3. Anthroposophical Research Findings on the Eternal in the Human Soul and on the Nature of Freedom

I have thus pointed out, by way of comparison, how the concept of freedom acquires meaning when we approach it from another angle and seek to explain this soul life in a real sense: not merely in relation to physical conditions, but in relation to the independent spiritual life that passes through births and deaths. It is to this spiritual-soul essence of the human being that we can attribute freedom. Freedom has always been treated in philosophy in such a way that one spoke of either/or: either man is free, or he is not free. By approaching the question of freedom solely from a philosophical perspective, I have already shown in my Philosophy of Freedom, published in 1894 and now out of print but available for consultation in libraries, that the concept of freedom can be grasped by considering the independent life of the soul. However, this independent spiritual life is only gradually attained in the course of physical human development. One cannot say: Man is either free or not free. Instead, one can only say: Freedom is something that man acquires in the course of his development, something he approaches more and more — by supplying the inner spiritual-soul being with the forces that strengthen this being within itself so that it can develop causality for human action, for human will, yet, on the other hand, from another direction, this causality lies in the human body.