Course I - Lecture II
The Origin of the Soul
GA 52
Berlin
October 3, 1903
Somebody who speaks today about the nature of the soul
exposes himself to misunderstandings and attacks from two sides. Above
all, the theosophist, who speaks from his standpoint, from the standpoint
of knowledge and cognition, is attacked by the official science, on
the other hand, also by the adherents of the various confessions.
Today science wants to know
little about the soul, the psyche, even that science which carries psyche
in its name, psychology. Even the psychologists would like to refrain
completely from that which one calls, actually, the soul. That is why
one could stamp the catchword: psychology without soul.
— The soul is said to be something questionable, something uncertain
that one simply investigates, for example, the appearance of different
mental pictures like one also investigates a physical process; but one
wants to know nothing about the soul itself. The modern natural sciences
can impossibly assume anything like a soul. They say that the human
mental pictures are also subject to the physical laws like all other
phenomena in nature, the human being is nothing else than a higher disposed
natural product. Therefore, we should not ask what the soul is. In doing
so, one refers to Goethe’s word:
According to eternal,
Iron, great laws
We all must complete
Our existence’s circle.
Like a rolling stone moves,
the human being has to develop according to the eternal laws. On the
other side, the religions are against it, which rest on tradition and
revelation.
Theosophy is neither an
adversary of religion nor of science. It wants to attain truth like
the researchers by knowledge, and it does not deny the basic truth of
the religions.
This basic truth is often
little understood by those who represent the religions. Original, eternal
truth forms the basis of all religions. The religions existing today
developed from it. Then, however, later ingredients overgrew them. They
lost their deeper truth. The core of truth lies behind them. However,
science has not yet advanced so far that it has ascended from the matter
to the spirit. It is not yet so far that it investigates the spiritual
with the same enthusiasm as it investigates the natural phenomena. Science
finds its core of truth in future. So, this higher truth of religion
got lost, and science has not yet found it. Today, theosophy stands
between them. It falls back on the past, on the lost, and it tries to
investigate in the future what has not yet been found. In return, it
is attacked by both sides. The habits and the external customs of today
are different from those of former times, but in spite of the frequently
praised tolerance of our modern time one still tries to intimidate those
who represent an uncomfortable opinion. Somebody who speaks of the soul
today, like the naturalist speaks of the external facts, is no longer
burnt, indeed, but also methods are found to burden and to suppress
him.
Nevertheless, we get a certain
consolation looking at the future if we judge the present-day relations
by the events of the past. When in the 17th century the Italian researcher
Redi put up the assertion that the lower living beings
do not simply arise from something lifeless, he only just escaped the
destiny of Giordano Bruno. At that time, one was of
the view in general that the lower living beings developed from inorganic
substances. The view of Redi is generally valid today, and somebody,
who denies the sentence: nothing living comes from the non-living would
be regarded as being backward.
In general, Virchow’s
sentence is valid: only life from life. — However, the sentence:
soul only from soul does not yet find belief even today. But as knowledge
has advanced to the insight that life can only originate from life,
science takes over the sentence: no soul comes from something without
soul. — Then one also looks down at the limited science of our
days as it happens today in regard to the opinion of Redi’s contemporaries.
We stand with regard to the soul on the same standpoint as the scientists
of the 17th century with regard to life. According to the present-day
view the spiritual is said to develop from life only; the soul is said
to come from the animal being just like that. With compassionate smile
one will look down at this view in later times as one smiles today at
the view that life comes from something without life. The soul did not
grow up from the very basis of the mere life; the soul arose from something
spiritual. As life only seizes the form of the animal to present itself,
the soul once touched the animal form to spread out. Our knowledge is
woven into the current of the external reality, and in doing so we forget
what should occupy us mostly. The soul is endlessly close to us. We
ourselves are it. If we look into ourselves, we see the soul. This is
hard to understand for the human beings. Our observation is directed
predominantly to that which is outside us. But should that be closer
to us than that which we are ourselves?
The human beings realise
the external research today, they are strange to themselves. Why do
the human beings understand the truth of the external research so easily
and ignore what is the next to them? Nevertheless, the soul is closer
and more familiar to them. Any natural phenomenon has only to take the
way through the senses. These change and often fake the picture. The
colour-blind sees the colours in a different way than they are real.
And apart from such exceptional phenomena, we know that all eyes are
different; not two human beings see the colours in the identical nuances.
According to the eye of the seeing human being, to the ear of the hearing
one, the impressions are different. But we ourselves are our souls;
we are able to look for it at every moment. It is peculiar that on this
knowledge the influence of a great poet is based, namely: how much closer
do our souls touch us than everything that is outside us. Tolstoy’s
emotionalism is based on this knowledge stupefying him. From this view
he goes into battle against culture, fashions, and moods.
We do not see our soul only
because we have not got used to considering it in its own figure. Today
our confidence in the material is invigorated, whereas our ways of thinking
have become dull for the soul. Even those who do not adhere to religions
make themselves comfortable with researching. Goethe is quoted with
preference to their justification. One should think only as little as
possible and do research. “Feeling is everything; name is but
sound and smoke.” With these words by Goethe one wants to disprove
the reasons of the soul researchers. Everybody should find everything
in his feeling; one believes to remain preserved in a lack of clarity,
disregarding the reasons. One seems to take a kind of lyrical approach
for the most suitable concerning the soul. Because everybody is so near
to the soul, he believes to be able to understand everything out of
feeling.
Should these really be Goethe’s
own views which he allows to pronounce Faust in these words? The dramatist
must have the right to let his persons speak out of the situation. If
these words which Faust uses towards the childish Gretchen were his
creed, why Goethe would let Faust explore all wisdom of the world? “Have
now, oh! Philosophy” et cetera. It would be a strange denial of
his researching, of his doubtfulness. If we wanted to resign ourselves
with nothing else than unclear feelings concerning the soul, would we
not resemble to a painter who offers no clear outlines, no copy of that
in his picture what he has seen outside, but would be content to express
his feeling only? No, the soul cannot be explained by uncertain feeling.
Theosophy wants to announce real scientific wisdom and turns just as
little exclusively to the feeling as science does it if it explains
electricity. Not wallowing in feelings theosophy tries to further the
cognition of the soul. No, it turns to frank striving for knowledge.
The own soul leads somebody, who tries to investigate it, to those who
sat at the feet of the Masters.
Since the Theosophical Society
was founded in 1875, it has nurtured real science of the soul. It wants
to teach the human beings to behold the soul. Today everybody wants
to talk about soul and mind without having taken care seriously to recognise
them. Everybody likes to disregard the difficulties which bar his way,
therefore, the most dilettantish attempts spread. Theosophy wants to
help those who thirst for mental wisdom, and wants to do psychology
as seriously as one investigates nature scientifically. These are the
difficulties which oppose the soul researcher today where everybody
who has not studied them is not allowed to talk about natural sciences;
however, everybody is allowed to talk about the soul who has not investigated
it.
Of course, the method of
investigating is different. The scientist works with physical apparatuses.
Using them, he penetrates deeper and deeper into the secrets of nature.
The word applies to the soul research that the secrets can be disclosed
neither with levers nor with screws. The more the field of observation
extends, the more natural sciences can progress. These observations
only require the usual healthy human reason. But what the researcher
uses of reason in the laboratory is not substantially different from
that which is also necessary in business or technology, it is only a
little more intricate; however, it is no other procedure.
The spiritual truth deals
not only with the healthy human mind; it turns to other forces which
rest in the depth of the human soul. It requires a development of the
cognitive faculties. The possibility of this development always existed.
The origin of all religions goes back to them. Everything that Buddha,
that Confucius, that all the great founders of the different religions
taught goes back to this deeper spiritual truth. At the moment when
the human race was there in such a way as it still exists, the soul
was there also, and it could be investigated developing the cognitive
faculties.
It was less necessary to
extend knowledge than to develop the internal cognition to behold what
rests in the soul. In the fields of the external sciences everybody
depends on the time in which he lives. Aristotle, the great scholar
of antiquity, could not do some scientific observations in the 4th century
B. C. which are possible only today with the help of modern natural
sciences. But the soul was there always as something complete, and today
one stands more distant to this knowledge only than our ancestors in
the dim antiquity because one does not want to investigate the own soul.
The Theosophical Society is there to develop this good will. Doing this
it does nothing new. This has happened at all times. But as it is easier
to investigate what presents itself us physically, soul and mind are
also more difficult to recognise and not so easily accessible and to
everybody violent. But already in grey antiquity the human beings have
observed this multi-formity, this composite character of the soul.
What is the soul? As long
as we believe that the soul is something that only lives in the body
and leaves it then again, we cannot get knowledge of the soul. No, it
is something that is active in us and lives and penetrates all performances
of the body. It lives in the movement, in the breathing, in the digestion.
But it is not steady in all our activities.
We have arisen from a small
cell, like the plant arises from the seed. And like the plant builds
itself from the organic forces, from the germ, the human being also
develops from organic forces, from the small gametes. He forms the organs
of his body as the plant forms its leaves and flowers, and the growth
of the human being is the same as that of the plant. Therefore, the
old researchers also attributed a soul to the plant. They spoke of the
plant soul. They found that the human beings have this activity of building
the organs in common with all plants. What builds up all the organs
in the human being is something that corresponds to the plant soul.
They called it the vegetative soul and regarded the human being as related
to nature, to everything organic. The first that forms the human being
is something plant-like, hence, one considered the plant soul as the
first level of the soul. It created the human organism. It built our
body with its limbs, eyes, ears, and muscles, it built our whole body.
We resemble the plant concerning growth and structure of our body like
every organic being.
If we only had the plant
soul, we would not advance beyond the only organic life. But we possess
the ability of percipience, of feeling. We suffer pain if we pierce
one of our limbs with a needle, while the plant remains untouched if
a leaf is pierced. That points to the second level of the soul, to the
animal soul. It gives us the abilities of sensing, desiring and moving,
what we share with the whole animal realm and call it, therefore, animal
soul.
That is why we get the possibility
to grow not only like the plants, but to become the mirror of the whole
universe. The vegetative soul induces us to take up the substances which
form the organism, the animal soul moves us to take up the subordinated
soul-life. The sentient life is based on desire and pain. As our vegetative
soul could not develop organs if there were not substances around us
in the world, also the animal soul can scoop the feeling, the desire
only from the world of desires, of the impulses around us. Like without
the driving force of the germ no plant could develop from its seed,
just as little an animal-like being could originate if it could not
fill its organs with impressions if it could not fill his life with
desire and pain. Our vegetative soul constructs the organic body from
the material world. From the world of desires, the world of kama or
the kamaloka, the animal soul takes up the materials of desire in it.
If the body were lacking the ability to take up desires in it, then
desire and pain would stay away from the plant soul forever. Nothing
originates from nothing.
The human being has the
soul of desires in common with the animal. The naturalists are right
to ascribe the lower soul qualities also to the animal. It concerns,
however, a difference of the level. The miraculous facilities of the
bee state and the ant state, the dens of the beavers whose regular arrangement
corresponds to intricate mathematical calculations prove it. But also
in other way the soul increases in the animal up to something similar
to the human reason. Technical skills as the human being practices them
consciously can be aroused particularly with our pets by training. However,
a big distance is present; there is only a dim sensing with the lowest
animals, the most developed animals have something like reason to a
high degree.
Now this third level of
the human soul-life forms the intellectual soul. We would get stuck
in the animal realm if we only had an animal soul as we would not advance
beyond the plant if we had a vegetative soul only. That is why the following
question is so important: does the human being not really differ from
the higher animals? Is there no difference?
Somebody, who puts this
question to himself and checks it unreservedly, finds that the mind
of the human being, nevertheless, towers all animals. If the Pythagoreans
wanted to prove the higher soul of the human beings, they emphasised
that only the ability of counting would be given to them. Even if anything
similar is found with certain animals, the immense difference comes
clearly to the fore between animal and human being, because we deal
with an original ability of the human soul organs, whereas it is training
with the animal.
Because the human being
can count, he differs from the animal, but also because he advances
beyond the animal and the immediate need. No animal advances beyond
the immediate need of the temporal and the transient. No animal rises
to the real and true, beyond the immediate sensory truth. The sentence
that two times two is four must apply at any rate, may the transient
truth of the senses lose their validity under other circumstances. May
beings live on the planet Mars of which kind ever, may they hear the
tone by means of their ears differently, may they perceive colours differently,
all thinking beings on all planets must equally accept the correctness
of the calculation two times two is four. What the human being gains
from his soul, is valid for all times. It was valid for millions of
years and will be valid in millions of years because it is descended
from the imperishable.
Thus the imperishable part
in us which makes us citizens of eternity rests in our transient part,
in the animal-like part. As the animal soul is built from the substances
of kama, the higher mind soul builds itself from the spiritual realm.
Nothing comes into being
from nothing. Aristotle, the master of those who had knowledge who was,
however, no initiate, arrives at the concept of miracle where he speaks
of the spiritual. He constructs the body strictly lawfully from nature,
but he lets the soul come into being every time anew by a miracle of
the creator. The soul is a creation from nothing for Aristotle. A new
creation is every soul also for the exoteric Christianity of the later
centuries. However, we do not want to assume the perpetual miracle of
soul creation. Like the origin of the vegetative soul has resulted from
the plant, that of the animal soul from the world of the instinctual
life, the mind soul has to come into being — unless nothing has
to originate from nothing — from the spiritual of the world. We
are led to the spirit, to the soul of the universe as Giordano Bruno
expresses it in his works: by the organic forces of the universe and
the soul forces of the universe.
Why do we all have a particular
soul? Why does every soul have its particular qualities? Science explains
the particular qualities of the animals by means of natural development
of a species from a species. But every animal species still carries
qualities in itself which point to its origin from other animal species.
The spiritual soul can develop
only from something individual-spiritual. Just nobody would think that
a lion originated directly from the cosmic forces of the universe, as
absurd it would be to suppose that the individual soul developed from
the general spiritual contents of the universe, from the spiritual reservoirs
of the universe. Theosophy stands there on the ground which just corresponds
to a scientific view. As sciences let a species develop from a species
theosophy lets a soul develop from a soul. It also lets the higher arise
from subordinated.
The single soul develops
from the universal soul like the animal formed from the general animal
principle. According to the soul principle a soul comes into being from
a soul. Every soul is a result of a soul and is again cause of a soul.
The soul which itself is eternal rises from the eternal origin. Theosophy
goes back to the so-called third human race with whose appearance the
higher soul element could come to the fore as an impact in the organic.
One calls this human race the Lemurian one. Prior to this, the soul
element was in the animal. For also the animal world comes from the
soul element. It has only taken hold of the animal to fulfil its functions.
From there it works from soul to soul.
Hence, education means to
develop what rests as an individual in the human being. The first principle
of education is to wake this higher soul element resting in every human
being. With the animals the single animal coincides with the concept
of the genus; a tiger is on a par with the other tiger in any essential
part. However, one is not justified to regard a human being as of the
same kind as the other human being. The soul of every human being differs
from that of the other human being. In order to arouse the soul element
in the human being, the art of education must also be different for
any individual human being. Because the awakening of the soul forces
was the beginning of any education, higher beings had to be there when
that third human race rose to spiritual life. The soul did not develop
from wildness, from ignorance. Millions of years ago, when the human
beings rose from the only impulsive condition, it did not happen by
itself, but by the great teachers helping this human race.
There must also be great
teachers who tower above humankind surrounding them, who draw them up
to a higher point of view. Also today there are teachers who tower above
the present knowledge who reproduce the soul germ. I discuss in an additional
talk where these teachers come from. One has known about these leaders
of humankind at all times. One of the most excellent philosophers, Schelling,
who himself was no theosophist, speaks in one of his often misunderstood
works also of them.
These great teachers who
can give information about the spiritual who are experts of the soul
element whose wisdom is of etheric kind, is a mental cognition, they
have supported and led humankind. The Theosophical Society wants to
lead the human beings again to these soul researchers. In their middle
are these who can give information about the nature of the soul. They
cannot come to the fore in the world, they cannot say: accept our truth,
because the human beings would not understand their language. The great
truth is hidden to most people. The task of the Theosophical Society
is to lead the human beings to the sources of wisdom. We have these
goals in luminous clearness before us.
Our era has advanced so
delightfully far that it denies the existence of the own soul. The task
of our movement is to give back this era the confidence in itself and
in the eternal and imperishable in us, in the divine core of our being.
Notes:
Psychology without soul: Friedrich
Albert Lange (German philosopher and sociologist, 1828–1875)
in his work History of Materialism and Critique of Its Present
Significance (1866)
Francesco
Redi (1626–1697), Italian physician
Giordano
Bruno (1548–1600), Italian Dominican friar, philosopher.
Rudolf
Virchow (1821–1902), German anthropologist, pathologist
Leo
Tolstoy (1828–1902), Russian writer
Friedrich
Wilhelm Joseph Schelling (1775–1854), German philosopher
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