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To this fourth principle in man we can give no better name than that which every human being can apply to himself alone and to no other, and which no other can apply to him. This is the name, I. In truth, we describe man in his entirety only if we ascribe to him, in addition to a physical, etheric and astral body, the possession of an I (Ego).
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When Kepler, against the hopes of his forerunner and friend, Tycho Brahe, accepted the heliocentric standpoint and made it the basis of his observations, he did so out of his understanding of what was the truth for his own time. Kepler’s ideal was to seek after knowledge through pure observation. In this respect Goethe took him as his model. Kepler’s discoveries were a proof that man’s searching mind is given insight into great truths at any stage of its development, provided it keeps to the virtue of practising pure observation.
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To this fourth principle in man we can give no better name than that which every human being can apply to himself alone and to no other, and which no other can apply to him. This is the name, I. In truth, we describe man in his entirety only if we ascribe to him, in addition to a physical, etheric and astral body, the possession of an I (Ego).
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Naturally, our previous studies have afforded many opportunities for observing the nature and mode of activity of the I. Still, at the conclusion of these studies it is not redundant to form a concise picture of this part of man’s being, with particular regard to how it works within the three other principles as its sheaths. For in modern psychology, not excluding the branch of it where efforts are made to penetrate into deeper regions of man’s being, nothing is less well understood than the true nature of man’s egoity.
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It has been the error of Newton and his successors up to our own day, to try to conceive the world dynamically within the limits of their spectator-consciousness and thus to form a dynamic interpretation of the universe based on its heliocentric aspect. This was just as repellent to Goethe as Kepler’s attitude was attractive.
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In order to recognize the peculiar function of the I in man, we must first be clear as to how he differs from the other kingdoms of nature, and how they differ from one another with respect to the mode of action of the physical, etheric and astral forces.
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But by so sharply distinguishing between Newton and Kepler, do we not do injustice to the fact that, as the world believes, Kepler’s third law is the parent of Newton’s law of gravitation? The following will show that this belief is founded on an illusory conception of the kind we met before. As we shall see, Kepler’s discovery, when treated in a Keplerian way, instead of leading to Newton, is found to be in full agreement with the very world-picture to which our own observations have led us.