No  better  way  of  doing  this  can  be  found  than  through  the  
medium  of  his  autobiography  , The  Course  of  My  Life  , written  
during  the  last  months  of  his  life  when  he  had  reached  the  age  of  
sixty-one  and  was  able  to  survey  , with  the  peculiar  clarity  that  
sometimes  comes  with  age  , his  early  years  , the  gradual  development  of  
his  own  powers  and  the  varied  influences  that  came  to  him  through  the  
many  friends  into  whose  orbits  he  was  attracted .sx   
The  warmth  of  his  nature  and  his  lively  interest  in  his  fellow  
human  beings  is  apparent  in  all  his  descriptions  of  the  men  and  women  
that  he  met-  whether  in  the  charmed  circles  of  the  literary  world  of  
Vienna  in  the  'eighties  , or  in  the  near-Utopian  cultural  climate  of  
Weimar  , where  he  worked  in  the  Goethe  Institute  , or  in  the  rough  and  
tumble  of  journalistic  life  in  Berlin  , where  he  edited  the  Magazin  
" r  Literatur .sx   He  did  not  find  agreement  in  opinion  a  necessary  
condition  for  friendship :sx   " I  loved  the  many-sidedness  of  " ,  he  
said .sx   
The  book  was  never  finished  , for  his  illness  and  death  intervened  
while  he  was  in  the  course  of  writing  it .sx   But  it  carries  his  story  to  
the  early  years  of  this  century  and  gives  a  comprehensive  picture  of  
all  that  led  up  to  his  life-work .sx   
Rudolf  Steiner  was  born  at  the  little  village  of  Kraljevec  in  
Southern  Austria  on  the  border  between  Hungary  and  Croatia .sx   His  
parents  both  belonged  to  the  Lower  Austrian  forest  region  , north  of  
the  Danube  , and  in  the  small  town  of  Geras  his  father  had  passed  his  
childhood  and  youth  in  close  association  with  the  seminary  of  the  
Premonstratensian  Order  , where  he  was  instructed  by  the  monks .sx   Later  
he  became  a  gamekeeper  to  Count  Hoyos  on  his  estate  at  Horn  but  on  his  
marriage  changed  this  occupation  and  took  the  job  of  telegraphist  on  
the  Southern  Austrian  Railway .sx   He  remained  a  countryman  at  heart  and  
the  new  work  was  uncongenial  but  he  was  soon  promoted  to  be  
Station-master  of  Pottschach  in  Lower  Austria .sx   At  this  little  railway  
station  , with  the  magnificent  scenery  of  the  Styrian  Alps  before  him  , 
Rudolf  Steiner  spent  the  formative  years  from  two  to  eight .sx   He  was  
much  absorbed  , as  any  other  small  boy  would  be  , in  the  daily  business  
of  the  railway .sx   His  father  taught  him  his  letters  and  his  own  
insatiable  curiosity  about  the  world  and  its  ways  taught  him  many  
other  things  , such  as  the  complete  process  of  milling  which  he  learnt  
from  constant  visits  to  the  local  mill .sx   But  there  were  many  problems  
that  exercised  his  active  mind .sx   " I  was  filled  with  " ,  he  
says  , " and  I  had  to  carry  these  questions  about  with  me  unanswered .sx   
It  was  thus  that  I  reached  my  eighth  "  .sx   
During  this  year  the  family  moved  to  Neudorff  in  Hungary  , and  
here  they  remained  until  Rudolf  Steiner  was  seventeen .sx   The  Alps  were  
now  visible  only  in  the  distance  but  near  at  hand  were  mountains  
easier  to  climb  and  great  forests  where  the  peasants  gathered  wood .sx   
With  his  parents  , his  sister  and  his  brother  , Rudolf  walked  and  
climbed  , bringing  back  wild  fruits  for  supper .sx   But  he  preferred  to  
walk  alone  , and  to  talk  to  the  peasants  that  he  met .sx   With  them  , he  
took  part  every  year  in  the  vintage  and  with  their  children  he  went  to  
the  village  school .sx   
It  was  through  the  assistant  master  at  this  school  that  the  first  
great  event  of  his  life  took  place-  an  event  that  , he  believed  , 
influenced  the  whole  course  of  his  development  and  of  his  future  work  ; 
it  was  the  discovery  , in  his  teacher's  room  , of  a  text  book  on  
geometry .sx   He  was  allowed  to  borrow  it  and  through  it  he  felt  the  
deepest  satisfaction  he  had  yet  known  , for  by  this  science  he  found  
justification  for  his  own  assumption  that  the  reality  of  the  unseen  
world  is  as  certain  a  fact  as  the  reality  of  the  physical  world .sx   It  
seemed  to  him  to  be  a  form  of  knowledge  which  man  appeared  to  have  
produced  but  which  had  a  significance  quite  independent  of  man .sx   He  
had  found  unaided  something  that  gave  confirmation  of  the  " unseen  " 
world  , a  world  of  which  he  had  been  aware  even  before  his  eighth  year  
and  in  which  he  longed  to  live .sx   Had  not  the  seen  received  light  from  
the  unseen  he  would  , he  said  , have  been  forced  to  feel  the  physical  
world  as  if  it  were  a  kind  of  darkness  around  him .sx   
Another  outstanding  event  that  took  place  in  his  tenth  year  , and  
that  was  to  bear  fruit  in  later  life  , was  his  introduction  , through  
the  local  priest  , to  the  system  of  Copernicus .sx   Astronomy  became  as  
absorbing  a  study  to  him  as  the  mechanism  of  the  railway  had  once  
been .sx   He  had  now  formed  an  attachment  to  the  priest  and  also  to  the  
Church  , where  he  was  a  server  and  a  chorister .sx   He  entered  into  his  
duties  with  sensitive  participation  , and  found  in  the  sonorous  beauty  
of  the  Latin  liturgy  " a  vital  "  .sx   It  was  to  him  a  means  of  
mediation  between  his  two  worlds .sx   But  it  was  not  a  soporific  , for  
through  the  music  and  in  contemplation  of  the  ritual  he  saw  the  riddle  
of  existence  rising  before  him  in  " powerful  and  suggestive  
"  .sx   He  makes  the  rather  sad  little  comment  that  in  the  matter  
of  this  early  religious  experience  he  was  " a  stranger  in  his  father's  
" ,  for  his  father  had  temporarily  shed  his  piety  and  become  a  
" free-thinker" .sx   
Rudolf  Steiner's  home  could  offer  him  no  cultural  background .sx   
His  father  , a  warm-hearted  , quick-tempered  , gregarious  man  felt  no  
need  for  books  and  loved  nothing  better  than  a  political  argument  with  
the  local  worthies  under  the  lime  trees  on  a  summer  evening  , with  the  
mother  , a  good  Hausfrau  , sitting  beside  him  with  her  knitting  and  the  
children  playing  around .sx   Rudolf  Steiner  was  indebted  to  the  local  
doctor  for  his  introduction  to  German  literature .sx   Pacing  up  and  down  
beside  the  station  , the  tall  , enthusiastic  doctor  opened  up  a  new  
world  to  the  eager  little  boy .sx   For  the  first  time  he  heard  of  Goethe  , 
with  whose  conception  of  nature  his  own  future  was  to  be  so  closely  
linked  , and  of  Schiller  , from  whose  letters  a  few  sentences  were  to  
wake  the  train  of  thought  that  led  him  to  the  perception  that  man  has  
the  possibility  of  changing  his  state  of  consciousness .sx   
The  doctor's  literary  influence  happily  continued  when  the  boy  
was  sent  to  the  Realschule  in  Wiener-Neustadt  , a  secondary  school  
where  prominence  was  given  to  science  and  modern  languages .sx   This  
school  was  chosen  because  the  father  had  determined  that  his  promising  
son  should  become  a  civil  engineer .sx   The  boy  himself  was  indifferent  
as  to  what  school  he  attended  provided  he  could  get  some  satisfactory  
answers  to  the  vital  questions  he  bore  within  him  on  " life  and  the  
world  and  the  "  .sx   Rudolf  Steiner  devotes  a  chapter  of  his  book  
to  this  period  of  his  school-days  and  it  is  evident  that  his  powers  of  
thought  were  far  in  advance  of  those  of  the  average  boy  , and  that  the  
scientific  method  of  approach  to  the  problems  of  existence-  an  
approach  which  later  he  came  to  regard  as  essential  for  modern  man-  
was  his  by  natural  proclivity .sx   
When  he  was  barely  eleven  he  read  a  paper  published  by  his  
head-master  on  " Attraction  Considered  as  an  Effect  of  "  .sx   
Though  he  understood  but  little  of  it  , for  it  began  with  higher  
mathematics  , he  derived  sufficient  meaning  from  certain  passages  to  
build  a  bridge  between  it  and  what  he  had  learnt  from  the  priest  of  
Neudorff  on  the  creation  of  the  world .sx   He  then  saved  his  pocket  money  
until  he  could  buy  a  book  by  the  same  author  on  The  General  Motion  
of  Matter  as  the  Fundamental  Cause  of  All  the  Phenomena  of  Nature .sx   
The  study  of  these  two  works  , combined  with  his  studies  in  
mathematics  and  physics  , took  him  through  his  third  and  fourth  year  
and  finally  brought  him  to  the  conclusion  that  he  must  go  to  nature  in  
order  to  win  a  standing  place  in  the  spiritual  world .sx   This  spiritual  
world  he  consciously  perceived  lying  before  him .sx   Further  , he  said  to  
himself :sx   " One  can  take  the  right  attitude  towards  the  experience  of  
the  spiritual  world  by  one's  own  soul  only  when  the  process  of  
thinking  has  reached  such  a  form  that  it  can  attain  to  the  reality  of  
being  which  is  in  natural  "  .sx   
He  then  discovered  Kant .sx   He  had  never  heard  of  him  but  saw  the  
Critique  of  Pure  Reason  in  a  shop  window  and  could  not  rest  until  
he  had  bought  it  , for  he  longed  to  know  what  the  human  reason  could  
achieve  in  gaining  genuine  insight  into  what  he  called  " the  being  of  
"  .sx   " How  does  one  " ,  he  asked  himself  , " from  simple  
clear-cut  perceptions  to  concepts  in  regard  to  natural  phenomena ?sx   " 
Sometimes  he  would  read  one  page  of  the  Critique  twenty  times  
over  in  order  to  arrive  at  a  definite  decision  as  to  the  relation  
sustained  by  human  thought  to  the  creative  work  of  nature .sx   But  he  
made  no  advance  through  Kant .sx   The  study  was  by  no  means  valueless  , 
however  , for  he  was  already  subjecting  himself  to  that  severe  
discipline  in  thinking  that  was  sustained  throughout  his  life  and  
which  he  demanded  of  his  pupils .sx   He  wished  so  to  construct  thought  
within  himself  that  every  thought  could  be  objectively  surveyed  , 
without  any  identification  with  feeling .sx   Thus  he  was  no  mystic .sx   
From  his  earlier  emotional  reaction  to  the  beauty  of  the  liturgy  
he  now  tried  to  establish  within  himself  a  harmony  between  objective  
thinking  and  the  dogma  and  symbolism  of  religion .sx   This  attempt  , he  
said  , in  no  way  diminished  his  reverence  and  devotion .sx   His  relation  
to  the  teachings  of  religion  was  determined  , he  states  , " by  the  fact  
that  to  me  the  spiritual  world  counted  among  the  objects  of  human  
perception .sx   The  very  reason  why  these  teachings  penetrated  so  deeply  
into  my  mind  was  that  in  them  I  realized  how  the  human  spirit  can  find  
its  way  consciously  into  the  "  .sx   It  was  a  natural  
result  to  arrive  at  the  question :sx   " to  what  extent  is  it  possible  to  
prove  that  in  human  thinking  real  spirit  is  the  agent ?sx   " And  , 
furthermore  , to  debate  from  this  basis  the  possible  scope  of  human  
thinking .sx   With  these  problems  uppermost  in  his  mind  Rudolf  Steiner  
entered  the  Technische  Hochschule  in  Vienna  , and  at  once  proceeded  to  
buy  a  large  number  of  books  on  philosophy .sx   He  had  now  decided  to  
become  a  teacher  , and  had  already  done  a  certain  amount  of  coaching .sx   
He  enrolled  for  mathematics  , natural  history  and  chemistry  , and  was  
fortunate  in  having  as  his  lecturer  in  physics  Edmond  Reitlinger  , the  
author  of  Freie  Blicke .sx   He  could  not  accept  the  prevailing  
mechanical  theory  of  heat  nor  the  wave  theory  of  light  , and  through  
them  was  driven  to  a  study  of  theories  of  cognition .sx   The  Darwinian  
theory  of  evolution  seemed  to  him  fruitful  in  so  far  as  the  higher  
organisms  derive  from  the  lower  , but  to  reconcile  this  idea  with  what  
he  knew  of  the  spiritual  world  was  immeasurably  difficult  , for  he  
conceived  of  the  " inner  man  " as  dipping  down  from  the  spiritual  
world  and  uniting  with  the  organism  in  order  to  perceive  and  to  act  in  
the  physical  world .sx   
He  had  now  come  to  realize  , through  his  own  struggles  to  win  
concepts  in  natural  science  , that  the  activity  of  the  human  ego  must  
be  the  sole  starting  point  for  arriving  at  true  knowledge .sx   Previously  
he  had  worked  from  the  opposite  premise  , first  observing  the  phenomena  
of  nature  in  order  to  derive  from  them  a  concept  of  the  ego .sx   Now  he  
saw  that  he  must  penetrate  nature's  process  of  " becoming  " from  the  
activity  of  the  ego .sx   He  was  now  about  nineteen  , an  age  when  the  sense  
of  the  ego  begins  to  assert  itself  more  fully  , and  from  this  time  
onwards  he  was  gradually  to  expand  his  understanding  of  the  spiritual  
and  the  eternal  nature  of  man's  ego  and  its  relation  to  the  evolution  
of  his  consciousness .sx