AS we have seen, Steiner devotes a great deal of time to the discussion of Monism and believes that it accounts for the explanation of nature in accordance with a single principle. Nonetheless, Steiner also points out that whilst Monism allows for the moral imagination to draw upon the world of observation with a view towards action it does not seek to perceive the “ultimate grounds” of the world outside of the world itself:

For Monism, the unity which reflective observation adds to the manifold multiplicity of percepts, is identical with the unity which the human desire for knowledge demands, and through which this desire seeks entrance into the physical and spiritual realms. Whoever looks for another unity behind this one, only shows that he fails to perceive the coincidence of the results of thinking with the demands of the instinct for knowledge. A particular human individual is not something cut off from the universe. He is a part of the universe, and his connection with the cosmic whole is broken, not in reality, but only for our perception. At first we apprehend the human part of the universe as a self-existing thing, because we are unable to perceive the cords and ropes by which the fundamental forces of the cosmos keep turning the wheel of our life. (p.126)

The individual is therefore able to view this part of the whole as something autonomous which “mysteriously” obtains information about the world from without. In addition, it is worth noting that Monism

has shown that we can believe in this independence only so long as thought does not gather our percepts into the network of the conceptual world. As soon as this happens, all partial existence in the universe, all isolated being, reveals itself as a mere appearance due to perception. Existence as a self-contained totality can be predicated only of the universe as a whole. Thought destroys the appearances due to perception and assigns to our individual existence a place in the life of the cosmos. The unity of the conceptual world which contains all objective percepts, has room also within itself for the content of our subjective personality. Thought gives us the true structure of reality as a self-contained unity, whereas the multiplicity of percepts is but an appearance conditioned by our organisation. (p.126)

It is important not to seize upon percepts themselves as though they were representative of reality. As we have seen in some of the earlier chapters of this book, our mental organisation divides reality into to separate factors: percepts that are received objectively and concepts which are subjective in terms of their being formed in association with human intuition. Once these two principles are unified we get a full picture of reality itself and this prevents us from viewing percepts as purely abstract, detached concepts that cannot be related to anything else. Once again, it is thought which brings the two aspects together.

Steiner makes a distinction between the way in which both the Monist and the Idealist view our potential to obtain knowledge of reality:

Even the most orthodox Idealist will not deny that we live in the real world (that, as real beings, we are rooted in it); but he will deny that our knowledge, by means of its ideas, is able to grasp reality as we live it. As against this view, Monism shows that thought is neither subjective nor objective, but a principle which holds together both these sides of reality. The contemplative act of thought is a cognitive process which belongs itself to the sequence of real events. By thought we overcome, within the limits of experience itself, the one-sidedness of mere perception. We are not able by means of abstract conceptual hypotheses (purely conceptual speculation) to puzzle out the nature of the real, but in so far as we find for our percepts the right concepts we live in the real. Monism does not seek to supplement experience by something unknowable (transcending experience), but finds reality in concept and percept. It does not manufacture a metaphysical system out of pure concepts, because it looks upon concepts as only one side of reality, viz., the side which remains hidden from perception, but is meaningless except in union with percepts. But Monism gives man the conviction that he lives in the world of reality, and has no need to seek beyond the world for a higher reality. (pp.127-8)

By locating reality in the information that an individual gleans from experience, Monism has no need to look elsewhere and it is only the Dualist who must construct an otherworldly dimension that lies beyond it. Steiner insists that we humans detect a fundamental link between one another as a result of experiencing the same “conceptual content” and, thus, the same reality.

If there is an ideal world, he tells us, it must therefore lie in the “unity of all multiplicity”. Absolute Reality, for the Monist, lies within the self, but the Dualist is only able to focus on a Divine Being that lives within each of us and this means the individual is effectively detached from reality. Con-sequently, Dualism runs counter to the principle of unity:

The ideal content of another subject is also my content, and I regard it as a different content only so long as I perceive, but no longer when I think. Every man embraces in his thought only a part of the total world of ideas, and so far, individuals are distinguished one from another also by the actual contents of their thought. But all these contents belong to a self-contained whole, which comprises within itself the thought-contents of all men. Hence every man, in so far as he thinks, lays hold of the universal Reality which pervades all men. To fill one’s life with such thought-content is to live in Reality, and at the same time to live in God. (p.128)

Steiner will not accept that our minds are capable of going beyond the basic reality of everyday existence, simply because the formulation of a hypothetical other-world cannot account for the more immediate world any better than it has already been accounted for. Seeking to apply philosophical principles beyond the world itself, in other words, does not alter the reality of the here and now. After all, Steiner believes that the divine is already immanent within our existing reality and that human thought has no need for transcendent theories that develop concepts without recourse to perception.

Similarly, human action does not spring from another dimension but is the result of thought-processes that undergo a process of intuition:

For Monism there is no ruler of the world standing outside of us and determining the aim and direction of our actions. There is for man no transcendent ground of existence, the counsels of which he might discover, in order thence to learn the ends to which he ought to direct his action. Man must rest wholly upon himself. He must himself give a content to his action. It is in vain that he seeks outside the world in which he lives for motives of his will. If he is to go at all beyond the satisfaction of the natural instincts for which Mother Nature has provided, he must look for motives in his own moral imagination, unless he finds it more convenient to let them be determined for him by the moral imagination of others. In other words, he must either cease acting altogether, or else act from motives which he selects for himself from the world of his ideas, or which others select for him from that same world. (p.129)

Although human motives are derived from one’s perception of the world and its content, the individual must convert it into reality and this, as far as Steiner is concerned, indicates that each of us is indeed a free agent in control of his or her own will.