Natural Science Facing a Crucial Decision
Berlin, 17 October 1907
In the preliminary talk, I already drew
your attention to the both basic conditions of spiritual
science or theosophy. I said that spiritual science rests on
two pillars: first, on the fact that the human being realises
that behind our sensuous world which you can see with eyes and
touch with hands a spiritual, supersensible world of the facts,
events and beings exists; secondly, that the human being can
become able to intervene in this spiritual world recognising
and on a higher stage even acting. Briefly, spiritual science
expresses its conviction that there is a spiritual world and
that it is accessible to the human being.
From the most different
sides, spiritual science should be illumined in the course of
these winter talks. Today, we look at its relation to natural
sciences. Indeed, some among you may see in this talk a kind of
aberration from the regular course. They come to these talks
especially in order to get to know the results of spiritual
science and the experiences in the higher worlds. In the main,
real theosophists take the view that they have found their
relation to the scientific results. Therefore, they regard the
explanation of such matters as the relation of spiritual
science to results of the natural sciences as somewhat boring
sometimes. However, we come to so specifically
spiritual-scientific subjects in the next talks that the
today's intermezzo may probably be bearable, in particular with
regard to the fact that the sharpest attacks and the strongest
misunderstandings concerning spiritual science come just from
those who pretend to stand firmly on the ground of natural
sciences. Above all, be clear in your mind that in the today's
talk I do not speak opposing natural sciences. With the big
impact that the scientific prepositions exert on our
contemporaries it would be really an awkward undertaking to get
into opposition to the natural sciences. For you can hear
repeatedly: the natural sciences stand on the ground of facts,
of experience, and everything that does not comply with these
facts and experiences must be expelled to the field of
speculative fiction. You get this information from many sides
concerning such things, as I want to explain just in these
winter talks on spiritual science.
It is most adequate — in
view of the general educational conditions in our time — if the
today's talk explains the relation of the natural
sciences to spiritual science as objectively as possible
without pros and cons. However, from the start I want to note
that spiritual science does not dispute with the natural
sciences especially where it concerns only scientific facts.
This could not be at all its task. Who would attack the
building of strict facts anyhow? Who would argue anything
against that which is certain by experiment and experience in
the scientific field? Spiritual science is completely based on
experiences. Admittedly, on experiences, as they have been
characterised last time, on experiences in the higher, in the
spiritual worlds. However, with regard to the methodical
principles it completely complies with scientific demands. It
agrees with the natural sciences that experience forms the
basis of any knowledge at last. Thus, I do not give my view on
certain scientific results of the present in the introduction
of a series of spiritual-scientific talks because this is not
necessary. Rather I want to show how one must look at the
scientist in his scientific thinking. This is important:
pursuing the scientific thought process, as it is offered to
us.
It may be very good if we
look back at the German cultural life for a short time. It
offers a picture of the whole spiritual life of the last
decades. Above all, the following comes into consideration: the
natural sciences have become for many people something that
they never were once. Slowly and gradually, for four centuries
it has prepared itself. However, in the 19th century, it has
come only to the climax of that what prepared there slowly. The
natural sciences have become something that one could call a
kind of religion, a kind of creed, or better said, single
persons have believed to be able to form a kind of creed, a
kind of religion from the scientific results of our time. It is
much more important for spiritual science than discussions
about scientific facts to a look at the way in which a kind of
new religion, a kind of new creed has come about based on
putative scientific facts. Someone who looks impartially at our
cultural life cannot misjudge that people oppose the assumption
of the spiritual world, oppose the religious feeling, while
they refer to the fact that new scientific results would
disprove any reference to a spiritual world. In certain
circles, one almost believes to have removed every reference to
a spiritual world with the results of the natural sciences.
Hundred years ago, nobody was inclined to draw such a
conclusion from the scientific facts. Indeed, there have also
been earlier quite materialistic confessions of the most
radical kind; but they have never put up the assertion, one
could explain the world only materialistically according to the
“true science.” The term “true science”
exerts an ineffable magic power on our
contemporaries!
One speaks much of former
dark times of the religious fury, religious disputes, and
religious persecutions. I do not varnish or defend these
things. However, if you compare these processes of former
centuries which humiliated the feeling and thinking of
humanity, nevertheless, you realise something peculiar
with an impartial look at the development of the human soul.
Someone who thinks impartially finds that confirmed everywhere
that I only assert now. Indeed, many times
were dark and intolerant, but intolerance with an immense
arrogance of infallibility has remained to our time! This inner
intolerance commits no riots and persecutions, although one can
already experience that one calls the police and the prosecutor
against anybody who reports about the spiritual world. However,
these are exceptions; our time is tolerant outwardly. Only in
relation to thinking, One considers everybody a fool, a
daydreamer, or at least an ignorant man who cannot share the
creed of those who say there: from the scientific facts follows
that one cannot state anything about the spiritual side of the
world.
This attitude has
prepared itself slowly. In the 19th century, one came with it
on the climax. It is well reasoned that this has come that way.
If we look for the reason, we must say, the reason is connected
with the big progress of humanity. We realise that in the newer
time the human beings have investigated the external physical
world with all imaginable instruments and skilfully developed
methods, which are more than amazing. We see how it has begun
with astronomy and with the view of the astronomical world
edifice how then the physical world has been conquered
gradually by that what can be investigated with the armed eye
and understood with the intellect. In the 19th century, it has
appeared that this kind of research not only is able to see
into in the lifeless nature, but it has also deeply illumined
the living nature.
He who is able to pursue
the spiritual life objectively knows that it signified an
immense progress when during the thirties of the 19th century
Schleiden (Matthias Jacob Sch., 1804–1881, German botanist)
discovered the smallest part of plants and animals, the cell
(together with Theodor Schwann, 1810–1882).
It became obvious that many former conjectures had to disappear
because of the facts, which one now discovered by means of the
microscope and the new research method. One has thought a lot
about what this organism is actually inside which composes our
living beings. One had now
discovered what corresponded to the thinking and feeling of the
19th century so much: one saw obviously how the organism
builds itself up from countless and extremely small living
beings. One saw now how they co-operated and yielded the human
organism. Now that was accessible to the actual research, which
one had assumed and bothered so much.
One had done a look at
the world of life that way. Then it was a big progress when
Kirchhoff (Gustav Robert K., 1824–1887, German physicist) and
Bunsen (Robert Wilhelm B., 1811–1899, German chemist) announced
the spectral analysis. The spectroscope, this miraculous
instrument, proved that the same materials, which compose our
earthly world, also exist in the universe. One recognised this
by the facts, which the spectroscope delivered. Then Darwin
came with the overabundant wealth of facts that show how the
living beings change under the influence of external
conditions, dependent on the place where they live. He
succeeded in investigating the rests of primeval living beings
that are in the layers of our earth. When the paleontological
research came along forming a bridge between history and
natural sciences, then the significant basics were given for
the feeling and thinking of the 19th century. They got their
solid, sure support.
In particular in Germany,
one felt the blessing of such solid, sure support. Just in
Germany, one had a great, idealistic-philosophical spiritual
worldview that was connected with names like Fichte, Schelling,
and Hegel. One had a range of daring, superior mental attempts
behind himself. Now one was of the opinion that these attempts
would have something subjective-arbitrary, something that
everybody can experience or not. What Hegel, what Fichte has
thought, they have thought it for themselves; another may find
different things. With it, we come — one meant — in a tangle of
worldviews. However, this happens only if we leave the firm
ground of facts if we omit, for example, to realise how the
smallest organism is composed of smallest living beings. For we
would ascertain that the thousands who look into the microscope
see and describe the same things. Everybody who knows the
layers of the earth must describe them in the same way. This is
the sure, firm ground of facts.
One has not remained to
it saying, he who stands on this ground of facts is on the safe
side, and we leave all remaining untouched. If one had stopped
on the ground of facts, never would have originated creeds,
religious problems from it. The true natural sciences that are
based on observation with exclusion of the supersensible world
will always be on the safe side, even if they confine
themselves to the sensory phenomena. They will come to sure
facts. However, these facts have worked suggestively, were
mesmerising! On these scientific facts, one founded a kind of
scientific atheistic or materialistic religion, a kind of
creed. Now one could say, with every creed it is possible that
the human being is steady and strong in life, the right thing
will be found in the course of human evolution, and it does not
depend on how the human being stands to the questions of the
supersensible world. However, just this idea will appear in the
course of these talks that it is not right to think that it is
irrelevant how the human being feels and thinks. We shall just
prove that feeling and imagining are a real world, and that not
only the future of the earth, but of the entire human race
depends on the human thinking.
We shall see in the
course of the winter talks how deep and true this sentence is.
Spiritual science does not deal with theoretical bickering but
has to work for the human being usefully and in suitable way.
Whether the single material body consists of atoms or not,
whether the single material organism is composed of single
cells or not, whether in the remaining heavenly bodies the same
materials are as on earth or not, all that are wholly factual
questions. But by the decision of these factual questions one
never states something about the destiny of the human soul or
mind. If one keeps to establish and describe the facts, and
does not cross this border to the soul area, then there can be
no conflict between natural sciences and spiritual science.
However, one has not just remained to this. One built up
theories; one constructed mental pictures with which generally
no soul being, no spiritual existence can be
combined.
We only need to have a
look back at some decades of development. Today it is already
almost forgotten when in the 19th century the so-called theory
of energy and matter appeared. However, it would be good just
for someone who stands beyond spiritual science to consider the
real reason of the theory of energy and matter.
Imagine the picture of
the dry theory of energy and matter as it was at that time. It
went philosophically out from that which the scientific facts
had brought. One had found that the human being consisted of
single cells. One had discovered chemical and physical
processes and had said, all our bodies would consist of
molecules and atoms, and the phenomena would originate from the
play and the movement of the atoms round us. Those who are now
forty, fifty years old and have the academic education behind
themselves remember the time lively when the so-called theory
of heat controlled everything. The big discoveries in the field
of thermodynamics had assumed such a shape that one imagined
any gas consisting of millions smallest parts, molecules and
atoms which are in an endless complex movement, knock at each
other and rebound and thereby produce the phenomena of heat.
What was there heat? Nothing but a result of that which exists
outdoors in space as a manifold play of moving and colliding
atoms. One said it soberly at that time: what you feel as
warmth is nothing but a movement that the smallest parts of the
bodies accomplish, and the degree of heat depends on the power
of the impacts, on the vehemence of the movements. Thus,
nothing was in the outside world for the theory of heat
available as the whirling atoms, and what one meant with the
word “warmth” was a subjective sensation, an effect
on the human organism or on the brain which one also imagined
materially. Not only the warmth or heat, everything was
imagined as such a movement of the atoms! One must retain this.
For: if you come once to the materialistic mental picture, it
is like a juggernaut: it devours the spiritual, as well as the
molecules and atoms have devoured it.
If you take books of that
time about the phenomena of light, you can find soberly said:
what you call red or blue is only an effect on your nerves, is
only in you. Outdoors in the world is no light and no colour,
there is only the ether penetrating the whole world, and the
peculiar movement of this ether works on you and causes the
sensation of colour. Thus, the light is objectively outdoors in
the world as a movement of the cosmic ether, and what you feel
is nothing, actually. — Briefly, the empty space became the
true reality, filled with moving atoms. One assumed that all
phenomena arose from this. Somebody who would have expressed
himself radically could have said the following: imagine all
human brains as not existing, what remains then? Nothing but
the empty space, filled with atoms, if you like, with moving
atoms of the ether and of the matter having weight.
However, any perception,
any sensation in you like the sensations of smell, taste,
warmth etc. do no longer exist; this is subjective and not
objective. People like Büchner (Ludwig B., 1824–1899) and
Vogt (Carl V,, 1817–1895) only drew the consequence from this
premise in the middle of the 19th century. You find the merits
of these men emphasised in my writing
World Views and Approaches to Life in the 19th Century
because they have had
the iron consequence to draw the conclusions of such a view. If
nothing else existed outdoors for the phenomena of colour and
sound than the moving atoms and molecules, it was quite natural
that the thinker said, then nothing else exists in the human
being than matter, consisting of moving atoms and molecules. —
Vogt had only to draw the unequivocal consequence: thoughts are
produced by the movements of the cerebral molecules like other
things by liver and kidneys et cetera. — This opinion bred much
bad blood and was only a consequence of premises, which others
had who only did not go so far. With it, it was connected
inevitably that one divided this world of atoms and molecules
that one regarded as the absolute in materials, which one could
discover. One was of the opinion that the whole matter is only
movement and can be divided in atoms and molecules. One
considered life also only as a complex movement of atoms in the
living bodies. One recognised that single bodies could be taken
to pieces, water, for example, to hydrogen and oxygen, sulfuric
acid to hydrogen, sulfur and oxygen. — However, there comes a
border, where the chemical research cannot accomplish any
further decomposition. Where from does this come? This is why
simple elements form the basis of our materials. There are
about seventy elements; all our materials are composed of
them.
How does water originate?
By the fact that its elements oxygen and hydrogen that,
otherwise, are apart side by side, penetrate themselves. The
materialists of the 19th century primarily relied on this fact
that one assumed a particular number of elements. In every
chemical book, you can find them: hydrogen, oxygen, carbon,
sulfur, phosphorus, fluorine, chlorine, bromine, iodine and so
on. Everything living and lifeless originates from a more or
less complex composition of molecules, and one considered the
complex of the human soul — all the human feelings, sensations,
mental pictures, ideals et cetera in himself — also as nothing
else than the result of the cooperation of his compound
molecules and atoms. Indeed, single persons like Haeckel said
that it is absurd to explain the soul as a mere result of the
cooperation of lifeless small atoms. Hence, Haeckel formed the
view that the atom already has a soul for itself. He is of the
opinion that all these atoms that build up such an organism
have a small soul and that many small souls yield the human
soul.
It is probably the most
daring, the most adventurous superstition to speak of such an
atomic soul! Here begins a chapter of scientific superstition
that flows then into such concepts as cell soul, soul cell and
the like. It would lead us too far to pursue this further. We
are concerned to characterise the sense and the spirit of
natural sciences as they have presented themselves.
Nevertheless, we look back at the time when a kind of
materialistic creed joined to the physical-scientific
suggestion. This has immense spiritual results. He who does not
take the matters seriously can easily pass over them. However,
it is true that this scientific creed excludes any independence
of soul and mind from that, it excludes to speak of mind and
soul. For this view, that what the human soul experiences
begins with the first activity of the organism and disappears
with the decay of it. The human being is nothing else than a
built up machine which, during the sixty to eighty years of its
existence, produces phenomena like thoughts, sensations and
feelings, and if it disintegrates, it is over, because all
these phenomena are nothing but the assemblage of molecules.
Thus, Vogt and all those thought who have drawn the daring,
radical conclusion from the scientific premises.
Then another party came
in natural sciences. One of it is the famous Du Bois-Reymond
(Emil Heinrich D., 1818–1896, German physiologist). He held an
important talk in a Leipzig meeting of scientists and
physicians in which he brought up something that forms the
object of many discussions still today. He said: we are in the
natural sciences so far that in us the scientific ideal has
developed that, for example, all light phenomena, all colour
phenomena and sound phenomena can be led back to the work of
atoms and molecules. The rest is appearance; however, these are
the realities. Everything that originates comes into being and
persists because these atoms combine, collide, and oscillate.
If it were possible — Du Bois-Reymond meant — to give the
suitable movement and position of the atoms for every
phenomenon, then the world would be explained scientifically.
However, with this scientific explanation something would not
and could not be explained. Du Bois-Reymond also pointed to the
teachings of the great German philosopher Leibniz (Gottfried
Wilhelm L., 1646–1716) in those days. — Imagine once — Du
Bois-Reymond said approximately: you could analyse and
describe a human brain in all its movements clearly, and now
imagine it enlarged, so that you can go for a walk in it like
in the machinery of a factory. Look at the whole: you see
enormously complex movements in it, you find complexities in it
with which one can compare nothing in the world; but you see
movements only. Natural sciences will never be able to explain
the transition, which causes that one can say: I smell rose
scent. Here is an uncrossable limit of knowledge. One cannot
explain how the human nature becomes conscious. Hence, he
speaks his “ignorabimus:” we shall never know. — He
says, one is never able to cross these limits; the human being
will never know how consciousness originates from
motion.
Du Bois-Reymond did not
only put this riddle before the world, but six other. In
The Seven World Riddles
(1880), you find that he admits not to
understand how life originated and how the first distribution
of matter came about. He admits that matter must have been
distributed from the outset. On the question, where from motion
comes, he says: one can never know this! — Du Bois-Reymond
counts all that to the seven world riddles, and in Haeckel's book
The World Riddles
(1895–1899) you can read that this has been
written as a kind of reply to DuBois-Reymond's
Seven World Riddles.
Then he says also, it
is true that there are seventy elements that consist of
materials, which are quite different in relation to the single
elements; but everything originates from the combination of
atoms and molecules. — One assumed one thing just as fixed: the
immutability of the atoms. What is an atom remains an atom.
Büchner emphasised the sentence repeatedly: the motion of
the atoms changes, but what is an atom sulfur, an atom oxygen
etc. remains an atom sulfur, an atom oxygen. This was announced
now as the immutability of the materials in the elements, the
eternity of the atoms. In his
World Riddles
(The Riddles of the Universe),
Haeckel emphasises
nothing stronger than the eternity of the matter. This was one
thing that one fixed. The other what Du Bois-Reymond fixed was
that limits are put to the natural sciences: one can never know
how consciousness comes into being.
Based on these premises,
different groups formed. One said: howsoever the things may be,
we remain at our old religious creed. We let the researchers
think what they want to believe, we do believe; but in relation
to science we keep to the determined facts. — The other, more
courageous ones said: Indeed, if the real is the atoms in
motion, the seventy elements and in between the ether atoms,
everything else is appearance, which exists only as long as a
motion exists. — This is no longer science, this is a creed!
This is something that spreads to everything that concerns the
spiritual world, which is for such a creed nothing else than a
manifestation of the wholly material facts.
It was already a
courageous venture when on the Lübeck meeting of
scientists and physicians, in the end of the eighties, the
chemist Wilhelm Ostwald (1853–1932) held a talk
The Overcoming of the Scientific Materialism.
Ostwald showed that for the logical thinking the
concept of matter generally disintegrates into nothing. One can
unfold this logical thinking very easily: what do you see in
the world? You see bodies! What are these bodies? They are
something that is a certain colour, a certain shine, a certain
temperature, something that you can smell and taste. Attempt to
retain everything that you perceive in such bodies. If you take
away what you perceive as smell, as taste, as touch, what
remains to you? Nothing at all! A body is before the logical
thinking nothing but a conglomerate, the sum of its
qualities.
What has one taken as a
basis of light, of colour? Nothing but movements of the ether!
One fulfilled the entire space with ether. He who is known with
theoretical physics knows how one calculates ether waves etc.
and that everything that one finds there is a result of
calculations. The ether can never be an object of immediate
observation. If it produces the discernible things, how can one
perceive it itself? The ether was the most fantastic idea that
one could assume. Thus, the natural sciences are based on
something fictional. One had nothing but results of
calculations. The absolute and most certain that should be
there for the scientific thinking was nothing but something
calculated. In my
The Philosophy of Freedom,
you can read up how
this thought cancels out, so that one can compare it to
Münchhausen who draws himself out of a swamp with his own
shock of hair. This is made clear there. However, on the human
beings, and if they believe to be ever so logical, never
reasons, never real facts, but suggestions work. There work all
possible concepts, which move through thousands and thousands
canals into the souls. Thus, the elements and atoms became a
natural premise also with those who had no possibility to
survey the matters and did not know at all, why one assumes
such matters. It was a general suggestion.
At this time, one of the
biggest progress of the human investigation of nature occurred,
namely the investigation of the living as Darwin made it so
popular. The infinite wealth of facts that have become known to
the world was in such a way that one had to say: if it had
occurred at a spiritual time when one knew that spirit forms
the basis of all material phenomena, then one would have found
countless reasons just in these facts for the work and being of
the spirit. One would have found the spirit working on the
change and transformation of the organisms. Darwinism never
generated materialism. Materialism, which comes from those
mental pictures, as I have just characterised them, made
Darwinism materialistic. It made such a high-minded thinker and
researcher as Ernst Haeckel also materialistic. While Haeckel
could have performed great things for spiritual science with
his researches, he was tied up with materialism by the
suggestive influence of his time.
If the matter were in
such a way even today, one would not be inclined to talk of
spiritual science, and it is still temporarily impossible to
convince those who are on the ground of the scientific
explanations. One has to let them go their own ways, and the
spiritual researcher must also go his ways. If it were in such
a way even today as it was at that time, one would have to say:
the spiritual science can be content in itself. — However,
things have changed. Just those who have participated in
everything that is regarded as natural sciences have also
witnessed — even if only slowly — the biggest reversal taking
place just in the field of scientific thinking. Times will come
when one will not be able to understand that one could ever
think such a thing as it is popular still today. Probably it
may seem as if the natural sciences advance in our present
triumphantly with this materialistic worldview, as if one
succeeded by well-prepared investigations in generating living
from the proteins in the laboratory. Then they would say, we
could generate living material of which whole living beings
consist, and there are for the naturalist virtually delightful
facts, which show that one can treat lifeless substance with
certain toxic substances by which effects arise like symptoms
of an intoxication. The substances resulting from it look like
living crystals: by their forms, they create the impression to
be alive, although they are not yet. Thus, one can assume that
one comes to the point where from molecules and atoms life and,
on the other side, spirit comes into being.
On one side, this seems
to be the case. On the other side, what is there? Something
that works stronger than everything that Ostwald said from the
point of view of a scientific logic against materialism. There
we see another scientific attitude slowly preparing and
becoming necessary. In the middle of the nineties, Becquerel
(Henri Antoine B., 1852–1908), the great physicist, discovered
certain radiations in certain substances containing uranium.
These have particular effects that express themselves making
the air electrically conducting or causing a certain change of
the photographic plate, as for example the X-rays. You know
that one also got around in the last time to finding such rays
in connection with the element radium. But as interesting it is
that there is something that one has not known once, the entire
kind and effect of these rays was so strange, so different from
the ideas that one had up to now that many people already
became uncertain in their view that the atoms are something
everlasting and only combine and separate. We have substances
there, which behave quite oddly in the world coherence just
like radium and uranium.
They emit, in particular
radium, but their radiations are almost inexhaustible. All that
would harmonise with the old view; but the most important is
that one can let emit such a material like radium that one can
separate certain parts and can keep back a part. There are, for
example, such radiations which make the air electric, and which
one can separate then in such a way that one has their effect
on the photographic plate. It is in such a way that one can
separate the different qualities, so that one has substances
that do no longer have the first qualities. A quality is taken
away from one substance and the other gets it. In every
bookstore, you can buy treatises about that today. However,
this is not yet the significant. It is significant that
permanently rays separate and go out into the space. Indeed,
certain reasons compel us to suppose that these rays run out
once. Today, one can already prove that certain substances are
diminished in short time, in a time hardly to be expressed,
however, that the substances that
can go adrift transform themselves strangely enough into quite
different substances, so that for a big number of researchers
the fact is that radiations of radium transform themselves into
helium.
We see that radium sends its radiations into
the space. According to the old theory what would have to
happen there? Nevertheless, at most the atoms go adrift,
separate if they are something invariable. However, there we
see that they send out radiations perpetually, and now we can
assume nothing else than that the atoms disintegrate and split
to the smallest particles. Others show clearly that for a big
number of substances this atomic decay is possible. Thus, we
realise that that which one regarded as the most lasting once,
as the absolute — whereas everything else counted only as a
result of it — today also disintegrates. This scatters today.
Reasonable hope exists that that applies to all atoms. What is
the atom in future? It is something that originates and forms.
Every atom forms, has a certain lifetime, and dissolves after a
certain time again. There you have transformed what is the
steadiest for materialism into a being that originates and
passes. If one sees that radium goes over into the helium
element, one sees that there material changes into material.
There one gets the idea that the dream of the old alchemists
that materials can be transformed into other materials has
reality.
In some books, we already
find indications that the modern scientific research suggests
what the alchemists have dreamt. There are already scientists
who have done interesting considerations about certain
processes. Once one said, there are copper salts that are
joined, for example, of copper and chlorine. If one separates
them, one has copper and chlorine again. One sees in it that
the atoms lie together, and if one separates them again, it is
chlorine and copper. Indeed, something essential occurred to
some persons who have started thinking and what the spiritual
scientist stresses repeatedly: if you combine the materials
that you have separated as copper and chlorine again, then heat
must originate. If these two substances combine, heat is
spread. The fact that heat appears there is something real and
it is as real as copper and chlorine are combined. If one wants
to separate both again, one must add heat again. We perceive
the warmth. Nobody has ever perceived atoms and molecules.
However, do we not recognise what is in the phenomenon? If you
bring together copper and chlorine, this is, as if you squeezed
out the heat, as it were, like flour from the flour bags. If
one wants to have the flour bags full again, one must just put
flour again into them. Thus, the heat would be the filling. —
With it, we have attributed reality to the heat and have made
clear that one has to count not only on molecular effects, but
that these materials themselves are possible only because of
this heat.
If now we consider that
the atoms disintegrate under our hands, we must ask ourselves,
do these natural sciences lead on their crossroads — where the
atoms scatter, the most certain up to now — to the recognition
of that which they once regarded as external expression, as an
appearance? The natural sciences lead to this view
today!
Today, the entire atomic
theory falters that has been the base of the natural sciences
long time. Today, the facts are in such a way that the theories
that are not based on facts must fall. Atoms and molecules are
nothing factual, but something fictional. If this falls because
it itself is an effect, we must ask, of what is it an effect?
At first, people will attempt to come again to something else
that forms the basis. Today, they are just speaking of liquid
electricity. Very nice is what Balfour (Arthur James B.,
1848–1930, British Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary) said:
if we imagine atoms, we can only say, something like a fluid
flows through the world, and the atoms are in it like ice lumps
in the water. — This is a nice picture. However, whereto does
it lead? Try once to continue it. It leads to that point where
the natural sciences get around to recognising as the actually
real what they have denied once what was only an appearance for
them. This was a weird belief that colours exists only in my
head that outdoors only small particles exist that knock and
press each other and thereby produce the sensations of light,
colour and sound. These mental pictures will soon have to
disappear due to the power of the facts. It will become obvious
that what we see and hear is real, and that it was a great
speculative fiction to think a material world behind this
world. This material world will scatter and disintegrate. On
will appreciate what is behind it. Then that will have to move
up which one experiences and can experience. Then one will
recognise that the atom can be nothing else than frozen
electricity, frozen heat, frozen light. Then one has still to
advance so that one has to realise that everything consists of
compressed spirit. There is no matter! What is matter relates
to the spirit as ice relates to the water. If you dissolve the
ice, there is water. If you dissolve matter, it disappears as
matter and becomes spirit. Everything that is matter is spirit,
matter is the external manifestation of the spirit.
It will still last long,
until one has to draw the last consequence that not the eye has
formed the light, but the light the eye, and the tones that we
hear the ear. Then one will realise that any matter is born out
of the spirit, and one will lead the true scientific facts,
without logical interruption, back to spiritual science. The
scientific facts will be the best basis of spiritual science.
He who stands on the spiritual-scientific point of view looks
admiring at the natural sciences on the crossroads. The
suggestions have them tempted to believe that matter is the
only one. They have not been content to examine the material
world, but they have added a second world. This was the
tragedy, the impossible. The spiritual researcher recognises
the existent natural world completely. The spiritual scientist
can never adopt a fictional and dreamt up world of invariable
atoms and oscillations of the fictional ether, this fantastic
world of materialism. He rejects them as superstition.
Superstition was the belief in material atoms behind our
perception. One said, every atom could be perceived if one has
the instruments. — Nothing is behind that what we perceive but
only the spirit and the spiritual world into which we
penetrate! We search this behind the phenomena. We search no
world of atoms surging up and down, but the world of the spirit
in the world of the sensuous phenomena. On the wrong track is
somebody who believes to find another material world behind the
external phenomena. Those who build even today on it like on
facts have to be corrected. The time will come when this
fantastic superstition is recognised as such and when a lot of
that which one regards from this side as superstition turns out
to be right. The right basic principle of natural sciences,
stopping on the ground of the facts, leads them even to the
crossroads where it becomes obvious whether the facts agree
with the theories. The facts do not agree with them, the
theories scatter like nothing! The element and the atoms
disintegrate that one had regarded as the steadiest basis from
which one wanted to explain the spirit and the consciousness.
What we want is certainty, and we can get it only by the fact
that we perceive the spirit in ourselves.
Thus, the natural
sciences will discharge into the spiritual science. Today, they
stand in the crossroads. Some people do not yet recognise it,
others can realise it. The time will come when a wonderful
harmony exists between the knowledge of scientific facts and
the assertions of spiritual science. It will never assert
something that contradicts the scientific facts. Spiritual
science also admires the works of the spirit in materialism;
but it establishes no cloud-cuckoo-land. Spiritual science
wants to understand the world to work in it. About hundred
years ago, one had natural sciences in Germany, which sailed
under full canvas into the materialism of the 19th century,
natural sciences that started recognising nothing else than
what one can see with eyes and touch with hands. The result was
that also that which was thought out became something material,
something concrete. The great philosophies that moved in
expressions and concepts, which were not everybody's taste,
were pushed aside. However, the people who condemn Hegel
and Schelling understand as a rule nothing at all of these
spirits who looked so deeply into the world, as none of those
suggest who believe to be way beyond them. However, they moved
in strongly sublimated concepts.
Goethe stood between
these two parties right in the middle of them. Hence, he could
anticipate how the natural sciences would sail into materialism
and, on the other side, he found opportunity to penetrate to
the problems and to build the connecting bridge between
religion and natural sciences. Therefore, he could say so
nicely that once the time would come when philosophy and
natural sciences unite. However, he added, for a while they
must still go separate ways. — They have gone separate ways,
without understanding each other. Today, we also have two
currents, materialism that has outlived itself that sees its
steadiest, most absolute basis disintegrating by its own
methods, that destroys itself, and a philosophy that discharges
into theosophy or spiritual science. It is not the
abstract-spiritual, but the concrete-spiritual that tries to
bring forward facts of the higher world to humanity that will
no longer be there as abstract, but as concrete spiritual
science.
We shall experience in
not too distant time that a nice alliance between the
scientific view and the spiritual-scientific one. We shall
realise how the scientific facts are useful for the spiritual
view and the spiritual view is useful to the natural sciences.
Therefore, the bridge is built. The human mind can prosper only
if its ways of activity harmonise with each other. The mind
would have to become crippled if the natural sciences remained
without spiritual science and spiritual science would have to
be content with the thought: nevertheless, you cannot take over
the natural sciences to the spiritual. — However, the course of
the world development will bring peace. It will build the
bridge between faith and knowledge. It will bring an infinite
progress and harmony between faith and knowledge.
How many people long for
external peace, for outer harmony and outer happiness of the
human beings! Nevertheless, everything outer is appearance of
the inside and the outer human life can be only a result of the
inner one. A happy outer human life originates if there are
hopeful souls. They will know how to found the right social
peace, and from the inner peace, the outer peace will come.
Therefore, it seems to be not without meaning to look at these
natural sciences in the crossroads and to show how the one
reaches a dead end, the other, however, leads quite clearly to
the areas, which are also those of spiritual science. Thus,
they will co-operate from now on and the world edifice will be
enriched from two sides. It will be a great, perfect harmony,
and this will be in the human being the inner harmony of the
soul that is the last purpose of spiritual science.
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