1. The Nature and Significance of Karma in the Personal and Individual; and in Humanity, the Earth and the Universe

It is very often emphasised nowadays by external science, that its own real importance lies in the fact that it is founded on the universal law of causes, and that everywhere it traces certain effects to their respective causes. But people are certainly much less clear as to how this linking of cause and effect takes place. For you will still find in books of the present day which are supposed to be clever and to explain ideas in quite a philosophical manner, such expressions as the following: ‘An effect is that which follows from a cause.’ But to say this is to lose sight entirely of the facts. In the case of a warm sunbeam falling on a metal plate and making it warmer than before, material science would speak of cause and effect in the ordinary way. But can we claim that the effect—the warming of the metal plate—follows from the cause of the warm sunbeam? If the warm sunbeam had this effect already within it why is it that it warms the metal plate only when it comes into contact with it? Hence, in the world of phenomena, in the inanimate world which is all around us, it is necessary, if an effect is to follow a cause, that something should encounter this cause. Unless this takes place one cannot speak of an effect following upon a cause. This preliminary remark, philosophical and abstract though it apparently sounds, is by no means superfluous; for if real progress is to be made in anthroposophical matters we must get into the habit of being extremely accurate in our ideas instead of being casual as people sometimes are in other branches of knowledge.