# Spiritual Teachings Concerning the Soul

## GA 52 — 23 March 1904, Berlin

### IX. Theosophical Doctrine of the Soul II: Soul and Human Destiny

The materialistic worldview has led modern thinking to the grotesque assertion that the magnificent tragedy of Hamlet is nothing more than the transformed food enjoyed by the great poet Shakespeare.

Well, at first glance, such a claim could be taken as ironic, as humorous. And yet, anyone who thinks through to the end the view of the soul that has developed within the so-called materialistic worldview must ultimately arrive at this claim. This view, however, reduces the materialistic view of the soul to absurdity. But if it is true that we must understand the phenomena of the soul as emanations of the mechanical activity of our brain, just as we must understand the workings of a clock from the mechanism of that clock, then we have no choice but to see in those causes in which we must seek the reasons for the functioning of the brain, ultimately also the causes of soul phenomena, the causes of the highest expressions of the human spirit.

The German philosopher Leibniz already found the correct refutation of this assertion. He said: Imagine if the entire human brain were understood, if we knew down to the smallest detail how these cells and their surroundings function, if we knew all the individual movements and could record what happens spatially in the brain when a thought, a sensation, or a feeling takes hold in a human being; let us assume that this ultimate goal of natural science had been achieved. — Leibniz continues: Now imagine this human brain infinitely enlarged, so that you can calmly walk around inside it and observe the movements taking place there. You have a machine in front of you. What will you see? You will see movements, you will see spatial processes. But what you will not see is that which humans say: I feel pleasure and pain, I feel joy and sorrow, I think this or that thought. That which humans must regard as their innermost property, as their innermost processes and experiences, will not be visible to any observer of this large, enlarged brain machinery. In order to observe what the ego considers to be its experiences in feelings, sensations, and mental images, a completely different kind of experience is required, namely human inner experience. This requires us to disregard all spatial considerations and immerse ourselves in the soul itself in order to find the reasons for what is going on within it.

This question can be illuminated in another way. I was once present when two young students were discussing this question. One of them was deeply immersed in materialistic thinking. He was convinced that human beings were nothing more than mechanisms, that we understood human beings once we knew how their brain functions and other bodily functions worked. To this the other replied: But there is a simple fact that only needs to be stated in order to make it clear that there is something else here quite different from a process similar to a mechanical one. Why does man not say: My brain feels, my brain senses, my brain imagines? — Well, man would have to acknowledge this fact as a distortion of his innermost soul experience. We can never explain the processes of the soul through spatial observation, just as we cannot explain external phenomena. This is precisely the characteristic difference between physical processes and mental processes: when we see something happening in a machine, we can say that this or that part of the machine is in motion, is effective, and because it is effective, the machine performs this or that action. One cannot object that we do not yet know all the movements, all the functions of our brain mechanism. For that is precisely the meaning of Leibniz's answer to the question, that even if we had understood this whole mechanism, the actual life of the soul would still have remained completely unaccounted for. There is only one thing to do: look into our inner selves and ask ourselves what we discover there when we let our own ego speak. What do we discover when we do not see with our eyes and hear with our ears, but observe our own soul?

But then, once we have made this point clear to ourselves, we must also be clear that all questions relating to the soul and its processes must be treated as scientifically and impartially as questions of external natural science. No natural scientist will admit that a mere chemical analysis of a part of the brain can tell us anything directly about the life of that brain or about the structure of that brain. Other methods are necessary for this. It is necessary for us to study the structure of such an organic member and to consider it in connection with the rest of the organic world. In short, we are unable to describe the processes of life if we remain with mere physics and chemistry alone. Nor are we able to recognize the facts of spiritual life if we merely observe external phenomena.

What, then, are these facts of the soul life? The basic fact of the soul life is pleasure and pain. For what we experience as pleasure and pain, as joy and displeasure, is our very own soul experience. We pass by objects around us. The objects make an impression on us. They tell us something about their color and shape, and also about their movements; they tell us what they are in space. But we cannot glean anything from the objects themselves if we want to know what is going on inside a person as they pass by these objects. The color of an object affects the eye of one person and affects the eye of another. The pleasure or perhaps also the pain that one person may feel when seeing this color can be different, very different from the pleasure and pain of another. What one person feels as pleasure may stem from the fact that this color reminds them of a particularly fond experience, that they have often felt joy when seeing this color. Another person may think of a sad experience when they see this color, which is why they may feel pain. These color experiences are the most personal experiences of human beings. They belong solely to them. The joy and pain that take place in our inner lives express the very essence of human beings, the essence that distinguishes one person from another, the essence in which no two people are alike. This alone should make it clear to us that how pleasure and pain are formed cannot depend solely on the outside world, on what is happening in the sensory world, but shows us that something within us responds to impressions from the outside world that is different in every human being; so that as many inner worlds stand before us as there are people before us, which we can only comprehend from the depths of their inner nature, which is something very special, something real that exists entirely on its own, as opposed to everything that expresses itself in space and time before our eyes and ears.

Human inner life unfolds in pleasure and pain. And connected with pleasure and pain is something that has permeated the human breast throughout all ages, ever since humans have been thinking, like a great question, like an enormous mystery. It is connected with human destiny, that human destiny which the sensitive Greek spirit perceived as something supra-personal, something that hovers above human beings, that descends upon them, something that has nothing to do with what the individual deserves, what the individual has achieved and strived for. We can describe the Greek people's view in the most concise terms. It is the soul that bears the gigantic burden of fate, which all too often crushes human beings. As varied as human pleasures and sufferings are, so varied are human destinies, and these human destinies, as a simple trivial observation can show, have nothing to do with what man as a personality works out for himself, acquires for himself. What is called destiny in the true sense is something that lies above personal merit, above personal guilt. When we speak of guilt and merit, we exclude that which befalls people and which is independent of their own work. There is the one who is destined by birth to live in poverty and misery, perhaps not only because of the environment into which he was born, but simply because of the gift, the dowry of nature, which he received at birth. There are others who appear to be children of fortune, for whom pleasure and suffering can lead to the highest peaks, simply because they were born with greater and more excellent gifts than others. How fate and individual human lives are linked has been the great anxious question of thinking people throughout the ages. The interrelationship between human destiny and the human soul has occupied poets and researchers alike. And how does human destiny compare to the individual human soul experience?

We find a perfect analogy for the interrelationship between soul and destiny in nature. We find an analogy in what we encounter in nature as species, as generic structures of living beings. A living being is not formed in any arbitrary way. Every living being is shaped according to its germ. According to its germ, the lion is a lion and the frog is a frog, because the germ contains the power for the particular form, and because the germ inherits this power from its ancestors. That is why the animal is shaped according to its particular species. These laws of heredity prevail in plant and animal species; they prevail according to what they have inherited in terms of limbs in order to be able to function. A life is determined by the development of the organs that have been inherited by the being. This law of heredity is the great law that determines the species and genera in the animal and plant world and also in the physical human world. This law of species and genus, this law of heredity and development, is the law of destiny for species and genera. Only in accordance with the law of heredity can the individual being function. Very similar is what the individual human being experiences as pleasure and pain in relation to his or her prevailing destiny. Just as animals have inherited the form of their genus from their ancestors, so we encounter human beings in a very specific way, endowed with predispositions and character traits that determine the extent of their pleasure and pain, that contain the measure of these, and that determine their life.

Just as the natural scientist of modern times, if he is honest and faithful to the laws of evolution, asks himself why this animal has a longer or shorter grasping organ, a sharper or less sharp eye, and how he is not content to accept the longer or shorter grasping organ, the more or less sharp eye as a miracle, but says to himself, I must compare this animal with other animals, I must observe how these organs have gradually developed through the great iron law of nature of kinship, of heredity among all living beings, so too must the researcher of man, the researcher of the soul, if he wants to understand the individual human life, ask himself: How does the great law of fate relate to these individual human lives? How is it possible that fate has ruled over individual lives in such a way that it has determined this or that degree of pleasure and suffering? — The question of the connection between the human soul and human fate is entirely analogous to the question posed by the natural scientist. And an entirely analogous consideration will provide us with clarification on the questions that occupy people in this regard.

There is one fact that speaks so clearly on this question that we need only think it through in all directions, that we need only immerse ourselves in it completely in order to find an answer. This fact is not observed in the same style and in the same sense as the natural scientist observes when he studies the relationship between species and genera. But this is not because this fact does not speak just as clearly and distinctly, but simply because modern humanity has become accustomed to overlooking this fact; has become accustomed to disregarding the loud voice, the clear testimony of this fact. It is certainly not as crude and coarse as the facts that speak to our outer senses. But can we hope that the subtle life of the soul will provide us with facts about the intimate processes within our own inner being that are as crude and conspicuous as the facts perceived by our outer senses? Must we not rather assume that the questions embodied in our soul life are of a finer, more subtle nature? It is just as Galileo once discovered the great law of pendulum phenomena when his mind was opened by a swinging lamp in a church, so that at that moment the law of nature was revealed to him. He achieved this success only because he was able to hold the facts together in the right sense. In the same way, when we understand the facts in the right sense, they must also enlighten us with regard to fate and the life of the soul.

Go through the series of animal creatures. You will find a multitude of different species and genera. As a modern naturalist, you explain these species and genera by their relationship to each other and by their descent from each other. You are satisfied when you understand that a higher, more perfect animal has acquired its species character by descending from ancestors whose organs gradually transformed into the organs of the animal that stands before us today.

But what interests you about the animal? It can never be the question that we are much more interested in the animal than in its species character. We are completely satisfied when we have described a lion or another animal species according to its species character. We are completely enlightened about a lion when we have understood how the lion species generally lives, how the lion species generally behaves; then we know that the same applies to the father, son, and grandson within the lion species. We are clear that individual differences, which also exist in the animal kingdom, do not interest us to such an extent that we would have to approach each individual to study it on its own. We are clear that what is decisive for the animal is what the father, son, and grandson have in common. The researcher will declare himself satisfied when he has understood any specimen of the lion genus, the lion species. This fact must be thought through to its conclusion and understood completely clearly in its meaning. If we then compare this with the other fact that this is completely different in humans, we can describe in a few words the difference between human character and animal character; a difference which, once understood, cannot be denied by any naturalistic researcher; a difference so great and powerful that it sheds light on the very essence of the human soul. The underlying fact can be expressed in the following words: Humans have a biography, animals do not.

It is true that in nature everything exists only in degrees, and there is no objection to this statement, for it is clear that one can list the individual characteristics of an animal and thereby create something similar to a biography. But the fact remains that only in the human realm do we have a real biography. This means that we show the same interest in individual human beings as we do in animal species. While we are not indifferent when describing a father, son, or grandson, we call a group of animals that belong together a species because they have the same characteristics and we have understood them scientifically when we have understood their form as a species. We must state the significant fact that every human individual is a species in itself. This is a statement that may not be immediately obvious to some, that may seem to some to be something contrived.

But even if the full significance of this statement cannot be grasped immediately, those who think it through, who think it through to the end, will only be able to see it in the light I have described. And with that, we move beyond the assertion that, for the soul researcher, only the exceptional individual is proof that something special occurs in human beings, while most people are of the same kind and, when it comes down to it, have the same thing as animals, only in a higher form of education.

Oh no, you can distinguish the simple human being, the savage, from the animal by being aware that he has a biography, that his essence is not exhausted by his species character as a human being, that it is important for us to grasp this individual individuality in him; that it is not indifferent whether the father, the son, or the grandson stands before us. If we want to proceed scientifically, then we must apply the same rules, the same laws to humans that we apply to animals in relation to their species character. We would have to regard the individual animal, which stands before us in perfect form, in a very specific shape, as a miracle if we did not understand its relationship and descent from other beings. But we would also have to regard the individual human being, who is a whole, a species in himself, with his particular experiences of suffering and pleasure, as a miracle if we simply presented him as he appears before us. Those who leave the individual human personality, that which is expressed in the biography, without wanting to explain it, without distinguishing it from other beings, those who want to leave this being unexplained, are like those who believe in miracles. If we hold fast to the idea of development, then we must say: just as in the animal kingdom the individual animal form is related to its species, so too must we trace the individual human soul in its particular form of manifestation back to something else of a spiritual nature. Just as clear as natural science has become since it recognized that life cannot develop from the inanimate, but that every living thing is based on a germ, it is true that today it would be scientific superstition if someone believed what was believed in the 16th century, that fish, frogs, and the like could develop from mud.

But it would be if someone were to claim that the soul does not arise from the soul, but from the soulless. Just as living things can only arise from living things, in the sense that natural science assumes, so one must recognize that the soul can only arise from the soul. And just as natural science regards it as a childish belief that life arises not from a germ but from something lifeless, so a true doctrine of the soul must regard it as absurd that something spiritual could arise from something mechanical. That would be the same as if someone claimed that something spiritual could arise from any random clump of mud.

If we take this as our basis, then we must say to ourselves: Anyone who does not want to believe in a miracle in the realm of soul life must ask themselves the question with regard to each individual soul: Where does it come from, what are the causes that have shaped it in the state in which it finds itself? We must, so to speak, ascend from the spiritual being of a human being to his spiritual ancestors, just as we ascend from the physical form of an animal to its physical ancestors in order to understand the emergence of its species.

In the last lecture, I described the culmination of Aristotle's theory of the soul as the downfall of Western philosophy of the soul. I showed that Aristotle's view of our physical world was entirely in line with modern evolutionary theory, in that he believed that beings, even the highest, develop naturally. But when Aristotle speaks of the highest soul, he rightly says exactly what we have now discussed. This soul is inexplicable from what we have come to know as mere natural processes. No one can ever understand the soul as a mere natural process. Therefore, as an honest researcher and thinker, Aristotle resorts to an explanation that clearly and unambiguously acknowledges the miracle in every single soul formation. This makes him appear as an honest thinker, but one who denies a scientific principle with regard to the soul. When a human being has developed to the point where his physical form has taken on human shape, then the Creator creates the soul of this human form; This is the only consistent position one must take if one does not want to explain the soul in the same way that modern science explains the species of the animal kingdom. If one does not want to search for the spiritual ancestor, as one searches for the animal ancestor when one wants to explain the animal, then one must say that a soul is created in every single human being.

There is only one other way, and this other way, this way out, is only an apparent one. It consists in the path shown by Herbert Spencer, the recently deceased great English philosopher. He was clear about this — as we have also said — that it is impossible to leave the individual soul being to itself, to accept it as a miracle. Therefore, he says, we must go back to the physical ancestors of the person in question with regard to this soul life, and just as he has inherited the shape of his face, his hands, and his feet from his physical ancestors, so too has he inherited his soul characteristics from his ancestors. In this way, Herbert Spencer equates the development of the soul completely with physical development. But this is only an apparent solution that can never be reconciled with the facts. That which is to be explained by another must be derived from the characteristics of the other.

Goethe says: “From my father I have inherited my stature and serious approach to life, from my mother my cheerful nature and love of storytelling.” But no one who examines the facts impartially will claim that what constitutes a person's very essence, what they regard as the result of their destiny, is determined by their physical ancestors in the same way that their external form and shape are determined by their ancestors, for otherwise the development of the mind would have to follow the same laws as the development of the physical. But where could we derive the mental characteristics of a Newton, a Galileo, a Kepler, a Goethe from their ancestors? Where could we derive Schiller's qualities? From his father? Certainly, Schiller received his external form, his physical characteristics, from his father; for what constitutes the general form is determined by physical inheritance, just as the physical form of animals is determined by inheritance. But if we want to explain the actual inner characteristics of an individual personality—and it doesn't have to be Schiller, it could be any Mr. Müller from this or that place—if we want to explain what goes on in his deepest soul, what makes him this particular person, what his biography is based on, then we can never understand this person by studying his origins in his physical ancestors.

Study a lion and describe the lion's father or grandfather instead of this little lion: you will be completely satisfied from a scientific point of view. But if you describe a human being, you must describe his or her very own life. The biography of the grandfather or father is something completely different from his own. As different as species and types are in the animal kingdom, so too are the biographies of individual human beings.

Anyone who thinks these ideas through thoroughly can never take spiritual development to be analogous to physical development. Rather, if we want to explain spiritual development, we must assume that we must ascend to spiritual ancestors in the same way that we ascend to physical ancestors in order to explain physical nature. And the physical ancestor cannot be the spiritual ancestor at the same time. The development of the soul does not follow the same path as the development of the physical. If I want to explain a soul, I must seek its origin somewhere other than in the physical organism. It must have existed before, it must have a spiritual ancestor, just as the animal species has a physical ancestor. This brings us to the ideas that the deeper soul researchers of all times have recognized as their own, and which, in the true sense of the word, consider the essence of the soul in a scientific sense. Anyone who penetrates this essence of the soul with all the energy of their research instinct — you can see this, for example, in Lessing's transparent analysis in “The Education of the Human Race” — comes to the conclusion that every soul must be traced back to another soul. And this brings us to the law of the soul's development, the law of reincarnation, the law of re-embodiment.

Just as in the animal kingdom, species incarnate themselves, just as a transformation of the species takes place, a reincarnation of the species, so too does a transformation of the soul take place in human beings. Nothing other than this idea may be associated with what is called the doctrine of reincarnation in spiritual science's doctrine of the soul. It is not a fantastical idea, it is an idea that is crystal clear and necessarily arises from the conditions of nature. Just as necessary as the idea of species reincarnation, the transformation of species in the animal kingdom, is the idea of the reincarnation of individuality. We have the reincarnation of species at the level of animality, and we have the reincarnation of individuality at the level of humanity. But if that is the case, then our view expands from the individual personal human soul, which otherwise stands before us inexplicably with its own life of pleasure and pain, beyond its soul predecessor and from this to further predecessors. Just as we understand a species when we trace it back to its ancestors, so we understand the soul when we trace it as a reincarnating individuality. What appears to be an inexplicable fate ruling within me, what seems to be unprepared predispositions in my birth, should not be regarded as a miracle arising out of nothing; it is an effect, as everything in the world is an effect, but an effect of the soul processes in my soul ancestors.

We cannot concern ourselves here with the details of how incarnations occur. Here, in a scientifically analogous manner, we shall simply show how the idea of theosophical soul doctrine is entirely compatible with, and indeed is exactly the same in the spiritual realm as, the modern theory of evolution in the realm of animal life. Natural scientists in particular should rise from their physical theory of reincarnation to this spiritual theory of reincarnation. Buddhists, for whom this spiritual theory of reincarnation is like our scientific theory of evolution, do not know the mysterious development, the mysterious course of fate in individual lives, in the same sense as the West. They say to themselves: What I experience is the effect of the soul life from which mine has developed; I must accept it as an effect. And what I myself accomplish today is the cause and will not remain without effect. Again and again my soul will incarnate, and it will determine the fate of this soul as it appears, it will form a whole with this soul. Thus, fate and soul beings are linked together in a chain. Like a string of pearls of fate, the individual stages of the soul's development in human life, in the whole of human life, appear strung together. And what is inexplicable in a human life becomes explainable when we do not accept it as a miracle in itself, but when we consider it in its recurring manifestations.

But then, when we view soul development in this way, we overcome the fate of Aristotle; and only in this way can we overcome the fate of Aristotelian soul doctrine. Those who do not profess the doctrine of development must profess the act of creation that takes place with every single birth of a human being. They must accept a special miracle of creation with every birth. The scientific doctrine of creation is a belief in miracles, superstition. Even in the 18th century, it was said that there are as many species coexisting as were originally created. In the field of soul doctrine, too, there are only these two paths: the miraculous act of creation at the origin of each human being, or soul development. The first is impossible. But that is why there are honest researchers who cannot bring themselves to believe in the development of the soul. However, if an honest researcher cannot bring himself to believe in the development of the soul, he will still profess today the act of creation at the origin of each individual human being. This is not scientific, but it is honest thinking. However, those who want to think scientifically and are able to view the life of the soul in a scientific spirit will naturally arrive at this doctrine of soul reincarnation from the standpoint of modern research, as a modern philosopher, Professor Baumann in Göttingen, has done. These are the two paths we must follow in clear thinking: either the creation of the soul as a miracle in every case, or the development of the soul in the sense of scientific thinking and the return of the soul.

From this doctrine of soul development, however, a bright light is also shed on the great question that has preoccupied modern philosophy and modern thinking in particular, the question of the value of life. As you know, this question has been answered in the negative by more recent philosophers, such as Schopenhauer, Eduard von Hartmann, and similar philosophers. Life has been denied value for the simple reason that life offers far more displeasure than pleasure. If life within the individual personality were truly exhausted between birth and death, then the question of the value of life would be justified insofar as one would have to assess this value of life in terms of pleasure and displeasure. These philosophers simply say that experience teaches us in every single case that displeasure far outweighs pleasure, that life is painful and full of suffering. For this reason alone, Schopenhauer assumes, we must profess this pessimistic view. We take pleasure for granted as something that is our due. Who does not consider pleasure to be something that is a matter of course for us? Where is there not a minor cause that humans perceive as pain, while they accept every pleasure more or less as a matter of course? It is therefore natural, say the pessimists, that people do not feel pleasure in the same way that they feel the reduction of pleasure as pain and displeasure. Thus, the pessimists draw up the so-called pleasure balance of life and declare that it shows that displeasure dominates life far more than pleasure. Without question, if one wants to solve this puzzle within the context of an individual human life, there is no other solution. For anyone who looks at a human life in its personal details will certainly say to themselves: even if the amount of displeasure that has affected this life is still small, it remains as something that has been held against this person, as it were. Let us try to draw up a balance sheet of pleasure and displeasure at the death of a person, based on the facts. If we do so, we will certainly, in Hartmann's sense, assess the pleasure value of life as negative. If life ends with death, then life ends with a negative value factor, with a negative value. But then this individual life appears completely inexplicable.

It is quite different when we regard what we retain as the result of an individual life as a cause for the next life, when we regard it as something that can be transferred and propagated to another level of existence. Then what appears as pain and displeasure in one life seems like something that can have a beneficial effect in the next life. And for what reason? For the very simple reason that then the feeling of displeasure we have in this individual life is not the only decisive factor, but also what arises as an effect of this displeasure. If I feel displeasure today, then for today this displeasure will attach a negative sign to my life. But tomorrow this displeasure may be of the highest value to me. By feeling displeasure or pain in some experience today, I can learn for tomorrow. I can learn to avoid this displeasure, this pain, in a similar situation; I can learn to regard this displeasure, this pain, as a lesson in order to perform the tasks that caused me displeasure more perfectly tomorrow. From this point of view, adversity will appear to us in a certain context that has far-reaching significance. Suppose a child is learning to walk. It falls constantly and hurts itself, causing itself pain. Nevertheless, it would be wrong for a mother to surround her child with rubber balls so that it would not feel any pain when it fell. Then the child would never learn to walk. Pain is the lesson. It prepares us for a higher stage of development. Only because the life of the individual between birth and death is not filled with pleasure, but because it causes us pain arising from our imperfect actions and the resulting displeasure, only then do we learn. And if life ends with a balance of displeasure, it also ends with a cause that will have an effect on later life. Through the displeasure of one life, we will reach a higher level in the next life.

Thus, our view broadens when we consider human life beyond birth and death. The balance of pleasure and displeasure presents itself as something that must exist so that we can learn from individual lives and carry that learning over into other lives. If we did not suffer pain, we would be like a child who cannot learn to walk if we spare it from pain. This leads us to regard the balance of displeasure, as cited by the pessimist, as a factor in development. It drives development forward like an engine. Then we come to the often-repeated statement: pain is a factor in development, to be honored, and it also takes on a higher meaning. And so we will understand individual life as an effect, as a result of previous causes. If we understand it as an effect, then we will understand the coexisting degrees of perfection within humans, just as we understand the coexisting degrees of perfection within animal species. Just as it does not seem strange to us, according to the theory of evolution, that the perfect lion lives alongside the imperfect amoeba, just as this imperfect form is understandable to us from the law of evolution, so too will the stage of development of the soul, from the highest genius to the undeveloped stage of the savage, appear understandable to us from the law of evolution of the soul. For what does genius represent to us? It represents to us a higher stage of development, a higher degree of perfection of the soul being that lives in the savage at a lower level of education. Just as the higher animal species differ from the subordinate forms of animals in the physical realm, so the soul of the genius differs from the soul of the Hottentot in the spiritual realm. This also explains to us that, basically, genius is not radically different from ordinary human talent, but is only a later stage of development.

Let us compare the psychology of Franz Brentano. It emphasizes that genius does not differ essentially from the stage of development of the imperfect soul, but only in degree. Consider a genius like Mozart. Even as a boy, he showed a talent that seemed quite extraordinary. He wrote down an entire mass that he had heard once and had never been able to follow before because it was not allowed to be written down, immediately after hearing it. What kind of memory is this, that Mozart's soul can grasp a large series of mental images at a glance, which the imperfect soul cannot grasp, but can only comprehend little by little? It is only the special development of that faculty of the soul that connects and links mental images together. This faculty of the soul can be so low that it is not possible to grasp five or six mental images in a certain amount of time. But through practice, man can improve this faculty of imagination and expand his overview. When we see genius manifesting itself with far-reaching abilities that can be gradually acquired through practice, we should not regard genius as a miracle. We must regard it as an effect. And since genius is already born with these qualities, we must seek the cause in a previous stage of soul development, in a previous life. Only in this way can you arrive at an explanation of genius. In this way, you can understand every stage of human development in a spiritual way. You can trace the human being from the highest genius abilities down to the saddest manifestations of human life, which we call insanity. From a scientific point of view, this is to be disregarded; only from the point of view of the soul researcher can these people be referred to in a word. We know that there are deformities and cripples. If we extend these concepts from the field of natural science to the field of psychology, we arrive at the abnormal phenomena of the soul life.

In this way, it becomes clear to us that the life of the soul is connected in time, just as physical life is connected in space. And those who claim that such ideas contradict scientific facts have certainly not worked through the full implications of either scientific thought or this science of the soul. They have not developed their observations to such an extent that they have learned to use the methods of soul research in the same way that natural scientists use the methods of external natural science. And when it is claimed that the teachings we have presented here seem fantastical, then we may well ask the question: what do those who laid the foundations for this natural science have to say about it? They must surely have recognized the significance of scientific thought, just as those who first explore a country with their own eyes and original powers know the country better than those who have only received a report or description. Thus, the natural scientist who, from the depths of his research, finds the foundations for the truths of natural science will have greater authority than the one who comes along afterwards and tries to convince us that the soul researchers speak of soul and spirit beings that exist separately.

Now here are some examples of how the fundamental natural scientists thought about the soul and spirit researchers. Again and again, it is emphasized that such a doctrine of the soul, as it has now been explained, is supposed to contradict the law of conservation of energy. This is the great law that governs all physical phenomena for the explainer. This law states that no energy is created in nature, but that all energy arises from another through development, and that we can measure the amount of energy by the energy that is its cause. When we convert heat into steam in a steam boiler, we have the cause and effect before us, and we measure the effect by the measure of the cause. Now, opponents of spiritualism say: This law contradicts the assumption that special spiritual processes take place within us. Measure the external impressions that a person receives, measure what goes on inside him, measure what goes on in the brain, and you will not be able to claim that anything special can be deduced from this: that there is a spiritual force. But then this would be born out of nothing, and this would contradict the fundamental law of the transformation of energy. Julius Robert Mayer is the discoverer of this fundamental law of the conservation of energy, which we are told contradicts the doctrine of the soul. Let us listen to the discoverer of this law, one of the greatest natural scientists and thinkers of all time. In 1842, in the age of natural science, he discovered the most important of the natural laws of the 19th century. Those who are materialistic natural scientists — you can follow this in their books — say and want us to believe that this law eliminates all spiritual and soul teachings. We hear these natural scientists say that anyone who still accepts inner teachings about the soul does not understand natural science, which is expressed in the law of conservation of energy. Julius Robert Mayer, however, says: If superficial minds, who think themselves geniuses, do not want to accept anything further or higher, then such presumption cannot be blamed on science, nor can it be of any use or benefit to it.

This is what the discoverer of this law says. Ask yourself whether those who follow in his footsteps have the right to invoke his law against what he himself has recognized.

Another fundamental researcher in our modern natural science, who laid the foundation for the world of living beings through his geological research on the transformations of the forms of our earth's layers and thus paved the way for Darwin, is Lyell, the great English geologist. He was the first to say, with regard to geology, that we are not proceeding scientifically when we assume miraculous catastrophes in nature, when we assume that upheavals took place in earlier periods that cannot be explained today by external forces. This researcher, Lyell, to whom materialistic natural science again refers, says the following: In whatever direction we may conduct our research, everywhere we find creative intelligence, providence, power, and wisdom.

And materialistic researchers tell us that since the law of so-called life force has been overcome, since it has become possible to produce substances in the laboratory that were believed to arise only in living humans, we no longer have the right to say that what happens in nature does not also happen in the chemical laboratory. Jöns Jacob Berzelius, a friend of Friedrich Wöhler, says: Knowledge of nature is the basis of research. Those who do not adhere to it cannot escape misleading influences. — Wilhelm Preyer has written about the phenomenon of death. He is the one who stated emphatically that death cannot be understood as the end of the individuality incarnated in the body, that death cannot be understood in this way in humans because it cannot even be understood in this way in the lower world. Preyer says that only the body dies, not matter, not energy, not movement, not life.

These are statements made by genuine, fundamental natural scientists, not philosophical dilettantes who believe that they can use natural science to deny the existence of soul phenomena — I don't want to say deny them — but to explain soul phenomena as mere functions of purely mineral processes. So when we see that precisely those who have rendered outstanding services to research into the course of natural development see no contradiction in this natural development with the view of an inner soul development, then we must be in agreement with all of them. And we know that all those who deny inner soul development are struck by Hamerling's statement, which says: He who seeks the soul is like a dog snapping at its own tail and unable to reach it. This is a doctrine of the soul in the spiritual-scientific sense, a doctrine of the soul in the modern scientific sense, but not in a stereotypical application of the scientific method, but in its application from the spirit. Then, however, the law of destiny reveals itself to us as a great law of development. Just as the species is bound up in the development of the animal kingdom and just as a wave appears on the surface of the sea, thrown up by the flowing tide of development, so the individual human life appears as a thrown-up wave and the successive individual lives appear as individual waves of human destiny itself.

We will consider the reasons for these waves in the next lecture, when we understand what human destiny is from the perspective of eternal being. Today, however, I have shown that those who regard destiny as the great law of development see it as active, as throwing up waves, and that each individual wave in its appearance is a reflection of the human being. This is how all those who have delved deeply into the matter view the development of the soul. And that is why Goethe speaks of the individual soul as being like a wave that is thrown up again and again, and of the wind as being the driving force of fate that throws up these waves from the water. That is why he compares the soul to the play of the waves and fate to the wind, based on theosophical knowledge, for Goethe agreed with this doctrine of the soul in the deepest sense. He expressed his comparison of wind and waves, of the soul and the fate of man, in these beautiful words:

> Wind is the wave's lovely suitor;  
> Wind stirs up foaming waves from the depths.
> Soul of man, how like water you are!  
> Fate of man, how like wind you are!