Anthroposophy: Its Roots of Knowledge and Fruits of Life

GA 78 — 29 August 1921, Stuttgart

First Lecture

First of all, I would like to express my sincere thanks to Dr. Unger and all of you for your warm welcome. At this moment, I would also like to express my heartfelt greetings to you, and you will believe someone whose whole heart is set on events such as the one that began yesterday contributing to the development of the anthroposophical worldview You will believe someone whose whole heart is committed to this, that this greeting is thoroughly sincere and that it comes from a soul that would like this event to proceed in the best possible way.

Anthroposophical spiritual science, as it is to be represented here at this congress, is based on the recognition that behind the sensory-physical world there is a spiritual-supersensible world that is intimately interwoven with it, but also on the recognition that human beings are capable of gaining insight into this supersensible world, which is interwoven with the sensory world, through the development of certain powers of cognition. Because anthroposophy recognizes this, it has often been regarded as a kind of revival of the ancient Gnosticism that was still flourishing in the early Christian centuries and was then overcome, or I might even say eradicated. Anyone who has read even one of my books with honest intentions can see that this judgment is completely incorrect. But on the other hand, anyone who looks at how anthroposophy seeks a supersensible view from a similar attitude of knowledge, as was the case in ancient Gnosticism and in other worldviews striving for the supersensible, will, if they do not succumb to the misjudgment just expressed, will nevertheless be able to describe anthroposophy as a kind of Gnosticism. In this way, however, it understandably opposes a view that developed more and more in the course of the 19th century under the influence of scientific thinking and which is actually the opposite of all Gnostic striving for knowledge. This is what has often been called agnosticism. This agnosticism arose, one might say in its purest form, from the same philosophical foundations from which Darwin, for example, worked in the field of natural science: from the way of thinking of the Western world. One can study it in its purest form in particular in the works of thinkers such as Herbert Spencer.

If one wants to describe the essence of this agnosticism, it is perhaps best to do so in the following way. This agnosticism wants to be a kind of philosophy, a kind of worldview, and it wants to work entirely from scientific premises. In doing so, it only accepts those methods of human cognition that are also used by science in its various limited and restricted fields. Natural science pursues the individual phenomena of nature in their lawful contexts; it intersperses the ideas it forms about the individual phenomena of nature with all kinds of hypotheses about causality; but it refuses—and rightly so in its field—to ascend from sensory observation in experimentation and observation, and from what results from experimentation and observation for the intellect, which is bound to the senses, to any elaboration of knowledge that goes beyond the sensory. It summarizes the phenomena, or rather only the areas of phenomena, and presents what it can thus ascertain about the lawful connections between the phenomena.

This is the basis of agnosticism. It says: One can go further and further in summarizing external phenomena. One then obtains, as it were, a picture of interconnected thought structures that extend like a net over the phenomena and series of phenomena that natural science observes. But in contrast to everything that can enter human consciousness as knowledge about nature, one must assume an unknown factor that underlies what can be known in this way as the actual deeper world of causes. One can really only have knowledge of the external sensory-physical realm and its summaries; but one cannot penetrate to that which holds and sustains the whole, which can no longer be reached by the senses, which must be supersensible. Man cannot have gnosis, gnosticism. Human beings can only have agnosticism; they can only know that there are limits to their knowledge and that they cannot penetrate to that which underlies the external sensory world as its actual supersensible cause.

This agnosticism is then extended to the soul realm. It is said: One can indeed fathom how that which appears as ideas in our consciousness is linked together, how it holds and supports itself, how feelings are linked to these ideas, how a world of will from unknown depths influences this world of ideas, how these ideas are stimulated by stimuli that come from sensory perceptions. But one cannot grasp what now flows forth within the interplay of ideas, the tingeing of this interplay with feeling, the pulsation of this same interplay with forces of will; one cannot grasp what flows forth and what consciousness summarizes in the word “I.” one cannot approach it in such a way that, for example, human aspirations for knowledge of an immortal, eternal soul can be satisfied by a science of this soul — agnosticism in the field of natural science, agnosticism in the field of psychological, spiritual life.

I do not wish to give a critical discussion of agnosticism, which thoroughly dominates large circles of today's human world, here today. These lectures are not intended to offer a critique of it; they are intended to offer what anthroposophy has to say in a positive way about its roots of knowledge and its fruits of life.

What I want to say today is something about the characteristics of how this agnosticism, when it takes hold of the human soul, affects the whole of human life. For only those who are not sufficiently impartial in their attitude toward human life, both in its individual and social aspects, can believe that knowledge, that something like an agnostic view can stand alone, can form the basis of a certain more or less scientific or popular philosophy. Those who are unbiased in their attitude toward life know that human life is like the individual human organism. Whatever happens in any part of the human body, whether sick or healthy, affects the entire human organism, wherever it occurs. And so the unbiased person can also see how what is today known as agnosticism is penetrating our science, which is, after all, an authority for the majority of people, at least for civilized people in the West, how agnosticism is penetrating science, how it is penetrating teaching and education from science, how it takes hold of social and religious life, how it has taken hold of millions and millions of people who set the tone for the present and the near future, and who often have no idea how, despite perhaps this or that traditional religious confession, they worship this agnostic view in their deepest souls. The unbiased observer can see the effects of agnosticism everywhere in life. Today, we encounter its effects in individual human beings and in social life. Initially, of course, it appears in the realm of ideas. Human beings reveal themselves both as individuals and as social beings through their ideas, feelings, and desires.

Agnosticism first takes hold of the world of ideas, and it asserts that no matter how one may develop this world of ideas, no matter how one may expand or deepen it, no matter what connections one may explore in one's imaginative life: one cannot immerse oneself in a being, in a reality, with this imaginative life. The life of imagination proceeds in a stream of images that are certainly rooted in some way in a being, in an objective reality; but what man carries within himself as his ideas has nothing in it that could point him down into this realm of true reality. — This view is advocated with all radicalism by outstanding minds of the present day. But just think about how the whole, complete human being with all his manifestations must actually be rooted not in some pictorial existence, not in a world of imagination that has nothing to do with true reality, but how he must be rooted in this true reality itself. Whatever one may think about the relationship between what we imagine and the true reality of the world, no one can deny that what human beings feel, what they want, what they do, is rooted in this true reality. Even the simplest step in practical life shows this.

There have been skeptics who did not want to go all the way to agnosticism, but who nevertheless regarded the external sensory world in an absolute sense as a kind of illusion. Legends have formed around such skeptics. For example, it was said of a skeptic of antiquity that when he came to an abyss, he did not stop in his tracks because he considered the existence of the abyss in the external sensory world to be merely an illusion. You will immediately see in such a legend, in all its absurdity, that it is impossible to derive ultimate practice from a view that does not root what human beings do, what they themselves judge to be their reality, in a true reality, in an objective world context.

But if one penetrates oneself quite inwardly and honestly with the view that everything one can imagine is only an image that does not penetrate down to the roots of the truly real, then one separates the whole of human imagination from what man actually is. Then one goes around in the world, on the one hand having to assume that human beings are rooted in a true reality, but at the same time that everything they can bring to mind in their consciousness has nothing to do with this reality. Human beings separate what gives them the most important content of their civilized life—their world of ideas and thoughts—not only from reality, but from themselves; they split themselves in two. And if such a thing is not taken merely as a phrase, as a vain theory, if such a thing is lived through by all of humanity as an inner truth, then it is impossible to be an inwardly strong person, a person with a secure basis for life, if one splits oneself in this way and separates one's best from what one actually is in reality, in truth. As a result, when such a worldview is honestly experienced inwardly, ideas become discontented; they become somewhat powerless, they gradually develop more and more into something indifferent, and, although they were the actual driving forces of human life throughout a large part of human historical development, they are dispossessed in favor of instincts and drives, in favor of what now plays out in human consciousness in a way that is not imaginative, but rather animalistic.

Who could fail to recognize that, fundamentally, modern humanity has, to a high degree, embarked on such a path toward the inner division of the human being, toward the devaluation of the life of imagination! But a life of imagination that proceeds in this way does not permeate the life of feeling. A life of feeling that is not permeated by strong ideas, which carry within themselves the consciousness that they are rooted in truth, gradually becomes untrue, gradually feels as if it is rooted in untruth, and then degenerates in two different directions. It loses its naturalness, it loses its inner honesty and truth, and it degenerates either into a false sentimentality, where one feels compelled to surrender to certain feelings as a human being; but one does not stand within them, because there are no strong ideas behind them. One only persuades oneself that one is allowed to surrender to such feelings. You then invest these feelings with all sorts of things that are not really experienced. You work yourself up, I would say sentimentally, rhetorically, to a level of feeling that is inwardly false. That is the degeneration on the one side. Or else the emotional life can become untrue in the other direction, by taking on the character I have already indicated, the character that denies the idea, but instead lets the animalistic speak. If the idea becomes pale, it loses the inner consciousness that it is permeated by being. Then it can no longer empathize with feeling, and the person must submerge themselves in that unconsciousness that lives in their animal nature. Then they become a plaything of their inner well-being or ill-being, their instincts, drives, and needs, which are not illuminated by the light of consciousness. Because they cannot rise to true humanity as human beings, they follow the play of nature in their organic being.

These are the two deviations into untruthfulness that feeling can take under the influence of agnosticism. These deviations are particularly evident in the artistic works that humanity produces. Artistic expression, which must essentially spring from the world of feeling, itself becomes untruthful if it is based on an untruthful world of feeling, a sentimental or animalistic world of feeling. We have seen both of these emerge in recent times, in the age of agnosticism. We have seen the rise of sweetness, sentimentality, and inner dishonesty, which escalates into feelings that do not spring from the true human being with elemental power, but are artificial, manufactured, and therefore untrue. On the other hand, we have seen how those who have seen through the untruthfulness of this sentimentality and could not help but express what is natural in human beings have been led to the crassest naturalism, to the mere imitation of what is already created in nature outside.

What is already created in nature can still be created better by nature than by man, and if man, as a landscape painter or whatever, wants to imitate nature, then even if he is a great artist, he will still have to remain behind nature — the unbiased observer can see this. Basically, anything that imitates nature is superfluous.

If one does not want to fall into the trap of clichéd exaggeration into the unreal because one believes one cannot grasp the real, if one does not want to degenerate into mannerism, then one must simply stick to the mere imitation of nature. True art rises above mannerism and imitation to become style. But style can only develop if the individual is rooted with his entire inner life in a true reality that goes beyond the sensual and physical nature, from which something can be created that can only come from human creativity. True art must strive for style, and true style can only be based on the experience of the supersensible by human beings. Anyone who sees art not as a luxury addition to life, but as a necessary condition of every dignified existence, something that makes human beings whole and gives human civilization its full meaning, will have to admit that agnosticism robs human beings of the truth that wants to live and must live in art.

Anyone who wants to see this can also see it in the course of our recent civilizational and cultural development. They can see how those who are agnostic have gradually rejected everything supernatural in art, how they recognize only what they say is natural, what reminds them of something they can perceive externally with their senses and their minds. But then art only fulfills a need for sensation that we want to satisfy when we rest from the week's work on Sunday; then people indulge in art as a luxury, then art is not a necessity in life. Agnosticism pushes art as a necessary part of life out of human existence itself, turning it into a Sunday pleasure, a luxury of life. This is what it has become for the vast majority. Is it any different when we see large groups of people being guided through museums today? This is a fundamental tone in our modern intellectual life. Those who do not view things externally, but rather the inner connections of life, see how what I have just characterized as the corruption of art is connected to the agnostic direction of the age.

And further: agnosticism has an influence not only on the life of the imagination, not only on the life of the emotions, but also on the life of the will. One may philosophize as much as one likes about thinking about nature and the world as one wishes — but what is duty, what is good, will still speak in human beings through a kind of categorical imperative. One can declaim and philosophize about such a categorical imperative within a sphere of agnosticism. But then, if agnosticism is not theory, if it is attitude, if it is also feeling, then categorical imperatives do not arise. And what matters is not how one thinks about a thing, but what can really arise in the human soul. No new categorical imperatives arise when the old ones, which have been passed down through tradition from earlier human epochs, diminish more and more. When these traditions are lost, categorical imperatives gradually cease to exist. Then, in that part of his being where the will acts as an impulse for life, man feels an inner emptiness. Thoughts and ideas are rendered powerless by the experience of agnosticism. Feelings become dull, the will becomes empty, and then man is at the mercy of either some external authority that gives him his imperative, or else the animalistic, that which asserts itself as physical needs, that which wells up from the deepest subconscious world without any imagination, indeed without any regulation of feeling. Then the human being is either forced to surrender unconditionally to the existing authorities, or to establish new ones, or to admit that the human race can do nothing else but live out its physical instincts.

These views, too, have been sufficiently represented in our age, albeit perhaps more or less timidly. What is increasingly pushing us today toward a belief in authority, toward a sense of authority, what cannot be anything other than based on this belief in authority, on this sense of authority, which we see so terribly prevailing, is connected with agnosticism. For something like agnosticism can be a theory in one generation—this generation can perhaps justify it very ingeniously—but in the next generation it is life, and when it is life, then the things I have described arise. Thus we see the theoretical agnosticism of our forefathers resurrected in the urge for authority of contemporary humanity, or we also see it resurrected in the disbelief in everything that could regulate human needs out of the spirit of man, that could establish a human social life. We see it in the establishment of the opinion that, basically, human beings can do nothing else but live according to their animalistic impulses and organize them.

Now, what is first expressed in human beings in their imagining, feeling, and willing then leads them on their way to the actual religious experience. For me, even the strongest materialist is a religious person, because ultimately, what matters in religion in general is not whether one professes this or that, but how one feels connected in one's soul, or even, if one denies it, in one's entire humanity, to the world being.

Thus it has come to pass that in the new age, more and more people feel empty inside with regard to religious experience and therefore seek support. A phenomenon may be apparent here that is perhaps not yet noticed by very many who are not directly involved, but which may become very noticeable in the not too distant future: the inclination of intelligent, soulful people in particular toward the outwardly established, rigid old church organizations. The human soul that is empty inside cannot find within itself the power that connects it to the divine foundation of the world; it therefore tends to seek external support. The soul that does not feel connected to God within itself wants to find in the outside world what will lead it to this God. Many people, whom one might not have expected, tend toward Roman Catholicism. However, many people who do not have this tendency toward Catholicism give themselves over to a materialistic view of religion. On the other hand, we see souls that are finely organized in religious terms, which have, in a sense, thoroughly felt the unsatisfactory nature of the religious traditions of the West. These souls devote themselves to all kinds of things that are brought to them from the old or even the new Orient. They do not seek what springs from their own present soul; they do not consider that if a religious life is true, it must always spring from within. They want to lean on something foreign, something old. It is inner emptiness that we see at work here, inner emptiness that seeks support from outside.

With all that I have described, human beings can only live to a certain extent, and recent developments have shown that, to a certain extent, it is possible to live with all of this. This has its deep roots in the entire recent development of civilization and culture. As a consequence of scientific thinking, modern technology has emerged, which can actually only work in that which is separate from man, in that which man cannot penetrate with his own inner being. This technology represents something around us that demands our work to such an extent that we have gradually integrated ourselves into it as something that surrenders to it, as something that surrenders to its best. One need only remember all kinds of work systems that have their origins in Western civilization, how these work systems want to place humans into the world of technology itself like a cog in a machine, so that what is dear to them, what arouses their sympathy or antipathy, what causes them to do something faster at one time or and sometimes to do something more slowly, is eliminated, so that one can count on what comes out of them as their activity, just as one can count on the activity of a machine.

Humanity could never be satisfied in the long run by such devotion, by such reliance on something foreign, be it something external and physical or something spiritual. It is natural that, under the influence of triumphant technology, something like this has developed, especially among the most civilized people of the modern age. But in a certain sense, it has now reached its culmination point, where calls for a reversal are clearly audible, where the inner division of human beings in their imaginative life, the dulling of their emotional life, the emptying of their volitional and religious life, and the emptying of their social impulses can already be clearly felt.

We are at a point in time where we can experience the fruits of agnosticism, which began as a theory but has now permeated our social life everywhere as a kind of life practice. And in life, everything is basically not only an effect from one side to the other, but also from the other side back to the first. When people today are caught up in a practical, technical life that strives to completely eliminate their subjectivity, their personality, when they have put themselves in a position where their will suffers from inner emptiness and their feelings and sensations suffer from a certain dullness, then we can see how all this in turn has an effect on their imaginative life. As a result, people today have become somewhat complacent in their imaginative life.

Today, it is certainly true to say that Whatever ideas or impulses arise to counteract the forces of decline, the human imagination is no longer receptive enough. The human imagination develops passive rather than internally active forces and no longer degenerates to the point where it can grasp something with enthusiasm to see whether it can withstand life. This inner activity of the life of imagination has given way to a certain complacency. When one hears something that is unfamiliar, that one has not already thought of oneself, one does not want to strain one's inner life so much that ideas with different contours, ideas with different tinges, come to life in one than those that have already been there. One does not actually examine what arises in one's inner life, but only asks: Am I accustomed to such ideas arising in me? If one finds that one is not accustomed to such ideas arising as they are presented to one, then one does not engage with them. I don't even want to say that one always rejects them energetically, but rather that one does not engage with them at all; one lets the ideas pass by.

Today, it is not only the case in political gatherings, for example. One can talk about various things there. Then another speaker appears, one who has completely immersed himself in a party template. You then hear him speak in all the ways he has been accustomed to for thirty years; he repeats what sounds a little like what he has been accustomed to for thirty years, but he has not heard the rest at all. He becomes unconsciously unwilling to hear anything he is not accustomed to. This is basically an effect of agnosticism, in that it has become a ‘theory of life’.

This also enters into our education system. Do we have the living insight that education must be shaped in the same way as life itself? Life is such that what we have as four- or five-year-old children is completely different when we are adults. Everything metamorphoses, everything is transformed. When we teach a child something, we would like to teach it in such a way that it can remain, that the child will later remember it, that in their memory what has been taught appears exactly as we have taught it. But anyone who thinks in a lively way must think of an education that conveys to the child everything it teaches in such a way that it grows with the child, that it is from the outset something that grows and develops. Things must be brought to the child in such a way that they metamorphose and transform, just like the child's organic limbs.

We have seen all this disappear from human perception, but also from human life practice under the influence of agnosticism. I emphasize this once again explicitly: Neither did I want to offer a critique of agnosticism today, nor did I want to counter it in a positive way. I only wanted to present, as it were, a characteristic of our age from an inner point of view, to show how certain fruits appear everywhere in human individual, social, religious, and moral life, which must be traced back to the seeds of agnosticism. This is how our age can appear to us if we look at it not as we would like to out of certain prejudices, as we would like to under the influence of certain agitational ideals, but if we look at this age in which we ourselves live according to its reality.

Ladies and gentlemen, I wanted to preface the lectures that will be given over the next few days with this, as they will deal with a view of life that an age in which the tragedy of agnosticism has been fulfilled must long for. This view of life, as you will see, is anthroposophy as a living worldview, a worldview that seeks to penetrate to that with which human beings connect as true reality, a worldview that will show that human beings also have the means to penetrate to this true reality.