The Logos Structure of The World

4.
The Language of Reality

The First RealityThe First Language
The Transition to Questioning
The Second Reality
The Third Reality
5. The Character of Perceptual
Reality
The Sensation of RealityObservations

The Functioning of the Human Senses
The Fate of Higher Ideas
The Wordlike Character of Nature
6. The Development
7.
of
I-Consciousness
Self-Sensing
8. Changes in the Given

9.
Meditation
10. Perceptual
Meditation
Epilogue
Bibliographical
References
Translator's
Foreword
Georg Kuhlewind's The Logos-Structure of the World may be

considered an epistemological continuation of his earlier work,
Becoming Aware of the Logos w h i c h was written in a theological and philosophical language appropriate to the New Testament and, above all, to the Gospel of St. John.
Logos-Structure is another attempt by Kuhlewind to describe his fundamental intuitionabout the nature of the
wordwhich runs like a connecting thread through all his
works, up to and including his most recently published Der
Sprechende Mensch {The Speaking Human Being).
For Kuhlewind, the word is the key that allows us to decipher two riddles: the riddle of the "hieroglyph" of the human
being in relationship to it's spiritual origin (which is the subject of Becoming Aware of the Logos), and the riddle of the
human being's relationship to nature, our physical foundation, the natural environment. This is the subject of LogosStructure.
The principal characteristic of the word is twofold, inner
and outer. For outer sense-perceptionhearing or seeinga
word appears in distinguishable sounds or letters. These
sounds and letters are interpreted as signs if we, as perceivers,
grasp that they have a meaningeven if we do not immediately understand that meaning. As human beings, we have the
1
1. Becoming Aware of the Logos (West Stockbridge, MA: Lindisfarne Press. 1985).
2. Der Sprechende Mensch (Frankfurt: Vittorio Klostermann, 1992).
T H E L O G O S - S T R U C T U R E O F THE W O R L D
capacity to embrace these two aspectssounds or letters and

meaningas one. This capacity is the essential element that
allows us to develop our humanity.
In relation to our inner spiritual source (the first riddle), we
can consider the light of our own self-awareness as a sign. Yet
if the light of our self-awareness is a "sign" for us, then this
sign must have a "speaker" just as every word does. As soon as
we ask about the speaker, however, we have already grasped
intuitively that there might be an answer to our question.
This act of questioning is the first manifestation of the
human faculty of giving and understanding meaning. Meaning
is the inner aspect of the word, its inner side. In turning our
gaze toward the one who asks and tries to answer questions we
behold our own I. Whence does this I originate?
The question of the origin of the I is the fundamental gesture
of conscious reflection (in German, Besinnung.) Who witnesses
the presence of my own I's gaze? The answer isI-AM (who
is the eternal witness) witnesses the presence of my own I's
gaze. I and I-AM are phenomena that can be considered in the
same way that a word isas manifestation and meaning. The
Gregk word logos signifies just this twofoldness. Indeed, considering the human ability for conscious reflection in this way
leads us to the nature of the word, that is, to the Logos that was
in the beginning, as St. John the Evangelist wrote of it.
In relation to the second riddlethe given, sense-perceptual world of naturethis same activity of conscious reflection is present in the very first question, What is thatl Here,
too, the activity of questioning is a sign for the intuition that
"that" has meaning. Outer sign and inner meaning again constitute what one may call a "word." Thus the sense-perceptible
world of nature is also to be considered as a text that consists
of words that might have an author, the same Logos that was
"in the beginning."
Foreword
Epistemologically, Kuhlewind justifies his approach by

pointing out that every "given"i.e., every sense-perceptible,
distinguishable phenomenonis identified as soon as consciousness says, "that." As soon as one says, "that," one means
something. One can communicate with other human beings by
agreeing what one means by "that"a tree as timber, firewood, paper, or plant; a tree as the specific essence of a "species," or even a tree like a linguistic conjunction word, like an
"and"in which case a tree is seen as a sense-perceptible phenomenon in a life process between center and periphery, central and peripheral forces, earth and heaven.
Kuhlewind shows that as far back as we can trace the evolution of language, words have continuously changed their meaning. And he shows, too, that with this change in the meaning of
words, the understanding by which human communities agree
on how to structure the given "that" of nature also changes in a
similar way. It can be shown that in the course of the evolution
of language, meaning has shrunk continuouslyfrom an allencompassing meaning of "tree" as a manifestation of a life
force, to the modern conception of a tree as timber, fuel, or cellulose (reduced to molecular structures and DNA codes). The
structure that can be found in any given evolutionary period of a
language thus precisely mirrors the meaning shared by the
human community living at that time. Such meaning today is
called a "prevailing view" or "paradigm."
At this point, the question of the origin of language arises.
What primal intuition occurred at the original arising of such a
"shared vision" or paradigm of reality? This question leads to
the same boundary as the focal point of the nature of the word.
Language is an archetypal phenomenon of consciousness.
An "archetypal phenomenon" presents inner meaning and perceptible manifestation as one. If we can discover the way in
which human communities structure reality, give different
10
meanings to what they consider as "reality," then we can begin

to experience the world of the Logos. "Reality" is the outer sign
for the inner understanding shared by a^ human community. In
this sense, language may be considered a model of reality.
Understanding language as a model of reality allows one to
see the metamorphoses of linguistic structures as a picture of
the evolution of consciousness. At the same time, this understanding of the relation between language and reality enables
us to consider all aspects of nature as an integrated whole, as
ancient humanity did.
From this insight, modern humanity's task arises naturallyto find a new way of integrating nature, not for our
comfort or for our consumption, but as a text that has something to communicate and that has an author. If, as we attempt
to decipher this text, we feel ourselves addressed by it, a new
sense of creation could appearcreation as the meaning of a
dialog between beginning and end.
To help us approach this task, Kiihlewind ends his book
with a suggestionthat we school our perception. He proposes that we can cultivate a. feeling perception that is analogous to the feeling of evidence that guides all intuitive thinking
and is always the last judge of the correctness and truth of a
statement. In this "feeling" way of seeing, the elements of
nature are integrated into a higher context in the same way that
an agglomeration of single letters must be integrated to be seen
as a word, and a series of words must be integrated to be read
as a sentence that expresses a single meaning.
Kiihlewind's approach may be seen as an evolution of
Goethe's intuition of seeing nature as a text. Goethe wrote:
"But if I would treat those cracks and fissures as letters, and try
to decipher them and assemble them into words, and learn to
read them, would you object?"
3. Wilhelm Meister.
Foreword
11
What was an intuitive leap for Goethe can become a systematic unfolding of our faculties. In the same way as a book
would not make sense if paper and ink were only chemically
identified, while the forms of the letters were analyzed in
terms of analytic geometry, so, too, the elements of nature are
integrated not only into systemic ecological cycles but also as
an organism whose existence utters its own sense. This corresponds to the inner understanding that makes a word into
meaning. Thus the phenomena of nature are considered both
as they appear and as the expression of
"meaning"meaning
not in the utilitarian sense of everyday consciousness but as

the spontaneous intentionality that reveals its personality
through the qualities in which it appears when it presents the
infinite possibilities of its own higher lawswhich are also
manifestations of such a "speaking" intentionality.
This is why feeling perception is cultivated. For in feeling,
the observer's will resounds perceptibly with the conscious,
thinking grasp of the p e r c e p t / A n d in the movement of the
attentional will in perceiving, the observer experiences the
nature of what a substance used to be"substantia"not
"matter" but a spiritual hierarchy, as may still be seen in the
language of Dante's Divine Comedy.* Thus the perceiver experiences in the perceptual will the force in which the complexity
of nature manifests itself.
Here the reality of being is felt. And thereby feeling perception becomes a mediator between our thinking conception and
the actual intentionality of the reality of nature. In the words of
Aquinas:
"Res natural is, inter duos intellect us constituta"

object
of nature
intelligences.)
is
4. Dante, Paradiso XXIX, 76 (29:76).

5. dc Veritate qu.I, art.2.
established
between
(The
two
12
' T H E LOGOS-STRUCTURE OF THE W O R L D
In this same spirit Kuhlewind opens his Logos-Structure

with another quotation from Aquinas: "The reality of things is
their l i g h t . . . . "
6
FRIEDEMANN-ECKART SCHWARZKOPF
6. Commentary to Liber de causis 1, 6.
Introduction
This book aims to show that the world, including human

beings and their consciousness, is not originally a world of
things but a world of words; that, fundamentally, it is structured like a text and can therefore be read like a text.
This objective makes the exposition difficult, for even the
simplest descriptive statement (e.g., "the blueberries have
already begun to ripen") breaks something that is simultaneous,
unified, and connected into words that appear one after another
and side by side. Things of consciousnessfor example, problems in linguisticsare even more difficult to communicate,
since many, if not all, questions appear simultaneously and
need immediate answers.
This work therefore makes use of, and continuously presents to the reader, three scientific disciplines that deal with
consciousness: epistemology (the theory of cognition), cognitive psychology (the psychology of cognition), and linguistics.
The principles of the latter will probably be unfamiliar even to
readers interested in spiritual science. The seeds of these disciplines may, however, be found in Rudolf Steiner's works, and
I myself have discussed them more or less comprehensively,
for example in The Life of the Soul, as well as in other works.
* Georg Khlewind, The Life of the Soul (Hudson, N.Y.: Lindisfarne Press, 1990) [Das
I.then der Seele, 1982]; Die Wahrheit Tun ("Doing the Truth"). 1978; Die Diener des
Logos ("Servants of the Logos"), 1981; Das Licht des Wortes ("Light of the Word"),
1984, all published by Verlag Freies Geistesleben in Stuttgart, Germany.
14
T H E L O G O S - S T R U C T U R E OF MM W<>KM>
This epistemological approach attempts to lake up what

was given by Rudolf Steiner, bm in a more differentiated way
appropriate to questions being asked today. Readers may find,
however, that the greatest problem ny\y be the unaccustomed
combination of these three disciplines.
This is why problems are not presented linearly. Instead, the
train of thought proceeds in loops and spirals, touching repeatedly on certain themes in order to do justice to various points
of view. The whole book is a single statement. Therefore readers will have to be patient until they have read ii to the end.
Much that is not discussed, or discussed insufficiently, along
the way, will be explained in later sections and, ultimately,
through the whole. This, at any rate, is the intention and goal.
Our method will be primarily to direct the reader's attention
to phenomena of consciousness that are normally ignored and
overlooked. The radical proposition that we can perceive only
phenomena for which we have concepts or ideas or for
which such concepts or ideas can be developed in the course of
observationapplies unconditionally to the observation of
consciousness. Such observation begins with everyday consciousness. In this work we attempt to present the results of
research that has made use of other planes of consciousness, in
terms of the effects of these other planes of consciousness on
completely observable phenomena and functions of everyday
consciousness. Readers should not connect any preconceived
notions or representations with the terms used here but instead
form concepts and ideas anew on the basis of the text.
The methodological aim of such a study cannol be to communicate knowledge or theories; rather, it seeks to stimulate
the reader's participation in the movement of thinking so that
the reader can arrive at the intuitions necessary for understanding the text. Only in this way can the life of the world
and of consciousness be experienced.
Introduction
15
The precondition for any empiricism of consciousness is

that the observer stand on a higher level of consciousness than
the object of observation; otherwise unreliable conclusions and
speculations will inevitably flow into the observation. Observation must proceed from the level on which we experience the
world as self-evident. Only then does the observing attention,
which is directed to preconscious and conscious processes of
cognition, become trustworthy.
The first step in the process of observation is to distinguish
between conscious cognitionguided by questioningand the
given image, which is the object of investigation and results
from earlier, nonconscious cognition. A further distinction
would differentiate between the planes of the present and the
past in consciousnessfor instance, by distinguishing between
the activity of thinking and the (already past) thoughts that are
the result of this activity. Observation also reveals the superconscious nature of intuitive cognitive processes, experienced
on the level of the present, as abilities or faculties. At the same
time, we become aware of the impulses that stem from the
soul's sphere of habit, the subconscious. This allows us to distinguish between intuitions and associations.*
It is equally important that we fully understand the difference between perception and mental representation. Because
of its immediacy, perception appears to exist here and now. A
mental picture or representation, on the other hand, appears
more like a memory. The existential, here-and-now quality of
the perceptual world can be explained only if we take into
account the difference between concepts relating to natural
phenomena and those relating to products of purely human
*See Georg Kuhlewind, Stages of Consciousness (Hudson. N.Y.: Lindisfarne Press,

1984), chapter entitled, "The Two Stages of Consciousness," and The Life of the Soul,
chapters 3 and 5.
16
T H E L O G O S - S T R U C T U R E OE THE W O R L D
activities of consciousness. Concepts produced by human

beings are clear and transparent (for example, mathematical
and geometrical concepts or those of man-made objects).
"Concepts" that relate to nature, on the other hand, at first
seem to be names, mental pictures, or collective concepts
formed on the basis of external characteristics rather than the
constitutive ideas of the phenomena of nature. Such constitutive ideas are unthinkable and inconceivable for normal comprehension. Mighty ideas stand behind natural phenomena
not something nonideal, as naive thinkers believe. Just this is
what gives perception its existential quality, since we ourselves are, after all, still open to these ideas. To overlook or
disavow this existential quality is an aberration of theory due
to inexact observation. It is the "introverted," complementary
form of the same error whose "extroverted" form we see in the
outer-directed focus of materialism.
The discontinuous structure of the conceptual world produces the structure of the perceptual world. Both structures are
given by language. Language lifts the basic concepts out of
what is directly given. That is one of the reasons why the
wordlike, rather than the Idea, plays the central role in the following chapters. Because they partly appear in the sense-perceptible world and also partly live concealed as an activity of
consciousness, human words can serve as a model for both
human beings and the sense-perceptible world. Both receive
their meaning, their hidden part, like words themselves, from
human beings.
The word is the form of the idea through which t lie re appears the words relation to an I. The life span of the word in a
human being leads from the given language (and the thinking
bound to it), through abstract thinking independent of language, to meditative thinking, which is also independent of
language. Meditative thinking seeks to understand words in
Introduction
17
their primal or original meaning and remain within that understanding, or even pass beyond it. In the process, a "thinking"
develops that is adequate to the ideas of natural phenomena.
The completion, and ultimately the redemption, of the given
text of nature begins in perceptual meditation.
Meditation is the continuation of creation as it is given. If
language initially structures creation into components, then in
perceptual meditation we read creation together again
through the accessibility of the higher word-nature. And
thereby the world receives meaning, like a text.
For the attentive observer the world will appear, in every
phase of cognitive life, to be structured by the word, or Logos.
Only an I-being has a "world." And I-beings have a world only
because the world has the nature and structure of the word, the
Logos, which in turn is accessible only to I-beings. In the first
epoch of consciousness, that of simplicity, the world is given
to human beings as reality. Percept and concept are given
together; they are separated only in a later configuration of
consciousness. Therefore in this first epoch the reality structured by the concepts provided by language is also given as a
unified whole. In the second phase of consciousnesswhich
ultimately leads to the emancipation of thinking from languagethe given world is structured by concepts grasped by
human beings. Generally, these are abstract concepts, like
those of the natural sciences, or they may be higher, meditative
ideas. In any case, in this second reality perceiving and thinking are strictly separated; and their synthesis is no longer given
but is performed by the human being. Thus, this second reality
is also structured by the Logos; it is structured and unified
through concepts.
This applies also to the third, potential development of consciousness, in which human beings realize the language character of the world through their own free deeds. The language
18
character of the reality of the second phase or epoch is more a

matter of form and not very noticeable because the functional
ideas corresponding to the facts of nature are not grasped;
instead, they are supplanted by the substitute concepts of measurability and calculability.
We must now learn to experience the higher ideas that are
appropriate to human beings and the world by achieving
higher levels of consciousness. At the same time, we must
continue to develop our perceptual capacities toward reading
in the book of nature. Then we will be able to perceive signs or
letters in nature, as in a spoken or written text, instead of seeing only things. This will lead us to complete or true reality.
The meaning of creationthe hidden part of the cosmic creative wordwas to help humanity reach this point of understanding. The new meaning, the new reality, arises through our
own continuing of creation.
One can experience that concepts and ideas always seem to
servethey serve as the concepts of the objects we produce
for our sciences, as the cultural ideas of our education, as the
artistic ideas of our self-development, or as the meditative
ideas of our essential future. That the future must continuously
be createdand now by usis ancient wisdom. It was already
prefigured and exemplified in the languages of the American
Indians. Now this ancient wisdom begins to dawn on us again,
slowly, and traveling along nearly catastrophic evolutionary
paths. May the friendly warmth of the word, always based on
trust, lift this ancient wisdom into modern consciousness.
Prelude
Every theory and every science begin with questions. Questions arise when we look at something twice because we were
not satisfied with the first view of what we saw. That is, the
existence of questions presumes two different glances, two
separate views, the second of which is conscious and deliberate. These two different views necessarily originate in two different possibilities of the seeing consciousness, which can be
at home on two different planes.
The first view or picture of reality is given to us, and it is
already a picture at that moment, not a reality, as is often
supposed. Reality is the last secret and can be attained only
through conscious questioning. The first picture is given
through the soul's superconscious and subconscious structure.
It is filtered, dulled, and immobilized because of the necessary
dependence of the cognizing principle in human beings on the
physical organism. As a result, only a part of the totality of the
world reaches conscious experience. Since our questions and
answers also become a part of reality, reality is not finished or
fixed: it blossoms within, and through, the human being.
Our questions concern the given picture, the first view. Epistemology deals with the question of how this "given" arises.
The sciences deal with the question of how to complete, correct, and understand the given picture. And the philosophy of
science deals with the question of how science is possible.
/. The Questions
E v e r y question arises as a new question: it dawns on us in the

same way as does insight, the answer. In fact, questions are
already insights, but incomplete ones. Questions cannot
develop out of navet; they always require duality and doubt:
What is that? That is discovered, but at the same time we realize that it was not fully understood. Herein lies the paradox of
asking questions: that so much must be known about what is
questionable and what is to be questioned.
Questioning and cognizing presuppose the possibility of
errorthat is, of freedom in the process of cognitionand also
presuppose the further capacity and freedom of discovering
errors as such. This means that what cognizes cannot be dependent, or at least cannot be wholly dependent, upon what is to be
cognized. Otherwise the result of cognizing would be predetermined by the influence of the object of cognition on the cognizing system. In that case, the lack of an independent authority
would make impossible any evaluation of the results of cognition. If the cognizing system were also subject to chance
events, then one and the same cause could lead to different
results. And since there would be no impartial authority to evaluate these results, it would be impossible to find the "right" one
among them. In this case, it would also be impossible to determine whether the cause in question was the same, for there
would be no direct access to the causes apart from their results.
Aside from these contradictions, the phenomenon of conscious reflectionthe ability of consciousness to look at itself,
observe itself and describe its observationscannot be

explained through any mechanistic input-output model. If consciousness depended on influences and the reactions they trigger, it could not look at itself; self-observation would not be
possible.
No mechanical system can define or describe its own mechanism while it is active. This fact refutes all theories that do
not consideror even denythe cognitive activity that is
independent of all influences, namely, the reading of the given.
If human consciousness were indeed constituted as these theories claim it is, the theories themselves could not have come
about. The connection between consciousness and the given is
wordlike and ideal. The reading of a text cannot be described
as the text's effect on the reader. When we read a text, only the
meaning, the sense, and significance of the text, enters consciousness, not the paper or the printer's ink.
The two levels of consciousnesspast and presentnecessary for asking questions are inherent in the structure of modern
human consciousness. As cognizers, we are universal; however
in our noncognizing part, we are subjective. We are conscious
and feel ourselves in that part of the soul where the cognized
appearsafter the process of cognition, in the "past"; but the
consciousness processesthe sources of thoughts, ideas, and
questionsusually remain superconscious. Intuitionsincluding questions, which are not complete intuitionsarrive superconsciously; once arrived, they become conscious.
The reflecting consciousness that is able to look at itself has
two planes, the past and the present. The past continually
derives from the present. The soul oscillates between these two
planes, barely touching the upper one, the present. It is this
oscillation that enables the soul to ask questions and to look
both at itself and at the plane of the past. This is the basic duality
through which the paradox of questioning is realized. The
answer lies in pursuing the intuition of the question.
2 . The Given
O n e of the basic gestures of the consciousness soul is to

observe its own contents. Its potential is realized and becomes
effective only by means of this gesture: "In sensations and
thoughts, the soul loses itself to other things; as consciousness
soul, however, it takes hold of its own being."
1
Therefore the consciousness soul may also be called "selfconsciousness s o u l . "

In the process of taking hold of its own being, the consciousness soul comes into being. And this process of taking
hold begins with observations in, and of, consciousness itself.
2
Reflection on
Consciousness
When we begin to reflect on consciousness, we discover its processes, as well as their resultswe find thinking, perceiving,
speaking, as well as concepts, percepts, words. We can notice
that these processes and contents already existed, or arose, prior
to reflection. Even the ability to reflect is given, though the act
of reflection itself is a free deed. Were this deed also given and
not free, the given as such could not be discovered.
1. Rudolf Steiner, An Outline of Occult Science (GA 13) (Hudson, N.Y.: Anthroposophie Press, 1989), chapter ' T h e Nature of Humanity."
2. Rudolf Steiner, Metamorphoses of the Soul, vol. 1 (GA 59) (London: Rudolf Steiner
Press, 1983), lecture of October 28, 1909.
24
T H E L O G O S - S T R U C T U R E OF THE W O R L D
The discovery that the human faculties are given and that
we did not produce them by ourselves can call forth wonder,
gratitude, and joy in usjoy in the existence of consciousness,
in the ability to turn attention to any theme we choose, joy in
this autonomy. This joy, which is kindled by the above experience and not by the mental picture of it, is the soul's best starting point for a schooling of consciousness.
Epistemologieal
Consideration of the Given
The given precedes every question; it is the first image from

which questions emerge or are kindled. The given is everything that appears in consciousness without any activity of
thought or m e m o r y .
3
This means that the given image of the outer and inner
world changes in the course of our life according to our circumstances; therefore, too, it can vary from individual to
individual.
4
What is given, or (pure) experience, includes both what we

later call the "perceptual image"after we have defined it as
such by thinkingand the inner world that has not yet been
processed by thinking. Thus we can call the given "the appearance to the senses," if by "senses" we mean not only those
directed outward but also those that grasp the events of our
inner life of soul and consciousness.
5
3. Rudolf Steiner, A Theory of Knowledge (GA 2, p. 27 ff) (Hudson, N.Y.: Anthroposophie Press, 1978), pp. 14,15.
4. See Steiner, Truth and Knowledge (GA 3, p.47ff) (Blauvelt, N.Y.: Rudolf Steiner
Publications. 1981), pp. 53,54.
5. See Steiner, A Theory of Knowledge (GA 2, p. 241), p. 16; and Anthroposophie: Ein
Fragment ("Anthroposophy: A Fragment") (GA 45) (Drnach, Switzerland: Rudolf
Steiner Verlag, 1980), chapter 2.
The
25
Given
For an adult, the given perceptual picture is an accumulation

of details, juxtaposed in space and successive in time, an
agglomeration of disconnected objects of sensation.
That particulars (things, for instance) appear as given is a
consequence of precedingnot presentconceptual determinations, as a result of super-conscious, previous "instruction of
the senses" (whereby concepts become integrated in the
sensessee below p. 40 ff). In other words, adults do not have
to reflect anew each time they see an object they have seen
before: they already see it conceptually.
6
The same is true for sensory qualities. The high conceptuall y corresponding to sensory qualities, which surpasses the
concepts of objects in scope and vitality, is "formed" in childhood through superconscious intuitions. When a child begins
to distinguish colors, no change occurs in the physical organization of its eyes; rather, the child grasps the idea of color
itself, or of individual colors.
We can also reflect on the contents of consciousness as
such, regardless of their potential reference to the perceptual
world. We find memory pictures (representations), fantasy
images, words, sentences, thoughts, emotions, wishes, and so
on. If current thinking ceases, this world, too, is a conglomeration of unconnected details.
The distinction between what is given and what we actually
cognize may be made in different ways. When one articulates
a theory of knowledge (an epistemology), one must examine
the origin and development of the adult's given image of the
world and conceive the idea of the given quite radically. This
means artificially removingin a thought experimentthe
6. See Steiner, A Theory cf Knowledge (GA2, pp. 30-32), pp. 17-19; and The Philosophy
of Freedom (GA 4, pp. 60, 89, 94, 137) (Hudson, N.Y.: Anthroposophie Press, 1986),
pp. 50, 78, 83,84, 125.
26
T H E LOGOS-STRUCTURE OF THE W O R L D
concepts already contained in the given. Once we have

removed all concepts, the connections between objects,
"things," separate details, and even the objects of sensation,
disappear. Only an undifferentiated continuum devoid of any
structure r e m a i n s , for the separation of any particular individual detail out of the whole undifferentiated given image is
already an act of thinking activity.
By means of this thought experiment, the boundary between
the given and what is consciously cognized is drawn most
deeply. The unstructured continuum given in this way is called
the "directly given." This "directly given" is not part of normal
experience but an artificial extrapolation that serves to help us
better understand experience.
7
Examination of the Given from the Standpoint

of Cognitive Psychology
How does the given appear in consciousness? "The first form
in which the whole comes to meet us stands finished before us.
We have no part in its coming into being. As if springing forth
from an unknown Beyond, reality first offers itself to the grasp
of our senses and our m i n d s . "
This "unknown Beyond" may be identified as the superconscious, spiritual part of the human s o u l .
9
10
From this part of the soul, the specifically human faculties

thinking, perceiving, and speakingare given to us. The course
or processes of these faculties are superconscious; but the
results are conscious. The given consists of these results. The
7. See Steiner, Truth and Knowledge (GA 3, p. 45ff), PP- 52,53.
8. Ibid, (GA 3, p. 46, fn. p.60), p. 52.
9. See Steiner. A Theory of Knowledge (GA 2), chapter entitled "Experience."
10. See Kiihlewind, The Life of the Soul, chapters 2 and 5; See Steiner, A Theory of
Knowledge, p. 14
The
Given
27
processes by which the given is given is superconscious. In earlier epochs of the evolution of consciousness human beings
actually experienced this giving, and today children still experience it when learning to speak.
Since the "first form" of reality enters consciousness already
finished as we become aware of it, we can almost experience
we may call it a "boundary experience"that the processes that
"give" this reality occur superconsciously. After all, for there to
be "finished" results, processes must have occurred first. We do
not know how we speak, nor how sounds are formed, nor how
the grammar and syntax of our mother tonguenever fully
described or describableare acquired in early childhood; nor
do we know how a perception comes about.
Even thinking is to be found within the g i v e n , even though
it is the activity in which we participate most consciously
because we ourselves produce it. Thinking does not appear
without our active participation. Yet it is in no way arbitrary or
subjective: it has its own inherent lawfulness, its own nature,
which is manifest in its how, its logic. Thus thinking is not only
formally given, but how it proceeds, its lawfulness, is produced superconsciously. Its rules are not consciously formulated and they can never be exhaustively described. In this
11
11
sense, thinking is superconsciously given.

Because the " h o w " of thinking originates in the superconscious and is therefore given to us, we cannot debate its correctnessexcept on the basis of this same thinking that is now
in doubt.
We can observe thinking and contemplate its nature only
after it is there: given.
11. See Steiner. Truth and Knowledge (GA 3, pp.53-55), pp.58-61.
12. See Steiner. Theory of Knowledge (GA 2, pp. 29,48,49,52), pp. 16, 35. 36, 39.
13. See Steiner, Truth and Knowledge (GA 3. p. 59), p. 64; and The Philosophy of
Freedom (GA 4. pp. 34, 49, 53f, 60, 62, 86. 90), pp.22, 37, 40-41, 50, 51-52, 75-80.
28
All these activities, including mental picturing (representation), are actually faculties for doing something without knowing how to do it. This ability enables us to initiate processes in
consciousness, although we are not conscious of the processes
but only of their results. This is similar to our voluntary body
movements: we set the body in motion with our will and chart
the course of its movement in a mental image. Then we perceive the result, but we do not consciously follow the act of the
movement in its "how."
Such human faculties are given from "above," from the
spiritual plane, and they intervene in the living and sentient
body to express and articulate themselves in it. The way these
faculties are given to us changes in the course of the development of the individual and of humanity as a whole (see chapter
8). It is characteristic of contemporary adults that the connection between consciousness and its superconscious sources is
interrupted by an abyss or gap that divides the plane of the past
from that of the p r e s e n t .
14
Observation of the Given Functions of
Consciousness
Each of the three basic functions of consciousnessperceiving, thinking, and speaking (which are the basis also of other
human faculties)has a distinct character and is experienced
differently by adults today. Perception, for instance, poses
many riddles. The disjointed particulars of perception immediately provoke questions; they are not at all transparent or comprehensible to contemporary perceiving.
The difference in the "givenness" of perceiving and thinking lies not only in that perceiving is mediated through the
14. See Kiihlewind, Das Licht des Wortes, chapter 1.
The
29
Given
senses while new concepts, new thoughts, appear in consciousness through intuition; much more significant is the fact
that thoughts and concepts are only wholly comprehensible
and transparent to us when they are really thought. Though we
can certainly say things we do not understand, we cannot possibly think anything we do not understand thoroughly. Nothing
remains hidden in the finished thought; so there is nothing
more to search for in it once it has been t h o u g h t .
15
Therefore, we are justified in taking a "naive" point of view

in regard to thinking. The logic and self-evident nature of
thinkingits howare given from the superconscious sphere,
and, in this "givenness," it is totally transparent and comprehensible. Indeed, anything we understand, we understand only
when it is "explained" through thinking, through ideas. In the
case of thinking, empiricism is sufficient. Attempts to become
aware of the " h o w " of thinking through logicwhich can
never be sufficientdo not replace the necessity of entering
into the living stream of thinking if we are to understand anything, even logic.
The perceptual world is also structured by concepts, and
only because of that can we experience or perceive it. Only
concepts can mark the boundaries of particulars, can say that
they are things, that there are particulars, defining them as
such. Human experience is always structured; reflection or
contemplation always starts with an already-structured image
of the world. How does this primary structure, given through
conceptswhich are themselves givencome about prior to
any self-conscious cognitive activity?
This question turns our observing attention to the third
basic "given," namely, language. Language teaches us to
understand discontinuously given signs and symbols, that is,
15. See Steiner, Philosophy of Freedom, p. 91-92.
30
to think in concepts and to perceive discrete particulars, and

hence structuring in general.
Though language appears to us as a perceptual phenomenon, it can be as transparent and understandable as thinking.
Language consists of perceptible acoustic or optic signs for
our understanding. Understanding (meaning) is the hidden
part of language. It does not appear in the perceptual world but
occursthrough intuitionin the human spirit. The reality or
totality of language includes both the signs and their understanding; neither is by itself the reality of language. Language
unites in itself the cognitive elements of perceptual reality that

would otherwise appear separately. When we do not understand them, the " s i g n s " are not signs but remain mere objects
of perception that we can puzzle over. They are signs only
when they mean something besides themselves. When we
understand them, the meaning we comprehend absorbs the
signs; as objects of perception, they become unimportant and
uninteresting. Voices, words; the form, size, structure, and
material of the lettersall these disappear as objects of perception: they are dissolved and read.
In children, language induces primary perceiving and primary thinking as a unity in a monistic and undivided way, and
they remain united until thinking emancipates itself from language. Children learn their first language, their mother tongue,
"monistically." They do not just impose " n a m e s " on objects
and meanings, as nominalistic and naive thinkers imagine.
Rather, languageand the concepts it provides structure
inner and outer worlds into objects, phenomena, and meanings.
Human language, which is always discontinuous and consists
of sounds, words, and sentences, structures our faculty of
understanding, thus making it earthly-humanthat is, discontinuous and conceptual. That is why the world is "given" to us
The Given
31
already structured into discrete particulars like a text, and

human beings only become fully human by gradually learning
to "read together" these particulars.
The awakening of our first language occurs very differently
from the learning of a second language. Learning a second language is a dualistic process because we have already been
given the meaning in our (first) mother tongue, and we then
merely learn the more or less corresponding expression in the
second language. The first language creates the meanings that
are then " n a m e d " in the second language. In fact, this process
reinforces the impression that the world is built up nominalistically because we easily forget that we can perceive a thing
only if it already has a meaning, only if it is already defined by
a concept. Before the first language or mother tongue, there is
nothing that could be named.
In the "energetic" phase (Wilhelm von Humboldt) of the
evolution of language, in which language structures the world,
thinking and language are still one. As long as this is the case,
the perceptual world cannot become independent of language,
and object, word, and concept are undivided. This is reflected
in numerous traditions that describe the creation of the world
through the divine Word: the idea is uttered, and creation
enters into existence. In this state of consciousness the perceptual world is like a continuation, or a part, of language. Therefore, at this stage language is not yet puzzling: there are not
yet any other concepts besides the ones language gives, and
they structure the world. In this state of innocence, questions
cannot yet be asked.
In general, questionsand with questions, scienceare
possible only after thinking has emancipated itself from its
teacher, namely, language. This emancipation takes place in the
epoch of the consciousness soul. In earlier times, the pursuit of
32
science was the privilege of a few chosen individuals, precursors of our age, who partially exemplified and foreshadowed
the structure of the consciousness s o u l .
With the exception of this elite, who anticipated later developmental stages, everything was still given to people at this
earlier stage in the evolution of consciousness.Today the world
is given to us in a different way. In the more dreamlike phase
of consciousness, people experienced as given even the cognitive processes that have now moved into the realm of the
superconscious. The given we are conscious of today is on the
plane of finished thoughts, finished perceptions; that is, on the
plane of the past. In earlier times, this plane was considered to
be merely the final point of the experienced, given world.
Nowadays, however, impulses from the subconscious, all of
which are destructive for our soul life, have joined these finished thoughts and perceptions. This is the field that psychology deals with (see chapter 8 ) .
16
Regarding
Concepts
The term "thinking" covers several very different activities of

consciousness. The highest achievement of thinking is the
intuitive grasping or understanding of a new idea, a new conc e p t " n e w " in the sense that the thinker is thinking it for the
first time. Every true understanding is new.
Contemplation immediately reveals that we cannot easily
say what a concept is. To do so we would have to use conceptsthe very thing we want to characterizewhich would
16. Rudolf Steiner, "The Human Soul and the Evolution of the World," lecture 5 (ms.
translation), (GA 212, lecture of May 7, 1922).
The
Given
33
assume that in practice we already " k n o w " what a concept is.

Thus we become aware that most concepts are already given
to us when we begin to direct attention to them and are not
formed through our own conscious reflection. Concepts represent an ability, rather than a knowledge.This ability reveals
itself in our being able to recognize every table, chair, pencil,
and so on, as such once we have understood the functional
concept that corresponds to it. For example, when we use the
lid of a piano as a surface to write or eat on, we realize that
the lid is now being used as a "table." A pen can be used as a
weapon for stabbing, and then it is a stiletto. To produce the
pure concept of a man-made object, however, is not so easy.
To do so we would have to reproduce the understanding that
enables us to identify all tables as such, as well as all objects
that can function as tables. To do this is to understand the
function of a table; or it is the result of this understanding.
This ability is superconscious, as are all other specifically
human abilities, such as thinking, speaking, perceiving, and
intentional movements. We don't know how we do it.
In the schooling of consciousness, the goal of the exercise
of concentration or the control of thoughts is precisely to lead
us to this intuitive understanding, to the reproduction of the
pure concept^ the
conscious reproduction of what we
learned unconsciously in childhood. Thus, from this first
observation we realize that concepts are intuitivethat, in
contrast to mental images or representations, they cannot be
remembered.
1
The second discovery reveals the distinction between concept and word. For adults the line separating them is sharp and
17. See Kuhlewind. Stages of Consciousness,

Contemplation."
chapter entitled "Concentration and
34
clear. A word designates something we understand or have

understood in a language. We can easily understand the function of an object, for example, a pair of scissors, without naming the object. This distinction between word and concept is
today easy to comprehend; however, prior to the possibility of
the consciousness soul, it could not have been grasped because
thinking was then not yet emancipated from language.
This is still true for very young childrenfor them language
and thinking are intertwined. Distinguishing between concept
and word requires that we are able to look at consciousness.
Immature reflection may draw the distinction between concept
and word falselynot between concept and word but between
thing and wordnot realizing that only its concept makes a
thing this thing. Then nominalism arises. A thing is pictured
without its concept, and the word is regarded as identical with
the concept. Therefore, nominalism assumes that the concept is
only a name, a way of naming an object. It is not noticed that
we can only name something we have first grasped conceptually. Nominalism introduced into the realm of human thought
the idea that things could exist without concepts. This is a truly
inconceivable, unthinkable idea, yet it has decisively influenced
not only the natural sciences (and through them the other sciences) but also the whole of Western Christian thinking. This
thinking has become so used to "thinking" the unthinkable that
the criteria of thinkability and self-evidence have been lost.
What has been lost above all is the experience of understanding, of thinking-intuition as the essence of the concept.
A second source of nominalism can also be discovered today
quite easily. Compare the functions of man-made objects with
things and phenomena in nature. We can understand the functions of man-made objects, and even mathematical and geometrical concepts are transparent to us, but our relationship to
things and phenomena in nature is very different. We do not
The Given
35
know iheir constitutive or functional ideas. The "functions" of

feldspar, lilies, or turtles are unknown to us, and we have
learned not to ask about them any more. We classify and identify the things of nature according to their outer characteristics.
For example, plants with a certain number of sepals and stamens in their blossoms belong to the family of the Rosaceae,
roses. We do not understand functionally what this means, and
we cannot be sure that the same characteristics always belong to
the same function. The way we proceed concerning natural
objects is similar to classifying pieces of furniture according to
the number of legs or doors, regardless of their purpose. In other
words, we relate to nature in a truly nominalistic way. For us the
concepts of natural objects are simply collective terms derived
from external attributes, orto put it more preciselythey
are universalized representational mental images. Of course,
"wolf," "rose," "quartz crystal," and so on are true universals:
we have no reason to assume that they come into being without
concepts, when we know for sure that not even a button could
be made without a concept. However, nowadays people are
unable to grasp the vast, living, sentient ideas of natural phenomena, at least not without a schooling of their consciousness.
Thus, in the universalsthe ideas of naturewe are faced
with something we cannot grasp; initially our powers of consciousness do not suffice to grasp them. The ideas of natural
objects are too bright, too blinding, to be grasped by dialectical
consciousness. Understanding them requires that we can "read
in the book of nature."
Functional understanding qiust be distinguished from identifying a thing on the basis of external characteristics or mental pictures. If we disregard this distinction, we fail to notice
that we have no adequate concepts for nature, but only mental
pictures that help us orient ourselves according to the outside
surface of phenomena. The statement "This is a columbine"
s
36
means that the appearance of the plant fits with what we know
to be characteristic of columbines. Nevertheless, we see or
perceive phenomena only because we have concepts; we comprehend the outer characteristics and qualities of the plant
such as the color, form, size, number of stamensconceptually. These concepts stand in, so to speak, for the natural phenomenon's concepts and thus allow us to categorize and
identify it. Still, they are merely substitute concepts and not
the functional or creative ideas that correspond to, and are, the
essence of the phenomenon.
Since the external characteristics of natural phenomena are
so clearly "super-ficial" ["above the surface"], our understanding of concepts has become falsified. We have forgotten that
concepts above all, and in their essence, consist of understanding. Therefore we seek the essential of the concept in the
direction of abstraction. The "essential" and " c o m m o n " properties and characteristics of the objects of perception are
derived from the individual object through abstraction. However, abstraction presupposes knowledge of the concept. To
determine the "essential and c o m m o n " characteristics and
thereby to define or limit the individual objects under considerationin other words, to "select" them outrequires a
norm. This norm is the c o n c e p t .
18
This abstraction model of concepts emphasizes their generality, in contrast to the particular individual object of perception. Whereas the universals of scholasticismwhich are
ideas based on understandingcould express themselves in
particulars as universalia in re, the abstract concept, on the
other hand, can hardly, if at all, be seen in the individual
object; nor can it help us to grasp individual details. For exam-
is. See Steiner, A Theory of Knowledge (GA 2), chapter 10 entitled "The Inner Nature
of Thinking."
The Given
37
pie, "green" as an abstract concept cannot cover a particular

perception of green; but "green," as the intuitively understood
universal, contains all shades of the color. To teach children
what "green" is, we by no means have to show them all the
shades of a color. Once a child has grasped the idea of "green"
by means of a single green, that child will correctly identify all
shades of this color as "green" without having to think about
itan experience we will return to later on.
The more we consider concepts as abstractions, the more
they will seem to lack in being, compared to the concrete particular we perceive. This tendency is reinforced by the existential, "being" character of perception, which contrasts sharply
with the unreality of finished thoughts and concepts. Thoughts
seem to be so independent of reality that we can think or imagine anything at all, whenever and wherever we want. Perception, on the other hand, can occur only in the present moment,
a truth that is a great puzzle for epistemology. We will discuss
it in chapter 5.
Consideration of how we proceed when we want to understand something reveals the difference between concepts of
man-made objects and concepts of nature. For example, when
we want to understand the concepts "shoe sole" or "ball-point
pen," we try to comprehend the function of these objects. We
do not start by analyzing them; we are interested in the component parts and materials only when we want to produce them.
When we are dealing with natural objects, however, we proceed in the other direction and analyze them first, if possible
down to their smallest particlfes. In most cases, we do not even
ask about the function of these natural objects. In any case,
0
analysis cannot tell us anything about function. In fact, we

have so completely forgotten to consider the purpose or meaning of objects in nature that we equate a mathematical description of them with truly understanding them. This is like trying
38
to understand a page of text by mathematically determining

the position of the black and white points on its surface rather
than by reading it.
r
The difference between the comprehension of the concepts

of man-made objects and that of the concepts of natural objects
is rarely noticed. We interpret the incomprehensible aspect of
natural objects as a lack of concepts and confound higher ideas
with what is idea-less. This leads to catastrophic results in our
spiritual life, which can be summarized as follows:
1. The true nature of the idea, of the concept, was misunderstood; and the fact that it is based on understanding
was forgotten.
2. The unthinkable notionthe nonthoughtof "property-less" matter (Giordano Bruno), able to act as bearer
of various properties, was introduced: matter without
form, being without idea. This notion now haunts philosophy and the sciences in many variationsas the
thing-in-itself, as the subconscious or unconscious, as
the foundation of the world and of consciousness, as
elementary particles without qualities, and so on.
Because of all this, we imagine the perceptual world and
its elements as conceptless.
3. The notion that concepts arise by abstraction leads to
the opposition of their generality to the concretesupposedly idea-lessqualities of separate things.
4. Understanding, the foundation of all theories and in its
essence absolute and irreducible, has been pushed into
the backgroundor we have postulated various mechanisms to explain it. Mechanical causality became the only
explanatory principle.
5. Instead of interpreting phenomena as letters to be read,
analysis was defined as the only justified cognitive method.
The
Given
39
6. The contradictions inherent in the five developments

listed here obstruct the healthy circulation of the life of
our consciousness just as impenetrable occlusions prevent the free flow of blood in the body. As a result, our
thinking and cognitive faculties are no longer healthy.
The most obvious symptoms of this affliction are theories
and thoughts that cancel each other out, and our failure to
notice this. Examples of such thoughts are: "thinking is
subjective," "thinking is a mechanism or a natural process," or "human consciousness is determined."
The Given and the Activity of the Senses:

Instruction of the Senses
Because reflecting consciousness is a thinking consciousness,
everything in it is permeated with concepts. In this state of
conscious reflection we are most awake. However, we are not
always reflecting, and therefore we can find, in retrospect,
events that do not seem to be permeated with concepts, for
example, soul moods, emotions, unrest, and so on. Thus,
beside or below wakeful thinking consciousness, whose contents the I can remember, one can perceive a second, sentient,
yet only semiconscious and more dreamlike layer of consciousness. The contents of this second layer elude the grasp
of the self-conscious I. Nevertheless, insofar as a certain content of consciousness is a distinct THATwhether arrived at
through perception [including inner perception], mental repre0
sentation, or thinkingit is always interwoven with concepts.

Without concepts there would be no THAT because we could
not distinguish it from its surroundings. Concepts separate
THAT out of its surroundings/making it available for outer or
inner perception.
40
Even though only what is conceptual can enter thinking consciousness, this same consciousnessin flagrant self-contradictionspeaks of the existence of nonconceptual, idea-less
things. Nonconceptual things were first "discovered" in the
realm of sensory perception; later they were transferred to a
"transcendental" cosmic realm, beyond the reach of thinking
consciousness. What resulted were inherently self-contradictory
constructs of thoughtno one ever actually saw a "thing-initself" or the "subconscious"which would also have to be
tested by thought. This contradiction, testing nonideal constructs through thinking, already contains its own verdict.
Let us now look more closely at the field of sense perception.
We can perceive because of our given senses. These consist
of a sense organwhich can be more or less localized in the
organismand an organization of consciousness, which is
teachable and without which the sense organ does not function.
Consciousness contributes the conceptual part to sense perceptionboth in a child's perception of color, for instance, and in
the givenness of particulars or individual objects of sensation.
Without this contributionas we saw when we artificially
removed all concepts in a thought experimentthere remains
only an unstructured continuum.
As adults, we receive from the sensesas raw material for
thinkinga picture consisting of particulars. This picture is
already structured conceptually before any current thinking
activity begins. In fact, we can observe that when adults perceive something with which they are sufficiently
familiar,
they "simply and immediately" recognize it for what it i s
for example, as table or pencilwithout thought or memory.
However, if, for example, we do not know the functional
concept "table," and do not develop it on the basis of perception, we do not see a table but only a smooth wooden surface
The
Given
41
with legs and so onprovided we at least know these latter

concepts.
Descartes already observed that adults perceive conceptually. However, as in the case above, substitute concepts hide
this fact when they take the place of missing conceptsfor
instance, when people describe a fork as "a piece of metal with
live pointed ends." Obviously, we have to distinguish between
perceptionas an activity that can lead to an experience of the
[ and the merely emotional reaction (astral experience) to
a sensory quality or an object (see chapter 5).
Rudolf Steiner describes the senses as physical and spiritual organs through which "an insight is gained without the
participation of the intellect, memory, etc." Obviously the
"etc." here refers to any current, intentional activity of consciousness. Therefore insight or knowledge gained through
the senses is "simple and immediate" and "precedes any evaluation or judgment; it is a sensation just as colors and warmth
are sensations."
Insights (cognitions), however, are always interwoven with
concepts, as we have seen in the simple examples given above.
Consequently, the senses themselves must be conceptually
schooled so as to be able to produce insight since all other current activities of consciousness, including memory, are
excluded from pure sense activity.
It is very difficult for people today who, consciously or
unconsciously, think materialistically to understand that even
sensory qualities cannot be perceived without concepts. Nevertheless, observation provides us with sufficient proof for
this. We have already discussed how children learn to distinguish colors. When we teach handicapped children about the
<
19. See Steiner. Anthroposophie: Ein Fragment. (GA 45. chapter 6).
20. Ibid.. (GA 45, pp. 35ft. chapter 2 and Theory of Knowledge, (GA 2, chapter 7).
42
smoothness or roughness of a surface by letting them touch it,

we are not "teaching" their fingers but instructing them in the
formation of concepts. As speech therapists know, children
who cannot reproduce a speech sound, or who can do so only
incorrectly (lisping), must first be taught to hear this sound
accurately and correctly. They hear the sound properly not
because of some change in their sense organ (their ears) but
because they grasp the sound's configuration. That is, they
conceptually separate the sound from its form, its pitch, and its
other qualities, thereby grasping the specific character of the
sound that differentiates it from all others.
This conceptual component of perception is even more pronounced in the experience of identifying colors, as in the
example mentioned above. Once we have grasped the concept
"green," we can identify all variant shades of this color as
green without recourse to mental pictures or memory, which
are already given and could therefore not help us recognize
new shades of green we have not seen before. Clearly, even if
children first encounter the functional concept "table" in a
small, round, brown, one-legged wooden table of normal
height, they will nevertheless later be able to identify, as a
table, a large, rectangular, white metal table with x-shaped legs
and modern, low design. If they tried comparing the second
table with the remembered image of the first one, they would
actually be misled.
Our ability to differentiate within a qualitative field (for
instance, in the field of color through the sense of sight)
means that this qualitative field can be structured conceptually and that the sense in question has intuitively integrated
these concepts. The same applies to differentiation between
qualitative fields. Without conceptual learning such differentiation is impossible, and we remain at the level of mere sensitive reaction.
The Given
43
As we can experience in the perception of speech sounds,

the three higher sensesthe sound- or word-sense; the concept- or thought-sense; and the you- or I-sense (the sense for
another I-being)apprehend only pure ideas. The other senses
(for example, that of hearing) provide the "raw material" for
the higher senses. This raw material is then (in the case of the
sense of hearing) processed by the sense of sound (or wordsense, i.e., sense for the acoustical form of a movement, which
in turn passes the product of its activity on to the sense of
thought, and so on.
Clearly, the higher senses have to be taught to perceive the
specifically human properties for which they are the senses.
Their work is purely ideational. They are "addressed" when
we learn to speak, and their spiritual sense organism is developed by means of this instruction. As a result, they are able to
perceive sounds, concepts, and I-ness "simply and directly,"
like a sensation. The instruction proceeds from the activity of
the I. New sounds, new thoughts, new I-beings are always
recognized as such by current intuitions or the activity of consciousness. Initially, the new perceptions are not at all "simple
and direct" for these senses,'as we can clearly see in the experience of children as well as of adults when, for example, they
learn a foreign language. The sounds, concepts, and I-perceptions that are already rooted in our consciousness, and our
experience and proficiency in apprehending ideas in these
areas, help us to absorb the new.
Our I-being also instructs our other senses and equips them
with conceptuality, so that, in sensory activity, the senses can
perceive "conceptually." As adults this is also true for the
21. See Khlewind, "Das Wahrnehmen rumlicher und zeitlicher Formen" ("The Perception of Spatial and Temporal Forms") in Das Goctheanum no. 21, (May 24, 1984).
Available as chapter 14, Schooling of Consciousness (Fair Oaks, California: Rudolf
Steiner College Publications, 1985).
44
T H E L O G O S - S T R U C T U R E : OE THE: W O R L D
particulars we perceive without having a word or name for

them. For example, we see totally irregular solids or twodimensional forms in qualitatively the same way as we perceive spheres or circles. This is significantly not the case in
children; they see and draw in a simplified manner in accordance with the concepts they have already acquired.
Our difficulty in realizing that the (pre-consciously) instructed senses perceive conceptually is above all due to the
fact, already discussed, that we relate differently to manmade objects than we do to natural phenomena. Sensory qualities, too, also belong to the class of natural phenomena; their
" c o n c e p t s " are merely a pale reflection of their meaning or
message, which cannot be conceived by everyday consciousness. Something of their high ideality appears in the arts. But
we must never forget that everything that is nameable is
defined and determined by an idea. Of course, we are not
used to imagining other than man-made concepts in this way.
Nevertheless, any natural object also exemplifies this fact of
determination by idea. For instance, we do not "understand"
the idea of the lilythe plant's appearance is not fixed once
and for all but changes with the seasons, the weather, and the
soil qualitybut the species is fixed. This idea of the species
differs qualitatively from thai of the " c u p , " partly because the
former is alive. W h e n we recognize a plant as a lily it is not
because of the functional idea, which we do not know, but
because of substitute concepts, (shape, colcir, smell); or,
when we are faced by an unusual variety of lily, we may perhaps carefully compare our perception with our mental
image; we usually perform such a comparison when we collect mushrooms in the woods, lor example. Between these
two extreme casesrecognition on the b;isis of functional
concepts or recognition on the basis of substitute concepts
The
Given
45
and memory imageslies a continuous spectrum of sensory

processes in which mental representation supplements sensory activity.
The middle senses function in a specifically human way, for
we do not simply react to sounds, colors, smells, and so on, but
rather we understand our perceptions as I-experiences that can
then become the basis for judgment in the I. This specifically
human functioning of the middle senses is due to their instruction, their equipment with concepts, which makes them receptive for everything wordlike.
Our senses would not function, however, without our specifically human attentionan attention that can attend to a
wordlike, conceptually structured perceptual world because
the fundamental concepts that structure sensory qualities, as
well as other concepts, have been instilled in us. In fact, these
concepts structuring the qualitative field of a particular sense
belong to the sense organism. After the senses have been
instructed, they receive perceptions as given. This is nowhere
so striking as in the experience or practice of the arts. Here,
our attention is like the breath flowing through a wind instrument; it takes on the configuration of air according to the guidance by the player. In the same way, depending upon how they
have been instructed, the configuration of attention is formed
differently in each of the senses.
Without instruction, without being instilled with concepts,
the senses are "senses for" qualities; they e m b o d y the possibility of reacting to colors, sounds, and so on, and the possibility of being instructed. T h e education of the senses
actualizes our potential to perceive colors, sounds, tastes,
and so on in a human way. A small child is still wholly sense
*See footnote 19
46
T H E L O G O S - S T R U C T U R E OE THE: W O R L D
22
the perceptual field is not yet divided into twelve

organ
discontinuous bands or strips, with no transition between
them. This division of the perceptual field arises through the
human speaking environment, although, except in the case of
the higher senses, this division is partly predetermined by the
organism. The fabric of the sensory world is " w o v e n , " as it
were: first the warp of the high concepts of the sensory qualities is introduced; then the woof of the other concepts of
objects and phenomena is added to it.
We grasp only the conceptual part of our perceptual world.
Whether nature itself is an ideal construct, whether the fabric
of the sensory world is indeed structured like a textor
merely consists of things rather than of signswill become
clear when we discuss the idea of reality in greater detail.
22. Rudolf Steiner, lecture of May 26. 1922 (GA 212). available as TheJiuman Heart
(Spring Valley, N.Y.: Mercury Press, 1985); (GA 2 IS. lecture of November 19, 1922);
and A Modern Art of Education (GA 307) ( H u d s o n , N.Y.: Anthropospphic Press,
1972), lecture of August 10, 1923.
3 . The First Structuring of the Given
T h e given inner and outer picture of the world presents itself

to self-reflection as already structuredthat is, permeated
with concepts: we see it as made up of particulars. Even the
cognitive functions of consciousness already exist when we
turn our observing attention toward them. We have called the
source of these functions the superconscious, in order to distinguish the source of cognition from the subconscious, which
consists of noncognitive elements in the soul.
The two realms of the superconscious and the subconsciousboth of which are unconsciousare often confused in
psychological discussion, or looked upon as the same power
source, which is a sign of our inability to distinguish spirit and
soul. The superconscious is the spiritual part of the soul.
Reflection finds not only the world content structured but
also finds the human being in its existence structured in such a
way that the world is given in dualities. For example, reflection finds a world consisting of particulars, and we find ourselves facing and opposing it as perceivers. Similarly, in our
being we find inner experiences, thoughts, and concepts, and
insofar as we "find" them, we sense the presence of a subject
facing this "preexisting" inner worldat least occasionally.
As soon as we have experiences, these ^ r e structured and contain boundaries, details, unities.
23. See Kuhlewind, The Life of the Soul, chapter 3
48
If we were to strip our given picture of the world of all concepts, this would leave only an unstructured c o n t i n u u m ,
which could no longer be called experience. *
At the same time, however, the separation of subject and
object would disappear. The term "subject" here refers
merely to the place of the experience; both thinking and perceiving provide the subject with something universal and
intersubjective. To deny this with regard to thinking would be
naive and self-contradictory. Even perception is only subjective in that different individuals' different and unique points
of view in relation to the objecttheir different sensory
capacities, sets of concepts, and differing abilities to conceptualizeinfluence the given picture. Nevertheless, there can
be no doubt that we live in a shared perceptual world. Indeed,
we cannot even discuss this doubt because such a discussion
and its subject matter presuppose a shared perceptual world.
By the same token, however, we cannot tell with absolute certainty whether the sensory qualities we perceivefor example, the colors we seeare exactly the same as everyone else
perceives.
24
Formulating the Question

Our sensory and spiritual organization determines the structure
of the given we p e r c e i v e .
26
This same organization also causes us to experience the

given as split into perception separated into subject and
24.
25.
26.
pp.
See Steiner, Truth and Knowledge (GA 3, pp.45-46), pp. 5 1, 52.

Ibid., p. 52. Also (GA 3, fn. p. 60).
See Steiner, Philosophy of Freedom (GA 4, pp. 64-65, 89, 96, 113, 126, 130, 132),
53-54, 78, 85, 101, 114-115, 118, 119-120.
'
The First Structuring
of the Given
49
object
in such a way that we consider our inner lifeof
thinking, feeling, and willingas part of the subject and the
perceptual world as part of the o b j e c t . The distinction is, of
course, not exact, but it will do for the purpose of our discussion here.
28
Our inner world is likewise similarly structured in its givenness. Naturally, then, we have to wonder how this preexisting
structure, without which we would not experience anything
consciously, arose. We have to ask, too, what our own human
"organization" signifies and what its purpose is.
The Structure of the Found or Given

If we look more closely at inner and outer reality as it is given,
we find that each consists of discrete particulars, facts, things,
and processes, as well as of connections and relationships
between the particulars. Without exception, these particulars
are distinguished and contrasted from each other and their
environment or background by means of concepts. The relations between the particulars are all such that they do not
belong to the perceptual realm. For example, qualities characterized by adjectivessuch as small, big, similar, crooked,
here, there, and so onare purely conceptual
determinations
arising from the perceived particulars by comparison or other
operations of thought.
Nevertheless, for the most part such characteristic qualities
as size and so on are integrated into our senses. Therefore we
easily fall into thinking them to be original, a priori parts of
27. See Steiner, Philosophy of Freedom (GA 4, pp. 88, 112, 247), pp. 77, 100, 235;
(GA 78, lecture of August 29, 1921), summarized in Fruits of Anthroposophy (London: Rudolf Steiner Press, 1986), pp.7-8.
28. Ibid., (GA 4, pp. 125, 126, 132), pp. 114, 115, 119.
50
i M I LOGOS S I K I K I U K I ; OF THE W O R L D
our sensory activity and therefore of a nonconceptual character. But this view would have to assume a present mental picturing, judgment, or memory of each time we perceive a
thingwhich clearly contradicts our observation that when we
see familiar objects, they are already conceptually defined.
0
Ultimately, all particulars, even those thai are designated

by nouns in the European languages, dissolve into relationships. We can trace the return of our consciousness to the
"directly given" through an example. When we say, "This tree
is bigger than that one," the meaning of the demonstrative
pronouns "this" and "that" is not defined by the objects we
perceive but by the point of view of the observer, that is, by the
relationship to the objects. We could reverse the sequence of
the two pronouns in this sentence. Similarly, we do not see
"bigger"; rather, "bigger" is a "judgment" based on comparing
the trees in our mind. We can arrive at this judgment just as
"simply and directly" as we can see the trees, without thinking,
because the concepts are already instilled into our senses. Even
the way we see trees, therefore, is determined by concepts, for
without the "concept" treetaken here in the nominalistic
sensewe would see only branches, trunks, and leaves.,If we
did not have these concepts either, we would probably see
merely shapes or differently colored spots. Nevertheless, even
these distinctions, when made by thinking consciousness, are
based on concepts. If we stripped perception of all concepts,
no discrete particulars and no distinctions would remain. We
have less difficulty realizing that other relationships, for
example, those of cause and effect, are by nature conceptual
and not perceptible.
Neither discrete particulars nor the relationships between
them are isolated', in fact, we cannot even conceive them as
isolated. For example, we cannot think of " s u n " without also
thinking of sky and of the sun's path through it, of light, dark,
of the Given
51
day, night, morning, noon, and succession in time. The same is

true for relationships: "that" goes with "this," " b e l o w " with
"above," "next t o " with "right" and "left," and so on. What is
more, the particulars and their relationships are dependent
upon each other. For instance, in an area where mechanical
causality is the general explanatory principle, it makes no
sense to speak of "kindness" or "friendship," or even of "cognizing" and "understanding."
Moreover, the structuring of the given reveals that it
consists ultimately of connections and relationships that must
be grasped at the "junctions" where they intersect. These
"junctions" are our concepts. On the one hand, our concepts
must have clear boundaries to keep them from blending into
each other; on the other, their boundaries must not be too hard,
rigid, or impermeable, otherwise the transitions and connections between the concepts will be lost. Discrete particulars
and relationships form a discontinuous structure; otherwise we
would be unable to distinguish between them. At the same
time, however, these discontinuities are also mutually interconnected and interdependent.
As adults, the structure of the given we perceive is determined by the course of our lives up to the moment when we
first begin to reflect upon the giventhat is, by our education,
our upbringing, and our family. All these formative influences
are based on our ability to speak and can be traced back to it.
Hence a person's mother tongue is the basis for all subsequent
structuring of the perceptual world.
The Pedagogy of Language

The first structuring of the given through concepts and conceptual understanding is given to children t>y the mother tongue
I MI I iMiuN S u n n
it K! 01
un
WORLD
ii..i Dill) i.\ ih< |..|, M l.uiguage hul also by the expressive,
" |m . i k 111 r behavioi oi the adult environment, behind which
lies the adults ability to speak and to grasp the world and situations conceptually. Except for a few exceptional situations,
human beings continuously communicate through gestures,
mimicry, looks, and movements.
Behind audible, spoken language and "speaking" behavior
lies hidden the powerful concealed aspect of language,
namely, the speech intention. Without this speech intention,
which corresponds to the listener's understanding, speech
does not normally happen. When a child learns to speak, this
"immaterial" reality (understanding) {^directly accessible. If it
were not, the child could not understand what was heard.
Language is unique in that it is not just perception but meaningful perception. Children must grasp both perception and meaning at the same time. This is the source of the consciousness
functions of perceiving and thinking, which are later separated.
1
This characterization of the first structure of the given

clearly shows the qualities of language. Language has an outer
side that appears to be discontinuous and that corresponds to
the particulars in the structure of the given. The inner side of
languageunderstandingconnects and understands these
discontinuities; it is related to the connections and relationships between particulars and indeed is the source of these
relationships and connections.
The discontinuous structuring, as well as the perceptual and
conceptual structuring of the given, is given in advance by the
phenomenon of languagenot only in principle (in that one
part of it is perceptible while the other is hidden from our
senses and remains an inner act of our consciousness) byt also
as the concrete structure of the two parts. Language structures
our consciousness, our thinking, and thus also our perceiving.
Language prefigures the union of perception and understanding;
of the
Given
53
it exemplifies at once their separation and their reunion in being

"read together."
Thus, the first structure of the given is modeled on the pattern and inner structure of our mother tongue. Therefore, thinking at first can vary widely in style in accordance with the
almost unimaginable variety of language patterns. Even among
European languages, grammatical categories have only a very
limited applicability. Two sentences that are very similarly constructed in one language can be completely unlike each other in
another language. Thus the way we think, the "logic" of our
languages, and the amount and extent of abstractions and concretization differ widely. Today, these differences are almost
completely hidden, not only because those who dominate
contemporary civilization use an Indo-European language,
and because the way of thinking of these languages has
spread over most of the world, but also because our thinking
has largely emancipated itself from l a n g u a g e .
29
We perceive ourselves as subjects through inner experiences,

especially through the experience of thinking. Like the experience of our ability to speak, these inner experiences are superconscious. They are colored and influenced by the way we
experience our body. The processes of thought, however, are
also shaped by the pattern of our language, which determines
both the separation of subject and object and the consequent
integration of the subject into the world in the act of cognition.
In fact, the mother tongue even influences the way the I takes
possession of the body and begins to express itself through it.
After all, speaking is also the result of a physiological effort
of the speech organs, which are part of our system of movement. The movements of our speech organs are determined by
the sound structure of our language, and since movements are
29. See Khlewind, Das Licht des Wortes, chapter entitled "Das wortlose Denken."
I III
Loons
S I K l K I I ) RE O F THE W O R L D
IIM .is
i Med l>\ our entire being, by our whole system of

ui ni. language thus influences our whole being and its
movements. English-speaking people, for instance, net only
move then mouth and face differently from French-speaking
people, but all their movements and their whole body posture
are different. Our system of movement connects the I with the
rest of the organism; therefore, this connection occurs predominantly through our learning to speak.
Thus, the way we develop our basic human faculties shapes
our experience and perception of our own body. The how of
our movements of limbs, eyes, and facial muscleswhether
these movements are intentional or in imitation of othersis
as superconscious as the " h o w " of our speaking and thinking.
In fact, all three faculties are closely connected and are also
linked to our upright posture.
The use of language is often compared to a g a m e a "language-game"and we can extend this analogy to thinking.
However, there is a very significant difference between such
language games and all other games in that we do not have to
learn the rules of speaking and thinking; in fact, these rules are
not even explicitly known. Instead, we acquire them as superconscious faculties. In all other games the rules must be learned
before we can play. Through these two special " g a m e s " of
thinking and perceiving, the world is given to us as a mass of
discontinuities; and thereby also we are the only beings who
have a world, a picture of the worldprecisely because we perceive the discontinuities as structured. Without the structuring
effect of concepts, which is based on the discontinuous structure of language, we would not find any discontinuities in the
world as such. Through concepts determined by languagethat
is, word-conceptswe gradually make our thinking independent of language and develop concepts that transcend language.
This is the precondition for a style of thinking that is valid and
The First Structuring of the Given
55
attainable for all people and that will make connections possible
that are valid and identical for everyone.
The basis of human freedom is the activity of reading
between two givensperceptions and conceptsbecause the
activity by which these two are "read together" is not given.
Consequently, for the cognizing subject, freedom exists only
in new cognitions, for what we have already cognized and
understood must be considered part of the given.
The First Structuring of the Given

Today, the given inner world and the outer perceptual world
are full of riddles; they pose questions and call for an understanding that is not given. These questions, themselves conceptual forms, anticipate conceptual, ideal answers. The given
is questionable for us as questioners, and as we have seen,
questioning carries its own conditions.
We have referred to the two separated levels of consciousness between which consciousness can oscillate, with the
result that consciousness takes two looks at the given. The second look reveals that existing concepts do not suffice to make
the given comprehensible. We will later see that this same
structure of our consciousness makes possible the emancipation of our conceptual thinking from language. The transition
to a questioning consciousness and to the questionableness of
the given required a long process of developmentwhose
results appeared only recently, relatively late in human history,
in the sciences, which are based on questions. This means that
the first form of the given was not questionable. Profound
changes had to occur in the given as well as in our consciousnesson which the given is partly contingentbefore we
could reach the level we have reached today.
1111
l o o o s N I K i K ruRE
OF THE W O R L D
I " i n . |)|N structure (he directly given into particulars and

nun. . Hons Concepts themselves are not discrete units but
ttlwuys emerge within systems of concepts or relationships.
I he In si system of this kind is given by the mother tongue.
The resulting first structuring of the given is not at all questionable because it is complete. In other words, concepts completely and seamlessly structure the perceptual given
nothing else exists yetinto discrete particulars, without leaving any gaps not covered by concepts.
Let us use an analogy to understand this better. For example, imagine a surface subdivided into small parts, so that the
parts cover the whole surface without leaving any gaps. Concepts structure (articulate) particulars out of the given continuum while at the same time structuring them back
(reintegrating them) into the unilied field of perception.
Thereby a complete transition between "structuring out" (distinction) and "structuring in" (reintegration) is possible,
indeed is the only possibility.
At first, structuring of this kind develops in the two directions at once because our intellect, which distinguishes particulars, and our reason, which reunites them, are still united. As
yet, there is also no inner world; rather, our attention is completely oriented in one direction, which today we call the
outer world. We will discuss in chapter 4 how we are to think
these "concepts," how they simultaneously structure the given
and make it comprehensible.
In the first form of the given, then, questions are not only
impossiblebecause we are not yet able to distance ourselves
from the structured whole of the worldbut also unnecessary
because in that stage the world is whole and complete and consists only of particulars that "explain" each othejxjeamlessly
without leaving any gaps. The system of concepts provided by
language structures the unified, given perceptual world. The
of the
Given
only concepts we know are those our language gives us. The
systems of speaking and thinking are one and the same; in
Humboldt's words, we are in the "energetic" phase of language development. In this phase languages do not simply
label something that already exists; rather they demarcate and
define the "somethings." Concepts indicate where "something" ends, where its boundary is, for "in the given there actually are no discrete entities, but everything is in continuous
c o n n e c t i o n . " This statement obviously refers to the "directly
given."
The epoch or stage of consciousness described above may
also be called the epoch of the magic word. On the one hand,
there was no separation or distinction between word, concept,
and "thing;" on the other, people still experienced the word in
its living occurrence, in its "arriving"and not only in its
immobilized and finished form on the consciousness level of
the past. Communication between I-beings through speech or
speech-song was then an immediate and spiritual interaction.
For instance, in the Kalevala (Song III), the battle between
Vajnemojnen and Joukahajnen, a direct test of the power of
the I, is fought through singing. The weaker of the two must
yield to the power of the words of the stronger; they force him
into the course of events they foretell or dictate.
30
If the first system of concepts structuring the world is given

to us by our language, then the way this structure is built can
differ widely because our languages are structured very differently. This may also be observed. Some languages, such as
German, are flectional; that is, they use inflections. Others,
such as ancient Chinese, are isolating; that is, they use neither
declensions, conjugations, prepositions, nor suffixes; neither
changes in the stem of words noj: separate classes of words,
30. . See Steiner, Truth and Knowledge (GA 3), chapter 5.
%K
h us n o u n s , verbs, and adjectives. Instead, in such isolating

lunguages, the roots of words are simply strung in a sequence.
I he proportion of the perceptible part of the language to the
hidden part differs in these two types of languages. Isolating
languages generally have fewer words and require much more
inner activity to complement the vocal, audible part of the
language than European languages. Some languages consist
entirely of "verbs," for example, that of the Nootka Eskimosthat is, they contain only words we would classify as
"verbs" in the European languages. In those Languages everything, even what we would express in nouns, is occurrence or
process. Roughly two-thirds of the known languages do not
conjugate verbs to form tenses; they structure time differently
than we do. In these languages time is not the same idea it is
for us.
ii
The outer and inner sides of languages differ enormously, for

example, the poly-synthetic languages of the American Indians
or Eskimos, with their giant words, which often have to be
translated as long sentences in a European language* are totally
different from an analytic language, such as French. As linguists
have long known, language shapes our thinking and thus the
structure of the world in the first phase of consciousness. Nevertheless, the outer and inner sides of every language complement
each other so that nothing is missing from any language; there is
nothing that cannot be expressed in any language.
1
For example, many languages do not assign a gender to

their nouns, or they do it differently than, for example, German; they may have more or fewer "genders" than German.
Such "defects" go unnoticed because they are not really shortcomings. Whether it is easy or difficult to express st5mething
depends on the topic and on the language. For instance, it is
easier to discuss dialectical philosophy in German than in
the Hopi language; talking about elementary spiritual truths
of the
Given
59
concerning nature and human beings is probably easier in the

Hopi language.
The two complementary parts of language, the perceptible
one and the hidden one, combine to make a whole that is common to all languages. This language-of-understanding is the
shared property of all humanity. It allows us to understand one
another across linguistic boundaries and makes translation
despite its limitationspossible. Still, understanding one
another is easier than translating. This shared property of all
humanity is the realm of higher thinking, a thinking that transcends language.
The differences in the structure of the various languages
result in differences in the structure of the world. Accordingly, the first given picture of the world is different in each
language. For example, many languages subdivide the color
spectrum differently than we do in English. Similarly, the
entire inner and outer world is structured differently from one
language to the next. In other words, a certain relativity
appears in the given pictures of the world: the particulars and
their connections vary with the l a n g u a g e .
Clearly, the first given picture of the worldthe one that
precedes scientific inquiry and is not based on questioning
does not show us the whole of reality because it is contingent
on our language. We can reach this full and complete reality
only by overcoming the thinking conditioned by language.
This is made possible by the structure of the consciousness
soul, and by conscious cognitive activity based on questions.
31
These thoughts and observations lead to the following. On

the one hand, our "organization," which determines the given,
consists of the physical foundation *of our senses and our
31. Rudolf Steiner has repeatedly alluded to this; see, for example, his Philosophy of
Freedom (GA 4), chapter 7.
60
thinking, which we inherit and have at our disposal when we

are born. On the other hand, this organization is also made up
of the "schooling" of the increasing free forces that make our
specifically human faculties possible. These faculties are not
inheriteda fact that the sciences have not properly taken
into account. Regardless of their country of origin, children
can learn any language as their mother tongue. In this earliest
"schooling" of the human faculties, languageor rather
speakingis all-important, for it largely determines our early
organization.
4 . The Language of Reality
lhe
idea of reality, like the idea of cognition, can emerge only
in the questioning individual. Various ideas can be associated

with the word "reality," but for modern human beings it inevitably refers to a particular sensation that categorically asserts
that something is real. From this it followsand we can easily
experience thisthat there are also other "givens" that do not
evoke this sensation and are therefore not real. But if they do
not have the quality of "reality," what quality do they have?
For modern thinkers this is an idle question.
xx._p.\It would be overhasty to identify the sensation of reality
with that of tangibility; after all, we have this sensation with
many things that are not tangible, such as sounds, smells,
warmth, and so on. We do not often test whether what we see
is real by touching it. By the same token, we all acknowledge
force fieldssuch as in the economy, the state, or our feelingsthat often have greater power over us than anything tangible and that are effective, that is, real. However, in the
natural sciences as well as in our thinking we transfer these
"realities" into the world of tangibility, which we believe to be
identical with the perceptual world. In fact, this sensation of
reality does derive from the perceptual world. We will look at
this further in more detail in chapter 5 .
We "experience" certain elements of consciousness, for
example, thoughts and concepts, without having this sensation of reality. Obviously, then, "sensed" reality does not
62
appear "real" because of its conceptual nature. Rather, this

sensation of reality must be ascribed to the nonconceptual
part of perception. However, this applies only to human beings
today, and it would be wrong to assume that people had similar perceptions and sensations in the "energetic" phase of language consciousness. Similarly, we cannot speak of "truth" in
the modern sense when we talk about this archaic consciousness. "Truth"in relation to the perceptual worldwould be
the adequate conceptual insight into the nature of the perceptual world. This insight itselfthat is, the truthdoes not
evoke the sensation of reality; instead, it is accompanied by
what we can call a feeling of evidence.
This feeling of evidence or obviousness also characterizes
purely conceptual judgments. We consider them true when
they are "right" and when they "agree," not with a phenomenon of the perceptual world, but with themselves, so that they
evoke the feeling of "self-evidence" and thereby satisfy the
thinker. Truth or evidence as such cannot be defined. In fact,
they cannot even be described because every statement we
make about them would have to be identified and felt as true or
evident to be acceptable and conceivable. All reductionist theories that try to reduce cognition or understanding to noncognitive or nonunderstanding processes cancel themselves out,
as we have shown in chapter 1.
When, meditatively, we penetrate below the surface of the
given, we experience that concepts control everything we perceive, insofar as what we perceive is a THAT, something we
can point to, something that is defined and outlined. As we
have seen also, in the first structuring of the given, everything
without exception is conceptual: nothing remains conceptually unpenetrated. Therefore, this first form of the given is not
questionable; concepts cover the given completely, without
any gaps. If we in modern consciousness could attain such a
complete conceptual covering, truth and reality would merge
The Language
of Reality
63
unci become one. We do not know whether this was the case
lor people in archaic times, because they had neither the
concept of "reality" nor that of "truth." They lived in the true
reality without looking for it or questioning it. People question and search for true reality only when they have lost it.
People in those early times did not need a synthesis of percept
and concept because for them they were still united. We, however, experience them as given separately. (The story of how
iliis true reality was lost will follow later.)
Today the above-mentioned two feelingsthe sensation of
reality and the experience of evidencedetermine what is true
;md real. Nevertheless, it is conceivable that thinking and perceiving could come together in a human, conscious synthesis
and form a true or full reality.
The two feelings would then interpenetrate, and the feeling
for reality would be illuminedwhich it usually is not
while the feeling of evidence would no longer remain abstract
but be filled with warmth and life and become a concrete perception. In other words, full reality would emerge from the
interpntration of a perception and itsadequateconcept.
Then no questions would remain, and the desire for knowledge
would be satisfied. Without this interpntration of percept and
concept, the given remains questionable; that is, it needs to be
completed. With regard to the reality we perceive, neither the
given percept nor the concept by itself constitutes the full reality. Neither the original union of these two elements in archaic
consciousnesswhere the concepts of language structure the
perceptual worldnor their new synthesis is additive. Rather,
both the concept and the perceptual element undergo a qualitative change when they interpenetratesomething we can
experience daily, if we pay attention.
12. See Steiner, Truth and Knowledge (GA 3), Preface, and The Philosophy of Freedom (GA 4), chapter entitled "The Consequences of Monism."
64
The First Reality The First Language

The first, full reality is wholly given to us in the union of the
percept with an adequate concept, which made the percept into
this percept. We can hardly overlook that this first reality is
related to the state of the world and the human being that many
traditions have described, under various names, as paradise.
According to all authentic traditions, human beings were
already endowed with the gift of language. That mythologies
do not speak about "reality" is only natural for a state of consciousness where questions were nonexistent. Perhaps our
image of paradiseat least in regard to the absence of questioningis only a rather radical projection onto the past of an
extreme condition, one whose image was designed along the
lines of an increasingly "obscured" consciousness.
There are good reasons to believe that today the world is
never unquestionable for children in any phase of the process
of their learning to speak. Children experience words more
deeply than the adults from whom they learn. For instance, for
adults the designations of natural objects are hardly more than
mere names (see chapter 2, "Reflecting on Concepts"). When
adults say these names, they are therefore no longer accompanied by an inner understanding. Thus the children, likewise,
can no longer experience this understanding. In contrast,
adults fully understand what the word "but" means, even
though most would probably have a hard time explaining it.
Still, since we understand this word, its meaning is also accessible to children by direct insight into what they hear. When
the children hear adults talk about "horses" or "pines," however, they do not find such an inner understanding.
Language has handed down words to us that we now understand only in a nominalistic sense. However, there are three
reasons why we should not assume that, even originally, these
The Language
of Reality
65
words were only arbitrary names to label a phenomenon or

o b j e c t . First, as we have seen, the concepts of our language initially structure the perceptual worldand only through these
i oncepts can we perceive its particulars. Second, we can name
o n l y things that have already been conceptually defined and
outlined. Since we receive our first concepts through language,
any "naming" is superfluous. Third, ethnological studies show
I hat human activity has never produced a new word stem.
When we encounter something new, we use old words or
stems of words, though perhaps in a modified form, to name
or describe the new experience. For instance, the Navajo India n s describe what we call film or movie in a phrase that
means "those who are gliding past one after the other." They
call elephants, for which there is, of course, no original word
in their language, "the one who throws a lasso with his n o s e "
(free translation). Indeed, even in modern European languages we use old words for new inventions, or we use compound words, such as "television," or we adopt words from
oilier languages.
In short, there is no known case of a new word stem being
creatednot even in modern times and not counting, of
course, words derived from old roots, for example, through
contraction. Thus, all terms for natural objects, which are mere
names for us today, were in their original or ancient form (all
words have gone through changes) as meaningful as words
like "spoon" or "or" are for us now.
The old word-concepts of natural objects, then, were "understood." The structure of the archaic consciousness meant that
people experienced the living, sentient higher conceptswhich
cannot be brought down to the plane of the past of modern consciousnessin a dreamlike way. Moreover, archaic perception
was hardly, if at all, separate from "thinking" and could therefore grasp much more of nature than ours. In the structure of
66
the archaic consciousnessand also in very young children in

our timethe plane of the past is not yet separated from that of
the present by an abyss. For this reason it has a more dreamlike
character and lacks sharp distinctions. It is linked, as if by resonance, with the continuity of the upper levels of consciousness,
which for us are now in the superconscious. Words or wordconcepts in this archaic consciousness still carry within them a
far-reaching perceptive feeling and willing by means of which
the "concept"very different from what we know as conceptssends its roots deep into the perceptual world, touching
the creational ideas of nature. These word-concepts are connectionsrelationshipsin the perceptual world and structure it.
They do not name "objects" but rather are relationships
between what later separates into subject and object.
The I-being still lives in a unified world, in understanding. It
experiences the world and itself as understanding, in a harmonythe later music of the spheres is a pale reflection of
thisthat is a sign of "understanding" what the natural world,
the cosmos, is "saying." It is an understanding from within,
without juxtaposition and without any I-consciousness. The
great ideas of nature are experienced in communion, and initially the human being is one of these ideas. In the archaic languages every word is an aspect of the world that structures the
world while at the same time reintegrating into a unity the particulars that are distinguished.
Words that designated objects in nature were then not just
names; they were even more than true universals. A species,
for example, a "red maple," was experienced as more real than
the individual tree. In contrast, for us " m a p l e " is now the name
of the individual tree, and using the word for the species seems
to us an abstraction. It was the same with designations of natural objects in fairy tales and myths. In fact, even in the Old
Testament, the name of a people is a reality; "Amalek," for
The Language
of Reality
67
instance, is not a comprehensive or general term but an idea

that gives the members of a people their character. Moreover,
" m a p l e " (or the corresponding original word) also signified a
function, a relationship to earth and sky, to other trees, to the
air, and also to human beings. It designated a "character" that
had a value for feeling and willing and also still other qualities
unknown to us that still " s p o k e " to archaic consciousness,
linking human beings in consciousness with nature.
To characterize archaic consciousness today we have to
describe it alternately in its two aspects of perception and
thinking because we now experience these two functions separately. But the essence of archaic consciousness is that these
two functions are still united, and representational mental pictures are thus not subject to human whim. If "thinking" is alive,
colorful, warm, saturated with feeling, and pulsating, then
"perceiving" is transillumined within itself by the ideal or ideating "thinking" that indwells it and not by any instruction;
"perceiving" then is already structuring everything out and
reading everything together, including the beings of nature
known in every tradition. If nature still speaks to human
beings, its speaking must come from beings who are themselves I-beings or who represent I-beingsif the latter have
already withdrawn from their work. The structure of the
archaic senses will be outlined in chapter 5 .
In his theory of knowledge, Rudolf Steiner alludes to the
possibility that percept and concept are already united in the
given. This, indeed, is true for the first, entirely given image of
reality in the first phase of language development. "Were there
a totality, complete in itself, in the directly given, then it would
be impossible, as well as unnecessary, to elaborate it [by thinking) in the process of cognition. Rather, we would simply
accept the given as it is and would be satisfied with it in that
form
If, in the world-content, the thought-content were
68
united with the given from the outset, no cognition would

exist."
Following our discussion above, we have to rephrase this
sentence as follows: If, in the world-content, the content of our
thoughts were from the outset united with the content of our
perception, there would be no humanly elaborated cognition.
For in chapter 6 of Truth and Knowledge, Steiner speaks of
cognition as a "still unconscious activity of the I " that must be
raised to consciousness by the theory of knowledge. In The
Philosophy of Freedom Steiner writes: "It would indeed be
quite possible for a mind to receive the concept simultaneously
with the percept and not separated from the latter. Such a mind
would never consider the concept as something separate from
the object but would ascribe to the concept an existence indivisibly bound up with the o b j e c t . " Archaic thought life is
often described by Steiner as a "complete g i v e n n e s s . "
33
34
35
The first reality is given, but given to human beings, for in

the world the gods have created, the human is the only being
through whom ideality, word, and concept as such can emerge
and flourish. The Logos-world attains its first reality in the
only Logos-being of this world.
Our contribution to producing the first reality is entirely
passive; idea and percept are already united when they appear
in consciousness. Language not only participates in the configuration of the given, it cannot be separated from the given reality. Therefore, it is trivial to say that reality is structured like
language; the two sides of language are disguised as percept
and concept. The inner changes in language gradually guide
archaic consciousness into a questioning one; that is, they lead
it to the second reality, the second language.
33. See Steiner, Truth and Knowledge (GA 3), chapter 5, pp. 69, 70.
34. See Steiner, The Philosophy of Freedom (GA 4), chapter 5, pp.76, 80.
35. Rudolf Steiner, (GA 212, lectures of May 27 and June 17, 1922).
69
The Transition to Questioning

Different languages lift different conceptual systems out of the
unstructured continuum of the directly given. These conceptual systems exist in the continuum not in a preformed state
but as "potential." Percepts and concepts, initially seamlessly
congruent, manifest in human beings. This means that human
cognitive activitywhether conscious or notmust be considered part of reality. In archaic consciousness this activity
was not experienced as separate from its result, which is the
image of reality. In chapter 5 we will discuss why we now do
not experience our cognitive activity as part of reality.
Due to profound changes in human consciousness, the first
reality has been lost. It is difficult to describe the reasons and
motivating forces behind these changes without using the language of myths. In the Old Testament the changes are
described as the events of the Fall. The changes have cut us off
from nature and from the spiritual beings who inspire and
guide us. As a result, we have become capable of erring and
sinning, and now, in the era of the consciousness soul, we have
to choose our further path as mature, emancipated beings.
This long process is reflected in the changes in our languages, which have always possessed the potential for this
development. Language's twofoldness prefigures every other
dualism, particularly the division of perceiving and thinking.
The discontinuous structure of the outer aspect of language
bears the seed for all further atomization. By the same token,
the hidden part of language contains the image and potential
for all unifying and synthesizing, for all "reading together."
The duality of perception and the inner act that complements
itpresent in languagecontinues into the duality of object
and subject. Today it is possible to realize that understanding
and what is understoodthe planes of the present and the past
in our consciousnessform the basic dual structure of the
70
T H E L O G O S - S T R U C T U R E OE T H E W O R L D
consciousness soul which makes it possible for consciousness

to reflect upon itself.
The outer changes, which we shall consider first, are not
limited to a particular language but affect the whole range of
languages, including those usually classified as archaic or
primitive, as developed or highly flectional languages. This
range of languages is often mistakenly considered to consist of
developmental stages. As far as the original store of word
stems and grammatical structures is concerned, we can find
losses and signs of deterioration within any particular language. However, the emancipation of thinking makes every
language more complicated insofar as it creates more complicated associations between thoughts in newly opened areas of
world and consciousness.
If one compares archaic languages with more "developed"
ones, one notices that, as the latter increase both their vocabulary and their sense-perceptible part, their perceptual pictureas well as their whole picture of the worldloses more
and more of the unity it had in the archaic languages. Increasingly, terms for connections become mere names for things;
and the connections themselves are expressed more and more
in the perceptible part of the language, for example, through
inflections, prefixes, suffixes, prepositions, and syntactical
rules. The real, higher relationships, connections, and concepts, however, cannot appear, they remain completely in the
hidden part of the language.
The more a language appears sense-perceptible, the less
inner work is necessary to complement it. As a result, the perceptible part is less permeated with life and feeling. Ultimately, language then ends up a mere carrier of information,
and the duality of "sign and meaning" develops accordingly.
In other words, this duality becomes even more pronounced as
thinking emancipates itself from language. What do we have
71
"information" about? About the world, which was first given

through language in its energetic phase and which we then
made from out of this primary reality.
fecoH^
As the multitude of particulars grows in the development of
language, the connections dwindle away. This development is

also reflected by changes in vocabulary; for instance, archaic
languages are rich in verbs, and the predominance of predicates
gives these languages their distinctive character. In more modern languages, however, nouns and adjectives predominate.
In addition to these "external" changes there are also important developments in the hidden part of each language. Words
that were still fluid in earlier times and expressed connections
now dry up and shrink more and more to mere names of particulars. Thus, the particular becomes questionable, not in regard
to the universality of concepts, but rather in its disconnectedness and in the quality of its being.
When the connections vanish from the nouns, and consciousness experiences in the sound of a word only what was
separated out without its simultaneous reintegration, then the
question concerning the how becomes urgent. Thinking begins
to search for connections, for principles that link the particulars, outside the sphere given by language. At first, we retain
the structure of the perceptual world through the word-concepts
of language, but the concepts gradually become mere shells of
words, and the connections dwindle away. We have to find
them again through new concepts independent of language. .
The above-mentioned analogy of the subdivided surface
may be used again to describe this new situation. The small
pieces now no longer extend over the whole surface completely. Instead, the concepts have shrunk to the size of points;
that is, they have become entirely nominal. The remaining,
uncovered parts of the surface thus leave ample room, and
provide compelling reasons, for asking questionsabout the
72
perceptual world or about the relationships between the pointlike concepts.

The human being now adds the concepts connecting the
percepts to the latter. Generally, we are not aware that the perceptual world is already structured through the remnants of the
language-concepts before we add new concepts to it. In any
case, whether in the first phase of consciousness or later, reality is always created through the union of percept and concept.
Initially, this union was given; later, human beings themselves
had to bring about the synthesis. The joining of percept and
concept does not permit any arbitrariness; although we are the
ones bringing together and uniting the elements of reality
namely, the structured percept and the conceptwe do so in
accordance with their own nature. We wait to see what
emerges from the union of these elements. The faculty of
forming concepts is becoming more and more individualized,
and in time it is less and less formed by the mother tongue
the "folk-spirit"or by cultural styles that transcend language, such as the baroque stylethe "spirit of the times."
The concepts provided by language were much more than
mere connections; they were felt, living, willing, and experienced realities.
The development of consciousness inherent in the pedagogy
of languageevery language guides the people speaking it
to a particular configuration of consciousnesscan cause
word-concepts to lose their life and become mere names of
things outside themselves (except for conjunctions, such as
"although"). This leaves two paths open to us, both of which
have become possible only because of the new capacity to
think independently of language.
One path leads to logical, abstract concepts, which can be
reduced to a common denominator, so to speak, through the
word-concepts of various languages, and therefore can be
73
translated. The logical concepts of "water," "eau," "aqua" and

"hydro" are equivalent, and the words are interchangeable in
this regard. Such words, however, differ in mood and character
and also in the ways in which they can be applied and connected to others in their respective languages. This is especially
obvious in translations of poetry. Structuralism calls this phenomenon the valence or value of words. We derive the logical
concept through abstraction from the different values of the
words; thus, logical concepts transcend language. Accordingly,
they rank below word-concepts because they are poorer. When
thinkers begin to realize this, they resort to languagefor
instance, to etymologyto enrich the abstract logical concepts, to understand them better, and to awaken them to life.
But there is another path. Rising above the word-concepts
we can reach the meditative or creational concepts. These contain all word-concepts and integrate them. Such meditative
concepts are therefore richer than word-concepts. They enable
word-concepts to unite in the logical conceptsthis impoverished union is, so to speak, their abstract reflection directed
downward. The creational concepts were already abstract by
the Middle Ages; they were no longer experienced but only
grasped as thought intuitions. As such, they were called uni36
versal ia ante rem.""

From this point of view, one could identify logical concepts
as universalia post rem; ** however, the third kind of universal
has no parallel in modern consciousness.***
36. See also Steiner. Die geistige Vereinigung der Menschheit durch den ChristusImpuls (GA 165) (Dornach. Switzerland: Rudolf Steiner Verlag. 1981). lecture of January 15,1916.
*"Universals" before their embodiment in matter. Translator's note.
**"Universals," understood after being experienced in their embodied reality. Translator's note.
"Universalia in re" "universals" as the functional idea according to which a thing
is given its conceptual definition while it is in use. Translator's note.
74
For example, "human being," "anthropos"

and "homo"
obviously have different valences or aspects. The logical concept of these words is formed by the outer, perhaps physiological, characteristics of the human being, but the creational
concept comprises the Word- or Logos-character of human
nature, its indwelling archetype, potential, freedom, and relationship to the whole cosmos as one idea. Obviously, this
idea requires a consciousness that rises far above everyday
consciousness. Judging by the sound alone, we do not perceive a connection between the words " r o s e , " "varda" and
"gw/." However, we can perhaps glimpse their c o m m o n creational idea behind the idea of the white rose in Dante's
Paradiso (Par. 3 1 . and 32.), which is the "Throne of the
Blessed."
Western science has taken the first path mentioned above,
the one leading to logical concepts. In the process everything
else has been excluded. The consequences of this choice urge
us now to try out the other path to balance and heal our onesidedness.
The Second Reality

When the first given reality fades, we retain only its remnants
and ruins. Now we have to strive to put together the "patchwork" by ourselves. The patchwork is already interwoven with
concepts, but they do not form a seamless network. As a result,
the world has become open to question, questionable. At the
same time, language has taught us the secret of structured
thinking and perceiving. We now try to find suitable concepts
to understand the questionable world independent of our
teacher, language. We want to reintegrate what has been separated out of the continuum.
The Language
of Reality
75
We strive to penetrate the given completely with understand"7-7
ing and conceptuality in order to bring the feeling of reality

into coincidence with the feeling of truth: we seek the "full" or
"true" reality. In other words, it is we who are now creating reality, because we are no longer satisfied with the feeling or sensation of realityat least not in regard to the perceptual world.
The relativity of the first reality was due to the mother
tongue; the second reality, however, is structured through the
new concepts, conceived independently of language. This in
turn relativizes the synthesis of the perceptual with the conceptual aspect of reality, but at the same time "reality" and "truth"
become dynamic ideas capable of further development. Perceptual reality and pure thinking are given space to play. Our striving for knowledge does not gravitate toward any predetermined,
absolute truth and reality; rather, we have the possibility of progressing from "unconcealedness" (aletheia, the Greek word for
truth) to unconcealedness, from light to brighter light, from idea
to idea. We contribute to the creation of the world.
Every cognition changes us, and since we are part of reality,
reality too is continuously being transformed. We create future
realitynot just in the sense of future time, but in the essential
sense of new beginnings. As I-beings capable of making
beginnings and taking initiatives, we can sow seeds for the
future. Thus, we can describe freedom as unconditioned, as the
ability to make new beginnings that are not contingent on, and
do not follow necessarily from, existing reality. As we have
seen, cognition itself is such a beginning.
The human contribution to the given is already concealed
within the given, but it is not fully preformed. Otherwise
cognition would be a merely formal, and not a creative,
37. See Steiner, Truth and Knowledge (GA 3, p. 65), p. 70; The Philosophy of Freedom (GA 4, pp. 112, 115, 247-248), pp. 100, 102-103, 235-236.
76
activity that adds something new to the reality that already

" i s . " In other words, cognition is itself r e a l i t y .
In the first reality, guided by our mother tongue, we structure and connect the given; in the second reality, we follow the
concepts we have now intuited independently of language.
The potential reality, slumbering concealed within the given, is
always actualized by human cognitive activity; it is production, not reproduction.
38
The new structure of consciousness, which enables us to

question, is based on the complete separation of the planes of
consciousness of the past and of the present, of thought and of
thinking. As a result, the latter has moved into the superconscious sphere. We can now turn and ask questions in both
directions; in fact, this is the mission of the consciousness
soul. However, our gaze does not turn equally and impartially
in both directions; the upper plane is entirely hidden from our
inner eye (see chapter 8). We do not see it. At first, we do not
investigate the lower plane either, because, being on the plane
of the past, it does not evoke the sensation of reality. For this
reason, we experience the perceptual world, or nature, as all
the more real. This explains why, historically, human questions
were at first wholly related to nature.
Historically, questions about consciousness only arise when
the "natural scientific" way of formulating questions ("what is
it made o f ? " and " h o w ? " ) becomes so deeply rooted that a different style of questioningappropriate to problems of consciousnessbecomes impossible. This predominance of one
style of questioning also influences the concepts that are to
penetrate natural phenomena. These new concepts have two
38. See Steiner, A Theory of Knowledge (GA 2, pp. 136-137). pp. 120-121; Truth
and Knowledge (GA 3, p. 11), p.l 1 and The Fruits of Anthroposophy (GA 78, pp.
27, 3 1 , 32), (Hudson, N.Y.: Anthroposophie Press, 1986), lecture of August 30,
1921, summarized pp. 8-1).
The Language
of Reality
77
distinctive features: first, they are contingent only upon a part,

a partial aspect, of the givenfor example, the concepts of
mechanics are contingent on the aspect of lifelessness. Second,
the connecting principles or explanatory concepts are of the
same type as the concepts they are intended to connect. Again,
this is typical of mechanics; its explanatory principles do not
read reality because the conceptual structure is no longer adequate to the perceptual picture. As a result, part of the perceptual picture remains nonconceptual and therefore not
transparent to the understanding.
The general application of the mechanistic style of thinking
and the predominance of mechanical causality arise from the
subconscious; they cannot be logically justified. Modern
thinkers know of hardly any connections or causes except
mechanical ones. Aristotle was still aware of others, for example, the causa exemplaris, that of the model or example.
Because mechanical connections, as explanatory principles
between things, are on the same level as the things themselves,
they are effective and even compelling, for instance, gravitation as the relationship between apple and earth. However,
when the explanatory principle remains on the same level as
the phenomenon to be explained, as in this case, the resulting
explanation never represents true understanding as does the
lull understanding of a thought in which there remains no further questions about the statement; when no understanding is
reached, or only a limited understanding, we can continue to
question until we arrive at a pure thoughtas is the usual procedure in mathematics. However, in natural science we do this
at the expense of the qualities, which are lost in this procedure.
Mechanics and mechanistic thinking are on a level below
the sense-perceptible simply because they seek to reduce all
qualities to entities without qualities, to particles and forces.
While the older worldview was concerned with the purpose,
78
direction, and meaning of phenomenawith their "why," their

motivationmechanistic thinking focuses only on the "hard"
facts, their application, and their "how," that is, their mechanism. For example, Galileo reduced all qualities to those of
size, shape, number, and movement. Then he explained these
"qualities"if they can still be called suchby the concepts
of force, resistance, and velocity. These concepts were borrowed and adapted from the living world; but there they have
an intentional character. Ancient science was a science of
essence, whereas modern science deals with mechanisms and
transformations.
Describing processes mathematically is not the same as

understanding them. For a mathematical description we first
observe a natural process (or reconstruct its assumed course)
using a model of it as a guideline, then we describe what we
have observed in symbols and mathematical equations. By
now we have taken two steps uncritically and even without
noticing it. First, "cognition" has already determined what we
have to describe mathematically, but we have not questioned
this "what" epistemologically (i.e., in terms of a theory of cognition). Second, we use symbols in our mathematical description, such as those for mass, density, velocity, and so on, even
though we have not examined or ascertained them epistemologically either. Thus, "successful" mathematical descriptions
often attribute concreteness to entities that do not originate in
our observation of the given perceptual worldthe entities
gain concreteness or have concreteness ascribed to them by the
"success" of the mathematical description. Such entities are
often part of our presuppositions when we formulate the model
or hypothesis; and later on we are inclined to consider them
more real than the perceptions we started with.
For more or less unhealthy thinking the usual questions
about reality focus on two points. The first concerns the world
79
of thought: Are our ideas and concepts already fully formed in

the superconscious sphere or in a spiritual world, where we
simply "copy" them, or do we ourselves form our concepts and
ideas out of the world of ideas? The second point and question
concerns the perceptual world: Are nature and its phenomena
already "there," do they exist, before we cognize them?
Both questions bear the stamp of learned cognitive naivete.
Moreover, the first question originates in a misunderstood Platonism that assumes the "world of ideas" consists of particular
finished, fully formed ideas, which we can then "bring d o w n "
as needed. In this regard we can learn much from studying a
foreign language that is very different from our own. We will
then vividly experience the relativity of conceptual systems.
For instance, it seems logical to us to conjugate all verbs in the
same way: I run, I stand, I sleep; you run, you stand, you sleep,
and so on. However, a different type of "logic" would consider
this conjugation completely illogical because it expresses very
different facts in the same way. After all, running is an activity,
so how could we treat standing or sleeping in the same way
linguistically? We can exert ourselves in runningbut in
standing or sleeping? In fact, there are languages that take
these differences into account, and accordingly they have different expressions for them.
The world of ideas does not consist of predetermined ideas
because, if that were the case, their number would be limited. Rather, the world of ideas consists of the infinite possibility corresponding to our capacityto separate more and
more ideas out of itself. This is what we do as soon as thinking has emancipated itself from language. If this were not the
case, we could not even understand the differences between
languages.
Concerning the second question, "nature" is indubitably not
created by us and our cognitive processes. The real question is
80
what we mean by "nature." What we call "nature" at a particular point in our development both as species and as individuals
is already a particular picture, and we have participated, either
consciously or unconsciously, in its creation. This is true both
for the given perceptual picture and for the second, conscious
cognitive understanding. Everything we speak about is always
a picture that already contains our activity. To claim that, in
this sense, nature has always existed would be naive; this
would imply that if people like us had faced the given reality
of nature before we did, they would have seen the same picture
of nature that we do, or at least a qualitatively similar one.
Seen as a text, however, nature is a letter we did not write
it would not be a riddle to us if we had written itnor is it
being written now, at this momentthe natural sciences would
not be possible if it were. A text is always an interpreted text;
it means what its reader understands. We are or could be readers of the letter that is nature. Our understanding is a reality,
one that previously did not exist. For the moment, however, it
is not yet clear whether nature is a text at all.
The givennature, perceiving, thinking, attention, and so
onis given, without any present contribution on our part.
This is the meaning of the term "given" in principle, in its
extreme form, beyond any epistemology, i.e., without any
structuring of the given. As soon as we have a mental picture
of it, however, the given is structured; this is the stage of particulars. Neither this structure nor the picture of the given exist
apart from us. After all, even human beings in their "givenn e s s " are not their own creations. We only become our own
creations; we become what we cognize ourselves to be (not
what we imagine or fancy).
Thus, everything we speak or think about or we ask questions about is already a mental picture, a k n o w n element, a
The Language
of Reality
81
structure. This is the power and fundamental character of the

word, of which we are normally unaware. After all, we cannot talk about something we do not know or cannot know,
and when we try this anyway, we always bring what we
already know into our thinking. The "thing-in-itself," the
"unconscious," "matter without properties," elementary particles that can be infinitely subdividedall these bear witness to the unsuccessful endeavor to think the unthinkable,
the nonideal, the nonwordlike. Only what is wordlike exists
in the world of the Logos. In spite of this fact, an enormous
attempt is underway to introduce what is not wordlike into
this world and thus to destroy it.
The given is what has always "been there"; it is the remnant
of the first reality, or to use a religious expression, it is the gift
of the gods. What we experience, perceive, think, know, imagine, and what we talk about does not exist apart from us and
never did. This truth may sound trivial; nevertheless, it follows
from the insight that cognition is not a mere reproducing,
copying, translating, or repeating of something that already
existed prior to the act of cognition. Part of reality appears
within us, namely, the idea. However, it is difficult to distinguish between true or full reality and the given, especially the
perceptual given, because a feeling of autonomous existence is
undoubtedly a characteristic of this part of true reality (see
chapter 5).
When we ask whether the violet, the moon, or the unicorn
already existed before we knew them, our real, underlying
question is whether the mental pictures, images, and syntheses
of percepts and concepts already existed before we created
them. The answer is clear. What "already existed" prior to our
activity is the given; from out of this given we have separated
our concepts and percepts and created a synthesis.
82
The Third Reality

The structure of true or full reality is similar to that of language; that is, percept and meaning are united from the
beginning. As long as language is not used in an entirely
mechanical way, it retains the character of the first reality. In
other words, its perceptual aspect functions as a sign; it
means something. As soon as the first reality is lost, however,
this unity disintegrates into the separate functions of perception and thinking, which originated in language. Only in this
way can we become independent, free beings; in the sphere
of thinking we can find this independence.
The perceptual world is no longer a world of signs but
becomes a world of objects, and thus becomes questionable
and enigmatic to thinking. The perceptual world retains, however, its feeling of reality for us, and we are therefore inclined
to believe it is the full and complete reality. We do not realize
that this perceptual world is given to us already interwoven
with concepts, albeit insufficient ones that do not cover the
given completely; this is why to thinking it is a problem to be
solved. The given that was given to us without questions
already existed before our cognition was there, before our conscious act of cognition.
The second reality is necessarily unsatisfactory, notwithstanding the promises of technologywhich is based on this
image of realityto solve all problems. On the one hand, this
reality is unsatisfactory in part because we cannot find the creational ideas or functional concepts of phenomena in nature
they can be reached only on higher planes of consciousness.
On the other hand, we cannot account satisfactorily for cognition and the cognizer if we do not focus our attention on the
cognitive functions of consciousness themselves rather than on
what is often taken for their mechanism. As spiritual science
The Language
of Reality
83
showed at the end of the last century, we as modern people can

and, indeed, of necessity must turn our attention in this direct i o n . Spiritual science later also presented the details and
methodology of this new direction of our a t t e n t i o n , but to
this day people have hardly understood them and even less put
them into practice. Nevertheless, there can be no doubt that we
can reach true reality only by raising our consciousness in both
the directions of our cognitive lifethat is, by forming, in our
"thinking," living, feeling, and willing ideas that enable us to
perceive and read the perceptual world as a realm of signs.
Then true reality will be realized through us, and will be our
own. We will discuss the requirements and necessary skills for
attaining this third picture of reality in chapters 8 and 9.
To overcome dualism consciously we have to do exercises
of consciousness that neutralize it at its source by temporarily
bridging the chasm that separates the two above-mentioned
planes of consciousness. This also solves the riddle of how we
as free individuals can create something universal in our cognition and in the activities based on it. Here, too, the phenomenon of language can serve as a " m o d e l " providing new
insights. After all, each of us uses language in a highly individual, unique way, and yet language is a phenomenon of community; it is shared by all, and its content is universal.
39
40
39. Rudolf Steiner, Goethean Science (GA I) (Spring Valley, N.Y.: Mercury Press.
1988), previously translated as Goethe the Scientist; A Theory of Knowledge (GA 2);
Truth and Knowledge (GA 3); The Philosophy of Freedom (GA 4); Goethe's World
View (GA 6) (Spring Valley, N.Y.: Mercury Press, 1985).
40. Rudolf Steiner. A Road to Self-Knowledge (GA 16) (London: Rudolf Steiner
Press. 1975); The Riddle of Man (GA 20) (Spring Valley. N.Y.: Mercury Press. 1990);
The Case for Anthroposophy (GA 21) (London: Rudolf Steiner Press, 1970); AnthroposophicalLeading Thoughts (GA 26) (London: Rudolf Steiner Press. 1973).
5 . The Character of Perceptual Reality
T o our questioning consciousness the sense-perceptible

world appears fraught with questions; how this world
becomes questionable was discussed above. In the process,
the feeling of reality and the feeling of truth separate; the
former remains with the perceptual world while the feeling of
truth lights up with our insights and guides them. The sensation of reality also accompanies our perception of man-made
objects. We understand these objects in their function. The
material they are made of, however, is given in nature or is a
modification of something given in nature. Thus, in our perception of these man-made objects a part of them is not permeated with concepts, and this part evokes the feeling of
reality in us.
The Sensation of
RealityObservations
It is best to make these observations with new perceptions or

with the intuitive understanding of new ideas, for then we can
study the processes in their pure form, without any admixture
of other soul processes or habits.
1. The element of the perception that we "understand," the
conceptual part, its "what," lies on the same plane of consciousness as all our thoughts. On this plane we also remember
The Character of Perceptual Reality
85
every perception as a representational mental picture. Compared with perceptions, mental pictures do not appear real;
they are definitely phenomena of consciousness. Perceptions,
however, appear to be really there, to be real.
Moreover, we can remember or mentally picture a landscape at any time, but we can see it only in the present moment
and when it is present with us. Our mental pictures and our
thinking, then, are independent of all external, that is, of all
perceptual, factors. Perception, however, does not depend only
on us. Therefore the phenomenon of perception has on the one
hand the character of the presentin the incomprehensible
pastand on the other hand the character of the pastin its
conceptuality.
Perception always shows us something "more," and this is
precisely what seems to be its nonconceptual part. This may be
an illusion, however, because the element which we experience is just the aspect which we do not conceive conceptually:
namely, the difference between the percept and the mental picture. This incomprehensibility does not necessarily imply that
what we do not grasp is actually nonconceptual. To j u m p to
that conclusion has led us from nominalism to materialism,
which is convinced that only the nonideal or nonconceptual
exists and is "real." Instead, we can attribute the incomprehensibility of the percept to the inability of our modern consciousness to grasp living, sentient, and willingin short, higher
concepts. The concepts we can understand, and also our memory pictures, belong to the plane of the past, and that is why
they do not evoke the feeling of reality in us.
2. To experience something as re^l it must be present in
space and time. The temporal present, a point between future
and past, is difficult to understand. Spatial presence is also not
easy to understand; for instance, we need only ask how far
86
from us an object can be and still be called "present/

This
question, however, reduces the problem to the range of our
senses, and that does not help us, for then we can only say that
we perceive what we perceive.
And yet we apply these incomprehensible concepts "correctly" and understand them when they are used (as, for example, with conjunctions); this points us to the superconscious
sphere, the source of all human capacities and abilities, which
we touched upon in our discussion of concepts (see chapter 2,
"Regarding Concepts"). This superconscious source is the
spiritual part of our soul. We have called the lowest level of
this part that of the present; it is identical with the plane of
imagination.
We can experience the existence and reality of this presence
in many phenomena. To express a new thought in time and
space, that is, in speech or writing, we must first have the
thought "beforehand" to be able to find appropriate words and
construct our sentences properly. We are not fully aware of our
thoughts and do not completely understand them until we put
them into words. Nevertheless, we must " c o n c e i v e " the
thought first before we can express it. The recipients of our
communication then must perform the opposite operation. To
understand the thought we are conveying, they must make
"simultaneous" what appears in time and space as a discontinuous sequence or juxtaposition. Both the sender and the
receiver touch the plane of the present. Although the content
of the communication unfolds time or space in the course of a
sentence, it is nevertheless always "simultaneous," a unity. In
the process of being expressed it is taken apart and brought
into the temporal-spatial world of our senses.
41. Massimo Scaligero. Segreti del Tempo e del Spazio (Rome: Tilopa, 1964).
The Character
of Perceptual Reality
87
In fact, the content is as timeless as its source. Thus, the

essential or eternal present
is the source from where the
linked duality of time and spacein itself not comprehensibleemerges at the moment when the source is mirrored and
no longer experienced as such. After the timeless conception
of the meaning of a sentence, the source itself retreats into the
superconscious sphere. The fragments of it that appear on the
level of the past we call time and space. As we can see in the
concept of time, only the past has meaning; the present
("now") and the future respectively can only be imagined as a
point and as a continuation of the "time line." Because the past
is "past," we no longer have reality in time; the feeling of reality has a source outside of time: in essential presence.
Careful observation shows that the spatial dimension is
timeless while the dimension of time is outside space. We cannot directly perceive time, that is, movement, process, and
change. We perceive only the thing that is being moved, where
a process or change is taking p l a c e .
43
This presence is also the source of the feeling of truth or

evidence, which is as important in our life as the feeling of
reality. It is touched upon in all our statements and stands
behind all of them.
42. Rudolf Steiner. The Effects of Spiritual Development (GA 145) (London: Rudolf
Steiner Press. 1978), lecture of March 22, 1913; Knowledge and Initiation (GA 211)
(Vancouver: Steiner Book Centre, n.d.), lecture of April 14. 1922); Macrocosm and
Microcosm (GA 119) (London: Rudolf Steiner Press. 1968). lecture of March 30, 1910;
The Michael Mystery (GA 26) (Spring Valley, N.Y.: St. George Publications, 1984). following leading thoughts 139 and 143; (GA 161, lecture of February 6, 1915); The Mission of the Archangel Michael (GA 194) (Spring Valley. N.Y.: Anthroposophie Press,
1961), lecture of November 30, 1919); (GA 214, lecture of August 5, 1922); (G218,
lecture of November 17. 1922 and December 9. 1922); Chance. Providence, and
Necessity (GA 163) (Hudson, N.Y.: Anthroposophie Press, 1988), lecture of August 30,
1915; (GA 183. lecture of August 25, 1918); Anthroposophy and the Inner Life (GA
234) (Suffolk. England: Rudolf Steiner Press. 1992). lecture of February 9, 1924.
I v See Khlewind. Das Licht des Wortes, chapters entitled, "Das Leben der Bewusstseinsseele," "Bewegung und Leben," Das Wahrnehmen des Lebens" (Stuttgart: Verlag
Freies Geistesleben. 1984).
88
Thus, the process of perception consists of a past and a

present element. The former appears in the conceptuality of
the percept and in our options to picture it mentally, both of
which participate in the second and all following acts of perception of the same content. The element of the present
appears in the feeling of reality that accompanies perception.
3. "Presence" also lights up in thought intuition and understanding. However, because of the flashlike and fleeting character of intuitionits immediate extinctionwe do not
perceive thoughts as "real." We are conscious only of the
results of intuition, on the plane of the past. In our thinking, we
strive for intuition, while perception seems more to be given,
though it does, of course, require our attention. Thinking attention and perceiving attention differ in that our attention is
much more self-conscious in thinking than in perceiving. The
reason for this is that our self-awareness is a thinking awareness; it awakens in thinking.
There is another difference between thinking and perceiving. The feeling of obviousness or self-evidence that flashes up
when we understand is highly differentiated, concrete, and
adapted to the manifold possibilities of understanding. In contrast, the sensation of reality in perception is experienced as
undifferentiated, or dull, precisely because we experience it in
not-understanding. This experience is very similar to that of
the sense of touch.
4. One can observe that the planes of the past and the
present both participate in perception and understanding,
although in different ways. Our soul life oscillates in both of
these cognitive functions between the two planes. When we
understand something through thinking, our soul life briefly
touches the superconscious plane of the present and then
The Character
89
remains on the plane of the past until the next act of understanding. When we perceive something, however, this inner
pendulum or oscillation between the planes continues for as
long as we are perceiving attentively. In perception, we can
experience the phase of surrender to what we perceive more
intensely and not only momentarilyand also experience the
definite return of consciousness to itself. This return coincides
with the conceptual assimilation of what we experienced while
being given over to perception.
These two phases of the activity of consciousness also differ in their degree of wakefulness or self-consciousness. In the
phase of being given over to perception, self-awareness is
asleep; it awakens only in the second phase. Except for special
cases, such as artistic perceptions, or those carried out as a
consciousness exercise, the two phases alternate very quickly
into one another. Still, we can see that the first phase of being
given over to our perception is akin to inhalationas in astonishmentwhile understanding, the second phase, is related to
exhalationas in naming t h i n g s .
44
5. While we are given over to what we perceive, we are not

aware of ourselves, and the same is true during the act of intuition. Indeed, the more we can "forget" ourselves, the more
intense our act of cognition will be. The result of intuition in
thought is the understood, by which consciousness awakens.
The result of perceiving is both the "what" of what we have
perceivedwhich is conceptual and can originate in our intuitive thinkingand the feeling that the perceived is real.
44. See Steiner, A Road to Self-Knowledge (GA 16), chapter 1; Study of Man (GA
293) (London: Rudolf Steiner Press. 1966). lecture of August 29, 1919: The Philosophy of Freedom (GA 4), chapters 4 and 6 and Appendix of 1918.
90
6. Further comparisons reveal that, in thinking, we are dealing only with our own attention', it is all that is required for
effective thinking. Perception, however, requires the activity
of a sense organ in addition to our attention. Usually, people
consider only the sense organ, even though it is a fundamental
insight for a theory of sensory perception thatas we all
notice frequentlyeven if our sense organs are receptive, we
do not perceive anything unless our attention is "there" also.
Even though all the necessary physical and physiological processes are taking place in the sense organs and in the part of
the nervous system connected to them, there is still no perception without attention. These processes may be necessary for
perception, but they are not sufficient in themselves to make it
happen.
Our thinking is also accompanied by physiological processes in the brain. The source of these processes, however, is
not in the external environment; they are activated by thinking
itself. As we have discussed in chapter 1, believing that these
processes are our thinking or its cause, would lead us merely
to an input/output system. This raises the question of the origin
of the input; that is, we would have to ask what initiates and
controls the physiological processes in the brain. In this brainbased model, "logic" would correspond to physiological lawfulness; in that case, we could neither speak of " l o g i c " nor of
physiological laws because both of these require a reference
point, a subject, independent of physiology.
7. The two feelings we have discussed, the feeling of evidence and the feeling of reality, cannot be proven, nor can their
content; such proof is neither possible nor necessary. Something that is self-evident to us cannot be proven any further
beyond that, and we cannot, and do not need to, prove the
existence of something our sense of reality tells us is there. In
The Character
of Perceptual
Reality
91
our attempts to develop such proofs, we would only resort

again to those two feelings, which we are trying to prove.
The feeling of evidence gives us a degree of certainty in
cognition that is never achieved in perception. The assertion
that "the inductive method never leads to certainty in knowle d g e " underlies all modern scientific theories. Yet this dictum
is supposed to be accepted unchallenged as certaintywhich
shows that in thinking, evidence can indeed lead to definite,
certain results, a fact that is often ignored and even denied.
This feeling of evidence applies to what is imperceptible
and immaterial. In contrast, the sense of reality seems to
apply above all to the material realm. Closer examination,
however, shows that what our senses mediate for usthe sensory qualities, the form, or the concept (i.e., the " w h a t " of the
percept), and even the feel of the percept in the sense of
touchis also " i m m a t e r i a l . "
The feeling of reality originates in the part that is not conveyed by the senses, the part we call, rightly or wrongly, the
"material." In other words, we do not experience the percept as
real because as a "what," as a concept, it lies on the plane of
the past: but, we believe the percept exists because we have
experienced the sense of reality while we perceived it.
45
It is easy to see that our higher senses "read" something

immaterial out of the "raw material" provided by the lower
sensesfor example, speech sounds, thoughts, and the identity of (another's) I. We are vaguely aware that the same is true
for the middle senses, and this led people to believe that the
secondary qualities conveyed by these senses are merely subjective and unreal. Ever since Galileo's time, only those qualities that seemed accessible to the sense of touch were
considered as primary, as "real"; of course, this observation is
45. See Steiner, The Riddle of Man (GA 20), chapter entitled "New Perspectives."
92
also incorrect. In fact, our sense of touch conveys such undifferentiated impressions that we can say it does not, by itself,
really convey anything except the point where our body
touches an object. We perceive the object's qualities, such as
its roughness, hardness, and so on, only with the help of other
senses, such as the sense of movement.
8. Perceptions are often connected with feelings. For the
most part, these feelings are "self-feeling," or "selfs e n s i n g , " and not cognitive: for example, desires, sympathies, hate, and envy. The other part is "cognitive" and feels
the "that" out there, as for example also in passive artistic
activity or in the feeling of evidence. In cognitive exercises,
too, cognitive feelings are awakened. Both of these feelings
self-feeling and cognitive feelingare "powerful" because
they do not appear on the plane of past consciousness. That is
why thoughts are powerless over the self-feeling feelings,
which appear as inevitable as percepts. Thoughts can at most
hint at what cognitive feelings convey, if they can describe it
at all.
46
In comparison to the two feelings just described, the sense of

reality seems to be a third quality. Looking at it with heightened
attention, we see that the sense of reality does not appear during
the first phase of perception when we are given over to the
object of perception. During this phase, we are one with the
"object," as we later call it. In this first phase, we are still at one
with it in reality without noticing it, however. This state is similar to living in a dream reality without realizing it. This phase of
perception is a remnant of the soul gesture in the "first" reality.
In the second phase of perception, when we are fully conscious and "within ourselves" and " k n o w " conceptually what
46. See Kuhlewind, The Life of the Soul, chapter 2.
93
we perceive, we experience reality in contrast to something

unreal. The first experience then breaks into, on the one hand,
feeling oneself within the body and, on the other, the feeling of
reality that applies to objects outside ourselves. Both of these
sensations are only vague.
The breaking up of our "first" experience of reality brought
about the constellation of touch, namely, the undifferentiated
sensation of our own body surface and of the object's surface.
Cognizing this, we are led to observe the experience of touch.
9. Of all our senses, the sense of touch is the most self-sensing one; that is, in touching we sense the perceiving organ. We
know with which part of our body we are touching something. In contrast, we can observe the function of the eyes or
the ears only through experiments guided by our thinking.
Accordingly, the sense of touch "tells" us almost nothing
about what is perceived except that it is "not m e . " The sense of
touch confronts us with a world outside of o u r s e l v e s .
47
What the sense of touch conveys is extreme otherness, and

therefore it cannot enter our soul immediately. Every other
sense communicates a deeper "immersion" into what is being
transmitted; the sense of touch, however, makes us aware of
the boundary of the body. In the sense of touch, the balance
between information about what is perceived and self-sensingwhich we can easily assess for all our sensestends
toward the extreme of self-sensing. In terms of "egoity" or
self-sensing the sense of touch takes first place among the
senses. As the intensity of touch increases, the process
becomes painful, to the point of being wounding.
Except for the higher senses, which assimilate the material
provided by the middle senses, all the other senses can be
47. See Steinen Anthroposophie: Ein Fragment, chapter 3.
94
injured and their normal functioning disrupted by excessive

stimulation.
This disruption is almost always due to physical influences.
This means that in all sensory activity (excluding the three
higher senses), the lower senses, which monitor and regulate
the condition of the bodyabove all, the sense of touchare
to some degree resonating and correspondingly affected. We
may not be aware of this cooperation among the senses if the
individual organ is not affected more intensely than usual; nevertheless, it is there. Because of this participation of the lower
senses, all the other senses also provide self-sensing in addition
to the perceptual qualities they convey. The more the lower
senses are involved, the less differentiated and expressive will
our perception be.
48
The Functioning of the Human Senses

On the basis of the previous and following observations, we
can recognize that the senses are compound formations consisting of a sense organ, whose physical vehicle we can identify more or less e x a c t l y , and of our specific, qualitatively
differentiated attention, which is instructed in early childhood
through higher concepts. That is, children learn to be attentive
to qualities, for example, to color.
49
Insofar as the sensory world and its things consist of qualities, particulars ("that") rather than of "substances"in other
words, insofar as they are configurations, "are thus," are
48. The sense of movement can be disturbed in connection with other senses, such as
the sense of balance. The sense of life can be. disrupted through artificially raising or
lowering the sensation of life; as a result, its regulative function can cease.
49. Rudolf Steiner, Die geistigen Hintergrunde der Menschlichen Geschichte (GA 170)
(Dornach, Switzerland: Rudolf Steiner Verlag, 1964), lecture of September 2, 1916;
and Karl Konig, Sinnesentwicklung mid Leibeserfahrung (Stuttgart: Verlag Freies Geistesleben, 1978).
95
idea-likewe can perceive and know them with the attention of our I-being, which is adapted and qualified to perceive
configuration, thusness, and ideas. The sense organs by themselves, on the other hand, are not capable of cognizing these,
because ideality can be cognized only by the human spirit, by
the I. Even the elements of things, the sensory qualities, are
ideal; therefore our instructed attention is obviously the vehicle for all our perceptions. The sense organs, then, have a different function, one that is indispensable for conscious
perception. After all, our attention and our sense organs have
to work together for conscious perception to come about.
The physical-physiological processes in the sense organs
correspond more or less to the physical contact in the sense of
touch.
The processes taking place in the brain when we are thinking also correspond to touch. However, these processes are set
in motion only by thinking itself. These processes taking place
in the brain mirror and, at the same time, immobilize and dull
intuitive t h i n k i n g , which thus sinks down onto the plane of
the past. The more intuitive thinking is, the fewer traces it will
leave in our physical organism and the more it will free itself
from the body.
50
We do not perceive the physical processes in the brain or

those in the sense organs; they are not part of our finished
thoughts or our perceptions. Except for higher stages of perception and cognition, we normally become conscious of our
finished thoughts only as they are being mirrored. As we have
discussed, thoughts themselves cannot originate in the "mirror." Therefore we can discover, in the process of becoming
conscious of our thinking, a subtle kind of "touching" that
50. See Steiner, The Riddle of Man (GA 20), "New Perspectives"; The Case for
Anthroposophy (GA 21), chapter 1.
96
evokes self-sensing, albeit much more subtly than physical

touching does.
To examine these relations in perception we have to study
the two phases of perception separately. Both phases affect the
sense organs, and in the second phase the conceptual activity
also initiates the processes in the brain that accompany our
thinking. These processes do not cause the sensation of reality
because it never arises without perception. Neither does it
originate in the processes in the sense organs; if it did, we
would already have the sensation of reality in the first phase of
perception, and even in the absence of attention. Therefore, the
physiological processes, which cause immobilization and dulling, cannot evoke the sensation of reality. After all, as something present, the sensation of reality by definition is not
immobilized, dulled, or mirroredif it were, it would not give
us the impression of reality.
The sensation of realitythis may be observeddevelops
in the second phase of perception, when our soul life is "within
ourselves." In this phase, our instructed senses, or our activities of mental representation and association, form concepts
and add them to the perceptual world. These concepts developed in modern times are merely substitute concepts, mere
names and mental pictures. The plane of the past of our consciousness refuses, filters out, or "dams u p " the higher concepts of nature and those of the materials of man-made objects
(see chapter 2, "Regarding Concepts"); but it does not immobilize themin fact, they cannot be immobilized precisely
because they are higher concepts.*
These powerful concepts do not enter the plane of the past.
Yet what we have left behind remains alive and retains its
character of "presence." It meets the same destiny as that of
* See Kuhlewind, The Life of the Soul, chapter 2. See note 46.
97
all high inspirations and possibilities we do not seize, even

though we could.
The Fate of Higher Ideas

In the past, people did not perceive the same sphere of the
world as real that we do. At one time, they experienced the
gods as completely real. Much later, universals were considered fundamental realities even though people no longer understood them functionally when they were used as concepts of
nature. In those times what appeared to be real but was conceptless was called " m a y a " or illusion. What was then called
illusion is identical with what we now take to be solid reality.
Word and world are one in the first phase of the development
of consciousness, which has lasting effects that are perceptible
in children even in our time. For instance, children, and most
adults, easily find their way back into the world of fairy tales,
especially if the tales are told with imaginative inner conviction. Every time literature stirs us and evokes our sympathy, it
is a faint sign that the magic of the word is working.
The world stage we know later on consists of space and
time, the barely graspable fragments of the former unified
experience of the world. This is revealed by the fact that we
can find neither the place nor the moment when or where the
world becomes a percept. After all, in space and time we can
find only temporal-spatial processes that are already percepts.
We cannot ascertain when and where these processes "change"
into processes of consciousness simply because the latter do
not originate out of the former but are independent activities.
The great change in our experience of reality occurs gradually, as the abyss between the plane of the present and that of
the past forms. The processes of consciousness embed themselves ever more deeply into the physical organism, where
98
they cause increasingly intense physiological processes. As a

result, the processes of cognition (attention) are subdued and
mirrored:
In conformity with their original nature, mental pictures
[here: ideas] are part of our soul life, but we cannot
become conscious of them in the soul unless the soul
consciously uses its spiritual organs. So long as the original nature of these mental pictures remains living, the
pictures themselves remain unconscious in the soul. The
soul lives through them but cannot know anything of
them. To become conscious soul experiences for ordinary
consciousness, the pictures must reduce their own life.
Such a reduction occurs with every sensory perception.
Thus, every time the soul receives a sense impression, the
life of the mental pictures is subdued, and the soul consciously experiences this subdued mental picture as the
vehicle of a cognition of external reality.
51
According to spiritual science, we have another relationship

to the perceptual world besides the sensory one:
The intrinsic nature of this [other] relationship does not
enter ordinary consciousness. Nevertheless, it exists as a
living, supersensible connection between us and seasonally perceived objects. What lives in us as a result of this
relationship is subdued by our mental organization and
turns into a mere "concept." The abstract mental picture is
the reality which has died down in order to be represented
within ordinary consciousness. Although we live within
this reality in sensory perception, we do not become
51. Sec Steiner. The ( use for Anthroposopliy (GA 21). chapter 1.
The Character
99
conscious of it in our lives. An inner necessity of our soul

makes our representational mental pictures abstract. Reality gives us something living, and we "deaden" the part of
it that falls into our ordinary consciousness.
We can then ask what happens to the part that is not "deadened/* When we ascribe real existence to a tree, for example,
we do so not on the basis of the relationship between what we
see and our eyes. Rather, this judgment about the existence
ofin this casea tree is based on another relationship
between ourselves and the object. Ordinary consciousness,
however, experiences distinctly and clearly only the first relationshipbetween our eyes and the tree we see. The other
relationship remains dim and subconscious; it manifests only
in the result, that is, in our acknowledgment of the "green tree"
as really existing. In fact, every percept that leads to such a
judgment is based on a twofold relationship between ourselves
and the world of objects.
5
In the first phase of perceptionwhen we are given over to

the objectthis twofold relationship consists, on the one hand,
in sensing the processes in the sense organs (which we know
from physiology) and, on the other hand, in the processes of
attention, or the I. The actual perceiving takes place in these
attentional processes, and we become conscious of it when it is
mirrored by the ones in the sense organs. In the second phase
of perception, the processes in our brain accompanying our
conceptual activity reduce or dim part of the attentional processes. The concepts formed there are of a past character, and
we have therefore called them substitute concepts.
The part of the perceptual process that is not dimmed and
reduced consists of the powerful ideas standing behind the
52. Ibid., chapter 4.3.
53. Ibid., chapter 4, and see also Anthroposophie: Ein Fragment, Appendix.
100
phenomena of nature. These ideas are analogous to the functional ideas behind man-made objects. They are not "grasped"
or "conceived," yet enter our consciousness through the
sensesnot through the sense organsalbeit only in metamorphosed form. To gain a clearer understanding of this metamorphosis, we will briefly discuss the nature of these ideas.
When we conceive a new idea, a "clear and bright" will is
doubtlessly active in this production. The cognitive feeling of
evidence guides the intuition in our thinking. In other words,
the three soul functions of thinking, feeling, and willing form a
unity in the act of intuition, but they break apart in our mirrored
consciousness. Similarly, we can expectand observation confirms thisthat the ideas behind nature address all three human
soul functions. A firm, unchanging creational will stands behind
every natural p h e n o m e n o n , and we adapt our will to this will
of the world. "In experiencing the process [of the perception of
nature], we realize that through this reversal of our will, our
soul takes hold of a spiritual element outside itself."
54
55
The feeling of the cosmic word, the phenomena of nature,

develops into the undifferentiated but living sense of reality
whose development we shall consider later. Thoughts that are
not understood become " i m a g e s " of nature, for example, "audible" or "smell" images, and so onwritten or spoken signs we
do not understand and cannot "read-together" or integrate and
that we try to guess at with our substitute concepts.
As we have seen, the more intensely our senses are affected,
the more their functioning tends to be disturbed and exposed to
pain and injury. Now we will examine what happens when we
54. See Steiner, The World of the Senses and the World of the Spirit (GA 134) (Spring
Valley, N.Y.: Anthroposophie Press, 1979), lecture of December 28, 1911; The Mission of the Archangel Michael (GA 194), lecture of November 30, 1919; Study of Man
(G A 293), lecture of August 23, 1919.
55. See Steiner. The Riddle of Man (GA 20). "New Perspectives."
The Character
101
enhance the quality on the other branch of the twofold relationship, namely, in the activity of our attention.
Ancient science investigated the hierarchy of the senses starting from the lower senses and proceeding upward. It examined
their "why," their intention, but ultimately their investigation
was aimed at the " w h o " of this intention. The impressions
transmitted by the middle senses were considered a system of
signs that one could read. Cognition was the investigation of
this speech or writing of the godsof its meaning. Cognition
dealt with ideas. During that period people knew from experience that ideas do not emerge accidentally, independently of a
person. Therefore, they spoke of the I-related idea, the word.
The world was wordlike, word-natured. Cognition, then, was a
dialogue with nature; people sensed creative beingsor at least
their representatives: nature beings, such as nature gods, mountain gods, river gods or spiritsbehind nature.
However, the above-mentioned transformation of our consciousness caused the language concepts concerning nature to
dry up into mere names. As a result, the former perceptual
world of signs turns into one of things. And as this happens,
the dialogue with nature ends because if the perceptual world
consists of things rather than ideas, then no beings stand
behind our percepts. Our investigation no longer proceeds in
an upward movement. What was formerly considered raw
material provided by the middle senses or the sense of touch
now itself becomes "the reality." It is no longer complemented
with ideasor so it seems.
In truth, however, we simply fail to notice that this "reality" is interwoven with ideas. Nevertheless, this "reality" is
endowed with the feeling of reality, which originates in the
higher, comprehending, yet dreamlike participation in the
perceptual world, an experience not accompanied by selfawareness and still part of a unified existence. The higher
102
feeling of evidence developed into the sensation of reality

accompanying our percepts. At the same time, our increasing
capacity to be aware of our body grew into the abovedescribed self-sensing (see also chapter 7).
Today, the twelve senses define twelve separate realms of
experience in the adult; there are almost no transitions between
these realms. In contrast, the sensory system of childrenand
of people in ancient timesis organized differently; they are
basically all sense organ.* In children and in ancient peoples,
the twelve senses are not yet separated. Moreover, there were
other qualities in addition to the twelve senses that have later
disappeared, namely, the transitions between those senses. The
senses that later became the upper senses, such as the sense for
the I (of another being) or the sense for concepts, are active
within the middle and the lower ones. As a result, perception is
filled with ideas and pertains to beings. Of course, it is not
"filled with ideas" in our modern sense of the phrase; rather,
we find an echo of this condition in artistic activity.
Even though the senses separate later, they still work
together, each conveying "raw material" upward, to the next
higher senses and ultimately to the I-sense. This explains the
characteristic questions of ancient science. With the further
development of consciousness, however, the senses cease to
work together, and each now remains, to begin with, without
any definite direction at all.
Thereafter, an impulse we do not have to describe in more
detail h e r e leads to a tendency to explain everything from
below, by mechanical effects. This tendency typically asks
5 6
* See note 22.

56. See Steiner. Three Streams in Human Evolution (GA 184) (London: Rudolf Steiner
Press. 1965). lectures of October 11 and 12, 1918; The Michael Mystery (GA 26), following leading thought 173 (March 29, 1925]; How Do I Find the Christ (GA 182)
(New York: Anthroposophie Press, 1941), lecture of October 16. 1918; (GA 211. lecture of June 11.1922).
The Character
of Perceptual
Reality
103
"what is it made of?" or "what causes it?" This turning of our

gaze toward things reveals a will hostile to the word. Analogously, the thinking or perceiving person has the inclination to
reduce human spiritual capacities and achievements to physical
and physiological causes. Higher ideas (and ideality as such)
are rejected, though they continue nevertheless to be an active,
powerful force. Now, however, they are compelled to exert
their metamorphosed influence in the depths of the subconscious part of the soul. We can see this in the feeling of reality,
which is inseparably connected with the act of perception.
Regarding the senses, it may be said that, since the higher
ideas are not "understood" or taken in by the higher senses,
they turn to the middle and lower senses, leaving an "impression" upon them. As this "pressure" is passed down through
the ladder of the senses, it becomes more and more material
and increasingly resembles the impression of physical t o u c h .
When this "pressure" reaches the lower senses, particularly the
sense of touch, the typical sensation of reality appears.
57
Still, the lower senses participate weakly in every sense

CO
perception;* in fact, all the senses are always to some extent involved in perception although one sense definitely
predominates. For example, when we do not understand our
partner in a conversation, we hear only words, his or her
voice. In other words, the percept begins to descend the ladder of the senses. In the same way, people who cannot read
see only the black shapes of the letters on the page.
The power of the ideas of nature not only gives us the sense
of reality, but it also enables us to perceive in the first place.
These willing, sensing, and living ideas create forms of will,
sensation, and lifethat is, the mineral, animal, and plant
kingdomsand are active within them. Our attention can
57. See Steiner. Anthroposophie: Ein Fragment (GA 45). chapter 6.
58. See Steiner. The Case for Anthroposophy (GA 21), chapter 4.
104
unite itself with these ideas; however, we are usually conscious only of that part of an encounter that has been subdued
by its physical and physiological effects. Nowadays, our
senses function only when they are affected by the mineralphysical influence of nature and in this way assist our attention. Thus, we can describe the share of attention in perception
as follows: "Perception is the boundary where our thoughts
touch the creative thoughts o u t s i d e . "
Our ordinary thinking, which belongs to the plane of the
past, takes us to the boundary of the perceptible, which is alive
and therefore cannot be comprehended by our thinking. Perception, then, begins at the point beyond which thinking cannot penetrate into the creativearrestedcosmic thinking.
59
Thus, we can think of perception as a continuous intuition,

for which the senses keep the entrance open. The part of perception that is not understood becomes what is perceptible;
it is perceptibility itself. In other words, we approach the
perceptual world like a meditative sentence we read only
for its informational content. Its higher meaning thus remains
hidden because it does not emerge unless the activity of our
consciousness complements the perceptible part of the sentence on the appropriate level.
In the process of perception, this higher meaning appears
as a picture that is incomprehensible for ordinary thinking
it appears as percept. Because it is not understood, this picture
is interwoven with high concepts; after all, it consists of sensory qualities. However, these concepts permeating the picture
are unthinkable for the plane of the past of our consciousness.
They do not suffice to understand the meaning of phenomena
59. Rudolf Steiner, Foundations of Esotericism (GA 93a) (London: Rudolf Stciner
Press. 1982), lecture of October 12, 1905; and Spiritual Science as a Foundation for
Social Forms (GA 199) (Hudson, N.Y.: Anthroposophic Press. 1986), lectures of
August 8 and 14, 1920.
105
of nature. We can attempt to let this meaning take hold of us

through perceptual meditation or pure p e r c e p t i o n .
The further down we move along the scale of the senses,
the poorer the sensory field will be in named concepts. For
example, in German we have seven colors for the sense of
sight, three or four words to describe the impressions of the
sense of taste, but not even one for the sense of smell. The
reason is that the latter senses are addressed by very high
ideas that do not enter our mirrored consciousness. Conscious spiritual development will give these senses particular
significance.
The concepts belonging to the senses are increasingly powerful the lower we descend in the hierarchy of the senses.
Higher meaning participates faintly, and usually unnoticed, in
every act of human perception.
60
61
Understandably, then, the sense of touch, which conveys the

smallest amount of information about the percept to our ordinary consciousness, radiates a sense of being filled with the
feeling for God into our soul"the feeling of being filled with
being as s u c h /
It is the metamorphosis of the creational ideas that causes
the ordinary sensation of touch while the unmetamorphosed
quality resonates faintly in the upper realm of the soul. This is
true for all the senses: what they convey to consciousness is
always accompaniedas though by an overtoneby a higher,
at first incomprehensible, quality.
60. Rudolf Steiner, The Boundaries of Natural Science (GA 322) (Hudson, N.Y.:
Anthroposophie Press, 1983), lectures of October 2 and 3, 1920. See also this book,
chapter 10.
61. Rudolf Steiner, The Riddle of Humanity (GA 170) (London: Rudolf Steiner Press.
1990), lecture of August 13, 1916.
62. See Steiner, Spiritual Science as a Foundation for Social Forms, lecture of August
8, 1920.
106
T H E L O G O S - S T R U C T U R E OF THH W O R L D
The Wordlike Character of Nature

Wherever we find qualities, similarity, differences, questionableness, analogy, homology, relationship, we also find ideas.
To our questions concerning nature we do not expect a "something" but a conceptual answer, just as our question was also a
conceptual one. Wherever we find ideas, the Word or wordwill of I-beings is or was active. In the "first reality," language
assured the wordlike character of the world by structuring and
integrating the given world as a whole, of which language
itself is a part. Therefore world and language must match or
harmonize. The one original language, however, has branched
out into a variety of languages, and all of them are suited to
their own world as well as to that of other languages. None of
these languages is lacking anything.
Accordingly, the basic structure of nature corresponds to the
common element that stands behind all languages. This common element does not necessarily appear in the sense-perceptible part of languages; it lies in their totality, which comprises
both the hidden and the perceptible parts. Nature and languages have a common source; this is the message of the first
verses of the prologue of the Gospel of St. John. By implication, then, the language of nature is not identical with any of
the languages we human beings speak. To understand the language of nature requires raising cognition above and beyond
these languages.
6 . The Development of
I-Consciousness
P e r c e p t i o n and thinking exist only for someone to the extent

that they manifest in a human, i.e., discontinuous form. They
adopt such a form by being "wordlike." "Wordlike" here does
not, of course, refer to the appearing part of a word but to the
pattern-configuration or ideal character of every form of language, whose appearance consists of words, sounds, sentences, structures, discontinuities, and connections. From this
we can already see that human attention is an attention for
what is word-natured. Indeed, transparent consciousness contains only what is wordlike, "wording" elements, even though
there is not necessarily a corresponding word for each of these
elements in our languages.
The attention that is open to what is wordlike is a faculty of
the I; we could also call it the primal substance of the I. But
this "substance"what is attention made of?develops
into
an I only if it becomes conscious self-experience. For this our
attention to the "other," |the external object], must be interrupted. For if the attention is continuously given over to the
"other," there can be no self-experience. Here, too, discontinuity is necessary.
This kind of discontinuity, however, does not simply develop
as a result of learning to speak and so does not arise from the
mastery of the organs of speech and movement. Although our
sense of movement is essential for the purposeful movements
of the speech and other organs, this in itself does not yet lead to
108
conscious self-experience. Through the sense of movement we

"perceive," and thus control, our organism's own movements:
this enables us to carry out specific movements without having
to call on any other senses, such as the sense of sight.
Attention that is open and receptive must be interrupted.
The inflow of the givenof all wordlike entitiesinto the
inner and outer senses must cease and start up again in rhythmic intervals. Sleep creates such a stop in our attention's dedication. When we are asleep, our attention withdraws from the
senses to its original sphere, the realm of the superconscious.
Thus, during sleep we do not experience attention consciously,
but only superconsciously. When we awaken it returns, gradually bringing more and more superconscious content with it.
Eventually, our waking attention cannot help noticing that it
has been interrupted.
At first the discontinuity seems to be only a gap. Within this
gap our attention then creates an "object" out of itself. It is the
change in awareness, in fact, that makes our attention an
"object" for itself. We are then able to "notice" independently,
and without any "given," the part of our attention that works in
the superconscious realm even when we are awake. This superconscious part of our attention structures the perceptual given
and "reads it together" or synthesizes it, and it is this inner act,
the reading itself, of which we then become conscious.
At the beginning of the development of consciousnessin
childhood and in ancient humanitywe notice this inner act
only fleetingly and only at the periphery of our consciousness.
The awareness is clothed in divine, then in semidivine, form;
we sense it only faintly in cognitive feelings, initially as a gap
among the given sensations, as our separate self.
As this awareness of the gap becomes independent of outer
conditions, it becomes an inner experience. In the course of
the development of our consciousness, this inner experience
The Development
of I-Consciousnesss
109
which became inner experience because it began to be independent from the given elementschanges into the duality of
mind (intellect) and soul (or heart). At first, the soul is still
experienced as a perceptive cloud of feeling that inspires the
intellect. However, in the age of the consciousness soul the living, unreflecting mind subdivides into two planes of consciousness, that of the pastwith its clear outlines, on which
we moderns mostly "live" and of which we are conscious
and that of the present, which we can also call the imaginative
plane, which has nowadays shifted into the superconscious
realm. Every understanding and every intuition comes from
this plane of the present like a flash of grace. This plane is also
the source of the superconscious " h o w " of our thinking, and
every intuition, every new idea, is actually a condensation of
this "how."
Along with the separation of mind into past and present, the
soul or heartnot today's soul, but the cognizing soulalso
subdivides: into cognitive feeling and self-sensing feeling.
Cognitive feeling lives above the plane of the present; selfsensing feeling belongs to the plane of the past and is part of
the subconscious of the modern soul. Therefore it is aware of
itselfrather than of something out therein emotions such
as envy, ambition, and so on.
Since the plane of the present has now moved into the
superconscious realm, a change from one plane to the other
makes discontinuities possible, even when we are fully awake
and conscious. To remain conscious, our consciousness must
at least briefly touch the level of the present repeatedly. If it
remained continually on the level of the past, our consciousness would no longer be "conscious." This is how the structure
and capacity typical of the consciousness soul develop:
namely its ability to reflect upon itself, to look from the plane
of the present onto that of the past, and to experienceat the
110
periphery of consciousnessthe plane of the present in touch

with the plane of the past.
The ability to reflect on thinking, language, and consciousness has led to the development of the sciences typical of the
age of the consciousness soule.g., epistemology, linguistics,
and psychology. The I becomes a reality through this ability of
conscious reflection; it realizes itself when the given part of
the I, that is, attention, is actually connected with the idea of
the I. This is analogous to how we realize a word or a text; we
connect the perceptible part of the word or textthe given
with the meaning from which it has been separated in the act
of being expressed.
The real connection of attention to the idea of the I can occur
only on the plane of the present, in the experience of living
thinking, perceiving, or mental representation. After all, as we
saw above, the term "reality" does not apply to the plane of the
past. The idea of the true I lights up only in these experiences
on the plane of the present. However, it is preceded by preliminary I-experiences that are reflected in the various definitions of
the I in the course of the development of consciousness.
The idea of each I-being, which becomes connected with
the given of the I, the attention, is entirely individual. I-beings
are not a species. As I-beings, each of us belongs to his or her
own species, which consists of only one specimen. This fact is
reflected in the individuality of our names; unlike all other
nouns, our names are the only concepts, the only words, that
do not have a general meaning.
7.
Self-Sensing
1 he Ps experience of itself creates the I; for without knowing

of itself, an I-being cannot be a reality. Nevertheless, selfexperience is hardly ever realized in its pure form, not even in
its preliminary stages. This is because another, parallel process
occurs as we take hold of the body through the I when we learn
to speak. This other process has no direct connection to speaking and is thus not caused by it. Rather, this second process
grows from the temptation of the I to sense itself in the body it
has taken hold of and to enjoy this sensation.
To move the limbs purposefully, the I-being must control
and direct them. This it does through the sense of movement.
The senses are the cognitive functions of sensation; they provide cognitions without current intellectual activity. For this
purpose they have free (cognitive) powers of sensitivity that
are not engaged in controlling biological functions. In these
powers the I can express and articulate itself.
As far as movements are concerned, we human beings can
imitate all forms of movement. The sense of our own movements acts through powers of sensation that " s e n s e " the
movements of our organs and can thus control or direct them.
This "sensing" does not become the above-mentioned self sensing because, paradoxically, we do not feel it as a sensation. For instance, when we write or play the violin, we are
not usually aware of our hands; our movements are controlled
superconsciously.
112
These superconscious powers of sensation, which are not

focused on themselves, become self-sensing when the I-being
mixes with them and with the powers of sensation of its biological beingwhich in themselves are not self-sensing
eitherrather than simply directing them and learning from
them about the body's movements. In the process, these cognitive forces, which are usually directed outward, develop an
"irregular" center, group themselves around it, and lose their
original outer-directed focus. That is, they turn into egotistical self-sensing. In contrast to the I, the resulting formation
can be called the " e g o " ; it is an attention focused on itself,
one that is not cognitive but merely self-sensing.
This self-sensing develops without our conscious intention,
and we remain unconscious of its consequences. After all,
nobody wants to be envious, vengeful, or power-hungry. In
contrast to our superconscious capacities or powers, this whole
sphere is called the subconscious. It consists of formed sensations, inclinations, and instinctive, compelling sensation "intentions" that urge us to repeat them. Since all of these are already
fully formed, they are not cognitive.
The development of the subconscious follows as a result of
this self-sensing. In the subconscious realm, free cognitive
forces, of which the I has not consciously taken hold, mass
together out of egoity. Modern human beings must do something with these forces by themselves. In earlier times, they
were still controlled and ordered through the superconscious. In
the animal kingdom we find virtually no instincts or passions
that are harmful to the animals' health or biological organism.
Such instincts and passions can exist only when forces usually
serving the biological organism become free and undefined
through the presence of the I, but are not used by the I.
In children these forces still function as undivided forces of
attention. This is the reason why children can learn to speak
Self-Sen.si tig
113
and to think with such unparalleled ease. This is also the reason why adults no longer have this wonderful ability. In part,
indeed for the most part, the above-mentioned forces are transformed, in adults, into self-sensing ones, and the attention is
split and divided between world and egoity.
Self-sensing is possible only for I-beings. The sensations of
animals are completely preformed and serve only their biological life. Animals have no freedom in sensationthey can
only react. Thus, they cannot distinguish between sensation
caused by inner sources and those caused by outer sources.
Always, their whole sensitivity reacts and is active. There is no
uninvolved, free entity that could be aware of or experience
such reactions. Therefore, we find egoity only in I-beings. The
ego is the reflected, self-sensing form of the I; it is self-sensing
instead of self-aware.
63
63. Self-sensing and self-awareness, or ego-consciousness and I-consciousness, arc

described in detail in The Philosophy of Freedom (GA 4), chapter 5.
8. Changes in the Given
T h e planes of the past and the present, which are separated in

the consciousness s o u l , were still intermingled or mixed in
the mind-soul. The process of thinking was then still given to
human beings. Today thinking enters consciousness superconsciously from the plane of the presentthat is, without our
awareness. Formerly, because of the mixed structure of the
mind-soul, the process of thinking was given to people in a
dreamlike manner, without clear outlines, and people could not
hold their own in this process. Their experience resembled the
way we experience ourselves when we dream. Words and concepts were one. They were experienced as they arose, as they
entered consciousness. Nowadays, we understand words and
concepts in the same way too, but for us their entry into consciousness remains superconscious. We are clearly conscious
only of their result, of what we have understood: of course, by
then this has lost its life and become dead. Because of children's dreamlike experience of these processes, their soul life is
alive in a way that adults have lost.
64
Similarly, before the soul separated into cognitive and selfsensing feelings, the experience of evidence in the field of religion was given to people in the form of "faith." Our experience of evidence in mathematics or logic is a vestige of this.
64. See Khlewind, Das Licht des Wortes, chapter entitled "Das Leben der Bewusstseinsseele."
Changes
in the Given
115
Once cognitive feeling has moved into the superconscious

realm, divinity is no longer given. In earlier periods of the
development of consciousness, divinity was given, as we can
see, for example, in the continuous intervention of the Homeric gods in human destiny and in the speaking of the godhead
to people in the Old Testament. Nowadays, we become conscious of what enters our consciousness from the superconscious realm only on the plane of the past. This makes it
impossible for us to experience the cognitive processes of consciousness, or to experience life or being.
At the same time, another change has taken place in the configuration of the soul, namely, the general development of the
subconscious in the last two hundred years or so. This conglomeration of habits extends from the domain of associations through self-sensing feelings and complexes to a deep
layer that can be called "collective," at least as far as our culture is concerned. This layer is the foundation of all other subconscious formations, but it is not the same as Jung's
"collective unconscious." Since this layer is truly collective,
we can perceive it only under special conditions, for example,
through enhanced attention that remains awake without being
mirrored.
The more individual layers of the subconscious send their
impulses into consciousness by means of the self-sensing feelings and the will at their disposal. The collective subconscious, on the other hand, manifests itself above all in thought
formations that are generally accepted as plausible and convincing based on collective sensations; in fact, however, these
thought formations are at least as irrational as the more individual impulses of the subconscious. We cannot reason out
these thought formations consequentially; their persuasive
power is not connected to the feeling of evidence that guides
logical or intuitive thinking.
116
Thus, what is given to us from above, from the superconscious, is joined by what is "given" from below, from the
subconscious. Indeed, what is given from the subconscious
now plays a leading role in human life and has become a world
power. Human beings now live by secondary instincts and
passions, originating in the subconscious. Our thinking could
help us orient ourselves, but it has been influenced by what
comes out of the subconscious and now accepts and spreads
so-called insights and new dogmas as knowledge. As a result,
the inclinations, habits, and addictions originating in our subconscious gain scientific justification.
We do not learn to speak and think "by nature" but by education and the imitation of models. Similarly, everything in
human development, the good and the bad, comes about
through education. For example, certain individuals, our forerunners in the history of thoughtinspired by powers
unknown to themdeveloped trains of thought that then elaborated and coached our collective subconscious impulses.
All inspirations and thoughts that are prompted by our collective subconscious share two characteristic features: they
cannot be thought through logicallythat is, thinking can
penetrate them only up to a certain limitand they give the
sensation of an overwhelming persuasive power that covers
up the fact that we cannot really think them through. We have
good reason to assume a subconscious origin for every
impenetrable, incomprehensible thought, or train of thought.
The whole sphere of egoity is connected to the subconscious.
People do not decide to become egoists; it happens without
our will.
This twofold change in the giventhe shift of both the process of thinking and cognitive feeling into the superconscious
and the arising of the subconsciousadmonishes us to change
our attitude and behavior toward it. Only a free being, or one
Changes in the Given
117
that is at least partially free, can "change" anything. We have

this potential because of the dual-track structure of the consciousness soul. We are protected from direct spiritual impulses
because their source has shifted into the superconscious realm,
and we can protect ourselves from subconscious impulses by
being moral in our thinking and cognition, that is, by "conscientiously" examining and testing whether something can be
thought through to the end, and accepting it as a thought only if
this is indeed the case.
We begin to realize for the first time that we have the possibility to educate ourselves when we experience our freedom in
cognition. After all, cognition must be free; otherwise we
could not determine whether it is truth or error, and we could
not evaluate its results. If all human cognition, including thinking itself, consisted of natural processes, we could not speak of
knowledge at all because natural as well as mechanical processes just run their course; they cannot err, they are simply
conditioned. Moreover, we could not possibly evaluate the
''knowledge" resulting from natural processes because the
evaluation would have to be based on other, but equally conditioned, natural processes. Speaking, in the human sense, would
also be impossible, and even the silence, which could result
from such a so-called insight, would be contradictory precisely
because of this insight. In other words, we could not take any
logical stance since we would be denying our ability to draw
logical and consistent conclusions.
Thinking cannot deny or even limit thinking, just as a word
cannot rob itself of its meaning. And thinking could only be
dethroned by thinking; the word could only be dethroned by
the word.
This fundamental insight leads us toward the sources of
thinking. From this insight it is clear that thinking cannot prove
itself, and the same insight shows the impossibility to deny the
118
independence and irreducibility of thinking. At this point, we

have to decide to begin our self-education precisely with the
education of our capacity for cognition, a decision that implies
the continuation of the activity we have recognized so far as
our only free one.
To approach the superconscious process of thinking more
closely, we have to raise our level of consciousness. The first
question is whether it is possible to do so. This question must
be answered in the affirmative before we take this stepif the
step is to be taken legitimatelythat is, if it is to be thought
through to the end conscientiously and so made secure.
The " h o w " of our thinking is given (see chapter 2), and we
use this "how"the logic of thinkingas a superconscious
ability to think based on evidence and logicalness without,
however, being able to explain or account for it. Thus, the
" h o w " of thinking is one of the "signs of transcendence" that
we can find empirically in o u r s e l v e s . Indeed, it is the most
fundamental of these signs, and we can find and understand all
the other signs with the help of this one.
65
In more than one sense, our thinking is discontinuous. To

clarify our thinking for ourselves or for others, we have to
articulate it in thoughts and express it through compound sentences, sentences, and words, all of which consist of parts and
are thus discontinuous. Before we express something, however, we must have the meaning to be expressed; otherwise we
could not put it into words or formulate it. For example, we
could not ascertain whether our formulation is correct or, as
sometimes happens, inadequate. To make such an evaluation,
we have to compare the discontinuous expression to something we are not yet fully conscious of, something that is not
yet a finished thought and is therefore not on the plane of the
65. Sec P. L. Berger, A Rumor of Angels, (New York: Bantam, Doubleday, Dell, 1981).
Changes
in the Given
119
past. This "something" consequently does not have a discon-
tinuous form; nevertheless, it must exist superconsciously, at

the periphery of our consciousness. In a good translation it is
this "meaning" that is transferred into another language.
Meaning, unlike its expression (in one or more sentences),
is a continuum. However, it is not totally unstructured; after
all, its latent structure unfolds in the discontinuity of language.

The continuum is primary while the expression is secondary.
As we understand a text we read or hear, this continuum is
reproduced in us.
Conceivingintuitinga meaning, expressing it in a discontinuous form, as well as reading a text and reproducing its
meaning, all require attention. The meaning that we conceive
is wordlike', that is, it says something. If it were not so, the
I
I
I
I
meaning could not result in the expressionthere would be

nothing there that could be said in the words of a language. In
this way "greater" or "mightier" words descend from the
superconscious into consciousness, that is, into discontinuous
form. Our understanding of a text, on the other hand, ascends

from its discontinuous expression to the more continuous
meaning. In this "ascent," consciousness moves from word to
word, without leaving or forgetting the preceding words, but
also without "remembering" them. The movement of understanding proceeds superconsciously, outside of time; it does
not follow the temporal sequence of the sense-perceptible
w o r d s but retains and anticipates them in a timeless present.
The expression of the intuition flows from this timeless
present into temporality. Thus, our attention alternates
between continuity and discontinuity.
6 6
Our attention alternates in another way also because every

element of discontinuitybe it thoughts, the perceptual world,
66. See Khlewind, Das Licht des Wortes, chapter "Bewegung und Leben.'*
120
or a textoffers an opportunity for our attention to become distracted from our consciously chosen subject. We can direct our
attention to anything we choose; however, as we know from
experience, it is difficult to keep our attention focused on an
uninteresting and unappealing theme. Associations influencing
us from the subconscious realm of the soul distract us against
our conscious will and our conscious intention.
The discontinuous form of attention in thinking, representing, and perceiving makes it possible for these activities to proceed step by step in understanding, thereby freeing these
functions from the necessity of understanding immediately and
intuitively. At the same time, this discontinuous form offers our
subconscious impulses the opportunity to intervene in the flow
of the attention we have consciously directed in a particular
way. This in turn restricts the autonomy of our consciousness
in controlling and maintaining our attention.
At first, attention cannot experience and meet itself in its
discontinuous form; it cannot meet itself (see chapter 6)
because it is constantly interrupted. Our attention is continuously falling out of its present and leaves its traces as a past
for example, in finished thoughts, percepts, mental representations. This development was necessary for the sake of the
growth of I-consciousness.
Once we have learned discontinuous, conceptual thinking
and have become able to synthesize, and once this has brought
us to the structure of the consciousness soul, we can continue
the further development of consciousness through conscious
schooling. For, by this time, because of the structure of the
consciousness soul, we no longer receive anything positive
from the given without effort on our part. Our first goal has to
be to strengthen the autonomy of our consciousness, that is,
to strengthen our attention, a considerable part of which is
caught in subconscious formations and habits.
Changes
in the Given
121
We can realize this goal by concentrating our attention on

objects that are not appealing or interesting in themselves. For
this, we must choose things that we can completely think
through. Man-made objects with their functional ideas are
appropriate for such e x e r c i s e s .
67
To avoid becoming distracted we must picture the object

and think thoughts proper and relevant to it as a preparatory
exercise. The actual concentration on the function or idea of
the object, however, requires that our now-strengthened attention become more continuous. We cannot "think" an idea, such
as an invention, or the function of an object, with interruptions
because it is neither a word nor a picture. That is also why the
idea or function cannot be remembered or repeated; rather, it
requires continuous intuition.
To ensure that an idea stays in our consciousness, our concentrated attention must stay in the immediate present. The
mental image and thought of the object, as well as its idea, are
woven out of our attention; they are this attention. That is why
we must make our attention more and more continuous
through these exercises. Then, with the help of the idea as subject to focus on, we raise our attention to the continuity of the
immediate present.
Our consciousness thus arrives at the " h o w " of thinking,
which is the logic of the discontinuous expression of our
thoughts. The functional idea of the man-made object is given
to us superconsciously in childhood as our ability-to-cognize
all similar objects as the same. Now we seek to raise our consciousness to a level that is usually superconscious.
This answers the question of whether thinking consciousness can come closer to its sources. It also allows us to
67. See Kuhlewind, Stages of Consciousness,

Contemplation."
chapter entitled "Concentration and
122
describe the self-awareness of the I, which was mentioned in

chapter 5, in more detail. When we practice the exercises presented above, we realize that the theme we pictured or thought
of, especially the idea of the chosen object, consists of attention. This attention is concentrated by virtue of the theme and
simultaneously focused on it. In other words, our attention is
focused on itself. We can now experience and perceive it just
like any other percept, because it has been strengthened within
itself. In our attention's encounter with itself, the idea of the I
lights up and is realized. This is how our experience of the I on
the level of the immediate present develops.
This experience is fundamental to our pursuit of spiritual
68
science.
Nevertheless, another experience precedes it, namely, the
insight that our thinking and representing attention is a more
powerful reality than the thought or pictured theme because
the latter is brought forth or maintained by this attention.
While attention cannot experience its own discontinuity
because it is continuously falling out of the reality of the timeless present into the unreality of the past, it can nevertheless
develop toward continuity by exercising. The less attention is
interruptedthe less discontinuous it isthe more alive and
present it becomes and the closer it moves toward the experience of evidence and of itself. Evidence is the property of reality; in other words, reality is self-evident. This points to the
one and common source for realityits effective causeand
the cognition of it. Reality actuates the cognition of itself. But
in the process of cognition, "reality" becomes reality (see
chapter 4). Cognizing and cognized reality coincide and
become one; they are one in our experience of them in the
immediate present: they are this experience.
68. Ibid., chapter entitled "The Fundamental Experience of the Spirit."
Changes in the Given
123
We can also say that in cognizing we realize ourselves in

living self-cognition; this is the source of evidence. In cognizing we become one with what we cognize, or cognizing
cognizes itself rather than something else, because it itself
becomes the "otherness" that is cognized and that ceases to be
"other" in the process of cognition. The feeling of evidence
originates in this realized and experienced identity.
On the level of the pure sciences, such as mathematics,
logic, and geometry, it is clear that the objects of cognition are
created by our cognition itself; and their "cognition" is at the
same time their creation, which occurs intuitivelythrough
thought or representational intuition. Afterward, "reasoning"
can build the steps to bridge the great leap of intuition. This
experience in the sciences corresponds to the realization that
the objects on which we focus our thinking and representing
attention consist of this same attention.
On higher planes of knowledge, the unity of cognition and
its "object" is experienced more and more intensely, up to the
experience of evidence. Thinking and perception also
approach each other, and coincide in the intuition; in our ordinary cognition subject and object appear separated because
thinking and perception are separated. As a result of the intuition, the experience of evidence in the central point of the I
falls, like a shadow, into the plane of the past, and is there
experienced without its reality-of-being; but at least we experience it. Whenever something like this experience occurs, the
shadow of self-evidence may be felt.
Proofs and the necessity to prove things are phenomena of
modern consciousness. Intuition and genius are higher and
more continuous forms of attention. They evolve their theses,
for example, those of mathematics, in one great step. Proofs,
on the other hand, are for those who cannot take the big
stepthe big insightall at once, in one leap. These steps
124
form discontinuities, and every one of these interruptions in

the process of understandingevery step along the w a y
offers new opportunities for error; one does not immediately
understand the whole proposition, but one can comprehend the
evidence of the individual steps. Since we do not understand
the thesis as a whole, even one unnoticed wrong step in the
proof can be enough to " p r o v e " a wrong thesis. Our attention
rests at every connecting link between the steps in the proof.
These connecting points easily allow incorrect turns, or
"ideas" that have not been thoroughly tested and thought
through, to enter in. Upon closer examination, such turns and
"ideas" reveal themselves as unthinkableor would be
unthinkable if we examined themand they disrupt our train
of thought with prejudices, emotional bias, or wishful thinking. After all, the steps of the proof must be connected logically. Since these connections are usually not explicit, they are
rarely examined and we are content with a kind of "common
sense," or with appeals to habitual forms of thinking.
As we saw in chapter 3, language structures our perceptual
world. However, the meaning of the designating words may
have changed in the course of the evolution of human consciousnesseven though they may have retained their outer
form, and their sense may seem unchanged. This kind of
change is not even suspected by linguists because they are
stuck in our modern consciousness. The change I am referring
to here is the change in our relationship to these word-concepts
as well as to the natural phenomena they designate.
For us, the names of objects in nature indicate things. For

instance, the word "oak" now refers to a particular individual
tree, and when we use the word to talk about the genus oak, it
seems to us an abstraction. For ancient humanity the reverse
was the case. Then, the word " o a k " was primarily a real universal, an idea manifested in the phenomenal world in many
Changes
in the Given
125
specimens. That is, "oak" then was not a " n a m e " (as it now is
for us) but a character, a function, a meaningful designation of
a relationship and connection. For us the "oak" remains external; we find it "thinkable" not in itself but only on account of
its outer characteristics. In fact, we think of the oakin contrast to the ideas and functions of man-made objects or mathematical conceptsonly nominalistically.
Formerly, natural phenomena were seen and understood not
as things but primarily as relations. That is, they were understood more as a continuity. Nowadays, however, we perceive
particulars, individual things, as the primary given. Then we
try to find the connections between them in the sphere of
mechanics, rather than reading them on the model of language, of linguistic and textual interconnections, as people in
ancient times did. If we do not read a text, it stands out as
something existential. Only through our reading does a text
become truth. The perceptual world of nature is difficult to
read because of its initially discontinuous structure, which is
largely a result of inadequate concepts.
9.
Meditation
1 he more discontinuous thinking becomes, the more it moves

away from the experience of evidence. This explains why
recent philosophy can deny the existence of evidence in its
thinkingeven though this thinking, in its activity, continuously resorts to its own intrinsic evidence. The gaps in our
attention allow such nonthoughtswhich resemble thoughts
only in their formto creep into our consciousness. At the
same time, these "pauses" in our dedication also offer our
attention the opportunity to notice themas gaps. Then, by
becoming aware of these interruptions in our dedication to the
"other," our attention begins to till these gaps with itself. The
attention perceives its own absence, and in this perception
attention meets itself. Discontinuity thus causes our I-consciousness to light up, on the plane on which our consciousness moves.
In pure thinking, the experience of evidence is identical
with the act of cognition itself: the object and the cognizing are
one. The given, the process in which it is given, and the concept all coincide.
When we read or perceive a text, the evidence lies in our
understanding of the given signs in our reading, or "reading
them together." When we read it, a text becomes obvious to us
as text, regardless of the evidence of its contents.
The experience of evidence in perception is also a kind of
reading. However, we have no concepts for these perceptual
Meditation
127
"textual signs," and therefore we do not even see them as signs.

Instead of reading the signs, we measure and mathematize
them and mistake their mathematical description for an understanding of them. The appropriate concepts rank higher than
others and are more powerful; they are living, sentient, and
willing concepts, which we encounter only in meditation.
The evidence of the perceptual world appears metamorphosed into the conviction that our percepts exist, that they are
real. This is because we cannot think the perceptual world with
our reflected dialectical consciousness, and therefore the part
of perception that is not thought escapes the fate of finished
thoughts. In other words, it does not fall onto the plane of the
past but remains alive and active on the plane of the present
during perception, thus giving it the character of reality. The
true concepts of nature can be grasped only in meditation.
With the exception of technical and scientific terms, words
do not have an unequivocal meaning; rather, a cloud of meanings surrounds them on the plane of thought. When we
employ language merely as a vehicle to convey information,
we use only a fraction of the cloud of meanings surrounding
the words. For instance, the meaning of a word in a particular
sentence is more or less unambiguously defined through the
meaning of the sentence. The corresponding parts of their
cloud of meanings then connect the words within the sentence.
Words are also surrounded by a cloud of feeling, which is
shaped by the sound structure of the language concerned,
above all by its vowels but also by the sound of the word as a
whole. The cloud of meaning and the rhythm also contribute to
the emotional character of words. Poets and writers in particular examine hard, soft, or airy words for their emotional value
and use them accordingly. That is why we cannot express
the meaning of a poem in terms of information. The cloud of
feeling we are talking about here has nothing to do with any
128
psychic "mood"; rather, it points to the sources of the conceptual meaning.

The original or primal meaning of words comprises the
cloud of feelings as well as that of meanings. It belongs not so
much to one particular word as to the words of a word group or
word family that have a common or related root. Children
grasp a word's original meaning when they hear the word used
in a particular way and understand it. After that, they can
understand and employ this word in all its known uses, and
they can even discover new uses appropriate to it.
This means that when adults use a word in its specialized
sense, the original, primal meaning resonates and covibrates
with the specialized meaning, and children then experience it
superconsciously. This continued presence of the primal meaning is particularly apparent in conjunctions and prepositions of
Indo-European languages. In these languages we can see
clearly how each sentence specifies and particularizes the original meaning, which is still present in the background. Indeed,
we can use the same word in consecutive sentences, each time
in a different sense.
The word that appears in the sensory world comes from
the hidden, larger word, from the meaning of the particular
sentence or sentences. If we train ourselves to experience
this meaning consciously and without having to put it into
words, we notice that the meaning in its living fluidity originates in an even more powerful word. The stepsthe ladder
of wordlike entitiesby which the word descended until it
became sense-perceptible can lead us gradually back up to
the W o r d .
6 9
The conscious experience of this "wordless word" is called

meditation. This wordless word is not an abstraction; it is
69. Sec Khlewind. Das Licht des Wortes, chapter "Die Himmelsleiter."
Meditation
129
similar to such creative words as, for example, the ideas of natural phenomena.
In chapter 8 we showed that when we are dealing exclusively with thoughts and linguistic or textual phenomena, reality and truth coincide in the experience of evidence. In the
sphere of perception, on the other hand, reality and truth are
separated, because we cannot fully think through the percept if
it is a part of nature; instead, we need higher concepts. Nevertheless, the outer image of nature, which has qualities and a
lawfulness that can be described even without being read,
leads us to the conclusion that we are dealing with a text.
Wherever we discover differences and similarities, analogies
and relations, we also find concepts, and wherever concepts
appear in the perceptual world, we are dealing with a text.
The truths accessible to modern thinking become conscious
when mirrored by our organism. As a result, these truths have
lost their quality of reality. In contrast, the part of perception
that is initially unthinkable remains aliveprecisely because
we cannot really think itthus kindling the sensation of reality. As this part is active, the sensation of reality it evokes
unites itself with the thinkable part of perception, that is, with
the familiar nominal concepts. As a result, in thinking we have
truth without reality, and in perception we have reality without
truth.
Meditation is an attemptby means of concentration and a
continuity of attention in thinking and representingto reach
a truth saturated with reality in the experience of evidence. In
perception on the other hand, that is to say, in perceptual meditation, the attempt isagain in the experience of e v i d e n c e
to come to a reality saturated with truth. Meditation in any
form always involves words. In fact, even the themes of pictorial and perceptual meditation are wordlike, although we cannot express such " w o r d s " in a particular language.
130
Meditation themes have been conceived with enhanced powers of cognition and are expressed in the form of a text or a picture. In perceptual meditation, we take our theme from nature;
the phenomena of nature are in themselves expressions of
higher concepts. The subjects we choose to meditate on do not
describe facts or refer to a world that is already past. Rather,
they point to the common source of world and cognition, that
is, to the Logos. In the Logos all being is cognition and already
contains the latter. We can cognize and know our outer and
inner worlds because they are Logos worlds and are created
through the Word. The text or theme we meditate on is taken
from a phase of the way the word travels "downward" toward
the world of the past and is then expressed in the words of a
particular language or in a picture. For this reason a meditator
can find the way up to the source of the theme through meditation that is, we find the way into a "wordless" sphere, "wordless" if we define "word" as necessarily always having a sound.
" W o r d " implies structure also in a higher sensethe structure of a fluid, airy, warmthlike element. Because our ordinary
language "structures" a much more dense and solid medium,
when we meditate we have to develop a much more powerful
faculty of structuring within our attention in order to be able
to cognize at all in the thinner clement. It is difficult to
express higher experiences in the words or pictures of ordi70
nary consciousness.
However, we can overcome this difficulty if we resort to the
primal meaning of words or to an archetype or symbol that is
equally meaningful.
Meditation always lives in the sphere of evidence. There,
truth and reality are one, reality and cognition are one being:
70. See Rudolf Sterner. Kunst unci Kunsterkenntnis (GA 271) (Dornach. Switzerland:
Rudolf Steiner Verlag, 1985), lectures of May 5 and 6, 19IS.
Meditation
131
the original, primeval word, not spoken, not audible, and not
part of one particular language; it is the creative Word through
which nature, our perceptual world, was created. In meditation
we leave the plane of the past of our consciousness, then our
theme becomes a task, which we can and must realize, so that
the reality to be gained is at the same time truth, that is, evidence. We realize a text when we understand it, and we realize
our I when our attention meets itself. Similarly, we create the
reality of what we meditate on when our consciousness, now
one with our theme, ascends to the corresponding level of the
Word, the level from which our theme was taken.
10. Perceptual
Meditation
1 o study the nature of a function of consciousness, it is well to

examine its development, or its first occurrence, before it gets
intermingled with habits, memories, and other mechanisms
that distort the picture. Accordingly, to describe the activity of
our senses in chapters 2 and 3, we had to go back to the
directly given, that is, to the condition preceding the instruction of the senses by thought-intuitionsor at least to the
beginning of this instruction. Now, however, we will look at
the boundary of this instruction and at the conscious development of perception and thinking, whose interdependence we
have already discussed in the above-mentioned chapters.
The middle senses (seeing and hearing) and the sense of
touch provide everything for the higher sensessuch as the Isense (or you-sense), the sense of concepts, and the word
senseto understand. They provide the raw material for perception, which the higher senses then read, to the extent of
their ability. In this reading, we always focus our attention on
certain, selected features of the raw material while ignoring
others. For instance, our word sense disregards the pitch of
words to focus on their sound configuration; our thought sense
concentrates on concepts and ignores words, and our "yousense" forgets the thought content to focus only on the speaking I-being. In every case, the relatively lower senses are transparent and open to the relatively higher ones.
Perceptual
Meditation
133
Conversation may be considered the archetype of perception. In conversation, we take in what our partner has said
and break it up into sounds, words, thoughts, and I-cognition.
Perhaps we hear the words but do not understand the other person's thoughts; in that case, we do not make use of the transparency of the word-sense. If we are unable to think what the
other has said, the utterance will remain stuck on the level of
the words. If we do not understand the language in which the
utterance was made, what we heard remains only noise or, at
most, sound. With this, our perception descends into the
sphere of the middle senses. Our lower senses do not become
transparent because the next higher functions above them are
unable to understand what the lower senses convey.
Obviously, the natural world is not spoken in the here and
now; rather, it is a finished text, much like a letter that was
written in the past and must now be read. As long as we do not
even know the individual letters of the text, much less the corresponding concepts and I-beings, nature remains for us a perception on the level of the middle senses and of the sense of
touch. What happens when we do not understand our partner
in conversation shows us that the middle senses convey
unthinkable concepts to us, and do so superconsciously.
Perceptual meditation has the task of understanding the text
of nature. To achieve this, we must raise our thinking to a more
intuitive and living plane. Only then will our perceptual attention, now concentrated and trained to a heightened sensitivity
for different qualities, be able to intuit the corresponding
higher ideas. In other words, our thinking must not descend to
the level of the past.
The text of nature does not consist of predetermined letters
or signs whose meaning is clearly defined. Discovering these
letters and signs is in itself a stage of meditation. All such acts
of discovery constitute the finding of an understanding; they
134
T H E LOGOS-STRUCTURE O F THE W O R L D
answer the question "What is to be perceived?" Just as we can

"read" sounds in tones, words in sounds, and finally the
thought content or meaning in words, so there is an act of
"reading" involved in pure perceiving or perceptual meditation. If we cannot intuitively grasp the higher concepts we
need, our perceiving remains on the level of the senses that
have been appropriately instructedafter all, even the middle
senses had to be instructed to be able to perceive the qualities
they specifically focus on.
The more concentrated and the more unencumbered by
concepts from the past our perceiving attention is, the more
likely are we to be able to intuit the concepts of higher qualities in perception. In meditation we try to distinguish such
concepts within the given we perceive. At the same time, we
try to integrate these concepts into the perceptual picture that
has come about as a result of their being distinguished within
the given. In other words, in meditation we are trying to find
adequate concepts. To find them, we must be on a higher
plane of consciousness.
The presence of inadequate concepts makes it more difficult
to reach such a higher level; therefore we must silence them.
Intensifying and extending the phase of being given over to
perception represents an attempt at silencing these inadequate
concepts. When the quality and intensity of our perception are
sufficiently enhanced, the concepts of the plane of the past
usually they are merely mental representations and not even
conceptscan no longer interfere and disrupt it.
With our higher senses, we focus our attention on a world
that exists only for human consciousness and that mirrors the
inner structure of this consciousness. Since the higher senses,
especially the sense of concepts, instruct all the other senses,
our perceptual world is a specifically human one, as is also our
world of thought.
Perceptual
Meditation
135
As we ascend the series of the senses, the activities proper

to the higher senses further individualize the raw material provided by the comparatively lower senses. For instance, a particular sentence is individualized by the I that utters it; it
makes a difference who is saying it. This applies even on the
level of mere information, where the reliability of the speaker
and his or her particular point of view are important.
Every sentence, in turn, individualizes the words; of a word's
many possible meanings, every sentence uses only a particular
oneone that also often depends on the situation. If we disregard the speaker, the meaning of a sentence is less definite, and
if we look at a word without considering the sentence of which
it is a part, the meaning of the word is also less definite. Thus,
the greater or more powerful wordlike entity becomes narrower, more defined, and more individualized as we ascend.
In comparison with the word, sound is the greater and more
ambiguous wordlike entity. Within each word, several sounds
narrow down each other's vast "meaning,"which is unfathomable for our ordinary consciousnessto a smaller wordlike
entity, namely, the word of which they are a part. For us,
sounds are at the boundary of what we can grasp. Comprehension and concepts begin in the transition from sounds to words
and continue in our understanding of sentences.
Perhaps in ancient times, by means of cognitive feeling,
people understood words much more as sounds. Today, our
understanding of words is very close to that of concepts.
Because of the decadence of our languages, this relationship
between sound and word is largely ruined.
Every sound forms within a tone, thus individualizing it.
Tones, then, say more and are the greater idea of the two.
However, people today hardly understand tones a n y m o r e
except perhaps in music and related arts. We still experience the sense-perceptible and the hidden part of words as
136
symmetrically interrelated; but we have only a vague idea that

the sounds of a particular language also have a hidden part,
namely, their meaning. In contrast, we hardly experience tones
as wordlike entities, and we have not the faintest idea what
could complement sense-perceptible tones the way our comprehension complements the words we hear.
Our scarcity of names for different qualities of tones indicates that our conceptual consciousness is very far from grasping the true nature of tone. Most of the adjectives we use to
describe tones, such as loud, low, deep, high (which could also
be called differently), soft, hard, and so on, are borrowed from
the other senses. Similarly, in the sphere of seeing, we have
proper names for roughly eight colors. We have even fewer
names for the perceptions of our senses of taste and of warmth.
For the sense of smell, we have hardly anything more than
"good smelling" and "bad smelling," that is, we really have no
terms specific to these sense impressions.
Languages provide only scanty structure for the field of the
middle senses, and this structure is rarely, if at all, based on
their essential ideas. Nowadays our languages instruct us only
in the ordinary concepts, and thus we can only instruct our
senses in the same way. A true understanding of the sensory
world requires the development of consciousness.
Perceptual meditation heightens our attention in the phase
of being given over to the object of perception; that is, it
enhances the activity of the I with which perception b e g i n s .
71
71. See Steiner, A Road to Self-Knowledge (GA 16), chapter 1; Anthroposophie: Ein
Fragment, Appendix 5; The Being of Man and His Future Evolution (GA 107) (London: Rudolf Steiner Press, 1981 ), lecture of December 8, 1908; An Occult Physiology
(GA 128) (London: Rudolf Steiner Press, 1983). lecture of March 23, 1911; (GA 165),
lecture of January 2, 1916; Chance. Providence, and Necessity (GA 163). lecture of
August 30, 1915; (GA 205), lecture of July 16, 1921; (GA 206). lectures of August 12
and 13, 1921; The Human Heart (GA 212), lecture of May 26, 1922; (GA 218), lectures of October 20, 1922 and December 9, 1922; Pastoral Medicine (GA 318) (Hudson, N.Y.: Anthroposophie Press, 1987), lecture of September 10, 1924.
Perceptual
Meditation
137
Without perceptual exercises we never become aware of our

attention but only notice the results of its activity. For example, we see a mountain, but we are unaware of the "looking"
attention that enables us to see it. The pictures we have in seeing and in other sensory perceptions are the results of our
activity, of our attention; they are not memory pictures. These
pictures are being woven in the immediate present, in the hereand-now, while we perceive. When we heighten the attention
that is active in this process to the point where it can discover
itself in its activity, then we will experience these pictures no
longer as results but as the activity itself in all its liveliness. At
the same time, the meaning of the meditation "tat tvam asi,"
or "This is you," dawns on us.
The I lives in identity. Since the I initiates and guides even
ordinary perception in giving itself over to the perceptual
object, the perceptual picture is not subjective. We can verify
this in conversation. We hear what our partner is saying, and
then we can ascertain whether what we heard is identical with
what was said. We can ask our partner in conversation about
this, and he or she can confirm it. Indeed, normally we hear
what was saidwe do not expect anything else. We have no
reason to assume that our relationship to "natural" perceptual
elements differs from our relationship to another person's
79
utterances in a conversation which can be verified.

Thus, all pseudoproblems, such as whether different people
experience the same sensory qualities, become less important.
We cannot ascertain whether they do or not. Nor can we
ascertain whether we ourselves always perceive the same sensory qualities. By this token, the pseudoconcept of "the s a m e "
is relativized.
72. See Anthroposophie: Ein Fragment, Appendix 5
138
Other concepts fare similarly. We cannot define our basic

concepts because that would require the existence of other,
already-defined concepts, and so on. We understand each other
in communication because we have an unshakable trust in the
commonality of the word, even if this fact is the issue under
discussion.
The directly given does not have a pregiven structure, neither a conceptual structure nor a perceptual one. After all,
concepts isolate perceptions out of the given. Our sensory
organs themselves structure the given only in cooperation with
conceptsas the unique way each language subdivides the
color spectrum proves.
When we have heightened the intensity of attention, we
realize that this attention is identical with the picture it
weaves. This leads to a monistic experience in pure perception. What is at work here is not human subjectivity; rather, it
is the structuring, universal activity of wordlike attention
received from language, trained through conceptual thinking,
and heightened by a schooling of consciousness. The new
structuring of the given and the lighting up of higher concepts
are one and the same act of consciousness. In and by such
conscious activity we realize the ideal of Goethe's contemplative perception. At the same time, we rediscover in full
consciousness the concepts that organically structure the
given. In this type of meditation, the "text" and its elements
remain ambiguous.
As we become aware of our attention as a creative reality, it
lights up for us as the most intimate and individual activity of
the I. When our I-experience occurs in perceptive attention, it
reaches a level where the I becomes able to take in the language of natural phenomena. Then we discover that these phenomena have always been speaking to us, but we lacked the
ability to understand this powerful language.
Perceptual
Meditation
139
What natural phenomena are "saying" can be conveyed

only in meditation sentencesif at all. The further we descend
the ladder of the senses, down to the sense of smell, the more
peace and harmony radiate toward us through a silence. This
silence is also present in the tones and sounds of nature. It consists of the gaps between tones, and these gaps offer us the
room to complement the phenomena. This silence is a waiting,
in infinite patience and through immeasurable ages of peace
that preceded any possibility of measurement.
We ourselves are the solution to the riddle of nature because we bear this solution within us, at least potentially. In
particular, we have the ability to complement the sense-perceptible part of nature, enhancing it, so that it becomes reality.
Of course, this is not the only and finite reality:
"In expectant sleep."
"Everything says: Peace."
"Unfathomable silence in the face of what is coming:
Welcoming silence."
"Crumbling eternity."
"Beyond joy and sadness."
"Comes now the World-Light?"
"Are you prepared?"
If we do not elevate ourselves to the level of meditation, we
will be blinded by the ideas of nature that exceed our comprehension. As these ideas are inaccessible to us, they implant
themselves in our mind as perceptual sensations and make us
believe that they contain a nonconceptual element. This nonconceptual element seems to affect our senses, but we could
comprehend the ideal with our spirit. Our affected senses
"respond," give us a picture. We assume that there is a nonideal "reality-in-itself" behind this picture. However, in reality,
140
THE LOGOS-STRUCTURE OF THE W O R L D
these substitute concepts are merely mental pictures, impure

"half-concepts," and lead us to misunderstand the nature of
ideas. We mistake ideas for abstractions from the nonconceptual, as though concepts were not already a precondition for
abstraction: after all, we must select and decide what we are
abstracting from.
The systematic cultivation of "nonthoughts" leads to impenetrable inclusions in our consciousness that obstruct the
healthy circulation of light. As a result, our intuitive thinking
is more and more weakened. We construct a labyrinth made up
of thoughts that move in circles, and we can hardly find a way
out. The intuitive forces that are prevented from functioning in
a healthy way then develop into the dynamic and powerful
habits of our subconsciousinto the inverted, yet profoundly
effective, inspirations of our feeling and will. These work to
prevent us from becoming truly human. Were they to succeed
in this, nature would be eternalized in its obscured existence
and unredeemed through our failure to read it with understandingeternalized like a being that never wakes from its sleep,
mummified while it sleeps.
In pure perception we are no longer blinded, and the incomprehensible regains its rank as a high idea. Our perception dissolves into understanding, into spiritual presence in the here
and now.
Thus the human being realizes itself: becomes the meaning
of the book of nature.
Epilogue
It is not the purpose of epistemology to make us conscious of

what we are doing in any case, regardless of whether we are
aware of it or not. To the extent epistemology does this, it is an
a posteriori descriptive science, just as logic and linguistics
are. Such description can at most serve as a preparation. The
purpose of epistemology, rather, is to show that cognition is of
a supersensible nature, that its nature is I-like. Moreover, epistemology leads us back to the sources of the given mode of
cognition: from there, we can consciously continue our cognitive path for ourselves. In addition, epistemology also indicates where and how we can begin this continuation.
The kind of cognition that
by conscious work. This is a
humanity, particularly since
not reserved for a few chosen
body.
is given to us may be enhanced

new element in the evolution of
such conscious development is
people but is available for every-
Every stage of cognitive life has its own epistemology.

This must be given from a higher level through "insight" into
the phase that is to be describedotherwise epistemology
will end up as fruitless speculation. With insight from above,
the description can be formed in such a way that we can
understand it through thought-intuition, through the intuitive
73. See Kuhlewind, Stages of Consciousness, chapter "The Two Stages of Consciousness."
142
formation of new concepts. This can be done even without

first having to raise our consciousness to a new level. The
intuitions needed for this prepare the conscious work needed
to raise our cognitive life to a higher level.
Epistemology then serves as "study" for the cognitive
path.
74
That is why this book ends with chapters on meditation.

These chapters were intended to show how a cognitive path,
in the sense of spiritual science, can heal our unhealthy cognizing and develop it organically. This path, given to us as a
possibility, is a heightening of cognition.
74. See Khle wind. The Life of the Soul, chapters 3 and 5.
Bibliographical
References
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The Being of Man and His Future Evolution ( G A 107). London: Rudolf
The Boundaries of Natural Science ( G A 322). H u d s o n , N.Y.: A n t h r o p o sophie Press, 1983. (GA 322).
The Case for Anthroposophy (GA 21). London: Rudolf Steiner Press, 1970.
Chance, Providence, and Necessity ( G A 163). H u d s o n , N.Y.: A n t h r o p o sophie Press, 1988.
The Effects of Spiritual Development ( G A 145). L o n d o n : Rudolf
Foundations of Esotericism (GA 9 3 a ) . L o n d o n : Rudolf Steiner Press,
1982.
Fruits of Anthroposophy. Hudson, N.Y.: A n t h r o p o s o p h i e Press, 1986.
Goethean Science (GA 1), previously translated as Goethe the Scientist.
Spring Valley, N.Y.: Mercury Press, 1988.
Goethe's World View (GA 6). Spring Valley, N.Y.: Mercury Press, 1985.
How Do I Find the Christ ( G A 182). H u d s o n , N.Y.: A n t h r o p o s o p h i e
Press, 1941.
The Human Heart (GA 212). Spring Valley, N.Y.: Mercury Press, 1985.
Knowledge and Initiation (GA 211). Vancouver, B.C.: Steiner Book
Centre, n.d.
Macrocosm and Microcosm, (GA 119). L o n d o n : Rudolf Steiner Press,
1968.
Metamorphoses of the Soul, vol. 1 ( G A 59). L o n d o n , Rudolf Steiner
Press, 1983.
The Michael Mystery (GA 26). Spring Valley, N.Y.: St. George Publications, 1984.
The Mission of the Archangel Michael ( G A 194). Spring Valley, N.Y.:
A n t h r o p o s o p h i e Press, 1961.
A Modern Art of Education ( G A 307). Hudson, N.Y.: A n t h r o p o s o p h i e
Press, 1 9 7 2 . '
An Occult Physiology (GA 128). London: Rudolf Steiner Press. 1983.
An Outline of Occult Science (GA 13). H u d s o n , N.Y.: A n t h r o p o s o p h i e
Press, 1989.
144
THE L O G O S - S T R U C T U R E O F T H E W O R L D
Pastoral Medicine (GA 318). Hudson, N.Y.: Anthroposophie Press,

1987.
The Philosophy of Freedom ( G A 4 ) . Hudson, N.Y.: Anthroposophie

Press, 1986.
The Riddle of Humanity (GA 170). L o n d o n : Rudolf Steiner Press. 1990.

The Riddle of Man (GA 20). Spring Valley, N.Y.: Mercury Press. 1990.
A Road to Self-Knowledge (GA 16). L o n d o n : Rudolf Steiner Press. 1975.
Spiritual Science as a Foundation for Social Forms (GA 199). Hudson,
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Study of Man. L o n d o n : Rudolf Steiner Press, 1966.
A Theory of Knowledge (GA 2). Hudson, N.Y.: Anthroposophie Press.
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Truth and Knowledge (GA 3). Blauvelt, N.Y.: Rudolf Steiner Publications, 1981.
The World of the Senses and the World of the Spirit (GA 134). Spring
Valley, N . Y . : A n t h r o p o s o p h i e Press. 1979.
B o o k s by G e o r g K h l e w i n d :
Becoming Aware of the Logos. Hudson, N . Y . : Lindislarne Press, 1985.

Das Licht des Wortes ("Light ol" the W o r d " ) . Stuttgart: Verlag Freies
Geistesleben, 1984.
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Die Diener des Logos ("Servants of the L o g o s " ) . Stuttgart: Verlag Freies
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A n c h o r B o o k s , 1981.
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Freies Geistesleben, 1978.
Sealigero, M a s s i m o . Segreti del Tempo e del Spazio. R o m e : Tilopa, 1964.

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4.

The Language of Reality

5. The Character of Perceptual

The Sensation of RealityObservations

8. Changes in the Given

Georg Kuhlewind's The Logos-Structure of the World may be

capacity to embrace these two aspectssounds or letters and

Epistemologically, Kuhlewind justifies his approach by

meanings to what they consider as "reality," then we can begin

as they appear and as the expression of

not in the utilitarian sense of everyday consciousness but as

"Res natural is, inter duos intellect us constituta"

4. Dante, Paradiso XXIX, 76 (29:76).

' T H E LOGOS-STRUCTURE OF THE W O R L D

In this same spirit Kuhlewind opens his Logos-Structure

6. Commentary to Liber de causis 1, 6.

This book aims to show that the world, including human

This epistemological approach attempts to lake up what

The precondition for any empiricism of consciousness is

*See Georg Kuhlewind, Stages of Consciousness (Hudson. N.Y.: Lindisfarne Press,

activities of consciousness. Concepts produced by human

character of the reality of the second phase or epoch is more a

E v e r y question arises as a new question: it dawns on us in the

observe itself and describe its observationscannot be

O n e of the basic gestures of the consciousness soul is to

Therefore the consciousness soul may also be called "selfconsciousness s o u l . "

Consideration of the Given

The given precedes every question; it is the first image from

What is given, or (pure) experience, includes both what we

For an adult, the given perceptual picture is an accumulation

concepts already contained in the given. Once we have

Examination of the Given from the Standpoint

From this part of the soul, the specifically human faculties

sense, thinking is superconsciously given.

Observation of the Given Functions of

Therefore, we are justified in taking a "naive" point of view

to think in concepts and to perceive discrete particulars, and

unites in itself the cognitive elements of perceptual reality that

already structured into discrete particulars like a text, and

The term "thinking" covers several very different activities of

assume that in practice we already " k n o w " what a concept is.

17. See Kuhlewind. Stages of Consciousness,

chapter entitled "Concentration and

clear. A word designates something we understand or have

know iheir constitutive or functional ideas. The "functions" of

pie, "green" as an abstract concept cannot cover a particular

analysis cannot tell us anything about function. In fact, we

to understand a page of text by mathematically determining

The difference between the comprehension of the concepts

6. The contradictions inherent in the five developments

The Given and the Activity of the Senses:

sentation, or thinkingit is always interwoven with concepts.

with legs and so onprovided we at least know these latter

smoothness or roughness of a surface by letting them touch it,

As we can experience in the perception of speech sounds,

particulars we perceive without having a word or name for

and memory imageslies a continuous spectrum of sensory

the perceptual field is not yet divided into twelve