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iENAISSANCt
aMIDOI-F steiner
(* DEC 12 1911 *
•
jn."t
BY * DEC 12 1911 *
RUDOLF STEINER
Ph.D. (Vienna)
'isiski list:^
AUTHORISED TRANSLATION FROM THE GERMAN BY
BERTRAM KEIGHTLEY, M.A. (Cantab.)
Introduction
Meister Eckhart 52
Afterword . 269
Ill
FOREWORD
The matter which I am laying before
the public in this book formed the
content of lectures which I delivered
seq.).
Rudolf Steiner.
INTRODUCTION
There are certain magical formulae
which operate throughout the centuries
of Man's mental history in ever new
ways. In Greece one such formula
was regarded as an oracle of Apollo. It
INTRODUCTION .
7
' Know-
ing is knowing, perceiving is perceiving."
Only in the one case the object is some-
thing lying in the world outside, in the
other this object is his own soul. He
finds words merely, or at best, abstract
in self-knowledge or self-perception we
stand within that object; that we see
INTRODUCTION ii
which sees."
mainder behind.
These developments contain nothing
which is susceptible or even in need of
logical proof. They are nothing but
the results of inner experience. Who-
ever calls into question this content,
shows only that he is lacking in this
inner experience. It is impossible to
INTRODUCTION 29
INTRODUCTION 31
of Vol. I.):
''The activity of merging ourselves
in something else, is what we call '
think-
is possible."
He who knows things in this way,
transforms himself within himself; for
of St. Thomas.
Eckhart had neither
the desire to take aught away from the
content of Christianity, nor the wish to
add anything to it; but he desired to
bring forward this content anew in his
own way. It forms no part of the
spiritual needs of a personaHty such as
he was to set up new truths of this or
the other kind in the place of old ones.
Such a personality has grown completely
intertwined with the content which it
themselves
. '
—
existent life a Wesung is to be known —
in the logical sense but the higher know-
;
— —
ing the beholding shall itself become
life; the spiritual, the ideal must be so
p. 161.
86 MYSTICS OF THE RENAISSANCE
\
;
p. 219 e^ seg_.
94 MYSTICS OF THE RENAISSANCE
natural existence.
Natural Science follows the evolution
of beings from the simplest up to the
most perfected, to man himself. This
evolution lies before us as already com-
pleted. We know it, by penetrating
it with the powers of our spirit.When
evolution has reached humanity, man
then finds nothing further there before
him as its continuation. He himself
accomplishes the further unfoldment.
Henceforward he lives what for earlier
stages he only knows. He creates, ac-
God."
A learned controversy which has con-
nected itself with the occurrence is
H: H< *
no MYSTICS OF THE RENAISSANCE
Through '
deeds."'
'
Chap. XV., Book of the Man from Frankfurt.
THE FRIENDSHIP OF GOD 1 19
presence.'*
Thus speaks Suso in the autobiography
which he wrote in conjunction with his
pupil Elsbet Staglin. He, too, is a pious
priest and lives entirely in the Christian
Nicholas of Cusa.
Scholasticism is, in the highest degree,
figures.
P- 395-
144 MYSTICS OF THE RENAISSANCE
^
Joseph Kleutgen, Die Theologie der Vorzeit, vol. i.,
P- 39.
148 MYSTICS OF THE RENAISSANCE
content.
is way preformed
in a certain in these
writings. Here we can only indicate
the essential trait in the way of con-
ceiving things found in these works.
Man primarily knows the things of the
sense- world. He forms thoughts about its
being and action. The Primal Cause of
all things must lie higher than these things
themselves. Man therefore must not seek
to grasp this Primal Cause by means of the
same concepts and ideas as things. If
' being
'
' too
is a concept which man has formed from
lower things. But God is exalted above
"being" and "not-being." The God
to whom we ascribe attributes, is there-
fore not the true God. We come to the
true God, when we think of an "Over-
God" above and beyond any God with
such attributes. Of this "Over-God"
we can know nothing in the ordinary
sense. In order to attain to Him '
' know-
ing" must merge into "not-knowing."
One sees that at the root of such a view
there lies the consciousness that man him-
self is able to develop a higher knowing,
which is no longer mere knowing —in a
purely natural manner —on the basis of
what his various sciences have yielded
158 MYSTICS OF THE RENAISSANCE
speak.
Thus, in truth, I am giving utterance
no longer only to my own being ; I am also
giving utterance to the being of things
themselves. My "ego" is the form, the
organ in which the things express them-
selves about themselves. I have gained
the experience that in myself I experience
my own essential being; and this ex-
perience expands itself in me to the
further one that in myself and througn
myself the All-Being Itself expresses
Itself, or in other words, knows Itself.
thought
"Our sensations are simply effects
perception.
If I were to attempt to deny to
biographers as unobjectionable, if it is
conviction.
^ We may here name the most important of Boehme's
writings: Die Morgenrothe im Aufgang; Die drei Prinzi-
pien gottlichen Lebens oder das dreifache Leben des
iiher
*'
question of all questions," that in
regard to the natural origin of man,
found its answer in the nineteenth
century; and other related problems
in the realm of natural events have
also found their solutions. To-day men
comprehend that it is not necessary to
step outside of the realm of the actual
and the sensible in order to understand
the serial succession of beings, right up
to man, in its development in a purely
natural manner.
And, further, J. G. Fichte's penetra-
tion has thrown light into the being of
THE END
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