Welcome to this journey, which is undertaken for the sake of transforming our means of seeing to the end of seeing, which is an apprehension of the truth of things. Theoria (from the Greek θεωρία, thea “a view, a sight” + horan “to see”) is the term I have settled on to designate the energy of vision. The discovery of a conceptual, intelligible, or noetic essence that is already latent in everything perceptual is an entry point into theoria.
Rudolf Steiner expresses the essence of theoria and the credo of Theoria-press (i.e. what we can perceive is what we can conceive) in the excerpt below from one of his first publications, long before he became well-known for his various anthroposophical endeavors and initiatives. To mark the 97th anniversary of his death on 30 March 1925, I offer my attempted translation of this key passage below followed by the 1886 German original:
The fact that a well-developed life of soul grants one insight into a thousand things that entirely escape the one who lacks such development demonstrates, plain as day, that we behold, as outer reality only the mirror-image of our minds, and that the true nature of the perceptual world is an empty container to be filled with meaning by our active cognition. Of course, we must posses the quickness of mind to catch our own inner activity as it produces our experience lest we passively recognise only the externalised products—only the reflection—of our spiritual activity and never cognise the spirit that is being mirrored. Even the person who confronts a physical mirror will only recognise his own image provided that he bears a concept of himself to begin with.
—Rudolf Steiner, An Outline of a Theory of Knowledge Implicit in Goethe’s Worldview, with Particular Reference to Schiller.
Wenn der eine, der ein reiches Seelenleben hat, tausend Dinge sieht, die für den geistig Armen eine Null sind, so beweist das sonnenklar, daß der Inhalt der Wirklichkeit nur das Spiegelbild des Inhaltes unseres Geistes ist und daß wir von außen nur die leere Form empfangen. Freilich müssen wir die Kraft in uns haben, uns als die Erzeuger dieses Inhaltes zu erkennen, sonst sehen wir ewig nur das Spiegelbild, nie unseren Geist, der sich spiegelt. Auch der sich in einem faktischen Spiegel sieht, muß sich ja selbst als Persönlichkeit erkennen, um sich im Bilde wieder zu erkennen.
—Rudolf Steiner, Grundlinien einer Erkenntnistheorie der Goetheschen Weltanschauung, mit besonderer Rücksicht auf Schiller, 1886