LECTURE II Dornach, April 3, 1921
Before I begin,
let me emphasize that this lecture does not form part of the
sequence of lectures presented in the context of the courses,
[Note 1]
but in a certain
respect is intended to relate to what I have outlined
yesterday evening. There, we dealt with studying that
particular form of development within humanity's historical
evolution that occurred in the middle and also in the second
half of the nineteenth century; the evolutionary impulse of
materialism. I said that in these considerations our
attention should not be turned so much to materialism in
general, which calls for other viewpoints, but rather to
theoretical materialism, to materialism as a world view. I
drew attention to the fact that this materialism must be
confronted with a sufficiently critical mind, but that, on
the other hand, materialism has been a necessary phase of
evolution in the history of mankind.
We cannot
simply speak of rejecting it and say that it is an
aberration; materialism needs to be understood. For the one
does not exclude the other. Particularly in these reflections
it is important to extend the sphere of thoughts relating to
truth and error further than is ordinarily the case. It is
generally said that in the logical life of thoughts it is
possible either to err or to find the truth. What is not
mentioned is that under certain circumstances the glance we
cast upon the external world may discover errors in outer
reality. Difficult though it may be for modern thought to
admit to errors in the events of nature — something
that spiritual science has to do — it is obvious for
people today to admit that there are actual errors in the
results that arise in the course of the historical
development and manifest themselves, so to speak, in the
communal, social sphere. These errors cannot be corrected by
mere logic, but demand comprehension based on the conditions
that gave rise to them.
In thinking,
all we have to do is reject error. We have to extricate
ourselves from error and, overcoming it, reach truth. But in
the case of errors rooted in the factual realm we must always
say that they also have a positive aspect and are of value in
a certain sense for the development of mankind. Theoretical
materialism of the nineteenth century should therefore not
merely be condemned in a narrow, one-sided manner; instead,
we should grasp its significance in human evolution.
Theoretical
materialism consisted in the fact — and what remained
of it still consists in this — that man devotes himself
to a conscientious and exact investigation of the external
material facts, that in a certain sense he loses himself in
this world of facts. Then, proceeding from this investigation
of facts, he attains to a view of life that tends to the
conclusion that there is no other reality except the world of
facts, and that everything pertaining to soul and spirit is,
after all, merely a product of the material course of events.
Even a conception of life such as this was necessary during a
certain epoch of time, and the only danger would be a rigid
adherence to it so that it could influence the further
development of humanity in an age when other contents have to
enter human consciousness.
Let us try
today and investigate the actual basis of this evolutionary
impulse leading to theoretical materialism. We come to it
when, from a certain standpoint, we picture once more the
threefold nature of the human organism.
[Note 2]
I have characterized it on many
occasions. I have said: We must distinguish within the whole
organization of the human being the part that, in regard to
his physical being, may be designated as the organization of
the senses and nerves. This is chiefly concentrated in the
human head, but in a certain sense it extends over the whole
human organism, also penetrating the other parts of it. As a
second member we have the rhythmical organization. We
encounter it chiefly in the rhythm of breathing and in the
circulation of the blood. The third part in a wider sense is
the metabolic organization of the human being, including the
whole system of the human limbs. The human limb system is a
system of movement, and every form of movement is basically
an expression of our metabolic processes. One day, when
people will investigate more closely what really takes place
in the metabolic processes whenever the human being moves,
they will discover the intimate connection between the limb
system and the metabolic system.
In
considering these three systems in the human being, we have,
first of all, pointed out the fundamental difference between
them. I have already drawn your attention yesterday to the
fact that, by means of the same drawing, two men with
entirely different world views wanted to clarify matters
relating to the human head organization as well as to the
processes of human thinking. I pointed out that it so
happened that I was once present at a lecture given by an
extreme materialist. He wished to describe the life of the
soul, but he actually described the human brain, the
individual sections of the brain, the connecting fibers, and
so on. He arrived at a certain picture, but this picture he
drew on the blackboard was, for him, only the expression of
what goes on materially and physically in the human brain. At
the same time, he saw in it the expression of soul life,
particularly the conceptual life. Another man, a philosopher
of the school of Herbart, spoke of thoughts, of associations
of thoughts, of the effect one thought has upon another,
etc., and he said he could make use of the same picture on
the blackboard. Here, quite empirically, I should say, we
encounter something most interesting. It is this that
somebody for whom the observation of the soul life is
something quite real, at least in his thoughts — this
must always be added in case of Herbartianism —
clarifies to himself the activity of the soul life by using
the same picture employed by the other lecturer, who depicts
the soul life by trying to set forth only the processes in
the human brain.
Now, what
lies at the foundation of this? The fact is that in its
plastic configuration the human brain is indeed an
extraordinarily faithful replica of what we know as the life
of thought. In the plastic configuration of the human brain,
the life of thought really does express itself, we might
almost say, in an adequate manner. In order to follow this
thought to its conclusion, however, something else is needed.
What ordinary psychology and also Herbart's psychology
designate as chains of thoughts, as thought associations in
the form of judgments, logical conclusions and so on, should
not remain a mere idea. At least in our imagination —
even if we cannot rise to clairvoyant Imaginations — we
should allow it to culminate in a picture; the tapestry of
logic, the tapestry presented to us by psychology of the life
of thought, the teaching of the soul life, should be allowed
to culminate in a picture. If we are in fact able to
transform logic and psychology in a picture-like, plastic way
into an image, then the human configuration of the brain will
emerge. Then we shall have traced a picture, the realization
of which is the human brain.
On what is
this based? It is based on the fact that the human brain,
indeed the whole system of nerves and senses, is a replica of
an Imaginative element.
[Note 3]
We completely grasp the wonderful structure of the human brain
only when we learn to investigate Imaginatively. Then, the
human brain appears as a realized human Imagination.
Imaginative perception teaches us to become familiar with the
external brain, the brain we come to know through psychology
and anatomy, as a realized Imagination. This is
significant.
Another fact
is no less important. Let us bear in mind that the human
brain is an actual human Imagination. We are indeed born with
a brain, if not a fully developed one, at least with a brain
containing the tendencies of growth. It tries to develop to
the point of being a realized Imaginative world, to be the
impression of an Imaginative world. This is, as it were, the
ready-made aspect of our brain, namely, that it is the
replica of an Imaginative world. Into this impression of the
Imaginative world we then build the conceptual experiences
attained during the time between birth and death. During this
period we have conceptual experiences; we conceive, we
transform the sense perceptions into thoughts; we judge, we
conclude, and so on. We fit this into our brain. What kind of
activity is this?
As long as we
live in immediate perception, as long as we remain in the
interplay with the external world, as long as we open our
eyes to the colors and dwell in this relationship with
colors, as long as we open our organs of hearing to sounds
and live within them, the external world lives on in us by
penetrating our organism through the senses as through
channels. With our inner life, we encompass this external
world. But the moment we cease to have this immediate
experience of the outer world — something I already
called your attention to yesterday — the moment we turn
our eye away from the world of colors, allow our ear to
become inattentive to the resounding of the external world,
the moment we turn our senses to something else, this
concreteness — our interplay with the external world in
perceiving — penetrates into the depths of our soul. It
may then be drawn to the surface again in the form of
pictures by memory. We may say that during our life between
birth and death insofar as our thought life is concerned, our
interplay with the external world consists of two parts: the
immediate experience of the external world in the form of
perceptions and the transformed thoughts. We surrender, as it
were, completely to the present; our inner activity loses
itself in the present. Then, however, this immediate activity
continues. To begin with, it is not accessible to our
consciousness. It sinks down into the subconscious but may be
drawn to the surface again into memory. In what form, then,
does it exist in us?
This is a
point that can be explained only by a direct view attainable
in Imagination. A person who honestly pursues his way in his
scientific striving cannot help but admit to himself that the
moment the riddle of memory confronts him he cannot advance
another step in his research. For due to the fact that the
experiences of the immediate present sink down into the
subconscious, they become inaccessible to ordinary
consciousness; they cannot be traced further.
But when we
work in a corresponding way upon the human soul by means of
the soul-spiritual exercises that have frequently been
discussed in my lectures, we reach a stage where we no longer
lose sight of the continuations of our direct life of
perceptions and thoughts into conceptions that make memories
possible. I have often explained to you that the first result
of an ascent to Imaginative thinking is to have before your
soul, as a mighty life-tableau, all your experiences since
birth. The stream of experience normally flows along in the
unconscious, and the single representations, which emerge in
memory, rise up from this unconscious or subconscious stream
through a half-dreamy activity. Those who have developed
Imaginative perception are offered the opportunity to survey
the stream of experiences as in one picture. You could say
that the time that has elapsed since birth then takes on the
appearance of space. What is normally within the subconscious
is then beheld in the form of interconnected pictures. When
the experiences that otherwise escape into the subconscious
are thus raised to direct vision, we are able to observe this
continuation of present, immediate perceptual and thought
experiences all the way into conceptions that can be
remembered. It is possible to trace what happens in us to any
sort of experience we have in our mind, from the point in
time when we first lose sight of it until the moment we
recall it again. After all, between experiencing something
and remembering it again something is taking place
continuously in the human organism, something that becomes
visible to imaginative perception. It is possible to view it
in Imaginations, but it is now revealed in a quite special
way.
The thoughts
that have lost themselves, as it were, in the subconscious
region an activity connected with our life-impulses, our
impulses of growth; they stimulate an activity in us that is
related to our impulse of death. The significant result
revealing itself to Imaginative perception in the way I could
only allude to today is the following: Human beings do not
connect the memory-activity, leading to the renewal of
thinking, of thought and perceptual experiences, with what
calls us into physical life and maintains digestion in this
life, so that substances that have become useless are
replaced by usable ones, and so on. The power of memory that
descends into the human being is not related to this
ascending life system in man. It is linked to something we
also bear within us ever since our birth, something we are
born with just as we are born with the forces through which
we live and grow. It is connected with what then appears to
us, concentrated into one moment, in regard to the whole
organism in dying.
Death only
appears as a great riddle as long as it is not observed
within the continuous stream of life from birth to death.
Expressing myself paradoxically, I might say that we die not
only when we die. In reality, we die at every moment of our
physical life. By developing within our organism the activity
leading to memory as recollective thinking — and in
ordinary physical life every form of cognition is actually
linked up with memory — insofar as this cognition is
developed, we die continuously. A subtle form of death,
proceeding from our head organization, is forever going on
within us. By carrying out this activity that continues on
into memory, we constantly begin the act of dying. But the
forces of growth existing in the other members of the human
organism counteract this process of death; they overcome the
death forces. Thus we maintain life. If we only depended on
our head organization, on the system of nerves and senses,
each moment in life would really become a moment of death for
us. As human beings we continuously vanquish death, which
streams out, as it were, from our head to the remaining
organism. The latter counteracts this form of death. Only
when the remaining organization becomes weakened, exhausted
through age or some kind of damage, thus preventing the
counteraction against the death-bearing forces of the human
head, only then does death set in for the whole organism.
Indeed, in
our modern thinking, in the thinking of today's civilization,
we really work with concepts that lie side by side like
erratic blocks, without being able to correctly recognize
their interrelationship. Light must enter into this chaos of
erratic blocks constituting our world of concepts and
thoughts. On the one hand, we have human cognition which is
so intimately tied to the faculty of memory. We observe this
human cognition and have no idea of its kinship to our
conception of death. And because we are completely ignorant
of this relationship, what could otherwise be deciphered in
life remains so enigmatic. We are unable to connect the
experiences of everyday life with the great extraordinary
moments of experience. The insufficient spiritual view over
what lies around as fragmentary blocks in our conceptual
world brings it about that despite the splendid achievements
of the nineteenth century life has gradually become so
obscure.
Let us now
consider the second system, the second member of the human
organization, the rhythmical organization. It is also present
in the human head organization. The interior of the human
head breathes together with the breathing organism. This is
an external physiological fact. But the breathing process of
the human head lies, as it were, more within; it conceals
itself from the system of nerves and senses. It is covered
over by what constitutes the chief task of the head
organization. Still, the human head has its own concealed
rhythmical activity. This activity becomes evident mainly in
the human chest organization, in those processes of the human
organism that are centered in the organs of breathing and in
the heart.
When we
observe the outward appearance of this organization, unlike
in the case of the head organization, we cannot see in it a
kind of plastic image for what exists as its counterpart in
the soul, namely, the life of feeling. When we observe the
soul experiences, our feelings manifest as something more or
less undefined. We have sharp contours in our thoughts. We
also have clear concepts of thought associations. In the
details pertaining to our life of feeling we have no such
sharp outlines. There, everything interpenetrates, moves and
lives. You will not find an Herbartian who, in making an
outline of the life of emotion, would characterize this in a
sketch that might resemble one drawn by an anatomist or a
physiologist for the lungs or the heart and circulatory
system. Here, you find that such a relationship does not
exist between the inner soul element and the outer aspects.
This is also the reason why Imaginative cognition does not
suffice to bring before the soul this relationship between
the soul's life of feeling and the rhythmical system. For
this we need what I have characterized in my books as
Inspiration, Inspirative perception. This special form of
perception through Inspiration attains to the insight that
our emotional life has a direct link to the rhythmical
system. Just as the system of nerves and senses is linked to
the conceptual life, so the rhythmical life is linked to the
life of feelings.
But,
metaphorically speaking, the rhythmical system is not the wax
impression of the emotional life in the same way that the
brain's configuration is the wax impression of the conceptual
life. Consequently we cannot say that our rhythmical system
is an Imaginative replica of our life of feeling. We must say
instead that what unfolds and lives in us as the rhythmical
system has come about through cosmic Inspiration,
independently of any human knowledge. It is inspired into us.
The activity carried out in the breathing and in the blood
circulation is not merely something that lives within us
enclosed by our skin; it is a cosmic event, like lightning
and thunder. After all, through our rhythmical system, we are
connected with the outer world. The air that is now within me
was outside before; it will be outside again the next moment.
It is an illusion to believe that we only live enclosed
within our skin. We live as a member of the world that
surrounds us, and the form of our rhythmical system, which is
closely connected to our movements, is inspired into us out
of this world.
Summing this
up, we can say: As the basis of the human head we have, first
of all, the realization of an Imaginative world. Then, in a
manner of speaking, below what thus realizes itself as an
Imaginative world, we have the realm of the rhythmical
system, an Inspired world. Concerning our rhythmical system,
we can only say: An Inspirative world is realized within
it.
How do
matters stand in regard to our metabolic system, our
limb-system? Metabolism belongs together with the
limb-system, as I have pointed out already. Our metabolic
processes stand in a direct relationship with our volitional
activity. But this relationship reveals itself neither to
Imaginative nor to Inspirative perception. It discloses
itself only to Intuitive cognition, to what I have described
in my books as “Intuitive knowledge.” This
explains the difficulty of seeing in the external physical
processes of metabolism the realization of a cosmic
Intuition. This metabolism, however, is also present in the
rhythmical system. The metabolism of the rhythmical system
conceals itself behind the life-rhythm, just as the
life-rhythm conceals itself behind the activity of nerves and
senses in the human head.
In the case
of the human head we have a realized Imaginative world;
hidden behind it a realized Inspirative world in regard to
the rhythm in the head. Still further behind this, there is
the metabolism of the head, hence a realized Intuitive
element. Thus we can comprehend our head, if we [see] in it the
confluence of the realized Imaginative, Inspired, and
Intuitive elements. In the human rhythmical system the
Imaginative is omitted; there we have only the realization of
the Inspired and Intuitive elements. And in the metabolic
system Inspiration, too, is omitted; there, we are dealing
only with the realization of a cosmic Intuition.
In the
threefold human organism, we thus bear within us first the
organization of the head, a replica of what we strive for in
cognition through Imagination, Inspiration, and Intuition. In
trying to understand the human head, we should really have to
admit to ourselves that with mere external, objective
knowledge gained through the observation of the outer sensory
world, which is not even Imagination and does not rise up to
the Intuitive element, we should stop short of the human
head. For the inner being of the human head begins to
disclose itself only to Imaginative knowledge; behind this
lies something still deeper that reveals itself to
Inspiration. In turn, behind this, lies something that makes
itself known to Intuitive knowledge. The rhythmical system is
not even accessible to Imagination. It reveals itself only to
Inspirative cognition, and what is concealed beneath it is
the Intuitive element. Within the human organism, we
certainly ought to find metabolism incomprehensible. The true
standpoint in regard to the human metabolism can be none
other than the following. We can only say that we observe the
metabolic processes of the external world; we try to
penetrate into them with the aid of the laws of objective
perception. Thus we attain knowledge of the external
metabolism in nature. The instant this outer metabolism is
transformed and metamorphosed into out inner metabolism it
becomes something quite different; it turns into something in
which dwells the element that discloses itself only to
Intuition.
We would
therefore have to say: In the world that presents itself to
us as the sensory realm, the most incomprehensible of all
incomprehensible problems is what the substances, with which
we become familiar externally through physics and chemistry,
accomplish within the human skin. We would have to admit: we
must rise up to the highest spiritual comprehension if we
want to know what really takes place within the human
organism in regard to the substances we know so well in their
external aspects in the world outside.
Thus we see
that in the structure of our organism there are, to begin
with, three different activities. First of all, something
that discloses itself to Intuitive knowledge is active in the
structure of the human organism, building it up out of the
world's substances. In addition something is active in this
organism that reveals itself to Inspirative knowledge; it
fits the rhythmical system into the metabolic organism.
Finally, something is active in the human organism that
reveals itself to Imaginative knowledge; it builds in the
nervous system. And when this human organism enters through
birth into the external physical world, all that is
ready-made, as it were, by virtue of its own nature, then
evolves further inasmuch as human beings develop objective
knowledge between birth and death.
Concerning
this objective knowledge we have seen that it is tied to the
activity of memory; it is not connected with constructive but
with destructive forces. We have seen that this form of
knowledge is a slow dying proceeding from the head. We may
therefore say that the human organism was built up through
what could be comprehended by means of Intuition,
Inspiration, and Imagination. This dwells in this human
organism in a manner inaccessible to present-day cognition.
On the other hand, what is built into our organism between
birth and death by means of our objective insights breaks
down and destroys this organism. We actually think and form
concepts on the basis of this destruction when we unfold our
conceptual life, the life of thoughts.
We really
cannot be materialists when we comprehend what this
knowledge, so intimately linked with the faculty of memory
consists of. For if we wanted to be materialists, we would
have to imagine that we are built up by forces of growth;
that those forces are active that absorb the substances and
transmit them to the various organs in order to bring about,
in a wider sense, the digestive processes within our
organism. We should have to picture this faculty, inherent in
growth, digestion, and the constructive forces in general,
continuing and culminating somewhere in the conceptual
process, in thinking which arrives at objective knowledge.
Yet this is not the case. The human organism is built up
through something that is accessible to Intuition, to
Inspiration, and to Imagination. Our organism is built up
when it has absorbed these forces into itself. But then
regression begins, the process of decay, and what brings this
decay about is ordinary knowledge between birth and
death.
Through the
processes of ordinary perception we do not build anything
into the constructive forces; rather, by destroying what has
been built up, we create, first of all, the foundations for a
continuous element of death in ourselves. Into this
continuing element of death we place our knowledge. We do not
immerse ourselves in material elements when we think; no, we
destroy the material element. We hand it over to the forces
of death. We think our way into death, into the destruction
of life. Thinking, ordinary perception, is not related to
growing, budding life. It is related to death, and when we
observe human perception, we do not find an analogy for it in
the natural formations including the human brain. We discover
an analogy only in the corpse that decays after death. For
what the decaying body represents, I might say, intensively,
in a certain greatness, must continuously take place within
us when we perceive objectively in the ordinary sense of the
word.
Look upon
death if you wish to comprehend the cognitive process. Do not
look upon life in a materialistic manner; look upon what
represents the negation, the elimination of life. Then you
arrive at a comprehension of thinking. To be sure, what we
call death then acquires an entirely different meaning; based
on life it attains to a different significance.
Even external
phenomena enable us to grasp such things. Yesterday, I said
to you that the culmination of the materialistic world view
lies in the middle or in the last third of the nineteenth
century. This culmination viewed death as something that must
absolutely be rejected. In a sense people at that time felt
noble by viewing death in this way, as ending life. Life
alone they wanted to consider and wished to see it as ending
with death. Frequently, one looks back somewhat disdainfully
upon the “child-like folk-consciousness.” Take
the word “verwesen,” (to decompose)
which points to the process of what occurs after death. The
prefix “ver” always indicates a movement
towards what the word expresses.
“Verbruedern” (to become like brothers,
to fraternize) means to move in the direction of becoming
brothers; “versammeln” (to gather
together) indicates moving in the direction of gathering, of
meeting. In the vernacular, “verwesen”
does not mean decomposing, ceasing to be; it means moving in
the direction of Wesen, of being, of life. Such word
formations, connected with a spiritual way of grasping the
world during the epoch of instinctive knowledge, have become
exceedingly rare. In the nineteenth century people
materialized everything; they no longer lived in the
spiritual essence permeating the word. Many examples could be
cited to show that the culmination of materialism became
evident even in speech.
We can
therefore understand that after the human being had been
developed, as I said yesterday, to a point of culmination by
forces that disclose themselves to Inspiration, Intuition,
and Imagination, he then attained to the highest culmination
in the nineteenth century, followed in turn by a decadence.
We can understand that the human being distanced himself, as
it were, from the power enabling him to comprehend himself
inwardly by developing in the strongest measure the forces
that, as conceptual forces, are most akin to death, the
forces of abstraction. It is from this point that it is
possible, proceeding from today's lecture, to advance to what
constitutes the actual, essential impulse within what we may
call the materialistic impulse of knowledge in human
history.
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