Death and Immortality in the Light of Spiritual Science

GA 69d — 20 January 1913, Vienna

12. The Relationship Between Spiritual Science and Natural Science and the Riddles of Life

If we speak about the riddles of existence from the point of view that was characterized here yesterday, then one question in particular must arise for every person in the present who has somehow come close to such a consideration; it is the question: What is the relationship between what has to say in relation to the present-day results of natural science, which over the past few centuries have led the intellectual life of humanity from triumph to triumph and have basically led to everything around us today appearing as a result, as a fruit of natural science. Not only is our external, material existence completely imbued with what natural science has given us, but scientific thinking has gradually penetrated into human thinking, feeling and sensing, into the whole of human spiritual life, giving it a colouring so that one can say: Anyone who wants to speak about the question of spiritual life today and who would have to contradict the scientific results of the present day would, in principle, be met with little credence. Natural science has provided a body of knowledge that, through its intrinsic value, through its relationship to the human-natural sense of truth, to common sense, penetrates our soul in such a way that one must rightly say: There must be a mistake somewhere if a world view feels compelled to contradict these scientific findings. What is to be presented here in terms of the world view is now fully in line with the legitimate results of scientific research at present, although it must of course go beyond this result in almost all respects when it comes to approaching a solution to the great question of existence, the significant riddle of life. And what are these great riddles of existence? They are not those that impose themselves through one or other scientific consideration; the greatest riddles of the world do not impose themselves on man from science alone, but they impose themselves at every turn in life; they are, so to speak, before our soul at every moment; and basically we can summarize these riddles of existence in two questions. Although what is meant here by spiritual science is not exhausted by these two questions, it must be said that, after all, for human interest, for that which man actually wants from spiritual science, all these spiritual scientific considerations ultimately aim at the two great riddles, which can be described on the one hand as the riddle of death, which is at the same time the riddle of life, and on the other hand the riddle of fate. ultimately] to the two great riddle-questions, which can be designated on the one hand by the word: the riddle of death, which is at the same time the riddle of life, and on the other hand the riddle of fate; the riddle of death, which is at the same time the riddle of fate. Surely, my honored audience, this riddle, [the riddle of death] arises for man from his hopes, from his desires, perhaps also from his fear and dread. It looms before the human soul, and it raises the question of what it is that can withstand the transitory existence of its body, what, for example, can be described as something immortal in the face of the temporary. This question is not raised scientifically, however, when it is raised as it usually flows out of the soul, where, in a certain sense, the solution to the question presents itself in concern about the fate of the soul after death, even if it is not admitted. [Man says to himself]: It would be unbearable to think of an annihilation of existence [after death], where one imagines all sorts of sophisticated reasons [for the continuation of the soul] in the face of the passing away of the body. In contrast to this, it must be emphasized that those people who, in the course of the nineteenth century, have managed to say that it is a special kind of selfishness for a person to demand that what he has in his soul as content should last beyond death, must certainly inspire a certain respect. There are certain selfless, if materially minded, noble natures who say: What I have worked for, what I have taken in my soul, I give to general human life, I sacrifice it on the altar of the human community. And so, in a sense, this [attitude] must be regarded as nobler than the one that, out of fear and dread, out of hope and desire, builds itself a belief in an immortality.

But the riddle of death comes from a completely different perspective, and that is truly the human riddle of life, where one reflects on the economy of the world, where one reflects on the nature of the accumulated forces that have come to light in the world. Man acquires - one can look at this quite impersonally - in the course of his life, from year to year, from week to week, a certain [inner] soul content; who could deny that this content in a normal person becomes ever richer, ever more inward, ever more permeated with energy. Now, those who think that the soul's content must be given to the whole [human] race must be confronted with the question: Is it really [even] possible to give away the best, what man has become within himself? Because that [which man must absorb in order to advance his soul personally] is something that is so connected with the individual life that it is impossible to give it to the general public. We can give much to the general public, but it is impossible to give away what is most essential, and precisely this most essential, which can only be achieved through personality, only through individuality, would have to disappear, would have to fade into nothingness if the human soul life, where the gate of death closes, disappears as an individual soul being. So, from the economy of life, this question arises quite objectively.

The second question that arises as a life riddle, which confronts us at every turn, [is that of fate]. It is this: [We see] that a person is surrounded by adversity and misery from the cradle, and that things will not change; this riddle of fate will confront us even more starkly when we see someone with limited abilities growing up and have to say of them: he will be of little use to society. Another will be surrounded by worries from the cradle on – [so that we can foresee]: he can become a significant member of society. These are questions that may not occupy the theoretical mind much, these are questions that in some respects ordinary science cannot even approach; but should it not be just as necessary to raise this question as other sciences seek to answer? These questions do not only occupy the theoretical mind, but the whole of human life. Inner happiness, inner support, inner security, inner joy of work in life depend on the answer that a person can give himself here. The one who believes that he can dismiss this question will notice in the course of his life that something occurs that he cannot explain, as if it came from this question; insecurity, nervousness, and instability can arise if someone does not find a way to find perspectives for a solution to this question. When approaching this question, spiritual science cannot simply take the results of natural science; it must go beyond them in every respect. We shall see why. But by going beyond the results of natural science, spiritual science, as it is meant here, retains - and this it must in the sense of modern times - the same discipline of thinking and feeling, [of research], the same way of confronting the world, which is in natural science. Oh, my honored audience, this has shown us yet another result: it has [in the course of the last century] produced a certain education of human thought, and this education is spreading. He who seeks a Weltanschhauung today, may not sin against this education of human thinking. Even though he who does not want to trouble himself with natural science can stand aside, he who wants to penetrate our culture must be able to justify it before the justified demands of natural science. (That which wants to take hold of our culture must be able to stand before justified thinking). On the other hand, however, we see how great the longing is to arrive at something in the indicated direction, beyond all traditions [about these questions], and especially in the thinking natural scientist we see that what is so often justifiably believed today is by no means considered sufficient. Hundreds of examples could be given to show how today's thinking natural scientists are striving for a worldview that can give them what they are seeking.

Of the many examples, one in particular: if we consider a speech given on July 22, 1909, by the man who had been president of Harvard University in America for forty years, a naturalist, a chemist, Charles Eliot, a man of character At the time, he spoke of the need to move forward from natural science to conquering the great soul question, and he presented it to his listeners as a matter of course, what he wanted to express as the existence of an independent soul alongside the physical life. He said: Man has always recognized in his fellow man an independent soul, a spirit that has its essence in itself, as which man experiences himself when he wants to get to know himself, as which man knows himself - [something separate from the body]. But precisely the way in which such a man attempts to move from the habits of scientific thinking into the spiritual can teach us how necessary it is for a special spiritual science to address the issue. If one follows Eliot's arguments, one actually comes to a strange thought. Although he takes it for granted that a soul being exists that is separate from the body, he never speaks of it other than: Yes, the soul is there. — Soul, soul, and always only soul. What would it be like if he applied the same approach to the field of natural science? It would be as if one did not want to construct this plant, these laws, but rather the whole external natural event, by saying: There is a nature. - The natural scientist [is not content with that]; he goes into [the details], the individual laws, the particular concrete existence of the same.

[Likewise, spiritual science does the same. It delves into the soul and seeks to penetrate the spiritual world and to get to know supersensible beings and facts. ] And that will be the task of spiritual science in the future, to be able to go into the details of spiritual life like natural science. Many people today still do not want to know that it is possible to penetrate into the spiritual world and to get to know supersensible entities there that never come to physical embodiment. That is precisely the task of spiritual science; in undertaking this, it proceeds in its field according to the same method as natural science in its. What matters is the similarity of the observation. Suppose, for example, someone wanted to observe the life of a plant, how it grows, how it produces leaves and flowers and finally the fruit. Is the human being satisfied with how plant growth comes to an end? No, when he gets there, he says to himself: the germ is the end of the plant's growth and at the same time the beginning of a new plant. End and beginning are linked together, and we then see the whole of life at work when we are able to link the end to the beginning.

In the same way, spiritual science does it [only applied to the soul]. It should be emphasized how such a consideration is fundamentally fruitful in the context of everyday life. Nothing could be more revealing of the fruitfulness of such a consideration than to reflect for a moment on the saying of an important man who occupied himself a great deal with the riddles of the maturing soul: a saying of Goethe. Goethe said, “In old age one becomes a mystic.” He did not want to present a gray theory, he wanted to present a way of life with it, he wanted to say: That which one has acquired in the course of one's life, regardless of where one has stood, what has become the content of the soul, what one has basically become has become, so that I have gradually become not only richer but also more mature, has matured inwardly, has taken on an inner energy, and detaches itself more and more from the outer life, gaining more and more independence. We are still relatively young, and everything that lives in us wants to be expressed in action; but we also know that something is increasingly forming in the soul, which the soul regards as its content to be experienced in solitude, through which it builds a world of its own, apart from the outside world. This deepening of our inner life, through the drawing in of a higher human being who reaches into our outer activity, is what Goethe meant by his saying. We become inward, soul-spiritual inward. Something similar takes place within our soul life as takes place outwardly-sensually in the plant, where the leaves and flowers gradually wither and the germ separates. What is sensually and physically separated and what becomes the starting point for a new plant life has its analogy in what is inwardly and spiritually separated, in what Goethe wanted to draw attention to, namely that the human being becomes a mystic, and this spiritual-spiritual soul is an accumulated power. One proceeds entirely according to the scientific method when one connects it with the beginning of the human body, and when one does that, then it must be done in such a way that one sees how, when a child comes into existence, it is gradually developed out of unknown foundations, which then later in the course of life comes to light. I have said here before how anyone who regards the human being as growing from birth to maturity in such a way that he believes that everything that unfolds would come into the line of inheritance, that he proceeds just as inaccurately as people , say, in the sixteenth century, when numerous people, including scholars, believed that a physical being – lower animals, earthworms – can develop from [the mere] river mud. It was a great achievement when, in the seventeenth century, Francesco Redi pointed out that this was based on an inaccurate observation and that all life emerges only from life.

Just as Redi behaved at the time, so does the spiritual researcher in relation to the soul and spirit. He shows that it is a mistake to assume only the physical, the line of inheritance, but that in truth one must see a spiritual unfolding into the spiritual-soul. One then sees how, in fact, the soul and spirit have more significant work to do in the early days of childhood than in later life. No matter how proud a person is of what he develops as intellect and spiritual ability, he is no longer so clever in the later stages of life that he is able to do what has to happen in the early days of childhood. The brain must first be made plastic; there the I has to work tremendously harder to develop a very specific ability. [A spiritual core works on the development of abilities.] There you can see: just as you see the new plant developing from the germ, so you can see maturing in a new human life the new abilities crystallizing out of the still plastic matter. [This is the very same view as in natural science.] From this arises – through a meaningful view of life – repeated earthly life. We see the spiritual-soul core of the human being passing through the gate of death, withdrawn from human observation, and emerging again to work on its physical-corporeal being until it has brought it to what then is it? What then is this? The materialist will say: It is a sum of material processes, from which the spiritual-mental then develops. He who thinks that the spiritual man can develop out of processes that arise out of bodily ones has no sense for the contemplation of what the inner soul life is. Anyone who has an appreciation of this [and wants to characterize it] will perhaps first have to resort to an image in order to construct the relationship between the soul and the body. This image could be the following: if we walk along a wall and we find mirrors hanging at individual points on the wall, we walk up to them and we always see ourselves in the mirror. But it would not occur to anyone to explain this reflection as their very own being, and it depends very much on the mirror whether and what is seen. Just as a person stands before his mirror, where the exterior of the mirror only reflects what he is, so the spiritual-soul life relates to the bodily-physical. The physical body is not a dead mirror, but a living mirror, but it is like a mirror that makes it possible for us to know something of the spiritual soul. But when we are asleep at night, we do not look at ourselves in this mirror. The further we penetrate into the everyday observation of the soul life, the more we will perceive how the spiritual-soul, when it has become independent, becomes aware of itself as in a mirror. But as long as we have not attained this independence in the first years of childhood, and as long as we are unaware of it, our soul and spirit work on our physical and material being, making it plastic so that we can recognize ourselves. Thus we see that through what we have worked for in an earlier life we become the architects of our present life.

Another contemplation of life can shed light on the question of fate. A person who has the right sense for self-contemplation will, when looking back on his life, ask himself: Would you have become what you are if you had not met this or that fate? Only a superficial view of life can separate you from what has been worked on you as fate. If you retrace your life [back to birth], you will realize that what becomes conscious to itself [the inner selfhood] cannot have started in childhood, so you will say to yourself: It must have been much earlier than that. One goes beyond one's consciously experienced destiny into earlier times; one recognizes oneself as the smith of one's destiny and one will not be far from the thought that one has also brought one's destiny in its causes from earlier lives.

Only if one does not look at life thoroughly can one be dissatisfied with such a view. One can say: the world view makes that which causes such pain and suffering to man into something that one has built oneself. But one is only dissatisfied when one looks at the surface; the more one knows that one has built one's own destiny, the more one comes to terms with one's destiny, the more satisfied one is. One is just not always a true observer of one's destiny. (A bad fate is often a necessity for moving forward.) Suppose someone has lived recklessly off his father's pocket alone until the age of eighteen, then the father loses his fortune, the young man has to work to support himself, and is forced to lead a different life. He will rightly consider this a bad fate; but when the man reaches the age of fifty, he will say, “Thank God; I would have become a good-for-nothing; my misery back then made me a decent person.” This shows that fate is a necessary part of our development. Thus, what one might feel as a reproach against this world view could perhaps be summarized by saying that if one can be an objective judge of what it can mean to have created one's own hardship and misery, one will not be dissatisfied, not only seeing misery in it, but also seeing developmental factors in it.

But is there, still apart from actual spiritual-scientific results, [a possibility] to imagine that there is a connection between the deepest core of the human soul, [what one is], and that, [what one experiences as] fate? Such an analogy also occurs in natural science. One need only imagine: Can a mountain plant flourish in the lowlands? It is transplanted [by its nature] into the appropriate environment. [There is a certain attraction between the mountain plants and their environment.] Thus man is transplanted into his destiny, for that is where he has to flourish. So there is always an inner bond between what he brings from a previous life and the following life. We always remain within the thinking habits of natural science, even within spiritual science, when we answer the riddle of death that man passes through the gate of death, leading a purely spiritual life until he enters into life again through birth; [we see a spiritual-soul core forming and perfecting itself in the spiritual world in the present life]. Thus we do not regard immortality as an unbroken line, but we see immortality as composed of individual links, and we see from the essence of the spiritual soul how the destiny of man is explained by this passing through of the spiritual-soul core through the various lives, [earthly life and spiritual life]. This already results in a purely external view of life. But when the pure spiritual-scientific method is applied, what could be regarded as a belief is fully confirmed when it is understood in the way it has just been developed.

Yesterday it was shown how the spiritual researcher is able to develop higher powers within himself. [Only someone who has developed his soul can become a spiritual researcher.] There are various moments. Some of these were already mentioned yesterday. Naturally, it is impossible to cover everything that a person experiences in the course of a lecture, even a sketchy one; but individual aspects can be hinted at, and one important point can be pointed out, which I have already tried to describe in [my] book [“How to Know Higher Worlds” and in] “A Path to Knowledge of the Human Being”. Reference has been made to a discovery that the person who is educating himself spiritually makes, [to the development that man undergoes]. What he experiences [there] he experiences figuratively [at first]; but this experience is the expression of a significant reality, of that which takes place in reality. In my book, I try to describe as vividly as possible what often comes unexpectedly as an image; when you have developed your soul sufficiently long and energetically, the moment comes when something can happen in a hundred different ways, but it can also happen in such a way that you feel: Now something is happening to you that you have never had any experience of before. It can be as if you feel within a complex of forces, as if lightning [strikes], passes through you and had blown up everything material. From that moment on, you feel [how you have come into a different relationship with the body], how you have become free and independent in your inner experience from that which is physically attached to you. One feels, as it were, consciously driven out and one feels as one can only feel when one has experienced the falling away of the body in death. That is why the words were used in the mystical life: one approaches the boundary of death.

Only from this moment on do you know what it means to experience yourself inwardly and at the same time know: It is not linked to the inner physicality, from which you feel liberated; now you know what it means to stand before the mirror. [Thoughts are not brain products]; you now know the spiritual and soul reality; but you are detached from something else at this moment, and that is the essential thing. One knows that one is detached from the body, but one is also detached to a high degree from what one has known as the spiritual-soul, from what one was in, in which one has experienced oneself, [from what one has addressed as oneself]. The mystics who have known it have spoken in such a way that one approaches the external necessity of existence. You only understand the mystics when you know this yourself; yes, you have this experience in this moment – it is a significant discovery. Just as you can only stand by and watch a foreign body, you feel that you can only be a spectator in the things you used to feel you were an actor in; you feel yourself as a spectator in the face of a spiritual-soul life. One feels it oneself as a kind of corporeality outside oneself, feels that there are processes in it over which one has no control. One feels, as it were, chained, forged to a being, to which one must remain until the gate of death and in relation to which one feels oneself outwardly as a spectator. One feels a new thinker awakening in oneself, the old will one feels snatched away, facing it. What matters more than a sensational result is that he - a person developing in this way - can really have such experiences, that he can know himself in a spiritual world; and when he knows himself there, one thing becomes clear to him. It becomes clear to him that with the new being that he has now peeled out of his previous soul life, he stands much closer to the outer physicality than he used to. We are close to the outer physicality. Today's materialist is familiar with the phenomenon of blanching, of blushing; we have experienced physical processes there; these can be thought of as being intensified; one can also refer to circumstances that come to light when one observes a person over a longer period of their life. We find that if a person has an inner life that does not remain purely theoretical, he becomes the master of his life; [the soul acts on the body; facial features change]. But these are all trivialities compared to the feeling that arises at the moment when one has, so to speak, detached oneself from one's soul and spirit, that one has within oneself the powers to create physically. [You feel that you have the strength to shape the physical body], then you feel the forces that are present in the child when it forms the plastic body, [physically develops the abilities]. This experience is not easy, it is quite difficult to bear. One cannot change this body, but one feels: one has gathered forces through one's life that can forge another body. One feels, as it were, the foretaste of the forces that will work on one's destiny in a subsequent life. One feels as if one has been detached, but one has also gained certainty about the spiritual-soul experience, [the spiritual-soul core]. As surely as oxygen and hydrogen are separated, so through the separation that one makes through this meaningful self-experiment, one recognizes that the spiritual-soul is mixed in the human body, a spiritual-soul core, and that the human being reaches out into a new life by carrying the potential for it within himself. Certainty arises for us when we do things this way. There are, however, no experiments that we can do in the laboratory; the only experiment is self-development, self-inspiration, and the only experiment to penetrate into the supersensible worlds is the spiritual-soul itself. He must make himself the instrument of penetration. Then he will actually gain knowledge about the connection of his destiny in the present life and in past lives. Just as the person who believes that he is a product of nature is in error [believes that he is even in the mirror, so the one who seeks his ego in the physical is in error], so is the one in error who experiences the following: It happens to him that he cannot find objects, for example, the buttons he needs to put on his clothes; he gets angry and assumes that someone has misplaced them. [He asks], “Who has done this to me, where should I look?” Then he looks more closely and finds that he himself is the cause, that he has had to search. What he has to do now is the result of what he himself did the day before. [So it is with our destiny.] We face our destiny; we face it in love and in hate; we do not draw it to ourselves because we have forgotten that we have caused it [ourselves]. But a true contemplation of life expands our memory, and we find that it is carpentered by ourselves.

That is the true expansion of true human self-reflection. Of course, natural science can penetrate into many things, but not into the realms of the spiritual and the soul. The aforementioned Charles Eliot said that the old worldview dealt with human suffering and said, “You will find a balance after death.” According to Charles Eliot, the new world view should not deal with death and misery, but with joy and life. We have to admit that without doubt. But can one simply say that one should construct a world view based on natural science that only deals with joy and life? You may say it, fine, you [may refuse to deal with suffering and death], may turn your eyes away from suffering and death - but suffering and death deal with us, they will get to us, and only the one who can look at suffering as a developmental factor, who can basically say to the question: You have experienced happiness and joy, pain and suffering. What would you rather give up of what you have experienced: [suffering or joys]? – I would give up joy for pain and suffering, because I actually owe my realization to them – he would speak correctly because he has acquired true realization. What makes us understand knowledge as a developmental factor, death, from which a new germ of life develops, which pushes away the shell like withered leaves, makes us see death as the event that guarantees us a new life. We would not be able to use what we should use for a new life, [the germ], if we did not have death, [if we did not go through death]. Once education is placed in this world view, it will become a practice of life, a kind of life sap; one will be able to symbolize oneself through the process, the withering of the plant, how the spiritual-soul core becomes more and more energetic, in which new life forces want to work. This will give the courage to face life. This realization will be an elixir of life. I have always pointed out the objection that is raised. Systematic investigations show us how mathematical talent was inherited in the Bernoulli family, and musical talent in the Bach family. The question now is this: Is anything of all these scientific results negated? Does something need to be denied? Through a simple comparison, we can see how everything that can legitimately be said about science can be admitted. [Spiritual science does not deny anything that science says.] The spiritual researcher is not a superstitious person; he is a person who does not want to raise objections, who does not need to reject what is justified. It is fully admitted that there is justification in the facts of heredity, [but alongside the materialistic cause there is also a spiritual one]. Let us assume that someone were standing before us and another personality said: I will answer the question as to why the personality standing before me actually lives. Well, because it has lungs inside and air outside, because it breathes. Quite right, he is right. But someone else comes along and says: Yes, but I know something else why he lives; I once happened to see how he hanged himself, I cut him down. My cutting him down is the reason that he is still alive today! Through this comparison, everything that constitutes the relationship between spiritual science and natural science is made clear. If someone comes along and says: We see the talents of a great general because his [Napoleon's] mother, when she was carrying him, had the inclination to like to be on battlefields, we can admit that, but that does not exclude the possibility that the other is also true, [that spiritual and mental connections are also present]. If we only realize this relationship between spiritual science and natural science sufficiently comprehensively, then we will no longer make the objections that we otherwise hear.

But even otherwise, these objections do not have sufficient logic. We see that genius is always at the end of the line of inheritance. Certainly we can see that the external bodily tools descend from the ancestors, but the individuality had to seek out the bodily tools. [This is proof against inheritance]. But if someone bases an assertion on this that everything only happens in the line of inheritance, saying that someone has inherited this or that quality from his ancestors because the ancestors also had it, that cannot actually be proof in the real sense. It is, in the logical sense, no more proof than saying that if someone has fallen into water, they are wet. At most, external, real proof could also be found logically if one had the genius not at the end but at the beginning of the line of inheritance, so that one could show how the genius is passed on - but one will hardly dare to do that. It can be seen that the assertions are not based on logic, but on certain habits of thought that tend to seek the reasons for everything in the corporeal, and so it must be said: it is the task of science to show what is transitory in man, and thus also to conclude its task; for how should science actually proceed? It makes use of the senses, but these cease with the death of the human being. How then can one use tools that are lost at death to gain insights into the supersensible world? How can one accomplish this with the intellect if the brain to which the intellect is bound is lost at death? It is only possible to penetrate into the spiritual, supersensible worlds if it is possible to appeal to those powers of the soul that are not bound to the senses, to the physical brain. And although it is true, and cannot be disputed, that once Du Bois-Reymond said that we understand the sleeping human being, but that we no longer understand him from a scientific point of view when the ray of consciousness enters him – [What constitutes joy and suffering can no longer be researched] – one must also admit that the solution to the riddle of life cannot be found in this way, which leaves a possibility for a solution open where natural science ends. If one does not do this, then one must despair of solving this riddle of life.

[Where natural science ends, spiritual science begins.] Therefore, there must be a spiritual science that does not want to deny the legitimacy of natural science in any way, but that has to research in the same [strict] way by developing the powers of the soul. Then knowledge comes about in the human being that is also life; it is something that pours out like a spiritual-soul elixir of life, through which we gain courage and security in life, through which we first know what we are as human beings and feel ourselves as spirit itself, as we feel ourselves within the physical-material world, as the same thing that lives out there. When we recognize the nature of the spiritual and the soul, we feel just as much a part of the spiritual and the soul as a link in the spiritual and the soul, which lives and weaves through the world everywhere, [so that we can say: what is in us as laws also lives outside, we are a part of the world]. Spiritual science should bring life and knowing life to modern culture, and that is what modern man needs. Old faith can no longer satisfy him for the simple reason that man has gone through the education that natural science can give him, and because he will demand that what is said about the spirit be said in the same way as what is said about natural science. And this finally leads us to recognize that, on the one hand, what Goethe says is absolutely justified: that because we have the ability to perceive light within us, we also recognize external light; and because we have a divine light within us, we can also recognize the divine. Goethe says:

If the eye were not solar,
The sun could not see it,
If we did not have the power of God within us,
How could we be delighted by the divine?

Goethe then points out how we [always] have a spiritual soul within us and, because we have it within us, it is, as it were, transferred out into the world and we can see it outside; if we had no eye, it is true, then everything would be dark; it is true that if we did not have a spiritual eye, we could not admire the divine outside of us. But Goethe did not just take the side of those many people who only want to recognize the spiritual and soul in man himself, but he took the side of those who knew that because light measures space, we have the eye; [because the eye is solar, we see the sun. That light floods space is the cause of the eye. If there were no light outside of us, the eye could not have become established in our lives! And so we can conclude this evening's reflections, which were intended to show us how man can attain spiritual knowledge by invigorating the forces within him, by saying that not only is the spiritual soul within us, but there is a guarantee that just as we are born out of the physical world, we are also born out of the spiritual soul [that the world lives through].

If the world were not endowed with the sun,
How could eyes blossom for the beings;
If existence were not the unveiling of God,
How could human beings come to be filled with God?