17. My “agreement” with Richard Wahle's “Critique of Knowledge and Anthroposophy”

When I read Richard Wahle's 1885 essay 'Brain and Consciousness', I had the impression that a personality was speaking who knew how to describe in a sharp-sighted way what human consciousness can say about the content given to it when it philosophizes, putting itself in the perspective of currently accepted science. This essay contains the germ of what Wahle would later discuss impressively in his books 'The Whole of Philosophy and its End' and 'On the Mechanism of Spiritual Life', and for which he found such apt formulations in smaller essays, particularly in his 'Historical Overview of the Development of Philosophy up to its Last Phase'. In “fast sündhafter” Kürze is the extract of a thought-provoking work in the preceding short essay given; in extraordinarily commendable detail, the result of this work is in the mentioned works. Wahle introduces his previous essay 'Erkenntniskritik und Anthroposophie' (Criticism of Knowledge and Anthroposophy) with the words: 'One happiness of the spirit is to grasp truth; another is to dream'. And he concludes it with the others: 'It is precisely my absolutely radical analysis and criticism of what exists, which only tolerates neutral realities that float in from somewhere and in some way, that makes it necessary to dream of true elemental forces. At the boundary of my steel-hard, narrow terrain of knowledge stands a turret from which the presentiment can roam into a necessary but unsearchable realm. And there is also the bridge on which my sympathies can walk to the forms of anthroposophy and its thoughts.

I described the impression that I gained from Brain and Consciousness in a short review of this work, which was printed in 1885 in the Deutsche Wochenschrift (No. 86, $. 9), which was then published in Vienna. I concluded this review with the words: “The main significance of this little work lies in the fact that it has shown, in sharp contours, what experience actually gives us and what is often only added to it. All that the individual sciences can find consists only in the observation of related events, whereby we must assume that the connection itself is based on some true fact. We consider the author's arguments to be thoroughly convincing, but we believe that he has not drawn the ultimate conclusion from his views. Otherwise, he would have found that the true facts of the matter are given to us as experiential events themselves – namely, the ideal ones – and that the negation of materialism consistently leads to scientific idealism. Thus, while we see the progression from the thoroughly solid foundation laid by Wahle to a higher level of knowledge as the right thing to do, we unreservedly admit that we see in this writing an outstanding achievement that will have a decisive effect on the branch of science to which it belongs and that will certainly take a place in the history of philosophy.

For me, before I read Wahle's writing, the content of which was given from the philosophical consciousness of the end of the nineteenth century; and I found this content presented in it in a way that seemed convincing to me. It was clear to me, however, that we must not stop at thinking this content through. Otherwise, we lack the 'final consequence'; and this cannot be a consequence of thinking, it must be a consequence of experience.

But must we not also recognize that dreaming encompasses a world of events, and waking another; and that the events of waking arise when dreaming suddenly changes into a different form of event? And must we not also recognize that the reality value of dreaming arises from the point of view of waking? If I have to answer these questions with “Yes,” I do not see myself in contradiction to what Wahle has said about dreaming in his “Mechanismus des geistigen Lebens.” I want to say, entirely in his spirit: There are series of events of waking and series of events of dreaming. One can think of the two types of series as being connected to each other, as Wahle does. In this way one is protected from the danger that Wahle so aptly characterizes (p. 459 of his “Mechanismus des geistigen Lebens”): “Dreaming makes a tremendous impression on people and when they talk about dreams they become quite dreamy and mystical.”

But it is different to consciously run through the stages in which waking and dreaming intertwine; it is different to experience waking and dreaming, and also the sudden transition from one experience to the other. It is precisely in the experience of waking, which occurs when one not only “wanted to get to know” Wahle's excellent “elucidations, refutations, demonstrations, analyses” and many “psychological and physiological insights”, but makes them the fully grasped constitution of “spiritual life” - I use this word entirely in Wahle's sense - is the impetus to move from the ranks of dreaming and waking to the others that I describe in imaginative, inspired, and intuitive knowledge. The transition of experience is as sudden as that from dreaming to waking; and the events of waking life receive from the standpoint of exact imagination, inspiration, and intuition a similar illumination of reality that they do not possess in themselves, just as dreaming receives one from the standpoint of waking life.

The objection that is raised, that nothing forces people to refer from the point of view of ordinary consciousness to that of imagination, inspiration and intuition, is naturally to be raised against the above statements. It will be raised by all those who do not go far enough in their cognitive life to notice the point in this life at which awakening from ordinary consciousness must occur.

It should not be raised by the man of choice alone. For he has ($. 174 f. of his “Mechanismus des geistigen Lebens”) written the fact-finding sentences: “We believe that once one realizes what is actually being said when one claims to perceive acts of the ego, one will be horrified by one's own presumptuousness. — Does one see, that is, perceive, not with the eyes, but does one clearly perceive the ego as a being, as a substance? Do you see the ego, which is supposed to appear as apperceiving, judging, willing, feeling in ever different acts, always as a constant thing, as the same being? When you see a person fencing, running, rowing, climbing, for example, you still always see the same person in the different activities. Do you always see the same ego here too? For heaven's sake, who can say that he has perceived this ego-being psychically?” And ($. 177 £.): ”But one must turn away from all this abstruse stuff, which of course was not gained by observation, but by the fear that one could only do justice to the complications by means of peculiar psychic brackets, and often was only gained by indirect spiritizing over literary enunciations. From metaphors and acts, unions, innate categories and symbols, one must turn to the simple representation of the multiplicity of sensual series.

Whoever says this indicates that ordinary consciousness dreams when it wants to claim something other than “series of images and bodily actions”. But then the next step cannot be to remain within ordinary consciousness, but to awaken from it. And with this awakening, the dreaming talk of a “will that shows itself to consciousness as power,” of an “act of loving,” of an “act of desiring, of judging, of imagining,” ceases. And an awakened speech about these “dreams” begins, similar to the way an awakened person speaks about his nocturnal dreams. For what is said in anthroposophy from exact imagination, inspiration, intuition about the phantasms of ordinary psychology, would like to relate to these as the judgments of the waking about the confused, confusing of his dream world.

The difference between awakening from the ordinary dream world to waking everyday life and awakening from this life to supersensible consciousness is only that the former is felt to be involuntary, the latter as brought about by one's own (but trained) will. (I also use the word will here with the same awareness as Wahle himself does in his writings, despite having seen through the fantasy of ordinary psychology with regard to the “will”).

Since Wahle is clear about the dreaming of ordinary consciousness, he cannot really close himself off from awakening either. But then it will also be possible to reach an understanding that by awakening to imagination, inspiration and intuition, one is on the way to the “primal factors” without sinning against one's justified “enlightenment, refutation, demonstration, analysis”. One has only to take a serious look at the corresponding occurrence of this awakening. Dreaming is often joined by nightmare. It is overcome by awakening. Such a “nightmare” is also present when one does not merely mentally imagine the “rows of flat, sensuous occurrences” and the “motoric activity in peculiar types,” but experiences them. This “nightmare experience” is what a person has when, in ordinary consciousness, he strives from the sensory into the supersensible. The dreaming of ordinary consciousness wants to merge into waking in the supersensible, just as the dream wants to merge into ordinary consciousness. Liberation from the “nightmare experience” is all striving for supersensible knowledge and for religious inwardness.

Spintizing about whether the results of imagination, inspiration and intuition now place us squarely in the realm of the “primal factors” ceases to have any significance when it is recognized that the point is not to speak of these “primal factors” in the way of dreaming, but to free ourselves from the nightmare of ordinary consciousness.

Wahle has analyzed and demonstrated the dream in a completely unique way (in his “Mechanismus des geistigen Lebens”). Anyone who moves in such trains of thought as he does, who can thus follow the dream sequences into the sequences of waking consciousness, should be able to understand that in the realm of occurrences not only the “frame principle” is assumed to be justified, but also the image principle. There is not only a framework, there is also a picture in the framework. And precisely those who can strictly experience the events in their immediacy, they arise in the field of the senses as images; in the field of bodily actions as experienced dreams. And through this, they are driven out of the image and the experienced dream into the supersensible reality, just as the (dreaming) dreamer is driven into the sensual.

The world of events is misinterpreted when one says: “Something that corresponds to the scurrying events of the world - still conceived without bodily senses - namely, how the world was and is, insofar as humans and senses are not, there must be it in living active power, and something that corresponds to the senses, there must also be it in truly living active power. Let us arbitrarily call the first substantial being X, the second substantial being in general Y. Then the following must hold: the free-floating, in themselves undeclared occurrences are the function of the interaction of XY. — That is the ultimate conclusion of “knowledge”: put XY, unknown how, the occurrences into the world.

But the occurrences say something else. They do not place all kinds of partial occurrences on the right side of the equals sign and X or Y on the left; nor do they add: Don't dissolve the calculation, but leave X and Y standing. They invite calculation; and calculation consists of imagination, inspiration, and intuition; and then, in the calculation, something comes out. We are not left with X and Y at the end of the path of knowledge, but at the beginning of the path of insight, with calculations to which we have applied the diligence of dissolution.

Actually, other objections to anthroposophy should be discussed here; but this “agreement” must also be of “almost sinful” brevity, and it already comprises more than double Wahle's remarks.

But from these allusions it should be clear that anthroposophy, without betraying itself, can do justice to Richard Wahle's excellent achievements. It will have no objection to the validity of the “destructive psychology” (the first part of “The Mechanism of Spiritual Life”); it will have to illuminate the astute “constructive psychology” (the second part of the aforementioned book) from the point of view of the awakened consciousness. For here Wahle relies on a physiology that, as numerous works in the anthroposophical literature show, is in great need of correction. But how can valid statements be possible for a mode of thinking that Wahle has so precisely analyzed and demonstrated? After all, even the dreamer can only judge his dream world after awakening.

And so I can still subscribe to the final sentences of my review of Wahle's “Brain and Consciousness” from 1885 today. Yes, I can extend them to include his later works.

There is only one thing I would like to say about the review at the time. It contains the sentence: “We consider what the author has presented to be thoroughly convincing, but we believe that he has not drawn the final conclusion from his views. Otherwise, he would have found that those true facts are given to us even as experiential occurrences – namely, the ideational ones – and that the negation of materialism consistently leads to scientific idealism.” What is underlined here often recurs in my writings from the eighties and nineties of the last century in various forms. Certain personalities, who are absorbed in outward appearances, certainly do not want to find in such sentences what leads to the later anthroposophical presentations in my consistent further development. If, when I wrote these sentences, I had not wanted to ward off being lumped together with those “spiritual cognizers” who materialize the spiritual in their imagination after all, if I had not wanted to make my view clearly recognizable as one of the “real spirit,” then perhaps I would not have had to run the risk of what I wanted to say clearly being later distorted by others into something unclear. For example, I could have formulated the above sentence as follows: “. . empirical occurrences, namely spiritual experience based on ideas, are given, and that the negation of materialism leads consistently to spiritual knowledge rooted in scientific idealism.” I do believe that anyone who wants to can see from my formulation decades ago the reference to what I currently call anthroposophy.

Considering all this, I would like to add my own to Wahl's final sentence: At the boundary of his steel-hard, narrow terrain of knowledge stands a turret with windows of frosted glass. If you leave them closed, the view into X and Y becomes cloudy, and you can only let “the hunch wander into a necessary but unsearchable realm”. But you can also open the windows, and then the inkling turns into an unsearchable realm – anthroposophy. But I have to return the sympathies, which are so gratifying to me, wholeheartedly, because one of the “little towers” that one needs to feel secure in the certainty of knowledge has been erected by Richard Wahle as a good master builder.

Criticism of Knowledge and Anthroposophy

by Richard Wahle

One happiness of the mind is to grasp truth, another is to dream. There is said to be truth and there is not said to be knowledge, because truth can consist in knowing that knowledge is impossible. But the mere certainty of knowledge, however sad the state of human knowledge may be, could not give rise to joy; rather, joy can come at most from getting rid of errors and vain hopes, and from having firm, albeit narrow, ground under one's feet instead of shaky ground.

I am free of all philosophical fallacies. Those who want to get to know the relevant explanations, refutations, demonstrations, analyses and many psychological and physiological insights would do best to read my works, especially my Mechanism of Mental Life. Here, in the utmost, almost sinful brevity, I shall mention what should lie behind us, in the night of false concepts and misleading words; I shall show the positive achievement that has been attained through my radical critique. And precisely that formula of the most certain and modest knowledge will then open the gate to the city of dreams.

First, let us recall the simplest analysis. There is no such thing as will essentially revealing itself as power to consciousness; there are only series of images and bodily actions. There is also no such thing as a psychic act of loving, no act of desiring, of judging, no act of imagining; but there are only series of two-dimensional sensory occurrences and motor functions - in peculiar types (which I have described in detail), for which those practical, abbreviated names are used, but behind which there are absolutely no recognized functions.

With the existence of the senses, there is certainly the occurrence of the world of expansion, of physicality; it is simply there, as a sensory occurrence, a reality. But there is no certainty, no chance for the assertion that this expansion is an effective, powerful potency, a factor of creation and energy.

It is quite certain that the extended reality exists on the one hand in the primary form of the real occurrence - as a crystal, a tree, a human body, an eye - and it is equally certain that on the other hand there is a secondary reality of occurrences in the form that is called memory - of crystal, of eye - or further emerging combinations of such occurrences, which are called fantasies. But it is not certain, it is even a deception that these events are found in the possession of an “I”. It is certain that all these primary and secondary occurrences are realities pure and simple, but it does not appear justified to assume that they exist as “known,” existing in the bosom of an “I.” There are free-floating, powerless, shadowy realities, without in any way betraying their origin, their rooting; we know nothing of their origin and their substance! That they are a treasure of an inner core-ego, that there is a consciousness of it, is a lie. It is easy to explain how the lie arises. It arises through the play - through opening and closing the eyes - of the senses, which, however, are themselves nothing but freely fluttering realities that show no power or way of acting and are not suited to tell us the true processes.

If we now summarize our critical certainty in the face of the abundance of unproven and premeditated events, we have to say: something that corresponds to the scurrying events of the world - still without bodily senses - corresponds to the world as it actually was and is, in so far as humans and senses are not present - must exist in living, active power; and something that corresponds to the senses must also exist in truly living, active power. Let us arbitrarily call the first substantial being X, and the second substantial being in general Y. Then the following must apply: the freely floating, in themselves undeclared occurrences are the function of the interaction of XY. That is the ultimate conclusion of “knowledge”: XY, unknown how, bring the occurrences into the world. And now one is pushed further to assumptions that allow a meager fixation, but cannot be thought out far. Thus, the realm of dreams opens up here, and four main streets emerge.

It is a fact in the area of occurrence that there is one circle of primary and secondary occurrences for sensory complex A and another for sensory complex B, and so on. The occurrences show themselves in spheres that are not open to each other, or at least cannot be declared open with certainty. So at first we may or perhaps must say that in the processes of effectiveness XY a principle of the departments exists. I called it the framework principle.

Then it can or must be thought that the X and Y, the elemental force of the extended world under the deduction of the senses, and the elemental force of sensuality are unified in the essence. For in order to interact, they must be equivalent. So perhaps only one elemental substance with an internal elemental differentiation is to be believed, with an internal cause to give itself in spheres, in the framework.

Furthermore, it is easily possible that this original substance in its functions also leaps its bounds, and so those spheres of occurrence could somehow flow together in the depths of the roots. And one can even dream that perhaps threads are spun from sphere to sphere in the realm of occurrences as well.

And finally. From the standpoint of man, we know joy and sorrow, pleasure and pain. But an almighty primary substance cannot suffer. And so every pain here must somehow be a part of a whole, in which it is not pain, but perhaps only a spice and an intensification of joy.

My absolutely radical analysis and critique of the existing, which only tolerates neutral realities floating around, unknown from where and how, makes it necessary to rave about true primal forces. At the edge of my steel-hard, narrow terrain of knowledge stands a turret from which the presentiment can roam into a necessary but unknowable realm. — And there is also the bridge over which my sympathies can cross over to the structures of anthroposophy and its thoughts.