Transforming The Soul: Volume 1 E-Book

Rudolf Steiner

• Herausgeber: Rudolf Steiner Press
• Kategorie: Ratgeber
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Beschreibung

The spiritual-scientific investigator has ... to transform the soul itself into an instrument; then - when his soul is awakened and he can see into a spiritual world - he experiences, on a higher level, a similar great moment as blind people do when, having been operated upon, they look at a world they have not seen before. In a key series of lectures on personal development, Rudolf Steiner explains that the central mission of spiritual science is to enable people to ascend, in full consciousness, to a knowledge of spiritual realities. But given that the means to achieve spiritual perception are now widely available, the danger exists that some individuals will gain access to the spiritual world whilst harbouring impure motives. This can lead to a distorted understanding and vision of that world. Steiner's emphasis, therefore, is on the preparatory steps - the metamorphosis and purification of the human soul - required for achieving true spiritual enlightenment. Life itself teaches and prepares us for progress, and anthroposophy explains and brings this to consciousness. In some of his most lucid lectures, Steiner describes the missions of anger, truth and reverence, the significance of human character, the meaning of asceticism and illness, and the phenomenon of egoism. He also clarifies the differences between Buddhism and Christianity, describes the goal of spiritual science, and makes some esoteric observations about the moon. Throughout the talks Steiner refers to many significant historical figures, including St Augustine, Coleridge, Leonardo da Vinci, Madame Blavatsky, Goethe, Homer, and Shakespeare.

Leseprobe

TRANSFORMING THE SOUL

TRANSFORMING THE SOUL

VOLUME 1

Nine lectures given in Berlin, Germany, between 14 October and 9 December 1909

RUDOLF STEINER

RUDOLF STEINER PRESS

Translated by Charles Davy and Christian von Arnim, and revised for this edition by Pauline Wehrle

Rudolf Steiner Press Hillside House, The Square Forest Row, RH18 5ES

www.rudolfsteinerpress.com

Published by Rudolf Steiner Press 2013

Previously published in English as Metamorphosis of the Soul, Paths of Experience, Volume 1 by Rudolf Steiner Press in 1983

Originally published in German under the title Metamorphosen des Seelenlebens, Pfade der Seelenerlebnisse 1 (volume 58 in the Rudolf Steiner Gesamtausgabe or Collected Works) by Rudolf Steiner Verlag, Dornach. This authorized translation is published by kind permission of the Rudolf Steiner Nachlassverwaltung, Dornach

Translation © Rudolf Steiner Press 2005

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978 1 85584 430 8

Cover by Andrew Morgan Design Typeset by DP Photosetting, Aylesbury, Bucks.

Contents

Summary of Contents

LECTURE 1 The Mission of Spiritual ScienceBerlin, 14 October 1909

LECTURE 2 The Mission of AngerMunich, 5 December 1909

LECTURE 3 The Mission of TruthBerlin, 22 October 1909

LECTURE 4 The Mission of ReverenceBerlin, 28 October 1909

LECTURE 5 Human CharacterMunich, 14 March 1909

LECTURE 6 Asceticism and IllnessBerlin, 11 November 1909

LECTURE 7 Characterizing EgoismBerlin, 25 November 1909

LECTURE 8 The Buddha and ChristBerlin, 2 December 1909

LECTURE 9 A Few Observations about the Moon in the Light of Spiritual ScienceBerlin, 9 December 1909

Notes

Notes regarding Rudolf Steiner's Lectures

Summary of Contents

Lecture 1

To spiritual science the spirit is a reality. Spiritual science is as old as humanity, but its form changes to accord with changing human consciousness. Belief in man as an image of the Divine faded, and then the link with the spiritual world was through symbols, myths and legends. Then came a period when there was a split between reason and belief, knowledge and revelation, and then one of dependence on documents and oral tradition. The spiritual world became understood in terms of a person's own experience. Achievements in the natural-scientific realm were accompanied by the acquisition of cognitive faculties reaching out beyond the sense-perceptible realm. Then the spiritual realm became accessible again. There was now a chance for charlatanry to flourish. But with common sense and goodwill everyone can again find answers to life's deepest questions.

Personalities referred to: William Shakespeare, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Count von Hoditz und Wolframitz, Johann Joachim Winckelmann, Aristotle, Descartes, Immanuel Kant, community of the Therapeutae, St Augustine, Eliphas Levi.

Lecture 2

For spiritual science there are no boundaries to knowledge. The contents of the universe are infinite and human knowledge of them depends on our developing the organs for reaching them. These organs are needed for spiritual research, which is then available to anyone with an unprejudiced mind. Redi's statement ‘Life can arise only from the living’ is followed by Rudolf Steiner's statement ‘Soul and spirit can issue only from soul and spirit’, which presupposes the concept of reincarnation and the spiritual-scientific view of evolution. In the future there will be conscious development by the ego of Spirit Self, Life Spirit and Spirit Man; in the past there was subconscious development by the ego of the sentient soul and the rational or perceptive soul and at present there is development of the consciousness soul. Distinction between percept and concept. There is always a risk ego development will lead to egoism. Anger is an educator of the soul and herald of clear judgement and loving kindness. Prometheus Bound: everything bestowed by Prometheus on humankind is connected with ego. Zeus is challenged to subdue the ego of Prometheus so that it may not be egoistic but selfless. Zeus is then succeeded by Christ, the God of Love, anger by the loving ego.

Persons referred to: Heraclitus, Francesco Redi, Arthur Schopenhauer, Goethe, Aeschylus.

Lecture 3

Our ego is confined between two extremes: losing itself and egoism. While anger is an attribute of the soul that must be overcome in the sentient soul, it is essential to cultivate truth in the rational or perceptive soul. Truth is best served if the thinker can leave himself out of account. Truth can prepare the way for justice and love. Love of truth is the only truth that sets the ego free. Truth comes in two forms: through reflective thinking (Nachdenken) and creative thinking (Vordenken). The former shows us nature's wisdom; the latter is required, among other things, for anthroposophical thought. Reflective thinking can lead to egoism; creative thinking leads into the future and liberates us from self. Goethe was drawn through his love of truth to the story of Pandora, in which Prometheus and Epimetheus portray the two forces of thinking. Eventually the two must unite. As Goethe realized, wisdom and the Word have to unite with the Deed.

Persons referred to: Edward Henry Harriman, Herman Grimm, Heinrich von Treitschke, Karl Friedrich Solger, Robert Zimmermann, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Goethe.

Lecture 4

Mystical union with the ‘eternal feminine’ is the highest goal of reverence. While anger educates the sentient soul and truth the rational or perceptive soul, it is reverence that educates the consciousness soul. Really to know something our thinking needs to be led by feeling and willing. This is even more necessary when the unknown thing is in the spiritual domain. The will is able to develop devotion towards the unknown, the feeling to develop love for it, and together these lead to reverence for and knowledge of the unknown. Too great an inclination to submissiveness leads to losing oneself—soul faintness, mortification of the will. Weakness of the consciousness of self leads to too much enthusiasm, becoming a raver—a kind of continuous state of dreaming—and to superstition. Significance of reverential gestures. Reverence in childhood produces the seed of strength to deal with life in old age. The response to love is again love; the response to reverence, when this concerns the divine, is might, an experience of the Almighty. Cultivation of reverence must go hand in hand with the cultivation of sound ego feeling. The ‘eternal masculine’ is the force that enspirits true reverence.

Person referred to: Goethe.

Lecture 5

Character as an inner force which manifests outwardly. The ego resounding in the three soul members brings forth a unified character. The human being matures through experience and wisdom learnt from life. Daytime experiences become faculties with the help of sleep life. The soul is more capable of incorporating new development than the etheric and physical bodies. For developed forces to enter our most material part, death is necessary. The statue The Laocoön shows what happens to unified character when the ego is driven out. Influence of education: strengthening of the physical body up till age seven benefits the consciousness soul; work on the etheric body benefits the rational or perceptive soul, and influence on the sentient body benefits the sentient soul. A person's character is evident in different gestures, physiognomy and skull formation, the latter giving evidence of reincarnation.

Persons referred to: Goethe, Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller, Homer, Johann Joachim Winckelmann, Karl von Rotteck.

Lecture 6

Asceticism is mostly not understood today; with spiritual science to help us we shall look in human nature for its true origin. Sleeping and waking and the creation of a condition similar to sleep in which one is awake to higher truths. A first step to this clairvoyant condition is to practise picturing symbols; the rose cross is an example by means of which soul faculties can be awakened. Asceticism is this path of training for acquiring faculties for future use. It can also be applied to worldly tasks, such as military manoeuvres. Play is the opposite of asceticism. Spiritual knowledge is often rejected for the sake of self-preservation. A false path of sensationalism leads to the opposite: self-annihilation. Another false path is to weaken the body so that the soul is then relatively the stronger. Vegetarianism. Human illness can have different causes than disease in plants and animals, because of the maladjustment that can occur between soul and body. Use of expression ‘vibrations’ (vibes). What we bring down from the spirit to introduce into the world can be likened to the story of creation.

Persons referred to: Schopenhauer, Goethe, Kant.

Lecture 7

As potentially free beings egoism can work in us both for good or ill; and existence is self-correcting. Analogies found in nature. Goethe's view is that man has to recreate nature on a human level in himself, and in doing so will be making rightful use of egoism. Our flowering is the birth of our higher ego. The real meaning of ‘Know thyself’. Just as the eye is created by light so is our strength of soul brought about by our deeds. Goethe's Wilhelm Meister is about the nature of egoism and the art of learning from life. Mignon is a being who has not yet become an ego, and therefore has not reached the age when egoism is born. ‘Confessions of a Beautiful Soul’ show the nature of egoism at its highest. In the ‘Pedagogical Province’ we see Goethe's ideas on education. The three venerations taught through gesture. Influence of ethnic religions, philosophical religions and the Christian religion. Choice of pupils’ clothing is to promote freedom for the individual. Goethe's views are very much in accord with spiritual science.

Persons referred to: Goethe, Johann Gottlieb Fichte

Lecture 8

The relative significance of Buddhism and Christianity. Buddhism speaks only about the means whereby man can come to an existence satisfying in itself. The conversation between the Buddhist sage Nagasena and King Milinda serves to point out insignificance of separate physical phenomena, with no spiritual agency keeping them together. Only ‘effects’ pass from one incarnation to another. In Christianity the mind is directed from the parts to the whole, to the ego, which brings the fruits of its activities over into a new incarnation. The Buddhist aim is to escape from suffering by overcoming the thirst for existence and following the eightfold path. Buddhism is a religion of redemption; Christianity is a religion of rebirth. Eastern culture is non-historical and western culture historical (based on evolution). Buddhism tells us the world is maya; Christians see it as maya until they have developed the organs to see the outer world in its true spirit form. Christ came to earth to bring the turning point from the old era of clairvoyance to the new era of ego-consciousness. The Christian Beatitudes have a Buddhistic version of them. The real meaning of John the Baptist's words ‘The kingdom of heaven is at hand’ means that knowledge of the world in concepts and ideas is approaching. In Buddhism release from death is desired as an escape; through Christ death became an upward thrust to everlasting life. The meaning of the symbol of the cross. Any attempt to transplant Buddhism into our time is due to Christianity not yet being understood. In Goethe dawns a Christianity of the future.

Persons referred to: Max Mueller, Helena Blavatsky, Schopenhauer, Goethe.

Lecture 9

This particular lecture should be considered as an episode in the course. The question of whether the moon has special influence or significance for life on earth has been spoken about for centuries. In the scientific age this belief has diminished. The ‘moon dispute’ between Schleiden and Fechner, and experiment with rainwater levels. Why the moon is a symbol attached to barbers’ shops. The moon's orbit corresponds with, but does not influence the course of the tides. Goethe's studies on atmospheric pressure showed a connection not with the moon but with a living earth. Leonardo da Vinci and Kepler had similar ideas. Our waking life is connected with the course of the sun (the sentient body with the native soil, the etheric body with seasons of the year, and the physical body with the rhythm of day and night), though dependency is slowly giving way to freedom. We are influenced during the night in accordance with the moon's phases. The moon is part of the earth—a memento of a past condition. The sun is connected with our life between birth and death, the moon with our sleep life and existence from death to a new life. The sun is connected with our present; the moon is connected with our earlier conditions. The moon's phases correspond to the weeks of a pregnancy. Poem by Wilhelm Mueller.

Persons referred to: Matthias Jakob Schleiden, Gustav Theodor Fechner, Julius Robert Mayer, Goethe, Johann Peter Eckermann, Leonardo da Vinci, Johannes Kepler, Wilhelm Mueller.

Lecture 1

The Mission of Spiritual Science

Berlin, 14 October 1909

As I have done now for several years I shall again be holding a series of lectures from the realm of spiritual science. Those of my audience who attended the previous ones will of course be quite clear about the sense in which I am using the term ‘spiritual science’. For those who have not attended these courses before, let me say that I shall not be presenting some kind of abstract science such as we find in ordinary books on psychology, nor shall I be speaking from a point of view that uses the term spiritual science only for presenting the various areas of the history of civilization and culture. I shall be speaking about a science that treats the spirit as something actual, something real. This kind of science starts from the premise that human experience is not restricted solely to sense-perceptible reality or to the findings of human reason and other cognitive faculties in so far as these are confined to sense perception. Spiritual science says that in addition to the knowledge human beings can acquire through their senses and intellect they have the possibility of penetrating behind the realm of sense phenomena and of making observations that are not accessible to the compass of our intellect.

This introductory lecture will describe the role of spiritual science in the lives of the people of today, and will show how in the past this spiritual science—which is as old as human striving itself—appeared in a form very different from the form it must take today. In speaking of the present I naturally do not mean the immediate here and now, but the relatively long period during which spiritual life has had the particular character which has come to full development in our time.

Anyone who looks back over the spiritual life of humankind will see that ‘a time of transition’ is a phrase to be used with care, for every period can be so described. Yet there are times when spiritual life takes a leap forward, so to speak. People living between the sixteenth and the nineteenth centuries, and in our time, have needed to relate differently in their soul and spiritual life to the world about them than humankind did in earlier times. And the further back we go in human evolution the more noticeable it becomes that human beings had different longings, different needs, and gave different answers from within themselves to questions concerning the great riddles of existence. We can gain a clear impression of transition periods such as these by acquainting ourselves with individual people who had retained certain qualities of feeling, knowing and willing from earlier periods, but who nevertheless felt the urge to meet the demands of a new age. Such historic characters can be found in most of the epochs of human evolution.

Today let us take an interesting personality and see what he makes of questions concerning the being of man and other such questions that most closely engage human minds—a personality who lived at the dawn of modern spiritual life and possessed the inner characteristics I have just described. I will not choose anyone well known but, as we are just starting out on these lectures, a seventeenth-century thinker who was unknown outside his small circle. In his time there were many such people who retained, as he did, medieval habits of thought and feeling and wished to gain knowledge in the way that had been followed for centuries past, and yet were moving on towards the outlook of the coming age. I want to give you the name of an individual about whose external life nothing is known historically, so to say. Where spiritual-scientific investigation is concerned this is always very pleasing; for anyone who wants to be thoroughly open-minded in the realm of spiritual science will know how distracting it is to find attached to a personality all the petty details of everyday life that are collected by present-day biographers. On this account we ought to be grateful that history has preserved so little about Shakespeare, for instance. The true picture is not spoilt—as it is with Goethe—by all the trivia the biographers are so fond of dragging in. I will designate for our purpose an individual of whom even less is known than is known about Shakespeare, a seventeenth-century thinker who nevertheless is of great significance for anyone who can see into the history of human thinking.

In Francis Joseph Philipp, Count von Hoditz und Wolframitz, who led the life of a solitary thinker in Bohemia in the second half of the seventeenth century, we have a personality of outstanding importance from the point of view of the history of the development of thought. In a little book entitled Libellus de hominis convenientia1—I have not enquired if it has since been published in full—he set down the questions which occupied his mind. If we immerse ourselves in his life of soul these questions can lead us into the issues that a reflecting mind would concern himself with in those days. This lonely thinker discusses the great central question of the being of man. With a forcefulness that springs from a deep need for knowledge, he says that nothing injures a human being more than not knowing what his actual being is.

Count von Hoditz turns to important figures in the history of thought, for instance to Aristotle in the fourth century BC, and asks what Aristotle can tell us in answer to the question: What is really the essential being of man?2 He says that Aristotle's answer is that man is a rational animal. Then he turns to a more recent thinker, Descartes, and asks what he had to say to the question of the actual being of man. And the answer he received was: ‘A human being is a thinking being.’3 But on reflection he had to admit that neither of these two representative thinkers can give him an answer to the important question of the being of man. For a real answer would tell him both what a human being is and what he ought to do. When Aristotle tells us that man is a rational animal, that is not an answer to the question of what a man is, for we cannot tell from his answer what the actual nature of rationality is. Nor does Descartes, the seventeenth-century thinker, tell us what man ought to do in accordance with his nature as a thinking being. For although we may know that man is a thinking being, we do not yet know what he should think in order to take hold of life in the right way, in order to relate his thought to life!

So our philosopher sought in vain for an answer to this burning question which has to be answered if a human being is not to become distorted in his whole being. Then he hit on something that will seem strange to modern readers, especially if they are given to scientific ways of thought, but for our solitary thinker it was the only answer appropriate to his particular soul constitution. It was no help to him to know that man is a rational animal or a thinking being. But now he had found his question answered by another thinker who had it from an older tradition, and he put it into the following words: ‘The human being is in essence an image of the Godhead!’4 Today we should say that man in his essential being originates entirely from the spiritual world.

We do not need to concern ourselves today with Count von Hoditz's further observations. The only thing of interest to us is that the needs of his soul drove him to an answer that went beyond anything we can perceive with our senses or comprehend with our reason. If we examine his book further, we find that he had no access to knowledge gained directly from the spiritual world. Now if he had been troubled by the question of how the earth related to the sun, he could, even if he were not an observer himself, have found the answer somewhere among the wider field of observations opened up by modern natural science. With regard to external questions concerning the sense world he could have used answers given by people who had themselves investigated the questions through their own observations and experiences. But the experiences available to him at that time gave him no answer to the questions concerning man's spiritual life, his real being in so far as it is spiritual. Clearly he had no means of finding people who themselves had had experiences of their own in the spiritual world and so could communicate to him the properties of the spiritual world in the same way as the scientists could impart what they had found out in answer to their questions about the external world. So he turned to religious tradition and its records. He certainly assimilated his findings—and this characterizes his whole depth of soul— but we see from the way he worked that he was able to use his reason only to give a new form to what had emerged in the course of history or what passed down to him from recorded tradition.

Many a person will ask at this point: Are there—or can there be—such people who from their own observation, from direct experience, are also able to answer questions related to the riddles of spiritual life?

This is precisely what, in modern times, spiritual science will make people aware of once more: the fact that—just as research can be carried out in the sense-perceptible world—it is possible to carry out research in the spiritual world, where no physical eyes, no telescopes and microscopes are available, and that answers can be given from direct experience as to conditions in such a world beyond the range of sense experience. We shall then realize that there was an epoch, conditioned by the whole evolutionary progress of humanity, when other means were used to make known the findings of spiritual research, and that we now have an epoch when such findings can once more be spoken of and understanding for them again be found. In between lay the twilight time of our solitary thinker, when human evolution took a rest from ascending towards the spiritual world, and people preferred to rely on traditions passed down through ancient records or by word of mouth, and in certain circles it began to be doubted whether it was even possible, through their own powers—by developing the cognitive faculties that lie hidden and slumbering within them—to ascend at all to a spiritual world.

Are there then any rational grounds for saying that it is nonsensical to speak of such a spiritual world, of a world lying beyond the sense-perceptible? A glance at the progress of our ordinary science should be enough to justify this question. But precisely by considering impartially the course of this progress and the wonderful advances that have been made in unravelling the secrets of external nature, we should become aware that a higher, supersensible knowledge must exist. How is that?

If we study evolution impartially we cannot fail to be impressed by the exceptional progress made in recent times by the sciences concerned with the outer world. With what pride—and in a certain sense this pride is justified—do a lot of people remark that the vast, ever-increasing advance of modern science has brought to light many facts about the external sense world that were unknown a few centuries ago. For example, thousands of years ago the sun rose in the morning and passed across the heavens just as it does today. What people could see in the surroundings of the earth and in connection with the course of the sun was the same then, for external observation, as it was in the days of Galileo, Newton, Kepler, Copernicus, and so on. But what was the humanity of those days able to say about the external world? Can we maintain that the modern knowledge of which people of our time are so proud has been acquired by merely observing the external world? If the external world itself could, just as it is, give us the knowledge, there would be no need to reach beyond what it gave us; centuries ago they would have known about the sense world all that we know today. Why is it that we know more and have a different view of the position of the sun and so on? It is because human understanding, the forces of cognition that we apply to the sense world, have changed and developed in the course of the centuries and millennia. Yes, these human faculties of cognition were by no means the same in ancient Greece as they have become since the sixteenth century and on into our time.

Anyone who studies these changes without prejudice must say to himself: Human beings have acquired something they did not have before. They have learnt to see the outer world differently because with regard to the forces of cognition they apply to the sense world there has been a further development. Therefore it became clear to them that the sun does not revolve around the earth; for their new cognitional faculties compelled them to think of the earth as going round the sun. In other words, in our time human beings have other forces at their disposal than they had in earlier times.

No one who is proud of the achievements of physical science and who studies progress impartially can have any doubts at all that human beings are capable of inner development, that we have more in us than natural forces, and that our powers have been remodelled from stage to stage until we have become what we are today. But we are called upon to develop more than outer powers; human beings have in their inner life something which enables them, in the new light of their inner capacities, to bring the world to life once more in knowledge. In Goethe's book on Winckelmann5 we find some of the finest words he ever uttered: ‘If the healthy nature of man works as a unity, if he feels himself within the world as in a great, beautiful, noble and worthy whole, if harmonious ease offers him a pure and free delight, then the universe, if it could become conscious of itself, would rise in exultation at having reached its goal and would stand in wonder at the climax of its own being and becoming.’ And again: ‘Man, placed at the summit of nature, is again a whole new nature which must in time achieve a summit of its own. He ascends towards that height when he permeates himself with all the perfections and virtues, summons forth order, selection, harmony and meaning, and attains in the end to the creation of a work of art.’

Human beings may possibly feel that they were born out of the forces they can see with their eyes and grasp with their reason. But if they apply the unbiased observation we have been talking about then they will have to admit that in the light of this very science itself it is not only external nature that has forces which develop until they are observed by human eyes, heard by human ears and grasped by human reason. For a study of human evolution will show that something evolves within human beings; the faculties for gaining exact knowledge of nature were at first asleep within them and have awakened and developed between those older times and now. But it is these newly acquired cognitional forces which have made possible the great progress of physical science.

What we need to ask ourselves is this: Is it inevitable that these inner faculties should remain as they are now, equipped only to reflect the outer world? Is it not perfectly reasonable to ask whether the human soul may not possess further slumbering faculties that can be awakened? Is there not the possibility that human beings can apply their inner forces not only as a mirror of the external world? May it not be that if they developed further forces within themselves that were once slumbering within them these might light up spiritually, so that their spiritual eyes and spiritual ears—as Goethe calls them6—might be opened, enabling them to perceive a spiritual world behind the sense world?

To anyone who follows this thought through without prejudice it will not seem nonsensical that hidden forces should be developed to open the way to the supersensible world and to answer the questions: What is the real nature of human beings? If they are created in the image of the spiritual world, what then is this spiritual world?

If we describe human beings in external terms and think of their gestures, instincts and so forth, we shall find their characteristics represented in the outer world imperfectly in lower beings. And we shall conclude from their outer appearance that they are a compilation of instincts, gestures and so on which we find distributed among a number of lower creatures. We conclude this because we think of what we see as man as having developed from what we see in these other creatures. Might it not be possible, then, to use in a similar way the forces we could develop, and penetrate into a spiritual external world, and see beings, forces and objects just as we see stones, plants and animals in the physical world? Might it not be possible to observe spiritual happenings which would throw light on man's inner life just as it is possible to understand man's relationship to the things of the physical world?

But that happened to be a time that was in between an old way and a new way of communicating spiritual science. It was a time of rest for the greater part of humankind. Nothing new was being discovered; the old sources and traditions were worked over again and again. That was absolutely the right thing for that period; for every period meets its needs in a characteristic way. So this interlude occurred, and we must realize that while it lasted people were in a special position that was different from both before and after that time. In a sense they became unaccustomed to looking for the soul's hidden faculties, which, if developed, could have led to seeing in the spiritual world. So a time drew on when human beings could no longer believe or understand that an inner development of hidden faculties would lead to supersensible knowledge. Even so, one fact could never be denied: that in human beings themselves there is something that cannot be perceived by physical senses. For how could it be thought that human reason, for example, is a visible entity? What sort of impartial thinking could fail to admit that human cognition is by its very nature a supersensible faculty?

People never actually lost sight of this fact, even at the time when they had ceased believing that supersensible faculties within the soul could be developed so as to give access to the supersensible. One particular thinker reduced this faculty to the smallest limit; it was impossible, he said, for human beings to penetrate by any kind of supersensible vision into a world that is as real to us spiritually as are animals, plants, minerals and physical human beings in the world of the senses. Yet even he had to recognize impartially that something supersensible does exist and can never be denied.

This thinker was Kant,7 who thus brought an earlier phase of human evolution to a certain conclusion. For what does he think about man's relationship to a supersensible spiritual world? He does not deny that human beings observe something supersensible when they look into themselves, and that they have to employ for this purpose faculties of knowledge which cannot be perceived by physical eyes, however clever they are in amplifying their physical instruments. Kant, then, does point to something supersensible—these very faculties of cognition themselves which the soul makes use of to draft for itself a reflected image of the outer world. But he goes on to say that this is all that can be known about a supersensible world. His opinion is that wherever human beings may turn their gaze, they see only this one thing they can call supersensible: the supersensible element contained in their senses in order to perceive, grasp and understand the existence of the sense world.

Accordingly, in the Kantian philosophy there is no path that can lead to observation or experience of the spiritual world. The one thing Kant admits is the possibility of recognizing that knowledge of the external world cannot be attained by the senses, but only by supersensible means. This is the sole experience of the supersensible world that human beings can have, and beyond this there is no access, no glimpse, no experience! This is the world historical importance of Kant.

But in Kant's argument it cannot be denied that when human beings use their thinking in connection with their actions and deeds they find the means to affect the sense-perceptible world. Thus Kant had to recognize that human beings do not follow only instinctive impulses, as lower animals do; they also follow impulses from within their souls which can raise them far above subservience to mere instinct. There are countless examples of people who are tempted by a seductive impulse to do something, but who resist the temptation and take as their guide to action something that cannot come from an external stimulus. We need only think of the great martyrs who gave up everything the sense world could offer for something that was to lead them beyond the sense world. Or we need only point to the experience of conscience in the human soul, even in the Kantian sense. When people encounter something ever so attractive and tempting, conscience can tell them not to be lured by it, but to follow the voice that speaks to them from spiritual depths, an indomitable voice within their souls. It was certainly like that for Kant, that in a person's inner being there is such a voice, and that what it says cannot be compared with any message from the outer world. Kant called it ‘the categorical imperative’—a significant phrase. But he goes on to say that human beings can get no further than this voice from the soul as a means of being active in the sense world from out of the supersensible, for they cannot escape from the world of the senses. They feel that duty, the categorical imperative and conscience speak from within them, yet they cannot penetrate into the realm from which they come.

Kant's philosophy prohibits human beings from going any further than to the boundary of the supersensible world. Everything that is actually within these realms from which come the voices of conscience, duty and the categorical imperative is withdrawn from our observation, despite the fact that it is of the same supersensible nature as the soul. According to Kant human beings cannot enter that realm; the most they can do is draw conclusions about it. They can tell themselves: Duty calls! But I am a human being and I am weak. In the ordinary world I cannot carry out fully the injunctions of duty and conscience. Therefore I must just accept the fact that my being is not confined to the world of the senses but has a significance beyond this world. I can hold this before me as a belief, but it is not possible for me to penetrate into the world from which moral consciousness, duty, conscience and the categorical imperative speak to me.

We will now turn to someone who in this context was the exact antithesis of Kant, no other than the poet and thinker Goethe. Anyone who truly compares the soul life of the two men will see that they are diametrically opposed in their attitudes towards the most important problems of knowledge. Goethe, after absorbing all that Kant had to say about these problems, maintained on the ground of his own inner experience that Kant was not right. Kant, says Goethe, claims that human beings have only an intellectual, conceptual power of judgement and not a pictorial faculty which could have experiences in the spiritual world. But—Goethe continues—anyone who has exercised himself with the whole force of his personality to wrest his way through the sense world to the supersensible, as I have done, will know that we are not restricted to drawing conclusions, but through a pictorial power of judgement we are actually able to raise ourselves into the spiritual world!—Such was Goethe's personal reply to Kant. And he particularly emphasizes that anyone asserting the existence of this pictorial power of judgement is embarking on an adventure in the realm of reason. But he adds that in his own eyes he passed the adventure of reason with flying colours!8