The nature of man : approached through the philosophy of Rudolf Steiner

great need of nurture and education if it is to grow up to a healthy and fruitful maturity? To do so we shall first have to recall the salient features of this scientific movement and come up against the limitations of knowledge which have arisen in its path and to which Rudolf Steiner drew most particular attention.

Man has today become overwhelmed by the avalanache of precise scientific knowledge, based on the accurate measurements of sense phenomena mathematically developed, which accumulates in ever increasing quantities. By comparison with the seeming precision of this work, the world of qualities, of tones, colours, smells and of emotions, appears as a bewildering kaleidoscope of changing dream pictures in which no certainty is to be found. And yet it is in the midst of all these qualities that we live and experience our life. These phenomena are not easily shared and made verifiable; like actual dreams they are largely private and subjective, communicable perhaps only through the media of art. By contrast the world of science appears verifiable and objective, that is to say shareable and subject to law, but it has become empty of content and meaning, abstract and dehumanised. Nevertheless we should recall that none other than Goethe saw and was deeply moved exactly by the rule of law, even in Art itself.

Up until the scientific revolution, some four centuries or so ago, this stark division between the world of human experience and the world of scientific measurement and calculation had not been established. Nature was conceived both quantitatively and qualitatively and man was conceived as Microcosm within the Macrocosm. What is more, Nature was felt, and even experienced, to be peopled by elemental spirits and there were the encircling spheres of heaven with the hierarchies of spiritual beings. It was a complex, subtle conception of the world, full of meanings, purposes and mysteries, and full of wonder. In Astrology and Alchemy, the study of the stars and of substances in their movements and transformations was pursued out of a consciousness which still found psycho-spiritual forces, beings and qualities intimately permeating the physical bodies and substances. Everything was still living, the full impact of death had not been felt.

At the end of the Middle Ages Western man became obsessed

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