The Origin and Goal of the Human Being

GA 53 — 18 May 1905, Berlin

Law and Theosophy

If it might seem remote to speak about any topic related to theosophy, this could certainly be said of today's topic, where we want to attempt to consider our legal studies and our legal life in connection with what we call the theosophical movement. Only those who are clear about how deeply the theosophical movement is understood as a practical movement by those who are involved in it and who know its full significance can initially recognize this as justified. The true theosophist has the least regard for theories and dogmas. The essence of the theosophical movement, however, is that it intervenes in immediate life. And if the theosophical movement is spoken of as something that is supposed to be distant from the practice of life, this can only result from a complete misunderstanding or misinterpretation of this movement.

Compared to the theosophical movement, a large number of other movements appear eminently impractical because they are partial movements, without knowledge of the greater context and without knowledge of the great principles of life. It is precisely in this regard that many questions of life will have to occupy us today. What could have a deeper impact on our lives than what comes from jurisprudence? In terms of the theosophical worldview, we naturally have less to do with what is called law or legislation. Rather, we have to deal with the real circumstances as they confront us, namely those that confront us in the form of human beings themselves, indeed in our jurisprudence in the form of our practical lawyers themselves. It is therefore not without reason that the topic is called “The Law Faculty and Theosophy.”

Above all, the question is: How do we educate the people who are called upon to intervene when rights are violated and to restore those rights? How does the university cultivate the necessary elements, how does it educate lawyers? In the last lecture on the theological faculty and theosophy, which was able to explain the relationship between theosophy and our university in much greater detail, I had to draw attention to how things stand in this regard. It is not so much the materialistic way of thinking as the deep habits of thought of our time, rooted in the minds and souls of human beings, that lay a certain foundation in our lives. This will occupy us even more today.

You see, I could describe the situation we are in when we touch on today's question—the law faculty and the theosophical movement—with a single fact. Anyone who has dealt with the law faculty to any extent knows the name Rudolf von Jhering, not only from his work “The Struggle for Law.” Everyone also knows the significance of his great work, “The Purpose of Law.” In this work, he created something that is fundamental to a whole range of fundamental views in our understanding of law and in our jurisprudence. Jhering was undoubtedly one of our most important legal scholars. Anyone who has had the good fortune to attend one of Jhering's lectures knows how forceful this legal scholar's language was. There was something sincere about Rudolf von Jhering's nature. I still remember how Jhering once said in a lecture: "I last spoke about this or that question; I have reconsidered the matter and must communicate some significant changes." Of those who have done similar work in other fields, perhaps the physicist Helmholtz should be mentioned, who achieved such great success through his important work, despite the modest manner in which he worked. I cite Jhering because he was original and had a profound impact. He was an outstanding jurist who had a profound influence on the jurisprudence of our time. In his work “Der Zweck im Recht” (The Purpose of Law), you will find a meaningful sentence. I would like to read the passage verbatim: “If I have ever regretted that my development coincided with a period when philosophy had fallen into disrepute, it is with the present work. What was neglected by the young man at that time due to the unfavorable prevailing mood could not be made up for by the mature man.” Such a statement points to a profound deficiency in the education of lawyers. What was lacking here is reflected not only in public life as a whole, insofar as it depends on legal circumstances, but also in literature, not only legal literature, but all literature, insofar as it is influenced by legal thinking. You will also find it in all reform literature. You will find it everywhere, even in practical life, because the most important thing is missing, namely a real knowledge of life and the human soul.

Why is it missing? Because our impractical practitioners have no idea how everyday life is connected to the deep principles of the individual human soul. Take a look at our economists, take a look at those who write or speak in the service of a reform movement. Anyone who has a mathematically trained mind, anyone who is able to construct their train of thought in a strictly logical manner, will see that it is missing everywhere, and they will remember a significant speech given by John Stuart Mill, in which he says that, above all else, what is needed is for our public affairs to be permeated by a real training of the mind, a training in the most elementary principles of the life of the soul.

It really takes very little to train one's thoughts in the way that would be necessary to become a true reformer. Three weeks would suffice if one were to engage in a real teaching of the principles of thinking. Admittedly, one would then only have the ability to think correctly and in a trained manner, but those who think correctly and in a trained manner will in any case set aside much of what is written today because they cannot bear the jumble of impossible thinking that it contains. Just realize that this is, in the most eminent sense, a tangible practical question. If someone wanted to build a tunnel and, with the knowledge of an ordinary bricklayer, started knocking and digging on one side of the mountain, believing that he would surely come out on the other side and then have built a large tunnel, you would probably consider him a fool. But in all areas of life today, we do almost exactly the same thing. What does it take to build a tunnel, a railroad, a bridge? Knowledge of the first principles of mathematics and mechanics and everything that enables us to foresee in advance the layers and formations of the mountain we want to work into. Only a trained technician is capable of really initiating such work, and only he is the real practitioner who approaches practice on the basis of the entire theory. This is what the world completely overlooks in relation to the most important questions of life; indeed, those who believe that knowledge is necessary to solve the great questions of life are called impractical. Today, we see tunnel diggers in all areas of human life without sufficient fundamental knowledge, without realizing that before embarking on a practical reform movement, it is necessary to acquire all the fundamental knowledge and insights of the human soul and to gain clarity about the possibilities and impossibilities in this or that area.

This is what more or less emerges from what this great jurist says about basic education. For he missed such a basic philosophical education in relation to his science and honestly admitted it. Therefore, you will see how far I am from criticizing any individual person or institution. I only wanted to give a characteristic description of the circumstances we encounter in life. Then it will be easiest for us to answer the question of what practical significance the theosophical movement has for jurisprudence.

Jurisprudence has developed in the most unfavorable way possible in the course of historical circumstances, because, as it is expressed today in the most diverse legal systems and schools of law, it first developed at a time when materialistic thinking had already taken hold in all circles. The other sciences date back to earlier times, and those based on natural history have a foundation in solid facts that prevents them from straying too easily in all directions.

Anyone who builds a bridge incorrectly will, of course, very soon realize the consequences of their amateurish approach. However, it is not so easy with the facts that confront us in the intellectual realm. There can be botched work, and there can be disputes about whether something is good or bad. There seems to be no objective criterion. Gradually, however, objective criteria will also emerge in this regard. I said that Jhering lacks a philosophical foundation. And I say that this can be missed wherever one intervenes in our lives.

Now you will say that philosophy is not theosophy. But that is precisely the point. For a time — take the 16th, 17th, and even the 18th century, right up into our 19th century — philosophy was, in a certain sense, the fundamental discipline for all other studies. We saw last time what disadvantage it has brought to theology that philosophy is no longer the foundation of studies. But in theology there is a substitute for the lack of philosophical study. However, there is no substitute in the legal field. When the old high schools developed out of the old schools, philosophy became something that sits, as it were, between two stools. In the past, there were preparatory schools at all universities, where people were offered an overview of various disciplines, through which they could also gain an overview of the laws of life. No one advanced to the higher faculties without having acquired a real knowledge of the laws of life. Nowadays, philosophizing is considered superfluous because it is believed that high school provides a general education. But even that has disappeared from high schools today. Only a few old-fashioned people still hold the view that a little logic and psychology should also be taught in high school.

This is how it came about that the judiciary pursued a one-sided course of study. The other faculties also have no preparatory school of their own, which imparts a general, real knowledge of life and a deep insight into the mysteries and questions of life. Thus, students approach the specific questions at an early stage and are necessarily forced to delve deeper and deeper into these special questions. As a result, lawyers are already being steered in a very specific direction during their training. This does not refer to details; but those who have been filled with certain forms of concepts for years can no longer break away from these concepts. The conditions are such that they must regard anyone who has retained a certain freedom of thought with regard to such concepts, which have become firmly established within their years of study, as a fool.

Now, at the very time when our modern thinking developed, philosophy became something that was, in a certain sense, remote from life. In the Middle Ages, there was no philosophy that was separate, I mean, that was practically separate from theology. Everything that philosophy dealt with was linked to the great and comprehensive questions of existence. This has changed in more recent times. Philosophy has emancipated itself; it has become a science because it no longer has any direct connection — and I will explain this in more detail in the lecture on the philosophy faculty — with the central questions of life. That is why, for centuries, it was possible to study philosophy without connecting the terminology to anything truly alive. In the 18th century, there was still something that made philosophy worldly wisdom. When Schelling, Hegel, and Fichte came along, immediate life was grasped. But these minds were not understood. There was a brief heyday in the early 19th century. But then there was a general misunderstanding about viewing philosophy in a real connection with life and establishing such a connection between life and the highest principles of thought in all areas, as exists between mathematics, differential calculus, and bridge building.

We want those who work on life to realize that it is necessary to have certain prerequisites, just as one must have studied mathematics in order to build bridges. Theosophy does not seek to teach dogmas, but rather a way of thinking and a view of life; a view of life that is the opposite of all muddling through, that establishes a conception of life based on serious principles. One does not need to know anything about the principles and can still be a good theosophist if one simply wants to get to the origin of things. Philosophy has only itself to blame if it has fallen into disrepute among those who are preparing themselves for the great questions of life, for it should be a kind of worldly wisdom. Those who developed our legal wisdom into a system were unable to build on the philosophical mindset. Natural science, of course, still ties in with mathematics, with rationality, with mechanics, and so on, and one cannot be a natural scientist without really knowing these first principles.

Now, it is connected with the development of law to acquire an awareness that law must also emerge from a fundamental education that is as secure and certain as mathematics. It is interesting that the people who developed law in the most eminent sense grew great in the history of human development precisely through the development of law, that the Roman people, who were magnificent in this field, were small in terms of the way of thinking that is also required for this field: the Romans did not produce a single mathematical theorem! Roman thinking was based on a completely non-mathematical and inexact way of thinking. Therefore, over the centuries, the prejudice has crept in that it would not be possible to have the same foundation for the fields of jurisprudence and social science as one has for the other, technical fields.

I would like to cite a characteristic symptom of this fact. Fifteen years ago, a distinguished jurist, Adolf Exner, became rector of the University of Vienna. He was an eminent teacher of Roman law. At the beginning of his rectorship, he spoke about political education. The whole point of his lecture was that it would be a mistake to place so much value on natural science, because scientific thinking is not suited to intervening in any practical way in the social and ethical questions of existence. On the other hand, he emphasized the necessity of understanding legal relationships. He then explained how legal relationships cannot possibly be influenced by scientific thinking. He said: In science, we see right down to the first principles. We see how things work in simple cases, but in the complicated cases of life, no one can reduce things to such simple relationships. It is characteristic that a great man of our time does not even realize that it is our task to create thinking in the realm of life that is as clear and transparent as we have been able to create in the realm of external sensory natural phenomena. It must be our task to realize that we can only be practically effective in the external field of large-scale tunnel construction if we are able to reduce all things in life to precise concepts, just as we are able to reduce rough things to mathematical concepts. In his “Purpose in Law,” Jhering says that it is a great deficiency in our legal education, as well as in our practical legal life, that people who have to be introduced to the law in any way are not trained to work directly in an educational, directly technical, learning, teaching, and effective way in life. Now he says that one can be a lawyer in the same way that one is a mathematician who has solved his problem once he has done his calculations. Again, Jhering fails to see that mathematics has only had real significance since scientific thinking has gained importance. One has found the way from the head to the hand when something becomes practical confirmation. Then everything related to jurisprudence and social ethics will also be of practical significance if it is as clear as the mathematics that is necessary when building a tunnel. Then it will also be understood that all partial efforts are like someone cutting stones, throwing them on top of each other and then believing that a house will be built from them. Nothing will be achieved or built in the field of the women's movement or any other social movement unless there is a plan underlying the whole. Otherwise, cutting stones is an eminently impractical task.

It is not important that we fill ourselves with theories and believe that if we have the system, we can then derive all the details from the grand principles. We must work without dilettantism and introduce the grand principles into life, into immediate life. We must work as the engineer works with what he has learned, even if he has a much smaller task, namely to intervene in lifeless existence. We must work as he works after he has researched and correctly recognized all the principles. That is what it is all about: recognizing and relating to the real principles of existence. Otherwise, nothing can be achieved, especially in the legal field. It is quite impossible for anything other than a lawyer biased by a system of concepts to emerge from our institutions if he has not first become acquainted with the science of life to the greatest extent possible. It is difficult to speak popularly about this question today. It is certainly impossible to go into specific examples of legal life, because it is unfortunately a fact today that jurisprudence is the most unpopular science, not only because it is the least loved, but also because it has the least effect.

Legal thinking is such that it can hardly be reconciled with healthy thinking and even less with life itself. Many of you will doubt that it is possible to arrive at firm principles in jurisprudence and social life, as one can in the natural sciences, which are oriented toward the sensory. One requirement would now be for our time to once again engage in searching for where people still stood on a higher level of precise thinking and where attempts were once made to bring some concepts into a clear form similar to mathematics. Everyone has the opportunity to find their way into this in an inexpensive way. Pick up a little Reclam booklet: “Der geschlossene Handelsstaat” (The Closed Trading State) by Johann Gottlieb Fichte. I am far from defending the content of this booklet or attributing any significance to it for our lives today. I just wanted to show how one can proceed in this field in the same practical way as mathematics proceeds in bridge building. But life becomes something special in individual cases. Those who establish general principles will not be able to apply them in life. It is the same in natural science. Nowhere are there real ellipses, nowhere are there real circles. You know that Kepler's law is that the planets move around the sun. Do you believe that this can be applied in such a simple way? Consider whether the earth really describes what we call an ellipse and write on the blackboard. Nevertheless, it is eminently necessary that we approach reality with such things, even though they do not actually exist.

Mathematics is not present in everyday life either, and yet we use it in everyday life. Only when we realize that there is something, even in relation to legal life, that is to this life as mathematics is to nature, will we be able to have a healthy view of this legal life again. But now there is the realization that there is a mathematics, a way of thinking similar to mathematics, for the whole of life; this realization and nothing else is theosophy!

Mathematics is nothing other than an inner experience. Nowhere can you learn externally what mathematics is. There is no mathematical theorem that has not sprung from self-knowledge, the self-knowledge of the spirit in the temporal and spatial realm. Such self-knowledge is necessary for us. Such self-knowledge also exists for the higher realms of existence. There is a Mathesis, as the Gnostics say. It is not mathematics that we apply to life, but something similar. Something like this also exists in relation to jurisprudence and medicine, as well as in relation to all areas of life and, above all, in relation to the social interaction of human beings. All talk of mysticism as something unclear is based on not knowing what mysticism is. That is why the Gnostics, the great mystics of the first Christian centuries, called their teachings a mathesis, because they formed self-knowledge from them. Once this is recognized, one will also know what theosophy wants and how, without a theosophical attitude, one should be afraid to even lift a finger in relation to the practical questions of life, just as one must be afraid to dig into the Simplon without knowledge of geology and mathematics.

This is the great seriousness that underlies the theosophical worldview, and what must then also become clear to us when we talk about such questions as jurisprudence. Only then will we once again have a sound legal education, when our greatest jurists no longer have to complain about a lack of foundation in our knowledge, when we have once again developed an awareness of what I have indicated. That is the misfortune of jurisprudence as it has developed over the last few centuries, when people no longer knew that there was such a thing as mathesis. The great philosopher Leibniz was a great jurist, a great practitioner, and a great mathematician; anyone familiar with philosophy knows him well enough. That may be a guarantee for you that Leibniz had a correct view of these things. What does he say about legal training without the basis of practical training? He says: In legal life, you will be no different than in a labyrinth from which you cannot find your way out. — Today, we see individual reforms being sought precisely in relation to legal life. There is a legal association; it is led by a former theologian. He is trying, in a certain way, to replace our legal concepts with something healthier. But here, too, we see how nothing fruitful can come from the sciences, which are less accustomed to exact thinking than mathematics and the natural sciences. You will find everywhere that there is a lack of real insight into the question of guilt. Only when we recognize what is at stake will we understand how we must know life before we have the norms of life. Only then will we have a healthy study.

The first thing a lawyer should study is knowledge of life. How do our lawyers today approach questions of the soul, and how should they approach them? Not only in such a way that they are dependent on experts. They approach things in a completely amateurish way. Only a deep insight into the life of the soul is capable of enabling the drafting of a law. But only this is capable of judging those who have deviated from the law. Only then can you put yourself in the law of human life if you have studied psychology. I do not want to speak of the theosophical view of the development of the human soul. The world is still too far behind to have a deeper understanding of the more intimate problems of life. But everyone should actually understand what is meant by the words: true study of the soul and social life.

This should be the foundation, the first instruction that lawyers receive at university: the study of human beings in the broadest sense. Only when they have studied human beings as such, including as souls, and in such an ethereal sphere as natural scientists attempt to study scientific problems, only then, when they can immerse themselves in the life of the soul in a mystical sense, only then are they ready to deal with real questions of the soul that have an effect and are organized according to a plan in public life.

Is it not regrettable that today the most unbelievable things are circulating in economics, even among so-called experts? Consider that simple concepts, which economists could clarify, have not yet been decisively defined. Take the difference between productive and unproductive work. You cannot decide on this unless you understand how productive and unproductive work affect public life. Without this clarity, any such work is completely useless. Nevertheless, it can happen that two eminent economists argue about whether a branch of public life such as commercial activity is a productive or unproductive activity.

In a certain sense, it is a slander against theosophy to attribute any kind of nebulous obscurity to it. Those who look into what theosophy wants will emphasize again and again that what it strives for is the utmost clarity, the absolutely serene way of thinking in all areas of life, following the model of mathematics. If this is the case, then the most favorable outcome must be predicted for the enrichment of our legal life through our movement. The result of such enrichment will be that the budding lawyer will be led to understand the way in which spiritual facts work in human life. They will see that entire areas remain unproductive because they cannot engage with the understanding of suggestion or with the things that result from the influence of the outside world on human beings and from what human beings have to attribute to themselves internally in relation to their actions.

Suggestions have such an enormous effect in our public life that one can simply see how, in large gatherings of thousands of people, the audience is not influenced by what one calls free conviction, but simply by what the speaker brings to them through suggestion. And those who have listened pass on the suggestion, so that much of what is done today has come about under the power of suggestion. However, those who intervene in practical life must be aware of and observe such imponderables. If one knows how to observe this process closely, one also comes to understand how such suggestions work.

Now you already have such a fabric that extends over our lives. Someone tells us what is to happen in this or that area of life. If we know life, we know that it gives us nothing at first but a sum of suggestions. One person gives us about social issues, another about national issues, and a third about a third issue. When theosophy has become common property of humanity, it will never be possible for those who are involved in public life not to see through such things. And when you realize how suggestions work their way down and determine our legal conditions, then you will realize that only through theosophical thinking can a cure come into these circumstances. Then it will also become clear that a significant part of what is taught in our law faculty, a large part of the purely theoretical knowledge, could be dispensed with, since lawyers can also acquire this knowledge in practice. Everyone knows what practical work is. The practical can be mastered in much less time if one has become familiar with the great questions of existence, into which the great questions of life fit themselves, questions that the lawyer cannot touch, such as the question of responsibility. How this is debated, for example in Italy by Lombroso. — For those who understand it, it is impossible to put forward such pros and cons as is usually the case. This is only possible because people who are not practically trained have a say in the matter.

What right do we have to punish? This is also a question to which there are answers of various kinds. All these things cannot be solved with the means of our current practical jurisprudence. But if the lawyer cannot delve deeper into this, he acts without understanding the ultimate principles. He must then act without freedom. But how can a lawyer not be a truly free man? We should be able to demand this from no one more than from lawyers. Savigny, the eminent legal scholar, once said: the law is not an end in itself, but an expression of life; therefore, it must also be created out of life.

Take the various views that people had about law during the 19th century, and you will see how little these views were born out of actual practice. There are schools of natural law that believe that law can be derived from human nature. Later, it was said: one person thinks of law in one way, another in another way, one people in one way, another in another way. — Then came historical law. Recently, an interesting attempt was also made with positivist law. Various attempts have been made that do not start from the attitude indicated. To have a historical view of law is just as impossible as a historical view of mathematics. It is therefore impossible to justify law historically. — It is not possible to prove this important statement now. — To examine something “positivistically” would mean that one does not construct purely intellectual structures with mathematics, but rather brings three rods together, measures the angles, and then forms the mathematical law of the sum of the angles in a triangle. That would be a “positivist” justification.

I only wanted to talk about the basis of attitude and the relationship to what theosophy can be in the practice of life. I wanted to show how, in all areas, and especially in this area, the theosophical way of thinking and theosophical attitude must be fruitful and useful. There is a widespread prejudice that theosophy is something that people invent for their own personal satisfaction. But anyone who holds this view is a poor theosophist. The true theosophist is someone who realizes that theosophy is life, while in so-called practical life so many endeavors are eminently impractical. It is painful that we see seeds everywhere in individual endeavors, where everyone wants to meddle in public life; if all impractical movements came together in the large circle that does not stand aloof from life but wants to embrace life, then an improvement could well result. Theosophy cannot solve the question itself. But from what it gives, life flows forth. Next time we will see how, when doctors become practical theosophists, a completely different trend will enter our lives. This is what this trend is about, this basic tone of a renewed life. When we understand this, a breath of theosophical sentiment will have to spread over all branches of practical life reform. Then people will understand the theosophical movement and all other aspects of life.

This has been emphasized again and again because certain problems cannot be improved as long as people are unwilling to really deal with things, because people judge long before they have acquired the most accurate knowledge of things. Those who want to get involved in the theosophical movement itself would find it easy to meddle in other endeavors as well. It would be easy to get involved in certain areas if we could expect even the slightest benefit from it, as long as we do not develop the practical sense that many consider so impractical. It would be easy if we did not know that before going to the periphery, the center must be mastered. It would be easy if we did not know that this is true: if you want to create better conditions in the world, you must give people the opportunity to become better themselves. In no field is this statement as justified as in the field of jurisprudence. If the theosophical movement also attempts to have a practical, invigorating effect in this field, then we will see how all the disputes between Romanists and Germanists, between historians and natural law scholars, and so on, disappear. When we come to what real movement and life is, when we attain the attitude that proves itself even in relation to external sensual work, because life would rebuke us if we could not approach it in an appropriate manner, then we have become theosophists and real practitioners.