Superstition from the Standpoint of Spiritual Science
Berlin, 10th December, 1908
Before some time when I stayed in a little town in Germany, I
made the acquaintance of a poet, a dramatist, and in the time
of our acquaintance, he was just occupied to complete a drama.
On an afternoon, he worked on the completion of his drama
almost like with steam power, as I could notice in a visit
which I had to do. One could not speak at all with him, because
he had to further the matter as quickly as possible. In the
evening shortly before eight o'clock, I did a walk. I met my
good dramatist, when he speeded on a bicycle to the post office
and could not be impeded. Nevertheless, it interested me
— you will soon see why — why the person concerned
speeded so exceptionally fast to the post office just that day.
It was shortly before eight o'clock when it was closed. When he
came back, he said to me on my question, why he had to go in
such haste to the post office just even today, this would be a
peculiar matter.
Now
you understand this matter best of all, if I say first that
after a just beginning, then prevailing fashion the dramatist
concerned belonged to the freest spirits of the present and
that he represented his worldview in the freest phrases. He was
a very advanced person. Telling the following, I would like to
show that I commit no indiscretion. If he were here, he would
completely be pleased to hear that I tell this matter. Now we
are able to form an opinion about what he said when he came
from the post office: “I have gone so quickly to the post
office because I wanted to bring my drama to the post office
today. Today is the last auspicious day. If I had waited till
tomorrow, I would have exposed myself to the danger that the
theatre management rejects the drama.” — I asked,
“Have you finished it, actually?” For it seemed
impossible to me. “No,” he said, “however, I
have written a letter, so that one sends the drama back again
to alter the last scenes.” This was the free spirit! I
had to remember a lady who had worked on a dress many years ago
and wanted to have it ready and put on at Thursday. If she had
put it on for the first time on Friday, she would certainly
experience a misfortune. One normally does not take into
consideration sufficiently, what it means for our feeling and
thinking in the present if a free spirit makes a post, like the
poet speeding to the post office to send off the drama
incomplete and then to let it send back again, so that he can
finish it. You see that superstition can be something rather
strange.
It
may be something that a person has banished completely from his
worldview and it may be that he protests strongly against it in
a boasting way to be concerned with such superstition. However,
if it depends on it, there are loopholes through which this
superstition can slip in. We live in a time in which in the
most scornful sense one speaks about all possible forms of
superstition. However, at the same time it happens in this
present that those who speak about superstition have no idea of
it now and again through which loophole slips in just with
them. For it does not need to be an old form of, like with this
dramatist speeding on his bicycle. New forms of superstition
can also appear. Just somebody who speaks scornfully about the
old forms of superstition may be exposed worst to some new form
of superstition. It is maybe difficult to realise these
concepts of superstition anyhow in our time, because in our
time the tendency prevails so much to regard everything that
one himself believes as the only reasonable and to deny
everything that one himself does not believe. Just this way of
feeling in our time opens the doors to various new forms of
superstition. Hence, it is not sufficient to continue the
common talking about superstition, if we want to get involved
thoroughly in superstition from the spiritual-scientific
viewpoint.
Various old traditions have come into our time, various things
that our ancestors have believed various things that our
ancestors and the scholars of ancient time believed to be
strictly scientific and what is expelled to the region of
superstition today. We ask ourselves, should not the idea light
up in those who face the old traditions with a shrug who seem
to be scientifically advanced, that that could be erroneous
which is believed today? Could it not be that our descendants
may regard this as the biggest superstition some centuries
later? Indeed, someone who believes to stand on the firm ground
of natural sciences is easily inclined, for example, to cast
everything that is pronounced from a viewpoint that assumes a
spiritual world beside the physical one, generally in the field
of superstition. On the other side, one can easily understand
that theosophy — admittedly maybe also unfounded —
combats and characterises the superstition of natural sciences.
The fact that the one or the other party regards this or that
as superstition can never become a characteristic feature of
the real nature of superstition. Various things which project
from old times just show us if it is real superstition that it
depends with such matters much less on the human logic, on
human reason than rather on the human ways of thinking, on that
which people are used to think today.
How
many things appear in our popular literature, in our daily
press today, which are apparently contrary to the enlightened
thinking! For example, there is a city in Germany — it is
not far away from Berlin — where you would look for a cab
with the number 13 in vain. He who had it once got no
passenger. It was ignored, the number 13. Also at hotels you
can often experience that the number 13 is absent in the room
numbers. You can also find in baths where nothing but
enlightened doctors are that the number 13 is ignored with
bathing cubicles because nobody wants it. That right in the
middle and beside the way of thinking of modern literature and
daily press! However, someone who is a soul expert to some
degree already finds that superstition is, nevertheless,
something that slips into the human thinking and feeling
completely quietly.
There is a popular booklet about superstition in which
something reasonable and something absurd can be found. Then,
after the author slaughters what astrology and astronomy and
other forms of superstition are, he states that astrologers
once existed who cast horoscopes to the human beings and
derived their destinies from the moment of birth. Such
astrologers would no longer exist as far as he would know; the
midwives would do this now. Indeed, it would not take place in
Berlin but in remaining Germany. You can really read this
sentence in this booklet about superstition. I do not believe
that anybody can call it other than superstition, because,
otherwise, he would have to say that many astrologers cast
horoscopes today. What the man says does not correspond at all
to the facts; it is the purest superstition. Every
investigation could show him the opposite of his assertion.
Similar things slip in the consciousness of the human beings
every day if these are also less palpable things and one would
regard it as a paradox if I spoke of superstition.
The
opinion has arisen in certain circles of scientific
consideration since some time that one has to look for physical
causes of human memory, in particular in the field of
sexuality. Not only this, but also the writings and brochures
are numerous which examine the mental conditions of great
spirits. A Leipzig scholar took great pains till recently to
examine a whole group of great spirits, among them Goethe,
Schopenhauer, Scheffel (Joseph Victor von Sch., 1826–1886,
German poet), and Conrad Ferdinand Meyer (1825–1898, Swiss
poet), to what extent they had, actually, this or that insanity
and whether their geniuses would be connected with this or that
insanity. On the other side, the tendency of physical illness
relates to inheritance, and no current event escapes from such
an interpretation today. Here we are concerned with a
superstition that rises just now, which penetrates, however,
our education like a scourge. Future times will not understand
that it was possible that science could worship such a
superstition for a while. If our descendants repaid this in the
same sense, judged in the same sense what science believes and
teaches today as one teaches and judges today what our
ancestors believed in former times, then those who are active
in these fields today would come off the worst. Thus, we
already see, while we survey the facts impartially, that the
old forms of superstition are rightly thrown to the window and,
on the other side, new forms slip in that are not just simply
recognised as those.
Who
looks around a little in science knows how many demons of
superstition slip in here and there which only have a short
existence fortunately, but can be not less detrimental.
Sometimes trends are not far from that which one may call
superstition. I would like to give an example. During my
activity as educator, I could make some observation that was
possible only because I could go into a large field concerning
the human development. More than twenty years ago, it was
standard to give little children red wine, generally wine to
drink — possibly in the second, third, fourth years. One
could realise how by a certain trend of medicine just children
got their glass of red wine at this age every time during
dinner. He, who observes such a thing, maybe observes too short
periods in relation to the effect of these matters. If one
compares those persons who are 20-year-old today and were
children of two to five years at that time to others who got no
wine at that time for their strengthening, the difference of
the present nervous manifests itself to a hair's breadth
between those who got wine and those who got no wine.
There was in those days the superstition that wine contains a
strength in itself. This was a trend of superstition. One
offered this opinion like any other superstitious opinion. Now
we can refrain from all that and go over to some other fields
where one does not speak at all of superstition, although the
mental fact of the matter is completely the same one in the
human being. If speak of the weird idols, fetishes or
catchwords people have in social life which they run after like
others run after certain idols in other fields, and we realize
how much superstition is contained in it, then you would
recognise: if the quantity of superstition does not live it up
in one field, it changes over to another field. If the human
being towers above superstition on one side, it is swiftly
expressed in another field where one does not notice it so
much.
After we have characterised the situation a little, we may be
allowed to try to come to the real origin of superstition, to
the peculiar state of mind in which a superstitious person is.
Above all one is allowed to say that with the emergence of this
state of mind the bias of a human being plays the conceivably
biggest role in this or that school of thought. Someone
understands the same fact — depending on his school of
thought — in the one or other way. Let us try to bring a
concrete case home to us. The French physiologist Richet
(Charles R., 1850–1935, Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine,
1913) had the following experience: he walked in the street
once, and on the other side of the street a person was walking.
At this moment, he had the thought: nevertheless, it is strange
that professor Lacassagne is in Paris today. However, it is not
so strange. Fourteen days ago, professor Lacassagne sent me an
article and wrote that he would be here in fourteen days.
Richet wanted already to go to the other side and greet him
when he said to himself that he wants to go to the editorial
office, and the other would probably also come there. At the
same moment, he realised that the professor resembled an
ophthalmologist known to him. Richet goes to the editorial
office, and there appears professor Lacassagne after one hour.
Richet says to him, I saw you in the street before one hour.
The professor answers: this is impossible. I was not there an
hour ago, but somewhere else. — It is no doubt; Richet
could not have seen him. It is peculiar how two persons often
behave to each other if they have two different lines of
thought. Richet saw a person and had the certain impression to
see professor L. However, when he faced the professor L., it
seemed to him brainless to have taken another person who was
big and blond for professor L., who was of medium height and
had a dark moustache. However, Richet is a man who believes in
occult effects, in telepathy. He said to himself, professor L.
is in Paris and thought to go to the editorial office —
and at this moment, I saw this thought by telepathy!
A
Danish researcher, Lehmann (Alfred Georg Ludvig L., 1858–1921,
psychologist), who has written a book about
Superstition and Magic
(1898) thinks differently about that. He says,
“Richet believes in telepathy; that is why he sees
something mystic in this quite usual experience which should
prove the correctness of his confidence, however, he overlooks
the incidental circumstances completely which explain the
matter absolutely naturally. I myself have experienced various
such cases, and because I do not believe in telepathy, I have
always looked for and found an obvious cause of the
phenomenon.”
There you have two persons who judge the same event quite
differently depending on the school of thought. I myself would
like to agree with the Danish researcher Lehmann, because those
who approach occult matters by inadequate means overstate the
case the easiest and can explain anything in the world to
themselves like in this case. However, you see from it how the
bias, in which a person is with his line of thought, causes
that he colours another person whom he faces in such a way.
Now
think how the things are reflected in the human soul if they
are not exactly figured out. There we come to the real nature
of superstition in the spiritual-scientific sense. You can read
countless writings and discussions about the superstition of
alchemy, the hapless art to produce gold to which so many have
dedicated themselves. Those who wrote about it were mostly
— in the modern view — exceptionally competent,
positive researchers in other respect. They occupy an important
place with their writings, in which in this or that way the art
of making gold is informed. However, what you read there
appears to you as sheer madness, as absolute nonsense.
Moreover, it appears in numerous cases as such obvious fraud
that one can realise very easily how just at that time when the
human being believed such a thing in this field fallacy by
fallacy was spread.
Even though chemistry developed from alchemy, we must be
infinitely happy that we have, finally, the true chemical
science, in contrast to those figments and errors to which our
ancestors have abandoned themselves in alchemy. Perhaps we can
understand just the easiest what is deception if we consider
some simple cases. We want to refrain from the number thirteen,
but you know that for some people the number seven causes
something dreadful that some regard it as a lucky number,
sometimes, however, also as an unlucky number with which magic
effects should be connected. I need to mention something only
that can lead you to that which is connected with the number
seven. I want not only to mention that the number seven is also
found in the purely physical nature — seven colours,
seven tones et cetera — what has often enough been
mentioned here from which one can conclude that this or that is
connected with the number seven. However, we want to refrain from
that today. We want to turn our attention to something else.
-
There
is an illness, pneumonia,
which increases for seven days and then decreases. Only
during the seventh day the crisis occurs, so that someone
who has to treat such a sick person has to pay attention in
particular to this physical rhythm. There we have the
number seven connected to a particular process, something
that can be observed in any single case. The modern
materialistic science does not get involved with any
explanation of this process. If we traced back medicine in
ancient times in which you do not have to see a sum of
mistakes only as it is shown in the history of medicine,
one would understand that the ancient doctors and experts
of nature knew how all life proceeds in a certain rhythm.
They knew that a rhythmical coherence exists between the
processes in the human being and outdoors in the big
nature, in the macrocosm. Because the human being is,
actually, born out of the macrocosm whose life proceeds in
certain external processes, the human life also proceeds in
a certain rhythm. He, who knows the rhythm of human life,
knows very well that an increasing and decreasing rhythm of
28 days, of four times seven days, in an organ like the
lung in which certain functional strengths and weaknesses
appear. There it is no longer surprising, as soon as one
recognises this basis, that the illness of the lung becomes
especially dangerous where it collides, so to speak, with
the general rhythm of life phenomena. Briefly, we would see
if we considered the facts in the sense of spiritual
research and not superstitiously, why after seven days a
particular crisis of pneumonia takes place. However, one
does not want to come to such things in our materialistic
age, which can be pursued only by the means of spiritual
science.
There was a time in which the doctors not only knew that
pneumonia goes through this crisis during the seventh day, but
in which they also knew why this is so. They knew how this is
connected also with the healthy rhythm. However, this
spiritual-scientific knowledge is forgotten to the external
life. One does no longer know the real lawfulness, it got lost
to humankind. The mere number seven remained. One did not know
at all, in the end, why pneumonia shows something particular
after seven days. Then one takes out such a thing, of course,
without being able or wanting to understand it. One applies it
because one sees something particular in the number seven as
such. One says to himself, something particular is connected
with the number seven. One can apply it anyhow here or there.
As long as one keeps to formalities, as long as one does not
look into the matter, one has no reason to apply the thing here
or there. So one applies it where apparently an occasion
exists. Above all, a human law is involved, which is only too
comprehensible: in all cases where one has arranged such a
thing from abstraction where one applies it and sees that it
fits the thing works; however, if it does not fit , one
overlooks it.
Thus, it also applies to some country lore. Who comes from the
country knows for sure that from the first thunderstorm, which
appears in the spring, this and that is prophesied. If the
prophesied comes true, it is accepted as a rule, if it does not
come true, one forgets it. Nevertheless, deep profundities are
in some country lore, and one would have to investigate it on
its deep wisdom. Then again, one applies not the purely
exterior of superstition, but intends to penetrate the thing
independently. Indeed, I was pleased rather well if beside
other country lore once again that is pronounced, if the cock
crows on the dung heap, the weather changes or remains as it
is. — A healthy trait appears here that must not be
generalised but individualised. On these essentials, the
development of our soul and spirit should depend.
In
a similar way, only not so transparently, many things of
alchemy are concerned. Some of you know when I spoke about the
Rosicrucian initiation and the philosophers' stone that I
showed what one has to understand by the philosophers' stone in
the real spiritual science of all times and what can remain in
force before our present most modern thinking. Among the
various methods that lead up the human being to higher
knowledge, in particular to the Rosicrucian initiation, you
find one method that one calls “the preparation of the
philosophers' stone” downright. Something is understood
by this preparation of the philosophers' stone that is
connected with a regulation of the respiratory process.
Becoming conscious and regulating breathing according to
spiritual principles belonged to the different methods, with
which the human being works his way up to the higher worlds.
After particular instructions, someone breathes who becomes a
disciple of spiritual science in the positive sense.
This breathing has a particular result for the whole organism
that the external science is no longer able to investigate
because it knows nothing of the matter. The human being
develops something by the instrument of his own body in himself
that really appears in his body and enables him to another
worldview because by the respiration an effect happens which
expresses itself in the mineral composition of the physical
body. Thus, we have produced something by the regulation of the
respiratory rhythm in the human being that was called the
philosophers' stone. It is that which is to be produced
inevitably in the human organism if the human being has to grow
into the higher worlds. The process can be given, but one
cannot impart it to any human being just without further ado.
Since only someone can apply this process by its very nature
who does it in a completely unselfish way without any personal
regard.
When I spoke once in a little circle how one is able to do it
today already as I would suggest it also wholeheartedly in one
of the talks, a person said afterwards, it would be rather
useful, if one publicly announced the method to produce a
particular mineral in the human being. For this mineral would
be something very useful if one produced it in big masses.
— I had to answer: the fact that you put this question
gives the reason why it is not allowed to be announced. As long
as such questions are put, it is just impossible that it is
allowed to be announced. You can find it in the literature, but
it is veiled there. It is only comprehensible to that who gets
to know the parlance going through a pre-school.
“Mercury,” “philosophers' stone,”
“silver” mean something else. If one speaks of the
union of mercury and its addition to any other product,
“mercury” and “philosophers' stone”
just mean something else than external matters.
However, these things exist in literature. Those who have no
idea what the expressions and the signs in particular signify
which are connected with them take the thing simply literally.
If one takes them literally, it is the purest nonsense. So, for
example, it has happened to a Danish researcher of superstition
that he read something about strange personalities of the
thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, about Ramon Llull
(~1232–1316) and others. It is at everybody's discretion to
regard him as a swindler, a charlatan or as the greatest sage
of his time, depending on he can understand him. Now, however,
it is told that Ramon Llull succeeded in finding the
philosophers' stone after a 30-year-study — to most
people an uncomfortable matter — and that he thereby
became able to make gold, while he transformed a certain amount
of mercury by a part of the stone into a powder which still had
all qualities of the stone. If one takes a tiny amount of it,
it gets the quality again to transform mercury. Then a tiny
amount is taken from this again, and so on, until gold
originates finally.
If
one tries this, if he takes what he finds in the book, takes
certain substances, mixes them and adds them to the mercury, it
is the biggest nonsense that can be done. Everybody is right to
mock it. The Danish researcher also does this. He mocks it. Who
knows, however, how to interpret the expressions finds that in
literature the “philosophers' stone” exists just as
in the writings by Ramon Llull, with which he achieved his
goal. This is the wonderful of the matter that the sentence has
been known for centuries and is right even today. This shows
somebody who knows something about it how brilliantly right it
is. Then he realises that in Ramon Llull really the soul of one
of the wisest of his age lived. However, who sticks only to the
external mode of expression gets up to nonsense really. Many
people got up to nonsense who believed that the wise alchemist
produced external gold, and they also went insane, although I
believe that they already went insane a little when they
started the matter. Psychiatrists, however, state that they
went insane thereby. They may have lost their wealth, because
they did not find gold at last. Hence, one must not disagree
with the writer so much who calls alchemy nonsense, because
— what he could understand of it is nonsense only.
However, no nonsense is big enough not to be believed by this
or that person.
This is connected with an addiction that you can experience in
the field of spiritual science day by day. You experience the
following: if you face this or that person with a natural
phenomenon, which needs clarification, and you try to explain
such a phenomenon in connection with its spiritual undergrounds
and claim to lead back an everyday phenomenon to its spiritual
base, then you excite no special interest with most people
today. Many human beings do not search the explicable but the
inexplicable. They are happy if they can find anything that
remains inexplicable to them. Tell to anybody that here or
there, something has taken place that cannot be explained, and
then they are pleased with it. People really want to be pointed
to the inexplicable. They do not want to penetrate what
presents itself to them, but they want to increase the
miraculous. Try to explain something about the development of
plants to anybody, while he can grasp them from the
undergrounds of development and look deeply at nature, so that
he is led from the sensuous where one deals with the spirit at
one end deeply into the spiritual — then he cannot
believe in a spiritual world! However, if you tell such a
person that a hand of a statue got lost, was found again in
another city, and has been reinserted, he says: no one can
explain this, consequently I believe in a spiritual world.
— This is in such a way that the persons want to remain
without an understanding of the spirit because they believe
that one is not allowed to fathom this. With it, they open the
doors to superstition everywhere.
If
the human being does not strive for impartiality with that
which is available to him in his reason and logical thinking,
he is exposed to all possible forms of superstition when he
does not want to rely on this, as soon as something appears
that is different from the usual. Thus, one could see, for
example — you forgive if I say this, although I stand
completely on the ground of spiritual science and theosophy
— how often just those who stand on the ground of
theosophy reject what could lead to enlightenment in the
spiritual-scientific sense. When the theosophical movement had
begun in the world, two significant persons lived by whom this
wisdom was revealed to humankind at first. Those who have this
wisdom have not behaved in such a way as it... (Gap)
I
have characterised this heaps of times. For: how could one have
behaved compared with a truth that was received from an unknown
side? The first intermediaries of the theosophical worldview
said, from personalities who stay in the background we have got
the wisdom we committed to this or that book. — There one
could have said the following, well, these human beings who
bring this wisdom are honourable, but we want to check this
wisdom ourselves. — I always emphasise that only somebody
can do research in the higher worlds who has attained
particular abilities. However, if this wisdom is informed, so
that it is verifiable, then what? This wisdom was not checked
in many cases. One accepted the matter in good faith because
one said to them that it has come from higher beings. The
others, however, said, whether it is founded or not, this does
not matter; whether the higher beings generally exist, that is
the point; and if one does not know for sure whether these
higher beings exist or not, we reject the whole theosophy.
However, could it not have happened that anybody said to
himself, this wisdom may have come wherever from at first, I
check it, whether and how it fits the phenomena of life,
whether it proves true in life; above all, I check its relation
to the current worldview, to the positive science? —
There one could maybe come to the view: how poor is that which
the worldview gives us built up on positive science compared
with that, which has come from theosophical side. One must not
accept it in good faith, but one can check and understand it.
The result will be whether those from whom this wisdom has come
are greater than those who stand on the ground of the so-called
scientific facts. We have no reason to assume that H. P.
Blavatsky received her worldview from a rain cloud. Such wisdom
that one has found as reasonable must originate from somewhere.
Whether one can call it great, this depends on what arises if
one compares this worldview to that which one already
recognises as great.
Such a check would have been reasonable. However, this is the
only one that brings honour to the human mind, not accepting on
good faith, also not rejecting on good faith, but examining
without prejudice. Indeed, not anybody can do research. Those
should do it who can develop their mental powers especially.
However, everybody can examine impartially, if only he did not
search the inexplicable instead of the explicable and were
satisfied having found the inexplicable. As long as one says to
him, he should try hard to fathom the spirit; he does not want
to come along. However, if one informs him of anything that is
not to be understood at all, he is present because it is more
comfortable. This is especially distinctive of the soul state
of the human being.
There is another case, which took place (taken from
Lehmann's book). I talk again not in such a way, as if
anything true is behind it, but I talk about the human
spiritual condition that has become obvious thereby. One told
that in certain regions of Asia human beings existed who can do
the following: they spread out a cloth, take a rope, throw the
rope in the air, let a little child climb up, until it becomes
invisible on top; then they themselves climb up, and after some
time the limbs of the child fall down dismembered. Then the
fakir also follows, takes a bag, packs the limbs into it,
shakes the whole, then he pours out the bag and — the
child is recreated completely. I do not want to decide what is
behind, but only speak about the way of superstition.
The
process appears to the human beings as something that is hard
to believe at first. A certain S. Ellmore wrote about that in
the Chicago Tribune, and a painter drew strange pictures
that showed the different stadia quite correctly: the thrown
rope, the climbing child and so on. Ellmore himself added
photos which were shot especially cunningly, because one always
saw the fakir and the spectators only who looked upwards once,
then downwards. However, one did not see the remaining. Ellmore
explained the whole matter, so that one could easily elucidate
it. He meant namely that the person concerned who carried out
the matter must be a very significant hypnotist who could
suggest the process to a whole company. There people said to
themselves that the process was no superstition but suggestion,
and it seemed explicable that all people were hypnotised.
However, this suggestive process appeared to a person even more
incredible than the original process. For he thought that there
could be matters in the world, which cannot be explained by our
principles, and said to himself: concerning suggestion one
already knows something, but concerning the soul forces one
must still investigate many a matter. — This person
turned to S. Ellmore to find out the place where this was
present at such a performance. Now the truth became known. S.
Ellmore explained that the whole story was invented, what
already his pseudonym points to: S. Ellmore = sell more. He had
dressed the matter in this form, because he could not believe
the original process and found the form of suggestion
acceptable to the modern consciousness.
You
see that it really depends on the mental constitution that it
depends on what takes place in our souls if one wants to
elucidate the concept and the being of superstition fairly.
Quite different factors must decide whether a matter is correct
or is not correct in the end. However, what can protect us from
any aberrations which become superstition can be solely the
pursuit of real knowledge, of seeing through the matters.
Someone is always addicted to superstition who does not want to
penetrate really into the depth of the matters. It anyway is in
such a way that this longing for a certain quantity of
superstition prevails absolutely. With it, I pronounce the
basic principle of superstition: as long as the human being
remains only in the observation of the physical environment, as
long as he does not want to penetrate to spiritual science, to
the real knowledge of the spiritual primal grounds of the
things, a certain need of superstition lives in him.
If
you like, take a modern doctor: if he rejects any form of
superstition in his thinking ever so much — that who is
impartial can easily prove how he covers his requirements of
superstition in another form copiously. This is the principle
of compensation in the human soul. You see in it how typical
the principle is.
You
have a person who wants to be way beyond the old superstition
in every respect, but how much superstition Haeckel (Ernst H.,
1835–1919, naturalist, philosopher) registers in his
Miracles of Life
and in his
World Riddles!
Those who know me know that I recognise Haeckel in all because
he is the great researcher. Who knows me also knows that I always
point to the positive that Haeckel has performed. Because he
has thrown out the old superstition and does not want to go
back to the spiritual backgrounds of the things, he applies it
to another field. He becomes the most superstitious person on
the other field. In the field of energy and matter, as he
imagines it, there the atoms are dancing and whirling.
He
calls that his god. He attributes to the dancing and whirling
atoms that they can create conditions which simple living
beings show, and that these again are made up to more complex
things which fit together, in the end, to the form of the human
brain. Everything that the human being can feel and want, all
ideals, and moral, all religions are for that who can judge the
thing impartially only dance of atoms. No difference exists to
him between the dance of the atoms and the big fetishes of
African savages. Whether the African savage adores his wooden
block and looks at it as his god, or whether Haeckel lets his
little atoms dance and looks at them as little gods —
there is no difference between both concerning superstition.
The one and the other superstition stand at the same point of
view. There was a time — it is behind us already in
certain ways — there one could see how this superstition
emerged bit by bit. New discoveries of natural sciences were
done in the course of time, in particular in chemistry. New
compounds could be explained that one noticed differences of
weight of the smallest parts in space. Many a thing was
explained by the principle of the atomic weights. The view
appeared fertile to construct such an atomic theory. Later, one
forgot that one had constructed this atomic theory in spirit.
The atoms became real idols which one adored.
When I was a pupil, a headmaster
(Heinrich Schramm, see Steiner's autobiography, chapter II)
made me realise what
atomic superstition is. The headmaster calculated all phenomena
of physics and chemistry as movements in those days — a
long time ago. However, he did not yet calculate the thinking.
However, he made calculations up to the chemical phenomena. The
booklet, which contained these things, is called
The General Movement of Matter as a Basic Cause of All Natural
Phenomena.
This was something that could fascinate somebody
who defers to this issue. I would just give everybody this
booklet with pleasure. However, it is no longer available in
the book trade for a long time. Perhaps in libraries it may be
still to be found. There we see superstition appearing in the
omnipotence of the atomic whirl.
We
saw all possible forms of superstition appearing one by one in
natural sciences. Consider once that we really have a certain
direction in natural sciences that speaks of the omnipotence of
natural breeding.
Everywhere you can see that everything is gathered that is or
is not indicative of the one or the other theory, if once the
researcher concerned is fascinated by a catchword that has an
effect on him like an idol. We would just see similar cases in
our time if we only wanted to have an eye for them. Already at
the beginning of the talk, I mentioned how the matters slip in
that will become obvious as the dreadful superstition of time
in a time not too far away.
Where is the cause of superstition now? Always the possibility
occurs that superstition replaces what can prevail only as a
fertile thought, as a fertile opinion. If we forget the
original thought, the original opinion and take the formality
presenting itself for it, we forget the essentials like the
crisis of pneumonia appearing after seven days. If we pull the
number seven out and retain it, the possibility exists that
this changes into superstition. There you have the reason why
ancient sages could show great natural phenomena.
Spiritual science wants to bring to the human being: that he
does not search the inexplicable, but that he wants to search
the explanation. Otherwise, if he stops in the area of the
environment and does not want to rise to the higher point of
view from which he can see what is justified or not justified
in the one or the other field, then he replaces superstition by
superstition. Who stops in the physical world leaves the one
superstition and comes into the other. Not before he rises
above himself and above superstition, he sees the right in the
one and in the other. Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778,
philosopher) already ascertained that it does not make a
difference whether one is more or less clever. He said, the
clever ones and the prudent ones have their prejudices just as
the silly ones, even if the clever and prudent ones know
something more and have more prejudices than the silly ones.
The silly ones retain to few prejudices the more tenaciously in
return. — This is absolute a principle which someone who
observes human life can find confirmed in many cases. Thus, we
see that a basic healing of superstition can be if one rises to
the higher point of view from which the spiritual undergrounds
of the world are readily comprehensible.
Various sorts of superstition will still emerge, and something
slips into our view today. We are developing in such a way that
the human beings have no right sense, actually, to eliminate
superstition from the public life if it does not just come from
old times. Oh, it absolutely applies to our time in various
fields what an old story tells us. Call it an anecdote, but it
applies, and it shows truth better than something else does. In
a certain region of Spain, on the border between two provinces,
an epidemic had broken out once. It was close to two
universities. One university had a medical faculty in which one
swarmed for bloodletting in particular. At the other
university, one swarmed against bloodletting. In this region
were two doctors. The one doctor was instructed in the one
university, the other one at the other university. The one
prescribed medicines, and the other venesected. It turned out
that the one doctor kept all patients alive, while all patients
of the other doctor died. Even if all patients stayed alive and
all patients of the other died, nevertheless, both operated
correctly according to their theory; one, indeed, wrong in
practice, but correctly according to his theory.
If
one tells such a thing, it may seem stupid. If one sees the
things, however, day by day, one finds that the anecdote says
nothing wrong, and one finds it even necessary. Therefore, it
can only concern — if about superstition is spoken
— that spiritual science has really no reason to
propagate this or that superstition. It stands on the ground
that the spiritual is explorable and that there are means and
ways to penetrate into the spiritual world by which one is able
to overlook the world from a higher viewpoint. Thereby the
human being is led beyond superstition, and beyond that, which
superstition can cause as damage in the human life. One can
express that with a Goethean word which reveals truth
comprehensively even if simply: “Wisdom is eternal, and
it will be victorious, and it will raise the human being in us
to humaneness in the most manifold tumults.”
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