Rudolf Steiner, the German philosopher and occultist, was born in Kraljevic, Hungary, of Catholic parents. His early education was obtained at technical secondary schools and the Polytechnic Institute of Vienna. Steiner's anthroposophical teaching, presented as "spiritual science," is an extraordinary synthesis of "organic" ideas in nineteenth-century German thought with theosophical material and fresh occult intuitions. In 1902 Steiner became a lecturer and general secretary of the Theosophical Society's German branch, but his earlier thought had been basically formed between 1890 and 1897, years devoted to the study and editing of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's scientific writings at the Goethe-Archiv in Weimar. In this time, and during a period (1897–1900) as editor of the Magazin: Monatschrift für Litteratur, he developed his own views of evolution, natural organization, and science through confrontation with the ideas of Charles Darwin, Ernst Heinrich Haeckel, Friedrich Nietzsche, and contemporary German philosophies.

Steiner presented...