Anthroposophy and the Riddle of the Soul

The other example I want to give is that of an excellent personality, Franz Brentano, who wanted to establish a psychology entirely according to the method of modern natural science. That was his ideal. I have — dear ladies and gentlemen — discussed the whole state of affairs underlying Franz Brentano's research in detail in the third part of my book 'Von Seelenrätseln' (On the Riddle of the Soul) and would like to mention only a few fundamental points here. Franz Brentano then tried, at the beginning of the 1870s, to write a psychology, a psychology. The first volume appeared in the spring of 1874. The second volume was promised for the fall; it never appeared. The whole work was intended to be in four volumes; except for the first volume, nothing ever appeared except individual attempts, which, however, are always only attempts. The whole work remained a torso. In the work mentioned, I have discussed why this had to be so. Franz Brentano wanted to conduct research into the life of the soul in the same way as in the natural sciences, and in this first volume one finds a remarkable confession by Franz Brentano. He says, for example: With this scientific research, it is indeed possible to modestly find one's way in the details of mental life. One can indicate how one representation connects with another, how one representation separates from another, how certain feelings attach to representations, how volitional impulses attach to representations, how memory works, and so on. But if, as Franz Brentano says, we have to content ourselves with investigating only these details of mental life, and if knowledge of the most important questions of human existence has to be bought at the price of this strict scientific method, where would that leave us? For Brentano finds justified the longing, already present in Plato, in Aristotle, in ancient Greece, to lead what can be investigated in the individual soul to the great questions from birth to immortality. And it would be sad, says Franz Brentano, if, in the desire to be scientific in the exploration of the soul life, one had to renounce knowledge of what happens to the better part of man in us when the physical part is handed over to the earth at death.