Spiritual Teachings Concerning the Soul

GA 52 — 16 March 1904, Berlin

VIII. Theosophical Doctrine of the Soul I: Body and Soul

In order to communicate heavenly wisdom to human beings, self-knowledge is necessary. Plato revered his great teacher Socrates in particular because Socrates was able to attain the highest, the knowledge of God, through self-knowledge, because he valued the knowledge of his own soul more than all knowledge of external nature, more than anything that relates to anything beyond our world. Socrates became a martyr of knowledge and truth precisely because he was misunderstood in his knowledge of the soul. He was accused of denying the gods, when in fact he was only seeking them in a different way than others, through his own soul; accused for the sake of this knowledge of the soul, which has as its goal not only the knowledge of one's own human soul, but also the treasure that this human soul holds in knowledge, namely the knowledge of the divine foundation of the world.

These three lectures will deal with this knowledge of the soul. The number of lectures has not been set arbitrarily, nor is it coincidental, but has been carefully considered based on the course of the soul's development. For in the times when knowledge and wisdom of the soul became the focus of all human thought and endeavor, in the times of the ancient Indian Vedanta wisdom that preceded Buddhism, and again at the time of Buddhism when it was in its heyday, and again at the time when Greek philosophy was in its heyday, and again in the first and later best period of Christian development, the essence of man was divided into three parts: body, soul, and spirit. If one wants to consider the soul in the right sense, then one must relate it to the other two members of the human being, to the body on the one hand and to the spirit on the other. Therefore, this first introductory lecture must deal with the relationship of the soul to the body. The second lecture will deal with the actual inner nature of the human soul, and the third lecture with the view that the human soul can gain from the divine-spiritual source of world existence.

Through a strange twist of history, this threefold division of the human being has been lost to Western research, for wherever you seek the science of the soul today, everywhere you will find that the science of the soul or psychology is simply contrasted with natural science or the study of the body, and everywhere you will hear that the starting point is the opinion that human beings should be viewed from two perspectives: from the perspective that enlightens us about physicality and from the perspective that enlightens us about the soul. In popular terms, this means that human beings consist of body and soul. This statement, on which basically all of our familiar psychology is based and to which many errors in psychology can be traced, has a curious history. Until the early days of Christianity, when people thought about human beings and sought to explain their nature, no one distinguished between them in any other way than in three parts: body, soul, and spirit. Go to the first Christian teachers, go to the Gnostics, and you will find this division everywhere. Until the 2nd and 3rd centuries, the tripartite division of man, which was also recognized by Christian science and dogma, was accepted. Later, this teaching was considered dangerous within Christianity. It was thought that by rising above his soul to the spirit, man would become too arrogant, that he would presume too much to shed light on the reasons behind things, which only revelation should illuminate. Therefore, various councils deliberated and decided that the dogma to be taught in the future was that man consists of body and soul. Respected theologians such as John Scotus Erigena and Thomas Aquinas held fast to the tripartite division in a certain sense. But Christian science, which was primarily responsible for the cultivation of the science of the soul in the Middle Ages, increasingly lost awareness of the tripartite division. And with the flourishing of science in the 15th and 16th centuries, there was no longer any awareness of the old division. Even Descartes distinguished only between the soul, which he calls the spirit, and the body. And so it remained. Those who speak of psychology or the science of the soul today are unaware that they are speaking under the influence of a Christian dogma. It is believed, and can be read in the textbooks, that human beings consist only of body and soul. However, this is merely a centuries-old prejudice that has been perpetuated and is still relied upon today. This will also become apparent to us in the course of these lectures.

Above all, it is now incumbent upon us to show what relationship between soul and body must be assumed by the unbiased observer of the soul; for it seems to be a result of modern natural science that one should no longer speak of the soul at all, as one spoke of the soul thousands of years before our time. Natural science, which left its mark on the 19th century and its intellectual development, has repeatedly declared that its views are incompatible with a science of the soul in the old sense of the word — such as that of Goethe and, in part, Aristotle — and therefore untenable. You can take any handbook on psychology, or take Haeckel's “The Riddle of the Universe,” and you will find everywhere that dogmatic prejudices persist and that the old ways of thinking, in which people sought to approach the soul, are considered to have been overcome. No one can — and I say this on behalf of natural scientists and admirers of Ernst Haeckel — admire Haeckel more than I do, as a great man, as a monumental scientific figure. But great men also have great faults, and so it is fitting to examine the prejudices of our time with an open mind.

What does this side tell us? It tells us: Look, what you have called the soul has disappeared from under our hands. We natural scientists have shown you that all sensory perceptions, everything that develops as imaginative life, all thinking, all willing, all feeling, that all this is bound to very specific organs of our brain and our nervous system. Nineteenth-century science has shown, they say, that certain parts of our cerebral cortex, if they are not completely intact, make it impossible for us to perform certain mental functions. From this, they conclude that these mental functions are localized in these individual parts of our brain, that they depend, as they say, on these parts of our brain. This has been expressed in drastic terms by saying that a certain point in the brain is the center for language, another part for this mental activity, another part for another, so that one can remove piece by piece of the soul. It has been shown that the disease of certain parts of the brain is accompanied by the loss of certain mental abilities at the same time. What has been mentally imaged for millennia as the soul cannot be found by natural scientists; it is a concept that natural scientists do not know what to do with. We find the body and its functions, but nowhere do we find a soul. The great moral teacher of Darwinism, Bartholomew Carneri, who wrote an ethics of Darwinism, clearly expressed his conviction in a way that could perhaps never be expressed more clearly in these circles of natural scientists. He says: Let us take a clock. The hands move forward, the clockwork is in motion. All this happens through the mechanism that stands before us. Just as we have an expression of the clock mechanism in what the clock accomplishes, so we have an expression of the entire nervous mechanism before us in what man feels, thinks, and wills. Just as we cannot assume that there is a little soul sitting in the clock, moving the wheels and advancing the hands, so we cannot assume that there is a soul outside the organism that causes thinking, feeling, and willing. This is the confession of a natural scientist in a spiritual sense; this is what natural scientists have made the basis of a new faith, a pure naturalistic religion. The natural scientist believes that the findings of science compel him to this confession, and he believes that he may consider anyone who does not come to these conclusions under the influence of science to be childish in spirit. Bartholomäus Carneri has shown this unvarnished. As long as people were children, they spoke like Aristotle; but now that they have become men and understand science, they must abandon their childish views. The view of natural scientists, who see humans as nothing more than a mechanism, coincides with the parable of the clock. This view is radical. It is regarded as the only one worthy of the present age. And it is presented in such a way that the scientific discoveries of the age compel us to come to these conclusions.

But now we must ask ourselves: Is it really above all natural science, the precise investigation of our nervous system, the precise investigation of our organs and their functions, that has forced us to this view? No, because in the 18th century, everything that is cited today as being at the cutting edge of science and authoritative was still in its infancy. There was nothing of modern psychology, nothing of the discoveries of the great Johannes Müller and his school, nothing of the discoveries made by natural scientists in the 19th century. And back then, in the 18th century, these views had been expressed in the most radical way in the French Enlightenment, which could not build on natural science, when the words “Man is a machine” were heard for the first time. A book by Holbach entitled Système de la nature dates from this period, about which Goethe said that he felt repelled by its superficiality and lack of substance. This proves that this view existed before modern natural science. It can be said that, on the contrary, the materialism of the 18th century prevailed over the minds of the 19th century and that the materialistic creed set the tone for the way of thinking that was then carried over into natural science. That is the historical truth. For if this were not the case, then one would have to call the view held by modern science, namely that one cannot speak of the soul in the old sense because the soul can be removed in the same way that the brain can be removed, as has been shown, a childish view.

For what is particularly gained by this view? No researcher in the field of spiritual life who, in the sense of Aristotle, in the sense of the ancient Greeks, or — let us say, despite all the contradictions that will come from some quarters — no researcher of the soul who seeks to understand the soul in the sense of the Christian Middle Ages, can take offense at the truths of today's natural science. Every reasonable researcher of the soul will agree with what natural science says about the nervous system and the brain as the mediators of our soul functions. He is not surprised that when a certain part of the brain becomes diseased, one can no longer speak. The ancient researcher is no more astonished by this than he is by the fact that he can no longer think when he is killed. Modern science does nothing more than specify in detail what people have already understood in general. And just as people know that without certain parts of the brain they cannot speak or form mental images, so it should be proof that they have no soul if they can be killed. The Vedantists, Plato, and others are also clear that human soul activity ceases when a large boulder falls on a person's head and crushes them. The ancient doctrine of the soul taught nothing else. We can be clear about that. We can accept all of natural science and still understand the doctrine of the soul differently. In earlier centuries, it was clear that the path taken by natural science does not lead to knowledge of the soul and therefore cannot be taken to refute it. If those who, from the standpoint of natural science, endeavor to refute the old science of the soul were well versed in the thinking of earlier times, when people were not yet so preoccupied with external life, when they were not yet accustomed to observing their own soul life, indeed to observe their own soul life at all, if the naturalistic believers were to listen to the thoughts of ancient sages, then they would be able to see, precisely through these thoughts, what a quixotic endeavor it is to fight against the doctrine of the soul in this scientific sense.

This whole struggle is already depicted in a conversation that you will find in Buddhist literature, in a conversation that does not belong to the speeches of Buddha himself, which was first recorded in the early years before the birth of Christ. But anyone who examines the conversation will see that it deals with the oldest genuine views of Buddhism, which are expressed in the conversation between King Milinda, equipped with Greek wisdom and dialectics, and the Buddhist sage Nagasena. This king appears before the Indian sages and asks: Tell me, who do people recognize you as? — To which the wise Nagasena replies: I am called Nagasena. But that is only a name. There is no subject, no personality behind it. “How so?” said King Milinda, who possessed Greek dialectic and all the ability and power of Greek thought. "Listen, all of you who have come here. The sage claims that there is nothing behind the name Nagasena. What is it that stands before me? Are your hands and legs Nagasena? No. Are your sensations, feelings, and mental images Nagasena? No, none of these things are Nagasena. Well, then, the connection between all things is Nagasena. But since he now claims that none of this is Nagasena, that there is only a name that holds everything together, who is he then, and what is Nagasena? Is that which lives behind the brain, behind the organs, behind the physicality, behind the feelings and mental images, nothing? Is nothing the one who does good deeds for others? Is the one who does good and evil nothing? Is the one who strives for holiness nothing? Is there nothing behind all this but the mere name? Nagasena replied with another parable: How did you come here, great king, on foot or by carriage? The king replied: By carriage. Now, explain the carriage to me. Is the shaft your carriage? Are the wheels your carriage? Is the carriage body your carriage? — No, replied the king. — What then is your carriage? It is a name that refers only to the connection between the various parts.

What did the wise Nagasena, who grew up in the Buddhist teachings, mean by his answer? — O King, you who have attained great and mighty abilities in Greece, in Greek philosophy, you must understand that when you consider the parts of the cart in their context, you arrive at nothing other than a name, just as when you consider the parts of a human being held together.

Take this ancient teaching, which can be traced back to the earliest times of the Buddhist worldview, and ask yourself what it says. Nothing other than that the path of gaining knowledge of the soul by observing the external organs, whether gross or subtle—the observation of the interplay of mental images, which a great anatomist, Metchnikov, estimated at a billion—is a wrong path. In the sense of this correct statement by the sage Nagasena, we cannot find the soul in this way. That is a false path. In the days when people knew how to find and study the soul, they never attempted to approach it in this way. It was a historical necessity that the subtle, intimate ways in which the ancient sages of the Christian Middle Ages sought the soul receded somewhat when our natural science began to focus more on the external world. For what are the methods, perspectives, and points of view that natural science has developed in particular? In the posthumous works of one of the most brilliant natural scientists of our immediate present, who made great discoveries in the field of electrical theory, you can find that modern natural science has written on its banner: simplicity and practicality. And you can find that a psychologist who also works in the spirit of natural science adds clarity to these two requirements of simplicity and practicality. And one can say that through these three—simplicity, practicality, and clarity—natural science has worked wonders.

But this does not apply to the soul. Clarity in relation to the observation of the external limbs, practicality in relation to external appearance, that was why natural science came to seek, calculate, and explore the connection between the parts. But that was also precisely what, in the words of the sage Nagasena, can never lead to the soul. Because natural science has now taken this path, it is only too understandable that it has strayed from the ways of the soul. Today, there is not even an awareness of what soul researchers have strived for over centuries. It is truly astonishing what is said in this regard and what a wealth of ignorance is revealed when today, in seemingly authoritative circles, people talk about Aristotle's soul years or the soul teachings of the first Christian researchers, or the soul teachings of the Middle Ages. And yet, if someone wants to understand the nature of the soul scientifically, there is no other approach than careful inner work, acquiring the mental images of Aristotle, the mental images that led the early Christians and the great Christian church teachers to knowledge of the soul. There is no other method. It is just as important for this field as the method of natural science is for external science. But these methods of soul science have been largely lost to us. Genuine inner observations are not regarded as a scientific field at all.

The theosophical movement has set itself the task of exploring the ways of the soul again. Access to the soul can be found in many different ways. In other lectures, I have attempted to convey knowledge of the soul through purely spiritual scientific means, using purely theosophical methods. Here, however, I will first speak about how the great Aristotle founded this science of the soul at the end of the great Greek philosophical epoch. For unlike Aristotle, wisdom about the soul had been cultivated in earlier times. We will understand how wisdom about the soul was cultivated in ancient Egyptian wisdom and in ancient Vedic wisdom. But that is for later. Today, let me speak of the soul teaching of Aristotle, who, centuries before the birth of Christ, as a scholar and scientist, brought to completion what had been found in completely different ways. We can say that in Aristotle's soul teaching we have something that the best in the field of soul teaching were able to give. And because Aristotle conveys the best, we must speak of Aristotle above all else. And yet this giant mind of his time — his writings are a treasure trove of knowledge from ancient times, and anyone who delves into Aristotle knows what was achieved before his time — this giant mind was not a clairvoyant like Plato, he was a scientist. Anyone who wants to approach the soul in the scientific field must do so in the manner of Aristotle. Aristotle is a personality who, in every respect — taking the time into account — satisfies the requirements of scientific thinking. Only, as we shall see, in one single point he does not. And this single point, in which we will find Aristotle unsatisfactory for the study of the soul, has become the great downfall of all scientific theories of the soul in the Western world.

Aristotle was a scientific teacher of evolution. He stood entirely on the standpoint of the theory of evolution. He assumed that all beings had developed in strict scientific necessity. He even had the most imperfect beings come into being through spontaneous generation, through the mere coming together of inanimate natural substances, in a purely natural way. This is a hypothesis that is an important scientific bone of contention, but it is a hypothesis that Haeckel shares with Aristotle. And Haeckel also shares with Aristotle the conviction that a straight ladder leads up to the human being. Aristotle also includes all soul development in this development and is convinced that there is not a radical difference between soul and physicality, but only a gradual one. That is, Aristotle is convinced that in the development from the imperfect to the perfect, there comes a moment when the stage is reached where everything inanimate has found its form, and then quite naturally the possibility arises that the soul develops out of the inanimate. And now he distinguishes in stages between a so-called plant soul, which lives in the entire plant world, an animal soul, which lives in the animal kingdom, and finally he distinguishes a higher stage of this animal soul, which lives in humans. You see, Aristotle, correctly understood, is completely in agreement with everything that modern science teaches. Now take Haeckel's “Riddle of the Universe,” the first pages, where he stands on the ground of correct natural laws, and compare that with Aristotle's natural science and soul doctrine, and you will find, if you take into account the difference given by time, that there is no real difference.

But now comes the point where Aristotle goes beyond the science of the soul, which modern science believes it has arrived at. Here Aristotle shows that he is capable of observing real inner life. For anyone who follows what Aristotle now builds on this theory of knowledge based on natural laws with deep understanding will see that all those who object to Aristotle's view have simply not understood it in the true sense of the word. It is infinitely easy to see that we must take a step, a huge step, from the animal soul to the human soul. It is infinitely easy to see. Nothing prevents us from taking this step with Aristotle except the habits of thought that have developed in the course of modern intellectual trends. For Aristotle is clear that something occurs within the human soul that is essentially different from everything that is found outside as spiritual. The ancient Pythagoreans already said that those who truly understand the truth that humans are the only beings that can learn to count know what distinguishes humans from animals. But it is not so easy to understand what it actually means that only humans can learn to count. The Greek sage Plato declared that no one was ready for his school of philosophy unless they had first learned mathematics, at least the basics, the fundamentals. In other words, Plato wanted nothing more than for those he introduced to the science of the soul to know something about the nature of mathematics, to know something about the nature of this peculiar mental activity that humans engage in when they do mathematics. But Aristotle also understands this; it is not a matter of doing mathematics, but rather of understanding that it is possible for humans to do mathematics. This means nothing other than that humans are capable of discovering laws, strictly self-contained laws that no external world can give them. Only those who are not trained in thinking, only those who do not know how to achieve self-observation, only they fail to realize that even the simplest mathematical theorem could never be obtained by mere observation. Nowhere in nature is there a real circle, nowhere in nature is there a real straight line, nowhere is there an ellipse, but in mathematics we explore these, and we apply the world we have gained from within to the outside world. This is a fact, and without thinking it through, one can never arrive at a true understanding of the nature of the soul. That is why theosophy demands of its pupils who want to delve deeper into it a rigorous training of the mind; not the erratic thinking of everyday life, not the erratic thinking of Western philosophy, but thinking that practices self-observation with inner thoroughness. This thinking allows us to recognize the significance of this statement. And those who, through their mathematical training, have made the greatest conquests in the field of astronomy, recognize the significance and express it. Read the writings of Kepler, that great astronomer; read what he says about this fundamental phenomenon of human self-observation, and you will see what this personality has to say about it. He knew the significance of mathematical thinking even in the most distant reaches of space. He says: It is wonderful, the correspondence we find when we sit in a lonely study and think about circles and ellipses, purely from our thinking, and then look up at the sky and find their correspondence with the spheres of heaven. Such teachings are not about external research, but about deepening such insights. Already in the vestibule, it should be apparent to those who wanted to be admitted to the school of philosophy which of them could be admitted. For then it was known that — just as those who have their five senses can explore the external world — they could also explore the nature of the soul through thought. This was not possible before.

But something else was required. Mathematical thinking is not enough. It is the first stage, where we live entirely within ourselves, where the spirit of the world develops from within us. It is the most trivial, the most subordinate stage, which must be taken first, but which we must go beyond. This was precisely what the older soul researcher demanded: to draw the highest realms of human knowledge from the depths of the soul in the same way that mathematics draws the truths of the starry heavens from the depths of the soul. This was the demand that Plato concealed in the sentence: Anyone who wants to enter my school must first have completed a course in mathematics. Mathematics is not necessary, but rather a knowledge that has the independence of mathematical thinking. And if one realizes that human beings have a life within themselves that is independent of external natural life, that they must draw the highest truths from within themselves, then one also realizes that human beings' greatest effectiveness extends to something that is beyond all natural activity.

Look at the animal. Its activity is purely species-related. Every animal does what countless of its ancestors have also done. The species concept completely dominates the animal. Tomorrow it will do the same thing it did yesterday. The ant builds its marvelous structure, the beaver builds his, in ten, a hundred, a thousand years, just as it does today. There is development in this, but not history. Anyone who realizes that human development is not merely development, but history, can be just as clear about the method of soul observation as someone who has realized what mathematical truths are. There are still wild peoples. They are dying out, but there are still some who cannot see the connection between today and tomorrow. There are those who, when it gets cold in the evening, cover themselves with tree leaves. In the morning they throw them away again, and in the evening they have to look for them again. They are unable to carry yesterday's experience over into today and tomorrow. What is necessary if we want to carry yesterday's experience over into today and tomorrow? We cannot say that if we know today what we did yesterday, then tomorrow we will also do what we did yesterday. That is the nature of the animal soul. It can progress, it can become something else over time, but then the change is not historical. A historical event consists in the individual human being making use of what he has experienced in such a way that he can infer something he has not experienced, something that will happen tomorrow. I learn the meaning, the spirit of yesterday, and build on the fact that the laws my soul gains from observation extend into what I have not yet observed, that is, into the future. Travelers tell us that it has happened that some wanderers have lit fires in areas where monkeys lived. They moved away and left the fire burning and the wood lying there. The monkeys came and warmed themselves by the fire. But they could not stoke the fire. They cannot become independent of their observations and experiences; they cannot draw conclusions. Humans draw conclusions from their observations and experiences and thereby become the self-determined masters of their own future. They carry their experiences into tomorrow and transform development into history. Just as they transform experience into theory, just as they extract the truths of the spirit from nature, they extract the rules of the future from the past and thereby become the builders of the future.

Anyone who thinks these two things through thoroughly, that humans can become independent in two ways, that they can not only observe but also formulate theories, that they not only have development like the animal soul but also history, anyone who understands these two things will understand what I meant when I said not only does the animal soul live in man, but the animal soul develops to such an extent that it can take in the so-called Nus, the world spirit. Aristotle considers this necessary for man to be able to form history, that the world spirit sinks into the animal soul. According to Aristotle, the human soul differs from the animal soul in that it has been elevated from what it has risen to within animal development to the functions and activities through which it has come into possession of the spirit. And when the great Kepler says that the laws discovered in a solitary study are applicable to external natural phenomena, this is explained by the fact that the world spirit, the Nus, the Mahat, sinks into it and raises the human soul to a higher level. The human soul is, as it were, lifted out of animal existence. It is the spirit that lifts it out. The spirit lives in the soul. It develops out of the soul. It develops in the same way that the soul gradually lifts itself out of the body.

But Aristotle did not say this latter point, or at least not clearly. He says again and again that the soul develops step by step to the human soul in a completely natural way — but then the spirit enters this naturally developed human soul from outside. In Aristotle's sense, the Nus is something that is placed into the human soul from outside through creative activity. And that became the downfall of Western soul science. It is Aristotle's downfall that he is unable to develop his correct view, that the human soul is elevated by the sinking of the nus into it, into a theory of the course of history. He is unable to comprehend this development as naturally as the development of the soul can be comprehended. But Greek sages and Indian sages have already done this. They have comprehended the body, soul, and spirit in a natural way up to the human spirit in their development. With Aristotle, there is a break. The idea of creation enters into the conception. We shall see how theosophical soul teaching overcomes this idea of creation, how it is that which, in the true sense, draws the ultimate consequences of the scientific worldview, albeit from a spiritual point of view.

But only by realizing that we must return to the old division into body, soul, and spirit will we truly understand this natural development of the human being. However, we must not believe that access to the soul will ever be found by following the seemingly irrefutable path cultivated by modern natural science, through the observation of the individual parts of the brain. We must realize that the objections of the Indian sage Nagasena also apply to today's naturalistic doctrine of the soul. Above all, we must realize that deeper, inner self-observation and deeper spiritual research are necessary in order to find access to the soul and spirit. A false mental image is formed of those who believe that the various religious creeds and the various ways that have emerged from the various religious creeds have said what modern science seeks to refute. They have never said this, never attempted it. Anyone who follows the development of the doctrine of the soul can see clearly that those who knew something about the methods of the doctrine of the soul never applied the methods of natural science in such a way that they would have to refute them. They cannot find the soul. Oh no, the soul researchers who still knew what the soul is never sought the soul in this way.

I will name one, the most frowned upon among the Enlightenment thinkers, but also the least known. I will say a few words about the doctrine of the soul in the 13th century, the doctrine of the soul of Thomas Aquinas. One of the characteristic features of this doctrine of the soul is that its author says: What the human spirit takes with it when it leaves this body, what the human spirit takes with it into the purely spiritual world, can no longer be compared with anything that human beings experience within their bodies. Yes, Thomas Aquinas says that the task of religion in its most ideal sense is to educate people so that they can take something from this body that is not sensual, that is not bound to the exploration, observation, and experience of external nature. As long as we live in this body, we see through our eyes and hear through our ears what is sensual. We perceive everything sensory through our sensory organs. But the spirit processes this sensory information. The spirit is what is actually active. The spirit is that which is eternal. And now consider the profound insight that has been gained on the basis of thousands of years of spiritual teaching, which is expressed in the words: The spirit that has gathered little during this life that is independent of external sensory observation, independent of external sensory life, is not happy when it is disembodied. Thomas Aquinas says: What we see in our sensory environment is constantly permeated by sensory phantasms. But the spirit, precisely the spirit that I have described in the sense of mathematics, described as Nus, which arises in a simple way, just as tomorrow arises from yesterday and today, this spirit, by freeing itself, gathers fruits for eternity. The spirit feels infinitely lonely and empty — this is Thomas Aquinas' teaching — when it enters the spirit world without having come so far as to be free from all the phantasms of the sensory world. The deep meaning of the Greek myth of drinking from the river Lethe is thus revealed to us as a thought: the spirit in its purely spiritual existence will develop higher and higher the freer it becomes from all sensual phantasms. Therefore, those who seek the spirit in a sensual way cannot find it, for the spirit, once it has become free from sensuality, no longer has anything to do with sensuality. Thomas Aquinas therefore strongly condemns the methods by which it is sought in a sensual way. This Doctor of the Church is an opponent of any experiment or attempt to communicate with disembodied and deceased beings in a sensual way. The spirit must be at its purest when it is free from sensual fantasies and from attachment to sensuality. If it is not, then it feels infinitely lonely in the spiritual world. The spirit that relies on sensual observation, that is absorbed in sensual observations, lives in the spiritual world as if in an unknown world. This loneliness is its fate, its lot, because it has not learned to be free from sensual fantasies. We will only fully understand this when we come to the second lecture. You see, it was precisely in the opposite way that the soul was sought in the times when inner observation, the observation of what lives within the human being, was decisive for the science of the soul. This is what lives on as a fundamental error in modern science and what has led to the slogan of soul science without a soul being trumpeted as the naturalistic creed of the 19th century. This science, which is based solely on external observations, believes it can refute the ancients. But this science knows nothing of the ways in which the soul has been sought. Nothing, not the slightest thing, should be said against modern science. On the contrary, as theosophists in the spirit of this modern science, we want to explore the realm of the soul in the same way that it explores the realm of purely spatial nature, but we do not want to seek the soul in external nature, but within ourselves. We want to seek the spirit where it reveals itself, by walking the paths of the soul and coming to knowledge of the spirit through knowledge of the soul. This is the path prescribed by millennia-old teachings, which one only has to understand in order to grasp its truth and validity.

But this also makes it clear to us, and will make it increasingly clear, what the deeper human being, if he wants to recognize the soul, will miss in modern cold science, just as Goethe missed it when he encountered this cold science in Holbach's “Système de la nature.” We can observe in external nature how human beings have developed in terms of their external appearance, how they have become what they are, how the monad works in the finer structures, how the central organ system can be regarded as an expression of the soul, but all this only leads us to an understanding of the external. There remains the great question of human destiny. No matter how well we understand a person in terms of their external appearance, we have not understood them insofar as they have this or that destiny in this or that way; we have not understood the role played by good and evil, perfection and imperfection. External science cannot give us any insight into what a person experiences internally; only the doctrine of the soul, which is based on self-observation, can give us a conceptual answer. Then come the big questions: Where do we come from, where are we going, what is our goal? — these greatest questions of all religions. These questions, which can lift people to a sublime mood, these questions will be the ones that lead us from the soul world to the spirit, to the spirit of God that permeates the world. That must be the content of the next lecture: Through the soul to the spirit. This will show us that it is absolutely true — not just a figurative expression — that even the perfect animal soul, which has come into being through purely external development, is only a human soul in man because it now represents something even higher, something more perfect, and because it carries within itself the potential, the seed of something even higher, something infinitely perfect. But that this human soul, in the sense of the same statement, must be regarded as something that does not produce the spirit and the soul phenomena from animality, but that the animal in man must develop into something higher in order to thereby receive its destiny, its task, and also its fate. Medieval soul doctrine expresses this in the words that only those who do not view truth as it appears to them when they hear with their outer ears and see with their outer eyes, but as it appears when we see it in the reflection of the highest spirit, truly recognize it in the real sense. I would like to conclude the first lecture with the words used by Thomas Aquinas in his lecture: The human soul is like the moon, which shines but receives its light from the sun. — The human soul is like water, which is neither cold nor warm in itself, but receives its warmth from fire. — The human soul is only like a higher animal soul, but it is a human soul in that it receives its light from the human spirit.

In accordance with this medieval belief, Goethe says:

The human soul
Is like water:
From heaven it comes,
To heaven it rises,
And back down again<
To earth it must,
Eternally changing.

Only then can one understand the human soul, when one grasps it in this sense, when one grasps it in the sense that it is understood as a reflection of the highest being that we can find everywhere in the universe, as a reflection of the world spirit that permeates the universe.