Another view would find no satisfaction in such an interpretation. It would assert that even in the manifested world nothing happens in definite places or surroundings without our having to presuppose causes for the event in question. Even though in many cases such causes have not yet been investigated, they are there. An Alpine flower does not grow in the lowlands. Its nature has something which associates it with Alpine regions. Just so must there be something in a man which determines his birth in a certain environment. Causes belonging to the physical world alone are not sufficient to account for this. To a more profound thinker such an explanation appears in somewhat the same light as when one has dealt another a blow, the motive for which is not attributed to the feelings of the one but is to be explained by the physical mechanism of the hand.[pg 090]Any explanation of abilities and talents solely by“heredity”is to such a viewpoint equally unsatisfactory. It is true one may say:“See how certain talents are inherited in families.”During two and a half centuries musical talents were inherited by members of the Bach family. Eight mathematicians sprang from the Bernoulli family, to some of whom quite different occupations were assigned in their childhood; but the inherited talents always drove them to the family vocation. It may be further pointed out how, by an exact investigation of the line of ancestry of a person in one way or another the gifts of this person have shown themselves in the forefathers, and only represent the sum of inherited talents. Whoever holds the latter of the two views above indicated will be sure not to let such facts pass unnoticed, but tohimthey cannot mean the same as they do to one who relies for his interpretation on the events of the world of sense alone. The former will point out that inherited talents can no more of themselves, combine into a complete personality than can the metal parts of a watch fit themselves together. And if objection is made that the co-operation of the parents may possibly produce the combination of talents,—that this as it were, takes the place of the watchmaker,—he will reply:“Look impartially at what is new in every child-personality, at that which is absolutely new; that cannot come from the parents, for the simple reason that it does not exist in them.”Inaccurate thinking may create much confusion[pg 091]in this domain. It is still worse when those who hold the second view are set down by the supporters of the first as opponents of what is, after all, borne out by“ascertained facts.”But it may well be that the latter have not the slightest intention of denying the truth or value of those facts. For instance, they see that a definite mental aptitude or predisposition is“inherited”in a family, and that certain gifts accumulated and combined in one descendant result in a remarkable personality. They are perfectly willing to acquiesce when it is said that the most celebrated name seldom stands at the beginning but at the end of a line of descent. But it should not be taken amiss if they are compelled to form very different opinions on the subject from those of people who are determined to accept nothing but material evidence. To the latter it may be said that it is true a man shows the characteristics of his ancestors, because the“spirit-soul”, which enters upon physical existence at birth, draws its bodily substance from that which heredity bestows on it. But this says nothing more than that a being shows the peculiarities of the body into which it has descended.It is no doubt a singular—a trivial—comparison, but the unprejudiced person will not deny its justification, when one says that a human being, who shows the qualities of his forefathers, proves the origin of the personal qualities of that human being as little as the fact that man is wet because he has fallen into the water, proves something regarding[pg 092]his inner nature. And it may further be said that if the most celebrated name stands at the end of a line of family descent, it shows that the bearer of that name needed that particular ancestry to build the body necessary for the expression of his whole personality. But it is no proof that his actual personal qualities were transmitted to him: such a statement is, on the contrary, opposed to sound logic. If personal gifts were inherited, they would be found at the beginning of a line of descent,7and starting from that point be transmitted to the descendants. As, however, they stand at the end, it is evident that they arenottransmitted.Now it is not to be denied that those who speak of a spiritual causality in life have contributed no less to bringing about confusion of thought. Far too much generalizing and vague discussion comes from this quarter. To say that a man's personality is a combination of inherited characteristics may certainly be compared with the assertion that the metal parts of a watch have fitted themselves together. It must also be admitted that, with regard to many assertions about a spiritual world, it is as though some one said that the metal parts of a watch cannot put themselves together in such a way as to enable the hands to move forward; some intelligence must therefore be present to effect this forward movement. In face of such an assertion,hecertainly[pg 093]builds on a far better foundation who says:“Oh! I care nothing for your‘mystical’beings who move the hands forward. What I want to know is the mechanical construction by means of which the forward movement of the hands is achieved.”It is by no means a question of merely knowing that behind a mechanism, a watch for instance, there is an intelligence (the watchmaker); it can only be of importance to know the ideas in the watchmaker's mind which preceded the construction of the watch. These thoughts may be rediscovered in the mechanism.Mere dreaming and imagining about the supersensual only result in confusion, for they are not calculated to satisfy opponents. The latter are right in saying that such general allusions to super-physical beings are not at all conducive to an understanding of facts. Of course, such opponents might also say the same of theexactstatements of occult science. But, in that case, it may be pointed out that the effects of hidden spiritual causes are seen in manifested life. Let us assume for the moment that what occult science asserts, proven by observation, is correct:—that a man has gone through a[pg 094]time of purification after death, and that during this period he has experienced in his soul how a certain deed, performed by him in a former life, was a hindrance to his progressive evolution. While he was undergoing this experience, the impulse arose in him to make amends for that deed. He brings this impulse with him into a new life and its presence produces a tendency in his nature which draws him into conditions rendering the amendment possible.—Taking into consideration a number of such impulses, we have the cause for a man's being born into an environment corresponding to his destiny.We may deal in the same way with another assumption. Let us again accept as correct the assertion of occult science that the fruits of a past life are incorporated in man's spiritual germ, and that the spirit-land in which man finds himself, between death and a new life, is the region in which these fruits ripen, and are transformed into talents and capabilities which will appear in a new life and will form the personality so that it appears as the effect of what was gained in a former life. It will become evident to any one who accepts these hypotheses and, bearing them in mind, surveys life impartially, that while, by their means, all material facts may be appreciated in their full truth and significance, at the same time everything becomes intelligible which, if only material facts were relied upon, must forever remain incomprehensible to one whose attention is turned toward the spiritual world. And more important still, that illogical reasoning of the kind indicated[pg 095]above will disappear, namely,—that because the most distinguished name in a line of descent stands at the end of it, its bearer must have inherited his gifts. Life becomes logically comprehensible through the supersensual facts ascertained by occult science.Yet another weighty objection may be raised by the conscientious seeker after truth who desires to find his way to facts and has no experience of his own in the supersensual world. It may be urged that it is inadmissible to accept the existence of facts, of any kind, simply because by means of them something may be explained which is otherwise unintelligible. Such an objection is meaningless to one who knows the corresponding facts from supersensual experience, and in later chapters of this book the path will be indicated that may be followed in order to gain knowledge not only of the spiritual facts herein described, but also of the law of spiritual causation as a personal experience. Any one, however, who is not willing to enter upon this path may find the above objection important; and what can be said against it is also of value to one who is resolved to follow the path indicated. For if it is received in the right spirit, it is the very best preliminary step that can be taken on this path. It is perfectly true that one ought not to accept a statement about which one is otherwise ignorant merely because, by means of it, something otherwise inexplicable can be explained, but in the case of alleged spiritual facts the matter is different. If such statements[pg 096]are accepted, the intellectual consequence is not only that, by their means, life becomes intelligible, but that through admitting these hypotheses into the thought-world, experiences of quite a new kind are induced.Take the following case. Something befalls a man which causes him extremely painful sensations. He may meet the situation in one of two ways. He may submit to the occurrence as something affecting him painfully, and abandon himself to the painful sensation, even becoming absorbed in his grief; or he may meet it in another way. He may say:“It is really I myself who in a former life set the force in motion which has brought me into contact with this thing. I have really brought it on myself.”He may then awaken in himself all the feelings which such a thought brings in its train. It goes without saying that the thought must be entertained with perfect seriousness, and with the utmost possible force, if it is to have such consequences in the life of sensation and feeling. One who succeeds in this will meet with an experience which may be best illustrated by a comparison. Let us suppose that two men have each a stick of sealing wax in his hand. One begins reflecting upon its inner nature. These reflections may perhaps be very wise, but if the“inner nature”did not show itself in any way, some one might easily retort:“That is all imagination.”The other, however, rubs the sealing wax with a woolen rag, and then shows that it attracts small particles. There is an important difference between[pg 097]the thoughts which have passed through the first man's head and his reflections, and those of the second. The thoughts of the first man had no actual result; those of the second have called out a hidden force, consequently something real.The same thing happens with regard to the thoughts of a man in whose mind the idea arises that in a former life he has set going within himself the force which causes him to experience a certain event. The mere conception of this stirs up strength within him which enables him to face the event in quite a different manner from that in which he would have met it without entertaining such an idea. It dawns upon him that an event which he would otherwise have looked upon as an accident was really a necessity and he will immediately see that he had the right thought, because this thought had the power to reveal the facts to him. If such inner processes are repeated they will grow into a source of inner power and thus prove their truth by their fruitfulness; and little by little, this truth is found to be powerfully effective. Such processes have a salutary effect on body, soul, and spirit,—nay, they help life forward in every way. Man becomes aware that in this manner he takes the right position with regard to life's continuity; whereas, by taking into consideration only the one life between birth and death, he is the victim of a delusion.Such an entirely inner proof of spiritual causation can of course be acquired only by each one for himself, in his own inner life. But it is in every[pg 098]one's power to have it. Those who have not acquired it certainly cannot judge of its convincing force; but those who have acquired it can scarcely entertain any further doubt in the matter. And there is no reason for surprise that this should be so. It is only natural that what is so wholly bound up with the constitution of man's inmost being and personality can be adequately proven only by inner experience. On the other hand, it cannot be alleged that because such a matter corresponds to inner experience it must therefore be settled by every one for himself, and that it is no subject for occult science. It is certain that every one must undergo the experience for himself, just as each must see for himself the proof of a mathematical problem. But the path by which such an experience may be gained is open to all, just as the method of proving a mathematical problem is available to every one.It ought not to be denied—apart from clairvoyant observation of course—that by means of the force producing power of the corresponding thoughts, the just cited proof is the only one which stands firm before all unprejudiced logic. All other considerations are no doubt very important, but in all of them there will be something on which an opponent might seize as a point of attack. Surely one who has acquired a fairly impartial way of looking at things will find something in the possibility and actual fact of man's education, which has the power of logical proof that a spiritual being is struggling for existence within the sheath of the body. He will[pg 099]compare animals with man and say to himself that at the birth of the former there appears certain definite qualities and capacities as something, decisive in itself, which plainly shows how it has been designed by heredity and how it will unfold itself in the outer world. We see how a young chicken carries out life's functions in the appointed way from its birth; but by means of education something comes into touch with man's inner life which is independent of any connection with his heredity, and he may be in a position to assimilate the effects of such external influences. The educator knows that such influences are met by forces coming from man's inner nature. If this is not the case, all instruction and training are meaningless. The unprejudiced educator finds the boundary line between inherited talents and those inner forces of the man himself which shine through them and originate in former lives, to be very sharply marked. It is true, we cannot bring forward such weighty proofs for things of this kind as we can for certain physical facts, by means of scales; but then these are just the intimate things of life, and one who has the power to appreciate such impalpable proofs will find them convincing—even more convincing than palpable reality.That animals may be trained, and thus, to a certain extent, acquire qualities and capacities by education, is no objection to one who is able to see reality, for apart from the fact that transitional stages are met with all over the world, the results of training an animal by no means fade away with[pg 100]its individual existence, as is the case with a man. What is more, the fact has been emphasized that faculties acquired by domestic animals through intercourse with man are transmitted, that is to say, continue in the species, not in the individual. Darwin describes how dogs fetch and carry without having been taught to do so, or without having seen it done. Who would make such an assertion with regard to human education?Now there are thinkers whose observations have led them beyond the opinion that a man is built by purely inherited forces from without. They rise to the thought that a spiritual being, an individuality, exists before life in the body, and fashions it; but many of them find it impossible to conceive that there are repeated earthly lives, and that the fruits of former lives are moulding forces during the intermediate state between two lives. Let us take one instance from among the ranks of these thinkers. Immanuel Hermann Fichte, son of the great Fichte, in hisAnthropology(p. 528) gives the observations which led him to the following conclusion:“Parents arenotgenerators in the full sense of the word. They supply organic substance, and not alone this, but also that intermediate element of mental and sense nature which appears in temperament, colouring of character, definite tendencies, and so on, the common source of which proves to be‘imagination’in the wider sense indicated by us. In all these elements of personality, the mingling and particular combination of the souls of the parents[pg 101]is unmistakable; it is therefore a perfectly well-grounded assertion that this combination is simply the result of procreation, even if we regard procreation, as we must do, as really a soul-process. But the real ultimate centre of the personality is just what is lacking here; for a deeper and more searching observation reveals the fact that even those peculiarities of disposition are but a covering and an instrument for the containing of the individual's really spiritual and ideal capabilities, and are qualified to aid these in their development or to hinder them, but in no wise able to originate them.”It is further stated in the same work (p. 532):“Every individual pre-exists as regards the fundamental form of his spirit, for no individual, from a spiritual point of view, resembles another, just as no species of animal resembles another species.”These thoughts reach only far enough to allow a spiritual being to come into the human body; but as the forces shaping such a being are not derived from causes existing in former lives, it would be necessary that, each time a fresh personality appears, a spiritual being should come forth from a Divine First Cause. With this hypothesis there would be no possibility of explaining the relationship which certainly exists between the potentialities struggling out of man's innermost being, and that which is forcing its way thither from his external earthly environment during life. Man's innermost being, issuing in the case of each single person from a Divine First Cause, would find what confronts[pg 102]him in earthly life quite strange and foreign. Only then would this not be the case—as, in fact, it is not—if there had already been a connection between the inner man and the outer world, and if the inner man were not living in it for the first time.The unprejudiced educator may undoubtedly observe clearly that he impresses the consciousness of his pupil with something taken from life's experiences which in itself is foreign to his merely inherited qualities, but which, however, appears to him as if the work out of which these experiences arise, had been done by him in the past. Only repeated lives on earth, in conjunction with the facts set forth by occult science as taking place in spiritual regions between two earthly lives,—only this view can afford a satisfactory explanation of present human life looked at from every side. I say expressly“present”human life, for occult investigation shows that the cycle of earthly life certainly had a beginning, and at that time man's spiritual being, which later entered a bodily frame, existed under different conditions. In the following chapter we shall go back to this primeval condition of human existence. When it has been shown, from the reports of occult science how human beings received their present form in connection with the evolution of the earth, it will also be possible to indicate more precisely how the spiritual germ of man's being descends from superphysical worlds into a bodily form, and how the spiritual law of causation, or“human destiny,”is developed.
Another view would find no satisfaction in such an interpretation. It would assert that even in the manifested world nothing happens in definite places or surroundings without our having to presuppose causes for the event in question. Even though in many cases such causes have not yet been investigated, they are there. An Alpine flower does not grow in the lowlands. Its nature has something which associates it with Alpine regions. Just so must there be something in a man which determines his birth in a certain environment. Causes belonging to the physical world alone are not sufficient to account for this. To a more profound thinker such an explanation appears in somewhat the same light as when one has dealt another a blow, the motive for which is not attributed to the feelings of the one but is to be explained by the physical mechanism of the hand.[pg 090]Any explanation of abilities and talents solely by“heredity”is to such a viewpoint equally unsatisfactory. It is true one may say:“See how certain talents are inherited in families.”During two and a half centuries musical talents were inherited by members of the Bach family. Eight mathematicians sprang from the Bernoulli family, to some of whom quite different occupations were assigned in their childhood; but the inherited talents always drove them to the family vocation. It may be further pointed out how, by an exact investigation of the line of ancestry of a person in one way or another the gifts of this person have shown themselves in the forefathers, and only represent the sum of inherited talents. Whoever holds the latter of the two views above indicated will be sure not to let such facts pass unnoticed, but tohimthey cannot mean the same as they do to one who relies for his interpretation on the events of the world of sense alone. The former will point out that inherited talents can no more of themselves, combine into a complete personality than can the metal parts of a watch fit themselves together. And if objection is made that the co-operation of the parents may possibly produce the combination of talents,—that this as it were, takes the place of the watchmaker,—he will reply:“Look impartially at what is new in every child-personality, at that which is absolutely new; that cannot come from the parents, for the simple reason that it does not exist in them.”Inaccurate thinking may create much confusion[pg 091]in this domain. It is still worse when those who hold the second view are set down by the supporters of the first as opponents of what is, after all, borne out by“ascertained facts.”But it may well be that the latter have not the slightest intention of denying the truth or value of those facts. For instance, they see that a definite mental aptitude or predisposition is“inherited”in a family, and that certain gifts accumulated and combined in one descendant result in a remarkable personality. They are perfectly willing to acquiesce when it is said that the most celebrated name seldom stands at the beginning but at the end of a line of descent. But it should not be taken amiss if they are compelled to form very different opinions on the subject from those of people who are determined to accept nothing but material evidence. To the latter it may be said that it is true a man shows the characteristics of his ancestors, because the“spirit-soul”, which enters upon physical existence at birth, draws its bodily substance from that which heredity bestows on it. But this says nothing more than that a being shows the peculiarities of the body into which it has descended.It is no doubt a singular—a trivial—comparison, but the unprejudiced person will not deny its justification, when one says that a human being, who shows the qualities of his forefathers, proves the origin of the personal qualities of that human being as little as the fact that man is wet because he has fallen into the water, proves something regarding[pg 092]his inner nature. And it may further be said that if the most celebrated name stands at the end of a line of family descent, it shows that the bearer of that name needed that particular ancestry to build the body necessary for the expression of his whole personality. But it is no proof that his actual personal qualities were transmitted to him: such a statement is, on the contrary, opposed to sound logic. If personal gifts were inherited, they would be found at the beginning of a line of descent,7and starting from that point be transmitted to the descendants. As, however, they stand at the end, it is evident that they arenottransmitted.Now it is not to be denied that those who speak of a spiritual causality in life have contributed no less to bringing about confusion of thought. Far too much generalizing and vague discussion comes from this quarter. To say that a man's personality is a combination of inherited characteristics may certainly be compared with the assertion that the metal parts of a watch have fitted themselves together. It must also be admitted that, with regard to many assertions about a spiritual world, it is as though some one said that the metal parts of a watch cannot put themselves together in such a way as to enable the hands to move forward; some intelligence must therefore be present to effect this forward movement. In face of such an assertion,hecertainly[pg 093]builds on a far better foundation who says:“Oh! I care nothing for your‘mystical’beings who move the hands forward. What I want to know is the mechanical construction by means of which the forward movement of the hands is achieved.”It is by no means a question of merely knowing that behind a mechanism, a watch for instance, there is an intelligence (the watchmaker); it can only be of importance to know the ideas in the watchmaker's mind which preceded the construction of the watch. These thoughts may be rediscovered in the mechanism.Mere dreaming and imagining about the supersensual only result in confusion, for they are not calculated to satisfy opponents. The latter are right in saying that such general allusions to super-physical beings are not at all conducive to an understanding of facts. Of course, such opponents might also say the same of theexactstatements of occult science. But, in that case, it may be pointed out that the effects of hidden spiritual causes are seen in manifested life. Let us assume for the moment that what occult science asserts, proven by observation, is correct:—that a man has gone through a[pg 094]time of purification after death, and that during this period he has experienced in his soul how a certain deed, performed by him in a former life, was a hindrance to his progressive evolution. While he was undergoing this experience, the impulse arose in him to make amends for that deed. He brings this impulse with him into a new life and its presence produces a tendency in his nature which draws him into conditions rendering the amendment possible.—Taking into consideration a number of such impulses, we have the cause for a man's being born into an environment corresponding to his destiny.We may deal in the same way with another assumption. Let us again accept as correct the assertion of occult science that the fruits of a past life are incorporated in man's spiritual germ, and that the spirit-land in which man finds himself, between death and a new life, is the region in which these fruits ripen, and are transformed into talents and capabilities which will appear in a new life and will form the personality so that it appears as the effect of what was gained in a former life. It will become evident to any one who accepts these hypotheses and, bearing them in mind, surveys life impartially, that while, by their means, all material facts may be appreciated in their full truth and significance, at the same time everything becomes intelligible which, if only material facts were relied upon, must forever remain incomprehensible to one whose attention is turned toward the spiritual world. And more important still, that illogical reasoning of the kind indicated[pg 095]above will disappear, namely,—that because the most distinguished name in a line of descent stands at the end of it, its bearer must have inherited his gifts. Life becomes logically comprehensible through the supersensual facts ascertained by occult science.Yet another weighty objection may be raised by the conscientious seeker after truth who desires to find his way to facts and has no experience of his own in the supersensual world. It may be urged that it is inadmissible to accept the existence of facts, of any kind, simply because by means of them something may be explained which is otherwise unintelligible. Such an objection is meaningless to one who knows the corresponding facts from supersensual experience, and in later chapters of this book the path will be indicated that may be followed in order to gain knowledge not only of the spiritual facts herein described, but also of the law of spiritual causation as a personal experience. Any one, however, who is not willing to enter upon this path may find the above objection important; and what can be said against it is also of value to one who is resolved to follow the path indicated. For if it is received in the right spirit, it is the very best preliminary step that can be taken on this path. It is perfectly true that one ought not to accept a statement about which one is otherwise ignorant merely because, by means of it, something otherwise inexplicable can be explained, but in the case of alleged spiritual facts the matter is different. If such statements[pg 096]are accepted, the intellectual consequence is not only that, by their means, life becomes intelligible, but that through admitting these hypotheses into the thought-world, experiences of quite a new kind are induced.Take the following case. Something befalls a man which causes him extremely painful sensations. He may meet the situation in one of two ways. He may submit to the occurrence as something affecting him painfully, and abandon himself to the painful sensation, even becoming absorbed in his grief; or he may meet it in another way. He may say:“It is really I myself who in a former life set the force in motion which has brought me into contact with this thing. I have really brought it on myself.”He may then awaken in himself all the feelings which such a thought brings in its train. It goes without saying that the thought must be entertained with perfect seriousness, and with the utmost possible force, if it is to have such consequences in the life of sensation and feeling. One who succeeds in this will meet with an experience which may be best illustrated by a comparison. Let us suppose that two men have each a stick of sealing wax in his hand. One begins reflecting upon its inner nature. These reflections may perhaps be very wise, but if the“inner nature”did not show itself in any way, some one might easily retort:“That is all imagination.”The other, however, rubs the sealing wax with a woolen rag, and then shows that it attracts small particles. There is an important difference between[pg 097]the thoughts which have passed through the first man's head and his reflections, and those of the second. The thoughts of the first man had no actual result; those of the second have called out a hidden force, consequently something real.The same thing happens with regard to the thoughts of a man in whose mind the idea arises that in a former life he has set going within himself the force which causes him to experience a certain event. The mere conception of this stirs up strength within him which enables him to face the event in quite a different manner from that in which he would have met it without entertaining such an idea. It dawns upon him that an event which he would otherwise have looked upon as an accident was really a necessity and he will immediately see that he had the right thought, because this thought had the power to reveal the facts to him. If such inner processes are repeated they will grow into a source of inner power and thus prove their truth by their fruitfulness; and little by little, this truth is found to be powerfully effective. Such processes have a salutary effect on body, soul, and spirit,—nay, they help life forward in every way. Man becomes aware that in this manner he takes the right position with regard to life's continuity; whereas, by taking into consideration only the one life between birth and death, he is the victim of a delusion.Such an entirely inner proof of spiritual causation can of course be acquired only by each one for himself, in his own inner life. But it is in every[pg 098]one's power to have it. Those who have not acquired it certainly cannot judge of its convincing force; but those who have acquired it can scarcely entertain any further doubt in the matter. And there is no reason for surprise that this should be so. It is only natural that what is so wholly bound up with the constitution of man's inmost being and personality can be adequately proven only by inner experience. On the other hand, it cannot be alleged that because such a matter corresponds to inner experience it must therefore be settled by every one for himself, and that it is no subject for occult science. It is certain that every one must undergo the experience for himself, just as each must see for himself the proof of a mathematical problem. But the path by which such an experience may be gained is open to all, just as the method of proving a mathematical problem is available to every one.It ought not to be denied—apart from clairvoyant observation of course—that by means of the force producing power of the corresponding thoughts, the just cited proof is the only one which stands firm before all unprejudiced logic. All other considerations are no doubt very important, but in all of them there will be something on which an opponent might seize as a point of attack. Surely one who has acquired a fairly impartial way of looking at things will find something in the possibility and actual fact of man's education, which has the power of logical proof that a spiritual being is struggling for existence within the sheath of the body. He will[pg 099]compare animals with man and say to himself that at the birth of the former there appears certain definite qualities and capacities as something, decisive in itself, which plainly shows how it has been designed by heredity and how it will unfold itself in the outer world. We see how a young chicken carries out life's functions in the appointed way from its birth; but by means of education something comes into touch with man's inner life which is independent of any connection with his heredity, and he may be in a position to assimilate the effects of such external influences. The educator knows that such influences are met by forces coming from man's inner nature. If this is not the case, all instruction and training are meaningless. The unprejudiced educator finds the boundary line between inherited talents and those inner forces of the man himself which shine through them and originate in former lives, to be very sharply marked. It is true, we cannot bring forward such weighty proofs for things of this kind as we can for certain physical facts, by means of scales; but then these are just the intimate things of life, and one who has the power to appreciate such impalpable proofs will find them convincing—even more convincing than palpable reality.That animals may be trained, and thus, to a certain extent, acquire qualities and capacities by education, is no objection to one who is able to see reality, for apart from the fact that transitional stages are met with all over the world, the results of training an animal by no means fade away with[pg 100]its individual existence, as is the case with a man. What is more, the fact has been emphasized that faculties acquired by domestic animals through intercourse with man are transmitted, that is to say, continue in the species, not in the individual. Darwin describes how dogs fetch and carry without having been taught to do so, or without having seen it done. Who would make such an assertion with regard to human education?Now there are thinkers whose observations have led them beyond the opinion that a man is built by purely inherited forces from without. They rise to the thought that a spiritual being, an individuality, exists before life in the body, and fashions it; but many of them find it impossible to conceive that there are repeated earthly lives, and that the fruits of former lives are moulding forces during the intermediate state between two lives. Let us take one instance from among the ranks of these thinkers. Immanuel Hermann Fichte, son of the great Fichte, in hisAnthropology(p. 528) gives the observations which led him to the following conclusion:“Parents arenotgenerators in the full sense of the word. They supply organic substance, and not alone this, but also that intermediate element of mental and sense nature which appears in temperament, colouring of character, definite tendencies, and so on, the common source of which proves to be‘imagination’in the wider sense indicated by us. In all these elements of personality, the mingling and particular combination of the souls of the parents[pg 101]is unmistakable; it is therefore a perfectly well-grounded assertion that this combination is simply the result of procreation, even if we regard procreation, as we must do, as really a soul-process. But the real ultimate centre of the personality is just what is lacking here; for a deeper and more searching observation reveals the fact that even those peculiarities of disposition are but a covering and an instrument for the containing of the individual's really spiritual and ideal capabilities, and are qualified to aid these in their development or to hinder them, but in no wise able to originate them.”It is further stated in the same work (p. 532):“Every individual pre-exists as regards the fundamental form of his spirit, for no individual, from a spiritual point of view, resembles another, just as no species of animal resembles another species.”These thoughts reach only far enough to allow a spiritual being to come into the human body; but as the forces shaping such a being are not derived from causes existing in former lives, it would be necessary that, each time a fresh personality appears, a spiritual being should come forth from a Divine First Cause. With this hypothesis there would be no possibility of explaining the relationship which certainly exists between the potentialities struggling out of man's innermost being, and that which is forcing its way thither from his external earthly environment during life. Man's innermost being, issuing in the case of each single person from a Divine First Cause, would find what confronts[pg 102]him in earthly life quite strange and foreign. Only then would this not be the case—as, in fact, it is not—if there had already been a connection between the inner man and the outer world, and if the inner man were not living in it for the first time.The unprejudiced educator may undoubtedly observe clearly that he impresses the consciousness of his pupil with something taken from life's experiences which in itself is foreign to his merely inherited qualities, but which, however, appears to him as if the work out of which these experiences arise, had been done by him in the past. Only repeated lives on earth, in conjunction with the facts set forth by occult science as taking place in spiritual regions between two earthly lives,—only this view can afford a satisfactory explanation of present human life looked at from every side. I say expressly“present”human life, for occult investigation shows that the cycle of earthly life certainly had a beginning, and at that time man's spiritual being, which later entered a bodily frame, existed under different conditions. In the following chapter we shall go back to this primeval condition of human existence. When it has been shown, from the reports of occult science how human beings received their present form in connection with the evolution of the earth, it will also be possible to indicate more precisely how the spiritual germ of man's being descends from superphysical worlds into a bodily form, and how the spiritual law of causation, or“human destiny,”is developed.
Another view would find no satisfaction in such an interpretation. It would assert that even in the manifested world nothing happens in definite places or surroundings without our having to presuppose causes for the event in question. Even though in many cases such causes have not yet been investigated, they are there. An Alpine flower does not grow in the lowlands. Its nature has something which associates it with Alpine regions. Just so must there be something in a man which determines his birth in a certain environment. Causes belonging to the physical world alone are not sufficient to account for this. To a more profound thinker such an explanation appears in somewhat the same light as when one has dealt another a blow, the motive for which is not attributed to the feelings of the one but is to be explained by the physical mechanism of the hand.[pg 090]Any explanation of abilities and talents solely by“heredity”is to such a viewpoint equally unsatisfactory. It is true one may say:“See how certain talents are inherited in families.”During two and a half centuries musical talents were inherited by members of the Bach family. Eight mathematicians sprang from the Bernoulli family, to some of whom quite different occupations were assigned in their childhood; but the inherited talents always drove them to the family vocation. It may be further pointed out how, by an exact investigation of the line of ancestry of a person in one way or another the gifts of this person have shown themselves in the forefathers, and only represent the sum of inherited talents. Whoever holds the latter of the two views above indicated will be sure not to let such facts pass unnoticed, but tohimthey cannot mean the same as they do to one who relies for his interpretation on the events of the world of sense alone. The former will point out that inherited talents can no more of themselves, combine into a complete personality than can the metal parts of a watch fit themselves together. And if objection is made that the co-operation of the parents may possibly produce the combination of talents,—that this as it were, takes the place of the watchmaker,—he will reply:“Look impartially at what is new in every child-personality, at that which is absolutely new; that cannot come from the parents, for the simple reason that it does not exist in them.”Inaccurate thinking may create much confusion[pg 091]in this domain. It is still worse when those who hold the second view are set down by the supporters of the first as opponents of what is, after all, borne out by“ascertained facts.”But it may well be that the latter have not the slightest intention of denying the truth or value of those facts. For instance, they see that a definite mental aptitude or predisposition is“inherited”in a family, and that certain gifts accumulated and combined in one descendant result in a remarkable personality. They are perfectly willing to acquiesce when it is said that the most celebrated name seldom stands at the beginning but at the end of a line of descent. But it should not be taken amiss if they are compelled to form very different opinions on the subject from those of people who are determined to accept nothing but material evidence. To the latter it may be said that it is true a man shows the characteristics of his ancestors, because the“spirit-soul”, which enters upon physical existence at birth, draws its bodily substance from that which heredity bestows on it. But this says nothing more than that a being shows the peculiarities of the body into which it has descended.It is no doubt a singular—a trivial—comparison, but the unprejudiced person will not deny its justification, when one says that a human being, who shows the qualities of his forefathers, proves the origin of the personal qualities of that human being as little as the fact that man is wet because he has fallen into the water, proves something regarding[pg 092]his inner nature. And it may further be said that if the most celebrated name stands at the end of a line of family descent, it shows that the bearer of that name needed that particular ancestry to build the body necessary for the expression of his whole personality. But it is no proof that his actual personal qualities were transmitted to him: such a statement is, on the contrary, opposed to sound logic. If personal gifts were inherited, they would be found at the beginning of a line of descent,7and starting from that point be transmitted to the descendants. As, however, they stand at the end, it is evident that they arenottransmitted.Now it is not to be denied that those who speak of a spiritual causality in life have contributed no less to bringing about confusion of thought. Far too much generalizing and vague discussion comes from this quarter. To say that a man's personality is a combination of inherited characteristics may certainly be compared with the assertion that the metal parts of a watch have fitted themselves together. It must also be admitted that, with regard to many assertions about a spiritual world, it is as though some one said that the metal parts of a watch cannot put themselves together in such a way as to enable the hands to move forward; some intelligence must therefore be present to effect this forward movement. In face of such an assertion,hecertainly[pg 093]builds on a far better foundation who says:“Oh! I care nothing for your‘mystical’beings who move the hands forward. What I want to know is the mechanical construction by means of which the forward movement of the hands is achieved.”It is by no means a question of merely knowing that behind a mechanism, a watch for instance, there is an intelligence (the watchmaker); it can only be of importance to know the ideas in the watchmaker's mind which preceded the construction of the watch. These thoughts may be rediscovered in the mechanism.Mere dreaming and imagining about the supersensual only result in confusion, for they are not calculated to satisfy opponents. The latter are right in saying that such general allusions to super-physical beings are not at all conducive to an understanding of facts. Of course, such opponents might also say the same of theexactstatements of occult science. But, in that case, it may be pointed out that the effects of hidden spiritual causes are seen in manifested life. Let us assume for the moment that what occult science asserts, proven by observation, is correct:—that a man has gone through a[pg 094]time of purification after death, and that during this period he has experienced in his soul how a certain deed, performed by him in a former life, was a hindrance to his progressive evolution. While he was undergoing this experience, the impulse arose in him to make amends for that deed. He brings this impulse with him into a new life and its presence produces a tendency in his nature which draws him into conditions rendering the amendment possible.—Taking into consideration a number of such impulses, we have the cause for a man's being born into an environment corresponding to his destiny.We may deal in the same way with another assumption. Let us again accept as correct the assertion of occult science that the fruits of a past life are incorporated in man's spiritual germ, and that the spirit-land in which man finds himself, between death and a new life, is the region in which these fruits ripen, and are transformed into talents and capabilities which will appear in a new life and will form the personality so that it appears as the effect of what was gained in a former life. It will become evident to any one who accepts these hypotheses and, bearing them in mind, surveys life impartially, that while, by their means, all material facts may be appreciated in their full truth and significance, at the same time everything becomes intelligible which, if only material facts were relied upon, must forever remain incomprehensible to one whose attention is turned toward the spiritual world. And more important still, that illogical reasoning of the kind indicated[pg 095]above will disappear, namely,—that because the most distinguished name in a line of descent stands at the end of it, its bearer must have inherited his gifts. Life becomes logically comprehensible through the supersensual facts ascertained by occult science.Yet another weighty objection may be raised by the conscientious seeker after truth who desires to find his way to facts and has no experience of his own in the supersensual world. It may be urged that it is inadmissible to accept the existence of facts, of any kind, simply because by means of them something may be explained which is otherwise unintelligible. Such an objection is meaningless to one who knows the corresponding facts from supersensual experience, and in later chapters of this book the path will be indicated that may be followed in order to gain knowledge not only of the spiritual facts herein described, but also of the law of spiritual causation as a personal experience. Any one, however, who is not willing to enter upon this path may find the above objection important; and what can be said against it is also of value to one who is resolved to follow the path indicated. For if it is received in the right spirit, it is the very best preliminary step that can be taken on this path. It is perfectly true that one ought not to accept a statement about which one is otherwise ignorant merely because, by means of it, something otherwise inexplicable can be explained, but in the case of alleged spiritual facts the matter is different. If such statements[pg 096]are accepted, the intellectual consequence is not only that, by their means, life becomes intelligible, but that through admitting these hypotheses into the thought-world, experiences of quite a new kind are induced.Take the following case. Something befalls a man which causes him extremely painful sensations. He may meet the situation in one of two ways. He may submit to the occurrence as something affecting him painfully, and abandon himself to the painful sensation, even becoming absorbed in his grief; or he may meet it in another way. He may say:“It is really I myself who in a former life set the force in motion which has brought me into contact with this thing. I have really brought it on myself.”He may then awaken in himself all the feelings which such a thought brings in its train. It goes without saying that the thought must be entertained with perfect seriousness, and with the utmost possible force, if it is to have such consequences in the life of sensation and feeling. One who succeeds in this will meet with an experience which may be best illustrated by a comparison. Let us suppose that two men have each a stick of sealing wax in his hand. One begins reflecting upon its inner nature. These reflections may perhaps be very wise, but if the“inner nature”did not show itself in any way, some one might easily retort:“That is all imagination.”The other, however, rubs the sealing wax with a woolen rag, and then shows that it attracts small particles. There is an important difference between[pg 097]the thoughts which have passed through the first man's head and his reflections, and those of the second. The thoughts of the first man had no actual result; those of the second have called out a hidden force, consequently something real.The same thing happens with regard to the thoughts of a man in whose mind the idea arises that in a former life he has set going within himself the force which causes him to experience a certain event. The mere conception of this stirs up strength within him which enables him to face the event in quite a different manner from that in which he would have met it without entertaining such an idea. It dawns upon him that an event which he would otherwise have looked upon as an accident was really a necessity and he will immediately see that he had the right thought, because this thought had the power to reveal the facts to him. If such inner processes are repeated they will grow into a source of inner power and thus prove their truth by their fruitfulness; and little by little, this truth is found to be powerfully effective. Such processes have a salutary effect on body, soul, and spirit,—nay, they help life forward in every way. Man becomes aware that in this manner he takes the right position with regard to life's continuity; whereas, by taking into consideration only the one life between birth and death, he is the victim of a delusion.Such an entirely inner proof of spiritual causation can of course be acquired only by each one for himself, in his own inner life. But it is in every[pg 098]one's power to have it. Those who have not acquired it certainly cannot judge of its convincing force; but those who have acquired it can scarcely entertain any further doubt in the matter. And there is no reason for surprise that this should be so. It is only natural that what is so wholly bound up with the constitution of man's inmost being and personality can be adequately proven only by inner experience. On the other hand, it cannot be alleged that because such a matter corresponds to inner experience it must therefore be settled by every one for himself, and that it is no subject for occult science. It is certain that every one must undergo the experience for himself, just as each must see for himself the proof of a mathematical problem. But the path by which such an experience may be gained is open to all, just as the method of proving a mathematical problem is available to every one.It ought not to be denied—apart from clairvoyant observation of course—that by means of the force producing power of the corresponding thoughts, the just cited proof is the only one which stands firm before all unprejudiced logic. All other considerations are no doubt very important, but in all of them there will be something on which an opponent might seize as a point of attack. Surely one who has acquired a fairly impartial way of looking at things will find something in the possibility and actual fact of man's education, which has the power of logical proof that a spiritual being is struggling for existence within the sheath of the body. He will[pg 099]compare animals with man and say to himself that at the birth of the former there appears certain definite qualities and capacities as something, decisive in itself, which plainly shows how it has been designed by heredity and how it will unfold itself in the outer world. We see how a young chicken carries out life's functions in the appointed way from its birth; but by means of education something comes into touch with man's inner life which is independent of any connection with his heredity, and he may be in a position to assimilate the effects of such external influences. The educator knows that such influences are met by forces coming from man's inner nature. If this is not the case, all instruction and training are meaningless. The unprejudiced educator finds the boundary line between inherited talents and those inner forces of the man himself which shine through them and originate in former lives, to be very sharply marked. It is true, we cannot bring forward such weighty proofs for things of this kind as we can for certain physical facts, by means of scales; but then these are just the intimate things of life, and one who has the power to appreciate such impalpable proofs will find them convincing—even more convincing than palpable reality.That animals may be trained, and thus, to a certain extent, acquire qualities and capacities by education, is no objection to one who is able to see reality, for apart from the fact that transitional stages are met with all over the world, the results of training an animal by no means fade away with[pg 100]its individual existence, as is the case with a man. What is more, the fact has been emphasized that faculties acquired by domestic animals through intercourse with man are transmitted, that is to say, continue in the species, not in the individual. Darwin describes how dogs fetch and carry without having been taught to do so, or without having seen it done. Who would make such an assertion with regard to human education?Now there are thinkers whose observations have led them beyond the opinion that a man is built by purely inherited forces from without. They rise to the thought that a spiritual being, an individuality, exists before life in the body, and fashions it; but many of them find it impossible to conceive that there are repeated earthly lives, and that the fruits of former lives are moulding forces during the intermediate state between two lives. Let us take one instance from among the ranks of these thinkers. Immanuel Hermann Fichte, son of the great Fichte, in hisAnthropology(p. 528) gives the observations which led him to the following conclusion:“Parents arenotgenerators in the full sense of the word. They supply organic substance, and not alone this, but also that intermediate element of mental and sense nature which appears in temperament, colouring of character, definite tendencies, and so on, the common source of which proves to be‘imagination’in the wider sense indicated by us. In all these elements of personality, the mingling and particular combination of the souls of the parents[pg 101]is unmistakable; it is therefore a perfectly well-grounded assertion that this combination is simply the result of procreation, even if we regard procreation, as we must do, as really a soul-process. But the real ultimate centre of the personality is just what is lacking here; for a deeper and more searching observation reveals the fact that even those peculiarities of disposition are but a covering and an instrument for the containing of the individual's really spiritual and ideal capabilities, and are qualified to aid these in their development or to hinder them, but in no wise able to originate them.”It is further stated in the same work (p. 532):“Every individual pre-exists as regards the fundamental form of his spirit, for no individual, from a spiritual point of view, resembles another, just as no species of animal resembles another species.”These thoughts reach only far enough to allow a spiritual being to come into the human body; but as the forces shaping such a being are not derived from causes existing in former lives, it would be necessary that, each time a fresh personality appears, a spiritual being should come forth from a Divine First Cause. With this hypothesis there would be no possibility of explaining the relationship which certainly exists between the potentialities struggling out of man's innermost being, and that which is forcing its way thither from his external earthly environment during life. Man's innermost being, issuing in the case of each single person from a Divine First Cause, would find what confronts[pg 102]him in earthly life quite strange and foreign. Only then would this not be the case—as, in fact, it is not—if there had already been a connection between the inner man and the outer world, and if the inner man were not living in it for the first time.The unprejudiced educator may undoubtedly observe clearly that he impresses the consciousness of his pupil with something taken from life's experiences which in itself is foreign to his merely inherited qualities, but which, however, appears to him as if the work out of which these experiences arise, had been done by him in the past. Only repeated lives on earth, in conjunction with the facts set forth by occult science as taking place in spiritual regions between two earthly lives,—only this view can afford a satisfactory explanation of present human life looked at from every side. I say expressly“present”human life, for occult investigation shows that the cycle of earthly life certainly had a beginning, and at that time man's spiritual being, which later entered a bodily frame, existed under different conditions. In the following chapter we shall go back to this primeval condition of human existence. When it has been shown, from the reports of occult science how human beings received their present form in connection with the evolution of the earth, it will also be possible to indicate more precisely how the spiritual germ of man's being descends from superphysical worlds into a bodily form, and how the spiritual law of causation, or“human destiny,”is developed.
Another view would find no satisfaction in such an interpretation. It would assert that even in the manifested world nothing happens in definite places or surroundings without our having to presuppose causes for the event in question. Even though in many cases such causes have not yet been investigated, they are there. An Alpine flower does not grow in the lowlands. Its nature has something which associates it with Alpine regions. Just so must there be something in a man which determines his birth in a certain environment. Causes belonging to the physical world alone are not sufficient to account for this. To a more profound thinker such an explanation appears in somewhat the same light as when one has dealt another a blow, the motive for which is not attributed to the feelings of the one but is to be explained by the physical mechanism of the hand.
Any explanation of abilities and talents solely by“heredity”is to such a viewpoint equally unsatisfactory. It is true one may say:“See how certain talents are inherited in families.”During two and a half centuries musical talents were inherited by members of the Bach family. Eight mathematicians sprang from the Bernoulli family, to some of whom quite different occupations were assigned in their childhood; but the inherited talents always drove them to the family vocation. It may be further pointed out how, by an exact investigation of the line of ancestry of a person in one way or another the gifts of this person have shown themselves in the forefathers, and only represent the sum of inherited talents. Whoever holds the latter of the two views above indicated will be sure not to let such facts pass unnoticed, but tohimthey cannot mean the same as they do to one who relies for his interpretation on the events of the world of sense alone. The former will point out that inherited talents can no more of themselves, combine into a complete personality than can the metal parts of a watch fit themselves together. And if objection is made that the co-operation of the parents may possibly produce the combination of talents,—that this as it were, takes the place of the watchmaker,—he will reply:“Look impartially at what is new in every child-personality, at that which is absolutely new; that cannot come from the parents, for the simple reason that it does not exist in them.”
Inaccurate thinking may create much confusion[pg 091]in this domain. It is still worse when those who hold the second view are set down by the supporters of the first as opponents of what is, after all, borne out by“ascertained facts.”But it may well be that the latter have not the slightest intention of denying the truth or value of those facts. For instance, they see that a definite mental aptitude or predisposition is“inherited”in a family, and that certain gifts accumulated and combined in one descendant result in a remarkable personality. They are perfectly willing to acquiesce when it is said that the most celebrated name seldom stands at the beginning but at the end of a line of descent. But it should not be taken amiss if they are compelled to form very different opinions on the subject from those of people who are determined to accept nothing but material evidence. To the latter it may be said that it is true a man shows the characteristics of his ancestors, because the“spirit-soul”, which enters upon physical existence at birth, draws its bodily substance from that which heredity bestows on it. But this says nothing more than that a being shows the peculiarities of the body into which it has descended.
It is no doubt a singular—a trivial—comparison, but the unprejudiced person will not deny its justification, when one says that a human being, who shows the qualities of his forefathers, proves the origin of the personal qualities of that human being as little as the fact that man is wet because he has fallen into the water, proves something regarding[pg 092]his inner nature. And it may further be said that if the most celebrated name stands at the end of a line of family descent, it shows that the bearer of that name needed that particular ancestry to build the body necessary for the expression of his whole personality. But it is no proof that his actual personal qualities were transmitted to him: such a statement is, on the contrary, opposed to sound logic. If personal gifts were inherited, they would be found at the beginning of a line of descent,7and starting from that point be transmitted to the descendants. As, however, they stand at the end, it is evident that they arenottransmitted.
Now it is not to be denied that those who speak of a spiritual causality in life have contributed no less to bringing about confusion of thought. Far too much generalizing and vague discussion comes from this quarter. To say that a man's personality is a combination of inherited characteristics may certainly be compared with the assertion that the metal parts of a watch have fitted themselves together. It must also be admitted that, with regard to many assertions about a spiritual world, it is as though some one said that the metal parts of a watch cannot put themselves together in such a way as to enable the hands to move forward; some intelligence must therefore be present to effect this forward movement. In face of such an assertion,hecertainly[pg 093]builds on a far better foundation who says:“Oh! I care nothing for your‘mystical’beings who move the hands forward. What I want to know is the mechanical construction by means of which the forward movement of the hands is achieved.”It is by no means a question of merely knowing that behind a mechanism, a watch for instance, there is an intelligence (the watchmaker); it can only be of importance to know the ideas in the watchmaker's mind which preceded the construction of the watch. These thoughts may be rediscovered in the mechanism.
Mere dreaming and imagining about the supersensual only result in confusion, for they are not calculated to satisfy opponents. The latter are right in saying that such general allusions to super-physical beings are not at all conducive to an understanding of facts. Of course, such opponents might also say the same of theexactstatements of occult science. But, in that case, it may be pointed out that the effects of hidden spiritual causes are seen in manifested life. Let us assume for the moment that what occult science asserts, proven by observation, is correct:—that a man has gone through a[pg 094]time of purification after death, and that during this period he has experienced in his soul how a certain deed, performed by him in a former life, was a hindrance to his progressive evolution. While he was undergoing this experience, the impulse arose in him to make amends for that deed. He brings this impulse with him into a new life and its presence produces a tendency in his nature which draws him into conditions rendering the amendment possible.—Taking into consideration a number of such impulses, we have the cause for a man's being born into an environment corresponding to his destiny.
We may deal in the same way with another assumption. Let us again accept as correct the assertion of occult science that the fruits of a past life are incorporated in man's spiritual germ, and that the spirit-land in which man finds himself, between death and a new life, is the region in which these fruits ripen, and are transformed into talents and capabilities which will appear in a new life and will form the personality so that it appears as the effect of what was gained in a former life. It will become evident to any one who accepts these hypotheses and, bearing them in mind, surveys life impartially, that while, by their means, all material facts may be appreciated in their full truth and significance, at the same time everything becomes intelligible which, if only material facts were relied upon, must forever remain incomprehensible to one whose attention is turned toward the spiritual world. And more important still, that illogical reasoning of the kind indicated[pg 095]above will disappear, namely,—that because the most distinguished name in a line of descent stands at the end of it, its bearer must have inherited his gifts. Life becomes logically comprehensible through the supersensual facts ascertained by occult science.
Yet another weighty objection may be raised by the conscientious seeker after truth who desires to find his way to facts and has no experience of his own in the supersensual world. It may be urged that it is inadmissible to accept the existence of facts, of any kind, simply because by means of them something may be explained which is otherwise unintelligible. Such an objection is meaningless to one who knows the corresponding facts from supersensual experience, and in later chapters of this book the path will be indicated that may be followed in order to gain knowledge not only of the spiritual facts herein described, but also of the law of spiritual causation as a personal experience. Any one, however, who is not willing to enter upon this path may find the above objection important; and what can be said against it is also of value to one who is resolved to follow the path indicated. For if it is received in the right spirit, it is the very best preliminary step that can be taken on this path. It is perfectly true that one ought not to accept a statement about which one is otherwise ignorant merely because, by means of it, something otherwise inexplicable can be explained, but in the case of alleged spiritual facts the matter is different. If such statements[pg 096]are accepted, the intellectual consequence is not only that, by their means, life becomes intelligible, but that through admitting these hypotheses into the thought-world, experiences of quite a new kind are induced.
Take the following case. Something befalls a man which causes him extremely painful sensations. He may meet the situation in one of two ways. He may submit to the occurrence as something affecting him painfully, and abandon himself to the painful sensation, even becoming absorbed in his grief; or he may meet it in another way. He may say:“It is really I myself who in a former life set the force in motion which has brought me into contact with this thing. I have really brought it on myself.”He may then awaken in himself all the feelings which such a thought brings in its train. It goes without saying that the thought must be entertained with perfect seriousness, and with the utmost possible force, if it is to have such consequences in the life of sensation and feeling. One who succeeds in this will meet with an experience which may be best illustrated by a comparison. Let us suppose that two men have each a stick of sealing wax in his hand. One begins reflecting upon its inner nature. These reflections may perhaps be very wise, but if the“inner nature”did not show itself in any way, some one might easily retort:“That is all imagination.”The other, however, rubs the sealing wax with a woolen rag, and then shows that it attracts small particles. There is an important difference between[pg 097]the thoughts which have passed through the first man's head and his reflections, and those of the second. The thoughts of the first man had no actual result; those of the second have called out a hidden force, consequently something real.
The same thing happens with regard to the thoughts of a man in whose mind the idea arises that in a former life he has set going within himself the force which causes him to experience a certain event. The mere conception of this stirs up strength within him which enables him to face the event in quite a different manner from that in which he would have met it without entertaining such an idea. It dawns upon him that an event which he would otherwise have looked upon as an accident was really a necessity and he will immediately see that he had the right thought, because this thought had the power to reveal the facts to him. If such inner processes are repeated they will grow into a source of inner power and thus prove their truth by their fruitfulness; and little by little, this truth is found to be powerfully effective. Such processes have a salutary effect on body, soul, and spirit,—nay, they help life forward in every way. Man becomes aware that in this manner he takes the right position with regard to life's continuity; whereas, by taking into consideration only the one life between birth and death, he is the victim of a delusion.
Such an entirely inner proof of spiritual causation can of course be acquired only by each one for himself, in his own inner life. But it is in every[pg 098]one's power to have it. Those who have not acquired it certainly cannot judge of its convincing force; but those who have acquired it can scarcely entertain any further doubt in the matter. And there is no reason for surprise that this should be so. It is only natural that what is so wholly bound up with the constitution of man's inmost being and personality can be adequately proven only by inner experience. On the other hand, it cannot be alleged that because such a matter corresponds to inner experience it must therefore be settled by every one for himself, and that it is no subject for occult science. It is certain that every one must undergo the experience for himself, just as each must see for himself the proof of a mathematical problem. But the path by which such an experience may be gained is open to all, just as the method of proving a mathematical problem is available to every one.
It ought not to be denied—apart from clairvoyant observation of course—that by means of the force producing power of the corresponding thoughts, the just cited proof is the only one which stands firm before all unprejudiced logic. All other considerations are no doubt very important, but in all of them there will be something on which an opponent might seize as a point of attack. Surely one who has acquired a fairly impartial way of looking at things will find something in the possibility and actual fact of man's education, which has the power of logical proof that a spiritual being is struggling for existence within the sheath of the body. He will[pg 099]compare animals with man and say to himself that at the birth of the former there appears certain definite qualities and capacities as something, decisive in itself, which plainly shows how it has been designed by heredity and how it will unfold itself in the outer world. We see how a young chicken carries out life's functions in the appointed way from its birth; but by means of education something comes into touch with man's inner life which is independent of any connection with his heredity, and he may be in a position to assimilate the effects of such external influences. The educator knows that such influences are met by forces coming from man's inner nature. If this is not the case, all instruction and training are meaningless. The unprejudiced educator finds the boundary line between inherited talents and those inner forces of the man himself which shine through them and originate in former lives, to be very sharply marked. It is true, we cannot bring forward such weighty proofs for things of this kind as we can for certain physical facts, by means of scales; but then these are just the intimate things of life, and one who has the power to appreciate such impalpable proofs will find them convincing—even more convincing than palpable reality.
That animals may be trained, and thus, to a certain extent, acquire qualities and capacities by education, is no objection to one who is able to see reality, for apart from the fact that transitional stages are met with all over the world, the results of training an animal by no means fade away with[pg 100]its individual existence, as is the case with a man. What is more, the fact has been emphasized that faculties acquired by domestic animals through intercourse with man are transmitted, that is to say, continue in the species, not in the individual. Darwin describes how dogs fetch and carry without having been taught to do so, or without having seen it done. Who would make such an assertion with regard to human education?
Now there are thinkers whose observations have led them beyond the opinion that a man is built by purely inherited forces from without. They rise to the thought that a spiritual being, an individuality, exists before life in the body, and fashions it; but many of them find it impossible to conceive that there are repeated earthly lives, and that the fruits of former lives are moulding forces during the intermediate state between two lives. Let us take one instance from among the ranks of these thinkers. Immanuel Hermann Fichte, son of the great Fichte, in hisAnthropology(p. 528) gives the observations which led him to the following conclusion:
“Parents arenotgenerators in the full sense of the word. They supply organic substance, and not alone this, but also that intermediate element of mental and sense nature which appears in temperament, colouring of character, definite tendencies, and so on, the common source of which proves to be‘imagination’in the wider sense indicated by us. In all these elements of personality, the mingling and particular combination of the souls of the parents[pg 101]is unmistakable; it is therefore a perfectly well-grounded assertion that this combination is simply the result of procreation, even if we regard procreation, as we must do, as really a soul-process. But the real ultimate centre of the personality is just what is lacking here; for a deeper and more searching observation reveals the fact that even those peculiarities of disposition are but a covering and an instrument for the containing of the individual's really spiritual and ideal capabilities, and are qualified to aid these in their development or to hinder them, but in no wise able to originate them.”It is further stated in the same work (p. 532):“Every individual pre-exists as regards the fundamental form of his spirit, for no individual, from a spiritual point of view, resembles another, just as no species of animal resembles another species.”
These thoughts reach only far enough to allow a spiritual being to come into the human body; but as the forces shaping such a being are not derived from causes existing in former lives, it would be necessary that, each time a fresh personality appears, a spiritual being should come forth from a Divine First Cause. With this hypothesis there would be no possibility of explaining the relationship which certainly exists between the potentialities struggling out of man's innermost being, and that which is forcing its way thither from his external earthly environment during life. Man's innermost being, issuing in the case of each single person from a Divine First Cause, would find what confronts[pg 102]him in earthly life quite strange and foreign. Only then would this not be the case—as, in fact, it is not—if there had already been a connection between the inner man and the outer world, and if the inner man were not living in it for the first time.
The unprejudiced educator may undoubtedly observe clearly that he impresses the consciousness of his pupil with something taken from life's experiences which in itself is foreign to his merely inherited qualities, but which, however, appears to him as if the work out of which these experiences arise, had been done by him in the past. Only repeated lives on earth, in conjunction with the facts set forth by occult science as taking place in spiritual regions between two earthly lives,—only this view can afford a satisfactory explanation of present human life looked at from every side. I say expressly“present”human life, for occult investigation shows that the cycle of earthly life certainly had a beginning, and at that time man's spiritual being, which later entered a bodily frame, existed under different conditions. In the following chapter we shall go back to this primeval condition of human existence. When it has been shown, from the reports of occult science how human beings received their present form in connection with the evolution of the earth, it will also be possible to indicate more precisely how the spiritual germ of man's being descends from superphysical worlds into a bodily form, and how the spiritual law of causation, or“human destiny,”is developed.