1. Primary and Secondary Qualities

Among the various philosophical, Goetheanistic and spiritual- scientific definitions of the human being given by Rudolf Steiner, we do not find a more universal and in a certain sense more radical answer to the question: Why did man become a thinking being? – than in one of the lectures of the cycle ‘The Deeper Secrets of the Human Being in the Light of the Gospels’. There, he says: “Why did the Gods create human beings? The reason was, that only in the human being could they develop capacities... of thinking, of representing things in thought in such a way that his thoughts are bound up with the making of distinctions. This capacity can only be developed on our Earth; prior to this it had not existed at all, it had to wait until human beings came into existence.... The Gods brought man into being in order to receive back from the human being what they had, but now in the form of thought.... And whoever does not want to think on the Earth deprives the Gods of what they had counted upon, and is therefore quite unable to achieve what is actually the task and mission of the human being on the Earth” (GA 117, 13.11.1909). The words of Rudolf Steiner quoted here can be compared to a tight, inward-spiralling movement, whose unwinding, which extends in both directions – back to the original, Goetheanistic-philosophical period of his activity, and forwards to its final stage, where he developed the ideas of reincarnation and of the Michael impulse – represents the “keynote” of his entire teaching. Even followers of Anthroposophy often have difficulty grasping this fact, unfortunately. Rudolf Steiner himself saw and experienced this, and also spoke about it. In the written version of the lecture held in August 1908 entitled ‘Anthroposophy and Philosophy’, he says: “For, in its deepest aspects this (Anthroposophical – G.A.B.) movement will not achieve recognition in the world through those people who only wish to hear about the facts of the higher worlds; it will only come about through those who have the patience to work their way into a thought-technique which creates a real foundation for genuine activity, creates a scaffold (Ger. ‘skeleton’) for work in the higher world” (GA 35). These are the points of departure arising from the main principles of Anthroposophy, which we are here trying to research into and are striving to follow in our discussions. The phenomenon of thinking consciousness is, indeed, many-faceted. If we wish to investigate how it is dealt with in Anthroposophy, it is especially important to crystallize out its chief characteristics, from which then everything else proceeds and is illumined in a consistent and organic way. One of these basic characteristics is, unquestionably, the following: “The belief that the world is produced by thinking and continues to be so produced up to the present time, this alone makes fruitful one’s inner practice of thought” (GA 108, 18.1.1909). By ‘belief’ is meant in the present case that complex state of mind and spirit in which individual cognition, after the abstract stage of reflection has been overcome, merges together with the ideal, essential being of things. Belief then becomes a form of immediate, direct knowledge. Such a spiritual act has a thought-will nature; it is essentially unique; it is what humanity has been seeking for thousands of years.

The idea that belief represents, so to speak, a naïve state of the individual spirit, who gives up, and rejects, the attempt to understand the world through thinking cognition, is the fruit of human errors that have arisen in comparatively recent times and have in every case the same origin: the increasing split of the single, unitary world into the world of thinking and the world given to perception. In this connection the problem of belief became a problem of both consciousness and being. The following question began to play the decisive role: Can the human being understand himself rightly and come to a clear recognition of the significance of thinking for his own being? This question can be answered once one has grasped the fact that thought is a human being’s most individual possession, that which is most uniquely his own, while being at the same time of cosmic origin.

Anthroposophical theory of knowledge teaches that the entire consciousness of the world also lives in man, but in an abstract form. Thanks to thinking, man knows that he is also a spiritual being. But the spirit that lives in us as knowledge is the same as that which holds sway in nature. And in its absolute nature it is the Holy Spirit. “All the things around us,” says Rudolf Steiner, “are condensed thoughts of God” (GA 266/1). These are also nature-forces. The thoughts of God are the laws of nature. As we raise ourselves to an understanding of them, we grasp hold of objects through our thinking. However, an object given to perception is merely another form of its spiritual essence or ‘ur’- phenomenon. We form a thought by inwardly abstracting from the object, the sensory form, and striving to grasp its spiritual archetype: the natural law, the ‘ur’-phenomenon, the type; and finally the ‘I’-subject if we are dealing with cognition.

This is not a metaphysics of dualism. “The entire ground of being,” so we are told by Rudolf Steiner, “has poured itself out into the world, has become fully identical with it” (GA 2). It has not poured itself out into the special world of ‘otherness-of-being’, but into the world that is unitary in its being-nature and in which sensory being is merely one of the forms of manifestation of the universe. This is the universe of revelation, and it is centrifugal. The Godhead causes it to become centripetal, in order to return to Himself via the world; he does this by way of thinking which, in abstract form, constitutes the boundary of the universe (see Fig.37). From it the boundless, the absolute, is, so to speak, mirrored back; the inversion outwards gives way to an inversion inwards. This gives rise to a new quality of the world: It (the world) becomes knowable in the thoughts of man. Thus the universal foundation of being reveals itself in man’s thinking in that form which it possesses in and for itself. In the experience of perception it appears in a mediated form, which is authentic nevertheless. When we set up conceptual connections between things, the world-foundation itself is thinking in us; not as a force from ‘yonder sphere’, but as the real and immanent basis of things. Our judgment makes a decision about its own content. And this means that our knowledge is true. If we remain true to its essential nature and do not distort it with artificial constructions, then “not only must, where revelation is concerned, nothing be admitted for which no persuasive reasons exist in thinking; but experience must also become known to us not only from the aspect of its appearance, but also as an element that is actively working (‘in the original’ – N. Lossky)” (ibid.). When we think, we observe nature in its creative activity. Indeed, we see the things in the light in which our thinking, our cognition, illumines them. This question must be correctly formulated; then it will become evident that, while it is true that we look at things through the ‘spectacles’ of our subjectivity, their essential nature is only revealed when the thing is brought into connection with the human being. “We have knowledge of the world, not only as it appears to us, but it appears – albeit only to thoughtful observation – as it really is. The form of reality that is the result of scientific investigation is its true and final form” (ibid.). Such is the conclusion of Rudolf Steiner in the book in which he describes Goethe’s theory of knowledge.

Of course, if we are to overcome the antithesis between nature and spirit which can be experienced within the human being, we must approach it scientifically on many different levels. In the first place we must, in this case, take account of the fact that we have before us in nature as the immediately given, something that is conditioned; that which conditions it, we find in the spirit, to which we ascend through cognition. What is graspable by the cognizing spirit is also the cause underlying the things in nature. Spirit itself can, however, only be known in its conditioning activity; here the particular is an originator of laws and is individual. In science we have what is general or universal. The profound crisis of knowledge stems from the confusion of these things. But the confusion arose as a result of the increasing abstractness of thinking, its mechanical character, its formalization.

What Anthroposophy strives to do in this situation becomes particularly clear when we examine in more detail the nature of the primary and secondary qualities. The relation to them in traditional science has remained almost the same as it was in John Locke’s time: the view of the subjective character of sense-perceptions (secondary qualities) – the cornerstone of all unknowability – has not been shaken in the slightest degree; and the role of the “objective” definitions of the human mind has increased to some extent. Kant’s transfer of time from the ideal (thought) to the sensory category (the form of sensory perception – ‘Anschauung’) simply led to a worsening of the confusion in science (relativity theory in physics).

The nature of the primary and secondary qualities can only be grasped if we approach reality in its immediate ideal-real unity. As such, it is arrived at by the human being via two paths: namely, the percept and the concept. In the first case, it can be known indirectly, through the revelation of the form. But this mediation needs to be approached in the right way. An understanding of it must not be sought in the forms themselves – these are objective – but in the definitions of the human mind or spirit, through which the forms are described and characterized in quantitative terms. The form stands before us in unity with its content, though this can only be revealed through the cognizing mind of the human being. And it can therefore be said that, in this case, the essence of the things merges together to a unity with the cognizing subject. The essential (being) does not thereby become non-essential (Nicht-Wesen); it merely comes to expression in an abstract form that is void of essential being, though it is not itself an abstraction.

Thus the content of the form is itself seen to be a form: the form of the subjective, thinking human mind or spirit. It is a concept, or a totality of concepts, a system of definitions. And it becomes apparent that the form in which the content of sense-perceptible forms is revealed to thinking is itself a kind of archetypal form. In it are given to the thinking spirit the eternal laws of nature, which are identical with Divine revelation and with the Divine Essence itself. They reveal themselves to cognition when it permeates the world of experience with ideas. “In thinking we stand within essential being...”, as Rudolf Steiner remarked in one of his notebooks (A.22, 1929). The ideal definitions of the form of appearance are the multiplicity of concepts. The essential nature of the thing is unity, the idea. When we think, we become, within our inner being, partakers in the formative, creative substance or, more accurately, we partake in communion. Therefore in cognition we do not alienate ourselves from being; we form ourselves – within the ‘I’, as a constituent part of the world of being.

It is, first and foremost, the non-organic realm that we gain knowledge of with the help of the primary qualities. The ideal in it is not assimilated into the form, but works in it as a guiding force, governs it as a law of nature. The objects of the inorganic world work upon one another with the help of the laws that stand outside them. The original members of this category may be described as archetypal (or ‘ur’) phenomena. Here the ideal is present outside the perceptible manifoldness.

Of course, a second fact remains unaltered by this: there is nothing in perception that is not also contained in the concept. – This is one of the principles of Goetheanistic science. In inorganic nature there is a separation between ‘existing’ and ‘appearing’. In the human mind or spirit ‘existing’ comes to expression disconnected from the reality given in perception – a fact recognized above all by dualism. It rejects the idea that the form in which the phenomenon presents itself to our perception and the form of our abstract definitions of the object are two manifestations of one and the same natural power, the unitary spirit of nature. In the thinking consciousness of man, this spirit assumes the character of pure being, but because the thinking subject separates it from the perceptible things, with which it is in reality connected, it (the spirit) is robbed of its reality. But the human being becomes thereby in his shadow-like thinking a subject: the creator of the primary qualities of things. In this activity of his own, he restores to the things their ideal content, and together with this he also gives himself: he gives himself back to the universe as an autonomous new creation.

Darwinism was not mistaken when, in its study of the primary qualities, it gave central emphasis to knowledge of the emergence and transformation of plant and animal forms in the struggle for existence. But what it achieved was, of course, no more than a system of knowledge, which it was basically unable to unite with reality; the reality it was dealing with was, after all, life itself, whose secrets were not revealed to Darwinism. What is it that imbues form with life, brings it to metamorphosis and not only to quantitative change? The answer to this question is provided by Goetheanistic science.

Where organic nature – life in its varied forms – opens itself up to the cognizing subject, the ideal element in nature comes to direct expression with the help of the primary qualities. In the organic world, says Rudolf Steiner, “one single part of a living entity (Wesen) does not determine another, but the whole (the idea) conditions each single element from out of itself, according to its own nature” (GA 1). Thus the wholeness of the entity is the entelechy, of which we spoke earlier. When the human spirit wishes to gain knowledge of the organic, it frees the entelechy of everything that approaches it in the shape of chance external influences upon the organism, and reaches through to the idea that corresponds exclusively to the organic within the organism, the idea of the archetypal (‘ur’) organism, which Goethe describes as the type. “It is even more real,” Rudolf Steiner explains, “than any single real organism, because it reveals itself in every organism. It also expresses the essential nature of an organism in a way that is more pure and more complete than any single, particular organism” (ibid.).

On this level of being, the form of our cognition that is conditioned by natural law has little to offer. Indeed, can Euclidian geometry, for example, which is so necessary in crystallography, help us in any significant way in our study of plant morphology?*  The unity of the organic world is higher than that of the inorganic – higher in terms of the developmental type. The forms of the organic world are the means by which the unity comes to manifestation. It is not so much the case that they spring forth from, as that they ascend to, a unity. It is particularly in research into the forms of the organic world that we apply the method of concrete monism developed by Rudolf Steiner. According to this method the forms must be explained with reference, not to the law, but to the type. To give an example: The forms observable in the emergence of a crystal and an apple have nothing in common. The organic fashions itself in the form, and not the form. The essential nature of the organic is something other than the manner of its self-realization in the form: The essential being determines the form in advance.

* We will not consider here the esoteric aspect of this question.
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Of course, external elements exercise a certain influence on the formative process; they cause the form to change, but the all-determining factor remains the self-realization of the type, of the idea of the organism, of the entelechy as an active force. Its active working is direct, while outer influence on the living entity is indirect and no more than a stimulus.

In the study of organic forms, the concept is not a law standing outside the sensory manifoldness, it is the principle inherent in the latter. Here the sensory unity (of the organism) itself points beyond its own limits. The relation of its single members as a totality has become real, and it comes to concrete appearance, not only in our intellect, but also in the object itself, in that within the object it brings forth the multiplicity from out of itself. The idea here “is a result of what is given (experience), it is concrete appearance” (GA 1). Also, it reveals itself to the power of judgment in beholding. This power takes hold of the concept and what is given to perception, as a unity and shows itself to be, in the last resort, observation, though admittedly of a different kind than sense-observation. Rudolf Steiner calls it intuitive. Nikolai Lossky distinguishes between sensory, intellectual and mystical intuition. The circumstances surrounding them “are radically different from one another,” he says, “but in the final analysis all of them are, nevertheless, different aspects of the one cosmos which we grasp in thinking.”138 They all signify “the immediate beholding of the object by the cognizing subject.” But he emphasizes at the same time that “I do not mean by the word ‘intuition’ a seeing of the concrete, indivisible totality of beings: for, after all, even discursive, abstract knowledge can represent a seeing of the aspects of the most authentic being, when within being processes of separation and reconnection take place; in this way I can speak of the intuitiveness of discursive thinking, even of the intuitiveness of the understanding faculty (not only of the power of reason). On the other hand it is possible, especially if one proceeds from the doctrine of intuition as the direct beholding of being in the original, to explain cases of a seeing of the object in its organic concrete totality.”139

We are in a certain sense summing up, in accordance with Rudolf Steiner’s theory of knowledge, the concepts through which the laws of the inorganic world are manifested; but also – we would add – those of the world of logic. The idea as a fruit of experience “sums us up” ourselves, so to speak; within experience it leads us to a higher experience – to a beholding of the ideal (world), whose first revelations already become evident in our discursive thinking.

All secondary qualities address our power of judgment in beholding; they call upon us to overcome their character of sensory appearance and to cross the threshold separating the cognizing subject from super- sensible reality; i.e. they prompt us to make the transition from knowledge of reality that is mediated by form and concept, to direct knowledge of its essential nature in intuitive perception or beholding. What is observed by us in things is merely one part of them; the other part is revealed to the cognizing mind or spirit, directly. “Only when we hold together the language of the outer world with that of our inner world do we have the full reality,” says Rudolf Steiner, and continues: “What did the true philosophers of all times want to do? Nothing other than to tell us of the essential nature of things, which the things them- selves proclaim when the spirit lends itself to them as an organ of speech” (GA1). Let us illustrate these points with the help of a diagram (Fig.66). This will also help us as we build up the thought-structure that follows.

2. Some Special Features of Quality and Quantity

When the cycle of primary and secondary qualities experienced by the human being draws together within him to form a single whole, the antithesis between subject and object is overcome. It grows clearly apparent to the human being that nature itself is speaking through his cognition; it is active in his thoughts and attains completion through them. All of this becomes especially easy to grasp if we turn our attention to beholding. Reality cannot be derived from the mere intellect. Our task is entirely different, namely: How can one endow the intellect with reality and, as a next step, the human being with essential being, thus making him into a true subject? To attain this goal we must (according to Fig.66) unite the concept with the percept and come to a living experience of thinking in the sphere of the secondary qualities. Then thinking acquires its own morphology: in it the idea becomes type and essential being – it becomes life of consciousness, thinking will, individual ‘I’.

Natural law (the ‘ur’-phenomenon), the entelechy (the type), the self-conscious ‘I’, which rises to the higher ‘I’ – in these three form- principles the ideal world undergoes its evolution. In natural law idea and reality are separate. The type brings them together in essential being. In human consciousness the concept becomes an object of perception. Here, beholding and idea coincide. The ideal world becomes beholding. Thus, the hidden ideal core of the nature surrounding the human being – of which he himself forms a part – comes to manifestation in the lower-higher ‘I’.

However, in the thoughts we are putting forward here there is one aspect which could be subject to serious criticism from the standpoint of physics. The following objection could be raised: If, for an understanding of the living world – also in the sphere of thinking – it is essential to behold the supersensible within the sensible, how is it with our perceptions of light and colour, which are secondary qualities of things, but reveal themselves nevertheless in inorganic objects? This objection has its roots in the Kantian, a priori principles of sensory perception, which are incorrect and served as a basis for the materialistic direction in physics, where the qualitative side of reality was replaced by the quantitative. To what outcome this led in practice has been discussed in the fourth chapter of the ‘Philosophie der Freiheit’.

In his philosophical system Kant postulates four categories which – as opposed to Aristotle, whom he unjustly accuses of nominalism140 – he firmly believes have been deduced by him with strict scientific necessity. These categories are: quantity, quality, relation, modality. Each of them comprises its own class of concepts stemming from the understanding faculty, some of which Kant – following Locke in this case – describes as mathematical, and the others as dynamic; to the second group belong: reality, negation, limitation.141 Among the dynamic concepts Kant also includes time.142 Similar to the Kantian view is that of modern physicists, when they say that the qualitative only arises as a result of the working of the quantitative upon the sense-organs; red is distinguished from blue only through the vibrational frequency, i.e. through a process of movement. A similar shifting of concepts takes place in abstract thinking. This fact is of crucial significance for an understanding of the meaning and the mission of science.

In contrast to materialism, the Goetheanistic Anthroposophical teaching with regard to the nature of sense-perceptions begins where physics ends. Here the wave-theory of light is viewed as an attempt to derive the phenomenal states of life from non-organic forms – i.e. to introduce a strictly determined causal connection into the sphere of the life-processes, “to test harmony by means of algebra”.

For Newton light is a composite phenomenon, whose elements are simple colours. Goethe considered this way of thinking unjustified. He regarded light as an indivisible, homogeneous being, as the simplest of all those known to us. Colours arise within the light; they are its “deeds” and its “sufferings”.*   But the essential being of light is immediate, and thus it appears for observation. To paraphrase Kant: Light, but not time, can be viewed as a pure form of sensory beholding, because of its indivisible nature.

* We would note in passing that those are the seventh and eighth categories of Aristotle.
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Philosophers of a certain kind maintain that behind the appearances of the sense-world lie its original, unknowable elements; light is, they say, such an element, a simple entity resting upon itself and not derivable from anything else. In order to assess this opinion correctly, one must of necessity base one’s inquiry on the phenomenological method developed by Goethe for the study of colours. This was described very well by Goethe, and a commentary was written by Rudolf Steiner, in which further aspects were added; we will therefore do no more than indicate its most important assertions. According to one of them, darkness forms the opposite pole to light, and there is interaction between these two. It is from this that colours arise. For example, yellow is light that has been diminished by dark; blue is darkness that has been mitigated by light.* The darkness of outer space is changed into dark blue sky by the illumined cloudedness of the atmosphere. At sunrise and sunset the light – depending upon the degree of cloudedness of the atmosphere – passes from yellow to orange, and even to ruby red, etc.

* In all this we have to do with facts that are experimentally verifiable with the help of a system of prisms, light filters etc. In Middle Europe excellent courses and lectures are held accompanied by demonstrations of the data that are obtained through experiment, where conclusive proof is given of the correctness of the Goethean phenomenology with regard to light and colour. Andrei Beliy in his book ‘Rudolf Steiner and Goethe’ is, so far, the only Russian to have seriously discussed this subject.
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Goethe’s views on the nature of light do not contradict in any way the conception of the relation between light and a certain process of movement in space. As Rudolf Steiner explains, Goethe only insists on the following: “The qualitative elements of the sense of vision: light, darkness, colours must first be understood within their own context and be led back to ‘ur’-phenomena; then, on a higher level of thinking, one can investigate the relation that exists between this complex of facts and the quantitative, the mechanical-mathematical in the world of light and colour” (GA 6). In this case, too, the conception of a movement is untenable which is not given to experience, but is merely a form of thinking, a mathematical thought-picture which supposedly determines reality.

The qualitative is unquestionably present also in the outer world, constituting there an indivisible whole with space and time. The physicist’s task, says Rudolf Steiner, is to lead back complex processes in the realm of colour, sound, warmth phenomena, magnetism etc. to simple processes within the same sphere. In his application of mathematics the physicist must not equate colour and light with phenomena of movement and force; he must seek the relationships within the phenomenon of colour and light. Therein lies the mathematical method in physics.

The quality ‘red’ and the given process of movement constitute a whole. They can only be separated in our intellect, but then it becomes evident that there is no reality underlying this process of movement. It exists in the same way as, in abstraction, a cube of the salt crystal exists, but it is not possible for us to form a real salt crystal out of a mathematical cube. Correspondingly, no colour can be created out of the wave-movement of light, just as little as all the discoveries of quantum mechanics enable us to create an atom.

Quantity as such does not create quality. It is incorrect to think that primary qualities, as form-conditions, give rise to secondary qualities – life-conditions. In reality the situation is exactly the opposite. The secondary qualities are substances of a purely spiritual nature – thought- beings. The same is true of light. “Inwardness,” says Rudolf Steiner, “must be seen as an attribute of light. In each point within it, it is itself” (GA 130, 1.10.1911). This can be regarded as the fourth dimension. Light is present wherever there is sound and warmth (cf. 5.12.1920). It is also the causative factor underlying the sense of sight. Goethe says in the introduction to the didactic section of this theory of colours: “The eye owes its existence to the light. Out of the rudimentary accessory organ of the animal the light calls forth an organ that is to be akin to its own nature, and thus the eye is formed in the light and for the light, so that the inner light may come forth to meet the outer.”143 This is the objective character, the objectivity, of the phenomenology of the secondary qualities.

The thoughts of Goethe and Rudolf Steiner concerning the nature of the secondary qualities have their roots in esoteric Christianity; it cannot be otherwise. Only an entirely superficial mind can look upon the words at the beginning of the St. John’s Gospel as a metaphor: “In Him was life; and the life was the light of men.” This statement must be taken literally, when it is applied to the Goethean colour theory.

In the light, the spiritual light in particular, the morality of the world is revealed to the human being. When spirit densified to matter, the light was reflected back from it. The bearers of the light of Christ are the Elohim, the spirits of Form, who bestowed the ‘I’ upon man in the aeon of Earth. In the reflected light of the sense-world Luciferic beings are revealed. Light is human thinking, which therefore has two sides: the reflected, Luciferic, abstract side, and the aspect of essential being, where consciousness and being constitute a unity – a unity of form, movement and quality.

In the course of the creation of the aeons, as described by Rudolf Steiner, the sacrifices brought by the higher Hierarchies spread out in the form of “sacrificial smoke” (of a spiritual kind, of course) from the centre of the universe to its periphery, where the beings of the third Hierarchy acquired the ‘I’-consciousness. This “smoke” was reflected back by them as light. On Old Saturn the second Hierarchy revealed itself in the light, but there was as yet nothing that it could illumine; on the Old Sun the Archangels breathed in the sacrificial smoke (cf. Figs. 11, 13, 14) at the periphery of that universe, and breathed out light; on the Old Moon colours appeared in the reflected light.

In the aeon of Earth the human being, who stands at the periphery of the universe, reflects its working in the form of light-filled thoughts. This happens in such a way that the universal beings directly and objectively appear to him. And he himself (not only his eye) is a creation of these appearances. And in philosophy, as we already noted, Kant had a partial inkling of this spiritual impulse behind thinking when he described his a priori principles of sensory experience as transcendental aesthetics. He could equally well have called them transcendental ethics; we will be speaking of this in our further discussions of the ‘Philosophie der Freiheit’. These pure senses are objective, and the fact that they are experienced by the human being does no more than reflect the other side of their unitary nature. For it is in aesthetics and morality that the antithesis between object and subject was first (and continues to be) overcome; they united within themselves the universal and the individual and created the pre-conditions for ‘beholding’. Thus Goethe, who combined in himself poetry and science, was able to realize the intellectus archetypus.

“Ethics (also aesthetics – G.A.B.) is... a doctrine of what is (vom Seienden),” says Rudolf Steiner (GA 1). In it are revealed the secondary qualities of things, including those of the subject himself, and they stand higher than the sensory perceptions conveyed by the sense- organs. One can describe them as pure being, as they are the revelation of the world-soul (see chapter 1, 6), of universal life, of the Word, of the second Logos, the Christ. In Christ the true beauty of the world is revealed. Being which contains mediation – to employ the language of Hegel – is thinking, pure abstraction. As existence it is form and quantity, “determinate quantity”. Hegel speaks of this as follows: “Quantity is pure being in which the determinacy is posited, no longer as one with the being itself, but as superseded (aufgehoben) or indifferent.”144 Also: “The (determinate – G.A.B.) quantum is the existence of quantity....”145 This is the nature of all that is created through the abstract activity of the understanding, including the categories of quantity itself.

Let us now, with the help of a diagram (Fig.67), draw together into the unity to which they belong, the many aspects we have discussed. Then all that we arrived at in Figs. 20 and 66 will reveal itself to us in greater detail.

3. What is the Relation between Thinking and Being?

The picture shown in Fig.67 bears a relation to the human being of the future, who has already acquired the ability to carry out free actions, the necessary prerequisite for which is that he has become a being who evolves in his ‘I’. Freedom of action presupposes development of the free individuality, and the latter presupposes an understanding of the idea of freedom. The human being of today has attained this insight only to a minimal degree, although it is precisely here that the central meaning of his existence lies. He would already go a long way, if he could only understand the following: The world of secondary qualities, which is revealed in sense-perception, cannot be known in its essential nature in abstract conceptual terms. “Just as the eye is the organ for perception (not for understanding - G.A.B.) of the phenomena of colour,” says Rudolf Steiner, “so what is needed for an understanding of the living realm is the ability to behold directly a supersensible reality within the sense-world” (GA 6).

The only real things in the universe are subjects – everything that is endowed with an ‘I’, whatever may be the form in which it realizes itself. Its forms can be grasped, its life can only be ‘beheld’. The life of the ‘I’-beings pervades the world with its vibrations and enters into the human soul, in order to express within it their true nature. It is in this way that the life of thinking arises in the human being. Over against this life stands the ascendancy of form. Its spiritual content is poured into the world of our ideas, but it cannot communicate to us its life, all the more so because it is itself continually losing this life as a result of its own tendency to rigidification and immobility. It is therefore necessary for human consciousness itself to gain possession of life (Fig.68). Such are the laws of evolution.

Originally, it is by way of perception that life enters the consciousness of man, but his spirit is blind to this perception. On the other hand, he is awake to those ideas of world-consciousness which arise within him thanks to the sensory perception of the forms through which this consciousness reaches him indirectly. World-consciousness is objective. Through bringing its two modes of appearance to a unity within him (in inner representation) the human being gains in two respects: He acquires a subject within himself, and restores the unity of the world in the realm of appearance: he gives back the ideas to the revealed things in the world, which in turn creates for them the possibility of becoming subjects in the future. Through reflecting upon the forms of his own consciousness, he gives the Divine quality even to his abstractness. The form of existence of the abstract mind is like a mineral. Its law (logic) stands outside it.*  The difference between the abstract mind (Geist) and the mineral is that the former is endowed with an ‘I’ – albeit one that is without substance – directly within sense-reality. For this reason it is possible for the ‘I’, after a change in its method of thinking, to instill life into its “mineral” of consciousness, without having to await the occurrence of world-wide metamorphoses.

* “Thoughts are just like mirror-images: they do nothing, they are not impelling in reality” (GA 224, 21.6.1923).
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The realization of this is hindered by philosophical doubts in the human being. Even if he has overcome solipsism and naïve realism, he still asks himself such questions as: Why is the world given to us in inner representations not enough in itself? Is the necessity to reflect back this world in concepts entirely objective (from the standpoint of the world-process)? Is it a necessity of this same world, the universe, that we reflect it back?

Let us turn to the introductions and commentaries on the natural-scientific works of Goethe, written by Rudolf Steiner. He remarks there, that cognitive activity only has a meaning if what is given to us in perception is not the whole reality but only a part of it, and if one contains within oneself the other part, as something higher that cannot be perceived with the senses, but only spiritually, thanks to the human being’s capacity to think. Hence, thinking adds nothing to reality, but merely – like the eye and the ear – perceives that within it which has the character of an idea.

Kant, Schopenhauer and the neo-Kantians maintain that ideas have no content of their own, that the idea and the object of beholding (the percept) are congruent with one another, that the idea is nothing more than the counter-image of the beheld object. But Rudolf Steiner suggests that we ask the following: How is it that we are able to clothe a multiplicity of percepts in a single, indivisible concept? An infinitely large number of human beings perceive an infinitely large number of trees. All their percepts are different, as the subjective element is contained within them. And yet, the concept of the tree is, for all of them, one and the same. Something similar happens in the realm of the abstract. Here we can think of the multiplicity of different triangles, a multiplicity which does not alter the fact that there is only a single general concept: “triangle”. From this it follows that the concept, and still more so the idea, has its own content, and therefore concept and percept (object of beholding) are not initially congruent with one another. They only become so in the inner representation – i.e. in the subject.

Beholding (percept, observation) always contains the particular and is, therefore, multiplicity. Even when we look twice at the same car driving past, we perceive it each time differently. But the universal – the concept “motor car” – is not impaired by this in any way. Rudolf Steiner asks: Can the unity of the concept be broken down into a per- ceptual multiplicity? – No, this is not possible. The concept has no knowledge of the particular, as the latter is only perceivable and not conceivable. The elements of multiplicity are given in perception. Thus concept and percept (object and beholding), while “in essence the same, are nevertheless two different sides of the world” (GA 1).

Thanks, therefore, to the activity of perceiving, of observation, the concepts are called forth in us. The conceptual universality in which concepts have their essential content is only to be found in the cognizing subject. It is obtained by the subject in connection with the object, in confrontation with the object, but not out of the object. When it arises, it has to give itself a content that is different from the world of sense-perceptions. This content works as a principle which activates the process of perception, i.e. it is qualitative in nature. We observe the objects passively; here we need do no more than use our sense-organs. The concept is the fruit of a spiritual activity. When we perform this activity we begin to understand that which remains inaccessible to perception: The driving forces of the world and the principles of its development. That they are real, of this there can be no doubt. In this case, however, the question mentioned above – Why do we need to reflect back the world in concepts? – can be preceded by another, or we can at least add a missing part to it. The resulting question would then be: If the part of world reality that is given to us in thinking is not essential, why did the world have to reveal itself to man in percepts? – That is to say, if cognition is not able to add anything to the content of the world, then perception – so we are forced to admit – can give the world still less. And in this case, to remove the human being from the evolution of the world will make virtually no difference to it. If, hypothetically, we remove one of the natural kingdoms – so one can argue in this case – we fundamentally change thereby the total picture of the world and its evolution, but if humanity were to disappear (or had remained behind at the animal stage), everything would remain just as it was before! If they are consistent, this is the conclusion which must be drawn by all those who underrate the importance of thinking and cognition in the objective evolution of the world. From this position it would follow that the human being is unnecessary for the world, not only in his scientific experiments, but in any role or characteristic whatever. Such are the conclusions drawn by cognition in the final stage of this crisis. That they are remote from reality (lebensfremd) and therefore life-destroying needs no proof, but is purely and simply axiomatic.

Because it takes account of the reality of life, Anthroposophy teaches how one can return to the reality of what is grasped by the intellect. It places a truly immanent world view over against the transcendentalism of sensualism and agnosticism and the metaphysics of dualism. The differences here, as defined by Rudolf Steiner, consist in the following: The foundation of the world, which the transcendentalists and metaphysicians seek in a ‘world beyond’, which is foreign to consciousness, is found by the immanent world-view in “that which comes to manifestation for the faculty of reason. The transcendental world- conception regards conceptual knowledge as a picture of the world. Thus the former can only provide a formal theory of knowledge, based on the questions: What is the relation between thinking and being? The latter world-view places at the forefront of its epistemology the question: What is knowledge? The first proceeds from the prejudice of an essential difference between thinking and being, the second focuses in an unprejudiced way on the only thing that is certain, and knows that no being is to be found outside thinking” (GA 1).

When the world of percepts appears before our thinking consciousness we give it the opportunity to address our power of judgment, whereby we hope to arrive at objective knowledge. Then a certain organ starts to become active within us, to which the second half of reality is revealed. Only when we have acquired both halves do we experience satisfaction with the world-picture in our consciousness. Now the perceived world stands before us in its “original form”. In appearing to us it performs its final deed. When we think about the world of percepts, we begin a process which cannot come about without our active participation; we take fully hold of this process and imbue with it the panorama of percepts which stands before us with all its riddles. Then the percept becomes for us as transparent as the thought. From this it follows that “a process in the world... (shows itself to be) entirely permeated by us, only if it is our own activity. A thought appears at the conclusion of a process within which we ourselves are standing” (ibid.). Thought reveals to us that part of reality which cannot be taken hold of with the lower sense-organs.

From the evolutionist position we have shown how and where this part of reality comes into being (see Figs.14 and 23). We experience a certain periphery or boundary of the universe when we have started to reflect. But reflection is not an empty mirroring; there lies within it the beginning of the return of the subject to the primal source of being. In the process of development this primal source brought about an extreme form of densification. Every substance, says Rudolf Steiner, is actually a concentrated, densified world process (see GA 343). For this reason, the universe that is given in percepts contains within it the entire mystery of world evolution, and there is therefore nothing spiritual that does not manifest in some way or other within sense-reality. The human being is a product of nature, but over and above this there has developed within him the capacity to experience the sensory phenomenology of forms and also of life and of consciousness – a capacity that is not even given to the Divine beings of the Hierarchies.

4. The Divine and the Abstract

We can imagine what is shown in Fig.23 as a kind of cosmically all-embracing “outbreathing” of the universal Being, whereby the latter, too, breathed itself out, identifying itself in this process with the multiplicity of phenomena created through its outbreathing, as the entities of which the world is constituted. At the outermost periphery of this “outbreathing” a creation gradually emerged, which had the capacity to draw the manifoldness of phenomena back into an ideal unity. Thus the universal Divinity is given the possibility of beholding Himself, so to speak, through the human being, of objectifying Himself within Himself. In the evolution of the world this was present from the very beginning as the aim and the law of its development, which led to the forming of the ‘I’-consciousness in man.

We discussed earlier how, before the beginning of the evolutionary cycle, in the Great Pralaya preceding it, the First Logos reflects itself, as it were, within itself, and in so doing imbues with life its own all- consciousness outside itself, in its reflected form. Thus arises the Second Logos. The unity of the world has since been preserved within the First Logos; through the activity of the Second Logos within creation, consciousness and life gradually strive to go their separate ways, attaining their extreme antithesis in the human being. In order to lead such a “periphery” of the world back to the unity of the Father, the Son had to make the greatest of all sacrifices: He had to descend into the realm of otherness-of-being and show man the way “to the Father”, to the unity of consciousness and life. The unity of the rest of the universe exists in the Father; it is forever unchangeable, but without individual human self-consciousness. When Christ went through the suffering of the Mystery of Golgotha he restored in the human being the unity of consciousness and life. God also became immanent to the individual spirit of the human being, only this fact requires, because it is rooted in the ‘I’-phenomenon, free recognition and acceptance on our part. This is the manifestation of the supernatural character. There is a notebook entry of Rudolf Steiner stating that the proclamation of the Second Logos is as follows: “I am All”; while the all-consciousness of the unity of the Father may be defined as “All is All” (GA 89).

Rudolf Steiner was emphatic in his defence of the point of view that there is no God standing above the world; God has poured himself fully into the world, but not only, of course, into its sense-perceptible aspect. He became immanent to the world in its unitary, sensible-supersensible reality. This consists of various levels, and God is present on them in different forms. The immanence of God in the world of the Hierarchies, of mighty ‘I’-beings, comes to expression in the fact that they are high creative Beings. The immanence of God in created nature is of a different kind.

The immanence of God in the world comes to expression in the fact that the world as a whole is an individual and the personification of the ‘I’-consciousness in it is its members (see Figs.17, 25 a,b,c). This individual continues its process of becoming, which is not completed within the confines of the evolutionary cycle. The human being bears his ‘I’-consciousness within himself, but there is no life in it.

If the human being knows the natural law, the ‘ur’-phenomenon, the type, the ‘I’, then he knows God in the world; he knows the essential being of the world, which is spirit, and this reveals itself in thinking in the form of concepts and ideas. In the beholding of ideas man experiences Divine revelation.

The best minds of German idealism, including Kant, wrestled with the question: How can one transform the truths of revelation into truths of reason? Anthroposophy has given the answer to this question. “To investigate the nature of a thing,” Rudolf Steiner says in the article ‘Goethe’s Theory of Knowledge’, “means to take one’s start in the centre of the thought-world and work from this point, until a configuration of thought arises before the soul which shows itself to be identical with the thing we have experienced. If we speak of the essential nature of a thing or of the world altogether, then we can mean nothing other than the comprehending of reality as thought, as idea” (GA 1).

In this sense the idea is One, while concepts form a plurality. The Idea said of itself in the burning bush to Moses: “I am the I AM.” It is here that monotheism and polytheism have their origin. The ancient peoples experienced the spiritual world as a multiplicity of thought-beings. In Christ the unitary essence of the ideal world poured itself into the physical plane. Therefore Christ said: “I and the Father are one”; at the same time, Christ is the life of the world. Hence, so Rudolf Steiner explains, to experience oneself as a Christian means: “To let the world-thoughts be crystallized out etherically in one’s own ether-body. And in addition to this, one must think in accordance with the world-will, i.e. one must surrender one’s own will in the astral body astrally to the world-will and thus recognize the Logos in Christ, so that the Christ becomes creative (in us – G.A.B.) (A.3, 1928).” Such is the esoteric side of thinking and the inner technique of the transition from abstract thinking to the thinking that is permeated with will, to thinking in the substantial ‘I’.

* * *

Abstract thinking is bound up with the life of the nerves, with the head. The ‘I’ of abstract thinking is hostile to the laws of life, as it is unable to transform substances. Consequently, in his nervous system, his head, the human being falls out of the universe. Aristotle was already beginning to experience this process. In Roman times the abstract became so strong, that it led to the concept of the rights of the citizen. The state of non-being in thinking gave the human being the feeling that, in the universe, a space was thus opened up, to which he and he alone was entitled. Initially this – so we may call it – “strange” form of selfhood arose on the basis of the death-process in the physical body; yet it is not illusory, because it is able to activate the individual will.

The results of abstract thinking are twofold. The first is that the abstract ideas, by way of processes in the physical body which arise in the act of thinking, also work upon the etheric body (the life-processes), on the will-elements, and give rise to actions that are by no means always in accord with the experience of our perceptions. This thinking is ego-centric and one-sided; only with the greatest caution should it be applied to the practical life. To characterize it, one could say: it lets itself be guided by individual sense-perception, and is able at the same time to discount the role this plays; it rejects the spirit and, in the end, reflects only what sense-perception arouses in us. In short, it is anthropomorphic, but in the negative sense of the word: it is conditioned to a large extent by what is instinctive. In its lack of substantiality it also contributes to the partial release of the ether-body (due to the dying of the nerve-cells), particularly in the head region. This is the second result, which can be made use of for positive purposes: When he thinks abstractly, the human being is engaged in a spiritual existence, even if he dismisses this fact.

Every thought, even the most abstract – says Rudolf Steiner – has its counterpart in the spirit as a spiritual being. This being also shapes the substance of the thought. In us, only its imprint appears, and this imprint of the spiritual being “is what we call an abstract thought” (GA 93a, 12.10.1905). Such a thought is, for example, “pure being”. For the philosopher it is “the imprint”, but in reality it is the being of the intelligible world, unrelated to the sense-world.

Indirectly, in images (imprints), there is given to human consciousness all the being of the world-consciousness which works in the evolution of the world as the totality of spiritual beings. The human being began to live consciously in abstractions during the epoch of the Old Testament. It was then called “living in the law” (see GA 186, 7.12.1918). This life in the law had a religious-social character and was still bound up to a greater extent with the rhythmic than with the head-system of man. In more recent times, particularly from the 15th century, abstract thinking took hold of the entire human being.

In antiquity the specific character of abstract thinking came to expression in a very marked way in Plato’s ‘Republic’. In our own time materialistic science, mathematical logic, computer “thinking” are developed with the help of abstract thinking. But also the entire sphere of social life, the structuring of society and production, are realms which the human being is striving to organize on the basis of abstract schemes of thought. A spirit of this kind does, indeed, have (in the Marxian sense) a “superstructure” character in the human being and merely reflects the laws of the inorganic world. The doors to the ‘ur’- phenomenal in the world, however, remain closed to him. He stands as a stranger towards the living realm.

* * *

World-consciousness is a reality. In one of Rudolf Steiner’s note- books there is an interesting thought concerning the principle of its working in the human being. It runs as follows: “The mental representations gained from the sense-world should not be applied to the inner human sphere, the spiritual. The spiritual beings should not come to the human being from outside .... One should only enter into a relation with the spiritual beings inwardly (in thoughts – G.A.B.) Spiritual beings who come from outside pursue their own, and not human aims” (let us say, in natural laws, in the evolution of species – G.A.B.).

The theme of these notes is actually the primary and secondary qualities, and it harmonizes with what we said in chapter 1 about the primal revelation of the Father. When it has become evolutionary process, this revelation works in the direction from the past to the future. Working in the opposite direction is the Holy Spirit, who reflects back to the Father what has been received by the Son. Out of the interrelation between Father and Spirit arises the multiplicity of forms. They densify to the material state and form a kind of “funnel of evolution”, which the human being also “slides down into” when he severs his ties with the spirit but receives instead the object-oriented consciousness (Fig.69).

At the periphery of the universe the human being is indeed approached from outside by the spiritual thought-beings whose aim it is to lead His revelation back to the Father – i.e. to bring the world to completion within the Divine Tri-unity. In their deeds, says Rudolf Steiner, “the self-revelation of Manas (i.e. the hypostasis of the Holy Spirit – G.A.B.) is ... the law”, and they do in fact have, in a certain sense, their “own” aim. Its imprints are known to us in the form of natural laws, which have nothing to do with the human being: “The law saves the world, but not the human being” (GA 343).

Spiritual beings guide the objective evolution of the world, bring about metamorphoses in it, densify and spiritualize aeons. In this activity of theirs the human being is, so to speak, a “by-product” – above all in the element of the lower ‘I’; this is why the materialists who regard the ‘I’ as a mere concept can also not understand what is the meaning of human existence. Its nature is twofold. As the fourth natural kingdom the human being is a component part of the system of nature. But as the fifth kingdom, the kingdom of the spirit, of freedom, of moral intuitions, the human being acquires his meaning in relation to the Christ. He begins already to develop this relation in the abstract sphere (a particularly striking example of this is Hegel’s ‘Philosophy of Religion’). The abstract thinker has the tendency to generalize (Ger. ‘universalize’). And as the laws of nature are immanent to the sense-world, their reflection in thinking consciousness brings about the universal immanence of thinking consciousness in the world of nature. But the abstractly thinking human being alienates himself from the essential being of what appears to the senses, and nature cannot give back to him this essential being. Christ alone can do this: He can give life to the consciousness that thinks in ‘beholding’, and together with this He can give a universal meaning to the human individuality. The human being, who has lost this meaning in accordance with the laws of development already known to us, was drawn by natural necessity to identify with the forms of being – right down to those in which the spirit dies. This shows itself in the fact that he focuses the entire force of his intellect on working upon sensory reality; and as he does not understand that, in the lower ‘I’, it is not yet granted to him to transform this reality in its essential nature, he places it in the service of his non-spiritual needs; he begins to consume with the fanaticism with which in earlier historical periods he prayed.

Rudolf Steiner says that the animal, too, is pervaded with abstract concepts. These work in it as a special instinct, thanks to which the wasps, for example, “invented” paper long before the human being. Out of the observation of a multiplicity of dogs, the human being crystallized out the general concept “dog”. But it is in the dog’s nature to be governed by this concept, and consequently he is unable to distinguish himself from other dogs. It should come as no surprise to us that the abstractly thinking human being increasingly has the wish to live like his “beloved animals” and only think of food. It was to this end that he transformed his abstractions into machines. For Hegel the individual human being who constructs objects for practical use – a carpenter, for example – is abstract.

In order to take complete command of his own reality, the human being must fill the reflective spirit of thinking with spiritual content. Before a true beholding arises, he must enrich the world of intellectual concepts with spiritual knowledge, knowledge of the fact that spiritual beings stand behind the forms of the sense-world. In order to be able to reach through to them the curtain of the outer senses must be overcome, and this requires metamorphosis of the instrument of cognition: from abstract to pure thought that is not dependent on the physical bodily nature.

When the human being thinks, not he but only his image exists. This gives the foundation for the principle of freedom. Freedom itself is attained in pure thought as transformed selfhood. The intellectual life of thinking is the life, now extinguished, of feelings and perceptions to which in ancient times, albeit ill-defined and unindividualized, vision of the intelligible beings was revealed. In our time the necessity has arisen to re-enliven dead thoughts with feeling – but now on an individual basis – transforming them into higher, pure feelings: and as the next step to identify them with the will. It is in this way that the Son leads the human being to the Father. Corresponding to this, the world-Spirit then reveals itself to us differently – not at the periphery and in reflection but, similarly, on the path to the Father, in that we receive teaching (as from Sophia) concerning the Son – the true Saviour who came from without, through the curtain of the outer senses, in order to enliven us from within.

* * *

The unity of man and world can be understood as the unity of man and God. This unity is dynamic and evolutionary. Actually, the process of cognition is also one of the stages of evolution – the last on its path leading from the spirit to matter. The law that dominates here consists in the fact – as described by Rudolf Steiner – that “it is in the life of the surrounding world that independent being is first separated out; then in the being thus separated the surrounding world imprints itself as though by a process of mirror-reflection (emphasis – G.A.B.), and then this separate being develops further independently” (GA 13). Also subject to this principle is the evolution of consciousness, which is already now taking place on an ascending stream moving from reflection to ‘beholding’. The mirroring character of thinking can also be seen as a method of separating oneself off, of severing oneself from the “surroundings”, which for the spiritual human being is the group form of consciousness. A genuinely independent development, however, is only possible for the human being when he has attained ideal perception.

‘Beholding-in-thinking’ once more acquires a pictorial character, as the spiritual world which surrounds the human being consists of thought-beings who possess a ‘Gestalt’ – i.e. form and image. Everything they create has a picture quality. Rudolf Steiner says: “For everything is created from pictures, pictures are the true causes of things, pictures lie behind all that surrounds us, and we dive down into these pictures when we dive into the ocean of thinking.... These pictures were referred to by Plato.... Goethe was referring to these pictures when he spoke of his archetypal plant. These pictures are to be found in imaginative thinking” (GA 157, 6.7.1913). In imagination the human being has experiences which in many respects resemble those arising from sense-perception. In it there is a return to the old principle of mirror-reflection as a relation in which substantial unity prevails. A similar relation, albeit in a coarsely materialized form, occurs in the assimilation of food and in breathing. Sense-perceptions are a refined form of breathing.

In the aeon of the Old Sun warmth-substance in their surroundings streamed into the human monads and out of them again, which was like a dim perceiving in which the breathing and nutritive processes were also contained in a germinal form. On the Old Moon breathing and nutrition are already separate, but they remain similar to one another. In the human astral body, which is not yet individualized, they give rise, in germinal form, to sensations and feelings. Through the relation to the surrounding world, the spiritual world also made its entry into the human monads, let its picture-forming activities stream into the human being and held them back in reflected form. Through these mirror-reflections of the spiritual pictures the human being was formed from within, whereby he himself became their mirror-reflection. This was how picture-consciousness arose in the human being. At that time the process of inner representation was close to that of reproduction. Later these two separated, when inner representations had begun to establish themselves supersensibly in the human being. And all these processes, which led gradually to the building up of homo sapiens in the totality of body, soul and spirit, are striving to undergo metamorphosis in the point of his individual ‘I’ and, as they cross over “to the other side”, to be repeated within the being of the thought-entities of the individual human spirit.

* * *

The world was not filled with pictures from the very beginning. At first the universal Being, which possessed the highest degree of selflessness, simply poured out its being into the world. This was the First Logos. In pictures, the Second Logos poured itself out into the world, filling it with pictures, colours, light. The Third Logos let its own being resound selflessly throughout the whole world, and the First and Second Logos resounded together with it (see GA 266/1). Of this, it says in Genesis: “The spirit of God moved upon the waters”, that is to say, pervaded with its rhythm the emerging world; then the following was spoken: “Let there be light: and there was light.” Thus the First Logos objectified itself, which for the hierarchical beings meant that they came into possession of the picture element. All this began to take place in the aeon of Old Saturn.

At the present stage of development the highest processes and phenomena of the past have led to the situation where the human being – the “image of God” – has entered into a relation with coarse matter by way of nourishment and breathing. On a finer level he breathes and feeds himself with spiritual air and nourishment: namely, when he forms inner representations and has religious and aesthetic experiences. And it was only in abstract thinking that he stopped breathing in any way at all; thus it was that his individual spirit acquired an outer boundary. On the other side of it there is no longer anything to be found – no pictures with which it would be possible to enter into any kind of connection. This condition recalls, in fact, that of the unitary God be- fore the primal revelation, while being, admittedly, diametrically op- posed to it at the same time.

A kind of shadow of picture quality does, indeed, come to expression in abstract thinking, but without actually belonging to it. It belongs to the thought-being who lives in the union of percept and thinking. Eduard von Hartmann was right to say that in every act of thinking something is preserved of the sensory experiences of colour, sound etc. We will be discussing this question in more detail later, and will examine it from the aspect of the esotericism of the thought-process. For the present, we would refer to a number of statements of Rudolf Steiner, where he says that in response to every sense-perception a counter- movement of ideas takes place from within the inner sphere of the human being. When we are given over to the senses – and thus also to the pictures – we are living in the etheric world. The movement from this world passes into our ether-body, then into our physical body, where it undergoes a “blockage” as it meets with the counter-thrust of the ideas. Thus the living, etheric movement – this comes to expression in the circulation of the blood – is “paralyzed”, so to speak, and deadened by the physical organism of the nerves. The consequence of this is that we see physically: we see physical instead of spiritual pictures (cf. GA 198, 10.7.1920; GA 206, 12.8.1921).

The process we have described also brings the astral body into activity (as was the case in the aeon of the Old Moon): the processes of breathing, of taking in nourishment and, finally, of perception are accompanied in our astral body by desires, sympathies and antipathies; this is also where instincts arise; impulses to action emerge. All this leads in gradual stages to a permeation of a part of the astral body with human consciousness, and out of this the sentient soul is formed. All the processes active in it take on a picture character and form us from within. The true cause underlying them – the influence coming from without – is the coarse sense-reality to which the human being should not surrender himself completely. It works in him with a deadening effect, arousing in us antipathy, which comes to expression in the form of reflection and abstract thinking.

If the breathing-process is not encumbered with coarse desires, more oxygen is retained in the blood; the threat to the human body diminishes and sympathy arises in the astral body. The physical body then offers less resistance to the stream of perceptions, and picture-thinking begins to gain the upper hand in us. The human being now finds in his heart the capacity to enliven the abstractions with experiences. It is not a sensory form of vision that is meant here, but a process of spiritual enlivening, where in the initial stages spiritual symbols can be of help to the seeker for knowledge. It is possible with their help to rise from the sentient soul to the higher soul-regions.

The life of the senses in the human being has a dual nature: the lower, which gives rise to abstractions (those of materialism, of consumerism etc.); and the higher, which has been purified. Both the former and the latter continually form pictures in the astral body which separate off from our experiences and remain within the soul, whereby they build up its organs. Hence, the soul is the body of the pictures, in which our ‘I’ is active. On the other – spiritual – side, the exalted hierarchy of the Spirits of Form, who are actually the creators of the earthly aeon, also give shape to their intentions – today as they did in the past – in the form of pictures. Their revelation is the hierarchy of the Angels, thanks to whom the pictures of the Elohim are carried into our astral body. This came to expression with great force and spirituality in the Christian icon paintings, through which the self-proclamation takes place, of the imaginative cosmos of the God who has descended to earth.

The human being of today who cultivates pictorial thinking, begins to participate in the creation of the future. His task is to rise from the pictures of outer perception and of the lower life of the senses, to the higher picture-thinking of imagination. Where half the journey has been completed, ideal beholding arises.

5. The Pure Actuality of Thinking

Let us summarize the conclusions we have come to in the course of this chapter. The primordial world-Being, the pictureless beginning of the world, the “immovable Mover”, acquires in the process of creation a form, a picture, and reveals Himself as a multiplicity of pictures: creative thought-beings. Their deeds of sacrifice in the world create an object: the material world – the picture of the creative hierarchical subjects.

Within the material world the Divine primordial Being, the Absolute, inwardizes itself, and finally assumes the character of conceptual systems (world-views) in the human being. As a consequence of this inwardization there arose a relation between the unbounded World-‘I’, and the point-like ego-centre in man, the centre of his lower ‘I’, which is the fruit of sense-perception and thoughts (Fig.70).

Within the sense-perceptible universe a further inwardization takes place as the being of man unfolds. This time, so we could say, there is a repetition of the great lemniscate of the world expressing the relation Nature – Man. The sensory universe inwardizes itself in the soul-spiritual world of the human being. In this way it cancels itself, because the inner being of man can objectify itself directly in the “outer sphere” of the spiritual universe. Thus it would be true to say that from now on the spiritualization of nature must also take place. But the lower, lesser ‘I’ is not able to fulfill this task. It must itself be cancelled (aufgehoben) to make way for the higher ‘I’.

An immature person who cancels his lesser ‘I’ loses himself, and it is therefore his task to strengthen and metamorphose it. Strengthening lies in evolving further, whereby the human being follows the same path as that through which he finally became a personality. This is precisely the path of development suggested by the ‘Philosophie der Freiheit’. The recommendation is made that, to begin with, one should devote oneself to a fundamental grasping in cognition of the sense-world, which is condensed spirit, given to us in sense-perception. The task is to unite with the world of percepts the spirit – pure, but lacking in substance – of concepts, while at the same time it is necessary to instill into this spirit one’s knowledge of the spiritual foundation of the world. We thus create for the Divine primal Ground of the world – which, in its working, had been mediated by the hierarchy of pictures which are at the same time beings, and again assumed within us a pictureless, non-substantial character – the possibility of reuniting with its inwardized part: namely, with the sensory pictures of nature. Nature contains within it the Divine substance; this is given to us in our perceptions. And if we unite with it no more than a shadow of the true world-Spirit, we restore the original unity of the world and thereby sanctify the world of Being.

The science of nature must become ethical, and will unavoidably take this direction at some point in the future; the research scientist of great learning will experience his laboratory table as something like an altar – or as an altar. Goetheanism does this already, by bringing the supersensible into the inner representations of nature. Then the human being, as he advances towards the supersensible, takes nature with him, and does so increasingly, the more he overcomes sense-perceptions. Thinking then becomes pure. Following Aristotle, we can call it “pure actuality”. As opposed to the unconscious, it can be given form by the human being, thanks to the identification of thinking with pure will, which is directed exclusively towards itself. Just as one can reflect back towards oneself, so it is possible to direct the will towards itself. In this will is revealed, not the world-Spirit, but the world-Will, the will of the Father, by whom was created all that is.

Already at the stage of abstract thinking one must try to engage the will. In the case of a good dialectician, the thinking frees itself from the object and draws living movement from the self-perception of its own dynamic, whereby the need for the physical-material body as a support for self-consciousness is gradually overcome. The value of abstract pure thinking lies in the fact that we bring it about actively. But dialectics can be upheld ideally as the autonomous movement of the world-Idea. For this reason, Hegel was a universalist in the realm of logic.

Abstract thinking is bound up with the astral body. In the first stages of abstract thinking, certain fine threads of our spiritual sense-organ extend themselves outwards. When we think about pure Being we have, in feeling, a very fine and subtle experience of the life of the world. Within our sense, the “overtones” of different levels of being merge together momentarily into a general “tone”. We are breathing out astrally. When this has been overcome, we breathe in astrally, and then the pure will comes into action. The process which unfolds in this way spiritually goes hand in hand with a process in the body. We breathe out carbon dioxide – the more so, the more abstractly we think – and we breathe in oxygen, which renews the metabolic processes in which the unconscious will is active. The act of pure thinking stands in connection with the holding of the breath when one has breathed out to the greatest possible extent.

The pure actuality of thinking allows us to retain consciousness when it has been emptied of all content. In its highest expression this is a state of intuitive consciousness in which “All in All” is experienced. This is the state of Nirvana. But in the initial stages the lesser ‘I’ is strengthened through the – merely sporadic – experience of pure thinking. This allows us to begin the process of the observation of thinking, which passes over gradually into an intuitive process when we enter into the stage of pure beholding. “In the observation of thinking,” says Rudolf Steiner, “the world-process becomes transparent to the human being. He has no need to seek for an idea of this process, as this process is the idea itself” (GA 6). And it is also the higher self of the human being.

When the human being transforms his own thinking into experience, percept, and when he continues to work with it as an object of thought, he creates a higher nature within himself. His thinking begins to rest upon the support of the etheric brain; but it is in the etheric world that true picture thinking lives. Through pure thinking we ascend to the individualized pictures, to the pictures of essential being. But where are these first experienced by our ‘I’, which arrives at a state of identification with them? It experiences them as the outer aspect of the objects given to us in perception as the secondary qualities of things. There takes place in thinking, when we make it into an object of observation, the transition from the primary to the secondary qualities; which goes hand in hand with a profound and far-reaching metamorphosis of the entire human being. In pure thinking, our ‘I’ also becomes picture (cf. A.7, 1929).

When we have passed through the school of the lower picture qualities and have purified these of coarse sensory elements, we move away (primarily in the consciousness-soul) from the being of non-existential picture quality which exercises no compulsion over us. The higher picture world that arises within us possesses, nevertheless, a very important characteristic: it is simultaneously objective and subjective, universal and individual. Something similar happens when, as we build up the world of inner representations, we draw single objects of perception out of the totality of the world-picture. When we think in beholding, we draw with our ‘I’ single supersensible pictures out of the wholeness of the ideal world. And this activity is world-encompassing in nature, as it is, itself, idea. The way we carry it out with our ‘I’ is similar to the way we have attained knowledge in the sense-world – namely, in freedom! This is how our freedom comes to realization in a real sense. It is based on the balance we create between the idea in its striving to attain real spirit, and outer material reality.

This balance can also acquire the character of an initiation. We speak in this case of two paths into the supersensible: the outer (Apollonian), which penetrates the veil of the outer senses, and the inner (Chthonic, Dionysian), which consists in diving down into one’s own inner being. In the world of culture these two unite in the realms of art and thinking. In his book on Goethe’s theory of knowledge Rudolf Steiner says that there is a correspondence between the idea in science and the picture in art. They are identical. This is why Goethe did not like to speak of the idea of the beautiful. The beautiful is the sense- perceptible image of the idea, and in art the hidden laws of nature come to manifestation. “Overcoming of the sensory nature through the spirit is the goal of art and science. The latter overcomes the sensory nature by dissolving it entirely in spirit; the former does so by implanting the spirit into it. Science looks through sensory nature towards the idea; art beholds the idea in sensory nature” (GA 2).

The ‘Philosophie der Freiheit’ realizes a synthesis of science and art, lending it in its totality an imprint of religious deepening – in the sense that it points to their connection with the Divine within the human subject. If we work in the right way with the ‘Philosophie der Freiheit’, “we stand before the world in such a way, that we say: True, the world for us has been stripped of the Divine (has become material – G.A.B.), it has become amoral. But we human beings, as natural-scientific thinkers, feel – just as we sense the blood flowing right up into our physical head, so that we have a physical instrument for thinking – we feel our purest natural-scientific thinking pulsed through from our own inner being, with moral intuitions.”146

Thus things flow together in the human being, which had grown in- to antitheses on a world scale, through the fault of man. In order to reunite them, one must start by investigating the simplest facts, as Rudolf Steiner does in chapter 4 of the ‘Philosophie der Freiheit’, for example, when, after he has sought for the light in our eye and not found it there, he describes how we must seek it in direct connection with the objects, where we perceived it in the first place. But parallel to the act of knowing, we must learn how to experience thinking; and this we will now do, as we turn to the next chapter of the ‘Philosophie der Freiheit’.

‘Die Philosophie der Freiheit’

Chapter 5 – Gaining Knowledge of the World

Etheric thinking does not have a linear movement. It has to do with volume, forms, pictures, which come into being and pass away, flow into each other, transform themselves into one another. In the cycles of this thinking the idea unfolds gradually (through thesis, antithesis etc.), but at the same time it reveals itself to ‘beholding’ in its totality. To be able to think in this way, one needs to have developed one’s ‘sense of thought’ to a considerable degree. We will have to make use of it to an increasing extent in our discussions of the last three chapters of the first Part of the ‘Philosophie der Freiheit’. In the sevenfold cycle of its chapters we now cross over into the upper part of the lemniscate, where ‘beholding’ thinking predominates. It sets its mark on all the elements of the cycles of which chapters 5, 6, and 7 consist.

In the fifth chapter everything must bear the stamp of the idea a posteriori in the Goetheanistic sense: after the experience of beholding which we had in chapter 4. This is also the character of the dialectical triad in the first Cycle of the chapter. This is in its entirety the outcome of the preceding, by no means easy observations and self-observations. For this reason it is not abstract but, so to speak, ‘saturated’ with experience. The whole chapter has this character. This arises as the fruit of the ‘beholding’ which takes place in chapter 4 and stands in contradiction to it, as we see if we compare the titles of these chapters. This contradiction is, of course, not abstract in nature; it arises, as is clear from the content of the book, within the human being and shows itself to be, in the final analysis, his own personal concern. It is not resolved in the world of ideas, but in the human individuality. And this is exactly what the following, the sixth, chapter is called. Thus we have before us a triad of chapters, dialectical in form, existential in content where the requirements of the individual spiritual life are concerned, and ontological as viewed from the standpoint of the widening of consciousness. So thoroughly, in the first Part of the book, is the reciprocal relation constructed between the second part (chapter 4) and the third part (chapters 5-7) of the lemniscate of cognition. But we have before us a similar relation in every cycle.

But let us now return to Cycle 1 of chapter 5. In its first three elements we see before us the picture of a building. This building is the

whole of our contemporary civilization, which is deeply disoriented in its ideal principle.

          CYCLE I
1-2.        Our preceding discussion has shown that it is impossible to prove, through an examination of the content
        of our observation, that our percepts are inner representations. This proof is believed to be delivered through
        the following argument: If the process of perception takes place in the way it is imagined to do, according to
        naïve-realistic assumptions regarding the psychological and physiological constitution of our individual nature,
        then we have to do, not with things-in-themselves, but only with our inner representations of the things. But if 
        naïve realism, thought through consistently, leads to results which represent the exact opposite of its prior
        assumptions, then these assumptions must be deemed unsuitable as the basis of a world-view and should
        therefore be discarded. It is in any case impermissible to reject the initial assumptions and accept the
        conclusions, as is done by the critical idealist, who uses the above argument as the basis for his assertion that
        “the world is my inner representation”. (In his book ‘The Fundamental Problem of Epistemology’ Eduard von
        Hartmann gives a detailed account of this line of reasoning.)

3.           The correctness or otherwise of critical idealism is one question, and the solidity of the proofs offered in
        support of it is another. How it stands with the first, will become apparent in the course of our discussions.
        But the proof supporting it has no power whatever to convince. If we are building a house, and while the first
        floor is under construction the ground floor collapses, then the first floor will collapse with it. Naïve realism and
        critical idealism stand in the same relation to each other as this ground floor to the first floor.

We explained earlier that the individualization of thought takes place in the sixth element. But thanks to the fact that we have come successfully through the trial of beholding, which has set aside our conceptually-thinking ‘I’, our individual principle has been strengthened, and therefore in the second part of the lemniscate all the elements will now come to expression in a more living and substantial way. The strengthening of the ‘I’ has, incidentally, come at just the right time, because attacks are launched by all the views that exist today concerning the nature of perception and thinking, which lead to a negation of the ‘I’. This is especially clear from chapters 4 and 5, but also from elements 4 and 5 of Cycle 1 of chapter 5.

4.            A person who believes that the entirety of the perceived world is no more than an inner representation
        arising as an effect upon my soul-being of the things that are unknown to me – for him, the actual problem of
        cognition will not revolve around the representations which only exist within the psyche; it will focus rather on
        the things that lie beyond our consciousness and exist independently of us. He will ask: How much can we
        know of these things indirectly, in view of the fact that they are not directly accessible to our observation?
        One who takes this standpoint is concerned, not about the inner connection between his conscious
        perceptions, but about their causes, which are no longer accessible to consciousness and have an existence
        independent of him while, in his opinion, percepts disappear as soon as he turns his senses away from the
        things. Looked at from this point of view, our consciousness functions like a mirror, whose images of certain
        things also disappear the moment its reflecting surface is not turned towards them. One who cannot see the
        things themselves, however, but only their mirror-images, is obliged to seek knowledge of the characteristics of
        the former indirectly, by inference from the behaviour of the latter. This is the standpoint of modern natural
        science, which uses percepts only as a means of last resort, for the purpose of gaining insight into the material
        processes which stand behind them and are the only things that really exist. If a philosopher, as a critical
        idealist, admits at all that there is such a thing as ‘being’, his quest for knowledge will be directed solely towards
        this ‘being’ and inner representations will be used as a means to achieve this end. His interest bypasses the
        subjective world of inner representations and seeks to fathom what it is that causes them.
               But the critical idealist can go so far as to say: I am enclosed within my world of inner representations and
        there is no way out of it. When I think of a thing that lies behind my inner representations, this thought is, itself,
        nothing more than my inner representation. An idealist of this sort will either dismiss the thing-in-itself entirely, or
        he will say of it that it is of no significance whatever for us human beings – i.e. that it might just as well not exist
        at all, because we can have no knowledge of it.
              For this kind of critical idealist the whole world resembles a dream, and to strive in any way to gain
        knowledge of it would have no sense at all. For him there can only be two categories of people: the deceived,
        who look upon their own dream pictures as real things, and the wise, who recognize the illusory nature of this
        dream world and cannot but lose, bit by bit, all desire to concern themselves with it any further. When things
        are viewed from this standpoint, one’s own personality can also become a mere dream picture. Just as in
        sleep a picture of ourselves appears among the other dream pictures, so, in waking consciousness, is the
        inner representation of one’s own ‘I’ added to the inner representation of the external world. In this case what
        is given to our consciousness is not our real ‘I’, but only our inner representation of an ‘I’.

5.            Anyone who denies that things exist, or at least that we can have some knowledge of them, must also
        deny the existence of his own personality, or his knowledge of it. This leads the critical idealist to the assertion:
        “The whole of reality is transformed into a wondrous dream, without a life that is being dreamt of, and without a
        spirit that is dreaming; into a dream that is held together within a dream of itself” (cf. Fichte, ‘Die Bestimmung
        des Menschen’).

The reader who would like to deepen his experience of the life of thought, can take elements 3, 4 and 5 and change the angle from which he is viewing them – the angle of beholding – seeing them now as a mixed, ‘dialectical-beholding’ triad, which he can then compare with the triad of element 4, 5 and 6. The seven-membered cycle of thinking is pervaded many times (seven times) with tri-unities, so fundamentally is the law of development (the number seven) conditioned within it by the universal principle of the triad (Fig.71).

As the entire dialogue in the Cycle is conducted in accordance with the principle that mistaken conceptions can be fully articulated and, as a result of this, simply ‘evaporate’, it can come as no surprise to us that in element 6 we have a ‘non-individualizing’ of thought. At the end of the Cycle, all we need to do is to name our opponents and point out the basis which they have in common.

6.          The person who thinks that life as we experience it directly must be recognized as a dream may assume
       that, behind this dream, nothing more exists, or he may relate his inner representations to real things: in either
       case, life itself must lose all scientific interest for him. But whereas one who believes that the dream embodies
       all that is accessible to us in the universe will find scientific inquiry completely futile, the other, who feels
       entitled to make inferences from inner representations to the actual things, will see the task of science to be
       research into the nature of these “things-in-themselves”.

7.           The first of these world-views can be called absolute illusionism; the second is called by its most
       consistent advocate Eduard von Hartmann – transcendental realism.*
              Both world-views have in common with naïve realism the wish to orient themselves in the world by means
       of research into the realm of percepts. However, they are unable to find any firm ground within this realm.

              * In the context of this world-view ‘transcendental’ is a way of describing a form of knowledge that is
        convinced that nothing can be asserted directly about the things-in-themselves, but makes inferences
        indirectly from the subjective element that is known, to the unknown that lies beyond the subjective sphere
        (transcendent). According to this view, the thing-in-itself exists beyond the realm of what is immediately
        accessible to our knowledge – i.e. it is transcendent. However, our world can be related transcendentally to
        what is transcendent. Hartmann’s view is called realism because it reaches out beyond the subjective and
        ideal, to the transcendent, the real.

In chapter 5 we leave ‘beholding’ behind and try, as we do so, to perceive the idea that underlies it. This means that, here too, nothing must be imposed upon the train of thought. What we have beheld must be allowed to speak. And this is indeed the character of the content and style of chapter 5. In our thinking spirit we have now become more active, not intellectually, but in ‘beholding’. Chapter 5, as a striking antithesis to chapter 4, engages in the creative struggle of its constituent parts. This is a struggle of growth, of development. We wait expectantly for its fruits to be revealed. This must be particularly the case in the antithesis between Cycles I and II, which is a projection of the antithesis between chapters 4 and 5.

Cycle I has shown that our ‘beholding’ of chapter 4 has revealed the naïve-realistic character of transcendental realism. Why was this so important in the analysis of perception? The answer to this is: Because the whole problem of ‘beholding’ confronts us with the question – Is it immanent to the self-conscious spirit? And in this question chapter 5 proves to be decisive. Its Cycle II is devoted in its dialectical part to the struggle between the main issue of transcendental realism and its opponents, whose views and arguments we have considered in chapter 4. This was the sphere of the psychology and physiology of perception. In Cycle II the philosopher of transcendentalism is given the opportunity to engage with it twice. Standing over against a provisional synthesis there is another antithesis (2’), with the result that the synthesis is reinforced (3’). This is indicated by the formulations at the beginning of the two syntheses: “Just as little can the philosopher...” and “In a similar way, the philosopher...”. But in the present case the reinforcement of the synthesis means its destruction. And then through the struggle of the opposites which, in themselves, have no future, something new emerges – that fundamental idea which can be perceived through the ‘beholding’ in chapter 4. In Cycle II it is revealed in element 5 – i.e. at the most appropriate place from the standpoint of the overlaying of numbers which we spoke of before.

We have thus arrived at a first, extremely important result for the ongoing task of providing a foundation for freedom. This is the answer (though not yet the final one) to the central question that arose at the end of chapter 1. This result came to us, revealed itself to us, as if through a flash of illumination – one that was not spontaneous, however, but brought about with the help of a particular method. Our task is now to unite it with the context out of which it arose and within which it strives to individualize itself. Individualization proceeds from the revelation of its new and unique character. But then we leave behind this form of consciousness and consider from a new point of view the rôle of thinking in the ordering of percepts and the forming of inner representations.

6.              The naïve human being cannot be charged with the lack of insight we are speaking of here. He takes
         life as he finds it and, in the form in which they present themselves to him in experience, he judges things to
         be real.

7.            But the first step that leads us beyond this standpoint can only consist in the question: What is the relation
        of thinking to the percept? Regardless whether the percept in the form in which it is given to me continues to
        exist, or not, before and after my act of inner representation, if I wish to say anything about it, this can only be
        done with the help of thinking. If I say: ‘The world is my inner representation’, I have given expression to the
        result of a thought-process, and if my thinking is not applicable to the world, this result is an error. Thinking
        interposes itself between the percept and any kind of statement I make about it.

In the transition to Cycle III the reader must be told in advance that chapter 5 consists of eight Cycles – i.e. that it forms its octave within itself. But by changing, as it were, the ‘angle of beholding’ one can experience seven Cycles in it. In this case cycles III, IV and V, taken together, form only two Cycles. We will show this alternative in the text of the ‘Philosophie der Freiheit’; however, we will not give special attention to it, but only touch upon it a few times in the course of our basic discussion.

Cycle III begins with an exchange between the view of thinking which we have arrived at, and naïve realism. For this view the naïve realist position is untenable; it rejects it, and at the same time comes into being thanks to this act of rejection. Something similar happens in the plant world, where the shoot organically negates the soil and seed, thereby pushing its way through to the light. As we know, this positive negation is known in dialectics as ‘Aufhebung’ (cancelling, superseding, setting aside). In Cycle III we arrive at a synthesis which shows us the place where naïve realism truly belongs. Here again we discover an analogy in the plant world. How – we ask – does the seed preserve itself in the shoot in an ‘aufgehoben’ state? It preserves itself by simply, in the course of time, becoming a plant, fading and bringing forth a new seed (see Fig.). In the present case naïve realism is cancelled, but preserves itself through the fact that thinking has to be regarded in a naïve-realistic manner. But in this case we ascend to the ontologism of thinking in ‘beholding’. How this is accomplished within the context of Cycle III, we can recognize if we have experienced its structure and content as a totality, and our experience has not been disturbed by further commentary.

            CYCLE III
1.            We have already pointed to the reason why thinking is mostly C.III’ overlooked while we are              (1.)
        considering things. It lies in the fact that (1.) we only direct our attention to the object we are thinking
        about, and not simultaneously to thinking itself. For this reason naïve consciousness treats thinking
        as something that has nothing to do with the things, but stands quite detached from them and makes
        its observations of the world. The picture of the world’s phenomena that is built up by the thinker counts,
        not as something that belongs to the things, but as something that only exists inside the head of the
        human being; the world is also complete in itself without this picture. The world is fixed and finished in
        all its substances and forces; and the human being builds up a picture of this finished world.

2.           One need only ask those who think in this way the following question: With what right do you             (2.)
        claim the world is complete without thinking? Does not the world produce thinking in the head of
        the human being with the same necessity as it brings forth the blossom on the plant? Plant a seed
        in the earth. It sends forth root and stem. It unfolds into leaves and blossoms. Place the plant before
        you. In your inner being it connects itself with a given concept. Why does this concept belong less than
        leaf and blossom do to the plant as a whole? You reply: The leaves and blossoms are there without a
        perceiving subject; the concept only appears if a human being stands in front of the plant. True enough!
        – But blossoms and leaves, too, only appear on the plant if there is soil in which the seed can be laid,
        and if there are light and air in which leaves and blossoms can unfold. In just the same way the concept
        of the plant arises when a thinking consciousness approaches the plant.

3.           It is entirely arbitrary to regard the sum of what we experience of a thing through perception              (3.)
        alone, as a totality, a complete whole, and to view what arises through thinking observation as
        something incidental that has nothing to do with the thing itself.

4.           If today I am given a rosebud, the picture that is there for my perception is finished, complete,           (4.)
         but only for the present. For if I place the bud in water, tomorrow quite a different picture of the
         object will be given to me. If I do not turn my eyes away from the rosebud, I will see today’s state
         pass over continuously into that of tomorrow through countless intermediary stages. The picture
         presented to me at any given moment is only a chance section taken from an object that is engaged
         in a process of continuous change. If I do not place the bud in water, it fails to bring to development
         a whole series of states which lay within it as a potential. Similarly, I can be prevented tomorrow from
         continuing my observation of the blossom and will therefore have an incomplete picture of it.

5.             To say of a picture that presents itself at a given moment: that is the thing, would be to express         (5.)
         an opinion that is arbitrary and clings to externals.
                 It is similarly not justifiable to assert that the thing is the sum of its perceptual qualities. A spirit
         might conceivably obtain the concept simultaneously and inseparably connected with the percept. It
         would not occur to such a spirit to regard the concept as something extraneous to the thing. He would
         have to ascribe to the concept an existence that is inseparably bound up with it.

6.             I will try to make my point clearer with the help of an example. If I throw a stone horizontally             (4.)
         through the air, I see it in successive positions, one after the other. I connect these positions to form a
         line. In mathematics I am taught about various linear forms, one of them being the parabola. I know the
         parabola as a line that arises when a point travels in accordance with a certain law. If I examine the
         conditions under which the stone moves when thrown, I will discover that the line of its motion is identical
         to the one known to me as the parabola. That the stone moves in a parabola is a consequence of the
         conditions given and follows necessarily from them. The form of the parabola belongs to the phenomenon
         as a whole, just as do all the other relevant factors. The spirit characterized above, who does not have to
         follow the roundabout route of thinking, would be given not only a sum of visual impressions at different
         locations but, inseparably connected with the phenomenon, also the parabolic form of the trajectory,
         which we can only add to the phenomenon by means of thinking.

7.               It is not due to the objects that they are given to us at first without the corresponding concepts,        (5.)
         but to our own spiritual organization. Our being as a totality functions in such a way, that in the case
         of every real thing we are approached from two sides by the relevant elements – namely, from
         perceiving and thinking.

In Cycle V of chapter 4 Rudolf Steiner shifts the discussion from the object of perception to its subject. He does the same in chapter 5, but in Cycle IV. How precisely do the inversions of thinking follow the numerical laws of metamorphosis! In chapter 4 ‘beholding’ led us to the subject, because there it was the most important question. In chapter 5 it is the triad of the first three Cycles that is especially important: it has revealed to us the fruit of ‘beholding’ in chapter 4. Now, however, the time has come to view it in the light of chapter 5. Thus arises the content of Cycle IV. We will also give this text in its entirety, and then compare it with the parallel structure.

         CYCLE IV
1.             It has nothing to do with the nature of the things, how I am organized to take hold of them. The
        dichotomy between perceiving and thinking only exists from the moment when I, the beholder, stand over
        against the things. What elements do, or do not, belong to the things cannot, however, depend at all upon
        the way I obtain knowledge of these elements.

2.             Man is a limited being. To begin with, he is a being among other beings. His existence belongs         (6.)
         to space and time. Consequently, he can only ever be ‘given’ a limited portion of the entire universe.
         But this limited part is immediately adjacent, both in time and space, to other things. If our existence
         were so closely connected with the things, that everything occurring in the world were at the same time
         our own occurrence, there would be no distinction between ourselves and the things. Then there would
         be for us no individual things. All events would flow continuously into one another. The cosmos would
         be a unity and a self-contained wholeness. The stream of events would not be interrupted at any point.
         Because of our limitation, things appear to us separate, which are in reality not so. Nowhere, for example,
         does the single quality ‘red’ have a separate existence for itself. It is surrounded on all sides by other
         qualities, to which it belongs and without which it could not exist. For us, however, it is necessary to
         raise certain segments out of their world-context and consider them individually, for themselves. Our
         eye can only take hold of single colours successively from a manifold coloured whole, our intellect
         can only grasp single concepts from an interconnected conceptual system. This separating off is a
         subjective act arising from the fact that we are not identical with the world process, but are beings
         among other beings.

3.              The all-important question now is to determine how the being that we ourselves are, stands in         (7.)
         relation to the other beings. This determining process must be distinguished from that whereby we
         merely become conscious of our own self. The latter rests upon perception in the same way as we
         become aware of all other things.

4.               Perception of self shows me a sum of characteristics from which I constitute my personality as
         a whole, just as I constitute the qualities yellow, metallic sheen, hard etc. into the unity ‘gold’.
         Perception of self does not lead me out beyond the realm of what belongs to me. This self-perception
         must be distinguished from the determining of myself through thinking. Just as I incorporate, by
         means of thinking, a single perception of the external world into the context of the world as a whole,
         so do I also incorporate into the world-process, by means of thinking, the perceptions that I have
         made of myself.

5.              My self-perception encloses me within certain boundaries; my thinking has nothing to do with        C.IV'
         these boundaries. In this sense my being is a duality. I am enclosed within that sphere which I                (1.)
         perceive as that of my own personality, but I am the bearer of an activity which determines my
         limited existence from a higher sphere. Our thinking is not individual as are our faculties of sensation
         and feeling. It is universal. It receives an individual stamp in each human being only through the fact
         that it is related to his individual feeling and sensation. Individual human beings are distinguished
         from one another through these special colourings of universal thinking. A triangle has only a single
         concept. For the content of this concept it makes no difference whether it is grasped by human
         consciousness-bearer A or B. But it will be taken hold of by each of these bearers of consciousness
         in an individual way.

6.              Standing over against this thought is a human prejudice which is difficult to overcome. It fails           (2.)
         to recognize that the concept of the triangle in my head is the same as the one in the head of my
         fellow human being. The naïve person regards himself as the creator of his concepts, and therefore
         believes that everyone has concepts of his own. It is a fundamental requirement of philosophical
         thinking that this prejudice should be overcome. The single, unitary concept of the triangle does not
         become a plurality through the fact that many people think it. For the thinking of the many is, itself, a
         unity.

7.              In thinking, we have that element given to us, which draws our particular individuality into a unity       (3.)
         with the cosmos as a whole. In our sensation and feeling (also our perceiving) we are separate
         individuals; in our thinking, we are the universal being that pervades all things. This is the deeper
         reason underlying our dual nature. ‡ We see coming to existence within ourselves an absolute force,        (4.)
         a force that is universal; however, we get to know it, not in its outstreaming from the centre of the
         world, but at a point of the periphery. If the former were the case, then the moment we awaken to    
         consciousness we would understand the entire riddle of the universe. But as we stand at a point of
         the periphery and find our own existence enclosed within certain limits, we must get to know those
         regions that lie outside our own being with the help of the thinking that reaches down into us from
         universal world-being.

The reader may well ask: Why does element 6 of Cycle III coincide with element (4) of Cycle III’? How, he will probably ask, is it possible for one and the same content to be experienced, now in the element of the individualizing of ideas, and now in the element of ‘beholding’? It is not by chance that we have stressed that, in our work with the ‘Philosophie der Freiheit’, we must change the ‘angle of beholding’. Without this capacity, one is not able to experience works of art, which is what we have to do with in this book – and still more can be said of it: namely, that it corresponds to the principle of being in higher worlds, where beings consist of other beings. Starting with the fourth element we move forward, in the Cycle of thinking, into those parts of it where ‘beholding’ begins to gain the upper hand over the intellectual faculty. Because an example is given in element 6, it can be ‘beheld’ (in Cycle III’). But it is given in the first person, and it therefore individualizes the result that has been obtained in element 5 (Cycle III).

In the transition from Cycle III to Cycle IV, element (5) in the parallel structure unites within itself elements 7 and 1. Some proof of this is needed. The ascent of the seven elements of Cycle III to the octave (in element (5)) consolidates it still further, and lends it the character of an ideal perception (which is particularly apt in chapter 5).

A different rôle is played by the fact that element (4) of Cycle IV’ coincides with a part of element 7 in Cycle IV and the first two elements of Cycle V. This is where the transition takes place from the Cycle of ‘beholding’ to that of ideal perception. To avoid the latter taking on too intellectual a character and to ensure, at the same time, that its beginning can play its role as octave in relation to Cycle IV, this transition must also have a ‘beholding’ character. Thus grows the ‘tree of knowledge’ of the ‘Philosophie der Freiheit’ – organically, and individualized through and through.

The theme of Cycle V is the same as in chapters 1 and 3, namely: motives that have become conscious and those that are unconscious, viewed from the aspect of the antithesis between concept and observation. As the theme is now emerging in accordance with experience, it is revealed in its reality as a distinction between beings who possess the capacity of thinking and those who do not. Thesis and antithesis blend together in this Cycle, whereby the intellectual tension between them is weakened and the organic affinity between them made stronger. The Cycle hinges so strongly on the previous one – growing out of it, as, indeed, does the chapter as a whole, as chapter 5 culminates in Cycle V – that for the ‘beholding’ in it a simple reference is made to “the foregoing discussion”.

         CYCLE V
1.           Through the fact that the thinking in us reaches out beyond our separate being and relates to the
        universality of world-being, there arises within us the striving for knowledge.

2.           Beings without the capacity to think do not have this striving. When other things are placed before
        them, this does not give rise to questions. These other things remain external to such beings. In the
        case of thinking beings, the concept leaps up in response to the external thing. This is what we receive
        from the thing, not from without, but from within ourselves. ‡ It is the task of the cognitive act to                 (5.)
        bring about the reconciliation, the union of the two elements, the inner and the outer.

3.           The percept is therefore not something finished and complete in itself; it is but one side of the
        total reality. The other side is the concept. The act of cognition is the synthesis of percept and concept.
        But only when we have the percept and the concept of the thing do we have the thing in its entirety.

4.           The foregoing discussion...

In the triad 3, 4 and 5, element 3 brings to a synthesis, in the conclusion which it draws, the results of the foregoing enquiries. This must again be set over against the beholding of the past, and then, in element 5, conclusion 3 is made more concrete in the areas that are given special emphasis in the previous context.

(4.          The foregoing discussion...)

5.           ... shows conclusively that it is absurd to seek for any other common element uniting the single
        entities in the world, than the ideal content offered to us by thinking. The failure is inevitable, of any
        attempt to find another world-unity than this internally cohesive ideal content which we acquire through
        thinking about all that we perceive. We can accept as a universal world-unity neither a human or personal
        God, nor force or material substance, nor the will (of Schopenhauer) that is devoid of idea. These entities  
        belong only to a limited sphere of our observation. Personality that is limited in a human sense is only
        known to us through observation of ourselves, force and material substance we only perceive in outer
        things. As for the will, this can only be seen as the active expression of our own limited personality.

As the pure thinking belonging to the right half of the lemniscate has within it the tendency to become pure will, we cannot but, in the encompassing relation between ‘object’ and ‘subject’ which we have arrived at, be faced with the question: And where is the element of will? We are talking all the time of thought and sense-perception, but the human ‘I’ realizes itself in the tri-unity of thought, feeling and will. As we recall, the second half of the first question in the book is formulated as follows: Is the human being in his activity spiritually free? The individualizing of this question in Cycle V falls to Schopenhauer, the ‘Philosopher of the will’ and denier of freedom.

6.           Schopenhauer wants to avoid making ‘abstract’ thinking into the bearer of world-unity, and looks       (6.)
        instead for what will present itself to him as something immediately real. This philosopher believes
        that we can never take hold of the world if we look upon it as a world outside us. “In truth, what I seek
        for as the meaning of the world which stands over against me as nothing more than my inner
        representation, or the transition from it, as a mere image in the mind of the cognizing subject, to what
        it may be beyond this, could never be found if the investigator himself were no more than a pure
        cognizing subject (an angel’s head with wings but no body). But he is himself rooted in that world;
        he finds himself within it as an individual; that is to say, his cognition, which is the conditioning factor
        supporting the entire world as inner representation, is nevertheless mediated throughout by the body
        whose modified states, as we have shown, provide the intellect with the basis for its way of seeing that
        world. For the pure cognizing subject as such, this body is an inner representation like any other, an
        object among objects; and to this extent its movements, its actions, are known to the subject in no other
        way than the changes undergone by all other perceived objects, and would be just as foreign and
        incomprehensible to him if the riddle of their significance were not resolved for him in an entirely different
        way.... For the subject of cognition, who appears as an individual thanks to his identity with the body, this
        body is given in two quite different ways: Firstly, as an inner representation in intelligent perceiving, as an
        object among objects and subject to the same laws as these; but then, secondly and at the same time, in
        an altogether different way – namely, as that element which is immediately known to us all and is
        described by the term ‘will’. Every true act of will is directly and unavoidably also a movement of the
        body: we cannot will the act in a real sense without perceiving at the same time that it comes to
        expression as a bodily movement. The act of will and the act of the body are not two objectively known,
        distinct conditions that are bound together by causality, they do not stand in a relation of cause and
        effect; they are one and the same thing, only given in two entirely different ways: quite immediately, on
        the one hand; and, on the other, in perception for the power of understanding.” Through these
        arguments Schopenhauer believes himself justified in seeing in the body of the human being the
        ‘objectification’ of the will. He is convinced that in the actions of the body he can feel, directly and
        concretely, a reality: the thing-in-itself.

We must distinguish at least two kinds of will: the one that works in the body, and the other, which is active in our thinking. This, Schopenhauer was unable to grasp. His ‘immediately’ given will comes to expression in instinctive, trans-individual, subconscious activity and is there subject to a causality that is rooted, on its one side, in physiological processes. Whatever of this reaches the human subject can only be given via sense-perception. The will in the thinking is completely different; it brings us into movement when, for example, we are engaged in the present considerations; we are then identical with it.

7.            Over against these arguments it must be objected that the actions of our body only enter our           (7.)
        consciousness through self-observation, and as such have no priority over other percepts. If we
        wish to gain knowledge of their essential nature, we can only do this through thinking consideration,
        that is to say, through their incorporation into the ideal system of our concepts and ideas.

In element 3 of Cycle V we have arrived at unity, and have strengthened this in the movement on to element 7. At the same time, even if one is willing to concede to the will a rôle in perception, the “unity of the thing” thereby achieved is not yet a unity of the world. It is therefore essential to lead the conclusion we have reached in Cycle V through a process of individualization, if we are to give an answer to the question: In what way can the will be immediately given to the human subject? As we will see later, this comes about through a quite special, intuitive mode of perceiving. To reach through to this, it is now necessary to try to experience in ‘beholding’, some of what has been dealt with conceptually. In this way we are laying the ground in practice for an argument in support of the perceptual character of thinking, which in fact becomes pure will and as such is immediately given to the human being.

         and entirely lacking in concrete content. It can offer, at best, an ‘ideal’ counterpart of world-unity,
         but not this unity itself.

2.               Whoever forms this judgement can never have clearly recognized what a percept is without
         its concept. Let us take a look at this world of perception: it appears as a mere juxtaposition of elements
         in space and a sequence of changing elements in time, an aggregate of single elements lacking all
         connection with one another. Of all the things that appear and disappear from the stage of my perception,
         none has directly anything to do with the other, that can be perceived. Here, the world is a multiplicity of
         objects of equal significance. None plays a more important rôle than the other in the machinery of the
         world. If we are to recognize that this or that fact is more important than another, we must consult our
         thinking. Where thought is not functioning, an animal’s rudimentary organ which has no significance for
         its survival appears to have the same value as the most important part of its body. The significance of
         single facts, within themselves and for the rest of the world, only becomes apparent when thinking
         weaves its threads from one entity to another. This activity of thinking is filled with content. For it is only
         through a definite, concrete content that I can know why the snail’s organization is on a lower level than
         the lion’s. The outer aspect, the percept alone, provides me with no content which could enlighten me as
         to the degree of perfection of the organism.

Perceptual thinking as pure will is called intuitive. Here we have before us one of the fundamental concepts of the ‘Philosophie der Freiheit’. In Initiation science it has another meaning. But if we have not grasped its content here, we will not grasp it there, either.

3.             This content is brought towards the percept by thinking, out of the human world of concepts and
         ideas. In contrast to the content of perception, which is given to us from without, the content of thought
         arises within us. The form in which it appears in the first instance, we will call intuition. It is, for thinking,
         what observation is for the percept. Intuition and observation are the sources of our knowledge.

The introduction of the concept of intuition radically changes our ‘angle of beholding’. Here we have, indeed, already entered the sphere of ‘beholding’ in thinking. The unity of things is beginning, through itself, to reveal the unity of the world.

We would also point out the following: The author has heard the objection made by opponents of Rudolf Steiner’s theory of knowledge, that there is a contradiction in the way it resolves the problem of “the differentiation of the unbroken unity of what is given”. It seems to us that such critics ought to read the ‘Philosophie der Freiheit’ more attentively, and their doubts would disappear of themselves. It is just at this point, where we have passed through the stage of differentiation and have recognized its nature and origins with sufficient clarity, that we turn to a reintegration of the whole.

4.              We stand as strangers before a thing we have observed in the world, for as long as we do not
        have in our inner being the corresponding intuition which provides us with that part of the reality which
        is lacking in the percept. Whoever does not have the ability to find the intuitions which correspond to
        things, has no access to the full reality. Just as a colour-blind person sees differing degrees of brightness
        without colour qualities, so is one who lacks intuition able to observe no more than disconnected
        perceptual fragments.

5.              To explain a thing and make it understandable means nothing other than to place it into the
        connection from which it has been torn through the structural peculiarity of our organization which
        we have described above.

6.              Nothing exists in a state of isolation from the world-whole. All separateness has only subjective
        relevance for our own organization. For us, the world-whole is divided into: above and below, before
        and after, cause and effect, object and inner representation, matter and force, object and subject etc.
        All that comes toward us in observation in the form of single entities, is joined together, piece by piece,
        through the inwardly cohesive, unitary world of our intuitions; and through our thinking we reunite all
        that we have divided through perception.

7.              The puzzling nature of an object lies in the separateness of its existence. However, this is something
        that we have ourselves produced, and it can also be overcome within the world of concepts.

Let us now move on to Cycle VII. In order to draw to a conclusion what has gone before – all that is given in the left-hand loop of the lemniscate of the entire first Part of the book – we must return to the problem of perception, but now from the position of our new under- standing of thinking. The well-known observations, objections and conclusions pass before our gaze once more, but we are already viewing them with new eyes. What takes place this time is a total ideal perception of the fundamental idea contained within them, which neither philosophy nor psychology, nor physiology with the help of its methods, has been able to discover through its path of research. We have overcome the dualism of idealism.

The structural peculiarity of Cycle VII consists in the fact that it is formed by the overlaying of two sevenfold sequences. One of them (we will be regarding it as the more fundamental) develops slowly at the beginning, and more quickly towards the end. The chapter concludes in this way. The second sevenfoldness slows down towards the end; its elements grow longer, and thus a greater breadth is created for our discussion. The elements of this structure are noted in the various sections below.

 
         CYCLE VII
1.              Nothing is given to us directly, except through thinking and perceiving. ‡ The question now             (C.VI')
         arises: Viewed in the light of our discussions, what is the significance of the percept? We have seen      (1) (2)
         that the proof brought forward by critical idealism for the subjective nature of the percept, collapses.
         But the fact that we have insight into the incorrectness of the proof does not mean that the theory
         itself is mistaken. ‡ Critical idealism does not base its argumentation on the absolute nature of thinking,       (3)
         but on the idea that naïve realism, if followed to its logical conclusion, is self-refuting. What is the
         situation once the absolute nature of thinking has been acknowledged?

2.             Let us assume that a given percept – red, for example – appears in my consciousness. Pursuing
         my observation further, I discover that this percept stands in connection with other percepts, for
         example, a certain shape, and certain sensations of touch and of warmth or cold. These elements
         in their interconnection I call an object of the sense-world. I can now ask myself: In addition to the
         above-mentioned qualities, what else is there in that segment of space where I experience these
         percepts? I will discover mechanical, chemical and other processes within this space. Moving on
         from here, I now investigate the processes that I find on the path from the object to my sense-organs.
         I find within an elastic medium processes of movement which, in their essential character, have nothing
         whatever in common with the original percepts. ‡ I arrive at the same result when I examine the                  (5)
         path of communication leading on from the sense-organ to the brain. In each of these areas I
         experience new percepts, but what extends as a unifying medium through all these spatially and
         temporally distinct percepts, is thinking. The vibrations in the air which communicate a sound are
         given to me as a percept in just the same way as the sound itself. It is thinking, alone, which draws
         all these percepts together as parts of a whole, and shows them in their mutual relations. We cannot
         assert that, in addition to what is directly perceived, anything exists other than what becomes known
         to us through the ideal connections be- tween percepts – which it is the task of thinking to bring to
         light.

3.             Thus the relation – transcending the mere percept – of the object of perception to the perceiving          (6)
         subject is an ideal one only, that is to say, it can only be expressed through concepts.

4.             Only if I could perceive how the object of perception affects the perceiving subject or if, conversely,
         I could observe the construction of the percept by the subject, would it be possible to speak in the
         manner of modern physiology and the critical idealism based on it. This view confuses an ideal relation
         (of the object to the subject) with a process of which one could only speak if it were perceivable. Thus
         the saying ‘no colour without a colour-sensitive eye’ cannot imply that the eye produces the colour, but
         only that an ideal connection, recognizable by thinking, exists between the percept ‘colour’ and the
         percept ‘eye’. Empirical science will have to establish through research, what is the relation between
         the characteristics of the eye and those of colour, by what means the organ of vision communicates
         the perception of colour etc. I can follow how one percept succeeds another, how it stands spatially
         in relation to others; and then I can express this in conceptual form; but I cannot perceive how a
         percept emerges from the non-perceivable. Attempts of whatever kind to find anything other than
         thought-relations between percepts are doomed to failure.

5.               So, what is a percept? Put forward in these general terms, the question has no sense. A            (7.)
         percept always arises as a quite definite, concrete content. This content is immediately given, and
         is fully exhausted in the given. In relation to this given element one can only ask what it is outside
         perception – i.e. what it is for thinking. A question as to the ‘what’ of a percept can only refer to the
         conceptual intuition that corresponds to it. Viewed from this standpoint, the question of the subjectivity
         of perception, as asserted by critical idealism, simply does not arise. One can only describe as
         subjective that which is perceived as belonging to the subject. To form the connection between
         subjective and objective is the task, not of some – in the naïve sense – real process, that is to say,
         something that can be perceived taking place, but only of thinking. For us, therefore, whatever shows
         itself to perception as lying outside the perceiving subject is objective.

6.              My perceiving subject remains perceptible to me when the table now standing before me has
         disappeared from the field of my observation. Observation of the table has called forth in me a change
         that is also of a lasting nature. I retain the ability to form a picture of the table again, later. This ability to
         produce a picture remains connected with me. Psychology calls this image a memory picture. But only
         this can be rightly called an inner representation of the table, because it corresponds to the perceivable
         change in my own state brought about by the presence of the table in my field of vision. And it means,
         not the modification of an ‘I-in-itself’ standing behind the perceiving subject, but a modification of the
         perceiving subject himself.

7.              The inner representation is therefore a subjective percept, in contrast to the objective percept
         where the object is present within the horizon of my perceptions.

When we move from abstract to pure thinking that is imbued with will, and ascend from there to imaginative thinking, we use as their bearer and support the physical, the astral and the etheric body, in that order. The dual structure of the Cycle helps us to reinforce this process. When we experience the structure that slows down and in which the dialectical triad is concise and therefore predominantly intellectual, it is above all the physical and astral bodies which are at work. In this case we are working cognitively in accordance with the world-views, for the most part, and can let the final element of the Cycle expand out into the Zodiac of world-views.

The other structure (which we take as our basis) develops more rapidly towards the end and is, by and large, more harmoniously constructed than the first. Its dialectical triad, extended in thesis and antithesis, calls us to a ‘beholding’ activity; but its synthesis is short because, like the fifth element, it arises on the level of perception. In this case, we try to use the support of the etheric brain.

Concerning the role of Cycle VIII in the structure of chapter 5, we can say the following: it raises the sevenfoldness of the Cycles to an octave of concrete individual life. This Cycle begins in Cycle VII, in the final conclusion of element 7.

Seen from another point of view, Cycle VIII is the beginning of chapter 6: we will discuss this in more detail when we move on to this chapter. This is an exceptionally ‘astralized’ Cycle; its content is abstract, though also sevenfold in its structure. It has special importance on the level of stating the problem for further research.

        CYCLE VIII
1.              The confusion of subjective and objective percept leads to the mistaken view of idealism:           (C.
         the world is my inner representation.                                                                                                       VII')

2.              Our task will now be to define the concept of inner representation more precisely.

3.              What we have expressed about it so far is not its concept; we have merely shown where it is
         to be found in the field of perceptions. The precise concept of inner representation will then enable
         us to gain an adequate insight into the relation between inner representation and outer object.

4.              This will also lead us across the boundary, where the relation between human subject and the
         object in the world is led down from the purely conceptual realm of cognition into concrete individual life.

5.              Once we know what we have to think about the world, it will be easy to find our orientation within it.

6-7.           We can only act with full energy and conviction if we have knowledge of the object in the world,
          to which our activity is directed.

As we see from the diagram, there are very many symmetrical relationships of the different elements of the chapter within their overall structure. We can test them all through an analysis of their content. We will do this for a single complex, namely: Cycle I in chapter 3 – Cycles ‘I’ and V’ in chapter 4 – Cycle V’’ in chapter 5 (see Tables 4, 6, 7).

• –  The observable occurs without our active involvement, the logical occurs solely thanks to our activity; as we find the conceptual correspondences of observations, we bring to light their mutual relations.

• –  Thinking reacts to percepts (observations) by finding their ideal correspondences, but the latter arise within thinking and combine together to form a system of knowledge, transcending as they do so the limits of mere perception.

• –  (But what is an observation?) If it is determined by our physical organization, it is subjective. But there are two parts inherent in it: the outer world and the way this world affects us (self-awareness). These two worlds unite within the ‘I’.

• –  (Thinking, too) – it arises within us, but is nevertheless united with world-being. (Therefore) the percept is one side of reality, and thinking is the other. Cognition draws them together to an ideal unity; to the latter, acts of will also belong.

We have already mentioned that the elements within the various structures of the book are connected together, as to their logic and their content, in different directions of what we may call a structural ‘ma- trix’. Let us now consider what chapter 5 has given us on this level (Table 7 – on p.17).

Table 7

If we read the vertical columns in the Table, we can recognize that they form sevenfold metamorphoses expressed aphoristically; for this reason, what we have summarized in the Table is not merely a brief statement of the content of the chapter but, as it were, a further dimension of it.

The columns can also be read from below upwards. Even then, they form a coherent whole. Let us take, for example, the seventh elements. If we read them from below upwards we obtain the following content: What is subjective is only the percepts of our inner representations; to confuse them with the objective percepts which come from outside, also leads to the mistaken assertion that the world is my inner representation; the puzzling nature of the object is, however, rooted in its separateness, which is due to ourselves and can be overcome by us (through thinking); our actions, too, reach us by way of perception; thinking unites our individuality with the cosmos; when we perceive, we are single beings, and thinking (merely) appears to us at the periphery of being; it is due to our organization that percepts and concepts come towards us from different sides; in order to escape from the blind alley of naïve realism, we must ask the question: What is the relation of thinking to the percept? Through seeking naïve-realistic support in its research into perception, critical realism comes either to absolute illusionism or, alternatively, to transcendental realism.

If we examine in depth the outcome of this discussion, we realize that it is built up in accordance with the law of deduction. This is the deductive line of reason. In this case we have made the discovery that one ‘dimension’ of the ‘Philosophie der Freiheit’, the straightforward movement of its exposition, represents an evolutionary, etheric-physical (because of the metamorphoses), inductive thought-movement; by contrast, the other ‘dimension’ has an astral, deductive character and moves from the future to the past. Indeed, the whole work bears a similarity to two dimensions. But if we try artificially, just to read the individual Cycles in the reverse order – from the seventh element to the first – we get nowhere, because deduction is not a formal inversion of induction.

Seen as a whole, the ‘Philosophie der Freiheit’ has been written with three different thought-methods at once: the inductive, the morphological and the deductive. Thanks to the interplay of these, the text of the book becomes a special kind of exercise, which shifts the support of thinking to the etheric brain. However, it is the unity of the three above-mentioned methods, the combining of them in an entirely original way, that results in the logic of ‘beholding’ in thinking. It is the method of the development of the form of thought as a system and as a constituent part of a higher totality. A single cycle of thought does not make visible the character of this logic as a whole, just as, to venture a comparison, knowing how to read does not imply, by any means, the ability to recognize the style, the unity of form and content of a literary work of art. For this reason, it is essential to read a single Cycle in the spirit of the ‘counterpoint’ of the work as a whole, but also in the unity of object and subject of cognition.

The universal system of knowledge encompasses the entire world – i.e. it is infinite. On the level of the logic of ‘beholding’ in thinking it is structured in accordance with the principle shown in Fig.74.

Through the special character of Ch.5, which consists in the fact that, within the structure of the first Part, it is the first element that arises out of ‘beholding’ and has the character peculiar to ‘beholding’ thinking, it became necessary to add a Postscript. Here Rudolf Steiner describes the spiritual – and not abstract-conceptual – effort the reader must make in order, in the unity of the object and subject of cognition, to embrace as his own the conclusions which lead him further to the monism of the free spirit.

The Postscript as a whole is a seven-membered Cycle, as can easily be recognized by means of the sense of thought. Some difficulty may arise through the merging together of thesis and antithesis which is, however, quite natural where those thought-forms are concerned, in which the main emphasis is laid on the ‘beholding’ quality.*

         Postscript to the New Edition (1910)

1-2.          The way of thinking outlined here can be viewed as one to which a person is as though naturally
          driven when he begins to reflect upon his relations to the world. He sees himself caught up in a thought-
          structure that dissolves for him as he forms it. This thought structure is such that, through refuting it on
          a merely theoretical level, one is not doing all that is necessary in relation to it. One must unite with it
          in living experience, so that insight into the false path to which it leads can enable one to find a way out
          of it. It must figure in a discussion about the relation between man and the world, not because one
          wishes to refute those who have, in one’s opinion, an incorrect view of this relation, but because one
          must recognize the confusion into which one can be led as soon as one begins, for the first time, to
          think about such a relation. Insight must be gained into the way one can refute oneself with regard to
         these first reflections. This is the point of view underlying the above discussion.

3.              Anyone who wishes to develop a way of looking at the relation of man to the world, becomes
         aware of the fact that he brings about at least one part of this relation through the forming of inner
         representations of the things and processes of the world. His attention is thereby drawn away from
         what is out there in the world, and is directed towards his inner world, his own life of inner
         representation. He begins to say to himself: I cannot have a relation to a thing or a process unless
         an inner representation forms within me. From the noting of this fact, it is only one step to the opinion:
         It is only my inner representations that I experience; I only know of a world outside me, inasmuch as
         it is an inner representation within me. With this opinion we have left behind the naïve standpoint with
         regard to reality, which the human being assumes before he begins to reflect in any way upon his
         relation to the world. It is this standpoint which leads him to believe that he has to do with real things.
         The act of self-reflection removes one from this standpoint. It does not allow the human being to look
         out upon a reality such as the naïve consciousness believes is there, spread out before it. It allows
         him to look only at his inner representations; these inter- pose themselves between one’s own being
         and a supposedly real world, whose existence the naïve consciousness believes it can, with full
         justification, assert. The interposed world of inner representation prevents the human being from
         seeing such a reality. He must assume that he is blind with respect to this reality. In this way the
         thought arises of a ‘thing-in-itself’ which lies beyond the reach of our cognition.

4.             As long as we continue to look only at the relation to the world into which the human being seems
         to be drawn by his life of inner representation, it will be impossible for us to escape from this line of
         thinking. We cannot insist upon the naïve standpoint if we do not wish to shut ourselves off artificially
         from the quest for knowledge. The existence of such an urge to know what is the relation between
         man and world shows that this naïve standpoint must be abandoned. If the naïve standpoint provided
         something that we could recognize as truth, we would be unable to feel this urge. – However, one does
         not arrive at something else which could be regarded as truth, if one merely abandons the naïve
         standpoint while retaining – without realizing it – the way of thinking that it obliges one to adopt. We
         fall victim to such an error if we say: I only experience my inner representations, and while I am firmly
         persuaded that I have to do with realities, all that I am conscious of, is my inner representations of
         realities; I must therefore assume that, beyond the range of my consciousness, true realities exist,
         ‘things-in-themselves’, of which I know nothing directly, and which approach me somehow, influencing
         me in such a way that my world of representations lights up within me. Whoever thinks in this way is
         merely adding in thought another world to the one that is already there for him; but with regard to this
         world, he would actually need to start his intellectual labours again from the beginning. For the
         unknown ‘thing-in-itself’ is not conceived in its relation to the individual being of man in any other way
         than is the known thing of the naïve approach to reality.

5.               The confusion into which one falls through critical reflection with regard to this naïve standpoint
         can be overcome only if one recognizes that, within the confines of all that one can perceptually
         experience in oneself and outside in the world, there is something that is entirely immune to the fate
         arising from the fact that the inner representation is inserted between outer process and observing
         human being. And this something is thinking. Vis-à-vis thinking the human being can maintain the
         naïve standpoint with respect to reality. If he does not do so, then the reason for this is simply that
         he has noticed that for other things this standpoint must be abandoned, while he does not realize
         that the insight gained in this way is not applicable to thinking. If he does recognize this, the way is
         opened up for him to a further insight: namely, that in thinking and through thinking that element
         must be recognized, to which the human being appears to blind himself through having to interpose
         the life of inner representation between himself and the world.

6.               One who is held in high esteem by the author of this book has levelled against him the criticism
         that in his discussion of thinking he remains fixed in a naïve realism of thinking, of a kind that is
         operative when the real world and the mentally represented world are regarded as one.

7.               However, the author of the present inquiries believes that, in them, he has demonstrated that
         the applicability of this ‘naïve realism’ to thinking emerges of necessity from an unprejudiced
         observation of thinking itself; and that the naïve realism which is not applicable elsewhere is
         overcome through knowledge of the true, essential nature of thinking.