PART III
THE WISDOM OF THE SPIRIT (Pneumatosophy)
LECTURE II
Truth and Error in the Light
of the Spiritual World.
O SOME of you it may seem superfluous in
discussing such weighty subjects at our annual meeting for me to
include a consideration of what contemporary science has to say about
these matters. I have no intention of constructing an elaborate
bridge across the gap separating us from the aforementioned
erudition. Nothing of the sort is necessary within our circles,
because the great majority of those who join us feel in their souls a
certain connection with the spiritual life. They do not come to us to
have the spiritual world proved to them in a so-called scientific
manner, but to become acquainted with it in a concrete form; hence
the calling in of such erudition might seem superfluous.
Another objection could be made that anthroposophists
often face the obligation to intercede for anthroposophy, to refute
objections, produce evidence and substantiations, but it is only
possible to a slight degree to convince our opponents by means of any
proofs whatsoever. Philosophies depend not so much on proofs as on
habits of thought, and if a person is unable to penetrate — his
thought habits being what they are — into the
spiritual-scientific way of looking at the world, he will for the
time being certainly remain deaf to proofs.
Such matters as were discussed yesterday were brought up
in order to meet and alleviate the confusion that might arise in the
minds of our members when again and again they must hear people say,
“Your philosophy lacks a scientific basis.”
Anthroposophists should feel ever more strongly that their world view
rests upon a solid foundation and is proof against whatever
recognized science has to say.
To propound everything needed for coming to terms with
modern science would take a long time, and references to external
science are intended only to arouse a feeling for the fact that there
are ways and means of meeting that science, and that in championing
anthroposophy one stands upon a firm foundation. So the aim is to
indicate the manner of approach, when the time is available, rather
than the approach itself. A modern science of external corporeality
may be fraught with many a disagreement, but one praiseworthy feature
of such a science is that its subject, external corporeality, is not
disputed. In dealing with the science of the soul, on the other hand,
the science of psychology, one enters a region in which there are
people who deny the reality of the subject itself, the soul. Not only
must we nowadays face the materialistic world conception, but we find
ourselves enmeshed in a sort of psychology intended to be a science
of the soul without a soul.
Yesterday we made the acquaintance of an Aristotelian
scholar of our time who turned his keen wits to an investigation of
the subject known as the soul. Of Aristotle it can be said that there
was no question of his denying the existence of the spirit, but we
found that Brentano shrewdly halted before the spirit, so that we do,
indeed, find there a standpoint concerned with pneumatosophy, or the
science of the spirit, that denies not only this or that law but the
subject itself, as such.
To many people the spirit is a highly debatable fact
anyway, hence we must seriously consider the question why this can be
so. The body is perceived through the outer senses and with all the
force of facts that exist for us automatically. Outer physical facts
affect the human soul with such force that it is incapable of denying
what they have to tell. We are in a similar position with regard to
the soul, for we do, in fact, experience its flowing content. We
experience feelings, conceptions, impulses of will; we experience all
that results as destiny from the course this soul life takes; we
experience suffering and happiness, joy and sorrow. So unless you
were to call all that nothing, or at most a sort of surface foam from
the waves of physical facts, you cannot but recognize the soul in a
certain sense, at least to the extent of admitting its reality. The
spirit, however, is primarily something super-sensible, imperceptible,
and this alone suffices to explain how plausibly its existence may be
denied. It explains why one might marvel at the idea of searching for
the spirit, on the ground that it does not enter the world in which
we live.
From the standpoint of anthroposophy we have stated
often enough that the real facts about the spiritual world are
derived through a method of observation that must be created by means
of a certain self-cultivation, a certain self-education through
meditation, concentration, and so forth. Thus the facts of the
spiritual world are not directly given to man. They can be gleaned
only if he is able to rise to a cognition differing from that of
everyday life. It might seem as though this spiritual world were
completely hidden from man, perceptible only after he had entirely
transcended his normal way of cognition and risen to another.
Well, if that were the way matters stood, we could ask
how man happens to long for a world that really in no way discloses
itself to him as he is in ordinary life. Against this objection only
the man of faith, not the scientist, can really feel himself
adequately armed. True, the former could answer this objection by
stating that the spiritual world had indeed manifested itself through
revelations received in the course of human development, so that man
could have obtained his knowledge of the spiritual world through
revelations from the super-sensible. One who is not inclined to
recognize such revelations or such faith, however, will object that
there may be a spiritual world, but there is no immediately apparent
reason why we should take account of it, as it does not manifest
itself in any way in the outer world. Against this, an objection has
been raised again and again throughout the ages by an idealistic or
spiritualistic philosophy, namely, that recognition of the spiritual
world by this or that philosopher depends largely upon his having
taken seriously the refutation of the first objection by means of the
second. Certainly it is possible to transcend the world that is
primarily revealed by outer perception; the human being can build up
a world of truth in his own inner being, and he could never be
satisfied with what the outer world of perception has to give for the
simple reason that he is a human being. Thus he builds a world of
truth within himself.
If we examine this world of truth seriously, we find
that it comprises something that already transcends all that is
external-physical as such. One then cites ideas produced by man about
the world — grand, comprehensive points of view that never
could have originated through the outer senses alone, and that must
have come, therefore, from the other side. Thus, the fact of the
world of truth is in itself sufficient to convince us that we
participate in a spirit world and live in it with our truth.
Naturally, a philosopher like Hegel, for instance, would find plenty
of justification for a spiritual world, as opposed to the objection
set forth — justification for recognizing a spiritual world
that embraces thinking as well, in so far as thinking is independent
of the senses. Philosophers whose whole disposition equips them to
recognize the absolutely independent world of truth will find in this
independent activity of the spirit, moving as it does in truth,
sufficient reason for assuming the existence of the spirit. It can be
said, then, that there will always be people in the world in whose
view the concrete actuality of the true world of ideas is sufficient
proof of the spirit. In a certain sense it can be said that even in
Aristotle something like faith is discernible, faith that in his
concepts and ideas, in the nous, as he calls it, man lives in
a spiritual world, and because it exists in man, it exists, and is
thereby sufficiently substantiated.
Granting this, it is permissible to draw conclusions
from what can be learned within one's own spiritual world as such
when moving within it, that is, conclusions regarding other beings
and facts of the spiritual world. Thus Aristotle draws his
conclusions concerning the Divinity, the immortality of the soul, and
arrives at inferences such as were described yesterday. Hegel speaks
of an independent activity of the spirit, meaning the independent
activity of concepts, that has no connection, as regards the laws
governing it, with the outer world, but is an activity of the spirit
itself. He maintains that the spirit reveals itself in the presence
of this independent activity.
More recent attempts such as that of Rudolf Eucken,
which spiritual science certainly cannot regard as particularly
inspired, talk of a self-grasping of the spirit and of self-proof of
the existence of the spiritual being. This path leads to no proof,
however, and it furnishes anthroposophists the opportunity of
perceiving how difficult it is to prove anthroposophy as such. Truth
per se and taken alone does not necessarily prove anything
with regard to the spirit. That is a point that is never-taken
seriously enough. The existence of the world of truth as such does
not necessarily prove anything concerning the spirit.
I will now sketch briefly, somewhat in the manner of a
parable, something that really should be thoroughly presented in a
whole series of lectures. Let us assume that actually nothing existed
but corporeality, the outer physical world. Let us further assume
that this physical world with its forces, or “energies,”
as it is now the fashion to call them, expressed itself in the
mineral world and became complicated. That is, that it did not gather
new energies but merely became more and more complicated in the plant
and animal worlds, until finally it became so complicated that it
built up man out of a combination and co-operation of purely physical
energies — built him in such a way as to enable him to produce
thoughts from the complicated instrument of the brain. All this we
assume to proceed in the manner in which physical processes run their
course within corporeality. Imagine for a moment that the
materialists' extraordinarily crude assertion were to be taken
seriously — the assertion that the brain secretes thoughts in
the same way that the liver secretes bile. Suppose the human brain to
be built up out of mechanico-physical energies in such a way as to
produce what appears to man as his spiritual life. In short, suppose
materialism were right, and that there were no spirit as such. Would
it then be possible, in the materialists' sense, to speak of a world
of truth — for instance as presented in Hegel's philosophy —
in the world of concepts? If it were possible to answer this question
in the affirmative, it would automatically show that materialism
itself could explain — that is, prove — a philosophy like
Hegel's. In other words, it could reject all spiritualistic or
idealistic philosophies.
One need only imagine, and this is the point, which to
explain thoroughly would call for many lectures, that what springs
from the complicated human brain as thought, in so far as the world
of truth is made up of thoughts, were nothing more than the
reflection of the outer physical world. You can place an object
before a mirror, the mirror reflects the object's image, image and
object are identical. The image is not the object, but purely
material objects bring about the image by means of the mirror. You
need admit nothing more than that you are dealing with a mere image
that has no reality; then you don't have to prove the reality of the
image. In the same way, you can take a materialistic standpoint and
say, “There is really nothing there but external energies
reflected in the brain, and all we have in the way of thoughts are
merely such reflections of the outer world.” Then you are not
obliged to prove the existence of the spirit, for all thoughts are
but reflections.
Nor would we stand much chance of convincing those who
might get up and say, “But there are concepts that cannot be
taken from outer perceptions, abstract concepts, like a circle or a
triangle, that we never encounter in reality.” We can reply,
“True, as they are, they do not appear in the outer world as
images of the thought world, but there are innumerable
approximations.” In short, though it cannot be denied that
truth is super-sensible, materialism can undoubtedly cope with the
objection that man creates super-sensible truth within himself; hence
truth as such would furnish no argument against materialism.
Now we're in a pretty predicament. This truth, being
undeniably super-sensible, appears to countless people as sufficient
proof of the existence of a spiritual world, or an indication of one,
but it is not a proof of the existence of a spiritual world! Truth is
super-sensible, yes, but it is not necessarily real. It could be a sum
of images, then no one need accept its reality. So we must keep in
mind that the possession of truth is not proof of the reality of a
spiritual world, and that merely by penetrating to truth and living
and functioning in reality, man can never reach the spirit. The
objection would always stand that truth might be but an image of the
outer physical world.
At this point one might object that in that case it is
difficult to see how anywhere in the wide world any argument could be
found that might persuade man, such as he is in everyday life, to
recognize a spirit. Then, when people like Feuerbach, for example,
come along and say that men assume gods or a god, but that what they
experience within themselves is nothing but the content of their
soul, their thoughts, which they deify and project into the world, it
is easy to prove the unreality of the divine world, because it is
merely an outward projection of the unreal world of thought.
Aristotle does not go about it right when he cites the objectivity of
the thought world as proof of the existence of a god. He argues
simply that man has a mind and the mind can be applied to objects.
This presupposes that all objects are permeated by the divine nous,
or mind, but as he describes the latter, it is nothing but the human
mind projected outward, a reflected image. Thus the divine nous
is merely an image reflected outward, and is incapable of forming the
basis of any proof.
Anthroposophists must really be able to face such
matters clearly, and to realize that the usual methods of attempting
to arrive at recognition of the spiritual world from without prove,
upon closer examination, to be inadequate. Are we compelled, then, to
admit unconditionally that there is no possibility of achieving
conviction concerning the existence of the spirit, other than through
clairvoyance? It would almost seem as though only those people were
justified in speaking of the spiritual world who either envision it
as clairvoyants or believe what clairvoyants have to tell. It would
seem so, but it is not the case.
The outer world as such, with its material content, does
not of itself point to a spiritual world, unless we know of it
already, nor does the inner world of truth, which might be a
reflection of the outer world. Hence the question arises as to what
else there is. Well, there is something else, and it is error. We
must forget nothing in the world when dealing with a complete picture
of it, and in addition to truth we have error. Now, error naturally
cannot lead to truth, and it would be a strange thing to proceed from
error as a starting point. The fact that the soil of truth is sterile
is no reason for taking the standpoint of error; that would hardly
reduce the number of our opponents. We shall not take error as the
starting point in our search for truth; that would be not only
foolish but absurd. There is one aspect of error that cannot be
denied. It exists, it is present in the world, it is real; above all,
it can arise in man's nature and achieve being there.
When the outer world has created for itself a reflecting
apparatus in the brain and is reflected, and the sum of truth is the
sum of the images, it could naturally still be possible that, instead
of truth, error might arise through a condition analogous to a
distorting mirror that reflects caricatures of objects. If you were
to use a mirror of that sort, you would simply get a false image, and
the error would be comparatively easy to explain. It is merely a
matter of the organ producing a false reflection, and this, too, can
be explained. Truth and error can be explained as reflections. But
what cannot be explained? The correction of the error, the
transformation of error into truth; this cannot be explained as a
reflection. Try as you will, you cannot induce a mirror producing
caricatures to convert these into true images; it abides by its
error. The difference in the case of man is that he is not compelled
to stop at error, but is in a position to conquer it and transform it
into truth. Man thereby proves that while there is such a thing in
the phenomenon of truth as a reflection of external reality, the
transformation of error into truth shows that error as such is more
than a mere reflection of the outer world, and hence has no raison
d'être in the world that surrounds us. Truth has
justification in the external physical world, but the acceptance of
the external physical world is not sufficient justification for
accepting error. Something must enter in that does not pertain to the
outer world, that has no direct connection with it. If the sensible
is reflected in truth as a super-sensible image, and if it is
reflected as error, the cause of error must lie elsewhere than in the
sensible itself.
What meets our eye, then, when we recognize the
existence of error? We behold a world that is not made up of outer
physical phenomena only. Error can only originate in the
super-sensible world, can only proceed thence. That is for the time
being a conclusion. Let us now see what super-sensible research has to
say about this, not in order to prove anything, but to illuminate the
matter. What does it tell us about the peculiar position of error in
the world?
Suppose we were so far lacking in self-esteem that out
of an inner urge we were to think, voluntarily, a conception that we
knew for certain to be an error. Let us think an error. At first
sight this might not seem a desirable thing to do, but in a higher
sense it can be useful because, if you bring to bear the requisite
force and energy and frequent repetition in voluntarily thinking an
error, you will notice that this error is something real in the soul,
that it has a real effect. The error we think voluntarily, knowing it
to be an error, proves nothing, elucidates nothing, but it works in
us. The effect is all the more remarkable in that we are not
distracted by any prospect of arriving at truth; when we voluntarily
think an error we are quite alone with ourselves. By continuing this
process long enough we achieve what we have always described in
spiritual science as the calling into being of forces hidden in the
soul, forces that were not there before.
Continual devotion to outer truth does not get us very
far along the path under discussion, but the voluntary encouragement
of error within ourselves can lead to the birth of certain hidden
soul forces. As I have presented it now, you will not be able to use
it as a precept; hence in my Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and
Its Attainment and in my Occult Science I omitted the
advice to keep thinking as much error as possible (for the purpose
mentioned). That was left out, but a certain other aspect of the
matter is similar to something I did set forth there. I said that we
should not proceed from some obvious, glaring error, but that two
conditions must be fulfilled. We must visualize something that has no
counterpart in external reality, like that of the rose cross, for
example. Now, red roses don't grow on a black cross; looked at from
one angle, that is an erroneous conception. The rose cross represents
no external truth, but it is a symbolical visualization, an
allegorical conception. It expresses no truth directly, but it is the
allegory of a super-sensible truth. In its relation to sense reality
it is an erroneous conception, but as an allegory it is spiritually
significant. In meditating on the rose cross we yield ourselves to a
conception that in its relation to external reality is an error. We
are not yielding ourselves to an ordinary error, however, but rather,
by meditating on the allegory, on the significant conception, we are
fulfilling a definite condition.
This brings us to the second condition. A certain
premise must be fulfilled when we devote ourselves to meditation,
concentration, and so forth. If you penetrate into the whole spirit
of what is set forth in Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its
Attainment, or in the second part of Occult Science, you
will see that a certain frame of mind is indispensable for proper
meditation and concentration. Certain moral attributes of the soul
are indicated that must be present if what is to take place is to
take place in the right way. Why are these given as a condition? Why
are certain moral qualities indispensable? To enable us to yield
ourselves to an allegorical conception of this sort, to a conception
that in the external sense is false.
This again is something that must be taken into account.
As a rule, nothing desirable is attained by meditating and
concentrating without first having sought the frame of mind that has
been sufficiently described because experience shows that without
such a foundation, the world that is opened up through the awakening
of hidden soul forces is in reality one that acts destructively upon
man, rather than tending to further his development. It has a
health-giving, developing effect only when it grows out of a frame of
mind such as has been explained. That is what experience shows.
Further, it shows what pathological phenomena, as they may be called,
are symptomatical in those who seek the higher worlds from motives of
passion or curiosity, instead of in the right frame of mind. Such
people do receive a reality into themselves, for error is a reality
and it acts in the soul. It is a reality not present in the outer
world as revealed by the senses; hence such people absorb a
super-sensible force, a super-sensible entity into their souls. This
error is actually something efficacious, but its roots can only be in
the super-sensible world, not in the outer sense world.
This super-sensible world must not be permitted to act
upon us unless we have the special foundation this moral frame of
mind provides. This can only be because we are aware that error,
though a superhuman force, leads us first into a super-sensible world
that is not a good one. Though truly a super-sensible force, it is in
the first instance quite certainly not a good force. It can only
become such when it is implanted in a good moral frame of mind. Now
translate that into words for yourselves such as are often used to
discuss such things on an anthroposophical basis.
You see, by learning to know error we can get to know a
super-sensible world. It is not necessary to approach the
super-sensible world by artificial means. The super-sensible world
looms into the sensible world through the medium of error, and then
in turn through error it leads us out into the super-sensible world.
But it is not a good world. We must bring the good world to it from
the other side, a frame of mind through which alone error can have
the right effect. Paradoxically it could be said that in the sense
world we actually become acquainted with the super-sensible world
because we have error. So the feature of the super-sensible world you
meet first is the devil, for at first you encounter a world in no
wise good, a world that reveals itself as anything but good.
For this reason Mephisto's remark could be appropriately
applied here, “These fellows would not scent the devil out,
e'en though he had them by the throat.” The devil is present.
We can also say that our first acquaintance with the super-sensible
world is made by way of the Luciferic power. We meet the
super-sensible world first in the shape of the Luciferic forces, and
these we can only escape by the ostrich method, that is, by burying
our head in the sand. This can, of course, be done, but it does not
do away with those forces. That is the point that should be
elaborated in many lectures if it were not to be merely sketched. The
super-sensible world is given with the existence of error, but at the
outset all that is revealed is the Luciferic element, the adversary
of the nature of man.
Is there any particular point in talking about just
these matters? If a man lacks the requisite moral frame of mind when
penetrating into the super-sensible world by means of an error
voluntarily accepted in his thinking, he falls prey to Lucifer!
Yesterday we cited Aristotle's statement that in addition to what man
comes by from parents and ancestors in the line of heredity, he
receives his super-sensible nature from the God, so that through a
relation to the God every human being entering the moral world is
endowed with the spirit as a new creation [“Aristotle's
world picture presents itself as follows. Down below, objects and
processes representing matter and ideas have their being, and the
higher one looks, the more everything of a material character
disappears. What is purely spiritual comes into view, disclosing
itself to man as ideas — the world sphere in which the divine
holds sway as pure spirituality that animates all. To this world
sphere the spiritual human soul belongs. It does not exist as an
individual being before combining with the elements of body and soul,
but only as part of the world spirit. Through this union it acquires
its individual existence, detached from the world spirit; and after
the separation from corporeality it lives on as a spiritual being.
Thus the individual soul being commences in conjunction with the
human earth being, then lives on, immortal. A pre-existence of the
soul before the earth life is assumed by Plato, but not by
Aristotle.” (Rudolf Steiner, Riddles of Philosophy, Vol.
I.)] by the Divinity. We could not come to terms,
however, with Aristotle's assertion. We found it contained much that
contradicted the assertion itself. Now, Dr. Unger has rightly shown
and clearly proved the justification for contradiction in the outer
world, [Carl Unger, Gedanken zur Philosophic
des Widerspruchs. Stuttgart, 1964.] but
certainly this recognition and justification cannot apply to a
contradiction that leads to inferences refuting the assertion itself.
Yet that is what we find in Aristotle.
If the God were to create a super-sensible man, then, as
we saw, an unsatisfied state would arise in all men after death. It
would follow that the God created man for a state of discontent, but
that cannot lie within Aristotle's meaning either. We cannot admit a
philosophy which maintains that, along with what is given through
birth, a super-sensible part is received directly from the God —
as more recent world conceptions interpret the concept “God.”
Even if this is based on truth, nothing can be proved by it, for
truth proves nothing concerning the super-sensible world. A proof of
that sort can in no way be applied to the super-sensible world. That
is the first point, and the second is that if we assume that man, in
his super-sensible component, is created by a God, it would be
unthinkable that after death he should pass to an imperfect state.
Aristotle's position is therefore untenable.
What Aristotle failed to take into account is that the
first element of the super-sensible world accessible to man —
active even in our immediate human experience — is a Luciferic
one, and that we can only make headway by admitting the Luciferic
principle at the inception of super-sensible man, by letting it
participate, so to speak, in so far as we look up from the man of the
physical world to the super-sensible world. Thus man cannot derive
from a God alone, but only from a God in conjunction with the
Luciferic principle. I ask you to keep well in mind the facts just
referred to. They have unconsciously passed over into the feeling of
occidental peoples, whatever their theories about a spiritual world,
and right into our own time they have prevented the learned lights of
the West from ridding themselves of their prejudices against the idea
of reincarnation and repeated earth lives.
In former times, of course, men did not express the
matter as we have done today, by saying that at bottom there is
greater compulsion to believe in the devil than in anything else that
is super-sensible, but they felt exactly what has just been expressed
in the form of ideas, felt the presence of the Luciferic along with
the Divine. They also felt — the justification of which will
become manifest later in these lectures — that side by side
with what we have as corporeality, a spiritual element is vouchsafed
us, something begotten of God. Try as they would, they never could
harmonize the cognition of the external physical human being on the
physical plane with the descent of man from a super-sensible origin.
They could not get around this contradiction. It was
much more difficult for the occidental than, for example, for the
Buddhist, whose whole way of thinking and feeling facilitates his
acceptance of the doctrine of reincarnation. One could almost say
that with him it is congenital to believe that external corporeality
really represents a sort of denial of the Divine, a fall from Grace,
and that he is justified in striving to be free of it and to rise
into worlds in which it means nothing. Quite different is the
standpoint of Aristotle from that of Buddha's disciples. Aristotle
says that we pass through the portal of death and take with us our
super-sensible part, but then we must look down on what we had been,
and our further development depends upon that physical life. The
Divinity introduced us into a physical body because we needed it.
Aristotle proclaims the importance of outer sensual form, outer
sensual life. It is not a question here of concepts, ideas,
abstractions, but of the content of the philosophers' minds. The
Buddhist's mind held no such content as Aristotle's. The essence of
his attitude was a feeling that contact with the physical world
constituted a defection. He was aware that in arriving at sensuality,
man had encountered precisely that from which he must free himself,
that a man became more of a human being after having cast off all
that.
It was impossible for Aristotle, as a representative
occidental, to feel Buddhistically, as indeed no one rooted in the
Occident can genuinely feel. He can acknowledge Buddhism
theoretically, but really only by repudiating the content of his
inner soul. Aristotle values the sense world not for its own sake,
but as a condition of rising into the spiritual world. Western
feeling always leads in the end to a certain recognition of a
divinely, spiritually permeated sense world. Though materialism
denied this for a time, it nevertheless lived on in the soul and must
persist as long as the fundamental conditions of the occidental
spirit exist.
Aristotle felt this to be a condition of the total
evolution of humanity. It lived on even into the nineteenth century,
and it is one of the elements that have prevented prominent minds of
the West from becoming reconciled to the idea of reincarnation. A
sensing of the Luciferic principle on the one hand, and the
assumption of a divine principle on the other, led to a feeling such
as I should like to point out to you in the works (1889) of the
distinguished philosopher, Frohschammer, on the philosophy of Thomas
Aquinas. There he onsets his own philosophy against that of Thomas
Aquinas. Among other things, he expresses his views on the
plausibility of what we call reincarnation. In a certain respect
Frohschammer must be regarded entirely as a representative of Western
mentality. He says, “Deriving as it does from God, the human
soul can only be regarded as the product or work of divine
imagination, for while the human soul and the world itself must in
this case originate in divine forces and activity (since nothing can
derive from mere nothingness), yet this force and activity of God
must act as a preparation for creation and as formative forces for
its realization and perpetuation; that is, as creative force not
merely formal but actual. It must be an imagination immanent in the
world, continually active and creative, a sustaining force or
potency; a world imagination, as was explained earlier.”
I must add here that Frohschammer also wrote a brilliant
book dealing generally with imagination as a world-creative
principle, as Hegel dealt with the idea and Schopenhauer with the
will. “As concerns the doctrine of the pre-existence of the
soul (souls that are regarded either as eternal or as transitory, but
in any case created in the beginning and all together), a doctrine
that appears to have been resurrected in recent times and is
considered capable of solving all sorts of psychological problems, it
is connected with the doctrine of the transmigration of souls and
their confinement in earthly bodies.”
This was written in 1889, and in the Carlsruhe lectures.
From Jesus to Christ (October, 1911), I mentioned that the
doctrine had always had adherents, even in the nineteenth century.
Naturally, Frohschammer knew that too, hence he continues,
“According to this doctrine, neither the direct,
divine creation of souls nor the creative production of new human
beings as regards body and soul would take place at procreation, but
only a new union of the soul with the body, a sort of becoming flesh
or an immersion of the soul in the body, at least partially, so that
one part would be encompassed and bound by the body and the other
would transcend it, asserting a certain independence as spirit. The
soul, however, cannot break away from the body (according to this
doctrine) until death severs the union and brings liberation and
deliverance, at least from this union. The spirit of man would in
that case resemble, in its relation to the body, the poor souls in
Purgatory as they are usually represented on votive tablets by
daubers; that is, as bodies half engulfed in roaring flames, but with
their upper parts, the souls, protruding and gesticulating. Consider
the position and significance this conception would imply for the
contrast of the sexes, the concept of human species, wedlock, and the
relation of parents to their children! The contrast of sexes is but a
system of bondage; wedlock, an institution for fulfilling the task it
involves; parents, minions of the law for holding and imprisoning the
souls of their children, while the children themselves owe this
miserable, weary imprisonment to their parents, with whom they have
nothing further in common. Everything connected with this
relationship would be based on wretched illusion, as would all that
humanity associates with the contrast of the sexes. What a formidable
rôle this bisexuality plays! How intensely man's planning and
longing are determined by it! What yearning it excites, what bliss it
yields, what a source of bodily and spiritual transport! What an
inexhaustible subject of artistic and particularly poetic creation!
Now we are to believe that this subject is but a process for
embodying and imprisoning poor souls that are thereby committed to
earthly misery, consigned to the toils, passions, temptations and
dangers of this earthly existence, rising at best with only a portion
of their being into a Beyond; are, as it is called, transcendental —
or better, transcendent. The significance of such a sex relationship,
then, is not to be found in a continuous renewal, a rejuvenation
corresponding to the spring of existence; quite the contrary, and the
underlying longing and rapture it engenders would not be based upon
the satisfaction of a lofty creative urge, as one would assume should
be the case, but would emanate from a pitiful ambition to imprison
new souls in bodily forms that obscure and estrange the greater part
of their real selves.” [J. Frohschammer,
Die Philosophic des Thomas von Aquino, Leipzig, 1889.]
Here, as you see, is a man who speaks sincerely and
honestly out of the spiritual life of his time, and we have every
reason to inform ourselves concerning the difficulties encountered by
occidental philosophies of the past in recognizing what must be the
basic nerve of our world conception. All who approach it honestly
will meet with great difficulties. One of the tasks of anthroposophy
is to become acquainted with these problems that face those who,
steeped in the occidental cultural life, would achieve recognition of
the spirit as it is represented by spiritual science in general and
pneumatosophy in particular.
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