Preface 3nothing here about the world of spiritual experience de-
scribed in my later writings, it should be borne in mind
that I did not want at that time to discuss the results of
spiritual research; rather, my purpose was first to lay the
foundations on which such results can rest. This “philos-
ophy of freedom” does not contain specific results of that
kind, any more than it contains specific results from nat-
ural science. But what it does contain will be indispens-
able, in my opinion, to anyone striving for certainty in
such knowledge. What the book says might also be ac-
ceptable to many who, for whatever reasons of their own,
want nothing to do with the results of spiritual-scientific
research. Those who are drawn to these results may also
find significant my attempt to demonstrate how an un-
prejudiced consideration of simply the two questions
characterized above, which are fundamental forall cog-
nition, leads to the view that human beings live within an
actual spiritual world. In this book, I try to validate cog-
nition of the spiritual realmbefore one enters spiritual
experience. Hence there is no need to cast furtive glances
toward the experiences that I put forward later on, as long
as one is able or willing to enter into the style of the dis-
cussion itself.
Thus this book seems to me quite separate from my ac-
tual spiritual-scientific writings. On the other hand, it also
seems to be connected with them in the most intimate
way, so that now, after twenty-five years, I can republish
the text essentially unaltered. I have, however, made ad-
ditions of some length to a number of chapters. Misinter-
pretations of what I had said made such extensive