Second Lecture

These two burning questions stood before my soul in the 1880s, and with these two questions in my heart, I considered what the various sciences, which, by becoming philosophical, had been nourished by the spirit of agnosticism, could give to human beings. I asked: What can the philosophy that emerged at the end of the 19th century offer to human urges? And from what I felt in response to these two questions, I formed what I wrote down in 1885 for my “Grundlinien einer Erkenntnistheorie der Goetheschen Weltanschauung” (Fundamentals of a Theory of Knowledge of Goethe's Worldview). The words came to me: “So we have a science that no one is looking for and a scientific need that no one is satisfying.” For that is how I saw what had emerged at that time as philosophy from agnosticism. This philosophy dealt with questions of such a remote, abstract nature that they had nothing to do with what was alive in the soul, seeking a solution to the actual riddles of existence.