Chapter 4 – The World as Percept

As we approach the study of this chapter, the main thing to be borne in mind is that within the structure of the first part of the book it plays the same role as the fourth element within the structure of the thought- cycle. In this chapter the ‘beholding’ type of thinking prevails. Its logical conclusions do not play a decisive part, but merely prepare the ground for what is to come. The development of the thought appeals primarily to certain truths that have become apparent through the previous content. We observe from the very beginning that no extra intellectual effort is required for the reading of this chapter. Such an effort would only disturb our understanding. But all the more are we asked to direct our gaze into our own being, where ‘from the other side’, so to speak, the crux of the matter must become evident to us indirectly – somewhat in the way that discoveries are made.

The content of the chapter can best be united with our soul if we treat it as thought-experience. It must become apparent to us that our thinking is moved forward not so much by the development of ideas as by that deep, half-conscious will-impulse referred to in the Postscript to chapter 3. The will-element is revealed here both in the thinking, which outwardly is weakened to a certain extent, and in the organ of sense with which we are observing. By virtue of the style and character of the chapter it is asked of us for the first time that we should begin consciously to experience the otherwise unconscious nature of the will. Then we will experience the world-metamorphosis – reflected in the conflict of world-views – of the real forms of world-being, from their subjective representation within us in the form of the primary qualities of things, to their objective essential being which is of a purely ideal nature.

The subjective primary qualities of things are products of our understanding faculty. We made use of them when we were studying the first three chapters of the ‘Philosophie der Freiheit’. It was then that the cardinal question arose for us: What are we to do with sensory perceptions, the secondary qualities of things? The answer to this is given in chapters 5, 6 and 7 of the first part of the book. These chapters arise as a profound metamorphosis of the first three chapters, the key point of

which is chapter 4. Its position corresponds to that of the Earth aeon within the evolutionary cycle. The first three chapters are found again, after they have passed through the fourth – or, rather, through the activity of our ‘I’, since it all has to do with the ability of the subject to cancel (aufheben) itself here in the lower ‘I’ and give the higher ‘I’ the possibility of manifesting within it – in the second triad of the thought- cycle of the first Part of the book – in the a posteriori of the activity of ‘I’ that has come into effect. This can be represented as shown in Fig.58.

The content of the whole of part one has, as it were, two dimensions. One of them is the development of the theme, which proceeds continuously from the beginning to the end of Part I (shown in the figure as a dotted line -----); the second is built up symmetrically, and the chapters within it are, so to speak, enclosed inside one another so that, figuratively speaking, their ‘overlay’ is particularly ‘dense’ immediately before and after Cycle IV of chapter 4, and ‘thin’ at the beginning and end of this Part. This structural peculiarity of the text is conditioned by the many-layered nature of the thinking that moves forward according to the laws of seven-membered metamorphosis. At the ‘periphery’ of this Part, so to speak, i.e. at its beginning and its end, it has a more intellectual quality. At the centre, the ‘layers’ of beholding thinking overlie those of intellectual thought.

In correspondence with the character of the structure of Part I, our cognizing spirit must also work – our ‘I’ as the will-centre of transformation. Here the will must be brought into thinking, otherwise we remain caught up in empty intellectual conceptions and cannot find a relation to the book. ‘Intellectual beholding’ weakens the abstract power of thinking, but this requires, all the more, the development of a special inner activity of will, the suppressing of the instinctive sphere of the working of the will in blood-circulation and nervous system, so that the organ of thinking is transformed through the will in the ‘I’ into an organ of ideal perception.

The will character of beholding thinking occurs with the greatest force in element 4, but is also present in elements 2 and 6. This whole triad has a special connection with the ‘I’. But one cannot attain ‘beholding’ if one fails to experience the heightened will-character of the thinking through the book as a whole. This character is even reflected in the quotations contained in it. This has been well understood by Otto Palmer, who says in the book we have already mentioned: “The quotations which one encounters in the ‘Philosophie der Freiheit’ serve a different purpose (from that in the general run of philosophical writings – G.A.B.), which becomes apparent when one omits the names of the philosophers quoted and brings the thoughts themselves without reference to their authors. The structure of the book is not affected. They serve partly as a resistance through the overcoming of which the strength of thought is enhanced, or which enable a new thought to light up, or they are an obstruction aimed to prevent one’s thinking from launching out in a wrong direction. They fulfill these functions totally, within the limits of the texts as quoted by Rudolf Steiner. For this reason, Rudolf Steiner does not consider it really necessary to discuss contemporary philosophy within the context of this book.... But if the reader lets himself be led and guided by the quotations in the way indicated, he will realize that the chain of thought in this work is not of an abstractly logical nature, but impels him to a thought-dynamic, one might almost say a thought-eurythmy. We have here to do with philosophy as an art of thinking. Whoever works his way into this dynamic of thought must activate his will in the process. Thus arises... will in thinking....”137

In the ‘Philosophie der Freiheit’, this thought-will arises, of course, with far greater strength in Rudolf Steiner’s own text than in the quoted passages. But in order to be convinced that this is so, it is not enough just to know about it – it is essential, with the aid of the relevant exercises, to experience what is taking place within the thinking spirit.

The fourth chapter consists of seven clearly and distinctly formed cycles. As, within the structure of the whole first Part of the book it corresponds to the element of ‘beholding’, the main feature of the sev- en-membered thought-cycle, consisting of seven chapters, has its roots in this chapter. It constitutes in a sense the thought-seed of the whole first Part, and, though not in the temporal sequence of the development of thought, grows in both directions: towards the beginning of the first Part and towards the end. And this being so, the beginning and end are to some degree morphologically predetermined by the middle of this section of the book. We will discover something similar in the second Part of the ‘Philosophie der Freiheit’. By virtue of this fact, the principle of symmetry is also rooted in chapter 4; it metamorphoses the first three chapters into the three that follow it. It is able to fulfil this task perfectly and completely, thanks to the fact that it is itself seven-membered, consisting of seven cycles.

The abstract-dialectical tension of thought is weakened in this chapter, as indicated already in its title. Thinking unfolds more like an organic process; the thought grows as though of itself. The thesis of Cycle I is complex. It, too, is structured in a sevenfold way.

    CYCLE I

1.      Through thinking, concepts and ideas arise. ‡ What a concept is, cannot be expressed in words         (1-2.)*
      Words can only draw our attention to the fact that we have concepts. ‡ When someone sees a              (3.)  
      tree, his thinking reacts to his observation; an ideal counterpart is added to the object, and he                (4.)
      regards the object and the ideal counterpart as belonging together. ‡ When the object disappears
      from his field of observation, all that remains behind is its ideal counterpart. ‡ This is the concept of        (5.)
      the object. ‡ The wider our experience grows, the greater the sum of our concepts becomes.                  (6-7.)

Although what we experience as we read the thesis, only unfolds in thought, it has nevertheless grown before our gaze like a small plant. The antithesis arises in a similar way, though it too is only built up out of the material of concepts. Anything that is striving towards the organic level is inwardly structured. Thus each part of the triad has a structure of its own. As to the synthesis, the sevenfoldnesses of the thesis and antithesis which undergo metamorphosis grow within it to a wider and still higher totality. As a result of this, the dialectical triad of the Cycle proves to have the quality of intellectual beholding. Thus its character, which corresponds to the fourth element of the thought-cycle, is evident from the very beginning of chapter 4.

2.         However, in no way do concepts stand in isolation from one another. ‡ They join together to form      (1-2.)
       a structured whole. ‡ The concept ‘organism’, for example, connects on to others: ‘development in         (3-4.)   
       accordance with law; growth’. ‡ Other concepts which are formed in relation to individual things, are       (5.)
       completely absorbed into a single concept. ‡ All the concepts of the lion that I form for myself are
       absorbed into the conceptual totality ‘lion’.                                                                                                   (6-7.)

3.        In this way, single concepts join together into a closed conceptual system, in which each one              (1.)
       has its own special place. ‡ Ideas are qualitatively no different from concepts. They are, simply,              (2.)
       concepts that are more filled with content, richer and more encompassing. ‡ I would stress that it is
       important to bear in mind here that I have taken as my starting-point thinking, and not concepts               (3.)
       and ideas, which are only gained by means of thinking. They presuppose the activity of thinking. ‡
       Consequently, what I have said about the self-contained, completely undetermined nature of thinking       (4.)
       cannot simply be transferred and applied to concepts. (I make explicit mention of this here, as this is
       where I differ with Hegel, who posits the concept as the primary and original element.)
           ‡ The concept cannot be drawn from observation. ‡ This is evident from the fact that the growing        (5.)(6.)
       human being only slowly and gradually forms the concepts for the objects that surround him. ‡ The
       concepts are added to observation.                                                                                                              (7.)

4.      A widely-read philosopher of the present day (Herbert Spencer) describes in the following way the
     mental (geistig) process which we carry out in relation to observation: “If, when walking through the fields
     some day in September, you hear a rustle a few yards in advance, and on observing the ditch-side where
     it occurs, see the herbage agitated, you will probably turn towards the spot to learn by what this sound and
     motion are produced. As you approach there flutters into the ditch a partridge; on seeing which your curiosity
     is satisfied – you have what you call an explanation of the appearances. The expla- nation, mark, amounts
     to this – that whereas throughout life you have had countless experiences of disturbances among small
     stationary bodies, accompanying the movement of other bodies among them, and have generalized the
     relation between such disturbances and such movements, you find this particular disturbance explained
     on finding it to present an instance of the like relation” (‘First Principles’, Part I, par. 23).

5.       Closer examination obliges us to take a different view of the matter. When I hear a noise, the first thing
     I do is to seek the concept for this observation. Only when I have this concept am I led beyond the noise itself.
     A person who thinks no further simply hears the noise and is quite content with this. But through my thinking I
     realize that I have to look upon the noise as an effect. Thus, only when I connect the concept of effect with
     the percept of the noise, am I prompted to go beyond the single observation and seek for the cause.

The process of the individualization of ideas is also made especially clear in this Cycle. Let us compare the end of element 5 with element 6. In both, the theme is the same, but the direction of the thinking process is different: leading in the first case towards the object, and in the second towards the subject. It is only thanks to this fact that the individualizing of the idea takes place: it has united itself with our ‘I’. An insufficiently acute thought-sense may well find these distinctions far too subtle and therefore questionable. It will be significantly easier to feel them and grasp their meaning when we move on to the general and definitive conclusion within the Cycle, which is contained in element 7. We have described its character as a striving towards a higher universality (generality). In this element these distinctions reveal the decisive role they have to play.

6.        The concept of effect calls forth that of cause, and I then seek for the object that acts as the cause, and
      find it in the shape of the partridge. However, I can never find these concepts of cause and effect through
      mere observation, no matter how many cases I extend it to. Observation calls forth thinking, and this alone
      sets me on the path that enables me to connect one experience with another.

7.        If the demand is made of a ‘strictly objective science’ that it should draw its content from observation
      alone, then one should, at the same time, require that it abstain altogether from thinking. For thinking, by
      its very nature, goes beyond what is observed.

Because chapter 4 plays the part of the axis, or one can also say the point of symmetry in the sevenfold structure of the chapters, it is closely connected in its first three Cycles with the first three chapters. This is quite definitely reflected in the transition from chapter 3 to chapter 4. This transition comes to expression with particular clarity thanks to the Postscript to chapter 3. Which is not to say that without the Postscript no transition would exist. It does indeed exist, but for the inexperienced reader it would be (owing to the aphoristic character of the form etc.) considerably more difficult to recognize.

If we take the final, seventh element of the Postscript to chapter 3, and bring it into connection with the first and last elements of Cycle I of chapter 4, we obtain nothing less than a dialectical triad, but one that unfolds in a reverse direction: from the fourth to the third chapter. This means that we have to do here with a kind of ‘counter-movement’ of the content. Such is the complex phenomenology of the organic movement of the spirit (subject) as it thinks according to the method of ‘beholding’.

     Chapter 4, Cycle I
     Element 7: Thinking goes beyond what is observed.
     Element 1: Through thinking, concepts and ideas arise.
     Postscript to Chapter 3
     Element 7: If we leave the sphere of thinking, we find nothing that acts as its cause.

As we move on to Cycle II, we should note how sharply the Cycles are separated from each other in chapter 4. After reading one of them, it is impossible not to feel the need for a pause before moving on to the beginning of the next. At first sight, this would appear to offend against the principle of leading the Cycle to an octave. For our own part, we can only say that the laws of beholding remain mysterious for us at present. We realize that, in the transition from Cycle to Cycle in chapter 4, we are shifting our attention from one object of beholding to another. But all the Cycles (there are seven of them) form a unity within the structure of the chapter. Hence, there is an inner connection between them. This exists in our higher ‘I’ to the extent that we succeed in overcoming (aufheben) our lower ‘I’ in the transition from the third to the fourth chapter. We have already mentioned that elements 2, 4 and 6 are important less for their content than for their ability to metamorphose the remaining four elements. All connections between the elements are, essentially, laws of their metamorphoses. And these laws are objective. Elements 2, 4 and 6 work, themselves, as laws of the metamorphoses, but in addition to this they have an entirely subjective character: what brings them into being is the thinking ‘I’. The leading over of the sevenfold ‘musical scale’ – or the Cycle – of thinking to an octave takes place by virtue of the objective law of the movement of thinking. In element 4 (of both the chapter and the Cycle) the law of the subjective movement of the spirit gains the upper hand over the objective law, and the former has, without being untrue to itself, to assume the character of the latter (objective law). Then the conditioning principle in the movement of thought, and its system-forming principle, will raise themselves above the level of otherness-of-being, and ascend into the world of essential being. The law of the negation of the thinking subject calls forth the ascent to beholding. The fourth element (or the fourth stage) itself is the realization in practice of beholding in accordance with the laws of beholding. This is a kind of ‘inverted’ Pralaya at its highest point, reflected within the microcosm, the beginning of its freedom.

The second Cycle in chapter 4 is short and vigorous in its movement. As to content, it is devoted to the theme dealt with in the final (seventh) Cycle of chapter 3. Thus the main antithesis of chapter 4 corresponds to the concluding Cycle of chapter 3. Herein comes to expression once more the orientation of the first half of chapter 4 towards what precedes it, as this has to be metamorphosed by the content of chapter 4 into the last three chapters of the first part of the book. We will now experience Cycle II in its entirety.

CYCLE II

1.-2.        The moment has now come for us to turn from thinking to the thinking being. For this is the agent
          through which thinking is connected with observation. Human consciousness is the place where concept
          and observation meet and where they are brought into connection with one another.

3.             But this is how, at the same time, this (human) consciousness may be characterized. It is the
          mediator between thinking and observation.

4.             To the extent that the human being observes an object, this appears to him as something given;
          to the extent that he thinks, he appears to himself as an active agent. He looks upon the thing observed
          as object, and upon himself as a thinking subject. Because he directs his thinking to the observation he
          has consciousness of the objects; because he directs his thinking towards himself, he has consciousness
          of himself or Self-Consciousness.

5.              Human consciousness must, of necessity, be self-consciousness at the same time, because it is
          thinking consciousness. For, when thinking directs its gaze towards its own activity, it has its very own
          essential being, in other words its subject, standing over against itself as an object.

6.              What must not be overlooked, however, is the fact that only with the help of thinking are we able
           to determine ourselves as subject and place ourselves over against the objects. For this reason,
           thinking should never be regarded as a merely subjective activity. Thinking is beyond subject and
           object. It forms these two concepts just as it does all the others. Thus, when we as thinking subject
           relate the concept to an object, we must not regard this relation as a merely subjective thing. It is not
           the subject which establishes the relation, but thinking. The subject does not think because it is a subject;
           it appears to itself as a subject because it is able to think. The activity exercised by man as a thinking
           being is, therefore, not merely subjective; it is an activity that is neither subjective nor objective,
           transcending both of these concepts. I ought never to say that my individual subject thinks; the truth is,
           rather, that the subject owes its existence to thinking.

7.                Hence thinking is an element that leads me beyond myself and unites me with the objects. But at
            the same time it separates me from them by setting me over against them as a subject.
                   This is what accounts for the dual nature of the human being: he thinks, and in so doing
            encompasses himself and the rest of the world; but at the same time he must, by means of thinking,
            determine himself as an individual standing over against the things.

Let us once again compare the content of this Cycle with that of Cycle VII of the third chapter. We discover that in the final, seventh element of Cycle II, which plays the role of antithesis within the chapter, a synthesis takes place of the two juxtaposed and contrasting Cycles. In this case one can experience the following, third Cycle of chapter 4 as a beholding of this synthesis. With regard to content it fits this role perfectly. Thus comes to view the living interweaving in the text of the ‘Philosophie der Freiheit’. In its sequence of chapters, the one grows into the other, all following the overall plan, the organization of the structure. Processes in the development of thought become manifest, the one of which overlies the other, thus showing the multi- functionality of their elements. And seen as a whole, a system of systems, free of contradiction, emerges, similar to the way in which in the universe ‘I’-beings live within the structure of other ‘I’-beings and find in them their highest expression. This is yet another phenomenon of the personalistic organism of thinking inherent in the ‘Philosophie der Freiheit’. Its trains of thought ‘sprout up’ in accordance with lawful principles which condition the existence not just of the living entity, but also of the thinking being (or the being of thought – Trans.).

In the structure of chapter 4, Cycle III is unquestionably a synthesis, although Rudolf Steiner opens it with the following words: “The next thing we have to do, will be to ask ourselves....” Of decisive importance here, we repeat, is the ‘beholding’ character of the chapter. Its development is driven forward by, not an external, but an internal struggle of its parts. This ‘next’ question is the main question of the chapter: namely, in what relation does the content of our observations stand to our thinking? The question arises as we draw together a series of opposites: thinking and idea, concept and percept, consciousness and thinking, consciousness and observation and, finally, subject and object. Not only as a result of what is said in the first three Cycles of chapter IV, but also thanks to the series of discussions that precede it, we are led to sense inwardly in our thinking that what is common to all these pairs of opposites is that in each case the constituent elements come towards us as observations.

             CYCLE III

1.           The next thing we have to do, will be to ask ourselves: How does that other element which, so far,
        we have simply referred to as the object of observation and which comes to meet thinking within our
        consciousness – how does it enter this consciousness?

2.            To answer this question, we must remove from our field of consciousness all that has already been
         brought into it by way of thinking. Because the content of our consciousness at any given time is
         invariably pervaded already with concepts in the most varied ways.
               We must picture to ourselves that a being with fully developed human intelligence springs forth from
         nowhere and suddenly has the world in front of him. All that he becomes aware of before he activates his
         thinking – that is the pure content of observation. The world would then only show to this being the
         disconnected aggregate of objects of sensation: colours, sounds, sensations of pressure, warmth, taste
         and smell; then feelings of pleasure and pain.

3.              This aggregate is the content of pure, thought-free observation. Standing over against it is thinking,
         which is ready to set in motion its activity as soon as it finds something to connect onto. Experience
         shows that it is soon found. Thinking is able to draw connecting threads from one element of
         observation to another. It unites certain concepts with these elements, thereby drawing them into a
         relation with one another.

As object of beholding in this third Cycle, element 5 from Cycle I is taken, in which the author gives expression to his own opinion. This is the first such case we have met in the book – where the positive results attained by the author are made an object of beholding. What follows from the beholding stands in an immediate relation to element 6 in Cycle II. Thus the development of the ideas in the book assumes the features of an independence of being above and beyond their connection with the ideas of the surrounding world.

4.                We already saw above how a noise that we encounter is brought into relation with another
           observation through the fact that we characterize the first as an effect of the second.

5.                 If we now recall that the activity of thinking can in no way be regarded as subjective, we will
           not be tempted to imagine that the kind of connections that thinking brings about only have subjective
           validity.

The sixth element in Cycle III presents us with an individual task, the fulfilment of which takes us to the end of the chapter, and even beyond. This can give us an inkling of the fact that with Cycle III an important stage in our research reaches its conclusion and we must brace ourselves for a new task. Thus individualization and the result of Cycle III merge into one. But as the result is the all-unity (in the Cycle) which has special significance for the further stages of the discussion, the need arises to construct element 7 in such a way that it serves as a transition from Cycle III to Cycle IV, even to what will follow right up to the end of the chapter. This task is assumed by element [7].

6-7.               Our task will now be to seek, through thoughtful observation, the relation which the immediate
            datum of observation given above has to our conscious subject.

[7.]                 In view of the shifting nature of linguistic usage it seems to me necessary to come to an
            agreement with the reader on the meaning of a word that I have to use in the discussion that follows.
            I will be calling the immediate objects of sensation enumerated above, to the extent that the conscious
            subject becomes aware of them through observation: perceptions. Thus it is not the process of
            observation, but the object of this observation that I refer to with the term. [Translator’s note: the less
            ambiguous word ‘percept’ will mostly be used here.] I prefer not to use the expression ‘sensation’,
            because this has a special meaning in physiology, narrower than that of my concept of perception
            (percept). A feeling I experience within me can certainly be described as a percept, but not as a
            sensation in the physiological sense. For in the case of my feeling, too, I become acquainted with it
            through its becoming a percept for me. And the way in which we become acquainted, via observation,
            with our thinking is such that we can also call our thinking, in the form in which it first appears to our
            consciousness, percept.

In view of the fact that the principle of perception in the individual thinking spirit is virtually the main subject of our investigations, a many-sided approach will be needed in the attempt to gain an under- standing of it. Here we must give special emphasis to the fact that our consciousness, insofar as it is awake, has to do with two objects: thinking and percept. And both of these are given to perception, albeit in different ways. For this reason, if one wishes to gain insight into the origin of thinking, one must have a corresponding grasp of the character of external perception. This is exactly what Rudolf Steiner does. In what appears, at first sight, to be a quite uncomplicated way he summarizes the content of the first three chapters, ‘prepares’ them in a particular way in the first three Cycles of chapter 4, and now they are ready to begin that process of transformation which leads them from the formal- logical element to that of beholding in thinking. The observable comes into its own.

* * *

It is now essential for us to make a pause in our practical work with the text of the ‘Philosophie der Freiheit’ and look once again at the role of chapter 4 within the structure of the entire first Part of the book. With its seven Cycles this chapter metamorphoses the first three chapters into the last three. In this sense it reveals to us with its structure and content the mystery of the working of the law of metamorphosis. Through experiencing within the chapter the Cycles as elements, we learn to experience chapters as elements in their greater metamorphosis, which contains within itself the ‘knowledge of freedom’. The over- all structure of the chapter in connection with that of Part I of the book can be viewed as we have represented it in Fig.59.

The fourth Cycle of chapter 4 is a kind of “watershed” between the first and second halves of the first Part of the book. On the side that lies before the cycle there are the chapters in which the speculative (dialectical) predominates, bound up as to content and structure with the first three Cycles of chapter 4, which lead them over into what can be ‘beheld’. This takes place in two stages. In the initial stage, the first three Cycles of chapter 4 metamorphose into its last three Cycles, thus giving rise to the possibility of beholding, and then everything changes once more, whereby it remains an interconnected whole, and appears again in chapters 5, 6 and 7. Thus we see that the greater metamorphosis encompassing all seven chapters is inwardly structured with the help of three chains of metamorphoses, which are, so to speak, tied together by a single nodal point (Table 5). There stands behind this configuration, determining the law of its structure, the particular quality of the Earthly aeon.

In order to demonstrate the reality of the chains of structural connections which we have discovered and represented in a tabular form, it would be helpful to analyze their content, but for reasons of space we cannot do this. We will, however, at least consider the first, and touch upon the other two only briefly.

In our fourth chapter (see note p.9), where we presented an over- view of the relevant literature, we mentioned that F. Teichmann made an attempt in his book to trace the structure of the first part of the ‘Philosophie der Freiheit’. He suggests that one should divide chapter 3 into seven parts and see in each of these the reflection of a chapter. But as this intention is lacking in any methodological basis*,  it remains for us nothing more than a thought-game. If one wishes to use the method involving numbers, then this presupposes that one knows the laws according to which “God mathematizes” when He creates organic wholes. In the case of the ‘Philosophie der Freiheit’ the law of mirror-reflection is closely bound up with the law of symmetry and with the laws of seven-membered metamorphosis. These work together in a unity. If this is unknown to us then the organic wholeness of the book remains beyond our grasp. Once we recognize this, however, it illumines for us the structure of the seven chapters in the way shown in Table. 5. Here one can also use a geometrical picture. We then arrive at three mutually overlapping circles (or three spheres), recalling the relation of the three bodies of the human being: physical, etheric and astral bodies (Fig.60).

* To provide it with one is impossible, for the simple reason that the initial idea is entirely far-fetched.

The fourth Cycle of chapter 4 constitutes the centre of the whole of Part I of the ‘Philosophie der Freiheit’. It is, so to speak, the seed from which this Part grows, and it does so from the centre to the periphery, towards both its end and its beginning. We therefore unlock a further mystery of the book when we experience the middle Cycle of its fourth chapter as the book’s true beginning: as the beginning for ‘beholding’ thinking, of course; for ‘knowledge at one stroke’. For conceptual thinking the book begins with the first chapter. It grows out of humanity’s entire experience of thinking and of life hitherto. But as a new creation – with respect to the quality of thinking – the book can only grow from out of itself and afterwards enter into contact with the old world. The question with which chapter 1 begins is actually the ‘periphery’ of the book, where it takes up contact with what is, from its own stand- point, the external world of science, with its results, its views on the question of freedom. Is the human being free in his thought and action? This problem is familiar not only to philosophers, but to the majority of educated people. But we repeat: On the level of abstract thinking the first page of the book is its beginning. It is also characteristic of conceptual thinking to begin with the statement of a generally-known fact. Rudolf Steiner does not depart from this rule, but he does not wish, in conceding to intellectualism, to be untrue to himself. Let us recall what is written on the title-page of the book: “The Results of Soul-Observation according to the Scientific Method”. A book in which ab- solutely everything is concrete and interconnected and in which the formal element is entirely absent, begins, organically speaking, where the living centre of symmetry (the seed) is to be found within it. And this is Cycle IV of chapter 4.

We must take two facts into account. Thinking consciousness is the final product of the period of the evolutionary cycle which has come to an end, and this cycle is subject to the law of symmetry. Symmetry of forms, of spatial relations, is only one of the expressions of this universal law. The symmetry of the entire evolutionary cycle is the highest ‘ur’-phenomenon for all its inner states and manifestations. Now an ‘ur’-phenomenon is always dynamic; through the symmetry of thinking a qualitatively new manifestation of the ‘ur’-phenomenon is brought about. The human being starts off by grasping through his understanding as he does with his faculty of sight: spatially, from the centre to the periphery. What is characteristic of the ‘power of judgment in beholding’ is that the one who possesses it experiences, even in conceptual thinking, comprehension of the object in its complete fullness and ‘at one stroke’. As a book for inner exercise, the ‘Philosophie der Freiheit’ teaches us, through the working of its structure, how we can acquire this capacity by dint of practice. Thus we learn in the first chain of connections (see Table 5) to experience the ‘outermost circle’ of the first Part, through which it enters into contact with the surrounding historical-philosophical and scientific world – i.e. with the world around it. As it receives into itself this surrounding world, it moves, in its solution of the question of freedom, towards its own centre. This ‘circle’ of thinking is the most spiritual, but only on an abstract level. One can compare it with the astral body of the human being. In the stage that follows, the circle of the second chain is superimposed upon this bigger circle (see Fig.60) and that of the third upon these two.

Such is the movement of dialectical ‘beholding’ thinking. Another travels in the opposite direction – from the centre to the periphery. In order to experience in this way the cycle of the seven chapters, one must of course read the book in the usual way from beginning to end. After that, one can try to think through each of the parts, moving from the centre in both directions – towards the beginning and the end. But before we carry out such an experiment, we must examine the remaining Cycles of chapter 4.

If one tries to think, not in a linear manner, but ‘spherically’, so to speak, one can really experience the thought-form at the centre of Cycle IV as the beginning of the book. Let us read the Cycle as a whole.

              CYCLE IV

1.           The naïve human being regards the data of his perception, on the level on which they appear to him
         directly, as things that have an existence entirely independent of himself. When he sees a tree he believes
         initially that it is standing, with the shape that he sees, with the colours of its various parts, there at the spot
         towards which his gaze is directed. When the same person sees, in the morning, the sun appearing as a
         disc on the horizon, and follows the movement of this disc, he is quite sure that all this exists (in itself) in
         this form and proceeds in just the way he observes it.

2.            He holds firmly to this belief until he has other perceptions which contradict the earlier ones. The child,
         before it has any experience of distance, reaches out to touch the moon, and only corrects what at first
         glance it had held to be real, when a second perception comes into contradiction with the first.

3.            Whenever a widening of the circle of my perceptions takes place, I am obliged to correct my picture
         of the world. This is true in everyday life just as it is in the spiritual development of humanity.

4.            The picture which the ancients had of the relation of the earth to the sun and the other heavenly bodies
         had to be replaced with a different one by Copernicus because it conflicted with previously unknown
         perceptions. When Dr. Franz operated on someone who had been born blind, the latter said that before
         his operation he had formed, on the basis of the perceptions arising through his sense of touch, a quite
         different picture of the size of objects. He had to correct the perceptions arising from his sense of touch by
         means of those gained through vision.

5.             How is it that we are continually forced to correct our observations?

6.             A simple reflection brings us the answer to this question. When I am standing at one end of a
         tree-lined boulevard, the trees far from me at the other end appear smaller and closer together than the
         ones where I am standing. The picture I perceive becomes different when I change the place from which
         I make my observations. Thus the form in which it presents itself to me is determined by a factor that has
         to do, not with the object, but with myself as the observer. For a row of trees the place where I happen to
         be standing is a matter of complete indifference. But the picture I receive of it depends crucially upon this
         factor. Similarly, it is a matter of indifference to the sun and the plane- tary system that human beings
         observe them from the earth. But the perceptual image presented to us is determined by the place where
         we live in the cosmos. This dependency of the perceptual image upon the point of observation is the one
         that we can most easily grasp. The matter becomes more difficult when we come to recognize the
         dependency of our world of perception upon our physical and mental organization. The physicist shows
         us that, within the space in which we hear a sound, air-vibrations are occurring, and that the spatial body
         in which we seek the origin of the sound is also subject to a vibratory movement of its parts. We only
         perceive this movement as sound if we have a normally-organized ear. Were we not to have such an ear,
         the whole world would remain for us eternally silent. Physiology tells us that there are people who perceive
         nothing of the wonderful display of colours all around us. The picture given to their perception only has
         shades of light and dark. There are others who do not perceive one particular colour, for example red.
         Their image of the world is lacking in this colour, and therefore differs from that of the average person.

7.              I would like to call the dependency of my perceptual image upon my place of observation ‘mathematical’,
          and that upon my organization ‘qualitative’. The former determines the relative sizes of my percepts and
          the distances between them, and the latter determines their quality. The fact that a red surface appears
          to me red – this determination of quality – depends upon the organization of my eye.

Let us now recall the beginning of chapter 1, where the question was raised whether the human being is free in his thought and action. This was indeed the ‘periphery’ (the ‘displacement’ of the centre) in the sense that this question can only arise as a result of great effort in the realm of thought and observation. It is therefore easy to arrive at the conclusion at the beginning of chapter 1 that this question is the most important of all in science, religion and life itself. But what we have in the middle of chapter 4 is, in fact, the first emergence of this question. For here everything takes its start from the naïve human being, who has had his first experience of the perceived world. The discussion here recalls another, that of Condillac in his analysis of perceptions, where he takes a statue and endows it with one sensory faculty after another.

The Cycle concludes with a re-adaptation of the Lockean concepts of primary and secondary qualities, which corresponds to the central core of the question regarding observation. Primary qualities in the broader sense of the word are determined by the ‘place of observation’, above all by the ‘place’ (or standpoint) of the understanding faculty. Secondary qualities appeal to the rest of the human organization. The conclusion to which we are heading at the end of the Cycle, namely that “my perceptual images... are, to begin with, subjective”, corresponds to the path followed by human thought from Locke and Condillac to Kant and Schopenhauer, whereby it constructed the theory of the two worlds and tried in vain to overcome it. Rudolf Steiner brings this question into sharp relief in its essential nature – in relation to human freedom.

2.              No objection can be made to this assertion so long as I merely take into account the general fact
         that the organization of my subject plays a part in determining the quality of my percept. The situation
         would be entirely different if we were able to state what the function of our perception is in the emergence
         of a percept. We would then know what happens to the percept during the act of perception and would
         also be able to determine what must be there before it is perceived.

3.              Our attention is thereby led from the object of perception to its subject.

Now that we have found the most precious and important element, so to speak, around which the entire content of the book revolves – the subject, the human being as a self, the ‘I’ – the element of beholding in the Cycle and that which we then ideally perceive, the final outcome of the Cycle, rests throughout on the basis of the ‘I’-phenomenon.

4.              I do not only perceive other things; I also perceive myself. In the first place, the content of my
         self-perception is that I am the enduring element over against the perceptual images, which are continually
         appearing and disappearing. The percept of my ‘I’ can arise in my consciousness at any time, while I am
         having other perceptions. When I am absorbed in the perception of a given object, initially I only have  
         consciousness of this. The perception of my own self can then arise in addition, with the consequence
         that I am now aware not only of the object but also of my personality, standing over against the object
         and observing it. I do not merely see a tree; I also know that it is I who am seeing it. I also recognize
         that something is happening in me while I am observing the tree. When the tree disappears from my
         field of vision, a trace of this process remains behind for my consciousness: namely, an image of the tree.
         This image has united itself with my being during the act of observation. An enrichment of my Self has
         taken place; its content has absorbed into itself a new element.

5.              I can call this element my inner representation (mental picture) of the tree. I would never come into
         the position of speaking of represen- tations if I did not experience these within the percept of my Self.
         Percepts would come and go; I would simply let them pass by.

6.              Only through the fact that I perceive my Self and notice that, with every percept, its content also
         changes, do I feel compelled to bring the observation of the object into connection with the change in
         my own state, and to speak of my inner representation.
                  I perceive an inner representation when I observe myself, in the same way that I perceive colour,
         sound etc. when I direct my attention to other objects.

7.               I can now make the further distinction that I call these other objects, which stand over against me,
         the outer world, while the content of my self-observation I describe as my inner world.

Thus, in a seemingly modest and inconspicuous way, the most important element in the book has emerged – namely, the ‘I’. This is the mediator (the basis for the relationship) between what is in terms of the genesis of consciousness the perceptual centre, and the ‘circumference’ of thinking. The relation between them is to a lesser degree dialectical and to a higher degree ontological. Here, the ‘I’, the subject, confronts the percept, the object, without knowing how it is to be understood: as a part of the ‘I’ itself, or as a ‘thing-in-itself’? On the other hand, abstract thinking robs the ‘I’ of its substance. In order to come to terms with this situation, the ‘I’, after it has become active in the form of pure actuality, reasserts its sovereignty, which was thrown into question by the activity of perception and thinking. This problem will be dealt with more appropriately in Cycle VI, where the content of Cycle V is individualized, but on this occasion Cycle VI is given a quite special ‘beholding’ quality. It is for the first time that the ‘I’ presents itself so forcibly with the task of ‘dying and becoming’.

In the preceding Cycle the naïve realism of perception was ‘drowned’, and at the same time we became aware of this, so to speak, in the naïve solipsism of Berkeley. Now, in Cycle VI, this becomes the thesis. The standpoint of Kant and other agnostics emerges as the an- tithesis to this. The whole Cycle ends with the collapse of the subjectiv- ity of percepts (Bondarev’s text says ‘representations’), which is put forward by them as an “obvious” truth.

CYCLE VI

1.            Failure to grasp the relation between inner representation and object has led to the greatest
        misunderstandings in modern philosophy. Perception of a change occurring in us, the modification which
        my own self undergoes, has been pushed into the foreground and the object that causes this modification
        has been lost sight of completely. The assertion has been: we perceive, not the objects, but only our inner 
        representations. I know nothing, so it is claimed, of the table in itself which is the object of my observation;
        I know only of the change that happens to me while I perceive the table. This opinion should not be
        confused with that of Berkeley, which we mentioned previously. Berkeley asserts the subjective nature
        of my content of perceptions, but he does not say that I can only know of my inner representations. He
        restricts my knowledge to my inner representations because he believes that there are no objects outside
        the act of inner representa- tion. What I see as a table is, in the view of Berkeley, no longer there from the 
        moment I cease directing my gaze to it. Therefore Berkeley causes my percepts to arise directly through the
        power of God. I see a table, because God calls forth this percept in me. Berkeley therefore knows no other
        real beings (or entities) than God and human spirits. What we call ‘world’ only exists within spirits. What
        the naïve human being calls outer world, bodily nature, does not exist for Berkeley.

2.             Over against this stands the now prevalent Kantian view, which restricts our knowledge of the world
         to our inner representations, not out of a conviction that things cannot exist outside these representations,
         but because it believes that we are so organized that we can only have knowledge of the changes
         undergone by our own Self, and not of the things-in-themselves which cause these changes. It concludes
         from the fact that I only know my inner representations, not that there is no existence independent of these  
         representations, but only that the human subject cannot receive such an existence into itself directly, and
         is able only through “the medium of its subjective thoughts to imagine or invent it, to think, cognize or
         perhaps fail to cognize it” (Otto Liebmann – ‘Analysis of Reality’, p.28). This view of things claims to be
         saying something that is absolutely true and can be seen to be so directly and without proof. “The first
         fundamental principle which the philosopher needs to bring to full clarity of consciousness consists in the
         recognition that our knowledge extends, in the first place, no further than our inner representations. Our inner
         representations are the only thing of which we have direct knowledge, immediate experience; and the
         fact that we experience them directly means that not even the most radical doubt is able to wrest from
         us our knowledge of them. By contrast, the knowledge that extends beyond our inner representation –
         taking this expression here in the broadest sense throughout, to embrace all occurrences of a psychic
         nature – is not immune to doubt. It is therefore necessary at the beginning of philosophizing to state
         explicitly that all knowledge that extends beyond our inner representations is subject to doubt.” Thus
         Volkelt begins his book on ‘Immanuel Kant’s Theory of Knowledge’.

3.               However, what is presented here as an immediate and obvious truth is, in reality, the outcome of a
         thought operation which runs as follows:

It is pointless to carry a philosophical discussion of this kind any further, as evidence of another sort has appeared – the evidence of the intellectus archetypus. It is simply necessary here to start again from the very beginning – with what the naïve human being has; then the standpoint of critical idealism must be looked at, and set over against the findings of the physiology of perception. Thus is constituted the central act of beholding in Part I of the book. But why here, in the sixth Cycle? – so one might ask. We must seek the answer in the motto on the book’s title page: “Results of soul observation...” This does not mean the soul observations carried out by the intellect in psychology. “Soul... results” are the fruit of thinking in beholding, of precisely this. And as such it attains its individualization in every sixth element, be it in that of the Cycle, the Cycle series or the chapters. This needs to be grasped once and for all when one is working with the ‘Philosophie der Freiheit’. In this work, the individual soul observes the higher ‘I’ within the soul, as the higher ‘I’ reaches out to ideal perception of the ideas. This is an absolutely new method and way of thinking, and there is a great risk that this simply goes unnoticed, since the new can only be observed with effort. If this happens, work with the book will be entirely fruitless.

4.             The naïve human being believes that objects, just as he perceives them, also exist outside his
         consciousness. Physics, physiology and psychology, however, seem to suggest that, for perception to take
         place, our organization is necessary, and that we can therefore know nothing of things apart from what is
         transmitted from them by our organization. Hence, our percepts are modifications of our organization,
         and not things-in-themselves. The line of reasoning indicated here has, indeed, been characterized by
         Eduard von Hartmann as the one which must lead to acceptance of the axiom that we can only have direct
         knowledge of our inner representations (see Hartmann’s ‘Basic Problem of Theory of Knowledge’, p.16-40).
         Because we find outside our organism vibrations of bodies and of air, which come towards us as sound-
         impressions, it is argued that what we call sound is nothing but a subjective reaction of our organism to
         those movements in the outer world. In the same way we discover that colour and warmth are only 
         modifications of our organism. It is held that these two kinds of percept are called forth in us through the
         working of processes in the outer world which are entirely different from the experience we have of warmth
         or colour. When such processes excite the nerves of the skin on my body, I have the subjective perception
         of warmth, when they affect the optic nerve, I perceive light and colour. Light, colour and warmth are,
         therefore, the way in which the nerves of my senseorgans respond to the stimulus coming from outside.
         My sense of touch, also, does not transmit to me the objects of the outer world, but only my own states.
         Viewing them in accordance with modern physics, one could imagine that bodies consist of infinitely
         small parts, known as molecules, and that these molecules are not immediately adjacent to one another,
         but have certain distances separating them. Thus there is empty space between them. Across this space
         they work upon one another by means of forces of attraction and repulsion. When I draw my hand close to a
         body, the molecules of my hand do not directly touch those of the body at all; a certain distance remains
         between the body and my hand, and what I experience as the resistance of the body is nothing other
         than the effect of the force of repulsion exerted by its molecules in relation to my hand. I am completely
         outside the body in question and experience only its effect upon my organism. As an extension of this idea
         there is the doctrine of what is known as the specific sense-energies, put forward by J. Müller (1801- 1858).
         It asserts that each sense-organ has the peculiar characteristic of reacting in one special way only, to all
         external stimuli. If a stimulus is directed to my optic nerve, a perception of light occurs, regardless
         whether the effect is produced by what we call light, or whether the nerve is being affected by mechanical 
         pressure or electrical cur- rent. Conversely, different percepts are aroused in different senses, by the same
         outer stimuli. From this it would appear that our senses can only convey what is going on within them, and
         nothing from the outer world. The percepts are determined according to the nature of our senses. Physiology
         shows that there is also no question of our having direct knowledge of the effects produced in our sense-
         organs by the objects. When he investigates the processes in our body, the physiologist finds that already
         in the sense-organs the effects produced by the outer movements are changed in the most varied ways.
         We see this most clearly in the case of the eye and the ear, both of which are highly complex organs which
         fundamentally change the outer stimulus before they convey it to the nerve in question. From the peripheral
         nerve-ending the already changed stimulus is transmitted further to the brain. And here a further stimulus
         must take place, affecting the central organ. It is concluded from this, that the outer process has undergone
         a series of transformations before it enters consciousness. What takes place within the brain is connected
         to the outer process by way of so many intermediary processes, that any similarity to it is completely out of
         the question. All that is finally transmitted by the brain to the human psyche (Seele) is neither outer
         processes, nor processes within the sense-organs, but only those inside the brain. But not even these
         are perceived directly by our inner being (Seele). What we finally have in our consciousness is not brain-
         processes, but sensations. My sensation of red bears no similarity to the process taking place in the brain
         when I am experiencing the colour red. This, too, arises in our psychic being (Seele) as yet another effect,
         and is merely the result of the brain process. Thus Hartmann says (‘Grundproblem der Erkenntnistheorie’,
         3. 37): “What the subject perceives is there- fore, invariably, modifications of his own psychic states, and
         nothing else.” However, when I have the sensations, they are in no way constituted, as yet, to the
         structured objects of my perceptions. Only single sensations can be transmitted to me by my brain.
         Sensations of ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ can only be conveyed to me by the sense of touch; those of colour and
         light only by the sense of sight. Nevertheless, we find these qualities joined together in one and the same
         object. This union must therefore be brought about by our psychic nature (Seele) itself. That is to say, the
         psyche (Seele) brings together the various sensations transmitted by the brain and forms spatial bodies
         out of them. My brain conveys to me the single sensations of sight, touch and hearing by quite distinct
         paths, and the psyche (Seele) joins them together to form the inner representation ‘trumpet’. This final
         stage (inner representation of the trumpet) of a process is the very first element that is given to my
         consciousness. Nothing of what exists outside me and made the original impression on my senses, can
         be found in it any longer. The external object has become completely lost on the way to the brain and via
         the brain to the human psyche (Seele).

At the threshold to the supersensible, modern humanity experiences – as we have mentioned – a fiasco, falls into a state of crisis. Element 4 has shown us the reason for this, and the latter need only be made conscious. The Greeks had a tradition according to which: If the Temple of Serapis is destroyed, heaven will fall down on the earth; ‘heaven’ referring to the age-old spiritual life. In the ‘Philosophie der Freiheit’ the ‘temple’ and also the ‘heaven’ of the agnosticism that is sustained by neo-Kantianism and positivism collapses before our very eyes. This collapse is a true blessing, since the ‘temple’ in its fall buries under it the non-freedom of the human being, and new heavens are opened up, whose blue – in the words of Goethe – is already theory. Let us now see what has hitherto obstructed our view of it.

5.             It will be difficult to find in the history of human spiritual-cultural life an edifice of thought that has been
        assembled with greater ingenuity, but which, on closer examination, collapses into nothing.

6.             Let us see how it comes about. We start out from what is given to naïve consciousness, namely, the
        object we perceive. Then the fact is pointed out, that every attribute of this thing would not be there for us
        if we had no sense-organs. No eye – no colour. Colour is therefore not present in what works upon the eye.
        It arises only through the interaction of the eye with the object. Hence the latter is colourless. But the
        colour is also not present in the eye, as a chemical or physical process is taking place there, which has first
        to be conducted by the nerve to the brain, where it gives rise to another process. This is still not the colour,
        which only arises in our psychic nature (Seele) by way of the brain process. Here, it still does not enter my
        consciousness, but is first projected outwards by our psyche onto a spatial body. It is here, finally, that I
        believe I see the colour. We have gone full circle. We became conscious of a coloured object. This is how
        we started out. Now the thought-operation begins. If I had no eyes, the object would be colourless for me. I
        can therefore not locate the colour in the object. I set off in search of it. I look for it in the eye: in vain; in the
        nerve: in vain; in the brain: it is not here, either; in the psyche: yes, I find it here, but not attached to the spatial
        object. I only find the coloured object again, at the place where I started. The circle is closed. I firmly believe
        that what the naïve person thinks is outside him in space is now known to be a product of my own psyche
        (Seele).

7.               So long as we leave it at that, everything seems to be perfectly in order. But we need to go right
         back to the beginning again. Up to now I have been dealing with a thing – with the outer percept, of which
         I formerly had, as a naïve person, an entirely wrong opinion: namely, that it had objective existence in
         precisely the form in which I perceive it. Now I realize that it disappears with my activity of inner picturing
         (Vorstellen), and that it is no more than a modification of my psychic states. Do I now have the right to start
         out from it in my inquiry? Can I say of it that it works upon my psyche (Seele)? I must from now on treat
         the table which, so I previously thought, has an effect upon me and brings about within me an inner
         representation of itself, as being, itself, an inner representation. But then it would follow from this, that my
         sense-organs and the processes occurring in them are also merely subjective. I have no right to speak of
         a real eye, but only of my inner representation of the eye. The same would apply to the nerve paths and the
         brain process, and no less to the process within the psyche itself, through which, out of the chaos of manifold
         sensations, things must be constructed. If, on the assumption of the correctness of the first circular train of
         thought, I think through once more the various parts of my cognitive act, the latter shows itself to be a
         network of inner representations which, as such, cannot possibly work upon one another. I cannot say: My
         inner representation of the object works upon my inner representation of the eye, and there arises out of this
         interaction the inner representation of a colour. But to do so is not necessary in the first place. For, once I
         have clearly recognized that my sense-organs and their activity, my nerve and psychic processes can also
         be given to me only through perception, the train of thought described is shown up in its full absurdity. It is  
         entirely correct to say: for me no percept is given without the corresponding sense-organ. But it is equally
         true to say that there is no sense-organ without a percept of it. I can shift my attention from my percept of
         the table to the eye that sees it, to the epidermal nerves that feel it; but what is going on in these, I can
         again only experience by way of perception. And I soon realize that in the process taking place in the eye
         there is no similarity whatever to that which I perceive as colour. I cannot blot out my percepts of colour by
         pointing out the process taking place in the eye during this act of perception. Just as little do I find the colour
         in the nerve and brain processes; I merely connect new percepts from within my organism with the first,
         which the naïve person locates outside his organism. I merely pass from one percept to another.
                 In addition, there is a hiatus in the whole chain of reasoning. I am able to follow the processes within
         my organism right through to the processes in the brain, even if my suppositions grow more hypothetical,
         the closer I come to the central processes within the brain. The path of external observation comes to an
         end with the process in my brain – with that process, namely, which I would perceive if I could examine the
         brain with the instruments and methods of physics and chemistry. The path of inner observation begins with
         the sensation and extends to the building up of things out of the material of sensation. In the transition from
         the brain-process to sensation the path of observation is interrupted.

In Cycle VII we reach the periphery of the ‘circle’ that embraces the thought-form contained in chapter 4 (see Fig 61), or the beginning of the philosophical reflection whose line of argument in the question of the nature of percepts culminated in the positions of critical idealism and naïve realism. There is no doubt that, as we read on, we arrive at Cycle VII as the outcome of the foregoing development of thinking and beholding. But we notice here a higher degree of abstractness, a style that differs from that of the other Cycles. It can be experienced in this Cycle that, through it, the beholding which is dominant throughout the entire chapter is summed up and, at the same time, the beginning is postulated of the new discussion that awaits us in the following (the 5th) chapter.

The seventh Cycle corresponds fully to its role and its place within the structure of the chapter as a whole. It has indeed led us to a kind of All-unity, but one that is negative in character. It has made clear to us the limits of cognition, and if we try to step beyond them we will be moving within an enclosed circle. This circle is, admittedly, a large one. In a lecture-cycle (‘Human and Cosmic Thought’, GA 151) Rudolf Steiner describes it as consisting of twelve world-views which are determined by the forces of the various regions of the Zodiac (see Fig.168). (Through the influence of the planetary spheres each of these world-views assumes seven different nuances.) A study of the history of philosophy shows that, for the greater part, these world-views succumbed, in one form or another, to the prejudice that the world is our mental representation and the thing-in-itself of the percept is unknowable.

In order to escape from the blind alley of cognition, we must find our way from the periphery of the universe, from the circle of the twelve world-views – which in our time are all abstract – to its centre, but not in a naïve-realistic manner, not in order to begin to perceive the sense-world there individually, but to perceive there ideally. We have also been led by chapter 4 to make the following resolve: To accomplish the metamorphosis of consciousness, without which one cannot approach this centre with one’s individual ‘I’.

Let us now try to experience Cycle VII as a complete, concluding musical scale, which is compressed together into a single chord. Passing across it, we arrive at the ‘opposite bank’ in the structure of Part I of the ‘Philosophie der Freiheit’.

          CYCLE VII

1-2.          The way of thinking described above, which calls itself – in contrast to the standpoint of the naïve
          consciousness which it refers to as naïve realism – critical idealism, makes the mistake of characterizing
          the one kind of percept as inner representation, while accepting the other kind in the manner of the naïve
          realism which it had apparently refuted. It wishes to prove that percepts are inner representations, while
          naïvely accepting percepts of our own organism as objectively valid facts, and, what is more, overlooking
          the fact that it confuses two spheres of observation, between which it can find no mediating element.
                 Critical idealism can only refute naïve realism by, itself, accepting in naïve realistic fashion the human
          organism as objectively existing. As soon as it becomes aware of the fact that the percepts of one’s own
          organism are of exactly the same kind as those which naïve realism assumes to have objective existence, it
          can no longer rest upon the former as a safe support. It would be obliged to regard its subjective organization,
          also, as a mere complex of inner representations. But this means it is no longer possible to think of the
          content of the perceived world as a product of our mental organization. One would have to accept the
          proposition that the inner representation ‘colour’ is merely a modification of the inner representation ‘eye’.
          The view known as critical idealism cannot be proved unless it borrows something from naïve realism.
          And the latter is only refuted if its own basic assumptions are left un- challenged in another sphere.

3.               From this we may conclude with certainty: investigation within the field of perception cannot prove
           the correctness of critical idealism and nor, therefore, can the percept be thus divested of its objective
           character.
                   Still less, however, can one regard the assertion “The perceived world is my inner representation” as
           being self-evident and in no need of demonstration.

4.                Schopenhauer begins his principal work ‘The World as Will and Representation’ with the words: “The
           world is my inner representation (Vorstellung); – this is a truth that holds good with respect to every living
           and cognizing being, although the human being alone can bring it into reflective, abstract consciousness.
           If he really does this, philosophical self-knowledge has arisen in him. It then be- comes clear and certain
           to him that he has no knowledge of a sun or an Earth, but only of an eye which sees a sun, and of a hand
           which feels an Earth; that the world around him only exists as an inner representation – i.e. is only there
           with respect to another, the representing being, which is he himself. – If any truth can be uttered a priori,
           then it is this; as it is the statement of that form of all possible and conceivable experience which is more
           universal than any other – time, space and causality; as all these already presuppose it....”

5.                The entire proposition is refuted by the fact mentioned above, that eye and hand are no less percepts
           than sun and Earth.

6.                 And in the spirit of Schopenhauer one could respond to his words, echoing his own form of expression:
          “My eye, which sees the sun, and my hand, which feels the Earth, are my inner representations just as are
          the sun and the Earth themselves.” But that I thereby invalidate the original assertion, becomes immediately
          clear. For only my real eye and my real hand could have within them as their modifications the inner
          representations ‘sun’ and ‘Earth’; my inner representations ‘eye’ and ‘hand’ could not. But it is only of these
          that critical idealism is entitled to speak.

7.                  Critical idealism is quite unable to achieve insight into the relation between percept and inner
          representation. It cannot make the distinction we indicated earlier, between the nature of a percept during
          the act of perception and the attributes it must have before it is perceived. This will require us to follow
          another path.

* * *

Let us retrace our steps, as there are a number of issues that arose at an earlier stage, which we have not yet resolved. Let us look again at Cycle IV, but taking into account all that has been said since then. It begins with something that would appear, on the surface, to be extremely simple: an analysis of the first childhood perceptions, which many a naïve realist preserves unchanged, on into later life. The antithesis in this Cycle shows us that it is impossible to be simply given over to one’s perceptions. They come into contradiction with one another. And now there arises, out of quite simple and obvious observations, the judgment in the synthesis: the experience in the realm of perception comes into disagreement with the concepts. In addition, the line of reasoning contained in the synthesis finds support in the working of the law of the unity of soul-spiritual phylogenesis and ontogenesis: Every human being, beginning from birth, passes through the school of sense-perception, as the whole of humanity has done – “We see this in everyday life, just as in the spiritual development of mankind.”

After this, the conclusion we have reached is looked at in the sphere of experience of mankind in general. And here we are not dealing at all with child-like perceptions. We might even ask ourselves whether Goethe was really right when he said, “The senses do not deceive.”

In element 6 the soul-observations are brought in relation to the natural-scientific method. Then follows a general conclusion. If we now move on from Cycle IV in both directions, we find – with the help of physiology and psychology – in Cycle V a fundamental consideration of the consequences which are of the greatest importance for cognition and arise from the conclusion reached at the end of Cycle VII. “The senses do not deceive” is only true if one has a right spiritual attitude. If, however, one does not come through to a monistic view of the rela- tion of concept and percept, it is not at all right to place one’s trust in the experience of observation.

If we move backwards from Cycle IV, we also take, in Cycle III, a step towards the realm of concepts. With the experience of observations we proceed in the same way as in Cycle IV – we begin with what is immediately given to the senses. Then in Cycle II we focus on the thinking being and the forming of the relation between subject and object; and in Cycle I we move ‘outwards’: thinking “goes... beyond what is observed”. Looking at the opposite side, in Cycle VII we move in an ‘outward’ direction, where thinking assumes the form of critical idealism. One must not imagine that the evolutionary world-movement of thinking from centre to periphery arrives at the same result in each direction. All that works here universally is the principle of the relation of centre to periphery, to the circle, just as the germ-cell, for example, receives an instreaming of forces coming from the spiritual regions of the entire Zodiac, relative to which it represents the central point, alhough on different sides of it different organs unfold.

Now that we have reached the outer limits (beginning and end) of chapter 4, we will step beyond these limits and follow the first of the chains of thought-forms represented in Table 5. In chapter 1, as we recall, the basic question of the entire book is asked: – Can the human being be free in his thinking and his activity? The chapter ends with the conclusion that, in order to make a judgement regarding activity, one must first solve the question of the origin of thinking.

In Cycle I of chapter 4 we see that the concepts in our consciousness are ‘freed’ in a certain sense from our percepts. But they do not derive from the percepts; they merely unite with them. The concepts come from the sphere of thinking, which goes beyond what the human being observes.

In chapter 1 an investigation is made into the relations between cause and effect in the process of human activity, and it is pointed out that the mistake of many philosophers who deny freedom stems from their inability to distinguish between conscious and unconscious motives. This fact is confirmed with the help of a ‘beholding’ of the proofs offered by Spinoza, which are presented in chapter 1. Spinoza’s standpoint is mistaken, and in element 5 (of Cycle II) our task is, proceeding from the ‘beholding’ of a false observation, to recognize the truth of the matter.

We do approximately the same thing in Cycle I of chapter 4, only in our beholding we turn, not to Spinoza, but to Spencer (who had also been mentioned in chapter 1). And then, in element 5, proceeding from a beholding of a mistaken argument, we arrive at the conclusion that the concept of effect (or result) implies (Ger. – ‘draws after it’) the concept of cause. This conclusion thereby provides us with the solution to the question that was not understood by Spinoza. We can now say: The external reasons for our actions are percepts. However, these do not give rise in us to actions, but concepts; then, out of the concepts is born the decision. We have thus learnt something as to how a decision comes about. We were asked this question in chapter 1.

In Cycle 1 of chapter 4 we are confronted with an observation of Spencer’s which unfolds in a similar way to that of Spinoza, as described in the first chapter. Spinoza was of the opinion that the impulse enters us unconsciously and causes us to act. In a similar way, Spencer also wishes to convince us that the sound, and not the thought, prompts us to seek for the cause; here, too, it is not the conscious motive. Finally, it becomes clear to us that the thought inserts itself between the percept and the deed. The procession of metamorphoses which we have been studying moves on into Cycle VII of chapter 4. Here a comparison is made between the standpoints of the naïve and critical consciousness towards the problem of the relation between percept and concept. The discussion that has broken out again on this theme reminds us of the one in chapter 1. There is a correspondence between the naïve-realistic standpoint of Cycle VII and Spinoza’s position; and between Schopenhauer’s critical realism (Cycle VII) and the position of Hartmann (chapter 1). The naïve realist considers his own organism as an objectively significant fact (the actions of the child and the diplomat are “of one and the same kind”). The critical idealist, who has discovered in the end that he is a metaphysical realist, also adopts the standpoint of the naïve realist, with respect to the percept and to the motives of activity.

If we juxtapose chapter 1 with Cycle VII of chapter 4 we begin to understand how difficult it is to resolve the question of freedom in conditions where the sphere of percepts as motives is separated by an unbridgeable gulf from that of conscious motives. For the cognizing subject everything depends upon whether he is able to overcome the ‘two-worlds’ theory. This is the question that will concern us in our study of chapter 7, where the naïve realist and the metaphysical realist are again at odds in their attitude to monism and dualism. We thus see in how organic and cohesive a manner the metamorphosis of the thought-process takes its course on the first of three paths in the structure of the unitary metamorphosis of the entire first Part of the ‘Philosophie der Freiheit’. Adopting a still wider perspective, one can add that the question of freedom of action flows over into the question as to the possibility of the existence of the free individuality and, undergoing metamor- phosis in the second Part, finds its final resolution in chapter 14, which bears the heading ‘Individuality and Species’. There we are shown the ultimate liberation of the human being: his liberation from the human kingdom (from the fourth natural kingdom). We will fail to grasp the essential character of this final chapter if we do not acquire practice in the complicated metamorphoses of thought and meaning which arise within the unitary (and therefore monistic) structure of the book.

Without going into detail, we would remark that in the second chain of metamorphosis (see Table 5, on p.123 of this chapter) in chapter 2 we undertake a thorough analysis of the positions of the monists and dualists. This, as the beginning of a new cycle of metamorphoses, corresponds to the ascent of the first chain to the octave. We are led to the conclusion that we place ourselves over against the world when we reflect upon it. Therefore it is essential to investigate our own being, in order to find within it something greater than what is produced in it by this confrontation. And in Cycle II of chapter 4 it is proposed that we turn our attention from thinking to the thinking subject, which consciously observes the world as object and itself as subject. In Cycle VI of chapter 4 we have dealt thoroughly with the question, how this process takes place in the subject. In chapter 6 all the questions enumerated here come up again and are then considered in the light of the human individuality.

In the third chain of metamorphosis, we investigated in chapter 3 how, in the subject, in the human individuality, observation and thinking stand in relation to one another: these two being the ‘starting- points’ for any conscious deed. Thus, in the third chain the questions that have been considered separately in the first two chains – concerning the percept and then the concept – are drawn together to a single question. Here, thinking is regarded as a special kind of activity which can be perceived and also thought. Thus monism receives its principal support. In Cycle III of chapter 4 we investigate the way in which the object of observation comes to meet thinking, the self-conscious subject. The question is, admittedly, not entirely resolved here. But it is asked, and we register the fact that the way the thought-content appears to consciousness is also as a percept. This question is taken up in Cycle V of chapter 4. That which is lasting and enduring (consciousness, the ‘I’) is here separated out from what is transitory (the percept). Once again, the standpoint of Spinoza comes to the fore, but now within the sphere of the activity of cognition. “I do not merely see a tree; I also know that it is I who am seeing it.” And, finally, in chapter 5 all that has been considered previously, rises a stage higher. The positions of the naïve realist, the transcendentalist, solipsist, the physiologist who researches into sense-perception, collapse, because they are unable to prove that the world is my inner representation. The cognizing human being is that indispensable link, thanks to which cognition draws together to a unity the world that has been split into two by the subject himself.

We have thus discovered, in our movement along the three lemnis- cates, the consistent development of the content, not only to the left of chapter 4 in the direct sequence of the text, but also to the right of it, in the reverse sequence: from chapters 7 to 4. In one of his lectures of 1923, towards the end of his life, Rudolf Steiner said of this puzzling and mysterious book: “No-one who lacks independence in his thinking can understand this book. Right from the beginning and page by page the reader must acquire the habit of returning to his etheric body, in order to be able to have the kind of thoughts that are contained in this book. For this reason, the book is a path of training” (GA 350, 28.6.1923).

The analysis of structure and content of Part I of the ‘Philosophie der Freiheit’, which we are carrying out here, has to do with nothing other than ‘etheric thinking’, in which it is possible to move, not in a straight line, but only on a lemniscate, from the periphery to the centre, ascending on the stages of development from the less perfect to the more perfect, etc. Here one must learn to think in inversions, within the element of will, because in the ether body the laws of thinking are the laws of life. In the place of formal logic there comes something that could be tentatively called logical organology. Let us now conclude with an analysis of the structure of the chapter as set forth by us, with its component parts placed in juxtaposition to one another.

162

Table 6

An analysis of the vertical columns of this Table shows conclusively that we have here to do with seven-membered thought-cycles. Our final résumé:

Sevenfoldness is organized by way of threefoldness. One of the forms in which this comes to expression is the principle of symmetry in the seven-membered metamorphoses. It is the source of reciprocal transformations within holistic objects. The principle of symmetry is contained within dialectical triads. It results in a polar inversion of the mirrored antitheses of being and non-being, whereupon becoming arises. This can convince us of the fact that the principle of symmetry is dynamic. The spiritual-scientific doctrine of becoming speaks of at least three principles of symmetry. They are all united and revealed within a sevenfold metamorphotic lemniscate, regardless of its content. The first principle of symmetry is expressed in the axis or surface (a lemniscate can be three-dimensional) separating one loop of the lemniscate from the other. This axis or surface finds its ‘ur’-phenomenal principle in the universal plan of the world, in accordance with which the Divine primordial revelation is reflected in the ‘otherness-of-being’ of evolution. The latter is the mirror-reflection of the Tri-unity. They are separated by the symmetry-plane (or line, or it may be no more than a point) which has become the boundary between two worlds – the supersensible and the sense-worlds. The nature of this plane or surface is the state of consciousness (Fig.62).

Thus, the principle of symmetry in the evolution of the world is the process of becoming, the becoming of consciousness – i.e. of the ‘I’ in its direct or indirect expression. The geometric picture of the world shown in Fig.62 is projected onto the thinking spirit of the human being and is realized in his process of becoming as it moves from the abstract to the beholding consciousness. The Tri-unity of the primordial revelation becomes, in its mirror-reflection, the dialectical tri-unity, in which it finds its complete non-being. Through the ‘I’s becoming, higher and universal being is brought in dynamic relation to non-being, and then the dialectical triad receives its living counterpart in the triad of beholding.

The first principle of symmetry we have found does not reveal to us immediately the character of its working. It is the source of various kinds of dualism and remains for conceptual ‘I’-consciousness the ‘thing-in-itself’. Dualism is overcome with the help of the second principle of symmetry. As axis (or plane) this runs in vertical relation to the axis of the first principle. Its expression in esotericism is the magical staff of Mercury. Thanks to this principle the metamorphoses within the cycle are held in a unity. In the evolution of the world it runs as a unitary axis (the line of the chalice-form) through all seven aeons. (Here, the first principle corre- sponds to the axis of world-symmetry).*  The earthly aeon represents, in this case, the crossing-point of the two principles of symmetry, and it is therefore precisely here that the human being develops his individual ‘I’ (Fig.63).

* Seen from another viewpoint, one can regard the first principle of sym- metry as the axis of evolution, and the second as the axis of ascending and descending ‘I’-consciousness, and also as the axis of world-symmetry.
______

The ‘I’ has the character of a ‘point’, in the sense that it calls forth only qualitative metamorphosis: by it the external is made internal, it sets involution over against evolution, and vice-versa, etc. Thus the ‘I’ constitutes the third principle of symmetry, and at the same time the unity of all three. It is, itself, non-spatial; or, rather, it belongs to the zero-dimension (the point-like space) of the world of intuition. But when it is active as the principle of becoming, it leads the two-dimensionality of the other two principles into a unity with itself, and then development enters the three-dimensionality of the material world, and the space-time continuum comes into being. In the lemniscates of the seven-membered cycles of thinking, in which the ‘Philosophie der Freiheit’ is written, we remain from the beginning within two-dimensional space; the third principle of symmetry has a point-like character. It is the point of the transformation of the lower ‘I’ into the higher, which can only occur as a qualitative ‘leap’ (Fig.64); but this is prepared through work done in the flow of time.

The first principle of symmetry separates the understanding-nature from the beholding-nature and indicates for us that their relation is one of mirror-reflection, so to speak. The second principle of symmetry combines within it the 2nd, 4th and 6th elements of the seven-membered thought-cycle; those elements, therefore, in which the complex of forces at work as between lower ‘I’ and higher ‘I’ must be particularly active. This axis organizes the symmetry of content present in elements 1 and 3, and also 5 and 7; and in addition their transverse symmetry 1-7 and 3-5.

If he wishes to be able realize ‘beholding’ thinking, the human being needs to enter with his lower ‘I’ into point 4 and try to undertake all that is neces- sary for the metamorphoses of the thought-cycle, appealing as he does so to the power of the higher ‘I’. Within the configuration of the whole of Part 1 of the ‘Philosophie der Freiheit’, it is chapter 4 which corresponds to this point. Here the ‘becoming’ of the ‘I’ begins. As a principle of symmetry, this is the mid-point of the circle, whose periphery dissolves into spiritual heights. On the conceptual level, it is the centre of the Zodiac of the twelve world-views (Fig.168, p.25). In the structure and the text of the ‘Philosophie der Freiheit’ is contained the working of the higher ‘I’. Merely to grasp its structure reunites our lower ‘I’ with the higher ‘I’. Let us try, therefore, to experience the content of the first Part of the book in its symmetry, as represented in Fig.65.

Thus is realized the Tri-unity in the seven-membered metamorphosis of development. When a movement of the metamorphoses takes place in this way, the content of the chapters become initially ever more complex; this reaches its climax in chapter 4 and then, in essence, becomes gradually simpler. Actually, it grows simpler on both sides of the first principle of symmetry, if we follow its axis downwards. As far as the cognizing ‘I’ is concerned, the beginning of its activity is found at the centre of chapter 4. The content, structure and dynamics of the thinking, its intentionality – all this remains, thanks to the three principles of symmetry, within a unity, and can be recognized in its relation to different axes of symmetry. This is yet another aspect (a subordinate part) of the logic of beholding in thinking.