Charles Darwin is extraordinarily faithful to sensory observations, and to a truly outstanding degree he seeks, within what he observes with his senses, laws that link the observations together. He seeks such laws in the same way one does when taking into account everything that observation itself teaches our intellect. He does this in the way one becomes accustomed to doing when one does not allow oneself to be led astray by all manner of subjective factors in thinking about the external world, but rather when one learns from the external world itself for one’s rational self—for the way in which reason and intellect are to function in life.

[ 6 ] Through this way of viewing life, Darwin truly succeeds, in an exemplary manner, in establishing a connection between the simplest, most imperfect organisms and the highest organism on Earth, humankind. The entire sequence, from the first to the last, is viewed with intellectual and scientific clarity. But it is the non-human that is being considered here. It is that in which neither the essence of humanity itself is already determined, nor that which humanity experiences as its longing for the supernatural.

[ 7 ] It is remarkably characteristic how Darwin reaches a limit, and especially how he behaves at that limit. For, after presenting the excellent conclusions in his book, he says: Why would it have been any less pleasing to the divine Creator to create, at first, a small number of relatively imperfect primordial forms of life and then, little by little, to transform them—or allow them to be transformed—into ever more perfect forms, rather than to conjure up the entire abundance and diversity of organic forms into the world right from the very beginning?

[ 8 ] What does it mean to stop at a certain limit? It means that one takes in intellectualistic-naturalistic ideas, taking them as far as an inner feeling, an inner sensibility, allows, and that one then stops at a certain boundary—not pondering further whether one has a boundary, or whether one might possibly cross it, but simply stopping at this boundary as a matter of course and, at this boundary, embracing what has been traditionally preserved from ancient times.

[ 9 ] Thus, within the non-human realm, the modern intellectualist-naturalist method of research is applied, and at the boundary reached by this approach, one incorporates the traditional elements provided by ancient religious creeds. This way of viewing the world has not changed much in the work that Darwin subsequently published, titled *The Descent of Man*. With regard to what has just been described, Darwin himself actually added nothing new.

[ 10 ] Now, what I have just mentioned is not only characteristic in and of itself, but it is also characteristic in the way it is received—depending on various national perspectives—more by the Western, namely the Anglo-American, peoples than in Central Europe. If one wishes to view modern existence in a lively way, one can learn a great deal precisely in relation to these national nuances.

[ 11 ] In Germany, we have seen that Darwinism was enthusiastically embraced. But it was received in two different ways. First and foremost was Ernst Haeckel, who, with youthful enthusiasm, adopted Darwin’s entire worldview, but—due to his national-German perspective—did not stop at the boundary as naturally as Darwin did; he did not pause at the traditional religious creeds and was willing to speak of a Creator who had created certain imperfect primordial forms. Rather, Ernst Haeckel took what applies so excellently to the non-human realm and used it to construct a new religion, extending what had proven so concise for the non-human realm to the human and divine realms as well. He did not, therefore, stop at the boundary, but crossed it—using the very same methods with which Darwin intended to work only within the non-human realm.

[ 12 ] Du Bois-Reymond took a different approach to Darwinism. He said: The fact is that with a naturalistic-intellectualistic way of thinking, one can only remain within the non-human realm. But one must also stop there. He did not stop in a self-evidently emotional way; rather, he turned the act of stopping itself into a theory. Where, I would say, there was an indefinite open-endedness in Darwin, Du Bois-Reymond introduced an “aut-aut,” an “either-or,” and he stated for his part: Yes, it is true: when we look into the external world, matter confronts us. We cannot penetrate the essence of matter—a limit of our cognition. When we look into our own inner being, consciousness confronts us. We cannot comprehend consciousness with the ordinary naturalistic-intellectualist approach—the other limit. We cannot, therefore, ascend to the supernatural. — Du Bois-Reymond turns this into a theory. He says: One would have to ascend to supernaturalism. Yet where supernaturalism begins, science ends. Therefore, he leaves everything that goes beyond the realm of the senses to the religions, but denies the scientific validity of everything one can arrive at in this way and merely allows human beings to supplement their realm of knowledge with the realm of faith in a free, mystical, and imaginative manner, or by embracing what has been handed down to us through tradition.

[ 13 ] The fundamental difference between Central Europeans and Westerners is that Westerners, while certainly more practical in their behavior, tend to frame their thoughts in such a way that they, in a certain sense, fade into the indefinite, just as life itself fades into the indefinite. In Central Europe, people are more inclined toward the impractical—though theoretically more consistent—approach of taking thoughts to their logical conclusion, to the point of an “either-or” choice. And we see this particularly clearly where such fundamental principles of life come into play in relation to the highest questions of human existence.

[ 14 ] But there is actually a third book by Darwin that, to anyone seriously engaged with questions of the soul, seems far more significant than both *On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection* and *The Descent of Man*. And that is the work on the emotions. When one allows this work, with its subtle observations on the expression of human emotional stirrings and human emotions, to sink in, one actually comes away from it feeling very satisfied, and ultimately says to oneself: Through what one learns by means of observation—conducted in a naturalistic and intellectualistic sense—one already acquires abilities that are well-suited to observing human emotional and spiritual life as well. Darwin, of course, could only go as far as his instincts allowed him. But it is precisely the subtlety of this observation that provides proof that the habit and training one acquires through scientific and intellectual observations succeed in penetrating the inner life as well.

[ 15 ] And it is on this fact that the hope of anthroposophical research now rests. In none of its steps does this anthroposophical research wish to deny the rigorously exact training provided by the modern naturalistic-intellectualistic way of thinking. But at the same time, it seeks to show how this mode of thinking can be further developed, thereby enabling us to transcend—in a factually precise manner—the boundary that Darwin boldly established in a more practical sense, boldly crossed by Haeckel in the name of naturalism, and theoretically established by Du Bois-Reymond, in a factually precise manner—and how one can enter into a supersensible world so that, in this way, a true understanding of the human being may come about.

[ 16 ] The first step taken in this regard, however, does not lie directly within the field that will be our primary focus in the coming days; rather, it seeks to build a bridge from ordinary modern mental images and perceptions to supersensory knowledge. And this bridge can be built if one simply uses means—which, at first, do not lie within the realm of supersensible research—to clarify what the essence of the naturalistic-sensualistic view of the world actually rests upon.

[ 17 ] In order to speak about this being, I would like to present two hypothetical scenarios to your soul. Suppose, for a moment, that we grew up from childhood in such a way that the entire realm of material existence lay open before us in all its clarity. Suppose matter were not situated outside of us as something dark—something our gaze reaches but which we cannot see through—but rather that all material existence were completely transparent to the external gaze and the reasoning mind, so that through a purely naturalistic-intellectualist view of the world we could come to have thoughts about everything that is, at its very core, matter. Let us therefore assume that matter does not lie before us as opaque, but rather as completely transparent. We would be able to fully understand what appears to us as material in a mineral, as if it were completely permeated by an inner light of thought. But then we would also be able to fully understand everything that appears before us as material, for example, in a human being. We would not see an indeterminate material form before our sensory eye in the human being, but rather we would look fully into the completely transparent human being, insofar as it is material.

[ 18 ] If you were to hypothetically assume for a moment that the world presents itself to you in this way, then you would have to set aside something without which the life in which our ordinary consciousness develops cannot even be conceived; you would have to set aside from this life everything that we encompass with the word “love.” For what is the basis of the love we have for another human being—even if only in the form of general human love—or for other beings in the world? It is based on the fact that, at first, we confront the other human being or the other being with powers other than the thoughts that make things transparent. If, at the very moment we confront another being, the abstract, luminous thought were to flash into being—a thought that made this being completely transparent to us—every love would wither away even in its very first bud; we could not love. You need only recall how, in ordinary life, love ceases when the abstract thought begins to shine in its brightness. You need only recall how justified it is to speak of the coldness of the abstract world of thought, how all inner warmth ceases when we approach that thought. Thus, this warmth, which reveals itself in love, could not arise at all if we were able to face external, material life with full intellectual understanding. Love would therefore be extinguished from our world.

[ 19 ] And now, for a moment, hypothetically assume that you could look completely into your own human being—that when you turn your gaze away from the external world and turn it back toward your own inner self, you would, so to speak, see the forces and substances of your own inner being shine up before you, just as the phenomena of the external world shine toward you in colors and resonate toward you in tones. The moment that were the case, you would indeed always be able to have your own inner being present. But you would have to set aside something else—without which the personal human being could not exist at all in the ordinary world. For what is it that shines out at you from within in the ordinary world when you seek this self-contemplation? The mental images of what you have experienced in the external world shine out to you. It is not the essence of your own inner self that shines out to you, but rather the reflections—the mental images—of what constitutes external experience; that is what shines out to you.

[ 20 ] If you consider that without this capacity for recollection, without this memory, personal life would not be possible at all—that you would have to imagine away this aspect of memory if you had full self-awareness in everyday life—then you will say to yourself: Here we come up against a higher limit that can be explained simply by the necessity of human organization. — Knowledge that would increasingly reveal the nature of matter would require a human being who was devoid of love. Knowledge that would continually reveal the inner nature would require a human being who had not developed his capacity for memory as an inherently human ability.

[ 21 ] And so we assume that we recognize that for ordinary life and ordinary cognition—which, after all, seeks to remain within this life—these two limits are simply necessary by virtue of human nature. Because love is necessary for social life in the external world, and because memory is necessary for personal life in the inner world, there must be two limits to cognition. And the only question is whether one can enter a realm that, while leading us into the supersensible world, does not destroy social and personal life.

[ 22 ] Anthroposophy has the courage to admit that naturalistic-intellectualistic knowledge alone cannot lead us to the supersensible. But it also has the courage to ask whether there are means that, with the same rigor as the intellectualistic-naturalistic means that lead into the sensory world, lead upward into the supersensible world. Anthroposophy seeks to have the courage not to say, “Where supernaturalism begins, science ends”—but rather to open up paths that allow us to penetrate the supersensible world just as precisely as we penetrate the sensory world through a naturalistic, intellectualistic approach. In this way, anthroposophy is truly a genuine continuation of the modern path, of modern life as a whole. It does not seek to be a rebel; rather, it seeks to provide precisely what modern life needs from its own foundations, but cannot provide for itself with its own means.

[ 23 ] The insight one can gain into the necessity of ascending into a supersensible world from such reflections as those just presented can now be supplemented by two other, in my view, significant perspectives that arise from modern life and that also shed significant light specifically on the system of education and instruction.

[ 24 ] It must be said, in fact, that the intellectualistic-naturalistic way of thinking characteristic of modern life, for all its striving to bring luminous clarity to the interrelationships of sensory phenomena, nevertheless leads, on the other hand, into much of the unconscious that is present in this modern life. I would like to illustrate this drifting into the unknown, into the instinctive realm of modern life, with two examples.

[ 25 ] One could say, when looking at Darwin in the way we just did: Well, if it is simply the case that one must remain within the realm of the physical and sensory when relying on sound scientific method, and if one wishes to approach the supersensible, one must proceed to the traditional realm of faith—then that is simply something that must be accepted; there is nothing one can do about it. But then one would have to accept something that would by no means be for the good of humanity. Anyone who follows history with a little psychological insight will find, in fact, that in ancient times religious mental images were not regarded as matters of faith—they only became so in more recent times—but rather as knowledge that was taken just as scientifically as knowledge of the external sensory world. It is only in modern times that knowledge has been restricted to the sensory world. This is why modern times have failed to attain any knowledge of the supersensible world; they merely adopted supersensible knowledge in its old, traditional form and did not generate any new knowledge. And from the illusion in which people live in this regard arose the belief that, when it comes to the supersensible, one can arrive at nothing but articles of faith. But when one surveys the way in which the supersensible was lived in the ancient religions, one sees at the same time that this way of inwardly grasping the supersensible signifies a strengthening of the human being—that being deeply immersed in religious life in a cognitive sense imbues the human being inwardly, right down to the physical level, with strength; and one sees that modern civilization cannot give human beings this strength, which used to reach them through religion in the ancient way. For when the religious is reduced to mere belief, it is no longer a powerful force; it no longer works its way down into the physical realm. This is probably felt instinctively in recent times, but its full significance is not fully grasped. And out of this instinctive sense of the matter has arisen a movement within modern humanity toward something that is instinctively sought, something whose place within modern civilization is not really understood at all—and that is everything connected with sports.

[ 26 ] Religion has lost the inner power to strengthen the physical aspect of human beings. Consequently, the instinct has arisen to obtain this power through external means. And just as everything in life operates in polar opposites, we have the fact here that what human beings have lost in the realm of religion, they instinctively seek to obtain through external means. Now, I certainly do not wish to launch a tirade against sports; I do not wish to say the slightest thing against the legitimacy of sports, and I am also convinced that it will continue to develop in a healthy way. But in the future, it will occupy a different place in human life, whereas today it serves as a substitute for religion. Such things seem paradoxical when spoken of today. But it is precisely the truth that seems paradoxical today, because we have become entangled in so many aspects of modern civilization.

[ 27 ] And there is yet another characteristic feature of naturalistic-intellectualist civilization: it leads not toward the fullness of life, but everywhere into contradictions that destroy life. Intellectualism becomes entangled, giving rise to all sorts of webs of thought whose intricacy, whose confusion, and whose chaotic nature it fails to grasp. It simply does not take notice of them.

[ 28 ] Thus, modern naturalistic intellectualism stands in awe of the fact that the child today is, in a sense, a reenactment of the wild, barbaric state of all humanity. Humanity has progressed from earlier times to the present—from savagery and barbarism to civilization. The child, in its very being, repeats something of that barbarism and savagery. The modern naturalistic thinker views the child precisely in this way: he looks at the child’s nose with its slightly upturned nostrils, the position of the eyes—which are even further apart than in later life—he looks at the shape of the forehead with its peculiar curve, the shape of the mouth: everything reminds him of the wild, barbaric state. The child is a barbarian, a savage.

[ 29 ] But on the other hand, in a contradiction quite unique to what has just been stated, there is nevertheless something Rousseauian stirring within the modern civilized person. He wishes to bring human beings back to what is natural in both physical and moral education. But this modern human being is, after all, trapped within intellectualism. And this intellectualism leads to logic in thought. Now, the modern human being sees much that is illogical in education, and thus seeks to introduce logic into it. He wants to structure education logically. This does not conflict with the nature of childhood. He finds it natural that things develop logically. It does not apply to the nature of the child. And yet, when he looks back to the barbaric era, to the “wild” era, which is supposed to be reenacted in the child, one cannot say that archaeologists teach us that the barbarians—the “savages” in our sense—thought in a particularly logical way.

[ 30 ] And so modern man believes he is returning to what is natural by seeking to impart to the child precisely what the child cannot possess if it is a true savage, a true barbarian. Rousseauism comes into a strange contradiction with intellectualism. The pursuit of nature cannot be fully reconciled with the trend toward intellectualism. And when it comes to the education of the will, the modern intellectualist thinker is even more at a loss. Based on his way of thinking—that human beings must, above all, strive for what is useful—he concludes Children, he argues, must be educated to be useful. And this modern intellectualist never tires of pointing out that people wear uncomfortable clothes that are not useful, that they engage in all sorts of activities in life that are not useful. He believes that, in order to achieve a state in harmony with nature, one must properly cultivate the concept of usefulness. The education of girls, in particular, is strongly criticized by educational reformers precisely from this perspective.

[ 31 ] But now we are once again faced with a puzzle: the savages, the barbarians, who are supposed to be repeated in children—did they strive for what is useful? Certainly not. The modern intellectual thinker finds himself compelled, on the one hand, to strive for logic in his mental images, and on the other hand, to strive for utility in the realm of the will. And the barbarians, the savages—whose likeness children are supposed to embody—as archaeology teaches us, cared little in their thinking for logic or for utility, which they satisfied—insofar as it was absolutely necessary for them—through their instincts.

[ 32 ] But what were they striving for? Adornment. Clothing did not arise from the need to satisfy human needs, but from the desire to adorn oneself. Everything that the savage puts on—or, more specifically, what he does not put on, but merely paints onto his body—which, after all, cannot be considered useful either: all of this shows that the starting point was not the logically true or the logically correct, not the useful, but rather the ornamental, the beautiful—in the sense in which it is understood.

[ 33 ] You can actually see this in children, too. You end up in a strange contradiction when, on the one hand, you think in an intellectualistic way—which pushes you toward what is logically correct and practically useful—and, on the other hand, you feel in a Rousseauian way and want to return to nature. You actually want to impose on the child what you, as an adult in your intellectualism, consider to be logical, useful, and right. But children do indeed strive to return—only in a way different from the Rousseauian way—namely, toward adornment, toward that which for them is neither the expression of the good on the one hand nor of the useful on the other, but rather the beautiful.

[ 34 ] Anyone who sees through the imperfections and contradictions of modern life in this way will inevitably be driven to ask: What, exactly, is the cause of these imperfections and contradictions? — If we look at this question with an open mind, we will be increasingly compelled to recognize how one-sided the intellectualist-naturalist way of thinking must be in its view of human beings themselves. It does not, in fact, consider the whole person, the whole of human life, but only one aspect of human life. It considers only waking daily life and fails to recognize that the whole of human life in fact encompasses just as much what happens from falling asleep to waking up as what happens from waking up to falling asleep. One could, of course, argue that the modern intellectualistic-naturalistic way of thinking also considers the life of sleep, and there are various interesting hypotheses about the nature of sleep and the nature of dreams; but all of this is understood solely from the perspective of the waking person.

[ 35 ] When a person is awake, they do not merely perceive; they experience—they are fully immersed in existence. In the life of sleep, a person is not initially consciously present within it. They can view it from the perspective in which it shines into waking life; but they cannot be directly immersed in it with ordinary consciousness. A complete view of life requires not only that one recognize something abstractly, but that one be able to stand fully within what has been recognized. And so, as a modern intellectualist thinker, one stands before the life of sleep in such a way that, if one is open-minded and serious enough about it, admittedly, much that is wondrous and astonishing shines out from this life of sleep, yet one cannot move beyond this astonishment and wonder in the way that Greek philosophy, for example, demanded for a worldview in general. Everything in one’s worldview, Greek philosophy taught, begins with wonder at the world, with amazement at the facts that confront one. But it must then go further. One must proceed from wonder and amazement to knowledge.

[ 36 ] Modern human beings, with the means at their disposal, are initially unable to do this with regard to the life of sleep and dreams. And the first step to be taken into the supersensible world must not consist in striving immediately for supersensible knowledge itself, but rather in building a bridge from ordinary sensory-physical knowledge over to supersensible knowledge. This can be achieved by vividly extending the training one has acquired through observation of the physical-sensory world to encompass what extends from sleep and dreams into ordinary life. Modern people can certainly observe; but observation alone is not enough—what matters is observing in certain directions if one is to grasp the essence of things. It all depends on how one observes.

[ 37 ] A few examples will show you how to approach observing this other aspect of life—one that intrudes into daily life but is not usually observed from the same perspective as ordinary, waking everyday life.

[ 38 ] There are people who do perceive the difference between waking daily life and the life of sleep, but only in a very limited way. Yet one can still say that in some naive minds there is an awareness that a person is different in waking daily life than in the life of sleep. That is why such naive minds often say—when one tries to explain to them the worthlessness of sleep, for example—that it is lazy and sluggish of a person to sleep too much: As long as one sleeps, one does not sin; one is not a sinful person then. — And by this they mean to express that what a person is from the moment they wake up until they fall asleep—a sinful being—they are radically not from the moment they fall asleep until they wake up. There is a very good instinct inherent in this naive view.

[ 39 ] But one can only come to know what actually exists in this realm by training one’s powers of observation in the appropriate way. And here, for example, I would like to say the following: There are certainly some among you—perhaps all of you—who have had dreams of the kind whose content clearly represents reminiscences of external, physical-sensory life. One might, for example, dream that one is led to a river and must cross it. In the dream, one looks for a boat. One goes through the entire effort of searching for a boat in the dream. Then one has found the boat—one can dream all of this—and must now exert oneself to make every single stroke of the oars. While dreaming, one feels the effort involved in each stroke, and finally, with great effort, one crosses over, just as one might do in everyday life.

[ 40 ] There are many such dreams. They appear to be dreams that, at least in terms of their content, are clear reminiscences of physical-sensory life. Other dreams do not present themselves as such reminiscences of physical-sensory life. You are familiar with such dreams as well. For example, someone might dream that they are led to a river and are supposed to cross it; they consider this in the dream, and in short, they spread their wings, fly across, and arrive on the other bank. One cannot say that this is a reminiscence from physical-sensory life, for as far as I know, the vast majority of people do not cross a river in this way in physical-sensory life; we are therefore dealing here in the dream with something that a person does not actually do in physical-sensory life.

[ 41 ] Now, however, something very peculiar occurs, which one only notices when one truly examines the connection between the life of sleep, the life of dreams, and the external, sensory-real life in the waking state. Anyone who observes this area closely would, in fact, notice the following. They would perceive that when they have had a dream—or dreams—in which all the drudgery and hardships of everyday life are imposed upon them in the dream—which are reminiscences of physical-sensory life—they wake up feeling exhausted. Their limbs feel heavy upon waking, and they remain in this state of fatigue throughout the day. Thus, one wakes from a dream modeled on physical-sensory reality in such a way that one is weakened in everyday life, in waking life. Observe how a dream that is not a reminiscence of physical-sensual life affects you: if you have ever flown—with genuine enthusiasm, flying with ease in a dream—and, in short, crossed a river with your wings, which you do not actually have in physical life, you wake up fresh and lively, your limbs feeling light. One must observe such differences in the effects of dream life and waking life with the same precision one is accustomed to using in mathematics or physics. If one did not observe precisely in this regard, one would not arrive at any results. But this is precisely not how observations are conducted in the fields under discussion; that is why one fails to arrive at results that can be satisfying, nor at impulses for deeper understanding and living.

[ 42 ] And it is not simply a matter of presenting isolated insights that seem to confirm what I have just hinted at; rather, the more one delves into the facts, the more evident it becomes that such a connection—which one can indeed intuit—exists between what occurs in the life of sleep and waking life. There are, after all, dreams that unfold, for example, in such a way that you have quite appetizing food in front of you and eat it in the dream—with a huge appetite and in large quantities. You will generally notice, if you have eaten in a dream, that you wake up without an appetite, that your stomach feels a bit upset, and that you can’t really eat properly all day. But if you have spoken with an angel in a dream, and if you have truly immersed yourself in that conversation with the angel, then you will see that this has an extraordinarily stimulating effect on your appetite during the day. I probably don’t need to state explicitly—or even provide exact proof—that eating in a dream is a reminiscence of physical-sensory life, for in the supersensible world one does not eat or drink. You will surely concede this to me even without proof. So when one eats and drinks in a dream, the content of the dream is a reminiscence of physical-sensual life; and when one speaks with an angel—which, after all, happens to very few people in physical-sensual life—it is an event whose content cannot yet be a reminiscence of physical-sensual life. Even if one thinks more abstractly, one can see from this that something initially quite unknown is happening to a person between falling asleep and waking up, something that spills over into the waking realm, into the life between waking and falling asleep. And one cannot say that one could not actually gain fully differentiated mental images in this realm. For it is indeed something quite differentiated when one must say: If we dream of what is reality in physical-sensory life—if the dream becomes what the naturalist poets or naturalist artists once strove for, those who always sought only to imitate life and did not wish to introduce anything from the supersensible into life—if the dream becomes such a naturalist, then it has an unhealthy effect on waking life. It has a disease-inducing effect. So if one carries ordinary sensory life into sleep through dreaming, it has a sickening, unhealthy effect in return. And on the other hand, when that which is not real in the physical-sensory world—what the narrow-minded philistine regards as fanciful, as mystical, as something a reasonable person, a true intellectual, would not wish to grasp spiritually—appears in a dream, it is precisely that which then makes one lively, fresh, and healthy. — Thus one can observe a peculiar interplay of what happens to a person between falling asleep and waking up, as it influences ordinary waking life.

[ 43 ] And since things are differentiated, one can certainly say: something must happen to the human being that is independent of the physical body, for it expresses itself in its effect on the physical body while the human being sleeps. And the dream is that which initially strikes ordinary consciousness as a source of wonder and amazement—that which a person, in an extraordinary state, does not experience with their ordinary consciousness but rather undergoes unconsciously. The more you try to gather examples, the more you will find that such a real connection between waking and sleeping life does indeed exist.

[ 44 ] But now take a look at the dream. It differs quite significantly from the mental content of waking life. In waking life, we approach our experiences in such a way that, through our will, we connect one mental image with another and separate one mental image from another. We cannot do any of this in a dream. The image of the dream weaves itself, just as objective phenomena do, without our will. The activity of the soul, which is at work in waking life, is paralysed; it becomes passive in the face of the dream.

[ 45 ] And when we then study the dream from a very special perspective, it in turn becomes a curious revealer of the hidden aspects of our human nature. Just observe how you sometimes find yourself face to face with a person in life whom you judge—well, out of practical considerations. You do not allow your entire inner self to flow into this judgment. You judge in such a way that you still take into account, for example, that the person in question holds a title, that someone with such a title must usually be regarded in a certain way, or that he is otherwise somehow part of social life—in short, you arrive at a certain judgment in your waking daily life. In your dream life, however, the following sometimes happens: You find yourself face to face with this person and begin to give them a thorough thrashing—which deviates from the judgment you formed in your waking daily life, but which points to sympathies and antipathies lying deeper within you, ones you do not allow yourself to feel in your waking daily life and which the dream conjures up before your soul in the form of an image. So, something that a person does not admit to themselves in waking life, but which they carry within them, is presented to the soul in a pictorial way through subconscious imagination in the dream world. This is still relatively easy to observe. But if, on the other hand, one were to examine certain moods, whims, or even inexplicable cheerfulness in waking life—phenomena that cannot be understood from the events of daily life—one would find, had one not forgotten the dreams that were there, that they were what led one to either that mood or that cheerfulness; what is experienced from the moment of falling asleep until waking up—and what the dream can reveal—finds its way into the unconscious, into one’s mood. One cannot understand life in its entirety at all unless one takes this other aspect of life—which unfolds between falling asleep and waking up—into account in a precise manner.

[ 46 ] But all of this takes place without human intervention. However, one can also elevate what occurs unconsciously and involuntarily to a fully conscious activity—an activity as fully conscious as, for example, that involved in doing mathematics or conducting scientific research. And when one does this, one rises from the indeterminate—which one can perceive when one relates the life of sleep to waking life—to that which can then present itself to one in the form of consciously developed imagination, inspiration, and intuition.

[ 47 ] But it is through these that true knowledge of humanity becomes possible. That which, I might say, the world stammeringly points toward by presenting us with the life of sleep is consciously developed in the methods through which anthroposophy strives to attain a genuine understanding of the world and of humanity.