TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE
When Rudolf Steiner, still a student and
tutor in Vienna, published this terse little volume just after his
twenty-fifth birthday, he concluded an intellectual struggle in which
he had been engaged since childhood. He arrived at a solution of the
problem: What is the relation between man's inner and his outer
world?
For him the inner
world had always been unmistakably a world of reality, not of mere
reflections from without and subjective reactions within. His
endeavor had been, not to establish the reality of either the inner
or the outer world, but — through intense observation of the
outer world and intense contemplation of his own mind in its activity
— to discover the interrelationship between the mind and the
world. Very early — perhaps, by his fifteenth year — he
had rejected Kant's theory of the nature of human knowledge, saying
to himself: “That may be true for him, but it is not true for
me.” When he was later brought into contact with Goethe, first
as poet and then as thinker, he discovered that, in the world
of living things, Goethe's mode of contemplative, intuitive cognition
was identical with his own; and that, through such a direct channel,
Goethe had acquired knowledge essential to the innermost nature of
plant, animal, and man. Hence, after editing one volume of Goethe's
scientific writings, he paused in that task to build an
adequate foundation upon which to base Goethe's mode of intuitive
thinking and his own interpretation of Goethe.
But he not only
solved the central problem with which he had been battling since
youth. He also laid foundations deep in the human spirit for all his
own creative thinking during the remaining thirty-nine years of his
life. The whole wealth of his writings and lectures, dealing with so
great a range of themes of deepest human concern, rests solidly upon
this foundation. It rests upon this exposition of the reality, the
spiritual nature, of human thinking: the truth he had apprehended in
inner certitude of experience, and had confirmed under the rigid
tests of the intellect, that “becoming aware of the Idea within
reality is the true communion of man.” Later writings and
lectures which set forth the potential and nascent capacity of the
human spirit to rise above the low horizons of our every-day
cognitions into a higher and clearer spiritual atmosphere of
self-confirming intuitions rests, like everything else he has
affirmed, upon the inherent nature of man's cognitive faculties as
set forth, explicitly or implicitly, in this first published
volume by the still youthful investigator. This compact volume
represents a milestone in the history of the human mind, a crucial
achievement in the struggle of man to know himself.
In essence, the argument is as follows.
One constituent of
direct experience — thought, which appears before our inner
activity of contemplation — is unique in manifesting
immediately its essential nature and its interrelationships. It thus
becomes the only key to disclose the hidden nature of all other
experience.
Thought is not subjective in itself,
but only as regards the prerequisite activity of our
contemplation. This is evidenced by the clearly observable fact that
we combine thoughts solely according to their inherent content. Our
contemplation, as an organ of perception, only brings to
manifestation in consciousness objectively real elements of the
one thought content of the world. Through the intellectual cognition
of single elements of this reality — concepts — and the
rational combination of inherently related elements into harmonious
complexes — ideas — we are
capable of knowing gradually expanding aspects of the total
reality. This knowledge is real, not a mere phantasm of the
subjective mind.
But the mode of
cognition suited to the inorganic is not suited to the organic. In
relation to the inorganic, we possess truth when we grasp the cause
of a phenomenon. In relation to the organic, we must apprehend the
supersensible type, which manifests itself in the single
members of a species of plant or animal. This requires direct,
intuitive cognition: the mind must perceive in thinking and
think in perceiving. Moreover, when we deal with the human being, we
must apprehend the central reality — the ego — manifest
as a self-sufficing spiritual being in its uniqueness in each single
human personality.
Through this mode of intuitive
cognition, we may attain to the knowledge that the universal Creative
Spirit is in the single human being; that His highest manifestation
is in human thought; that man is in harmony with this Guiding Power
of the world when he follows freely, as an individual, the guidance
of his own intuitions.
* * * * *
The heartfelt thanks of the
translator are due to several competent specialists who have
rendered important service in this difficult task: to
Miss Ruth Hofrichter,
of Vassar College, who painstakingly scrutinized the
manuscript in its first form some years ago, in comparison with the
German text, and pointed out a number of deficiencies; to Dr.
Hermann Poppelbaum and Dr. Egbert Weber
for very helpful detailed criticisms and suggestions.
O. D. W.
New York City
July 1940
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