Scientific Disciplines and Anthroposophy

GA 73a — 15 January 1921, Stuttgart

14. The Relationships Between Spiritual Science and Individual Academic Subjects IV

Dear attendees, When one speaks, as I have done in these lectures, of the relationship between anthroposophical spiritual science and the individual specialized sciences, one is perhaps least inclined to emphasize the necessity of also mentioning the technical sciences as such, which, like the other sciences, are to be fertilized by this spiritual science – of which I have already characterized examples in the last lectures. Even if I can only sketch out these outlines, I would still like to point out how there is an important inner relationship between the spiritual science I am referring to here and what can be called the technical sciences with their practical consequences for modern life. I may refer to this – it is not meant personally, it is entirely relevant – and I already tried to do so in the early 1890s with my Philosophy of Freedom.

This “Philosophy of Freedom” is intended, first of all, as a foundation for ethical and social life. It is intended as such a foundation that is to be thoroughly modern. And if I were to characterize the meaning of this “Philosophy of Freedom,” I would have to point out the way in which it has grown out of contemporary life. It is not built on traditional philosophical presuppositions. It did not come into being in the way that much of this kind of work does, namely by presupposing some philosophical current, by becoming a follower of this or that school of philosophy and then trying to form some kind of direction that is supposed to have a certain validity but what I was trying to develop as the Philosophy of Freedom, as the ethical and social foundation of life, arose out of a very special way of thinking, which was formed first through the contemplation of modern social life. And here I must interject a few personal remarks, because they may more easily characterize what I want to say than a discussion would, and because the time allotted for these four lectures is too short for a discussion, which would otherwise be possible.

My school, my most important school, was the study of modern commercial life, which I faced every day from early childhood as the son of a minor railway official who had been introduced to everything related to railways from a technical point of view, and also to everything that was directly related to such a situation in commercial terms, even if it was perhaps from a narrow perspective at the time. Then again, I was able to continue my studies more than through any school, since for years I had to deal with the sons of people who were essentially involved in important industrial and transport sectors of the present day or the last decades of the 19th century. What I saw there in terms of thinking and feeling, I would say, what was flowing out of the forces that were incorporated into the most modern human endeavor, that demanded a certain grounding in ethical and social views of life.

When you look at life from the points of view that I have just described, you see it in those functions in which it becomes more and more detached from human subjectivity, so to speak, and in which it becomes more and more external, so to speak, technical. I would like to say that in life you are constantly confronted with what is repeatedly and repeatedly demanded as a principle in modern science. In modern science, it is postulated that phenomena should be treated entirely separately from the human being. And if we allow life to take its course, especially when technical achievements are involved, then we are primarily dealing with what takes place through the machine, through traffic and so on, with something that is very distinct from human subjectivity, that is very much only in the objective – so very much only in the objective that we can say: Here man loses his subjectivity, here much of his personality is lost, here man is placed in the objective driving wheels of life.

On the one hand, this emerged in modern scientific life in that one wanted to completely ignore in such sciences as optics or thermodynamics or similar what arises from the interrelation of the human being with the outside world, and wanted to found a science that then leaned in the last third of the 19th century towards atomistic theories, the dominance of which has by no means been overcome today. That is on the one hand. On the other hand, however, we also see that something is underlying the whole development of modern life, something that is separate from life and from the human being, from subjectivity, from the personality of the human being. In such a context, one can either thoughtlessly integrate oneself into the wheels of life, or one can believe that the old traditional beliefs and views could still provide certain ethical forces for this modern life, separated from man, and one can then demand such an objective science from certain subconscious depths, as has just been demanded in atomism, in physics, chemistry and even in biology.

But one can also come to something else. One can look at this life of modern times, which is separate from the human being, from the full, complete human sense of personality. One can feel it and sense it with all the effects it has on the human personality, and one can feel it best when one oneself acquires a technical education, when one goes through precisely those spiritual currents that are effective in technology. If I may add a personal comment: my university education was a purely technical one, not a philosophical one in some way, but a technical-scientific one. When one grows into this life, so to speak, completely separated from the human being, then, in the center of the personality, that which I believed I had to present as the other force of modern social life in the “Philosophy of Freedom” will stir. For the more, on the one hand, this technical life of modern times develops as an historical necessity (and one can certainly have an affirmative attitude towards this), the more man must, as it were, lose himself in external events, and the more must the inner reaction assert itself: to build up ethics, to build up religious feeling, too, on the innermost core of the human personality, on that which can be extracted from the conceivably deepest recess of the inner human being. And one can perhaps imagine how, on the one hand, one can be fully engaged in modern technical life and precisely for this reason say to oneself: Yes, man loses more and more of his personality there; all the more he must resort to the innermost source of his soul life, all the more he must shape out of it that which then brings light into what the personality otherwise completely discards. And from this innermost core of human life there emerged an ethical individualism — an ethical individualism, to be sure, that appeals first to a very significant social force.

Today it is very easy to criticize such ethical individualism, as it is founded in my “Philosophy of Freedom,” to the ground. Of course, one can do so if one clings to old traditions, if one does not want to counter external progress in humanity with inner progress. But on the other hand, one can also say to oneself: the stronger external progress is, the greater and stronger must be the power of inner striving in the human soul. And so one comes to say to oneself: That way of summarizing groups of people, as it was present in the old ethics, is no longer possible within modern human development, because within such summaries, man relies too much on what flows into his soul from the environment and from elsewhere to provide the ethical impulses. In our time, it is necessary for the human being to reach much deeper into his soul life in order to extract ethical impulses. But then it is indeed necessary to appeal to the power that, in the social life of man, we may call trust. This trust must become an ethical power. For only when people are called upon to appeal to the innermost core of their being, when they are called upon to draw their ethical motives from there, only then can they work together socially in freedom, yes, they will work together socially in freedom precisely when one can have confidence in this kind of sincerity, in this kind of uprightness and fertility of the human personality, then one finds, solely and exclusively, the forces that are necessary to make the social life of the present time progress in the right way.

One might say that we would have to wait a long time for people to mature to such ethical individualism. Those who say such a thing usually suffer greatly from personal arrogance, because they consider themselves mature and the others immature. But besides, theoretical consideration stops when these questions begin, because there is only an either-or. Either we go down the path of decline of our ethical and social and thus also of our technical life in the manner of Spengler, or we decide to draw those ethical impulses from the depths of the human soul that are necessary for the further progress of humanity. All the declaiming and theorizing about whether this is possible is of no value; only the will to such ethical individualism has value, because it appeals to the will that is permeated by pure thinking. And so I think that in fact the contemplation of the most modern way of life should evoke this particular kind of ethics. Therefore, I also have the idea that this ethical individualism, this freedom, should basically assert itself precisely there as a science that addresses the human being, the whole human being, who is to engage in social life, just where, on the other hand, it is seen that people are introduced to technical, commercial, modern economic life and to the other branches of life, which, by the way, are all mechanized in a modern way. Such a conception is needed alongside what has emerged from the scientific way of thinking and attitude that has developed to the point of technology. What is needed is the greatest deepening and strengthening of human life, where, on the other hand, what has been separated from the human being has been strengthened.

Therefore, it was necessary to found a philosophy that could not be like the other philosophies. These other philosophies traditionally came more or less from the old science. This old scientific approach had still retained something, one could say, of the perception of inner concepts and ideas and so on. We need only think back a few centuries to see that people did not look at nature the way we do. Whatever you want to call it, for example an “animistic worldview,” it lasted well into the 15th century and was quite common, perhaps much later — but that people always thought of something spiritual when they thought of natural entities; then, from what they thought, they were able to draw fresh principles from the details of inorganic nature and, in turn, ethical impulses from these principles. Until well into the 19th century, and even into the second half of the century, people were not yet dependent on drawing ethical and philosophical impulses entirely from within, because they still associated something spiritual with the observation of the external world and the technical manipulation of the external world, something that was also connected with the human being. The last third of the 19th century has produced a technology that demands ways of thinking that are completely detached from the human being. There is nothing more to be gained from impulses that could become ethical impulses. Therefore, these ethical impulses must be drawn entirely from the human being himself; the whole of individual ethical intuition must be placed at the center of the ethical view of the world. The age of natural science, which has been spoken of so often, demands such a purely scientific basis for ethics.

That, ladies and gentlemen, to shed some light on how there is a very real connection between what modern life is – insofar as this modern life has been shaped by science – and what this modern life makes necessary as an ethic that is strictly based on science. Now, such an ethic is only possible if one develops within oneself what I tried to characterize just yesterday: flexible concepts, concepts that are so flexible that one really does not get stuck in contexts that are completely separate from the human being, but which are capable, I might say, of turning around to embrace that which pulses from the depths of the human being as something real. But in order to make sufficient progress in such a scientific world view, many other obstacles must be overcome. Above all, it is necessary that we also find ideas, scientific laws, which have grown out of a scientific world view on the one hand and an historical, a historical world view on the other.

History, as we understand it today, is a young science. Even in the 18th century, it was something quite different. It is therefore no wonder that what we call the science of history is still poorly developed and has no inner driving force of its own. For example, people talk about the guiding ideas in history. Now, only pure intellectualism can talk about the guiding ideas in history, which believes that thoughts, as people think them, then also materialize as forces of history, that thoughts could somehow be driving forces in history. Thoughts are purely contemplative; thoughts cannot achieve anything. On the one hand, people talk about the driving powers of thought, and when they say “powers of thought”, they are already saying something that is actually a contradiction in terms. And on the other hand, they fall into the other extreme: they actually only represent what happens historically by presenting the external, material transformations of cultural life. One then goes as far as the materialistic conception of history has taken it, or one makes compromises by trying to build history out of the mere pursuit of external cultural phenomena; one then imbues this with some symbolic ideas, as many a historian of the 19th and early 20th centuries has done. But one could not yet arrive at such knowledge about how one should even attempt to arrive at ideas in this science about what actually underlies the historical development of humanity. And if one draws attention to this today – I will be drawing attention to it in a leitmotif – if one draws attention to this, then, yes, today one is still decried as a fantasist, because what is regarded as reality today is far different from what real reality is.

Today, anyone who has done a little research in this field will readily agree when it is said that the human being as a physical being must be understood in his formation by going back to embryology. And in a certain way one will then try – even though much that is unjustified has been introduced into the corresponding sciences – one will nevertheless try with a certain right to compare those forms that arise as the developmental forms of the human embryo with the forms found in the extra-human organic world; and one will then try to find a connection between the animal series and the human form. There is no doubt that much of what was called the “biogenetic law” was unjustified. But there is something in the methodological consideration based on this that is extraordinarily promising for a realistic consideration of human development. It is pointed out that One must consider the beginning of life if one wants to understand the physical form of the human being; one must consider the beginning of human life in order to understand its further development.

At best, one can only use a kind of analogy for the historical approach. This analogy has indeed been used very often. The fanciful interpreters of the biogenetic law, in particular, have also wanted to apply this law to a certain materialistic way of thinking with regard to the historical development of humanity. And so we have seen those strange views that trace back what is the content of our civilization today to the earlier developmental phases of humanity — in a way similar to the approach taken in the formulation of the biogenetic law. They said to themselves: What the child goes through leads back to very early stages of development, to very early cultures; and what is then later experienced in later childhood leads back to the later stages of development, and so on, until man has achieved what he has in the present as his civilization. This is an external analogy; and much more than is usually believed, such external analogies are present in the scientific view when we come up in the historical, because today what is not really close to man is what I would call a faithful observation of reality, an engagement with the conditions of reality. That is why the spiritual science referred to here endeavors to develop pure phenomenalism within inorganic and organic natural science and to present the processes themselves purely, without speculation, without underlying atomic or other hypotheses, as they present themselves.

Phenomenology is the ideal of scientific endeavor that is present in anthroposophy. The aim is not to move from what are basically only modifying sensations to all sorts of wave vibrations and the like, which are hypothetically assumed and speculated upon. The aim is to remain within the pure phenomena, because they mean a great deal. And all the talk about the “thing in itself” is basically unfathomable. For example, people say: Yes, but you can't see the underlying reality from the phenomena; after all, a phenomenon always points to what underlies it, and so you have to go beyond the phenomenon, that is, assume something that the phenomenon causes in interaction with human subjectivity. Those who speak in this way do not realize that they are applying a completely wrong way of thinking. I would like to characterize this wrong way of thinking by means of an analogy: the one who sees individual letters, for example S, I, F, will say that this S or I or F means nothing, they must point to something else. Those who have an overview of a written context, which also consists only of individual letters, will not relate this written context to something that lies behind it – along the lines of the atomic world supposedly lying behind sensual phenomena. will not relate this context of letters to something contrived or to something standing behind it, but he will read the context and know that, when he has the whole context, it points him to the corresponding reality.

It is also a matter of leaving these natural phenomena in their purity within the world of natural phenomena, because by learning to read natural phenomena purely, in a way that corresponds to the inner nature of the phenomena themselves, one learns to look into that which underlies reality – not by speculating about a “thing in itself” or the presupposition of some “thing in itself”, as it always underlies the atomistic theories and hypotheses. By developing the habit of pure observation of phenomena, by breaking the habit of mere speculation, of living in some hypothetical assumptions, by remaining in the inorganic and organic fields with pure observation, one develops the ability to observe in the field of human spiritual development. One then learns to see that one cannot transfer the biogenetic law to historical development by means of an analogy, but one learns to recognize that one must consider the whole human being, the whole human life – just as in natural science, if one wants to recognize something, one should not pick out one thing, but consider the totality of related phenomena. Then one is urged, for the understanding of historical life, not to go to the beginning of individual existence, as one would for the understanding of the natural life of man, but to the end. One must also consider the end. Even if it is a kind of self-contemplation, this self-contemplation is a thoroughly objective one: when one has become accustomed to observing the life of the soul as concretely as one otherwise observes the external natural life, one finds that, when one is past the middle of life has passed the age of thirty-five or forty, this life of soul, quite apart from all external manifestations, shows certain phenomena within itself – phenomena which run their course in such a way that one can truly say one is surprised by them.

The life of the soul itself takes on a certain configuration. That this is so little noticed today is due to the fact that the power of observation is little developed in youth. Therefore, such things are seen by very few people in old age. Very few people are still endowed with such a fresh power of observation in old age that they take these things into account. If you do not disregard them, you will notice how something rises up from the depths of the soul, which can be said to be like a repetition, like an inner repetition of what old cultural epochs of humanity show in terms of mental attitude and mental structure. In doing so, I am pointing to a phenomenon that is eminently important for the historian to observe. It is not necessary to do much outwardly, for it is not necessary that old people should make their signs of aging the basis of life. But it is necessary that life be observed in its entirety, and it shows itself in that we ascend in life, becoming ever older and older, that something wants to enter into consciousness that is initially similar to the way of thinking of immediately preceding cultural epochs. One becomes similar to the Greeks. And if one lives through this entire middle age, as did Goethe, for example, then under certain circumstances one can also have such a longing to live through the Greek age, as Goethe did, in whom this longing became irresistible. And if one then goes further back and observes what arises within the human being, then one comes to even earlier cultural epochs. At that age one notices that one understands all the better the special nature of the views of the even older times. And one is transported back into a prehistory of human development that is no longer recorded in documents when one considers this biogenetic law, which is now polaric. This is not carried over from natural science into human life by analogy, but is borrowed from direct observation.

If we continue to develop this path of research – I can only give guidelines – then we will come to understand an extraordinarily important guiding principle for the historical development of humanity. We come to see that there have been older cultures in which people, by simply developing their physicality, developed their spiritual and soul life right up to an advanced age, so that their spiritual and soul development was, as it were, born out of their physical development. We, in our advanced human civilization, still find ourselves dependent on our physical development in early childhood, even in later adolescence, but not anymore. In the twenties, this dependency ceases. How the child is still dependent on its physical development in its entire soul configuration! How can we observe how intimately the two are connected, and what a profoundly significant effect sexual maturity, the age of sexual maturity, has on a person's mental and spiritual development! And if we go further, we hardly even notice that something is clearly changing again, that, for example, at the beginning of the 1920s, there is a more inward dependence of the mental and spiritual on the physical. But then this connection becomes so unclear that we can say: Today it is the case that until the twenties, and in some people until the thirties, the soul and spirit remain dependent on the development of the body, but then the soul and spirit emancipate themselves, rely more on themselves, and undergo a development that is more or less independent of the physical. This was not the case in earlier ages of human life. We come back to the early ages of human development, when people, after the age of fifty, still felt into the sixties what was taking shape inwardly and spiritually in dependence on external physical development. These were the ages in which people could, as it were, still wrest from their own nature the inner experiences that one has in the declining years of life. What they gained in soul and spirit through their disintegrating bodies, these people still went through.

If I now want to express myself through a law that has yet to be formulated – even if every formulation can be challenged – I would like to say: These people of the oldest cultural ages remained young well into their fifties and sixties. If we follow this thread, we find that in Egyptian and Indian civilization there was an age when people only remained young in this respect until their forties. And the Greek-Latin age, from which we have inherited such remarkable artistic and scientific ways of looking at things, can be understood when we know how these Greeks were still so youthful between the ages of thirty and forty, because in their case the soul and spirit were dependent on their physical development until that age. Then came our age, when this only goes into the twenties. And one must realize that we can only draw on our physical development until the twenties, that at most, contemplatively - as an inverted biogenetic law - the subtle observer of life inwardly perceives what is a repetition of things humanity has gone through before. The way in which the biogenetic law was formulated – even if it is completely disputable – there is a healthy core to it. As formulated, that man in his development from birth briefly passes through what is tribal development, so it must be said that in historical life, man inwardly, spiritually and mentally, repeats the way of thinking that was the actual impulse of history at earlier ages.

Here we have the connection between the observation of spiritual life and the observation of the physical life of humanity. Here we have a science that does not develop one-sided concepts of natural phenomena on the one hand and, on the other, forms concepts about spiritual phenomena that cannot be related to natural phenomena and vice versa. There you have a unified way of thinking that, by not becoming one-sidedly materialistic or one-sidedly spiritualistic, but by encompassing the whole of reality, regards external physicality as the one current of this reality and the spiritual-soul as the other current, but considers both purely phenomenologically.

This also opens up extraordinarily promising perspectives for the individual spiritual scientific research, but one must have the courage to go to real laws in history as well. What is still often discussed today as a historical method is a way of talking around the issue, something that is not based on real ground. One finds a real foundation only when one has grown out of a phenomenalistic, a phenomenological, observation of nature, which then creates such flexible concepts that these concepts are also suitable for penetrating into the phenomena of spiritual life.

What is meant here by anthroposophical spiritual science – I must emphasize this again and again – is not amateurish dabbling. It is a form of research that carries pure observation of phenomena over from the field of natural science into the spiritual, and in this way will find precisely that reconciliation for which the best souls today are longing: the reconciliation of outer life with inner life, the reconciliation of science and art, the reconciliation of science and religious feeling. But if one simply occupies oneself with the continuation of the old, traditional religions, one cannot create what modern man demands for his religious life. Today, we need a science that is capable of penetrating into the realm of the spirit as we otherwise penetrate into the realm of nature. We need people who have the scientific courage to search, even if it is often seen as fantasy, because it is not considered to apply the same strict scientific method that is demanded for the realm of external nature to the realm of spiritual events.

That is one side of it, which follows from a human view of life for the view of historical life. The other side is that the person who gains such a view also develops this view within himself into social impulses. It is only out of such a view that the liveliness of soul life actually arises, which finds ethical impulses, but ethical impulses that are so devoted to human nature that they can also be transformed into social impulses. We cannot make our ideas so vivid with the concepts we draw from science alone that they also work as ideas if they are to underpin social action.

In a very learned contemporary book, there is a remarkable quote, which admittedly comes from a man who was not particularly learned, namely Georg Brandes, but the quote is accepted by a very learned personality. In his work, attention is drawn to why it is so difficult to teach people ethics, to teach them something, for example, about essential necessities, and this difficulty is emphasized to have a spiritual effect on social life. Attention is drawn to the fact – and this is said quite as if one fully agreed with what Brandes says – that the masses of people do not act according to reason, but according to vague instincts. Well, it is very easy to make such a statement. It is very easy to criticize what is living out, not in the life of the individual, but in the field of human interaction. It is very easy to condemn it as mere instinctive living out of some impulses, if one is not able to look at the essence of social life in a truly scientific spirit. If one is able to do the latter, then one knows: however much rationality there may be within the intellectual sphere of man, however clever people may be in the pattern of that cleverness that can be gained in the one-sided natural sciences, social life would still always contain many, many unconscious moments, so that it could still be criticized in the way Brandes does and as is found even in books on the principles of political economy.

But what is the real basis for this? The fact is that reason, which people like to talk about so much, is something that develops within the human personality, something that is suitable for looking at the world, something that is also suitable for evoking certain impulses for action from within the human being, but something that is not at all suitable on its own for bringing about social coexistence. If you believe that this inner rationality is suitable for this, then you end up with those social theories that are so common today and that do not promote life, do not sustain life, but destroy life. And such life-destroying theories, which can only shine as long as they remain criticism, but which immediately show their absurdity when they are to be introduced into real life, they often flow from that attitude that has emerged with the facts of modern scientific life, which are quite rightly perceived as a triumph. The point at issue is this: in human cooperation, even in language, there is something that permeates and warms human action and feeling, but also hates it, and that cannot be reduced to intellectualistic concepts of reason.

And on the other hand, something is asserting itself in economic life itself that appears much more complicated than what must be taken as a basis in the natural sciences. I am merely drawing your attention to everything that has occurred within economic life, everything that has occurred within political economy in the way of definitions of commodity value and commodity price, everything that has occurred in the way of definitions of the functions of value and price in economic life, and so on. In particular, I would like to draw attention to how vague and indeterminate such definitions, such characteristics of the value and price of goods, of other functions in economic life are.

What is the underlying reason for this? The reason is that it is impossible to understand the social being at all with the concepts based on mere intellectuality. What is needed is an inner education of the soul towards those modes of conception which I have described in the course of these lectures as imaginative knowledge, and then in Higher Fields as inspired knowledge. An education in such ways of thinking is necessary in order to grasp that which should now arise not from the individual, but that which should arise in the social interaction of people. And the way in which people interact socially – even if one wants to call it instinct – cannot be seen or influenced with intellectual concepts. One can only influence it with living, meaningful views of social life itself. These substantial views of social life, however, can only be opened up to the life of imagination through the imaginations that I have also described in these lectures about the other reality. Therefore, there will only be a real social science that can be the basis for social work when it is developed from the method of anthroposophical spiritual science.

You must not think that I, who am able to present what I myself can advocate today as anthroposophical spiritual science, somehow regard it as something already perfect that can remain as it is. Rather, I am talking about what is to become of this anthroposophical spiritual science, quite independently of the form it now has. It will certainly be shaped much better than it is now by those who practise it. But it must be pointed out again and again that only it can be that, with its methods, it finds such flexible concepts that these flexible concepts themselves can go, can flow on the waves of social life, can invigorate these waves of social life. And only when one can see through the social structure in this way, in direct contemplation, can it be divided into a spiritual life that needs independence, a legal life, a practical state life that must in turn be self-contained and need independence, and an economic life which must be based on associations, because an economic life can only develop when people think together, while the spiritual life can only develop when the individual is able to contribute to the social organism that which flows from his spiritual impulses.

These three areas, which today are lumped together in the unified, abstract social organism, are clearly distinguishable for a living imagination, a living view. They are lumped together only because today one does not think practically, but theorizes, because one relates to reality more or less hypothetically and, if one wants to shape that reality, one constructs hypotheses instead of pouring real impulses into that reality. Those who are inclined to hypothesize in the theoretical sciences do not come to bring fully real concepts into social life. Therefore, especially those who have ceased to think practically often regard as utopian what is found in my “Key Points of the Social Question”, which has now been republished, and in other books , in everything that is published in our newspaper, the weekly journal “Dreigliederung des sozialen Organismus” (Threefold Order of the Social Organism), and in everything that emanates from the Federation for Threefold Order of the Social Organism. It is regarded as utopian because those people who see it that way do not themselves know how utopian they are, how they regard as utopian precisely that which is completely saturated with reality. Today, in the intellectualization of the sciences, one has come so far that one no longer senses or feels when true reality is pulsating somewhere. If we really open ourselves to what comes out of true reality, we will find that we do not need to say that decades are necessary for its realization, but we will see that it can be transferred directly into social life as soon as it is in people's heads.

This is what I wanted to say about how the ideas and impulses that arise from spiritual science can be carried into ethical, historical and social thinking and feeling, and then also into ethical and social volition. And when a person truly recognizes historical laws, when he surveys human life as it is surveyed when the phenomena of spiritual life are considered, not just the external cultural phenomena, then one learns with the character of inner necessity to recognize what has been lived in a particular age. And from this awareness of a connection with one's age, one's task for this age arises. One is imbued with one's inner life task. And today we need people who can be imbued with a real, meaningful life task.

I have been able to share only a little of what is being striven for in the field of spiritual science, and only in outline, in the sense that the individual specialized sciences are to be fertilized. You will hear again and again how individual groups are working to enrich the individual sciences, from astronomy to social insights, and how they are striving to develop this spiritual science for the individual fields in a very specialized way. Such endeavors are still only met with very limited understanding today. And especially when giving lectures like these, when one considers that here in Stuttgart, through the efforts of our Waldorf school teachers and other personalities, an attempt is being made to show how the individual scientific disciplines can be enriched by anthroposophical spiritual science and how absolutely necessary this fertilization is absolutely necessary if we do not want to go into decline but strive for an ascent, then one must also consider how such efforts are met with hostility and rejected, especially by older people who are involved in scientific life today.

And now, in conclusion, I would like to address that part of you to whom I would like to make an initial appeal, particularly in the present situation, for very specific reasons. Especially now, when anthroposophically oriented spiritual science is facing so much hostility, one hears it emphasized again and again: Why does this spiritual science not turn to science itself in a strictly scientific way? Well, a lot could be said about that. Above all, it could be said that those who express such views care little about how this spiritual science actually works in the individual scientific fields. But perhaps something else may be said. What I myself represent today in this anthroposophically oriented spiritual science began in the early 1880s. At the time, I tried to introduce what needed to be said into the scientific currents in an elementary way, using viable scientific methods. I took up Goethe in an interpretation that was taken very seriously and conscientiously. Now, I have not always been met with such hostility as I am now – what I have written in reference to Goethe has often been described as something very good. But how was it received? It was received in such a way that I could not be satisfied with this acceptance. People said: Yes, some of what Goethe meant is being addressed, Goethe is being interpreted in the right way. But they did not notice, or did not want to notice, that something else was meant by it. It was not meant that one merely wanted to interpret the man who died as Johann Wolfgang Goethe in 1832, but rather that one should seek in Goethe, in his world view, what can experience a continuation, what flows out when one regards Goethe as still alive today, when one develops him further. A position was to be taken on the problems of scientific, philosophical and social life.

What is often called “pure science” today was not at all inclined to do so, today when one can read in scientific works statements such as that science does not have the task of forming ethical, political or social life, for example, but only to consider all these branches of life objectively. In an age when people just want to sit down at some seat to observe the world and only accept as science what has arisen from the observation of the world, but not what passes into our soul life to become will, action, and social deed, it may seem understandable that science initially did not take a stand on what was actually meant. Therefore it was necessary that appeals be made to the larger circles of humanity, that thought be given to the larger circles of humanity, because the truth must in some way present itself to humanity. And when, out of certain intuitive perceptions, the larger circles of humanity had found their way to what is here called anthroposophical spiritual science, then people again deigned to say that what was being said was not scientific. They did it, for example, like the Jena professor Rein, who in 1918 characterized the 'Philosophy of Freedom' as a work that could only have been born out of the war period. This man only just got hold of “The Philosophy of Freedom” and found the date 1918, the year of the new edition. In his usual conscientious manner, he characterized this work, which was published in 1893, as a product of wartime thinking.

You can find many examples of such scientific conscientiousness in the present day. I could point out many similar facts to show you why I feel particularly satisfied today to see that there is now some interest coming from the younger generation in the present, even if there is not much interest from those who shine in science because of their venerable age or because they have not yet reached a venerable age. From this side, there is still little engagement with anthroposophical spiritual science, but all the more misunderstanding.

Therefore, from among those gathered here today, I would like to address those who, coming out of their student life, want to turn to this anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, which is certainly not to be presented to you authoritatively or dogmatically, which only wants to be taken so that it is examined. Because it is convinced that the more it is examined, the more it will be found to be well-founded. It does not shrink from exact testing; it has only to defend itself against what is truly very far removed from exact testing. If one were fainthearted, one could become discouraged in the field of anthroposophical spiritual science in the face of the inexact tests that are so prevalent in the present day. Those who represent spiritual science, as it is meant here, are not afraid of truly exact testing. It will prove itself all the more the more precisely it is tested, because it knows that it has emerged from the spirit of science.

This is what I wish to say to you today, especially to you, my dear fellow students, who are gathered here today; especially to you I wish to say that the anthroposophically oriented spiritual science that comes from me has arisen from a faithful contemplation of what I myself have gone through. I look back on a student life that took place at the time of the heyday of atomism, the heyday of that world view in which all optics, all thermodynamics, and so on, were based on hypotheses in which one indulged — but hypotheses that led away from the grasp of reality because they based something on mere thought, on something that was merely thought up. In many cases, people have moved away from this; today, we are realistic, especially in the field of natural science. But the fruits of thinking that have been developed there can still be seen in the historical and social sciences, and they are often partly responsible for the misery of our present catastrophic life. During my time as a student, the concepts, ideas and soul impulses were not developed by science that could then swim powerfully on the waves of social life. That is what we lack today: impulses. People get very annoyed when you talk about impulses. But the word 'impulse' should mean nothing other than what lives powerfully in the soul - in contrast to the abstract life of thoughts or ideas. It should be thoughts and ideas that arise from such an anthroposophical spiritual science, but thoughts that are imbued with full life, so that they can become ethical, religious, but especially social reality.

Anyone who has been through what has happened in our scientific development over the decades, who knows the connection between the scientific theories of the 1870s and 1880s and the helplessness of today's ethical and social thinking, truly speaks from the heart to those who are young today, my dear fellow students. He then remembers the reasons why the youth of that time was spoken to in vain. They had not yet been confronted with what has since emerged as a dazzling abundance of life, as it were, that which resounds from all sides with the words “how we have come so gloriously far” in terms of external culture. Today, however, young people see something different around them; today they see material need all around them, and in this material need they also see spiritual need. On the whole, the situation today is quite different from what it was in my youth. In those days, one was quite alone with these thoughts. Today, my dear fellow students, if you really find the way to impulses full of life, today you will perhaps be able to find understanding in quite a number of people who are shaken by the present life. Today life speaks: I need living ideas born out of science that can become ethical and social impulses. Today the world needs such leaders who can work out of the spiritual, because only this spiritual can be meaningful.

My esteemed audience, dear fellow students, those who are touched by what anthroposophical spiritual science actually wants will understand me, each in their own way. This is what fills me with a certain satisfaction when I am allowed to speak today to those to whom I actually feel very close, despite the fact that the age of life that is yours today is long behind me, dear fellow students. But anyone who has lived through these last decades with full consciousness also knows how strongly one must build on those who are still young today and who want to have a powerful effect in their youth today. One can always contribute only very little to that to which one would like to contribute a lot.

I have been able to say little in these few lectures; may this little be further developed by our local colleagues in the university courses. And may this little be valued more for its intention than for what it could become in these four lectures. But I would like to have touched the hearts of today's fellow students, I would like to have spoken to their hearts. Not only – even if in the fullest sense – from the spirit of science would I speak, but to warm hearts would I speak, for when these two things are joined together, the will for true science with the strength of brave hearts, then, my dear fellow students, then we shall make progress. If one is allowed to speak to people from such a background, then one can still have hope for a fruitful development in the near future, especially for our German people, who have been so sorely tried and are therefore perhaps particularly called upon to develop spiritually.

Answering questions

Question: Does Dr. Steiner understand “reminiscences” in the same way as “associations of ideas” when it comes to imagination?

Rudolf Steiner: If you follow what I have discussed in my book “How to Know Higher Worlds”, you will find that the greatest efforts are required of those who want to progress to imaginative life , especially in the direction of combating everything that is reminiscence, that is mere association of ideas, in fact, to combat everything that is drawn from the ordinary unconscious or subconscious life of the soul. In this respect, it may be said that much is well recorded in today's scientific literature. I myself have emphasized some of my own observations in the book mentioned. I will only highlight one example from a well-known publication that appeared in the Wiesbaden collection to show how such reminiscences actually work, how difficult it is to pay attention to them, and how necessary it is to pay attention to them.

A scholar - who describes the matter himself - walks past a bookshop, certainly the delight of many a scholar. And he finds - he is a zoologist - a book about lower animals, something that is certainly closely related to his immediate present life. He is surprised himself that he suddenly has to start laughing at the most serious title. He laughs – just think, a zoologist, a learned man, laughing at a learned title. He feels quite funny himself. And he tries to find out why he has to laugh like that. He closes his eyes; that helps, because now he hears a hurdy-gurdy in the distance, playing a melody to which he danced in his youth. At that time, however, he was thinking of other things, which he has long forgotten, which have long since been drawn down into the deepest depths of his soul, but now they have risen up and made him laugh at the sight of the solemn title. So something that has been in the soul for decades comes to the surface again as reminiscence.

We have to think about such things when we emphasize that the development of the imaginative life must be based on comprehensible ideas, and specifically on comprehensible ideas that can be made directly present in consciousness in all their parts. For only when one has developed the ability to bring such comprehensible ideas into consciousness with the kind of thinking that one otherwise only trains in comprehensible mathematical, geometric concepts, and when one has the will to deal with these ideas inwardly, only then does one gradually succeed in really having a practice in rejecting all reminiscences, all associations of ideas and all life in some subconscious soul content. This overcoming of reminiscences and the like must indeed first be acquired. And only then, when one has conscientiously overcome what reminiscences and the like are, is one actually able to develop that which imaginative life is, and this imaginative life proves itself by its own quality to be related to reality in just such a way as I characterized in the first lecture.

Here too, the objection is often raised – and the objections are sometimes almost typical – that something like this can only be an autosuggestion or something, the origins of which one does not suspect. Yes, you see, in the outer life too one can indulge in illusions, deceptions, and only the context of life, the whole of life as such, makes one gain a judgment about reality. So one must also educate oneself to a sure judgment in what appears to one as imaginative life. And if it is objected that it could not be the same with the imaginations as it is with some people, for whom their mouths water when they just think of or hear about lemonade, it is said that it is still not reality, even though the subjective experience of the taste of lemonade is there. Of course they have this subjective experience. If objectivity is judged only by this subjective content, one is naturally not yet ready to take from the content of the imagination that which represents it objectively, objectively spiritually. But one must still say: If one introduces something like autosuggestion into full, real life, not remaining with a cut-out piece, then the relationship to reality arises. For one can assume that people get an intense taste of lemonade when they think of lemonade, but I don't think that anyone has actually quenched their thirst with the imagined lemonade. When one progresses from a piece of reality to total reality – and this must be done in the realm of outer reality as well as in the realm of inner spiritual reality – then it ceases to be the case that one can be beguiled by mere illusions, mere autosuggestions. Recently, it has been said time and again that what is asserted as spiritual content is based on repressed imaginative life, and that what is repressed in repressed ideas would be brought to life, driven up into consciousness, and that this would lead to personifications and so on. This is how it is described, and to someone who sees through it, it sounds amateurish.

Yes, something like personifications and the like can arise in some nebulous mystics. For there are indeed some mystics who talk about all kinds of soul content and yet mean nothing other than reminiscences. It is true that some claim to have mystically experienced the unio mystica, the union with some divine within. But such experiences, which one had decades ago, can arise as reminiscences in consciousness, not only in the old form, but also in a transformed form; one can experience that what was experienced decades ago, and which has sunk into the depths of the unconscious, emerges after decades in a sublime form. What some mystics describe as the content of their experiences in mystical union need be nothing more than a barrel organ seen decades ago.

These things are carefully avoided in the truly subtle process of spiritual research, and the methods are clearly developed so that such errors can be avoided. People could also be convinced by the fact that the anthroposophical spiritual science referred to here does not just tell of what is in the spiritual worlds, but also talks about the things of ordinary science just like other people. If one can talk about the subjects of ordinary science in the same way as others, then the scientists have no right to claim that the additional findings of spiritual research are mere fantasy or stem from repressed mental images.

Furthermore, with regard to the so-called inner vision, what actually comes out of true spiritual vision is not at all what the nebulous mystics believe. The nebulous mystics speak of all kinds of inner experiences. In true spiritual insight, when one penetrates down through the ordinary life of the soul, one's own material, bodily inner life is more and more filled. One really learns anatomy and physiology through inner vision and does not prattle on about some mystical secrets. One comes to know the real spiritual life by looking at the world and living with the world, not through false, introverted asceticism or through lazy withdrawal into an unworldly life, but precisely by immersing oneself in real life and thus also through a kind of self-inspection that experiences in the inner being of the human being precisely that which the nebulous mystic does not seek.

The imaginative life that is meant here does not culminate in unworldly mysticism, not in a cloud cuckoo land, not in a spirit that is sought by saying: outer reality is so bad that one must withdraw from it, true reality is in the beyond.

A true spirituality is seen in such a way that it is connected with the will to immerse oneself in life. It is therefore not alien to life, but life-friendly. It is from this overall context of life that I ask you to judge what is meant here as anthroposophical spiritual science.

Question: What is the difference between monocotyledons and dicotyledons?

Rudolf Steiner: The question regarding the difference between monocotyledons and dicotyledons cannot be answered briefly. I would just like to say the following: I generally avoid answering isolated questions just like that, because this gives the impression that spiritual science is making judgments out of the blue, when in fact everything is structured in an appropriate way and is pursued from its elements. I would just like to say about this: for the spiritual scientific investigation, it is also necessary to set up a different plant system as real than the one that we find set up in many cases today. You have already seen that When I spoke of the human being yesterday, I had to point out that the human being cannot be viewed in such a way that one simply takes the whole human being and then does some kind of phylogenetic research, as is done today. Rather, one must start from the main organization of the head and trace it back, and there one must consider a complete transformation of animal forms, whereas one must consider later developments in the organization of the limbs. And yesterday I also first dealt with the morphological contrast between the spinal cord and the brain in order to show that one cannot proceed in the history of development as is usually done.

So it is also the case in botany that one starts from plant stages that are now more in the middle of the system. And on the one hand, one will look at these plant stages, which are where monocotyledons and dicotyledons split, and one will go down through the monocotyledons to the lowest plants, the fungi, algae and so and on the other side go up to the fully developed plants and so on; this will provide a system of plants that really includes in the morphological consideration the understanding of why the plants develop one organ downwards and the other upwards. In general, it will be found how two polar forces act on the plants, but in a different way on the plants of the different levels. And there we shall see that a certain force, which we must regard as running parallel to the terrestrial radius, is combined with another force, which has often been sensed in earlier times. We have only to recall the older speculations on the spiral tendency, such as those of Sprengel and others at the beginning of the nineteenth century. But these explanations are incomplete; they are multiple speculations, and what has been developed as morphology will have to be developed differently. If we proceed in this way, we will recognize why one organ is directed in one way and another in another. Efforts are definitely being made within our spiritual community to identify a plant system that will contain the information needed to explain the individual morphological phenomena. Then it will be easier to answer such questions in context from a natural arrangement than if one has to refer to them in an aphoristic way as one does today.

Question: What is the connection between the climbing plants and the heavenly bodies acting on them?

Rudolf Steiner: It is impossible to answer such questions, which necessarily require an explanation of the special nature of the influence of the heavenly bodies on plants, in an aphoristic way now. For one exposes oneself to the accusation of dilettantism if one speaks somehow about the influence of the heavenly bodies without having said in what sense this is taken. It is absolutely necessary that anthroposophical spiritual science be taken as a real method. Just as one cannot explain anything in a scientific way without going into the whole subject — as one would not, for example, expect someone who starts explaining chemistry to start with the most complicated things —, nor can it be done in the way that such attempts at explanation have been made here, and nor can such questions be answered. And one could almost believe that such questions are asked in reference to these lectures out of certain mystical inclinations, which basically should not be accommodated. You will understand me: it is absolutely essential to protect the spiritual science meant here from the accusation of dilettantism. And if such questions are answered without being put into context - they can of course be answered - then the accusation of dilettantism arises.

These questions are not even formulated in such a way that the same words can be used in answering them; they are formulated in an amateurish way. Therefore it is not possible for me to speak to them in this way. I suspect that these questions are based on something that has been heard elsewhere, because they are not in the least connected with what has been presented here about the individual tests of the relations of spiritual science to the individual specialized sciences. You must understand that it is not possible to answer these questions without having discussed the basic elements of them. It is like this: if people want to have such questions answered, then it is – I cannot put it any other way – amateurish. You must not hold this against me, but it is my job to put the scientific nature of this spiritual science in its proper perspective, and that includes its attitude. Therefore, I will not allow myself to be tempted in the future either, by those who would like to be followers but do not want to get into the subject, to expose this spiritual science to the accusation of dilettantism by talking about all sorts of things. That is the character of charlatan movements, that they talk about all sorts of things. Spiritual science also wants to be thoroughly scientific in its attitude.

Question: How does the movement of the muscle come about, since the motor nerve does not transmit the will impulse to the muscle? Is there a connection to be seen with the metabolic system?

Rudolf Steiner: I would have liked to have given the fifth lecture on this question, if possible, because it is a question that is directly related to what I have dealt with in these four lectures, only this question must be treated in the following way:

The difference between the sensitive and the motor nerves has been mentioned, more or less merely to provide direction. It has been emphasized that the so-called motor nerves are also sensitive nerves, only their task – and this can even be seen from their anatomical structure – is to sense inwardly, that is, to sense what underlies a movement process, for example, not to impulse this movement process itself, but to sense what underlies it, what happens in the metabolism – which is always part of a movement process. If you follow all this research on the nervous system and want to use the image of wireless telegraphy for it, then that is not in the sense of spiritual science, you leave that to others. Not true, in the time when telegraphy came up, all kinds of comparisons were also made from the telegraphy to compare the centripetal and centrifugal nerves with telegraphic feeders and pathways and so on. Such comparisons are not applied by spiritual science. It wants to go into the matter itself and not play with analogies.

The point is this: whenever there is a nerve pathway that appears empirically to be a supply line, say to the spinal cord or brain, and its continuation is found in the so-called motor nerve, it is always a matter of sensing inwards and outwards – let us assume, for example, a reflex movement –; what the nerve conveys is merely sensation, only either from the outside or from one's own physical interior. And the transition, which is usually regarded as the end of the transmission and the beginning of the impulsation, is merely what I would like to call a switchover, and not by taking an example from telegraphy. In this process, the whole process is experienced inwardly by the soul. We are then speaking of something very real when we say: something jumps over, just as an electric spark jumps over when I cut a telegraph wire. - This is the process that takes place in the so-called central nervous organs.

If we summarize what can be determined about the nature of the nervous system, then this will become the basis for further research into the nature of volitional impulses. It is, after all, only a hypothetical theory that what we call 'will' is in some way represented by the motor nerve, which is also a sensory nerve. Rather, the fact that we really understand the phenomena leads us to seek the relationship of the will to organs quite different from nerves. But this leads one to study precisely that which is so often treated with hostility – the higher members of human nature; one comes to see how the will cannot be understood at all if one regards it in the same relation to materiality as one regards, for example, the images in relation to materiality. In the study of the will, one then becomes acquainted with something that must essentially be viewed spiritually, while the life of imagination is really present in it in a material context. While the structures of the brain can be shown to parallel the structures of the imagination, the same cannot be said for the life of the will. However, if one wants to find the material correlates, one must look for metabolic processes, but one is led to completely different insights, which then lead upwards to spiritual contemplation. This is approximately how the answer to the question can be formulated here.

It is somewhat shocking to realize that the life of the imagination, which since scholastic philosophy has been regarded as the spiritual life in man, is so closely related in its structure to the material life of the body – although, as I have shown in these lectures, it is based only on it. But that is just how it is. On the other hand, we are led into a much more spiritual region when we consider the structures of the emotional life. There everything is so intimately connected with the rhythmic life of the body. And then one is led into the region of metabolism when it comes to the will; but in truth it is a matter of the mastery of matter through spiritual forces, which one has before one in direct contemplation when one rises up to what the will is - undeceived by the motor nerves. One sees how the will does not intervene in the material world in such a differentiated way as the life of the imagination.

I remember a discussion that followed a lecture by a real, solid materialist. He had explained the whole life of imagination from the brain, so that in the end nothing remained of the life of imagination, because he had actually only described brain processes, but described them very well, and then also drew figures on the blackboard, which in turn the chairman, who was a solid Herbartian, looked at. He then said that he was not as materialistic as the lecturer, but that if he were to draw the associations and suppressions of associations based on his Herbartian teaching, the figures would be exactly the same as those of the materialistic lecturer. So when a staunch opponent of materialism draws the structures of the representations, the same figures emerge as in the materialist, who only records what he has learned from Meynert about nerve phases, nerve centers, and so on.

From this, however, one can clearly see how similar what can be observed in the Herbartian sense as phenomena and connections between phenomena in pure mental life is to what someone who disregards this and describes the brain with Meynert's or similar hypotheses draws on the board. You cannot do that with the emotional life, and least of all with the life of the will. There you have to go to things that are made vivid, but made vivid mentally, but not in the way that what can be drawn in direct connection with material life.

Question: Why, according to the anthroposophical approach, does one suddenly have to work with opposite signs in the Einstein problem, where one passes from ponderable to ether?

Rudolf Steiner: Of course, this can be done quite without an anthroposophical approach, simply by doing things as in numerous other fields of science: one studies the phenomena. In a course I gave a few months ago to a small audience here, I showed how to look at the phenomena of so-called thermodynamics without prejudice. The aim is to try to express in mathematical formulas what is presented to us as phenomena. The peculiar thing about such expressions in mathematical formulas is that they are only correct if they correspond to the process that can then be observed, if, so to speak, what results from the mathematical formula also applies in reality, if it can be verified by reality. If you have a sealed chamber containing heated gas under pressure and you want to understand the phenomena that arise, you can apply Clausius's and other formulas, albeit in a very contrived way, but you will see - and this is also admitted today - how the facts do not match the formulas. In Einstein's theory, the strange thing is that experiments are available first; these experiments are set up because a certain theory is assumed; the experiments do not confirm this theory, and then another theory is constructed, which is actually based on imagined experiments. If, on the other hand, you try to treat the phenomena of heat in such a way that you insert corresponding positive and negative signs into the formulas, depending on whether you are dealing with conductive or radiant heat, then you will find these formulas verified by reality. However, when we proceed to other imponderables, we cannot stop at mere positive or negative signs, but must then add other conditions. We must, as it were, imagine a force that acts in the ponderable in a radial direction, and that which belongs to the realm of the ethereal, as coming from the periphery, acting only in the circular area, but still with a negative sign. And so, when we turn to other factors, we have to express the magnitude concerned differently; then we find that we arrive at formulas that can be verified through the phenomena. This is a path that anyone can take, even if they do not have an anthroposophical attitude.

But there is something else I would like to emphasize: do not think that the things I have told you in these four lectures were told to you because I was in an anthroposophical frame of mind. I told you these things because they are so. And the anthroposophical attitude follows only from the fact that one properly surveys things; the anthroposophical attitude does not precede things, but follows afterwards. One wants to recognize and understand things impartially, and then the anthroposophical attitude can follow. It would be badly ordered what I have said if one had to start from a prejudiced attitude. No, that is not the point at all. The point is to follow the phenomena in a strictly empirical way. The anthroposophical attitude must then be the last thing — even if I do not want to claim anything other than that it can nevertheless always be the best.

Question: What can be said about Schleich's works?

Rudolf Steiner: I prefer to talk about things in concrete rather than abstract terms. I have discussed many things with Professor Schleich and found that he is really very open to many ideas and has extremely interesting views on some subjects. But he cannot make the transition to the latter because he forms theories out of certain presuppositions - not out of a lack of presuppositions, but out of assumed presuppositions. Most of all, this confronted me – and I will now speak of an example – in a case he described to me; Professor Schleich described it to me before his book was published. A man came to him once who had pricked himself somewhere in an innocuous place with an ink pen, and he imagined that he had blood poisoning and would have to die during the night. He came to Schleich and wanted to have his arm amputated. Schleich looked at the arm and said: “That's not possible, it's not necessary at all, the sting is harmless, and I can't take your arm away.” The man went crazy with fear that he would die, he absolutely wanted to have his arm cut off, but Schleich sent him away. The man then went to another doctor, but he did not want to amputate the arm either. The next morning Schleich, who is a great philanthropist and humane man and, when he starts something, does not just leave it, went to the man. The man had actually died during the night. There was no trace of blood poisoning, and Schleich diagnosed: death by autosuggestion. Yes, that is easy to diagnose. But this is something completely different. It is a pity – or perhaps it was not possible – that the autopsy did not determine the real cause of death with certainty. It lay in something completely different. The man felt a certain presentiment, a certain premonition, that did not come to consciousness in such a way that one could have grasped it as a fully articulated presentiment. In the man's case, the approach of death was expressed not as some kind of physical sensation, but only in a mad fear; and the stabbing with the feather was nothing more than the man becoming clumsy and stabbing himself. And his whole behavior was nothing more than a certain presentiment; he would have died — stabbed or not. What was present was the premonition of the death living in the body, and the other was only symptomatic. One should also examine the case more closely from a psycho-physical point of view and not simply say: death by autosuggestion. - The matter was as I have now explained it, at least most likely. But this is something that Schleich did not want to be persuaded of; he stuck to his auto-suggestion, for which there is no evidence and which can only be said to be a daring hypothesis.

The same applies to other problems. Spiritual science wants to investigate everything empirically and not start from assumptions, while Schleich in particular really does have such favorite ideas in many cases. He is a witty and very humane man, but he cannot bring himself to be completely impartial and unprejudiced. But that is what must be striven for in anthroposophy, even with regard to such things that one values. And I can assure you, I appreciate Schleich's thoughts and work, which I know well; but if one asks, it must be pointed out that he always stops at something in this way. Anthroposophy wants to observe the phenomena in full impartiality in order to get to the bottom of reality, so that one can penetrate this reality with mathematical clarity.

I must again and again emphasize that it is not in the sense of any kind of sectarianism or amateurishness that anthroposophically oriented spiritual science wants to assert itself here in Stuttgart. What is being striven for, even if it can only be done with the weakest of forces today, is genuine, true science. And the more spiritual science is examined in this way, the more it will be recognized as fully equal to every scientific method of examination. Spiritual science is not heaped with such misunderstandings out of real scientificness, as it is heaped today; its opponents truly do not fight it because they are too scientific, but - one goes after the thing -, because they are too little scientific. But in the future, we need not a drying up, but an increase, a real true progress of science, and in the end this can only be a progress that leads not only into the material, but also into the spiritual with complete precision.