Austrian philosopher, playwright, and artist Rudolf Steiner (1861 1925) is perhaps best known as an educational philosopher and reformer, the founder of Steiner (or Waldorf) schools located around the world. These schools' philosophy represents the priorities Steiner discusses in Theosophy: the development of body, soul, and spirit. Goethe was an important influence on Steiner, and he edited the poet's scientific works (1889 1896). Steiner was an active member and leader of the German branch of Madame Blavatsky's Theosophical Society, eventually broke away from theosophy, as he developed his own spiritual philosophy termed 'anthroposophy'; this philosophical movement asserted the potential of realizing a spiritual reality through cognition. This 1910 translation by Elizabeth Douglas Shields is of the book's third German edition; it was first published in 1904. This work will be of particular interest to historians of philosophy, of spiritual movements and of education.

Given his energetic involvement in practical initiatives and extensive lecturing, Rudolf Steiner had little time to write books. Of those he did write - belonging almost entirely to the earlier years of his work - four titles form an indispensable introduction to his later teaching: Knowledge of the Higher Worlds, Occult Science, The Philosophy of Freedom and Theosophy. Theosophy focuses on a psychology based not on the usual duality of body and mind, but on the more ancient division of body, soul and spirit. Steiner describes in detail the functions and organs of these three aspects of the human being, and the objective realms to which they belong. Just as the body derives from and belongs to the material world, so do the human soul and spirit belong to their own specific realms. These are the dimensions through which all human beings travel in the life after death, and in which - after passing the 'midnight hour' - we prepare to seek our destiny, or karma, in a new life. Theosophy features one of the most comprehensive and condensed of all Steiner's accounts of these realms, and of the experiences which our immortal being undergoes in passing through them. The book ends with a chapter on the modern 'path of knowledge', in which Steiner describes the exercises through which every person may develop the latent powers of perception which are necessary for a knowledge of metaphysical worlds.