Contemporary Civilization in the Mirror of the
Science of the Spirit (1904)
THE OBSERVER of the course of scientific
development in the last decades cannot doubt that a great revolution
is in preparation. Today when a scientist talks about the so-called
enigmas of existence, it sounds quite different than it did a short
time ago.
Around the middle of the nineteenth century some
of the most daring spirits saw in scientific materialism the only
creed possible to one familiar with the then recent results of
research. The blunt saying of that time has become famous:
“Thoughts stand in about the same relationship to the brain as
gall to the liver.” This was stated by Karl Vogt, who in his
Köhlerglauben und Wissenschaft (Blind Faith and Science)
and in other writings, declared everything to be superannuated which
did not make spiritual activity and the life of the soul proceed from
the mechanism of the nervous system and of the brain in the same
manner in which the physicist explains that the movement of the hands
proceeds from the mechanism of the clock. That was the time when
Ludwig Buechner's Kraft und Stoff (Force and Matter) became a
sort of gospel among wide circles of the educated. One may well say
that excellent, independently thinking minds came to such convictions
because of the powerful impression made by the successes of science
in those times. A short time before, the microscope had shown the
synthesis of living beings out of their smallest parts, the cells.
Geology, the science of the formation of the earth, had come to the
point of explaining the development of the planets in terms of the
same laws which still operate today. Darwinism promised to explain
the origin of man in a completely natural way and began its
victorious course through the educated world so auspiciously that for
many it seemed to dispose of all “old belief.” A short
time ago, all this became quite different. It is true that stragglers
who adhere to these opinions can still be found in men like Ladenburg
at the Congress of Scientists in 1903, who proclaim the materialistic
gospel; but against them stand others who have arrived at a quite
different way of speaking through more mature reflection on
scientific questions. A work has just appeared which bears the title,
Naturwissenschaft und Weltanschauung (Science and World
Conception). Its author is Max Verworn, a physiologist of the school
of Haeckel. In this work one can read the following: “Indeed,
even if we possessed the most complete knowledge of the physiological
events in the cells and fibers of the cerebral cortex with which
psychic events are connected, even if we could look into the
mechanism of the brain as we look into the works of a clock, we would
never find anything but moving atoms. No human being could see or
otherwise perceive through his senses how sensations and ideas arise
in this mechanism. The results which the materialistic conception has
obtained in its attempt to trace mental processes back to the
movements of atoms illustrates its efficiency very clearly. As long
as the materialistic conception has existed, it has not explained the
simplest sensation by movements of atoms. Thus it has been and thus
it will be in future. How could it be conceivable that things which
are not perceptible by the senses, such as the psychic processes,
could ever be explained by a mere splitting up of large bodies into
their smallest parts? The atom is still a body after all, and no
movement of atoms is ever capable of bridging the gulf between the
material world and the psyche. However fruitful the materialistic
point of view has been as a scientific working hypothesis, however
fruitful it will doubtless remain in this sense in the future —
I point only to the successes of structural chemistry — just as
useless is it as the basis for a world conception. Here it shows
itself to be too narrow. Philosophical materialism has finished
playing its historical role. This attempt at a scientific world
conception has failed for ever.” Thus, at the beginning of the
twentieth century, a scientist speaks about the conception which
around the middle of the nineteenth was proclaimed as a new gospel
demanded by the advances of science.
It is especially the 'fifties, the 'sixties, and
the 'seventies of the nineteenth century which may be designated as
the years of the high tide of materialism. The explanation of mental
and spiritual phenomena on the basis of purely mechanical processes
exercised a really fascinating influence at that time. The
materialists could tell themselves that they had won a victory over
the adherents of a spiritual world conception. Those also who had not
started from scientific studies joined their ranks. While Buechner,
Vogt, Moleschott and others still built on purely scientific
premises, in his Alten und neuen Glauben (Old and New Belief,
1872), David Friedrich Strauss attempted to obtain bases for the new
creed from his theological and philosophical ideas. Decades before he
had already intervened in the intellectual life with his Leben
Jesu (Life of Jesus) in a manner which caused a sensation. He
seemed to be equipped with the full theological and philosophical
culture of his time. He now said boldly that the materialistic
explanation of the phenomena of the universe, including man, had to
form the basis for a new gospel, for a new moral comprehension and
formation of existence. The descent of man from purely animal
ancestors seemed about to become a new dogma, and in the eyes of
scientific philosophers, all adherence to spiritual-soul origin of
our race amounted to an antiquated superstition from the infancy of
mankind, with which one did not have to disturb oneself further.
The historians of culture came to the aid of those
who built on the new science. The customs and ideas of savage tribes
were made the object of study. The remains of primitive cultures,
which are dug out of the ground like the bones of prehistoric animals
and the impressions of extinct plants were to bear witness to the
fact that at his first appearance on earth man was distinguished only
in degree from the higher animals, and that mentally and spiritually
he had risen to his present eminence from the level of animalism pure
and simple. A time had come when everything in this materialistic
edifice seemed to be right. Under a kind of coercion which the ideas
of the time exercised on them, men thought as a faithful materialist
has written: “The assiduous study of science has brought me to
the point where I accept everything calmly, bear the inevitable
patiently, and for the rest help in the work of gradually reducing
the misery of mankind. The fantastic consolations which a credulous
mind seeks in marvelous formulas I can renounce all the more easily
since my imagination receives the most beautiful stimulation through
literature and art. When I follow the plot of a great drama or, under
the guidance of scientists, make a journey to other stars, an
excursion through prehistoric landscapes, when I admire the majesty
of nature on mountain peaks or venerate the art of man in tones and
colors, do I not then have enough of the elevating? Do I then still
need something which contradicts my reason? The fear of death, which
torments so many of the pious, is completely unknown to me. I know
that I no more survive after my body decays than I lived before my
birth. The agonies of purgatory and of hell do not exist for me. I
return to the boundless realm of Nature, who embraces all her
children lovingly. My life was not in vain. I have made good use of
the strength which I possessed. I depart from earth in the firm
belief that everything will become better and more beautiful.”
Vom Glauben zum Wissen. Ein lehrreicher Entwickelungsgang getreu
nach dem Leben geschildert von Kuno Freidank. (On the Belief in
Knowledge. An Instructive Course of Development Described in a Manner
Faithfully True to Life by Kuno Freidank.) Many people who are still
subject to the compulsive ideas which acted upon the representatives
of the materialistic world conception in the time mentioned above,
also think in this manner today.
Those however who tried to maintain themselves on
the heights of scientific thought have come to other ideas. The first
reply to scientific materialism, made by an eminent scientist at the
Congress of Scientists in Leipzig (1876), has become famous. Du
Bois-Reymond at that time made his “Ignorabimus
speech.” He tried to demonstrate that this scientific
materialism could in fact do nothing but ascertain the movements of
the smallest material particles, and he demanded that it should be
satisfied with doing this. But he emphasized at the same time that in
doing this it contributes absolutely nothing to an explanation of
mental and spiritual processes. One may take whatever attitude one
pleases toward these statements of Du Bois-Reymond, but this much is
clear: they represented a rejection of the materialistic
interpretation of the world. They showed how as a scientist one could
lose confidence in this interpretation.
The materialistic interpretation of the world had
thereby entered the stage where it declared itself to be unassuming
as far as the life of the soul is concerned. It admitted its
“ignorance” (agnosticism). It is true that it declared
its intention of remaining “scientific” and of not having
recourse to other sources of knowledge, but on the other hand it did
not want to ascend with its means to a higher world-conception. In
recent times Raoul Francé, a scientist, has shown in
comprehensive fashion the inadequacy of scientific results for a
higher world-conception This is an undertaking to which we would like
to refer again on another occasion.
The facts now steadily increased which showed the
impossibility of the attempt to build up a science of the soul on the
investigation of material phenomena. Science was forced to study
certain “abnormal” phenomena of the life of the soul like
hypnotism, suggestion, somnambulism. It became apparent that in the
face of these phenomena a materialistic view is completely inadequate
for a truly thinking person. The facts with which one became
acquainted were not new. They were phenomena which had already been
studied in earlier times and up to the beginning of the nineteenth
Century, but which in the time of the materialistic flood had simply
been put aside as inconvenient.
To this was added something else. It became more
and more apparent on how weak a basis the scientists had built, even
as far as their explanations of the origin of animal species and
consequently of man were concerned. For a while, the ideas of
“adaptation” and of the “struggle for
existence” had exercised an attraction in the explanation of
the origin of species. One learned to understand that in following
them one had followed mirages. A school was formed under the
leadership of Weismann which denied that characteristics which an
organism had acquired through adaptation to the environment
could be transmitted by inheritance, and that in this way a
transformation of organisms could occur. One therefore
ascribed everything to the “struggle for existence” and
spoke of an “omnipotence of natural selection.” A stark
contrast to this view was presented by those who, relying on
unquestionable facts, declared that a “struggle for
existence” had been spoken of in cases where it did not even
exist. They wanted to demonstrate that nothing could be explained by
it. They spoke of an “impotence of natural selection.”
Moreover, in the last years de Vries was able to show experimentally
that changes of one life-time into another can occur by leaps,
mutation. With this, what was regarded as a firm article of faith by
the Darwinists, namely that animal and plant forms change only
gradually, was shaken. More and more the ground on which one had
built for decades simply disappeared beneath one's feet. Even
earlier, thinking scientists had realized that they had to abandon
this ground; thus W. H. Rolph, who died young, in 1884 declared in
his book, Biologische Probleme, zugleich als Versuch zur
Entwicklung einer rationellen Ethik (Biological Problems, with an
Attempt at the Development of Rational Ethics): “Only through
the introduction of insatiability does the Darwinian principle of the
struggle for life become acceptable. Because it is only then that we
have an explanation for the fact that wherever it can, a creature
acquires more than it needs for maintaining the status quo,
that it grows to excess where the occasion for this is given . . .
While for the Darwinists there is no struggle for existence wherever
the existence of a creature is not threatened, for me the struggle is
an omnipresent one. It is primarily a struggle for life, a struggle
for the increase of life, not a struggle for existence.”
It is only natural that in view of these facts the
judicious confess to themselves: “The materialistic universe of
thought is not fit for the construction of a world-conception. If we
base ourselves on it, we cannot say anything about mental and
spiritual phenomena.” Today there are already numerous
scientists who seek to erect a structure of the world for themselves,
based on quite different ideas. One need only recall the work of the
botanist, Reineke, Die Welt als Tat (The World as Deed).
However, it becomes apparent that such scientists have not been
trained with impunity amidst purely materialistic ideas. What they
utter from their new idealistic standpoint is inadequate, can satisfy
them for a while, but not those who look more deeply into the enigmas
of the world. Such scientists cannot bring themselves to approach
those methods which proceed from a real contemplation of the mind and
the soul. They have the greatest fear of “mysticism”, or
“gnosis” or “theosophy.” This appears
clearly, for example, in the work of Verworn quoted above. He says:
“There is a ferment in science. Things which seemed clear and
transparent to everybody have become cloudy today. Long-tested
symbols and ideas, with which everyone dealt and worked at every step
without hesitation a short time ago, have begun to totter and are
looked upon with suspicion. Fundamental concepts, such as those of
matter, appear to have been shaken, and the firmest ground is
beginning to sway under the scientist's steps. Certain problems alone
stand with rocklike firmness, problems on which until now all
attempts, all efforts of science have been shattered. In the face of
this knowledge one who is despondent resignedly throws himself into
the arms of mysticism, which has always been the last refuge when the
tormented intellect could see no way out. The sensible man looks for
new symbols and attempts to create new bases on which he can build
further.” One can see that because of his habits of
conceptualization the scientific thinker of today is not in a
position to think of “mysticism” otherwise than as
implying intellectual confusion and vagueness. What concepts of the
life of the soul does such a thinker not reach! At the end of the
work referred to above, we read: “Prehistoric man formed the
idea of a separation of body and soul in face of death. The soul
separated itself from the body and led an independent existence. It
found no rest and returned as a ghost unless it was banned by
sepulchral ceremonies. Man was terrorized by fear and superstition.
The remains of these ideas have come down to our time. The fear of
death, that is, of what is to come after, is widespread today. How
differently does all this appear from the standpoint of psychomonism!
Since the psychic experiences of the individual only take place when
certain regular connections exist, they cease when these connections
are in any way disturbed, as happens numberless times in the course
of a day. With the bodily changes at death, these connections stop
entirely. Thus, no sensation and conception, no thought and no
feeling of the individual can remain. The individual
soul is dead. Nevertheless the sensations and thoughts and feelings
continue to live. They live beyond the transitory individual in other
individuals, wherever the same complexes of conditions exist. They
are transmitted from individual to individual, from generation to
generation, from people to people. They weave at the eternal loom of
the soul. They work at the history of the human spirit. Thus we all
survive after death as links in the great interconnected chain of
spiritual development.” But is that something different from
the survival of the wave in others which it has caused, itself
meanwhile disappearing? Does one really survive when one continues to
exist only in one's effects? Does one not have such a survival in
common with all phenomena, even those of physical nature? One can see
that the materialistic world conception had to undermine its own
foundations. As yet it cannot lay new ones. Only a true understanding
of mysticism, theosophy, and gnosis will enable it to do so. The
chemist Osterwald spoke several years ago at the Congress of
Scientists at Luebeck of the “overcoming of materialism,”
and for this purpose founded a new periodical dealing with the
philosophy of nature. Science is ready to receive the fruits of a
higher world-conception. All resistance will avail it nothing; it
will have to take into account the needs of the longing human
soul.
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