CORRESPONDANCE AND DOCUMENTS 1925

INTRODUCTION

NOTES BY RUDOLF STEINER
written for Edouard Schuré in Barr, Alsace, September 1907

My attention was drawn to Kant at an early stage. At fifteen and sixteen
I studied Kant intensively, and before going on to college in Vienna I had
an intense interest in Kant's early nineteenth century orthodox followers,
who have been completely forgotten by official historians of thought in
Germany and are rarely mentioned. In addition, I immersed myself in Fichte
and Schelling. During this period - and this is already due to external spiritual
influences I gained complete understanding of the concept of time. This
knowledge was in no way connected with my studies and was guided totally
by the spiritual life. I understood that there is a regressing evolution, the
occult-astral, which interferes with the progressing one. This knowledge is
the precondition of spiritual clairvoyance.

Then came acquaintance with the agent of the M. the Master l

Then intensive study of Hegel

Then the study of modern philosophy as it developed from the 1850s
onward in Germany, particularly the so-called Theory of Knowledge with
all its various branches.

My boyhood passed in such a way that, although no one consciously
planned it, I never met anyone who was superstitious. If I did hear anyone
speak of superstitious things, the emphasis was always strongly on their
rejection. Although I became familiar with church worship, in that I took
part in it as a so-called altar-boy, nowhere did I meet true piety and religiosity,
not even among the priests whom I knew. On the contrary, I continuously
saw certain negative traits of the Catholic clergy