by Rudolf Steiner
A Lecture given at Karlsruhe, 19th January, 1909
This is the 2nd of 4 lectures given by Rudolf Steiner at various cities, in the Winters of 1909 and 1912. A title these lectures were published under is: Anthroposophy in Everyday Life. The translator is Frances E. Dawson..
This is an authorised English translation, printed in agreement with Harry Collison, M.A. (Oxon.). It is presented here with the kind permission of the Rudolf Steiner Nachlassverwaltung, Dornach, Switzerland. Copyright © 1944
This e.Text edition is provided with the cooperation of: Steiner Books and The Rudolf Steiner Press
Download the article: The Mystery of the Human Temperaments
The Mystery of the Human Temperaments*
By RUDOLF STEINER
“When it is a case of mastering life, we must listen for
life's secrets, and these lie behind the sense-perceptible.”
*A public lecture given in the winter of 1908-09.
IT is an oft-repeated and a justifiable opinion, with regard to all the realms of human spiritual life, that man's greatest riddle here in our physical life is man himself. And we may truly say that a large part of our scientific activity, of our reflection, and of much besides in man's life of thought, is applied to the solving of this human riddle, to discerning a little wherein the essence of human nature consists. Natural science and spiritual science try to solve from different sides this great riddle comprised in the word Man. In the main, all the more profound natural scientific research seeks to attain its final goal by bringing together all the processes of nature, and so forth, in order to comprehend the external laws. And all spiritual science seeks the sources of existence for the sake of comprehending, of fathoming, man's being and destiny. If then, on the one hand, it is unquestioned that in general man's greatest riddle is man himself, we may say that in relation to life this expression may have a still deeper significance, in that it is necessary on the other hand to emphasize what each of us feels upon meeting another person: namely, that fundamentally each single person is in turn an enigma for others and for himself because of his special nature and being. Ordinarily, when we speak of this human enigma, we have in mind man in general, man without distinction regarding this or that individuality; and certainly many problems appear for us when we wish to understand human nature in general. But today we have not to do with the general riddles of existence, but rather with that enigma, not less significant for life, which each person we meet presents to us. For how endlessly varied are human beings in their deepest individual essence!
When we survey human life we shall have to be especially attentive to this riddle which each person presents, for our entire social life, our relation of man to man, must depend more upon how in individual cases we are able to approach with our feeling, with our sensibility, rather than merely with our intelligence, that individual human enigma which stands before us so often each day, with which we have to deal so often. How difficult it is regarding the people we meet to come to a clear knowledge of the various sides of their nature, and how much depends in life upon our coming to such clear knowledge regarding those people with whom we come in touch. We can of course only approach quite gradually the solution of the whole riddle of the human individual, of which each person presents a special phase, for there is a great gap between what is called human nature in general and that which confronts us in each human individual.
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