Freedom, Immortality and Social Life

GA 72 — 18 October 1917, Basel

1. The Human Soul in the Realm of the Supernatural and Its Relationship to the Body

When anthroposophy is discussed — in the sense in which it is meant here in this lecture as knowledge of the spiritual life of the human being — you will hear again and again that it springs from the dreamy, fantastical ideas of individual personalities. At least, that is the opinion of many people who consider themselves competent to make such a judgment. However, it must be said from the outset that this anthroposophical spiritual knowledge extends over a field of research that encompasses the deepest and most significant interests of human inner life. Therefore, at all times, even in recent times, when such endeavors have been overshadowed by the brilliant advances of natural science, attempts have been made again and again, isolated attempts, we might almost say, to cultivate this field. But it must be said that, especially in recent times, these have mostly been mere flashes of insight from this or that outstanding personality who has engaged in reflection on human spiritual life, flashes of insight that always give the impression of they come from completely different sources of human nature than the insights that relate to external nature, to the field of external sensory perception.

It is not surprising that something like an unconscious instinct for knowledge compels people again and again to illuminate this field with such flashes of light, for in this field lie the most significant questions of the soul, the riddles of the soul, those soul riddles that human beings must face again and again with their entire sensory, emotional, imaginative, and volitional life. And human beings must feel that if they do not gain a position on these questions, it will have an effect on their soul that can be compared, in the physical realm, to a kind of illness. The soul life becomes desolate; it feels swept away by all kinds of — one might use the good old word “addiction” — all kinds of addictions when the doubts and uncertainties arise that can arise in relation to these questions.

In recent times, however — as we have seen over many years — people have sought little satisfaction for the hunger for knowledge that arises from such impulses through what could be called spiritual nourishment. Who is not familiar with the tendency of those who had enough money to go to the most diverse sanatoriums around the world — although the sad times we are currently experiencing have deprived many of this opportunity — the tendency to go to sanatoriums, where for many, many, too many, should have been quenched nothing other than that thirst for knowledge which one would so much like to numb oneself to in ordinary life today, which one would so much like to satisfy by means other than spiritual ones. What people sought in sanatoriums and similar institutions was, after all, basically only stimulation that did not require them to be present with their souls, so to speak, and that was intended to satisfy those mysterious longings I have just spoken of, which one is not inclined to satisfy in a spiritual way.

Again and again, when I have to think about such questions, that image appears before my soul, which once appeared before me years ago when I was in a sanatorium—not for rest or recovery, but to visit someone in a sanatorium at a time when one could, so to speak, review the various inmates, and where, after talking to some of them, I came to the conclusion that the person who most needed refreshment and recovery of his nervous system was actually the head physician. All the others needed much less refreshment of their nervous systems than the head physician.

In this field, which is being referred to here, individual people who have dealt more intensively with questions of spiritual life, as I said, have shed individual flashes of light that have dawned on them from the depths of their souls. In doing so, one thing has always become apparent, which, I would say, will also run like a thread through the reflections of this evening: it has become apparent that within the human being, as he goes through the world today with his ordinary life, another human being actually sleeps, in reality sleeps and rests, a human being who is not actually perceived by the circumstances of ordinary life, because he sleeps more quietly in the ordinary human being than the dream images that are present in him, which also come and go.

But one thing has always struck spiritual people when they have realized how such a second human being, who is basically asleep, rests within the ordinary human being: they could not grasp the idea of this sleeping human being, this unnoticed second human being, without in some way bringing it together with what we must call death within the circumstances of our lives. And indeed, more or less instinctively, it dawned on one or another personality that just as the phenomena of external, sensory nature are connected with the laws of existence that can be found through observation of growth, birth, the emergence of beings from others, and so on, so too this second human being, sleeping within the first, is intimately connected with what we must call death in the context of our lives, with passing away. And one realizes that it is a great and significant moment for people of knowledge when they no longer have to think of the higher human being in man in connection with growth and prosperity, but rather with the forces that move after death.

One of the personalities to whom this connection has, I would say, appeared in a particularly illuminating light is the philosopher and psychologist Fortlage. I would like to start with a significant statement he made in 1869 in the course of eight psychological lectures, lectures on psychology, which he gave. In these lectures, the following very significant passage can be found:

"When we call ourselves living beings and thus attribute to ourselves a characteristic that we share with animals and plants, we necessarily understand the living state to be something that never leaves us and continues within us both in sleep and in wakefulness. This is the vegetative life of nourishing our organism, an unconscious life, a life of sleep. The brain is an exception in that this life of nourishment, this life of sleep, is dominated by the life of consumption during the intervals of wakefulness. During these intervals, the brain is exposed to excessive consumption and consequently enters a state which, if it extended to the other organs, would result in the absolute exhaustion of the body or death."

And then, after Fortlage has made this remarkable statement, he continues his reflection with the following, I would say, profound words:

“Consciousness is a small and partial death; death is a great and total consciousness, an awakening of the whole being in its innermost depths.”

One sees that, through such a flash of insight coming from the depths of the human soul, the connection between what we call death and what our consciousness is, which always accompanies us during our waking life and, in essence, makes us human, becomes clear to Fortlage. Fortlage arrives at an idea of the relationship between death and consciousness by realizing that what suddenly seizes a person at the moment of death, what suddenly consumes the human body in death, could be said to act in small, continuous amounts when we unfold this blossoming of our spiritual existence, consciousness during our waking life. Every conscious act is, in small measure, the same as what death is in large measure. So that for Fortlage, real death, when it occurs, is the emergence of a comprehensive consciousness that transports the human being into a supersensible world, while, as a soul between birth and death, he needs the physical body for his life and is transported into the sensory world.

Fortlage has written a lot about psychology, many volumes; such flashes of insight only appear occasionally in his writings. The rest of the content of his writings deals only with what is commonly found today in the psychology of the soul: the socialization of ideas, the flow of ideas, the emergence of drives, and so on, in short, with all those questions that are ventured upon today solely in psychology and which are far removed from what actually interests human beings, the whole human being, in psychology, far removed from the two main questions: the question of human freedom and the question of human immortality.

This evening's reflections will mainly deal with the latter question, while in a few weeks' time I will give a lecture here that will address the question of freedom from the same point of view.

Even though Fortlage, in the broad scope of his psychological research, his psychology, deals only with subordinate questions, and in such a way that this type of activity cannot lead him to the highest questions, there are nevertheless flashes of insight to be found in his work. But he was criticized for this as well. Eduard von Hartmann—those esteemed listeners who have heard my earlier lectures know that I do not underestimate this philosopher at all—Eduard von Hartmann sharply criticized Fortlage for having left the path of science at a moment when he brought into strict science a connection such as that between human consciousness and death.

Now one can say: Not only Fortlage — as anyone who is familiar with spiritual scientific literature on a larger scale knows — not only Fortlage, but many personalities have brought forth in individual flashes of insight something from their souls that relates to this characterized second human being, the human being sleeping within the sensual human being. But these have remained isolated flashes of light, especially in recent times.

Anthroposophy has no other task than to systematize, regulate, and methodize what has otherwise instinctively resounded in individual flashes of insight like a revelation of higher knowledge from the depths of the human soul, so that what emerges from this can stand alongside the wonderful natural sciences of recent times as a fully valid science. To this end, however, it is necessary that anyone who wishes to form an opinion about this anthroposophy or spiritual science should cast aside various prejudices, prejudices which cannot even be said to be reprehensible in many people who hold them, prejudices which are easily explained by certain advantages of contemporary science.

I had to say: the human being who is actually involved when considerations of spiritual science come into play is something like a sleeping being within the normally waking human being. But this explains why everything that relates to this second human being, the human being who is asleep in the waking human being, initially proceeds in such a way that one does not notice it, proceeds like another stream flowing beneath the streams of ordinary consciousness, but which is drowned out, overwhelmed by what fills consciousness according to sensory experience, according to the needs of personal life. And when such flashes of light appear from time to time in this ordinary life, they disappear faster than a dream. No wonder, then, that most people, according to the entirely justified judgment of the present day, say to themselves: Yes, what emerges from the soul and wants to provide insight, wants to form a revelation about this quietly sounding, quietly shining sleeping human being, when it occurs in those who call themselves spiritual researchers, it makes the impression of something dreamlike, fantastical, it makes the impression of figments of the imagination, of ideas put forward about this human being. And the present day does not want to engage with such figments of the imagination. It is quick to judge: Oh, that is something that sprang from the imagination of the individual, something that shaped a dreamer!

Yes, but something else could be true. What if it were true that what lives on in human beings beyond birth and death, what is eternal in human nature as opposed to the transitory, could be perceived, even if only in a faint way, in muted images, as they exist in the ‘I-space’? If that were the case, then one would either have to renounce any knowledge of the eternal in human beings, if one did not want to resort to ideas that arise with the character with which imagination or dreams otherwise arise, or one must carry over into this world, which otherwise seems dreamlike, what one is accustomed to in terms of logical discipline and methodical research in the ideas that pertain to the sensory world. And one must raise the ideas by certain means, inner soul means, by exciting certain inner soul forces, so that they do not merely flit by like dreams, but obtain the clarity and impressibility that the ideas of ordinary life, of ordinary waking life, of ordinary consciousness have.

Is this possible? Today, it is difficult to make it clear to people that it is possible in a truly scientific sense, because today natural science is regarded as the only science that has a strictly founded methodology. And when other sciences are distinguished, they are actually only accepted insofar as they are methodologically founded according to the model of natural science. This is certainly true for certain areas, and even more must be said. One must say: the ideas that natural science has produced in recent times have shown that they must be this way if they want to dominate the field assigned to them. But one must also say that with them one cannot approach the eternal life of human beings. These ideas cannot be equally suited to solving the mysteries of nature and the mysteries of the human soul. Something completely different must come into play for the latter. How many different paths, how many different means must be used to make the soul so strong, so internally powerful, that it can bring up ideas that otherwise lie dormant in the depths of consciousness and apply the strict discipline and methodology of thinking to them. I have spoken about this in various writings, notably in my book “How to Attain Knowledge of Higher Worlds.” Today, as I have done in previous lectures here, I would like to highlight a few points from these writings. The detailed path that the human soul must take in order to truly reach the spiritual world through inner strengthening, to see into it as one sees into the physical world with the physical eyes, must be sought in the aforementioned writings; but today I would like to emphasize a few points in particular.

One cannot get an idea of how the spiritual researcher must actually proceed, what he must actually do in order to look into the spiritual world with his soul, unless one realizes what one can experience as a full, whole human being, equipped with the corresponding thirst for knowledge and need for knowledge, at certain limits of knowledge to which modern science leads one.

Modern natural science not only provides those who devote themselves to it with insights into the external course of nature and into many things that also have an impact on practical life, which no one can admire more than the spiritual researcher himself, but this natural science also provides those who devote themselves to it with dedication from certain points of view with an inner education of the human soul life. And more than was possible in earlier stages of scientific knowledge, today we are actually prepared for spiritual research through science itself. We should not allow ourselves to be restricted by what science has to say about the external world in its own field. Rather, one should be able to rise to an inner discipline, to an inner cultivation of the soul life through the way in which one researches nature. The ideas that natural science itself provides can only give information about external nature; in terms of their content, they say nothing about spiritual life. But by using them, by using them devotedly in the study of nature, in the knowledge of nature, they educate, I would say, incidentally, in those people who are able to pay attention to what is going on within them, certain inner conditions of life that lead them to gain a concept, an inner experience of what it means to live with one's soul outside the body.

I am well aware that this concept – living with one's soul outside the body – is the height of nonsense for many people today. But that does not matter. Everyone can convince themselves that inner experience gives them a certain insight into life outside the body when they undergo such exercises of the soul life as are indicated in my writings or as I intend to express them in principle here.

One can go through something particularly meaningful when one reaches that borderline of the life of knowledge to which natural science so often leads one. Borderline! You see, many people talk about the great borderline questions of knowledge. They say that the human soul reaches a border when it wants to investigate whether the world is infinite or finite in space or time, when the soul wants to investigate whether it is subject to an irresistible compulsion in all its actions or whether it is free. Certainly, these are the highest borderline questions. In his famous speech on the limits of natural cognition, on the seven mysteries of the world, Du Bois-Reymond posed other such borderline questions. It can make a deep impression on one when one feels, I would say, out of the pain of cognition of a man of knowledge, how such a man stands at such a borderline.

I could cite many examples of the fact that true men of knowledge are placed at such borderline points. One such example is that which we find in the writings of the famous aesthetician and philosopher Friedrich Theodor Vischer, known as V-Vischer because his name is spelled with a V. When reading through his writings, one often has to pause at what his soul experiences at such borderline points of knowledge. He wrote a beautiful treatise on a book about dream fantasy written by the philosopher Volkelt, who also once worked here in Basel. In this treatise, which, however, earned V-Vischer the accusation—one should not believe it, because V-Vischer was as far removed from this accusation as possible; but even this was possible—that he had gone among the spiritualists, V-Vischer cites a passage where he shows what he experienced at the frontiers of knowledge. He said: It is quite certain that the human soul cannot be in the body, but it is equally certain that it cannot be outside the body either. Here we have such a borderline question, a borderline question that is paradoxical because it contains a complete contradiction, a contradiction like those that one always encounters when one devotes oneself to rigorous natural science, to life in general. It is a contradiction to which one is led: the soul cannot be in the body, but it cannot be outside the body either! Why is one led to such a contradiction?

At such borderline points, where such contradictions arise, scientific knowledge is of no help, and it is most disturbing when one can believe that it does help. Most people today, however, are quick to pass judgment. In such cases, they simply say: Well, this is as far as human knowledge can take us; we cannot go any further. But that is not the case. Because Vischer was caught up in the prejudices of modern times, he experienced only the contradiction, so to speak. But he did not experience what one can do to progress with one's soul at such borderline locations. Here, ordinary cognition must cease and a very special experience of the soul must begin. Here, one must be able to forget, so to speak, the ideas of ordinary life, because they only carry one to this borderline. One must be able to experience this here. Here, as a soul, one must be able to wrestle with what confronts one when one enters into what, I might say, swirls in such a contradiction, like the air swirls into which we must enter with our lungs. Such contradictions want to be experienced, want to be experienced with the whole soul. Then something new confronts this whole soul, as if from the gray depths of the spirit, something that it cannot experience without this experience of such contradictions.

People have formed ideas about the way in which lower animals, lower organisms that do not yet have senses, develop their senses in interaction with the outside world. An inner life existed; this inner life encounters the outer world, adapts to the outer world, experiences the impulses of the outer world. And while before, life pulsated, so to speak, within the organism and then encountered the external sensory world, the spatial world, this encounter, this interaction with the outside world, gave rise to a sense of touch, so to speak. First it is an inner stirring, then a collision with the boundaries of the external spatial world. But in its interaction with the outside world, the being learns to adapt; from the reactions to the external collisions, the pressures, a kind of image of the outside world is formed through the sense of touch; this sense of touch develops through the collision with the boundary. With this idea — we do not want to examine now to what extent it applies — of what is at work in lower organisms in the formation of external senses, one can compare what the soul experiences when it comes to such borderline places of cognition as those described. In the life of the soul, it is really as if one were to first encounter something in the dark interior that one initially has externally. Then what one experiences in such contradictory ideas, which one forms at the boundaries of knowledge, becomes more specific and differentiated. And just as the sense of touch emerges as a physical sense from the undifferentiated, so a spiritual existence emerges from the soul when the soul encounters the boundary of the spiritual world. One really encounters the spiritual world. But one also adapts to it. And one experiences the significant fact that, in a sense, one first has the soul as an undeveloped soul organism, which is confronted by the spiritual world outside, the supersensible, but then, in a further, deeper process, this soul develops spiritual organs of touch and, to use Goethe's expressions, spiritual eyes and ears, in order to truly perceive what it first only encounters.

I readily believe that today, people who perhaps already have an urge to learn something about the spiritual world, based on some vague inner instinct, would love it if they could be taught the ability to perceive the spiritual world by having hands laid on them mystically or something similar. Some people believe this. But that is not the case. What opens up the spiritual world to us is inner, soul work. This inner, soul work truly leads to what I have indicated. The person who transforms their soul into an organized soul, who realizes that they can have such an organized soul within themselves, knows that the moment they touch the spiritual and become aware of the spirit, they live with their soul free from the physical body.

This life free from the physical body is definitely a result of inner perception. For what I have just explained occurs again and again in people who are truly seeking knowledge. It is remarkable how precisely the path I have described to you from spiritual research develops in those who have gone through the pains and longings of knowledge. Let me give you another example from V-Vischer, an example of a statement he made in which he shows how he repeatedly found himself at those boundaries of knowledge where one cannot help but perceive contradictions, feel contradictions, as a complete human being, but contradictions that cannot be resolved by logical means, contradictions that can only be resolved by immersing oneself in them and developing one's mental faculties.

In particular, V-Vischer repeatedly encountered the contradiction: The brain is supposed to be the organ of the soul, supposed to produce ideas, so to speak; but if one delves into the nature of ideas, one cannot regard them as products of the brain. This is such a borderline area of cognition; V-Vischer says in reference to this:

“No mind where there is no nerve center, where there is no brain, say the opponents.” Vischer himself does not say this! "No nerve center, no brain, we say, if it were not prepared from below on countless levels; it is easy to speak mockingly of a stirring of the spirit in granite and limestone – no more difficult than it would be for us to ask mockingly how the protein in the brain rises to form ideas. Human knowledge is losing the ability to measure the differences between the steps. It will remain a mystery how it comes about that nature, under which the spirit must slumber, stands as such a perfect counterstroke to the spirit that we bump our heads on it; it is a dimension of such apparent absoluteness that Hegel's otherness and otherworldliness, as witty as the formula may be, say as good as nothing, simply concealing the harshness of the apparent dividing wall. The correct recognition of the edge and the blow in this counterattack can be found in Fichte, but no explanation for it."

How strange this description is! Friedrich Theodor Vischer finds himself confronted with such a limit of knowledge; he describes his experience. How must he describe it? He comes to the expression: “We bump our heads on it.” He comes to the expression: “Edge and blow in the counterblow.” — One sees the soul that wants to differentiate itself in order to develop inner spiritual organs through which it can experience the supersensible outer world in which it stands.

For a long time in the history of human development, there was an obstacle to rising in the right way to what I here call spiritual organs, through which one perceives a spiritual world, just as one perceives a sensory world through the sensory organs — for a long time, there was an obstacle in that people believed that certain questions, precisely the questions about God, freedom, and immortality could only be solved by human thinking, by thinking that proceeds from sensory impressions. Now, thinking is important, because basically a large part of the exercises one must do to attain spiritual organs consists in developing thinking, in developing thinking to a higher level than the thinking required for ordinary natural science. But if one surrenders oneself only to the thinking that is needed in ordinary life, it is a thinking that comes from the ordinary human being, not from that second human being sleeping within him. This thinking does not lead into the spiritual world; this thinking can only make itself clear that it stands in the spiritual world. No unprejudiced person will admit that thoughts are something that lives in the sensory world; but these thoughts can contain nothing other than impressions of the sensory world if they are taken from ordinary human nature. Those who have a deeper — if I may use the expression — experience of human inner life have always felt, as in flashes of inspiration, where human thinking leads when it is emancipated from external sensory perception and left to its own devices.

If one has experience in spiritual scientific literature, one can find such flashes of light, which are sometimes, however, flashes of darkness, in the research of numerous personalities who have delved deeply into the spirit. With them, one must pause and observe the cliffs to which human cognitive life leads when this life is sincere, true, and honest with itself and does not pretend to have all kinds of prejudices, nor does it want to apply all kinds of methods taken from other, secure areas to the life of the soul itself. Again, one example among many:

One man who has truly wrestled with problems and puzzles of knowledge is Gideon Spicker, who until a few years ago lectured in philosophy at the University of Münster. Gideon Spicker started from an education in the spiritual. The deepest questions of knowledge took root in his soul through theology. A few years ago, he wrote a beautiful little book: “Philosophical Confession of a Former Capuchin,” two volumes; one recounts his life, the other his thirst for knowledge. One passage in particular is worth pausing over, where this former Capuchin, who went on to become a professor of philosophy, talks about his experience with thinking, which he had detached from sensory experience but, because he did not have the courage to delve into spiritual science, did not develop to the point where the power of thought itself awakens spiritual organs, so that one is confronted with a spiritual world and feels oneself in the realm of the supersensible with one's soul. Because he was at such a borderline point where he experienced something with his thinking, he expressed himself as follows:

"Whatever philosophy one professes: whether dogmatic or skeptical, empirical or transcendental, critical or eclectic: all without exception proceed from an unproven and unprovable proposition, namely the necessity of thinking. No investigation, however deep it may delve, can ever get behind this necessity. It must be accepted unconditionally and cannot be justified by anything“ — he means the necessity of thinking — ”every attempt to prove its correctness always presupposes it. Beneath it yawns a bottomless abyss, a terrifying darkness illuminated by no ray of light. So we do not know where it comes from, nor where it leads. Whether a gracious God or an evil demon placed it in reason, both are uncertain."

However, no one who has learned even a little, or perhaps even a great deal, and then uses the concepts they have learned to construct all kinds of philosophies, cobbling together all kinds of monistic or dualistic worldviews, speaks in this way; This is how a person speaks who has gone through what the seeker of knowledge and researcher of knowledge can go through when he delves deep enough with the powers of his soul into those depths of inner experience into which one can delve, into those depths where one encounters the cliffs, the dividing walls, which one can only penetrate when the spiritual organs truly awaken, when they become consciousness.

I have met a number of such people in my life who, like Gideon Spicker, struggle for knowledge, and I have tried to portray such characters of knowledge in the image of a personality in my mystery dramas, in the image of Strader. However, I have had to experience that it is precisely those who often call themselves followers of the spiritual direction I represent who have misunderstood me most deeply. While the personalities portrayed in these dramas, in these, I would say, dramas of knowledge, are taken from real, wide-ranging life, from that life which is precisely intended to show the necessity and validity of spiritual science from other areas of today's existence, there have been strange people who believed that I wanted to write such roles specifically for those who were to portray them, when in fact I was, of course, far from doing so.

One could illustrate by means of a comparison what such a person experiences who does not attain spiritual knowledge, but does attain insight into the necessity of thinking. Those who attain spiritual knowledge know that if one does not merely want to consider thinking, but experiences it — just as the lower organism experiences it when the organs develop from an indeterminate life substance — then one does not experience beyond thinking what Gideon Spicker describes, the bottomless abyss, the terrifying darkness illuminated by no ray of light, but one experiences beyond this thinking the spiritual world that carries sensory reality. He experiences himself with his soul in this supersensible realm. He also experiences that it remains no uncertainty whether a gracious God or an evil demon is placed in reason, but he experiences the spiritual shining into reason, then through spiritual experience, spiritual observation, how the sensory world shines into sensory observation.

But it must be said that when thinking is left to itself, when it is merely thought and not experienced, then such a development of the soul life can be compared—forgive the somewhat strange comparison, but I must make it because it actually follows from the nature of the matter itself—to a hungry organism. And if one believes that one can achieve something by merely thinking about the highest questions — God, freedom, immortality — then one resembles a person who does not want to remedy hunger by taking in food from outside, but by allowing hunger to develop on its own, built on itself. Just as little as one can develop a hungry organism so that it balances its own needs within itself, so little can one, if one merely abandons oneself to thinking, bring about any fulfillment of the soul with spiritual content, any solution to the questions about God, freedom, immortality. Just as one can only continue to hunger if one does not eat, and hunger never satisfies itself, so one cannot attain spiritual development by merely continuing to think.

This is what older philosophical metaphysics has often sought to achieve. And as hard as it is, it is true: this outdated metaphysics, which is indeed something new for some people today—they even want to refresh it from time to time and consider it a great achievement to refresh these questions of metaphysics—is nothing more than a science that suffers from malnutrition, from spiritual malnutrition. Philosophical metaphysics is a starved science, spiritually.

But it is not enough to merely gain this insight in order to truly understand inner experience. Just as one must understand that mere thinking leads to starved metaphysics if this thinking does not draw on inner experience, one must also understand that no matter how much knowledge of external, sensory reality relating to human beings, no matter how many results of sensory observation and the processing of this sensory observation by the human mind, through methodical research, can lead to knowledge of the soul. You can see this for yourself if you pick up today's textbooks or other books on spiritual science; they usually begin by discussing the nervous system. What else is said about the human organism, what is then built up, often flows only from what has been borrowed about the human organism from physiology, from natural science.

Now, in order to avoid misunderstanding, it must be emphasized again and again that spiritual science is as far removed as possible from misjudging natural science; the value of what natural science has brought forth in recent times about the mysteries of nerve life, about the mysteries of the human organism in general, should not be taken away. But its value lies in a different realm than that of knowledge of the soul. One can abandon oneself to mere thinking, but then one starves, like someone who is starving; but to abandon oneself to the knowledge of the soul life based solely on external observation, which natural science, anatomy, physiology, and biology provide, is like introducing into the human organism not useful food, but all kinds of stuff that is indigestible. If you fill your stomach with indigestible stones or the like, the human organism is simply unable to make anything out of this indigestible stuff. So if you simply take the findings of natural science as they are, without processing them spiritually, you cannot expect them to provide any insight into the spiritual world or the life of the soul in the realm of the supersensible. In recent times, people have indulged in a wide variety of ideas that are supposed to explain how the soul actually relates to the body. Not only are the strangest fairy tales circulating in what is often called science. Fairy tales, superstition, which people want to eradicate from external life, often flourish in science as strongly as they ever have in life, only one notices them in science just as little as one noticed them in external life at that time. Take the fairy tale of the telegraph wires: that the nerves themselves are telegraph wires to the soul, which transmit external sensory impressions, and then other nerves, which direct the impulses of the will to the periphery of the body. One would rather not talk about this fairy tale, about this recurring comparison, because what is meant by this comparison is very far from the real facts and springs only from an unnoticed scientific superstition.

But there are two ideas that are still very widespread today among those who have thought about the relationship between the body and the soul. Some believe that they must treat the body—preferably, they then speak of the nervous system—as a kind of tool of the soul, as if the soul were a kind of actor, a being that uses the body as a tool. The others, who cannot understand how a spiritual being — which is what they consider the soul to be — can find a point of attack to act on something material like the body, have come up with — as have many contemporary researchers of the soul — the strange idea of what is called spiritual-physical parallelism. According to this idea, all possible bodily processes are supposed to take place independently of each other. Without the soul acting on the body as a cause or the body acting back on the soul, the life of the soul is supposed to run parallel to the bodily processes, like two parallel streams running side by side. One always accompanies the other, but one does not affect the other. Wundt, Ebbinghaus, a whole number of psychologists, Paulsen – I could name many – subscribe to this strange theory of parallelism.

All these theories suffer from the fact that they fail to grasp what the connection between the soul and the body is actually based on. This connection cannot be expressed by saying that the body is the tool of the soul, nor can it be expressed by saying that the phenomena of the soul, the processes of the soul, run parallel to the phenomena of the body.

However, as I have already announced, I can only present what needs to be said in this field, which covers a wide area, as the result and observation of anthroposophy; further explanations can be found in my various writings. But I would like to briefly outline here today the essentials of what the questions raised lead anthroposophical research to conclude.

If one wants to express the relationship between the soul and the body in the right way, one must say: Insofar as the human being is concerned, for real observation — for observation that advances to the point of seeing the spiritual in the way I have indicated — everything physical in the human being proves to be neither a tool nor a secondary process, but a creation of the soul, in the small and in the large, a creation of the soul. And there is nothing physical in human beings that is not a creation of the soul. However, one must cast aside many prejudices and take up many new concepts from spiritual science if one wants to contemplate this far-reaching idea that everything physical is a creation of the soul.

This is already the case on a small scale, when we form any kind of idea, when a feeling arises in us. Yes, it is only because we have not learned to observe in a truly spiritual-physical way that we believe that something external acts upon a finished body; that the external effect is transmitted through the eye or ear to the finished body, and then the effect continues internally. Take a truly unbiased look at the corresponding theories that speak in this way; you will find everywhere that they are not based on real observation at all, but are actually all based on prejudices. For what really happens when we perceive something, when we hear something, is actually already accomplished in its most essential parts at the moment when the thing comes to our consciousness, and is always, in essence, a process of formation within the body. A ray of light strikes us; the ray of light has an effect. It is in the same world in which our body is also involved. Something is happening in our body. What happens inside is of the same kind, only on a smaller scale, I would say on an atomistic scale, as when our entire organism is formed from forces on a large scale. Just as our entire organism is formed from the forces of growth and other forces, so something is formed within us when a ray of light strikes us, when a ray of sound strikes us, and so on. What is formed there, what is new formation within us, what has arisen within us, what is just as fine and atomistic within us as if a new finger had grown — that would only be more obvious — is then reflected back into the soul, which is not in the body, but always in the realm of the supersensible. And that reflection comes to our consciousness. But the process that must take place there for the waking consciousness must be a process of consumption, a process of decomposition, truly a little death.

We cannot, on the basis of ordinary consciousness processes, on the basis of what we have in ordinary life as imagination, feeling, and willing, convince ourselves completely through physical-spiritual observation of what actually happens with consciousness and with the soul being. But when we turn to something else, when we turn to what also accompanies our ordinary waking life, to the formation of memory images, to memory, we come closer to what has just been said. Anyone who knows how to observe what goes on in human beings knows that what actually makes us conscious of an idea, what makes me see, hear, or feel an object, does not immediately lead to memories. No, something else must always be going on at the same time, another process must be going on at the same time. If you have a sense of observation, look at a student who is really struggling; look at all the additional exercises he has to do so that what he takes in also becomes a memory, so that it passes into his memory. There must always be a subconscious process, an unconscious accompanying process. What we know does not remain with us, but what goes on in the subconscious alongside consciousness. But what happens in our organism through this secondary stream of consciousness is very similar to the processes that take place when we grow, when we grow from an early age, when we develop. The emergence of conscious ideas is really an atomistic growth process on a small scale. Something grows within us, even if it is only something minute. Otherwise, we grow as if with enormous forces in relation to the small growth process that takes place within us, unnoticed in ordinary life, when memory is formed. Beneath the surface of the stream of conscious ideas, while we experience through imagination, there flows an event that carries the memories; and this is very similar to the processes of growth. You ask why it is precisely in youth that memory can be well trained? Because then we still have those forces, the forces of growth, fresh within us, because they have not yet died or withered away. But I can only ever give such individual examples; what I have said can be substantiated by hundreds and hundreds of individual observations.

But what we normally imagine, what we feel, what we want, what our soul life is in general, now intervenes in such a way that it is not only reflected and thereby brings what is actually happening to consciousness; but just as there is an undercurrent to our conscious life for the purpose of memory, so there is also an overcurrent. And just as one does not notice the undercurrent — one notices it at most when the student groans and makes movements and jolts his brain in order to do something to promote this undercurrent — one certainly does not notice the overcurrent. But this upper current belongs above all to what I called earlier the second human being, who sleeps in the ordinary human being while we think, feel, and will, and in this way bring about the blossoming of our ordinary life, which runs between birth and death, or let us say between conception and death.

Just as the stream of memory flows beneath consciousness, so too does something purely spiritual flow above consciousness, something that does not in any way intervene in the body in ordinary experience. And because this conscious soul life has, I would say, such an oversoul, the forces that human beings have as growth forces are not sufficient for this conscious soul life, indeed for the complete soul life. The forces that lead human beings to birth are not sufficient. These forces could only bring about in human beings what we perceive in the sleeping organism. At the moment when consciousness intervenes in the organism with its designated overflow, those forces must intervene in the organism which then, in their totality, also destroy this organism as death. These forces are forces of decay, forces that intervene more and more destructively, so that the forces of growth must act compensatingly during sleep. Only then can one understand the supersensible life of the soul, when one knows how far the purely organic extends below the senses.

I do not like to speak — as my esteemed listeners who have heard me here often know — about purely personal experiences; however, what I now want to say about purely personal experiences is essentially connected with what I have to say in general.

I must confess that, through inner work, I have been intensively pursuing the problems I am talking about today, and which I discuss in my writings, for well over thirty years, pursuing them in every way possible. These paths are intended to lead the soul into the realm of spiritual life and into the connection between this spiritual-soul life and physical life. I have found that if one works honestly and sincerely in accordance with the scientific achievements of our time, one can really gain an infinite amount of fruitful knowledge by disciplining oneself scientifically, by training oneself scientifically. In this way, especially when one studies natural science, one also finds precisely those questions and problems that cannot be solved by ordinary natural science. Indeed, it is precisely through scientific thinking that one obtains different results, different observations about what actually exists in natural science.

I must say that for decades, one of the greatest mysteries in the field of natural science and the humanities for me has been the question of the nature of the nervous system, this nervous system that contemporary natural science psychologists and psychological natural scientists consider to be the organ of the soul, imagining that an inner activity takes place in the nerves that is similar to other organ activities. Well, such activities do take place in the nerves, but they do not serve to form ideas, feelings, and will. The processes that take place in the nervous system serve to nourish the nerves and to produce nerve substance when it is depleted. They do not serve the life of the soul at all, but they must be there for the life of the soul to take place. I may use a comparison that I have used here before.

If one looks at the nervous system and considers it as something that must be there for the life of the soul, it is like saying: The ground must be there so that I do not fall into the depths when I want to walk. But if I walk and the ground is soft and I leave footprints behind, then anyone who examines the ground and searches for the forces within it, in the ground that made my footprints, from within, will be completely mistaken. Just as little as these forces come from within, so too do any inner forces of the brain and nervous system make the traces that arise through imagination, will, and feeling. It is the soul that works in the supersensible realm. Just as I have nothing to do with the floor when I walk, even though I need it, so the soul has nothing to do with the nerves, even though this nervous system is certainly as necessary to me as the floor.

Until one understands this, until one experiences it as a real observation, one cannot come to any understanding of the true nature of the soul. What really underlies the life of the soul in the life of the nerves is not the processes of nutrition, not the organic processes of the nervous system — which, as I said, lead in a different direction — that is what I would now like to describe in more detail. I have mentioned the preceding personal remarks so that you may see that I am not speaking lightly about something so important as what I am about to say, that what I am saying about the life of the nerves has been hard won: as human beings live their way into their nerve ramifications, as organic forces enter into the nerve ramifications, they pass from life into death. Human beings die continuously in their nerve ramifications when they use these nerve ramifications for thinking, feeling, or willing. Organic life does not continue as growth conditions do, but dies as it branches into the nerves. And as it dies, as it becomes a corpse, starves, and weakens, it prepares the ground for spiritual development, for the purely supersensible soul. Just as when I remove the air from under the receiver of an air pump, creating a vacuum, and then the air flows in all by itself and asserts itself inside, so, when the organism continually sends partial death into the nervous system, continually making itself dead, spiritual life flows into the dead part.

Therefore, death, partial death, is the basis of consciousness. If one learns to recognize that human beings do not need to pour their organic forces into their bodies in order to make these bodies the seat of the soul, but that human beings are compelled to set limits on their organic experience, to continually create death in their organic weaving of forces, to continually withdraw this organic life from the places to which the nerves give opportunity, then one realizes how the supersensible soul life can unfold within the sensory body, after it has first built up this sensory body. For it is the same soul that thinks, feels, and wills in the time from birth, or let us say from conception to death, that same soul that is also there before. The spiritual world—as I have often said here—is not somehow in a cloud cuckoo land; it is everywhere where the sensual world is; it permeates and interpenetrates it; and everywhere where there are sensual effects, they emanate from supersensible, spiritual effects. This soul, which during life, because it has formed the body, because it has transformed it into a mirroring apparatus that reflects back to it the processes that can come to its consciousness, this same soul, which thus consciously shapes itself because it has, so to speak, solidified the body, this same soul lives in the supersensible world before it came into being at birth, or let us say conception. it lives in the supersensible world, and in this life it is connected with the supersensible world. This soul exists not for decades, but for centuries before it enters into sensory existence through conception.

And just as during life between birth and death this soul has created its image in the body and unfolds its life through this image of the body, so the life of the soul unfolds from the other side, from the supersensible world, through its radiance and flow, the forces which, through generations of parents, father and mother, again father and mother, up another generation and so on, bring together, so they bring people together, so that through the generations those forces are formed which then appear as hereditary forces.

It is true — and by no means should the scientific teaching of heredity be challenged by spiritual science — that what we inherit arises in the sensory series of generations. But our soul already works into this sensory series of generations. Through the effects of our soul, we place in our ancestors the forces that we then inherit. Thus, just as we form something in our memory during our small growth, we form our entire organism out of the spiritual world; and only the foundation, the opportunity for this, is provided by what is in the sensory stream of heredity, in the succession of generations. The body is entirely a creation of the soul and spirit. Just as the individual experience between birth and death is based on a creation of spiritual activity, so too is the entire physical body of the human being based on the creation of this physical body from the spiritual and soul. But it is not only the forces of growth, not only the forces of progress, that are taken up into this whole stream of development, but also the forces that then show themselves in the sum total as death, which is only the outer aspect of immortality.

For in placing the body into the world, as it were, and reflecting itself in it, the soul-spiritual experiences its own life in the supersensible realm. But through the development of the upper stream described to you earlier, it simultaneously destroys the body and brings death into it. And just as every consciousness is based on a partial death, so the entire death is nothing other than the withdrawal of the soul from the body, which is the beginning of a different kind of experience of the soul. We know that just as we form memories for the time between birth and death, so too, in the supersensible stream, in the superconscious stream, we form the inner human being who goes through births and deaths, who is eternal.

What I have indicated as the experience of the soul, the self-experience of the soul in the supersensible, is not something that the spiritual researcher creates; it is something that is always present in the human being as the characterized second human being, who is otherwise only overslept. Spiritual research is nothing other than bringing to consciousness that which is continuous in the human being, that which is also eternal in the human being, so that it can pass through death. Then, when one is able, in the manner indicated, to move with one's soul in the spiritual world, just as one moves with one's senses in the physical-sensory world, then one knows that as a human being, as a spiritual-soul human being, one lives in a spiritual world just as one lives in a physical world through the senses. And just as one distinguishes between different kingdoms in the physical world — the mineral kingdom, the plant kingdom, the animal kingdom — so one distinguishes between kingdoms full of beings in the spiritual world, which, ascending, become more and more spiritual, and to which human beings belong through their souls just as they belong to the mineral, plant, and animal kingdoms through their bodies. In short, the soul consciously enters the realm of the spiritual.

I would like to name this worldview, which arises scientifically in the way I have indicated, after its sources — if I were not to be misunderstood, I would always name it that way — after the sources from which it originates for me personally; I would prefer to call this worldview Goetheanism, just as, if it did not give rise to misunderstandings upon misunderstandings, I would prefer to call the building in Dornach, which is dedicated to this worldview, the Goetheanum. For what I mean by anthroposophy is based not on some kind of dream, not on some kind of arbitrary idea, but on the sound premise on which Goethe's worldview is based. Goethe's view of natural things differed precisely in such assumptions from what later emerged as natural science — with a certain justification, for one can only make progress with concepts if one uses them correctly. Goethe, however, developed such scientific concepts that these concepts do not really lie like stones in the stomach of the soul, but can be transformed so that one can ascend with these scientific concepts into the realm of the soul. Goethe himself did not yet establish spiritual science; he did not get around to it. But he developed his theory of metamorphosis in such a way that one only needs to consistently develop the inner experience from the principles from which Goethe's theory of metamorphosis flowed, and then one also arrives at an understanding of the spiritual experience.

What is the purpose of conventional psychology? A very, very important philosopher, in my opinion the most important philosopher of the present day, Franz Brentano, who died this spring in Zurich, had a rich life of knowledge behind him; he was a fighter in this field; he finally found refuge in Zurich during the war; he died in the spring of this year. Throughout his life, in addition to his other profound research in the field of the soul, he tried to come to terms with what we call thinking or imagining, feeling, and willing. These three concepts play a very special role in the science of the soul. Well, even Franz Brentano did not get any further than actually just a classification; he did not get to the point where, in essence, it is precisely in the soul that one can see what lives there as soul, where the soul itself can first be grasped as something living. If one groups them so simply and mechanically: imagining, feeling, willing – one has three classes. In order to grasp the soul, in which thinking, feeling, and willing live, as something living, one must grasp the soul, now, however, the spiritual soul, in the sense in which Goethe sought to grasp the external things of nature in his theory of metamorphosis, as Goethe attempted — one may agree with him more or less in this, but that is not important now; he may have been wrong in detail, but what matters is the principle, the method – how Goethe tried to see green stem leaves transformed into petals, and even into fruit organs. Just as he attempted to explain all organs through a metamorphic transformation into one another, so we must not merely leave thinking, feeling, and willing side by side, but must gain a living transition between them.

Here again, I can only cite the research results of anthroposophy, which have matured over decades: What we call will in ordinary life is not merely placed externally alongside feeling and imagination, but feeling has simply arisen from the will through a metamorphosis, forming out of the will, just as the petal forms out of the stem leaf; and imagination in turn forms out of feeling. The anthroposophist comes to the conclusion that what we recognize as will is basically a young, still childlike being which, as it grows older, transforms itself into feeling, metamorphoses, and as it grows even older, metamorphoses into thought, into imagination.

In what we experience as imagination, the same essence is always mysteriously present that is also present in feeling and will. But we do not experience this — because in ordinary life we experience what the soul experiences with the help of the body, with the help of the image, the creature it has made for itself — we do not experience how all imagination arises from feeling. But when the soul has developed its spiritual organs, it experiences a mysterious feeling in all its imaginations, only not a feeling that is bound to our body, but a feeling that leads us, by way of imagination, into the vastness of the spiritual world. When we are not led into our physical being through feeling, but rather led out into the vastness of the spiritual world, we experience the supersensible realm in which we exist between death and a new birth, in which the soul lives before it proceeds to birth and after it has passed through the gate of death. And then, in higher knowledge than ordinary ideas, in spiritual-soul knowledge, one experiences the supersensible world.

Most people, however, want to experience this supersensible world according to the methods and model of the sensory world. They are not satisfied with merely experiencing it in images — as I have indicated in my writings — in imaginations. They want to experience it as vividly as sensuality. But just as the body must first die in order to become pure spirit, so too must sensual knowledge first shed what is connected with the material, with the physical, and knowledge must become imagination, imaginative, so that in imaginative experience, which is as subtle as the life of the imagination, but not so arbitrary, but internally methodically regulated, so that in this supersensible experience, which is now no dream, the sensual-material, which belongs to sensual perception, is stripped away, and an image is gained between birth and death of what is reality when the human being enters the supersensible world through the gate of death. Everything that comes from the body is material in knowledge; this must be stripped away from knowledge if one wants to lead this knowledge to the supersensible.

Therefore, no one can hope to truly recognize the supersensible who wants to place it so crudely in the sensory world, as do the spiritualists, who want to have voices or other material effects, while they are actually, caught up in a strange self-deception, basically want to attack the supersensible and have placed a sensory experience in its place. Many people today are not satisfied with that subtle spiritual experience, that experience truly stripped of material knowledge, which must occur if one wants to experience the eternal, imperishable human being. But it is this supersensible experience alone that can lead us to a real knowledge of the soul being in the realm of the supersensible, as I have shown — I could only show it in outline — which leads us to a true view of the relationship of the body to the soul and the soul to the body.

Just as feeling transforms into imagination, so too does volition. And just as one can mysteriously find a feeling in every imagination, one also discovers a volition, but a volition that does not lead one into human limb movements, into human sensory activity, but rather leads one out of the life of imagination into the realm of the supersensible world. When one discovers the young soul being of will in the aged soul being of imagination, then one discovers in this will, which is experienced purely spiritually, those forces that carry over into this earthly life from previous earthly lives that the human being has lived through. And then the repeated earthly lives, then the passage of the soul as a supersensible being through repeated earthly lives, with intervening lives in the purely supersensible world, become a real object of observation; then the human being enters into real supersensible knowledge.

This real supersensible knowledge — one might think that it is only there to satisfy the human need for knowledge. Let me just briefly suggest, in conclusion, in a few words, that this is not the case.

What one might believe could only satisfy the human hunger for knowledge, the need for knowledge, has its deep practical significance. Certainly, we are dealing with progress in the development of humanity. The Copernican worldview and modern science only came about after humanity had gone through other stages. Thus, anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, as it is meant here, will only arise when, as at the end of the Middle Ages, the urge arises to view the structure of the world in a different way than in the Middle Ages, when the urge to recognize the supersensible becomes strong enough in human beings. Many people who know that there is a supersensible world still believe that people today are not mature enough to develop those free powers of cognition, to awaken the sleeping human being. The opposite is true! Today, human beings thirst in the depths of their souls for knowledge of the supersensible. They are only numbing themselves, as I said at the beginning of this lecture.

But there are other reasons why this numbness will not be able to last much longer. It is possible to understand nature without ascending to laws that explain the life of the soul; indeed, one could even say that the more one refrains from any interference of the soul and spirit in the development of the laws of nature, the more purely one will understand nature. The laws of nature will be all the more suitable for their field the less they are confused by laws that relate only to the soul and spirit. That much must be said. But as soon as it comes to understanding human life in its entirety, in such a way that our understanding can intervene in the development of this human life, as soon as it is a matter of understanding social, political, and societal coexistence, as soon as it is a matter of finding a proper relationship between people, then something else is necessary; then the ways of thinking that are based solely on the model of natural science are not sufficient.

Oh, humanity has become all too accustomed to thinking about all life according to ways of thinking that are based on natural processes, processes that are in accordance with nature. And so, I would say, we have instinctively found ourselves thinking about social life, the political coexistence of human beings, and shaping it in the same way as the mind that is accustomed to thinking only in terms of the laws of nature. This has developed more and more over the last four centuries and into our time. Just as it is right for natural science to exclude the mind in order to keep its field pure, so it is completely inadequate for human coexistence, for everything related to society and social science, to develop ways of thinking that are drawn solely from natural science. One cannot cope with the way in which people have to live together on earth if one wants to shape this coexistence according to political, social, and societal ideals that are modeled on the laws of natural science.

One example among many: when this tragic war broke out, it was said by many, especially by people who prided themselves on their experience with the laws of human coexistence — well, it was said many times — that this war could not last longer than four to five months. People said this in all seriousness, based on their thinking, which they had developed from the discipline of scientific training, which is also present in those who are not scientists. It was precisely the “most knowledgeable” who spoke in this way. How sadly reality has disproved these ideas! No one who sees through the world through spiritual science can succumb to such errors, for the simple reason that they know the difference between ideas that are far from reality and ideas that are close to reality and penetrate reality.

What fills our souls as spiritual science, as anthroposophy, brings us together with reality, places us in the whole, full reality. A social science, a science about human coexistence, which has truly grown out of this coexistence of people across the whole earth, which is not supposed to bring instincts, impulses into human beings that discharge themselves in the same way as today's terrible, catastrophic events discharge themselves – such a social science, such a science of society, can only grow out of the prerequisites provided by spiritual science, anthroposophically oriented spiritual science. For it alone deals not with one part of life, but with the whole of life; it alone can therefore produce ideas and concepts that have grown out of reality.

And if people do not bring themselves to base their social thinking on anthroposophically oriented spiritual science — that is my deepest conviction — then humanity will not emerge from the calamities that are unfolding so terribly today. I appreciate what comes from people who call themselves pacifists or similar today, who are enthusiastic about all kinds of peace movements. However, such things cannot be decided by mere commandments, cannot be decided by decreeing that this or that must be. One can certainly agree with what must be. But if one only brings forth commands, only laws, from ordinary thinking, it is like saying to the stove that stands there: Dear stove, it is your duty as a stove to heat the room; so heat the room nicely. It will not heat the room unless you put wood in it and light a fire, even though it would be quite pleasant to do so today. But that is not possible; you have to load the stove with wood and light a fire. Similarly, all the usual, regular ideas about maintaining peace and so on are not enough. What is important is not just to say: People, love one another — but, comparatively speaking, to bring fuel into people's souls. But these are concepts that arise from a living understanding of spiritual life. For the human soul does not belong solely to material life, it belongs to spiritual life. And in many cases today, people still do not understand what it means for the human soul to belong to the realm of the supersensible. People usually believe that with the laws they are developing today, they are already in the realm of the supersensible. But they are not.

Especially in the fields of serious science, people are now beginning to realize that it is important not only to examine human experience in terms of the prejudices of natural science in recent decades, but that other concepts and ideas are also necessary.

We have recently witnessed the remarkable spectacle of one of Haeckel's most loyal disciples, Oscar Hertwig, the famous physiologist and biologist, writing a book in which, despite being one of Haeckel's most loyal disciples, he takes leave of the entire external aspect of Darwin's theory, of that theory which seeks to explain becoming solely through a sum of coincidences, of chance occurrences, which does not want forces to intervene in this becoming, forces which cannot be recognized through mere external observation. Thus, we have witnessed the remarkable phenomenon of Oscar Hertwig recently writing an important book: “The Development of Organisms: A Refutation of Darwin's Theory of Chance.” And in this book, in which serious science itself seeks to break free from its attachment to the merely material and ascend to the spiritual, Oscar Hertwig concludes from these considerations—and this is the significant point that I would like to mention in conclusion—his remarks in the following manner:

"The interpretation of Darwin's theory, which is so ambiguous with its uncertainties, also allowed for a very versatile application in other areas of economic, social, and political life. From it, everyone could, as from a Delphic oracle, draw their own useful applications to social, political, hygienic, medical, and other questions, depending on what they wanted, and invoke the science of Darwinian biology with its immutable laws of nature to reinforce their assertions. But if these supposed laws are not such — as Oscar Hertwig believes he has proven — could there not also be social dangers in their versatile application to other areas? One should not believe that human society can use phrases such as relentless struggle for existence, selection of the fittest, the useful, the expedient, perfection through selective breeding, etc., in their application to the most diverse areas, such as daily bread, for half a century without being deeply and lastingly influenced in the entire direction of its idea formation! It would not be difficult to find evidence for this assertion in many phenomena of modern times. That is precisely why the decision about the truth or error of Darwinism extends far beyond the scope of biological science."

Here we see how a natural scientist understands that what people think and what passes from their thoughts into their impulses prepares and shapes what is then discharged into external reality; in the social sphere, too, the spiritual is the creator of the material. And when the material world appears in its present form, then other reasons must be sought in the spiritual realm than those sought by those who educate themselves about social issues only according to the model of natural science. A spiritual science based on occultism will be able to influence social life in a different way; it will not merely speak of a relentless “struggle for existence,” but will see through what is spiritual in what appears in nature as a struggle for existence; it will not merely look at existence from the outside, but at what the spirit has poured into it; it will not merely judge the course of development according to what is expedient, but also according to what is placed in the course of expediency as ethically valuable; it will not merely speak of perfection through selective breeding, but of the creative spirit that flows into the stream of development and creates selective breeding for itself, just as the soul creates its body. It will seek the foundations for social laws above all in the supersensible.

We can already see that spiritual science, anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, is not something for the mere satisfaction of knowledge, but something that is intimately connected with practical needs, with the whole course of life. And the future will demand those foundations of thinking for practical life that can only flow from spiritual science.

Why are people today still so often reluctant to accept spiritual science into their souls? From what has been said this evening, we can form an answer to this question. This evening we have been primarily concerned with how spiritual science pursues the mystery of immortality. But death separates us from this immortality. And we have seen that, especially in the course of life, we must acknowledge the constant intervention of death. In ancient times, when people spoke in a different way about knowledge of the spiritual world, they always said that those who enter the spiritual world must symbolically experience death. Now, this may be a radical way of expressing it, but it is true. Between our world of the senses and the intellect, which dissects sensory observations, and the world in which immortality lies, there is not a world of growth, not a world of blossoming, not a world of flourishing, but between them lies death. And one must face death, one must face the forces of decay, one must face the forces that counteract the forces that natural science considers, the forces of birth and growth. This produces something in the realm of knowledge that is similar to the fear of death in the realm of outer life. One can already speak of a fear of knowledge, of the fact that people do not have the courage to penetrate the realm that must be passed through if one wants to enter the supersensible world. People shy away from it. They do not know. They make up all kinds of theories and prejudices about “limits of knowledge,” about some purely material meaning of life. They prefer to delude themselves rather than boldly enter through the gate through which one can pass from the sensory to the supersensory world. But this gate is the one through which one must recognize the nature of death and everything related to death. For it is true: satisfying inner harmony of the soul can only be found when one is able to take in the secrets of immortality into one's inner soul.

But the fruit of knowledge, which can be enjoyed as immortality, can only be attained by plowing the soil of death and all that is related to death. But one must not be afraid of this. To the extent that people overcome this fear of death in the realm of knowledge, a science of the immortal, a science of the supersensible, will arise.

Tomorrow I will talk about how this science of the supersensible, this anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, does not interfere with anyone's religious beliefs.

I hope I will not keep you so long tomorrow, but today's fundamental lecture could not be made any shorter.