PART I
THE WISDOM OF MAN (Anthroposophy)
Berlin, October 23–27, 1909
LECTURE I
The Position of Anthroposophy in Relation
to Theosophy and Anthropology.
The Human Senses.
ERE in Berlin, as well as in other localities where our Society has
spread, much has been discussed that concerns the comprehensive realm
of theosophy, that emanates, so to speak, from the high regions of
clairvoyant consciousness, and it is natural that a desire should
have arisen to do something toward a serious and adequate
substantiation of our spiritual current.
The present General Assembly, which brings our members
together here at the seventh anniversary of our German Section, may
be taken as the proper occasion for contributing something toward
strengthening the foundations of our cause. This I shall attempt to
do at this time in the four lectures on Anthroposophy.
The lectures in Kassel on The Gospel of St. John, those
in Düsseldorf on the hierarchies, those in Basel on The Gospel
of St. Luke, and those in Munich on the teachings of oriental
theosophy, were all occasions for rising to high altitudes of
spiritual research and for bringing back spiritual truths difficult
of access. What occupied us there was theosophy and, at least in
part, its ascent to exalted spiritual peaks of human cognition.
It does not seem unjustifiable, given a gradually
acquired feeling in the matter, to see something deeper in what is
called the cyclical course of world events. At the time of our first
General Assembly, when the German Section was founded, I delivered
lectures to an audience composed only in part of theosophists; those
lectures may be characterized as the historical chapter of
anthroposophy. Now, after a lapse of seven years that constitute a
cycle, the time seems ripe for speaking in a more comprehensive sense
on the nature of anthroposophy.
First, I should like to make clear through a comparison
what should be understood by the term anthroposophy. If we wish to
observe a section of country, together with all that is spread out
there in the way of fields, meadows, woods, villages, roads, we can
do so by going about from village to village, through streets and
meadows and woods, and we will always have a small section of the
whole region in view. Again, we can climb to a mountain top and from
there overlook the whole landscape. The details will be indistinct
for the ordinary eye, but we have a comprehensive view of the whole.
That approximately describes the relation between what
in ordinary life is called human cognition or human science, and what
theosophy stands for.
While the ordinary search for human knowledge goes about
from detail to detail in the world of facts, theosophy ascends to a
high vantage point. This extends the visible horizon, but without the
employment of quite special means the possibility of seeing anything
at all would vanish. In my book, Knowledge of the Higher Worlds
and Its Attainment, is set forth how one can reach this ideal
peak without losing the power of clear vision.
But there is a third possibility, lying between the two
described. It is to ascend part way, remaining half-way up. At the
bottom you cannot survey the whole; you observe only details and see
the top from below. At the top, everything is beneath you, and above
you have only the divine heavens. In the middle you have something
above and something below you, and you can compare the two views.
Any comparison lags and limps, but all that was intended
at the moment was to place before you the manner in which in the
first instance theosophy differs from anthroposophy. The latter
stands in the middle, the former on the summit: it is the point of
departure that is different. Thus far the comparison is helpful, but
it is inadequate in characterizing what follows.
Devotion to theosophy necessitates rising above human
points of view, above the middle, from self to higher self, and it
implies the ability to see with the organs of this higher self. The
peak attained by theosophy lies above man, ordinary human knowledge,
below, and what lies half-way between, that is the human being
himself: between nature and the spiritual world. What is above
reaches down to him; he is permeated by the spirit. In contemplating
the world from a purely human angle, he does not take his point of
departure from the summit, but he can see it — see the spirit
above. At the same time he sees what is merely nature beneath him; it
reaches into him from below. There is a risk connected with
theosophy; unless the above-mentioned means are employed to see with
the higher self — not with the ordinary self — there is
danger of losing contact with the human element, and this results in
forfeiting the ability to see anything at all adequate, of
recognizing reality below. This danger disappears, however, as soon
as those means are employed. Then we can say that theosophy is what
comes to light when the God within man says, “Let the God
within you speak; what He reveals of the world is theosophy.”
Take your stand between God and Nature and let the human being in
you speak. Speak of what is beneath as well as what is above you, and
you have anthroposophy. It is the wisdom spoken by man.
This wisdom will prove an important fulcrum, a key to
the whole realm of theosophy. After a period of immersion in
theosophy, nothing could be more profitable than seriously to seek
the firm center of gravity provided by anthroposophy.
All that has been said so far can be historically
substantiated in many directions. We have, for example, the science
calling itself anthropology. As it is practised, anthropology
comprises not only the human being, but everything pertaining to him;
all that can be gleaned from nature, everything necessary for
understanding man. This science is based on moving about among
objects, passing from detail to detail, observing the human being
under a microscope. In short, this science, which in the widest
circles is regarded as the only one dealing authoritatively with man,
takes its view from a point beneath human capacities. It is chained
to the ground; it fails to employ all the faculties at the
disposal of man, and for this reason it cannot solve the riddles of
existence.
Now contrast all this with what you encounter as
theosophy. There one searches the most rarefied regions for answers
to the burning questions of life. But all those who are unable to
keep pace, whose standpoint is anthropology, consider theosophy an
air-castle, lacking foundation. They are not able to understand how
the soul can ascend step by step to that summit from which all is
spread out beneath it. They cannot rise to the planes of imagination,
inspiration, and intuition. They cannot ascend to the peak that is
the final goal of human evolution.
Thus we find anthropology on the lowest step, theosophy
on the summit. What becomes of theosophy when it wants to reach the
top but is not in a position to do so with the right means? We can
find the answer in the historic example of the German theosophist,
Solger, who lived from 1770–1819. Conceptually, his views are
theosophical, but what means does he employ to attain the summit?
Philosophical concepts, concepts of human cerebration long since
sucked dry and emaciated! That is like climbing a mountain for the
purpose of observation, and forgetting to take your field-glasses;
you can distinguish nothing whatever down below.
In our case the field-glasses are spiritual, and they
are called imagination, inspiration, and intuition. Man's ability to
reach that peak diminished more and more through the centuries —
a fact that was clearly felt and acknowledged as early as the Middle
Ages. Today it is felt too, but not acknowledged. In olden times that
capacity to ascend existed, as you know, though only to a minor
degree. It was based on a clairvoyant twilight condition in man.
There really was an ancient theosophy of that sort, but it was
written that such revelations from the summit should come to a close,
that they should no longer be open to the ordinary means of
cognition.
This old theosophy, which considers revelation a thing
of the past, became theology, and thus we find theology running
parallel with anthropology. Theology's ambition is to climb the
heights, but for its means it depends upon something that was once
revealed, was then handed down, and is now rigid; something incapable
of continually revealing itself anew to the striving soul. Throughout
the Middle Ages, anthropology and theology frequently opposed without
rejecting each other, but in recent times the contrast is sharp.
Nowadays theology is admitted along with anthropology as something
scientific, but no bridge is found between the two. If we do not stop
with the details but ascend half-way, we can establish anthroposophy
by the side of theosophy.
Within modern spiritual life attempts have been made to
practise anthroposophy, among other things, but again, as in the case
of theosophy, with the wrong, inadequate means of a defunct
philosophy. The meaning of philosophy can really no longer be
understood by philosophers — only by theosophists. Historical
contemplation alone yields this understanding. Philosophy can be
comprehended only by contemplating its origin, as can be seen by an
illustration. In former times there were the so-called Mysteries,
abodes where the higher spiritual life was cultivated, where the
neophytes were guided by special methods to spiritual vision. One
such Mystery, for example, was in Ephesus, where the neophytes could
learn through their training the secrets of Diana of Ephesus; they
learned to look into the spiritual worlds. As much of such matters as
could be made public was communicated to the profane and received by
them, but not all of these realized that higher secrets had been
revealed to them. One of those to whom such communications from the
Mysteries of Ephesus had penetrated was Heraclitus. He then
proclaimed these, by means of his partial initiation, in a way that
could be generally understood. In reading the doctrines of
Heraclitus, “The Obscure,” we still find immediate
experience, the experience of the higher worlds, shining through
between the lines. Then came his successors who no longer realized
that those doctrines originated in direct experience. They no longer
understood them, so they began to improve them, to spin them
out in concepts. They began to speculate intellectually, and this
method persisted through the generations. Everything we have in the
way of philosophy today is but a heritage of ancient doctrines
squeezed out and sucked dry of all life, leaving only the skeleton of
the concepts. Yet the philosophers take that skeleton for a living
reality, for something created by human thinking. There is, as a
matter of fact, no such thing as a philosopher who can think
creatively without having recourse to the higher worlds.
Just such a skeleton of concepts was all that the
philosophers of the nineteenth century had to work with when they
took up what may be called anthroposophy. The term actually occurred.
Robert Zimmermann wrote a so-called Anthroposophy, but he
constructed it of arid, empty concepts. Indeed, everything that has
attempted to transcend anthropology without employing the right means
has remained a shriveled web of concepts no longer connected with the
subject.
Like philosophy, anthroposophy too must be deepened
through theosophy; the latter must provide the means for recognizing
reality within the spiritual life. Anthroposophy takes the human, the
middle standpoint, not the subhuman, as does anthropology. A
theosophy, on the other hand, as practised by Solger, though
spiritual in its point of view, employs only inflated concepts, and
when Solger arrives at the summit he sees nothing. That is spinning
at the loom of concepts, not living, spiritual observation. It is
something we do not intend to do. We aim in these lectures to
confront the reality of human life in its entirety. We shall
encounter the old subjects of observation, now illuminated, however,
from a different point whence the view is both upward and downward.
The human being is the most important subject of our
observation. We need but to contemplate his physical body to realize
what a complicated being he is. In order to gain a sentient
understanding of anthroposophy's aims, let us first ponder the
following. The complicated physical body as we encounter it today is
the product of a long evolution. Its first germinal potentiality came
into being on old Saturn, and it evolved further on the old Sun, the
old Moon, and the Earth. The etheric body was added to it on the Sun,
the astral body on the Moon. Now, these members of the human being
have changed in the course of evolution, and what we encounter today
as the complicated physical human body, with heart, kidneys, eyes,
ears and so forth, is the product of a long development. It has all
grown out of a simple germinal form that originated on Saturn.
Through millions and millions of years it has continually changed and
been transformed in order that it might achieve its present
perfection. If today we wish to understand a member or an organ of
this physical body — say, the heart or the lungs — we can
do so only on the basis of this evolution. Nothing of what we
encounter today as the heart existed on the old Saturn. Only
gradually did these organs assume their present form, one being
developed and incorporated earlier, another later. Some organs we can
actually designate Sun-organs, as having first appeared during the
Sun evolution, others Moon-organs, and so on. If we would understand
the present physical body of man we must assemble our concepts from
the whole Universe — that is the theosophical method of
observation.
How does anthropology set to work? Theosophy ascends to
the ultimate heights and from this spiritual summit examines
individual phenomena. Anthropology remains on the ground, takes its
point of departure from the details, and now even investigates
individual cells in their juxtaposition. Everything is mechanically
lined up and the cells are studied individually, but this does not
reveal their relative age. Yet, far from being immaterial, it is
important to know whether a given group of cells developed on the Sun
or on the Moon. Much more could be said concerning these complicated
conditions. Consider, for example, the human heart. True, as
constituted today it evolved late, but as regards its first germinal
potentiality it is one of the oldest human organs. During the period
of the old Sun, the heart was dependent upon the forces governing
there. During the Moon period its development continued; then the Sun
withdrew from the Moon, with which it had been united, and henceforth
its forces acted upon the heart from without. Here the heart
underwent a different development, so that from then on a Sun element
and a Moon element can be observed in its tendencies. Then Earth,
Sun, and Moon were united again and worked upon the heart. After a
pralaya the Earth evolution followed, during which the Sun first
withdrew again. This separation resulted in an intensification of the
Sun's influence from without. Then the Moon withdrew as well and also
acted upon the heart from without. So, being among the oldest human
organs, the heart comprises a Sun element, a Moon element, a second
Sun element during the Earth evolution, a second Moon element during
the Earth evolution, and finally, after the withdrawal of the Earth,
an Earth element — all corresponding to cosmic evolution.
If these elements of the heart accord, as in the cosmic
harmony, the heart is healthy; if any one element preponderates, it
is sick. All human sickness derives from disharmony among the
elements within the organ in question while their cosmic counterparts
are in harmony. All healing depends upon strengthening the element
that lacks its share, or subduing superfluous activity, as the case
may be, thereby bringing the elements into harmony again. But talking
about this harmony is not enough. In order to effect it one must
really penetrate into the wisdom of the universe; one must be able to
recognize the different elements in each organ. That will suffice to
give an idea of genuine occult physiology and anatomy, which
comprehend the whole human being out of the whole cosmos and explain
the details out of the spirit.
Occult physiology speaks of Sun and Moon elements of the
heart, larynx, brain, and so forth, but since all these elements are
at work upon man himself, something in him confronts us today in
which all these elements are consolidated. If we look into the human
being himself and understand these elements, we also understand the
etheric body, the astral body, etc., the sentient soul, the
intellectual soul and the consciousness soul, as man is constituted
today. That is anthroposophy, and in anthroposophy, too, we
must start at the lowest step, gradually ascending to the highest.
Man's lowest member is the physical body that he has in
common with the sensory world that is perceived through the senses
and the sensory-physical mind. The theosophical point of view,
starting from the universe, contemplates man in his cosmic contexts.
In the matter of the sensory-physical world, anthroposophy must start
from man, in so far as he is a sensory being. Only then can we deal
appropriately with the etheric body, then the astral body, the ego,
and so forth, and what is to be learned from them.
Observing the human being in this anthroposophical
sense, we ask what it is that must first engage our interest. It is
his senses, and it is through these that he acquires knowledge of the
physical-sensory world. Starting from the physical plane, it is
therefore these that anthroposophy must consider first. Let the study
of the human senses then constitute our first chapter. Thereafter we
will ascend to the study of the individual spiritual regions in man's
nature.
Beginning with the study of the human senses, we at once
find anthroposophy invading the territory of anthropology, for
anthroposophy must invariably start from all that the senses tell us
is real. But it must keep in mind that what is spiritual, influences
man from above. In this sense it is genuine anthropology. Ordinary
anthropology has thrown everything pertaining to the human senses
into complete confusion, groping its way from detail to detail and
examining only what is on the ground, so to speak. Important matters
are disregarded because men have no Ariadne-thread to lead them out
of the labyrinth of facts into the light. Anthropology cannot find
its way out of this maze and must fall a victim to the Minotaur of
illusion, for the saving thread can be spun only by spiritual
research.
Even in the matter of the human senses, anthroposophy
has a different story to tell than has external observation. At the
same time it is interesting to note how external science has lately
been forced by material facts to go to work more thoroughly,
seriously and carefully. There is nothing more trivial than the
enumeration of the five senses: feeling (touch), smell, taste,
hearing, and sight. We shall see what confusion reigns in this
enumeration. Science, it is true, has now added three more senses to
the list, but as yet doesn't seem to know what to do about them. We
will now list the human senses according to their real significance,
and we will endeavor in the following to start laying the foundations
of an anthroposophical doctrine of the senses.
The first sense in question is the one that in spiritual
science can be called the sense of life. That is a real sense
and must be as fully acknowledged as the sense of sight. What is it?
It is something in the human being of which, when it functions
normally he is not aware. He feels it only when it is out of order.
We feel lassitude, or hunger and thirst, or a sense of strength in
the organism; we perceive these as we do a color or a tone. We are
aware of them as an inner experience. But as a rule we are conscious
of this feeling only when something is out of order, otherwise it
remains unobserved. The sense of life furnishes the first human
self-perception; it is the sense through which the whole inner man
becomes conscious of his corporeality. That is the first sense, and
it must figure in the list just as does hearing or smell. Nobody can
understand the human being and the senses who knows nothing of this
sense that enables him to feel himself an inner entity.
We discover the second sense when we move a limb —
say, raise an arm. We would not be human beings if we could not
perceive our own movements. A machine is not aware of its own motion;
that is possible only for a living being through the medium of a real
sense. The sense of perceiving our own movements — anything
from blinking to walking or running — we call the sense of
our own movements.
We become aware of a third sense by realizing that the
human being distinguishes within himself between above and below. It
is dangerous for him to lose this perception, for in that case he
totters and falls over. The human body contains a delicate organ
connected with this sense: the three semicircular canals in the ear.
When these are injured we lose our sense of balance. This third sense
is the static sense, or sense of balance. (In the
animal kingdom there is something analogous: the otoliths, tiny
stones that must lie in a certain position if the animal is to
maintain its equilibrium.)
These are the three senses through which man perceives
something within himself, as it were; by their means he feels
something within himself.
Now we emerge from the inner man to the point at which
an interaction with the outer world begins. The first of such
reciprocal relations arises when man assimilates physical matter and,
by doing so, perceives it. Matter can be perceived only when it
really unites with the body. This cannot be done by solid or fluid
matter, but only by gaseous substances that then penetrate the bodily
matter. You can perceive smell only when some body sends out gaseous
matter that penetrates the organs of the mucous membrane of the nose.
The fourth sense, then, is the sense of smell, and it is the
first one through which the human being enters into reciprocal
relationship with the outer world.
When we no longer merely perceive matter but take the
first step into matter itself, we have the fifth sense. We enter into
a deeper relationship with such matter. Here matter must be active,
which implies that it must have some effect upon us. This takes place
when a liquid or a dissolved solid comes in contact with the tongue
and unites with what the tongue itself secretes. The reciprocal
relationship between man and nature has become a more intimate one.
We become aware not only of what things are, as matter, but of what
they can induce. That is the sense of taste, the fifth sense.
Now we come to the sixth sense. Again there is an
increase in the intimacy of the interaction. We penetrate still
deeper into matter, things reveal more of their essence. This can
only occur, however, through special provisions. The sense of smell
is the more primitive of these two kinds of senses. In the case of
smell, the human body takes matter as it is and makes no effort to
penetrate it. Taste, where man and matter unite more intimately, is
more complicated; then, matter yields more. The next step offers the
possibility of penetrating still more deeply into the outer world.
This takes place by reason of an external material substance being
either transparent or opaque, or by the manner in which it permits
light to pass through it, that is, how it is colored. An object that
rays out green light is internally so constituted that it can reflect
green light and no other. The outermost surface of things is revealed
to us in the sense of smell, something of their inner nature in
taste, something of their inner essence in sight. Hence the
complicated structure of the eye, which leads us much deeper into the
essence of things than does the nose or the tongue. The sixth sense,
then, is the sense of sight.
We proceed, penetrating still deeper into matter. For
example, when the eye sees a rose as red, the inner nature of the
rose is proclaimed by its surface. We see only the surface, but since
this is conditioned by the inner nature of the rose we become
acquainted, to a certain extent, with this inner nature. If we touch
a piece of ice or some hot metal, not only the surface and thereby
the inner nature are revealed, but the real consistency as well
because what is externally cold or hot is cold or hot through and
through. The sense of temperature, the seventh, carries us
still more intimately into the fundamental conditions of objects.
Now we ask ourselves if it is possible to penetrate into
the nature of objects still more deeply than through this seventh
sense. Yes, that can be done when objects show us not only their
nature through and through, as in the case of temperature, but their
most inner essence; that is what they do when they begin to sound.
The temperature is even throughout objects. Tone causes their inner
nature to vibrate, and it is through tone that we perceive the inner
mobility of objects. When we strike an object its inner nature is
revealed to us in tone, and we can distinguish among objects
according to their inner nature, according to their inner vibration,
when we open our inner ear to their tone. It is the soul of objects
that speaks to our own soul in tones. That is the eighth sense, the
sense of hearing.
If we would find an answer to the question as to whether
there exist still higher senses, we must proceed cautiously. We must
beware of confusing what is really a sense with other terms and
expressions. For example, in ordinary life — down below, where
much confusion exists — we hear of a sense of imitation, a
sense of secrecy, and others. That is wrong. A sense becomes
effective at the moment when we achieve perception and before mental
activity sets in. We speak of a sense as of something that functions
before our capacity for reasoning has come into action. To perceive
color you need a sense, but for judging between two colors you do
not.
This brings us to the ninth sense. We arrive at it by
realizing that in truth there is in man a certain power of perception
— one that is especially important in substantiating
anthroposophy — a power of perception not based on reasoning,
yet present in him. It is what men perceive when they understand each
other through speech. A real sense underlies the perception of what
is transmitted to us through speech. That is the ninth sense, the
sense of speech.
The child learns to speak before he learns to reason. A
whole people has a language in common, but reasoning is a matter for
the individual. What speaks to the senses is not subject to the
mental activity of the individual. The perception of the meaning of a
sound is not mere hearing because the latter tells us only of the
inner oscillations of the object. There must be a special sense for
the meaning of what is expressed in speech. That is why the child
learns to speak, or at least to understand what is spoken, before he
learns to reason. It is, in fact, only through speech that he learns
to reason. The sense of speech is an educator during the child's
first years, exactly like hearing and sight. We cannot alter what a
sense perceives, cannot impair anything connected with it. We
perceive a color, but our judgment can neither change nor vitiate it;
the same thing is true of the sense of speech when we perceive the
inner significance of the speech sound. It is indispensable to
designate the sense of speech as such. It is the ninth.
Finally we come to the tenth sense, the highest in the
realm of ordinary life. It is the concept sense, which enables
us perceptively to comprehend concepts not expressed through speech
sounds. In order to reason we must have concepts. If the mind is to
become active, it must first be able to perceive the concept in
question, and this calls for the concept sense, which is exactly as
much a sense by itself as is taste or smell.
Now I have enumerated ten senses and have not mentioned
the sense of touch. What about it? Well, a method of observation
lacking the spiritual thread confuses everything. Touch is usually
tossed in with our seventh sense, temperature. Only in this meaning,
however, as the sense of temperature, has it in the first instance
any significance. True, the skin can be called the organ of the
temperature sense — the same skin that serves also as the organ
of the touch sense. But we touch not only when we touch
[TRANSLATOR'S NOTE: The verb tasten can
mean “to touch.” Indeed, the sense of touch is der
Tastsinn, but more often it signifies something like our
“groping,” as one gropes in the dark by means of the
sense of touch: “feeling around for something.” In this
sentence the first “touch” is to be understood in this
sense, the second (berühren) as meaning “to come in
contact with.”] the surface of an object.
We touch when the eye seeks something, when the tongue tastes
something, when the nose smells something. Touching is a quality
common to the fourth to seventh senses. All of these are senses of
touch.
Up to and including the sense of temperature we can
speak of touching. Hearing we can no longer describe as
touching; at least, the quality is present only to a small degree. In
the senses of speech and concepts it is wholly absent. These three
senses we therefore designate as the senses of comprehension
and understanding. The first three senses inform us concerning the
inner man. Reaching the boundary between the inner and the outer
world, the fourth sense leads us into this outer world, and by means
of the other three we penetrate it ever more deeply. Through the
senses of touch we perceive the outer world on the surface, and
through those of comprehension we learn to understand things, we
reach their soul. Later we will deal with other senses transcending
these.
Below the sense of smell, then, there are three senses
that bring us messages out of our own human inner being. The sense of
smell is the first to lead us into the outer world, into which we
then penetrate deeper and deeper by means of the others. But what I
have described to you today does not exhaust the list of senses. It
was only an excerpt from the whole, and there is something below and
something above the ten mentioned. From the concept sense we can
continue upward to a first astral sense, arriving at the senses that
penetrate the spiritual world. There we find an eleventh, a twelfth
and a thirteenth sense. These three astral senses will lead us deeper
into the fundamentals of external objects, deep down where concepts
cannot penetrate. The concept halts before the external, just as the
sense of smell halts before the inner man.
What I have given you is an urgently needed foundation
upon which to build cognition of the human being. Through its neglect
in the nineteenth century, everything pertaining even to philosophy
and the theory of knowledge has been most horribly jumbled. Merely
generalizing, people ask what the human being can learn by means of
the individual sense, and they cannot even explain the difference
between hearing and sight. Scientists talk about light waves in the
same way they do about sound waves, without taking into account that
sight does not penetrate as deeply as hearing. Through hearing we
enter the soul-nature of things, and we shall see that by means of
the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth senses we penetrate their
spirit as well: we enter the spirit of nature. Each sense has a
different nature and a different character.
For this reason a great number of expositions given
today, especially in physics, concerning the nature of sight and its
relation to its surroundings may be regarded unhesitatingly as
theories that have never reckoned with the true nature of the senses.
Countless errors have arisen from this misconception of the nature of
the senses. That must be emphasized, because it is quite impossible
for popular representations to do justice to what has here been set
forth. You read things written by people who can have no possible
inkling of the inner nature of the senses. We must understand that
science, from its standpoint, cannot do other than take a different
attitude. It is inevitable that science should spread errors, because
in the course of evolution the real nature of the senses was
forgotten.
This true nature of the senses is the first chapter of
anthroposophy.
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