Practical Training
in Thought
A Lecture given at
Carlsruhe 18th January, 1909
by
Rudolf Steiner,
Ph.D.
Translated by GEORGE
KAUFMANN
1928
PRINTED
IN ENGLAND.
LONDON:
RUDOLF STEINER PUBLISHING CO.,
54 BLOOMSBURY STREET, W.C.I
The
Authorized English Translation
Edited by H. Collison
New
and Revised Edition
COPYRIGHT 1928
BY
ANTHROPOSOPHICAL PUBLISHING CO.
Unwin Brothers, Limited, London and Woking
|
Practical Training in
Thought
IT may seem strange to
some, if an anthroposophist, of all people, feels himself
called upon to speak of practical training in thought. For people
very often imagine Anthroposophy to be something highly unpractical,
having nothing whatever to do with real life. That is because they
look at the thing externally and superficially. In reality,
what we are concerned with in the anthroposophical movement is
intended as a guide for everyday life, for the most matter-of-fact
affairs of life. We should be able to transform it at every moment
into a sure sense and feeling, enabling us to meet life
confidently and find our footing in the
world.
People who call
themselves practical imagine that their actions are guided by the
most practical principles. When you look into the matter closely, you
will, however, frequently discover that what they call their
practical way of thinking is not thinking at all, but the mere
“jogging along” with old opinions and acquired habits of
thought. You will often find there is very little that is really
practical behind it. What they call practical consists in this: they
have learned how their teachers, or their predecessors in business,
thought about the matter in hand, and then they simply take the same
line. Anyone who thinks along different lines they regard as a
very unpractical person. In effect, his thinking does not accord with
the habits to which they have been brought up. In cases where
something really practical has been invented, you will not generally
find that it was done by any of the “practical”
people.
Take for
instance our present postage stamp. Surely the most obvious thing
would be to suppose that it was invented by a practical
post-office official. But it was not. At the beginning of last
century it was a very long and troublesome business to post a letter.
You had to go to the office where letters were posted, and various
books had to be referred to; in short, there were all manner of
complicated proceedings. It is hardly more than sixty years since the
uniform postal rate to which we are
now accustomed was introduced. And our postage stamp, which makes
this simple arrangement possible, was invented, not by a practical
man in the postal service, but by a complete outsider. It was the
Englishman, Rowland Hill. When the postage stamp had been invented,
the Minister who had to do with the Postal Department said in the
English Parliament: In the first place, we can by no means assume
that as a result of this simplification postal communication
will really increase so enormously as this unpractical man
imagines; and secondly, even assuming that it did, the main
Post Office in London would not be big enough to hold it.
It never dawned
on this very practical man that the Post Office building ought to be
adapted to the amount of correspondence, and not the amount of
correspondence to the building. Yet in what was, comparatively
speaking, the shortest imaginable time, the thing was carried out.
One of the unpractical people had to fight for it against a practical
man. To-day we take it as a matter of course that letters are sent
with a postage stamp.
It was similar
in the case of the railways. In the year 1887, when the first German railway
was to be constructed between Nuremberg and Fürth, the Bavarian
College of Medicine, being consulted, pronounced the following expert
opinion. In the first place, they said, it was inadvisable to build
railways at all; if, however, it were intended to do so, it would at
any rate be necessary to erect a high wall of wooden planks to the
left and right of the line, in order that passers-by might not suffer
from nerve and brain shock.
When the line
from Potsdam to Berlin had to be built, the Postmaster-General Stengler
said: I send two mail coaches a day to Potsdam and they are not full
up; if these people are bent on wasting their money, they might as
well throw it out of the window without more ado.
In effect,
the real facts of life leave the “practical” people behind,
or rather they leave behind those who so fondly call themselves
practical.
We have to
distinguish true thinking from the so-called practical thinking, which
merely consists in opinions based on the habits of thought in which
people have been brought up.
I will tell
you a little experience of my own, and make it a starting-point for our
considerations to-day.
In my
undergraduate days, a young colleague once came to me. He was bubbling
over with that intense pleasure which you may observe in people who have
just had 'a really brilliant idea. “I am on my way,” he
said, “to see Professor X. (who at that time occupied the chair
in Machine Construction), for I have made a wonderful discovery. I
have discovered a machine whereby it will be possible by the use of a
very little steam-power to exert an enormous amount of work.”
That was all he could tell me, for he was in a tremendous hurry to go
to see the Professor. However, he did not find him at home, so he
came back and set to work to explain the matter to me. Of course,
from the very start the whole thing had sounded to me suspiciously
like perpetual motion; but, after all, why shouldn't such a thing be
possible one fine day? So I listened; and after he had gone through
the whole explanation, I had to answer: “Yes, it is certainly
very cleverly thought out; but you see, in practice it surely comes
to this. It's as though you were to get into a railway truck and push
tremendously hard, and imagine that the truck would thereby begin to
move. That is the principle of thought in your invention?” And
then he saw that it was so, and he did not go to see the Professor
again.
THAT is how it is
possible to shut oneself up, as it were, in one's thought. People put
themselves in a neat little box with their thought. In rare
cases this is perfectly evident; but people are continually doing it
in life, and it is not always so clear and striking as in the
instance we have taken. One who is able to look into the matter a
little more intimately knows that this is the way with a great many
human processes of thought. He constantly sees people standing, as it
were, in their truck, pushing from the inside, and imagining that it
is they who are propelling it.
Much of what
happens in life would happen altogether differently if people were not
such pushers, standing in their trucks!
True practice
of thought requires us in the first place to have the right attitude of
mind, the right feeling about thought. How can we gain this? No
one can come to a right feeling about thought who imagines that
thought is something which merely takes place within man, inside his
head, or in his mind or soul. Anyone who starts with this idea
will have a wrong feeling, and will continually be diverted from the
search for a truly practical way of thought. He will fail to make the
necessary demands on his thinking activity. To acquire the right
feeling towards thought, he must rather say to himself: “If
I am able to make myself thoughts about the things, if I am able to
get at the things through thoughts, then the things must already
contain the thoughts within them. The thoughts must be there in the
very plan and structure of the things. Only so can I draw the
thoughts out of them.”
Man must say
to himself that it is the same with the things in the world outside as
with a watch. The comparison of the human organism to a watch
is frequently used, but people often forget the most important thing.
They forget the watchmaker. The cogs and wheels did not run together
and join up of their own accord and set the watch in motion, but
there was a watchmaker there first, to construct the watch. We must
not forget the watchmaker. It is through thoughts that the
watch has come into being. The thoughts have, as it were, flowed out
into the watch, into the external object. And this is the way in
which we must think of all the works of nature of all the natural
creation, and of all natural processes. It can easily be illustrated
in a thing that is human creation: in the things of nature it is not
quite so easy to perceive. And yet they too are works of the spirit;
behind them are spiritual beings.
When man
thinks about things, he is only thinking after, he is only re-thinking,
that which has first been laid into them. We must believe that the world
has been created by thought and is still in continual process of creation
by thought. This belief, and this alone, can give birth to a really
fruitful inner practice of thought.
It is always
unbelief in the spiritual content of the world that underlies the greatest
impracticality of thought. This is true in the sphere of science
itself. For example, some one will say, our planetary system came
about as follows: “First there was a primeval
nebula. It began to rotate, drew together into one central body from
which rings and spheres split off, and by this mechanical process the
whole planetary system came into being.” People who speak like
that are making a grave error in thought. They have a pretty way of
teaching it to the children nowadays. There is a neat little
experiment which they show in many schools. They float a drop of oil
in a glass of water, stick a pin through the middle of the drop and
then set it in rotation. Thereupon little drops split off from the
big drop in the middle, and you have a minute planetary system. A
nice little object lesson, so they think, to show the pupil how such
a thing can come about in a purely mechanical way.
Only an
unpractical way of thinking can draw this conclusion from the experiment.
For the man who transplants the idea to the great cosmic planetary system
generally forgets just one thing — which at other times it is
perhaps quite good to forget — he forgets himself. He forgets
that he himself, after all, set the thing in rotation. If he had not
been there and done the whole thing, the drop of oil would never have
split off the little drops. If the man would observe that too, and
transfer the idea to the planetary system, then, and then only, would
his thought be complete.
Such errors
in thought play a very great part to-day — and they do so especially
in what is now called science. These things are far more important than
people generally imagine.
IF we would make our
thinking practical, we must first know that thoughts can only be
drawn from a world in which thoughts already are. Just as you can
only draw water from a glass that does really contain water, so you
can only draw thoughts from things that already contain thoughts. The
world is built up by thoughts, and it is only for that reason that we
can gain thoughts from the world. If it were not so, then there could
be no such thing as a practice of thought at all. When a man really
feels what has here been said, and feels it to the full, then he will
easily transcend the stage of abstract thinking. When a man has full
confidence and faith that behind things there are thoughts, that the
real facts of life take place according to thoughts — when he
has this confidence and feeling, then he will readily be converted to
a practice of thought that is founded on reality.
We will now
set forth some elements of practice in thought. If you are penetrated by
the belief that the world of facts takes its course in thoughts, you will
admit how important it is to develop true thinking.
Let us assume
that someone says to himself: “I want to strengthen my thought, so
that it may find its true bearings at every point in life.” He
must then take guidance from what will now be said. The indications
that will now be given are to be taken as real practical principles
— principles such, that if you try again and again and again to
guide your thought accordingly, definite results will follow. Your
thinking will become practical, even though it may not appear so at
first sight. Indeed, if you carry out these principles, you will have
altogether fresh experiences in your life of thought.
Let us assume
that someone makes the following experiment. On a certain day he
carefully observes some process in the world which is
accessible to him, which he can observe quite accurately — say,
for example, the appearance of the sky. He observes the cloud
formations in the evening, the way in which the sun went down.
And now he makes a distinct and accurate mental image of what he has
observed.
He tries to
hold it fast for a time in all its details. He holds fast as much of it
as he can, and tries to keep it till the following day. On the morrow,
about the same time, or even at another time of day, he again
observes the appearance of the sky and the weather, and he tries once
more to form an exact mental image of it.
If in this
way he forms clear mental images of successive conditions, he will soon
perceive with extraordinary distinctness that he is enriching
his thought and making it inwardly intense. For what makes a man's
thought unpractical is the fact that in observing successive
processes in the world he is generally too much inclined to leave out
the actual details and to retain only a vague and confused picture in
his mind. The essential, the valuable thing for strengthening
our thought is to form exact pictures above all in the case of
successive processes and then to say to ourselves:
“Yesterday the thing was so; to-day it is so.” And in
doing this we must bring before our minds the two pictures which are
separated in the real world, as graphically, as vividly as
possible.
To begin with,
this exercise is simply a particular expression of our belief that the
thoughts are there in reality. We are not immediately to draw some
conclusion — to conclude from what we observe to-day what the
weather and the sky will be like to-morrow. That would only corrupt
our thinking. No, we must have faith that outside in the reality of
things they have their connection, and that to-morrow's process is
somehow connected with to-day's. We are not to speculate about it,
but first of all to think, in mental images as clear as possible, the
scenes which in the external world are separated in time. We place
the two pictures side by side before our minds, and then let the one
gradually change into the other.
This is a
definite principle which must be followed if we would develop a truly
objective way of thinking. It is especially valuable to take this
line with things which we do not yet understand, where we have not
yet penetrated the inner connection. Particularly with those
processes — the sky and the weather, for example — which
we do not understand at all, we must have the belief that, as they
are connected in the outside world, so will they work their
connections within us. And we must do it simply in mental pictures,
refraining from thought. We must say to ourselves: “I do not
yet know the connection, but I will let these things grow and evolve
within me, and if I refrain from all speculation, I am sure they will
be working something within me.”
You will not
find it difficult to imagine that something may take place in the invisible
vehicles of a human being who, refraining from thought in this way,
strives to call forth clear mental images of processes and events
that succeed one another in time in the outer world. Man has an
astral body as the vehicle of his life of thought and ideation. So
long as he speculates, this astral body of man is the slave of his
Ego. But it is not completely involved in this conscious activity,
for it also stands in relation to the whole Universe. Now as we
refrain from giving play to our own arbitrary trains of thought, and
simply form in ourselves mental images, clear pictures of successive
events, in like measure will the inner thoughts of the universe work
in us and impress themselves upon our astral body, without our
knowing it. As, by observation of the processes in the world, we fit
ourselves to enter into the world's course, and as we take its scenes
and pictures into our thoughts clearly and faithfully in their
reality and let them work in us, so do we become ever wiser and wiser
in those vehicles and members of our being that are outside our
consciousness.
So it is
with processes in nature that are inwardly connected. When we are able
to let the one picture change into the other just as the change took
place in nature, we shall soon perceive, that our thought is gaining
a certain flexibility and strength.
That is how
we should proceed with things that we do not yet understand. For things
that we do understand — events, for example, that take place around
us in our daily life — our attitude should be slightly different.
For instance,
someone — your neighbour, perhaps — has done something or
other. You consider: Why did he do it? You come to the
conclusion: Perhaps he did it in preparation for such and such a
thing that he intends to do to-morrow. Very well; do not go on
speculating, but try to sketch out a picture of what you think
he will do to-morrow. You imagine to yourself: That is what he will
do to-morrow; and now you wait and see what he really does. It may be
on the following day you will observe that he really does what you
imagined. Or it may be that he does something different. You observe
what really happens and try to correct your thoughts accordingly.
Thus we select
events in the present which we follow out in thought into the future, and
we wait and see what actually happens. We can do this with the actions
of men, and with many other things. Where we feel that we understand
a thing, we try to form a picture of what, in our opinion, will take
place. If it does take place as we expected, our thinking was
correct; that is good. If what happens is different from what we
expected, then we try to think where we made the mistake. Thus we try
to correct our wrong thoughts by quiet observation, by examining
where the mistake lay, and why it was that it happened as it
did.
If, however,
we were right, then we must be careful to avoid the danger of mere
self-congratulation and boasting of our prophecy: “Oh
yes, I knew that was going to happen, yesterday.”
Here again
you have a method based on the belief that there is an inner necessity
lying in the things and events themselves — that there is something
in the facts themselves which drives them forward. The forces working in
things, working on from one day to the next, are forces of thought.
If we dive down into the things, then we become conscious of these
thought-forces. By such exercises we make them present to our
consciousness. When what we foresaw is fulfilled, we are in
attunement with them. Then we are in an inner relationship to the
real thought-activity of the thing itself.
Thus we accustom
ourselves not to think arbitrarily, but to take our thought from the
inner necessity, the inner nature of things.
There is yet
another direction in which we can train our practice of thought.
An event that
happens to-day is also related to things that happened yesterday. For
example, a child has been naughty. What can have caused it? You
follow the events back to the previous day, you construct the causes
which you do not know. You say to yourself: “I fancy that this
thing which has happened to-day was led up to by such and such things
yesterday or the day before.”
You then make
inquiries and find out what really happened, and so discover whether
your thought was correct. If you have found the real cause, then it
is well; but if you have formed a wrong idea of it, then you must try
to see the mistake clearly. You consider how your thought-process
developed, and how it took place in reality, and compare the one with
the other.
It is very
important to carry out such principles and methods. We must find time
to observe things in this way — as though with our thinking we
were in the things themselves. We must dive down into the things,
into their inner thought-activity.
If we do so,
we shall gradually perceive how we are entering into the very life of
things. We no longer have the feeling that the things are outside, and
we are here in our shell, thinking about them; but we begin to feel how
our thought is living and moving in the things themselves. To a man who
has attained this in a high degree, a new world opens up. Such a man
was Goethe. He was a thinker who was always in the things with his
thoughts. In 1826 the psychologist Heinroth said in his book,
Anthropology, that Goethe's was an objective thinking.
Goethe was delighted with this description. Heinroth meant that
Goethe's thought did not separate itself off from the things or
objects; it remained in the objects, it lived and moved in the
necessity of things. Goethe's thought was at the same time
contemplation; his contemplation, his looking at things, was at
the same time thought.
Goethe
developed this way of thinking to a
high degree. More than once it happened, when he was intending to go
out for some purpose or other, that he went to the window and said to
whoever happened to be by: “In three hours it will rain”
— and so it did. From the little segment of the sky which was
visible from his window he could tell what would happen in the
weather in the next few hours. His true thought, remaining in the
things, enabled him to sense the later events that were already
preparing in the preceding ones.
FAR more can be
achieved by practical thinking than is generally imagined. We have
described certain principles of thought. A man who makes them his own
will discover that his thought is really becoming practical. His
vision widens, and he grasps the things of the world quite
differently than before. Little by little his attitude to things, and
also to other human beings, will become different. A real process
takes place in him, one that alters his whole conduct of life. It can
be of immense importance for a man to try to grow into the things
with his thought in this way. In the fullest sense of the word it is
a practical undertaking to train our thinking by such
exercises.
There is
another exercise which is particularly valuable for people who fail to
get the right idea at the right moment.
Such people
should try, above all, to think not merely in the way suggested by every
passing moment. They should not merely give themselves up to what the
ordinary course of things brings with it. When a man has half an hour
to lie down and rest, it nearly always happens that he simply gives
his thoughts free play. They spin out in a thousand different
directions. Or perhaps his life is just occupied by some special
worry. Suddenly it flies into his consciousness, and he is
completely absorbed in it. If a man lets things happen in this way,
he will never arrive at the point where the right thing occurs to him
at the right moment. If he wants to succeed in this, he must do as
follows. When he has half an hour to lie down and rest, he must say
to himself: “Now that I have time, I will think about something
which I myself will choose — something which I bring into my
consciousness by my own will and choice. For example, I will think
about something that I experienced at some earlier date — say
on a walk two years ago. I will bring it into my thought and think
about it for a certain time — say even only for five minutes.
All other things — away with them for these five minutes! I
myself will choose what I am going to think about.”
The choice
need not even be as difficult as the one I have just suggested. The point
is, not that you try to work upon your processes of thought by difficult
exercises to begin with, but that you tear yourself away from all you
are involved in by your ordinary life. You must choose something
right outside the web of interests into which you are woven by your
everyday existence. And if you suffer from lack of inspiration, if
nothing else occurs to you at the moment, then you can have recourse,
say, to a book. Open it, and think about whatever you happen to
read on the first page which catches your eye. Or, you say to
yourself: “Now I will think about what I saw at a certain
time this morning just as I was going into the office.” Only it
must be something to which in the ordinary course you would have paid
no further attention. It must be something beside the ordinary
run of things, something you would otherwise not have thought
about at all.
If you carry
on such exercises systematically and repeat them again and again, the
result will soon be to cure you of your lack of inspiration. You will
get the right idea at the right moment. Your thought will become
mobile, which is immensely important for a man in practical
life.
Another
exercise is especially adapted to work on the memory.
First you try
to remember some event — say, an event of yesterday — in the
crude way in which one generally remembers things. For, as a rule,
people have the greyest of grey recollections of things. As a rule
you are satisfied if you only remember the name of someone you met
yesterday. But if you want to develop your power of memory you must
no longer be satisfied with that. You must set to work systematically
and say to yourself: “I will now recall the person I saw
yesterday, clearly and distinctly. I will recall the surroundings,
the particular corner at
which I saw him. I will sketch out the picture in detail; I will have
an accurate mental image of what he was wearing — his coat, his
waistcoat, and so on.” Most people, when they try this
exercise, will discover that they are quite unable to do it. They
will notice how very much is missing from the picture. They are
unable to call up a graphic idea of what they actually experienced on
the previous day.
In the vast
majority of cases it is so; and this is the condition from which we must
start. As a matter of fact, people's observation is generally most
inaccurate. An experiment which a University Professor made with his
class showed that, of thirty people who were present, only two had
observed a thing correctly; the other twenty-eight had it
wrong. But good memory is the child of faithful observation.
To develop our memory, the important thing is that we should observe
accurately. By dint of faithful observation we can acquire a good
memory. Through certain inner paths of the soul a true memory is born
of a good habit of observation.
Now suppose
that, to begin with, you find you are unable to call to mind, exactly,
something that you experienced on the previous day. What is the
next thing to do? Begin by remembering the thing as accurately as
possible; and where your memory fails you, try to fill in the gaps by
imagining something which is, probably, incorrect. For instance, if
you have absolutely forgotten whether a person you met had on a grey
coat or a black one, then imagine him in a grey coat, and say to
yourself that he had such and such buttons to his waistcoat, and a
yellow tie; and then you fill in the surroundings — a yellow
wall, a tall man passing on the left, a short man on the right, and
so forth.
Whatever you
remember, put it in the picture, and then fill it in arbitrarily with the
things you do not remember. Only try to have a complete picture
before your mind. The picture will, of course, be incorrect, but by
the effort to gain a complete picture you will be stimulated to
observe more accurately in the future. Continue doing such exercises
— and when you have done them fifty times, then the fifty-first
time you will know exactly what the person you met looked like and
what he had on. You will remember exactly, to the very
waistcoat-buttons. You will no longer overlook anything, but every
detail will impress itself upon your mind. By this exercise you will
first have sharpened your powers of observation, and in addition you
will have gained a truer memory, which is the child of accurate
observation.
It is especially
valuable to pay attention to this. Do not merely content yourself
with remembering the names and the main outlines of things, but try
to get mental images as graphic as possible, including the real
details; and where your memory fails you, fill in the picture and
make it whole. You will soon see — though it seems to come in a
roundabout way — that your memory is becoming more
faithful.
Clear directions
can thus be given, whereby a man can make his thought ever more and more
practical.
There is another thing
of great importance. Man has a certain craving to reach a definite
result when he is considering some line of action. He turns it over
in his mind, how should he do the thing, and comes to a definite
conclusion. We can well understand this impulse; but it does not lead
to a practical way of thinking. Every time we hurry our thought on,
we are going backward and not forward. Patience is necessary in these
things.
For example:
there is something you have to do. It is possible to do it in one way or
in another; there may be various possibilities. Now have patience; try
to imagine exactly what would happen if you did it in this way, and
then try to imagine what would happen if you did it in that
way.
Of course,
there will always be reasons for preferring the one course of action to
the other. But now refrain from making up your mind at once. Try,
instead, to sketch out the two possibilities, and then say to
yourself: “Now that's done — now I will stop thinking
about it.”
At this point
many people will become fidgety, and that is a difficult thing to
overcome. But it is no less valuable to overcome it. Say to
yourself: “The thing is possible in this way and in that way,
and now for a time I will think no more about it.” If the
circumstances permit, defer your action to the next day, and
then once more bring the two possibilities before your mind.
You will find that in the meantime the things have changed, and that
on the following day you are able to decide quite differently —
far more thoroughly, at any rate, than you would have done the day
before.
There
is an inner necessity in the things
themselves, and if we do not act impatiently and arbitrarily, but let
this inner necessity work in us — and it will work in us
— then it will enrich our thought. And our thought, being
thus enriched, will appear again the next day and enable us to form a
more correct decision. That is immensely valuable.
Or to take
another example: someone asks your advice about some point that has to
be decided. Do not burst in with your decision straight away, but have
the patience to lay the various possibilities before your own mind
quietly and to form no conclusion on your own account. Let the
different possibilities hold sway. An old proverb says: “Sleep
on it before deciding” — but sleeping on it is not
enough. It is necessary to think over two or even more possibilities
(if there are more than two, so much the better). These possibilities
work on in us, when we ourselves, so to speak, are not there with our
conscious Ego. Later on, we return to the thing. We shall see that by
this means we are calling to life inner forces of thought, and that
our thinking grows ever more practical and to the point.
Whatever it
is that a man is seeking to find, it is there in the world. Whether he
stands at the lathe or behind the plough, or whether he belongs to the
so-called privileged classes and professions, if he does these
exercises, he will become a practical thinker in the most everyday
affairs of life. Practising his thought in this way, he begins to
look at the things in the world with a new vision. And though these
exercises may at first sight appear ever so inward and remote from
external life, it is precisely for external life that they are so
useful. They entail the greatest imaginable significance for the
external world; they have important consequences.
I
will give you an
example to show how necessary it is to think about things
practically. A man climbed a tree and was doing something or other up
above; suddenly he fell down and was dead. The thought that lies
nearest at hand is that he was killed by the fall. Most probably,
people will say: “The fall was the cause, and his death the
result.” Such is the apparent connection between cause and
effect. But this conclusion may involve an utter inversion of the
facts. For it may be that he had a fatal heart attack, and fell down
as a consequence. Exactly the same thing happened as though he
had fallen down alive. He went through the same external processes
that might really have been the cause of his death. So it is possible
to make a complete inversion of cause and effect.
In this
example the fault is very evident, but often it is not so striking. Such
mistakes in thought occur very frequently. Indeed, it must be said that
in modern Science conclusions of this kind are drawn day by day,
with a complete reversal of cause and effect. It is only not
perceived because people fail to put before them the possibilities of
thought.
One more
example may be given, to show you as vividly as possible how such mistakes
in thought come about, and how they will no longer happen to a man who
has done the kind of exercises which have here been
indicated.
A learned
scientist says to himself that man, as he is to-day, is descended from
an ape. That is to say, what I learn to know in the ape — the forces
at work in the ape — evolve to greater perfection and so result in
the human being. Now in order to indicate the significance of
this as thought, let us make the following supposition. Suppose
that by some circumstance the man who will propound this theory be
placed on the earth alone. There are no other human beings around
him; there are only those apes of which the said theory declares that
human beings can originate from them. Let him now make an accurate
study of them. Entering into the minutest detail, he forms a
conception of what there is in the ape. Albeit he has never seen a
man, let him now try to develop the concept of a man out of his
concept of an ape. He will see that he cannot. His concept
“ape” will never transform into the concept
“man.”
If he had
right habits of thought, he would say to himself: “I see that the
concept of an ape will not transform itself within me into the concept
of a man. Therefore what I perceive in the ape is also not capable of
becoming man, for if it were, the same power of evolution would
be latent in the concept. Something more must come in, something that
I am unable to perceive.” Thus, behind the visible ape, he
would have to imagine something invisible and super-sensible —
something which he could not perceive, but which alone would make the
transformation into man a possible conception.
The
impossibility of the whole thing need not here concern us; we only
wanted to reveal the faulty thinking which lies behind that theory.
If the man's thinking were right, he would be led to the conclusion
that he could not think the theory at all without postulating something
super-sensible.
If you
consider it, you will readily see that in this matter a whole succession
of thinkers have committed a grave error. Such errors will no longer be
committed by one who trains his thinking in the way here
indicated.
A large
proportion of modern literature (and particularly of the scientific
literature) is positively painful to read, for a man who is able to
think rightly. Its crooked, perverted ways of thought are distressing
to have to follow. In saying this, we are by no means depreciating
the wealth of observation and discovery that has been accumulated by
modern Natural Science with its objective methods.
All this has
to do with short-sightedness of thought. It is a fact that men seldom know
how very little to the point their thinking is, and to what a large
extent it is the result of mere habits of thought. And so, one who
penetrates the world and life will judge differently from one
who lacks this penetration, or who has it only to a very small degree
— a materialistic thinker, for example. It is not easy to
convince people by grounds and arguments, however good, however
genuine. It is often a thankless task to try to convince by grounds
and reasoned arguments a man who knows little of life. For he simply
does not see the reasons which make this or that statement
possible. If, for instance, he has grown used to see nothing but
matter in things, he simply adheres to this habit of
thought.
As a rule
it is not the alleged reasons which lead people to their statements.
Beneath and behind the reasons, it is the habits of thought which they
have acquired, and which determine their whole way of feeling. While
they put forward reasons, they are only masking feelings that are
instinctive with thoughts that are habitual. Thus often, not only is
the wish father to the thought, but all the feelings and habits and
ways of thinking are parents of the thoughts. A man who knows life,
knows how little possibility there is of convincing people by logical
grounds and arguments. That which decides in the soul is far deeper
than the logical reasons.
And so there is good
reason for this anthroposophical movement, working on in its
different groups and branches. Everyone who works in this
movement will presently perceive that he has acquired
a new way of thinking and feeling about things.
For by our work in the groups we
are not only finding the logical reasons for this and that; we are
acquiring a wider mental outlook, a deeper and more far-reaching way
of feeling.
How, for
example, did a man scoff a few years ago, when he heard a lecture on
Spiritual Science for the first time! And to-day, perhaps, how many
things are clear and transparent to him, which a short time ago
he would have considered highly absurd! By working in this
anthroposophical movement we not only transform our thoughts; we
learn to bring all our life of soul into a wider
perspective.
We must
understand that the colouring of our thoughts has its origin far deeper
than is generally imagined. It is the feelings which frequently impel a
man to hold certain opinions. The logical reasons he puts forward are
often a mere screen, a mask for his deeper feelings and habits of
thought.
To bring
ourselves to the point where logical reasons really mean something to us,
we must first learn to love the logic in things. Only when we have learned
to love what is real and objective, only then will the logical reasons
be the decisive thing for us. We gradually learn to think objectively
— independently, as it were, of our affections for this thought
or that. Then our vision widens and we become practical — not
in the sense of those who can only think on along the accustomed
lines, but practical in the sense that we learn to draw our thoughts
from out of the things themselves.
Practical life
is born of objective thinking — that thinking which flows out of the
things themselves. It is only by carrying out such exercises that we
learn to take our thoughts from the things. And these exercises must
be done with sound and healthy things — things that are least
perverted by human civilisation — things of Nature.
Practising our
thought as here described in connection with the things of Nature, will make
us practical thinkers. This is a really practical thing to do. And we
shall take hold of the most everyday occupations in a practical way,
if once we train this fundamental element in life: our thinking. A
practical frame of mind, a practical way of thinking, forms itself,
when we exercise the human soul in the way here indicated.
The
spiritual-scientific movement must bear fruit: it must place really
practical men and women out into the world. It is less important for
a man to feel able to accept the truth of this or that teaching. It
is more important that he should develop the faculty for seeing
things and penetrating things correctly. It is not a matter of
theorising away beyond the things visible to the senses, —
spinning theories into the spiritual realm. Far more important is the
way in which Anthroposophy penetrates our soul, stimulates our
activity of soul, widens our vision. It is in this that Anthroposophy
is truly practical.
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