Spiritual Teachings Concerning the Soul

GA 52 — 27 November 1903, Berlin

V. The Epistemological Foundations of Theosophy I

It will certainly come as no surprise to many of you that when the word “theosophy” is uttered, many of our contemporaries can offer nothing but a smile. Nor will it be unknown to many that precisely those who claim to be scientific or, let us say, philosophically educated, regard theosophy as something that must be described as a dilettantish pursuit, a fantastical belief. In scholarly circles in particular, theosophists are often regarded as a kind of fantastical dreamers who profess their peculiar ideas only because they have never become acquainted with the foundations of knowledge. You will find, especially in circles that consider themselves scientific, that they readily assume that theosophists are basically without any philosophical education, and even if they have acquired such an education or speak of it, it is only a dilettantish, piecemeal affair.

These lectures are not intended to be directly devoted to theosophy. There are enough others for that. They are intended to be an examination of Western philosophical education, an examination of how the scientific world relates to theosophy and how it could actually relate to it. They are intended to be a refutation of the prejudice that theosophists must be uneducated, amateurish people when it comes to science. Who has not heard often enough that philosophers of various schools — and there are enough schools of philosophy — claim that mysticism is an unclear mental image permeated by all kinds of allegories and emotional elements, and that theosophy has not managed to cultivate what is strictly methodical thinking. If it did so, it would realize how nebulous its path is. It would realize that mysticism can only take root in the minds of eccentric people. This is a well-known prejudice.

However, I do not want to begin with a rebuke. Not because it would not correspond to theosophical conviction, but because, based on my own philosophical education, I do not regard theosophy as amateurish, and yet I speak from the depths of my conviction. I can well understand that those who have absorbed Western philosophy, and are thus equipped with all the scientific tools, find it difficult to see anything in theosophy other than what is already known. For those who come from a background of philosophy and science today, it is really infinitely more difficult to find their way into Theosophy than for those who approach Theosophy with a naive human understanding, with a natural, perhaps religious feeling, and with a need for solutions to certain mysteries of life. For Western philosophy places so many obstacles in the way of its disciples, offers them so many judgments that seem to contradict Theosophy, that it makes it seemingly impossible to engage with Theosophy.

And indeed, it is true that theosophical literature shows little of what resembles a confrontation with our contemporary science and what could be called philosophical. That is why I have decided to give a series of lectures on this subject. They are intended to be an epistemological foundation of theosophy. In the course of these lectures, you will become familiar with the concepts of contemporary philosophy and their content. And if you consider these in a genuine, true, and profound sense, you will ultimately—but you must indeed wait until the end—see the foundation of theosophical knowledge spring forth from this Western philosophy. This should not be done by some kind of clever dialectical tossing around of concepts, but should be done, as far as possible in a few lectures, with all the tools that the knowledge of our contemporaries provides us with; it should be done with everything that is capable of giving even those who do not want to know something of the experience of a higher worldview.

What I have to deal with would not have been possible to deal with in the same way in another age. But it has been necessary, perhaps especially in our time, to look to Kant, Locke, Schopenhauer, or other contemporary writers, such as Eduard von Hartmann and his student Arthur Drews, or the brilliant epistemologist Volkelt or Otto Liebmann, or the somewhat feuilletonistic but no less rationally rigorous Eucken. Anyone who has looked around, who has familiarized themselves with this or that shade of the philosophical and scientific views of the present and the recent past, will understand and comprehend—this is my deepest conviction—that a real, genuine understanding of this philosophical development must lead not away from theosophy, but toward theosophy. It is precisely those who have thoroughly studied philosophical teachings who must come to theosophy.

I might not need to give this speech if the entire thinking of our time were not under the influence of one philosopher. It is said that Immanuel Kant's great intellectual achievement gave philosophy a scientific foundation. It is said that what he accomplished in defining the problem of knowledge is something unshakable. You will hear that anyone who has not grappled with Kant has no right to have a say in philosophy. You can go through the various schools of thought: Herbart, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, from Schopenhauer to Eduard von Hartmann – only those who have oriented themselves towards Kant can find their way through all these lines of thought. After various attempts had been made in 19th-century philosophy, in the mid-1870s the call went up, first from Zeller, then from Liebmann, then from Friedrich Albert Lange: Back to Kant! — And philosophy lecturers are of the opinion that one must orient oneself towards Kant, and only those who do so can have a say in philosophy.

Kant left his mark on all of 19th-century and contemporary philosophy. However, he brought about something quite different from what he himself intended. He expressed it in these words: he believed he had accomplished a feat similar to that of Copernicus. Copernicus turned the entire astronomical worldview upside down. He removed the Earth from the center and made another body, previously thought to be in motion, the Sun, the center. Kant, however, makes human beings, with their capacity for knowledge, the center of the physical view of the world. He completely reverses the entire physical view of the world. Most philosophers of the 19th century believed that this reversal was necessary. One can only understand this philosophy if one understands it from its premises. One can only understand what has flowed from Kant's philosophy if one understands it from its foundations. Anyone who understands how Kant arrived at his conviction that we can never really know things “in themselves,” since everything we know are only appearances, anyone who understands this also understands the course of the development of 19th-century philosophy, understands the objections that can be made against theosophy, and also how to respond to them.

You will know that Theosophy is based on a higher experience. The Theosophist says that the source of his knowledge is an experience that goes beyond sensory experience. You can see that this has the same validity as that of the senses, that what the theosophist tells us about astral worlds and so on is just as real as the things we perceive around us with our senses as sensory experience. What the theosophist believes to be his source of knowledge is a higher experience. If you read Leadbeater's “Astral Plane,” you will find that things in the astral world are as real as the cabs and horses in the streets of London. This is to say how real this world is to those who know it. The contemporary philosopher will immediately object: Yes, but you are mistaken in believing that this is true reality. Didn't 19th-century philosophy prove to you that what we call our experience is nothing more than our mental image? And that even the starry sky is nothing more than our mental image within us? — He considers this to be the most certain knowledge that can possibly exist. Eduard von Hartmann considers it to be the most self-evident truth that this is my mental image and that one cannot know what else it is. If you believe that you can describe experience as “real,” then you are what is called a naïve realist. Can you decide anything at all about the value of experience if you view the world in this way? This is the great conclusion that Kantianism has come to, that the world around us must be our mental image.

How did Kant's worldview come about? It emerged from the philosophies of his predecessors. When Kant was still young, Christian Wolff's philosophy prevailed in all schools. It distinguished between so-called empirical knowledge, which we acquire through sensory impressions, and that which comes from pure reason. While we can only understand the things of everyday life through experience, according to him we have things that are the highest objects of knowledge from pure reason. These things are the human soul, the free will of man, and questions relating to immortality and the divine nature.

The so-called empirical sciences deal with what is offered in natural history, physics, history, and so on. How does the astronomer obtain his knowledge? By directing his eye to the stars, by determining the laws according to his observations. We learn this by opening our senses to the outside world. No one can say that this is derived from pure reason. Man knows this because he sees it. These are empirical insights that we absorb from life, from experience, regardless of whether we incorporate them into a scientific system or not; it is experiential knowledge. No one can describe a lion based on pure reason alone. Wolff, on the other hand, assumes that what one is can be derived from pure reason. Wolff assumes that we have a doctrine of the soul based on pure reason, and also that the soul must have free will, that it must have reason, and so on. Therefore, Wolff calls the sciences that deal with the higher aspects of the doctrine of the soul rational psychology. The question of whether the world had a beginning and will have an end is a question that can only be decided by pure reason. He calls this question an object of rational cosmology. No one can decide on the purposefulness of the world based on experience; no one can investigate it through observation. These are all questions of rational cosmology. Then there is a science of God, of a divine plan. This is a science that is also derived from reason. This is what is known as rational theology, or metaphysics.

Kant grew up at a time when philosophy was taught in this sense. In his early writings, you will find him to be a follower of Wolffian philosophy. You will find him convinced that there is a rational psychology, a rational theology, and so on. He presents a proof that he calls the only possible proof of the existence of God. Then he became acquainted with a philosophical current that had a profound effect on him. He became acquainted with the philosophy of David Hume. This, he said, awakened him from his dogmatic slumber. — What does this philosophy offer? Hume says the following: We see that the sun rises in the morning and then sets in the evening. We have seen this many days. We also know that all peoples have seen the sun rise and set, that they have had the same experience, and we become accustomed to believing that this must continue to be so for all time.

And now another example: We see that the sun's heat falls on a stone. We think it is the sun's heat that warms the stone. What do we see? We first perceive the sun's heat and then the warmed stone. What do we perceive? Only that one fact follows the other. And when we experience that the sun's rays warm the stone, we have already formed the judgment that the sun's heat is the cause of the stone becoming warm. As Hume says: There is nothing that shows us more than a succession of facts. We become accustomed to believing that there is a causal connection. But this belief is just a habit, and everything that humans conceive of in terms of causality consists only of that experience. Humans see that one ball pushes another, they see that this causes a movement, and then they get used to saying that there is a law of nature at work here. In truth, we are not dealing with any real insight.

What is it that humans regard as knowledge derived from pure reason? According to Hume, it is nothing more than a summary of facts. We have to bring the facts of the world into a context. This corresponds to the human habit of thinking, the tendency of human thought. And we have no right to go beyond this thinking. We cannot say that there is something in things that has given them a lawfulness. We can only say that things and events flow past us. But when it comes to the “in itself” of things, we cannot speak of such a connection.

How can we now speak of something in things revealing itself to us that goes beyond experience? How can we speak of a connection in experience that originates from a divine being that goes beyond experience, if we are not inclined to orient ourselves toward anything other than habits of thought?

This view had such an effect on Kant that it awakened him from his dogmatic slumber. He asks: Can there be anything that goes beyond experience? What insights does experience give us? Does it give us reliable knowledge? Kant immediately answered this question in the negative. He says: Even if you have seen the sun rise a hundred thousand times, you cannot conclude from this that it will rise again tomorrow. It could also turn out differently. If you have only concluded from experience, it could also turn out that experience convinces you of something else. Experience can never provide certain, necessary knowledge.

I know from experience that the sun warms the stone. But I cannot claim that it must warm it. If all our knowledge comes from experience, it can never go beyond the state of uncertainty; then there can be no necessary empirical knowledge. Now Kant seeks to get to the bottom of this matter. He seeks a way out. Throughout his youth, he had become accustomed to believing in knowledge. Hume's philosophy had convinced him that there is nothing certain. Is there not perhaps something somewhere where one can speak of certain, necessary knowledge? But, he says, there are certain judgments. These are mathematical judgments. Is a mathematical judgment perhaps like the judgment: The sun rises in the morning and sets in the evening?

I have the judgment that the three angles of a triangle are one hundred and eighty degrees. If I have proven this for a single triangle, it suffices for all triangles. I can see from the nature of the proof that it applies to all possible cases. That is the peculiarity of mathematical proofs. It is clear to everyone that these must also apply to the inhabitants of Jupiter and Mars, if they have triangles at all, that there too the sum of the angles of a triangle must be one hundred and eighty degrees. And then: two times two can never be anything other than four. That is always true. Therefore, we have proof that there are insights that are absolutely certain. The question cannot be, “Do we have such insights?” Instead, we must consider how it is possible that we have such judgments.

Now comes Kant's big question: How are such absolutely necessary judgments possible? How is mathematical knowledge possible? — Kant now calls those judgments and insights that are drawn from experience a posteriori judgments and insights. The judgment: The sum of the angles of a triangle is one hundred and eighty degrees — but this is a judgment that precedes all experience, an a priori judgment. I can simply form a mental image of a triangle in my mind and prove it, and then, when I see a triangle that I have not yet experienced in detail, I can say that it must have an angle sum of one hundred and eighty degrees. All higher knowledge depends on this, if I can make judgments based on pure reason. How are such a priori judgments possible? We have seen that with such a judgment: the sum of the angles of a triangle is equal to one hundred and eighty degrees, all triangles are covered. Experience must conform to my judgment. If I draw an ellipse and look out into space, I find that a planet describes such an ellipse. The planet follows my judgment formed in pure knowledge. So I approach experience with my judgment formed purely in the realm of ideas. Did I draw this judgment from experience? — Kant asks further. When we form such purely ideal judgments, it is undoubtedly true that we do not actually have any empirical reality. The ellipse, the triangle—they have no empirical reality, but reality conforms to such knowledge. If I want true reality, then I must approach experience. But if I know what laws operate in it, then I have knowledge before all experience. The law of the ellipse does not come from experience. I form it myself in my mind. Thus, a passage in Kant begins with the sentence: “But even if all our knowledge begins with experience, it does not therefore all spring from experience.” I put what I know into experience. The human mind is such that everything in its experience corresponds only to the laws it has. The human mind is such that it must necessarily develop these laws. When it then approaches experience, experience must conform to these laws.

An example: Suppose you are wearing blue glasses. You will see everything in blue light; objects will appear to you in blue light. Whatever the nature of things outside may be, that is of no concern to me for the time being. The moment the laws that my mind develops spread over the entire world of experience, the entire world of experience must fit into them. It is not true that the judgment “two times two is four” is taken from experience. It is the nature of my mind that two times two must always equal four. My mind is such that the three angles of a triangle always add up to one hundred and eighty degrees. This is how Kant justifies the laws from within man himself. The sun warms the stone. Every effect has a cause. That is a law of my mind, and if the world is chaos, then I counter it with the lawfulness of my mind. I grasp the world as if it were a string of pearls. I am the one who makes the world a mechanism of knowledge. — And now you can also see how Kant came to find such a specific method of knowledge. As long as the human mind is organized as it is, everything must conform to this organization, even if reality were to change overnight. For me, it could not change if the laws of my mind remain the same. So the world may be as it will; we perceive it as it must appear to us according to the laws of our mind.

Now you see what it means when it is said that Kant turned the whole theory of knowledge upside down. Previously, it was assumed that man reads everything from nature. But now he lets the human mind dictate the laws of nature. He lets everything revolve around the human mind, just as Copernicus lets the earth revolve around the sun.

But there is something else that shows that humans can never go beyond experience. It may seem like a contradiction, but you will see that it is actually in line with Kant's philosophy. Kant shows that concepts are empty. Two times two is four is an empty judgment if it is not filled with peas or beans. Every effect has a cause is a purely formal judgment if it is not filled with a specific experiential content. The judgments are preformed in me to be applied to the perception of the world. “Perceptions without concepts are blind — concepts without perceptions are empty.” We can think of millions of ellipses, but they do not correspond to reality unless we see them in the movement of the planets. We must prove everything through experience. We can gain a priori judgments, but we may only apply them if they correspond to experience.

But God, freedom, and immortality are things we can ponder for so long, yet we cannot gain knowledge of them through experience. It is therefore completely futile to try to figure them out with our reason. The a priori concepts are only valid as far as our experience extends. Therefore, we do have a science a priori, but it only tells us what experience must be like once the experience is there. We can, as it were, capture experience as if in a web, but we cannot determine what the law of experience must be. We know nothing about the “thing in itself,” and since God, freedom, and immortality must have their origin in the “thing in itself,” we cannot determine anything about them. We do not see things as they are, but as we must see them according to our organization.

Kant thus established critical idealism and overcame naive realism. What conforms to causality is not the “thing in itself.” What conforms to my eye or my ear must first make an impression on my eye, my ear. These are perceptions, sensations. These are the effects of some “things in themselves,” of things that are completely unknown to me. These produce a multitude of effects, and I classify these in a lawful world. I form an organism of sensations. But what lies behind it, I cannot know. It is nothing other than the lawfulness that my mind has placed into the sensations. I cannot know what lies behind the sensation. Therefore, the world that surrounds me is only subjective. It is only what I myself construct.

And now the development of physiology in the 19th century seems to have proven Kant completely right. Take the important discovery of the great physiologist Johannes Müller. He established the law of specific sensory energies. It consists in the fact that each organ responds in its own way. Let light into the eye and you have a glimmer of light; strike the eye and you will also have a sensation of light. From this, Müller concludes that it is not the things outside that matter, but that what I perceive depends on my eye. The eye responds to a process unknown to me with the color quality, let's say, blue. Blue is nowhere outside in space. A process affects us and produces the sensation of “blue.” What you believe to be in front of you is nothing more than the effect of some unknown processes on a sensory organ. The entire physiology of the 19th century seems to have confirmed this law of specific sensory energies. This also seems to support Kant's idea.

In the fullest sense of the word, this worldview can be called illusionism. No one knows anything about what is happening outside, what causes their sensations. They spin their entire world of experience from within themselves and construct it according to the laws of their mind. Nothing else can ever approach them as long as their organization is as it is. This is Kant's doctrine, motivated by physiology. This is what Kant calls critical idealism. This is also what Schopenhauer develops in his philosophy: People believe that the entire starry sky and the sun surround them. But this is only your own mental image. You create the whole world. — And Eduard von Hartmann says: This is the surest truth there can be. No power could ever shake this statement. — So says Western philosophy. It has never considered how experiences actually come about. Only those who know how experiences come about can hold on to realism, and they then arrive at true critical idealism. Kant's view is transcendental idealism, which means that he knows nothing of true reality, nothing of a thing in itself, but only of a world of ideas. He basically says: I must relate my world of ideas to something unknown to me. — This view is supposed to be regarded as something unshakeable.

Is this transcendental idealism really unshakeable? Is the “thing in itself” unknowable? — If that were the case, then there could be no question of a higher experience. For if the “thing in itself” were merely an illusion, then we could not speak of any higher beings. And this is therefore also an objection raised against theosophy: you have higher beings of which you speak.

Next time, we will see how these views need to be deepened.