The Position of
Anthroposophy
among the Sciences
R u d o l f S t
e i n e r
A Lecture, hitherto
untranslated, given at The Hague
(as part of a course for university graduates)
on April 8, 1922
-
From a shorthand
report unrevised by the lecturer. Published by permission of the
Rudolf Steiner-Nachlassverwaltung, Dornach, Switzerland.
S
Anthroposophy spreads to fields
where men usually seek their religious and, maybe, their moral
impulses also, it encounters many persons who feel drawn towards such
a spiritual stream. The modern spirit, which yesterday I allowed
myself to call “the scientific spirit”, has, in many
respects, shaken old, traditional beliefs, and although many people
approach the anthroposophical line of research somewhat sceptically,
there are, nevertheless, very many to-day whose souls have at least
an inclination towards it. But it is correct to say that, in one
respect, Anthroposophy encounters difficulties when it would enter
the fields of the various sciences. That is the particular aim of
this course, and it will be my task to present here, in the main, the
general, more comprehensive principles and results of our
research, while the other lecturers will deal with special scientific
fields.
But precisely
such an arrangement must arouse all the antipathies — I use this
word more in a theoretical than in a moral sense — which
Anthroposophy encounters from scientific quarters. I can only assure
you that one who is engaged in anthroposophical research fully
understands how difficult it is for a man involved in scientific work
to-day to pass from the scientific attitude into Anthroposophy.
Although Anthroposophy has certainly much to correct in present-day
science, and, at the same time, when organic and spiritual fields are
included, very much to add to the present material for research, it
does not of itself come into conflict with current science. It
accepts the justified results of science and deals with them in the
way I have just described. The reverse, however, does not occur; at
least, not yet — as one may well understand. Anthroposophy is
rejected; its results are not regarded as satisfying the strictly
scientific criteria that one feels entitled to impose to-day.
In a short
lecture I shall not, of course, be able to go into all that Anthroposophy
can itself bring forward to serve as an effective foundation for its
results. But I should like in to-day's lecture to attempt to
characterise the position of Anthroposophy among the sciences, and to
do this in a way that will enable you to understand that
Anthroposophy, in laying its foundations, is as conscientious as any
science with its own precise technique. For this, however, I shall
have to inflict upon you somewhat remote discussions — things
which in ordinary life may be called difficult but which are
necessary in order to provide a certain basis for what I shall have
to offer in an easier and, perhaps, more agreeable form in the next
few days.
*
Many people
to-day imagine that Anthroposophy starts somehow from the nebulous
attitude of soul to be found in present-day movements that are really
“mystical” or “occult”. But to ascribe to
Anthroposophy such a very questionable foundation is a complete
mistake. Only one who knows Anthroposophy only superficially,
or, indeed, through its opponents, can do that.
The fundamental
attitude of consciousness in Anthroposophy has been drawn from that
branch of present-day science which is least of all attacked in
respect to its scientific character and importance. I admit,
however, that many of our adherents — and opponents too —
fail to perceive correctly what I have now to characterise by way of
introduction.
The position
of mathematics among the sciences has already been mentioned. Kant's
pronouncement, that in every science there is only as much real
knowledge — real cognition — as there is
mathematics, is widely known. Now I have not to deal here with
mathematics itself, with its value for the other sciences and in
human life, but rather with the mental attitude a man assumes when
“mathematicising” — if I may use this word; that
is, when actively engaged in mathematical thinking. His attitude of
soul is then, indeed, quite distinctive. Perhaps we may best
characterise it by speaking, first, of that branch of mathematics
which is usually called geometry and, at least in those parts of it
known to the majority of people, has to do with space, is the science
of space.
We are
accustomed to speak of three-dimensional space; we picture it so
constituted that its three dimensions, as they are called, stand at
right angles to one another. What we have before our mind's eye as space
is, in the first place, quite independent of man and the rest of the world.
And because man as an individual being orientates himself in accordance
with spatial laws, he pictures space before his eyes, independent of
himself. He can certainly say that he is at this or that distance
from any selected point; thus he inserts himself into space, as a
part of space. And by regarding himself as an earthly being and
assigning to himself certain distances from this and that star, he
inserts himself into cosmic space. In a word, man regards space as
something objective, independent of his own being. It was this that
led Kant to call space an a priori intuition (eine
Anschauung a priori), a mode of intuition given to man prior to
experience. He cannot ask how he comes to have space; he must simply
accept it as something given; he must fit himself into it when he has
attained full earthly consciousness.
But it is
not so in reality. We human beings do actually build space out of our
own being. More correctly: we build our idea (Vorstellung), our
mental perception (Anschauung), of space from out of
ourselves. Only, we do not do this consciously, because we do it at a
time of life when we do not think about our own activities in the way
that would be necessary if we were to come to a clear understanding
of the nature of space in relation to our own being. Indeed, we
should not have our intuition of space (Raumanschauung) if, in
our earthly life, we did not first experience its three
dimensions.
We do
experience them. We experience one of them when, from out of our
inability to walk upright from birth, we raise ourselves into the vertical
position. We learn this dimension from the way in which we build it.
And what we learn to know is not just any dimension, set at right
angles to the other two. We learn to know this quite definite
dimension of space — standing vertically, so to speak, upon the
earth's surface — from the fact that we human beings are not
born upright, but, in accord with the formative laws of our earthly
life, must first raise ourselves into the vertical position.
We learn to
know the second dimension of space in an equally unconscious manner. You
will be well aware that man — to mention what pertains more to his
inner than to his outer being — in developing the capacities
which serve him in later life, learns to orientate himself from left
to right, from right to left. One need only recall that we have our
organised speech centre in a certain area of the brain, the so-called
Broca convolutions, while the other side of the brain has no such
organisation. One also knows to-day — and from accepted science
— that the development of the speech centre on the left side of
the human body is connected with the mobility, spontaneous at first,
of the right hand. One knows, too, that an orientation from right to
left develops, that this activity excited on the left by an activity
on the right, or vice-versa, is experienced by us within the laws
that form us — just as we experience our achievement of
the upright position. It is in this co-ordinated orientation of right
with left, or left with right, that we human beings experience the
second dimension of space.
The third
dimension of space is never really experienced by us completely. We first
focus this so-called “depth-dimension” as we try to gauge it.
We are constantly doing this, though deep down in the unconscious.
When we make the lines of vision of our eyes intersect at a point and
focus both eyes on this point, we expand space, which would otherwise
have only two dimensions for us, into the third dimension. And with
every estimate of spatial depth we build the third dimension
unconsciously out of our own being and the laws that form us.
Thus one
might say: we place, in a certain way, the three dimensions of space
outside us. And what we conceive as space, the space we use in geometry
— Euclidean geometry, at first — is nothing more than an
abstraction from what we learn to know concretely, with our own
organism, as the three dimensions linked to our own subjective being.
In this abstraction the quite definite configuration of space is
ignored; the definite directions — vertical, horizontal and
depth — have equal value. (This is always done when we make
abstractions.) And then, when we have constructed, by abstracting
from the three-dimensional space experienced within, the external
space we speak of in geometry, we extend our consciousness
through this external space alone.
We now come
to the important thing. What we have won from out of ourselves is now
applicable to external nature; in the first place, to inorganic,
lifeless forms, though it can also be applied to the spatial and
kinetic relations between organic structures. Briefly, this fact
largely determines the character of our external world. Having
accomplished this transition (this metamorphosis of space) from one
domain, which really lives in us, to space commonly so called, we now
stand with our spatial concepts and spatial experiences within the
outer world and are able to determine our position and motion by
spatial measurements. We actually go out of ourselves when we
construct space in this way. We lift out of our body what we have
first experienced within ourselves, placing ourselves at a point of
view from which we look back upon ourselves as filled with
space. In thus objectifying space we are able to study the external
movements and relative positions of objects with the help of ideas
formed geometrically within space; we feel thereby that we are on
firm scientific ground when we enter into objects with what we have
formed so earnestly from out of ourselves. In these
circumstances we cannot doubt that we can live within things with
what has come from us in this way. When we judge the distance, or the
changing distance, between two bodies in the outer world according to
spatial relations, we believe we are determining something completely
objective and independent of ourselves. It does not occur to us that
this could be otherwise.
Now, however,
a fundamental and important problem confronts us here. What we have
experienced subjectively in ourselves, transforming it, in the case
of space; simply by making from it a kind of abstraction, now becomes
something permeating — to a certain extent — the outer
world and appearing to belong there.
Anyone who
considers impartially what confronts us here must say: In his subjective
experience of space in its three dimensions and in his subsequent
objectifying of this experience, man stands within the external world
with his own experiences. Our subjective experiences, being
experiences of space, are at the same time objective. After all, it
is not at all difficult, but trivial and elementary, to see that this
is so. For when we move ourselves through space, we accomplish
something subjective, but at the same time an objective event occurs
in the world. To put it another way, whether we see an automaton or a
man move forwards, subjectivity does not come into consideration.
What occurs when a human being lives spatially is, for the external
disposition of the world, quite objective.
If we
now focus attention on the human being as, in this way, he objectifies
something of his subjective experience, moving himself in an
objective domain by himself traversing space — for, in
objectifying space, he really bears this space within himself also
— we are led to say: If man could do with other experiences
what he does when “mathematicising”, he would be able to
transfer, to some extent, the mathematical attitude of soul to other
experiences. Suppose we could shape other experiences — our
mode of perceiving the qualities of colours and tones, for example
— in the same way that we create and shape our experience of
space from out of ourselves! When we look at a cube of salt we
bring the cubical shape with us from our geometry, knowing that its
shape is identical with the spatial concept we have formed. If we
could create from out of ourselves, let us say, the world of colour,
and then confront external coloured objects, we should then, in the
same way, project (as it were) into the outer world what we first
build up in ourselves. We should thus place ourselves outside our
body and even look back upon ourselves. This has been accomplished in
mathematics, although it remains unnoticed. (I have given a
geometrical illustration; I could give others also.) Neither
mathematicians nor philosophers have paid attention to this peculiar
relationship that I have just put before you.
In regard
to sense perceptions, however, science has become really confused. In
the nineteenth century physiologists joined hands here even with
epistemologists and philosophers, and many people think with them as
follows:
When we see
red, for example, the external event is some vibration which spreads
itself out until it reaches our organ of vision, and then our brain. The
specific sensation of red is then released. Or the tone C sharp is
evoked by an external wave motion in the same way.
This confusion
has arisen because we can no longer distinguish what lives in us —
within the confines of our body — from what is outside. All
sense qualities (colours, tones, qualities of warmth) are said to be
actually only subjective, while what is external, objective is said
to be something quite different.
If now,
in the same way in which we build the three dimensions of space from
out of ourselves and find them again in things (and things in them)
— if we could, in the same way, draw from ourselves what appears
in us as sensation, and then set it before us, we should likewise find
in things what we had first found in ourselves. Indeed, looking
back upon ourselves we should find it again — just as we find
in the outer world what we have experienced within us as space, and,
looking back at ourselves, find that we are a part of this space. As
we have the space world around us, so we should have around us a
world of intermingling colours and tones. We should speak of an
objectified world of flowing colours and singing tones, as we speak
of the space around us.
Man can
certainly attain to this and learn to know as his own construction the
world which otherwise only confronts him as the world of effects
(Wirkungen). As we, albeit unconsciously,
construct for ourselves the form of space out of our human
constitution and then, having transformed it, find it again in the
world, so we can train ourselves, this time by conscious
effort, to draw from out of ourselves the whole gamut of qualities
contained in the world, so as to find them again in things, and then
again in looking back upon ourselves.
What I
am here describing is the ascent to so-called “imaginative
perception” (imaginative Anschauung). Every human being
to-day has the same space-world — unless he be abnormally
mathematical or unmathematical. What can live in us in like
manner, and in such a way that we experience with it the world as
well, can be acquired by exercises. “Imaginative
perception” — a technical term that does not denote
“fancy” or “imagination” in the usual sense
— can be added to the ordinary objective perception of objects
(in which mathematics is our sure guide), and will open up a new
region of the world.
I said
yesterday that I would have to expound to you a special method of training
and research. I must describe what one has to do in order to attain to
such “imaginative perception”. In this we come to
perceive as a whole the qualitative element in the world — just
as, in a sense, we come to perceive space (which has, at first, no
reality that engages our higher interests) as a whole. When we are
able to confront the world in this way, we are already at the first
stage of super-sensible perception. Sense-perception may be compared
to that perception of things in which we do not distinguish
between triangular and rectangular shapes, do not see geometrical
structures in things, but simply stare at them and only take in their
forms externally. But the perception that is developed in
“Imagination” is as much involved with the inner essence
of things as mathematical perception is with mathematical
relationships.
If we approach
mathematics in the right frame of mind, we come to see precisely in
the mathematician's attitude when “mathematicising”
the pattern for all that one requires for super-sensible perception.
For mathematics is simply the first stage of super-sensible
perception. The mathematical structures we “perceive” in
space are super-sensible perceptions — though we,
accustomed to “perceive” them, do not admit this. But one
who knows the intrinsic nature of “mathematicising” knows
that although the structure of space has no special interest at first
for our eternal human nature, mathematical thinking has all the
characteristics that one can ask of clairvoyance in the
anthroposophical sense: freedom from nebulous mysticism and confused
occultism, and the sole aim of attaining to the super-sensible worlds
in an exact, scientific way.
Everyone can
learn from a study of “mathematicising” what clairvoyance is
on a higher level. The most astonishing thing is that mathematicians,
who of all people ought to know what takes place when a man is
“mathematicising”, do not show a deeper understanding of
what must be presented as a higher, qualitative
“mathematicising” — if I may use this word —
in clairvoyant research. For “imaginative” cognition, the
first stage in this research, is only a perception that penetrates
other domains of existence than those accessible to
“mathematicising”; and it has been gained by exercises.
In respect to human perception, however, much is understood
differently once one is able to survey, in genuine self-knowledge,
the whole inner nature of “mathematicising”. For example,
one arrives at the following:
On looking
back to the way in which we came to know in early childhood the structure
of space — by walking and standing upright, by orientating
ourselves to right and left, by learning to gauge the
depth-dimension, by connecting all this with the abstractly perceived
space of geometry (which the child learns to know from inner
experience) — we realise the serious and important consequences
that follow if we cannot look back to the living origin, within our
own being, of space — of our conception and perception of space
— but simply accept it in its already transformed shape,
independent of ourselves. For example, in recent times we have come
to regard this space (with its three dimensions) in such a way that
we have gone on to postulate a fourth and higher dimensions. These
spaces and their geometries are widely known to-day. Anyone who has
once learnt to know the living structure of space finds it most
interesting to follow such an extension of mathematical operations
(applicable to three dimensions) and to arrive at a fourth dimension
that cannot be visualised, and so on. These operations are logical
(in the mathematical sense) and quite correct. But anyone who knows
the genesis of our idea of space, as I have described it, will detect
something quite special here. We could take a pendulum, for example,
and watch it oscillate. Watching it purely externally, we might
expect it to swing further and further out. But it does not. When it
has reached a definite point, it swings back again to the opposite
side. If we know the relation between the forces involved, we know
that the pendulum oscillates and cannot go further because of the
relation between the forces.
In respect
to space, one learns to know (to some extent) such an interplay of forces
in the constitution of our soul. Then one views these things
differently. From the logical, mathematical standpoint one can
certainly keep step with those who extend their calculations from
three-dimensional to four-dimensional space. But there one must make
a halt. One cannot pass on into an indefinite fourth dimension; one
must turn back at a certain point, and the fourth dimension becomes
simply the third with a minus sign before it. One returns through the
third dimension. The mistake made in these geometrics of more than
three dimensions is in going on abstractly from the second to the
third, from the third to the fourth dimension, and so on. But what we
have here, if I may express it in a comparison, is not simple
progression but oscillation. Our perception of space must return into
itself. By taking the third dimension negatively, we really
annihilate it. The fourth dimension is the negative third and
annihilates the third, making space two-dimensional. And in like
manner we can find a quite real progression, even though,
logically, mathematically, algebraically, these things can be carried
further and further. When we think in accordance with reality, we
must turn back at the fourth, fifth and sixth dimensions to the space
that is simply given us. With the sixth dimension, we have abolished
space and reach the point.
What really
confronts us in the culture of our age? This — that its thinking has
become abstract; that one simply continues along the line of thought
that takes us from planimetry, stereometry, etc., whereas reality
leads us back at the fourth dimension into space. But, in turning
back then, we are by no means where we were when we found our way
into the third dimension by gauging distances. We return
spiritually enriched. If we can think of the fourth dimension (the
negative third) in such a way that we return with it into space, then
space becomes filled with spirit, whereas three-dimensional space is
filled with matter. And we find space filled with ever loftier
spiritual configurations when we pass along the negative third and
second and first dimension and reach the point where we no longer
have spatial extension but stand within the unextended — the
spiritual.
What I am
now describing is not formal mathematics, but the reality of spiritual
perception. It is a path in real conformity with the spiritual and in
contrast to the path that has adapted itself so closely to material
appearances alone. This latter path, even though keeping close to
mathematics — which does not, of course, work in a material way
in the soul — leads nevertheless to an imperceptible world in
which one can, at most, only calculate and construct imaginary
mathematical spaces.
You see here
that, by penetrating the mathematical domain completely, we are led to
apprehend the inner nature of the spiritual present everywhere in the
world. To understand the mathematical attitude of soul is to be led
directly to the concept of clairvoyant experience. And then we raise
ourselves to “Imagination” and, in the way I have still
to describe, come thereby to a comprehensive survey of the spiritual
that can be perceived, not in the ordinary way, but in the way I have
put it here — that is: by going out of the third and into the
fourth dimension, and so on, and coming to the domain of
no-dimensions — that is, the point. This leads us spiritually
to the highest if we apprehend it, not as an empty point, but as a
“filled” point.
I was once
— it made a great impression on me — regarded with astonishment
by an elderly author who had written much on spiritual matters. Seeing
me for the first time, he asked: “How did you first become
aware of this difference between perceiving the sense-world and
perceiving the super-sensible world?” Because I always like to
express myself about these things with radical honesty, I replied:
“In the moment when I learnt to know the inner meaning of what
is called modern or synthetic geometry.” You see, when one
passes from analytic to synthetic geometry — which enables us,
not only to approach forms externally, but to grasp them in their
mutual relationships — one starts from forms, not from external
co-ordinates. When we work with spatial coordinates, we do not
apprehend forms but only the ends of the co-ordinates; we join up
these ends and obtain the curves. In analytical geometry we do not
lay hold of the forms, whereas in synthetic geometry we live within
them. This induces us to study the attitude of soul which, developed
further, leads us to press on into the super-sensible world.
*
I have now
described the extent to which Anthroposophy can be sure that it proceeds
from “mathematicising” as strictly as the natural science of
to-day — though from another point of view. Natural science
applies mathematics as it has been elaborated to date. But anyone who
wishes to understand clairvoyant activity must seek it where it is
present in its most primitive form: in the construction of
mathematical forms. If he can then raise this activity to higher
domains, he will be developing something related to elementary,
primitive “mathematicising” as the more developed
branches of mathematics are related to their axioms. The primary
axioms of clairvoyance are living ones. And if we succeed in
developing our “mathematicising” by exercises, we shall
not only see spatial relationships in the world around us, but learn
to know spiritual beings revealing themselves to us, even with
spiritual inwardness — as we learn to know the
“cubicity” of a salt crystal. We learn to know spiritual
beings when, in this way, we raise to higher domains what we develop
by “mathematicising”.
This is what
I wished to say, at the outset, about the basis of what must receive
recognition as “clairvoyant research” in
Anthroposophy. We shall go on to see how, with such clairvoyant
research, one can enter different fields of knowledge — the
natural sciences as well as therapy, medicine, history, etc. We shall
see that the sciences are not to be attacked; they are to be enriched
by the introduction of what can be known by super-sensible perception.
A consideration
of the course of human evolution over a certain period — how it
developed and led at last to the elaboration of our present
scientific thinking — can help to a right understanding of what
our aims here are.
Let us focus
our attention upon scientific thinking to-day. It is able to see clearly
the formalism of mathematics, while it nevertheless learns from
mathematics inner certainty and exact observation, regarding
natural laws as valid only if they can be formulated mathematically.
This is, at least, a kind of ideal for scientific method to-day. But
it was not always so. The scientific spirit, as acknowledged to-day,
has been elaborated in the course of human evolution. I should like
to draw your attention to three stages only — of which the
present is the third — in this development, and I shall do so
in a more narrative form. I shall also touch on some of the things
that can be said in support of what I shall relate.
*
As we look
back on human evolution, we do not, in fact, always find the same
disposition of soul that man has to-day. He cultivates the scientific
spirit as, in a sense, a most lofty thing. If we look back at the ancient
Orient — not necessarily so far back as the most ancient Indian
times, but to times more recent — we found much of what had been
handed down as cognitive principles still retained. The path to
knowledge was named quite differently then. In those ancient times
— even the history of language can support this — man did
not think of himself as he does to-day. Modern man has, on the one
hand, his consciousness of self firmly established within him, and,
on the other hand, a grasp, through observation, of what is
mechanistic. But the man of the Orient, for example, could not have
this feeling of himself. (As I have said, the history of language can
prove this.) He felt himself, in the first place, as a
breathing human being. To him, man was a breather. In
self-contemplation he focussed his attention chiefly upon the
respiratory process. He even related immortality to the respiratory
process: death came to him as a kind of expiration of his soul.
Man a breather!
Why did man in this former disposition of soul feel the human being as a
breathing being? Because he did actually feel life in the respiratory
process (which did not proceed so unconsciously as it does to-day).
He felt the vibrations of life, life's rhythm, in his breathing; he
felt breathing as one feels hunger and thirst to-day. But this was a
continuous feeling in the waking state. When he looked with his eyes,
he knew: the process of breathing now enters right into my head and
into my eyes. He felt his perceptions permeated by the flow of the
breath. It was just the same when the will stirred. He stretched out
his hand and felt this movement as if it were something linked up
with the respiratory movements. An expansion of the breath through
the whole body was felt as an inner life-process. He even felt the
more theoretical perception of the outer world through the senses to
be ensouled with breath, just as he felt the breath ensouling the
movements of the will.
Man felt himself
a breathing being, and because he could have said: “My breath is
modified in this and that way when I see through my eyes, hear
through my ears and receive through the effects of heat”
— because in his sensations of all kinds he “saw”
differentiated, modified, refined respiratory processes —
because of all this the path of knowledge was for him a systematic
training of the respiratory process. And this systematic training was
for those earlier epochs in the evolution of man's cognition what
university study is for us to-day.
We study
in a different way now. But in those times, when one sought religious
satisfaction or wished to acquire knowledge, one
“studied” by systematically modifying the respiratory
process; in other words, by developing what was later called Yoga
Breathing, Yoga Training. And what did one develop? If we investigate
what was attained by one who practised Yoga Breathing in order to
reach higher stages of cognition, we find something striking. Those
who came to be “savants” through Yoga exercises —
the word “savant” is not quite appropriate to these
earlier conditions, but perhaps one can use it — required as
long for this as we do for a university course. In the knowledge so
acquired they had grasped in the disposition of their souls what, in
a later age — the Graeco-Roman, for example — was
regarded as a world of ideas and present of itself in the soul, thus
making Yoga unnecessary.
*
This is really
a very interesting thing — that what men had to strive for in earlier
epochs through all kinds of exercises is present of itself in later
epochs of evolution. It has then no longer the same significance as
before. When Socrates, when Plato were alive, their philosophies had
no longer the same significance as they would have had for the
ancient pupils or teachers of Yoga, had they reached Socratic or
Platonic truths. By this Yoga-breathing the pupil did not acquire
exactly the same inner organisation as Plato, Aristotle or Scotus
Erigena, but he came to the same disposition of soul
[Seelenverfassung]. Thus we find systematic breathing
exercises practised in ancient times, and we see that this
cognitive path led to a certain vivid world of ideas.
One really
gains a correct idea of what lived later in Parmenides and Anaxagoras
if one says to oneself: What was given to men in this age as something
self-understood, had been achieved in still earlier times through
Yoga. It was always through exercises that men strove for the higher
knowledge required by their own age. Thus in the perception of the
world in later epochs, men were no longer aware of their breathing in
self-contemplation, but they perceived as the Greeks perceived (I
have given more details of this in my Riddles of Philosophy).
At that time one did not construct for oneself isolated thoughts
about the world, for ideas and sense-experiences were one. One saw
one's thoughts outside, as one saw red or blue and heard C sharp, G
or B natural. Thoughts were in the world outside. Without knowing
this, nobody understands the Greek view of the world. But the Greeks
perceived only spirit permeated with sense-perceptions, or
sense-perceptions permeated by spirit, and no longer differentiations
in the process of breathing.
*
Then once
again men sought to attain a higher stage of cognition in all domains
in which they were seeking higher knowledge. This stage was also gained
through exercises. To-day we have rather vague ideas about the early
Middle Ages and their spiritual life. A mediæval student did not learn so
abstractedly as we do to-day. He, too, had to do exercises, and
ordinary study was also combined with the doing of exercises. Inward
exercises had to be carried out, though not so strenuously as with
Yoga breathing; they were more inward, but still a set of exercises.
From this there
remains a kind of deposit, little understood now, in what were called
then the Seven Liberal Arts. They had to have been mastered by
everyone who claimed to have received a higher education.
Grammar meant the practical use of language. Rhetoric
meant more: the artistic use of language. Dialectic was the
use of language as a tool of thought. And when the student had
practised these inwardly, as exercises, Arithmetic followed;
but this, again, was not our abstract arithmetic, but an arithmetic
which entered into things and was clearly aware that man shapes all
things inwardly. In this way the student learnt Geometry
through inward exercises, and this geometry, as something involving
the human being, was the pupil's possession — a tool he could
use.
All this then
passed over into what was called Astronomy: the student integrated
his being with the cosmos, learnt to know how his head was related to
the cosmos, and how his lungs and heart resulted from the cosmos. It
was not an astronomy abstracted from man, but an astronomy in which
man had his place. And then, at the seventh stage, the pupil learnt
to know how the Divine Being weaves and rules throughout the world.
This was called Music; it was not our present music but a
higher, living elaboration of what had been elaborated in
thought-forms in Astronomy.
It was in
this way that men of a later epoch trained themselves inwardly. The
breathing exercises of earlier times had been replaced by a more inward
training of the soul.
And what
did one attain? In the course of the history of civilisation men came
gradually to have thoughts apart from sense-perceptions. This was
something that had to be acquired. The Greeks still saw thought in
the world, as we see colours and perceive tones. We grasp thought as
something we produce, not located within things. The fact that men
came to feel this in the constitution of their souls, that we can
feel this to-day — that is the result of the training in
Grammar, Rhetoric and so on to Music. Thought was thereby released.
Men learnt to move freely in thoughts. In this way was achieved what
we take for granted to-day, possessing it without these exercises
— what we find when we go to school, what is offered in the
separate sciences (as described yesterday). And precisely as man in
different epochs had to advance by means of exercises — in
ancient times by breathing exercises (Yoga) which gave him the
Graeco-Latin conception of the world as something he took for
granted; in later times by exercises that went from Grammar to Music
and gave him the scientific standpoint we have to-day — so
to-day he can again advance. He can best advance by setting out from
what is most certain: namely, mathematics, recognised as
certain to-day.
My reply to
that author was true, although it so astonished him. It was mainly through
synthetic geometry that I became clear about the clairvoyant's
procedure. Naturally, not everyone who has studied synthetic geometry
is a clairvoyant, but the procedure can be clearly presented in this
way. Though that author was so astonished at not being told the sort
of thing that people who “prophesy” are wont to relate,
it is nevertheless true that Anthroposophy, setting out from
the firm base on which science stands to-day, seeks to extend this
base; and from this base, which science itself has laid, to carry
further, into super-sensible domains, what reliable science brings
before us.
From here
we must proceed more inwardly. And a still more inward procedure is the
path to clairvoyant research which I had to describe in my books
Geheimwissenschaft
(“Occult Science”)
and
Wie erlangt man Erkenntnisse der Höheren Welten
(“How to Attain Knowledge of Higher Worlds”).
But precisely such an historical survey as I have given can show you that
anyone who stands to-day with full consciousness within Anthroposophy
derives this consciousness from standing within the course of human
evolution. My historical survey can also show you that I do not speak
from personal predilection or subjective partiality when I assert
that we need to undertake exercises in order to carry further the
historical movement that has brought humanity to its present
standpoint. Anyone who knows the course of history up to the present,
and knows how it must continue, stands consciously within the whole
historical process, and to this consciousness he adds the insight
acquired by taking — inwardly, not outwardly — the spirit
of modern science into the constitution of his soul.
Thus
one may well say: Anthroposophy knows its position in respect to the
science of to-day. It knows this in an absolute sense, because it
knows the special character of contemporary science and rejects all
that is dilettantish and amateurish. It builds further on genuine
science. On the other hand, Anthroposophy knows the historical
necessities; knows that man's path must go beyond present
achievements — if we do not wish to stand still, unlike all our
forerunners, who wanted to advance beyond the stage of
civilisation in which they shared. We, too, must go forward. And we
must know what steps to take from the present standpoint of the
scientific spirit.
In the
next few days I shall have to depict what this actually involves. The
foundations I have laid to-day will then appear, perhaps, in a more
understandable form. But I may have been able to show that Anthroposophy
knows from its scientific attitude — from an attitude as scientific
as that of science — what its aims are in face of the contemporary
world, of human evolution as a whole, and of the separate sciences.
It will get to work because it knows how it has to work. Perhaps its
path will be very long. If, on the other hand, one sees, in the
subconscious depths of human souls, the deep longings for the heights
that Anthroposophy would climb, one may surmise that it is necessary
for the welfare of humanity that the path Anthroposophy has to take
should not be too slow. But whether the pace be slow or fast may be
less important for Anthroposophy than for human progress. In many
domains we speak of being caught up in the “rapid tempo”
of our time. May all that mankind is intended to attain by cognition
of the super-sensible be attained as rapidly as the welfare of
mankind requires.
Translated by V. C. Bennie.
|