4. The Human Soul and the Human Spirit

The highest ideal of natural science will be to show what the organic process of thinking is. But what is the relationship between this organic process and thinking? I can only express it comparatively now, but it could be presented in detail. However, it will be understood quite well precisely through a comparison. When a person walks along a road and the road has a somewhat soft surface, so that every step is imprinted, the traces can be seen afterwards. Someone could come and say: Yes, there are certain impressions in the earth – I now investigate the forces in the earth that form these impressions from within the earth, that have caused the path to be formed in such a way. Someone who only looks at the earth and forgets that a person has walked over it might believe that. This is precisely how one proceeds when seeking the causes of thinking in the brain and in the actual processes that take place in it and accompany thinking. Just as the footprints did not come from inside the earth, so too what can be found in the brain does not come from inside the person, but is imprinted in it by the living soul, just like the footsteps in the ground. And just as the one who wants to derive the footsteps from the forces of the earth itself and not from the person who has stepped them in thinks wrongly, so too the one who believes that he can derive from the inner processes of the nervous system what takes place in the brain during the course of thinking under these nervous processes thinks wrongly. These are the traces that this living soul imprints. This living soul is not seen within, but it works and lives within. And it cannot be found through external research, but its paths, its destinies, its life can only be found through those processes that are purely inner soul processes and that have been spoken of today as the paths by which one finds the human soul and human spirit!