WHILST humans are not identical to the objects of the external world, we are nonetheless part of that world in the sense that we contain the same drives and share in its cosmic destiny as subjects:

Hence, for a relation to subsist between my organism and an object external to me, it is by no means necessary that something of the object should slip into me, or make an impression on my mind, like a signet-ring on wax. The question, How do I gain knowledge of that tree ten feet away from me, is utterly misleading. It springs from the view that the boundaries of my body are absolute barriers, through which information about external things filters into me. The forces which are active within my body are the same as those which exist outside. I am, therefore, really identical with the objects; not, however, I in so far as I am subject of perception, but I in so far as I am a part within the universal cosmic process. (p.56)

At the moment a percept appears before us we being to think and this leads to the formation of an idea. Once we have developed what Steiner calls an “individualised concept,” through the unity of perception and thought, the thing we have encountered becomes a reality and remains in our mind as a subjective representation.

This idea, located somewhere between percept and concept, enables us to recognise the same object over and over again. The idea may also be regarded as a form of experience, and the more ideas we accumulate the more superior our knowledge of the world. Possessing the ability to think, however, is nothing without the capability to perceive through intuition. Nevertheless, it is important to remember that if we amass percepts, concepts and ideas in the way that someone might collect seashells from a beach we simply remain at the stage of cognition. It is crucial to relate them to what Steiner terms our “private subjectivity” in the form of feeling, i.e. as pleasure and pain. With thought helping us to participate in the “world-process,” feeling allows us to withdraw into the confines of the individual Ego:

Were we merely thinking and perceiving beings, our whole life would flow along in monotonous indifference. Could we only know ourselves as Selves, we should be totally indifferent to ourselves. It is only because with self-knowledge we experience self-feeling, and with the perception of objects pleasure and pain, that we live as individuals whose existence is not exhausted by the conceptual relations in which they stand to the rest of the world, but who have a special value in themselves. (p.58)

Although it could be claimed that feeling offers far more satisfaction to the individual than trying to understand the workings of the universe, Steiner reminds us that feelings also have a vital role to play in the external world to the extent that they enter into relations with percepts and become part of the macrocosmic web:

Our life is a continual oscillation between our share in the universal world-process and our own individual existence. The farther we ascend into the universal nature of thought where the individual, at last, interests us only as an example, an instance, of the concept, the more the character of something individual, of the quite determinate, unique personality, becomes lost in us. The farther we descend into the depths of our own private life and allow the vibrations of our feelings to accompany all our experiences of the outer world, the more we cut ourselves off from the universal life. True individuality belongs to him whose feelings reach up to the farthest possible extent into the region of the ideal. There are men in whom even the most general ideas still bear that peculiar personal tinge which shows unmistakably their connection with their author. There are others whose concepts come before us as devoid of any trace of individual colouring as if they had not been produced by a being of flesh and blood at all. (p.58)

This pivotal streak of individuality – which, in many ways, Steiner inherited from the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) – allows us to form concepts in our own specific way. Inevitably, this process is often dependant on geographical factors that are presented by Steiner as one’s “milieu”.

Combined with personal interaction with percepts, our feelings bring to life those concepts which are indelibly stamped with our own character. Each of us is therefore a soul with the potential to participate in the wider communion of souls that occupies the same universal cosmos.