The
Nature of Spiritual Science and Its Significance for the Present
Berlin, 20 October 1910
Already for several years, I attempted to hold talks about
spiritual science here from this place during the winter
months. In this winter, I want also to give a picture of facts
of the spiritual world from this viewpoint in the series of the
talks announced to you. We shall consider the big questions of
existence, the relation of life and death, of sleeping and
wakening, of the human soul and animal soul, of the human
spirit and animal spirit, and of the spirit in the realm of
plants. Then we want to consider the development of the human
being through the different ages, through childhood, youth, and
the later years, the interest of education in the main
character of the human being. We will light up the spiritual
life turning our look to the great individualities of the human
development, to Zarathustra, Moses, Galilei, and Goethe. Using
single examples, I want to show in which way spiritual science
relates to the natural sciences: at the example of astronomy
and geology. Then I want to explain what spiritual science can
say about the riddle of life. A kind of orienting, general
consideration preceded the considerations every year. I follow
this custom also this year speaking about the meaning of the
spiritual science, its significance, its nature, and its task
within the different spiritual needs of the present.
One
may be allowed to say that spiritual science (German:
Geisteswissenschaft) is a rather unpopular thing
even today in wide sections of the population. Indeed, one also
speaks about “humanities” (German:
Geisteswissenschaft) outside our spiritual
science. One understands, for example, something by history
that one calls humanities, and probably also by other fields of
knowledge of the present. In another sense than one normally
speaks of humanities, I want to speak here. If one speaks of
“humanities” today and applies the term possibly to
history, one admits in the utmost that beside the human
observation, the sensory experience, and intellectual
experience still certain big trends come into consideration.
These are effective like forces in the stream of the world
evolution and cause as it were the talents of the single
peoples and states. One probably speaks also of general ideas
in history and in the human life. He who reflects what is meant
in such a case soon remembers that one appeals to abstract
ideas speaking of the forces, of that which guides the human
destinies. These are general ideas in certain respect to which
the human intellectual capability can attain a relation of
knowledge.
In
another sense, one speaks about humanities here assuming a
spiritual world as a world that is essential as the human world
is essential within the physical existence. I want to show: if
one exceeds with the human cognitive faculties what presents
itself to the external sensory observation, the intellectual
experience, and goes to the guiding forces of human existence
and world existence generally, one does not come to
abstractions, to sapless and feeble concepts. However, one
comes to something essential, to something that is living, full
of contents, spiritually impregnated existence as the nature of
the human being is. One speaks about an existing spiritual
world here. That is why spiritual science is no popular thing
for the widest circles of our present cultural striving. It is
still the least if one calls those who devote themselves to
such spiritual-scientific research blabbers, dreamers, or
daydreamers. It is even today something ordinary to say that
everything that wants to be or to appear as a strict method, as
real scientificity on this ground is a quite dubious thing.
Big, immense progress always exercised a suggestive effect on
humanity also concerning thinking and feeling. The big progress
of the general human life does not lie in the
spiritual-scientific field, but rather in that field, of which
humanity is rightly proud and on which it still sets big hopes
for its further development. Until our days, this progress of
the last centuries lies in the field that grows out of the
natural sciences.
Imagine the immense theoretical progress of science which one
has attained and will attain, and which big significance these
scientific achievements have for the outer life, then one must
say: the blessing of this scientific progress must exercise a
suggestive power on the human beings. Thus, it has happened
that this suggestive effect has expressed itself also to
another side. If it had expressed itself only in such a way
that above all the human mind felt something like a kind of
worldly cult compared with this immense progress, who could
even speak a single word against it? However, this suggestive
power has also expressed itself in such a way that one does not
only recognise the scientific research and the progress
following from it for our time, but within wide sections of the
population the faith originated that any knowledge of humanity
can be gained only on scientific ground. Because one regards
oneself as entitled to conclude from this faith that the
spiritual-scientific method contradicts these scientific
methods that it is impossible for that who is on scientific
ground to speak generally of the investigation of a spiritual
world, the prejudice is spread that spiritual science must be
rejected compared to the entitled requirements of natural
sciences. With this refusal, one hears very serious
objections.
The
scientific method, one says, is such a one whose research
results, whose knowledge can be checked by every human being at
any time, and that for the production of this knowledge, of
these research results no subjective feeling, sympathy or
antipathy, longing or desire are allowed to come into the
picture. Nothing is allowed to interfere from the requirement
that one would like to have this result so or so; the human
element must exclude itself from the research and let the
objectivity of the things speak if it concerns results of
scientific research.
Spiritual science cannot put up this demand just like that. To
someone who regards this demand as generally valid it is a
sufficient reason to reject spiritual science that it cannot
satisfy this demand. Why is this the case? The natural sciences
have the objects of their research round the human being. They
start from that what can be put before every human being what
every human being can think about it with the
physical-scientific methods, if he is led before the thing. It
is apparently completely irrelevant with which requirement the
human being approaches what presents itself in his
surroundings. It is just that what expresses itself in the
general demand: physical-scientific knowledge must be able to
be checked by any human being at any time. The true spiritual
science cannot go forward at all, as the natural sciences
obtain their results. It cannot say at first, it is necessary
that any human being can check the results at any time. Since
it must assume that these research results are obtained because
the human being does not consider his inside as anything solid,
anything concluded that he does not regard his subjective being
as anything ready, but says to himself: my subjective being is
nothing concluded, is nothing ready, it can be developed; the
soul life can be deepened. The soul life can run so that that
what one finds if one turns the senses to the outer world and
applies the mind to what the senses say is only a base of other
soul experiences. Other soul experiences arise if the soul
becomes engrossed in itself, if it regards the immediate life
experience only as a starting point and then struggles with
forces slumbering in it at first. These forces can be got out,
however, through the stages of existence that one cannot regard
in such a way that one could check them with an outer eye.
What the spiritual researcher must experience for the
preparation of his studies is an inner struggle of the soul
that is completely independent of that what the human being has
in himself. If one demands from science generally that the
human being should add nothing to the results that face him
outside, then it could not be talk of spiritual science at all.
However, he who reflects a little and asks himself: which is
the most important part of the demands which are asserted there
for spiritual science, could say to himself that its results
are valid for any human being that they are not subject to the
personal arbitrariness, and are significant for all human
beings.
This is the characteristic of everything scientific that it
does not only apply to somebody whom the objects of science
face, but that — if the objects have been investigated
— this can lead to knowledge that can be valid for all
human beings.
If
it were true that that what I have characterised in such a way
as a development of the human being were only subjective,
applied only to the one or the other person, and that only a
personal faith were due to it, one could not speak of spiritual
science really. It will still become apparent, however, in this
winter that this inner life of the human being, the struggle of
the soul can develop from the forces that slumber at first but
can awake and guide him from experience to experience, and that
this soul life can still ascend to a stage, where his
experiences have a particular peculiarity.
Considering the human life as it happens inside of the human
soul, it is a quite personal one at first, for the one this
way, for the other that way. Someone who has a healthy
self-reflection can realise with this or that what surges up in
his soul as sympathy or antipathy what has as it were a
personal touch only, that this and how this is the case.
However, the inner experience leads to a certain point where
just a methodically achieved, pure self-knowledge, uninfluenced
by anything personal, must say to itself, the personal has just
been cast off, forms a special area. However, then one comes to
a certain point where for the inner experience, for the
supersensible experience arbitrariness stops exactly the same
way as it stops if one faces these or those sense-perceptible
phenomena, and where one can also not think as one wants but
must think according to the object. Thus, the human being also
comes internally, emotionally to a certain sphere, to a certain
area where he clearly realises that his personal subjectivity
does no longer speak but that now not sense-perceptible but
supersensible beings and forces speak for which his
individuality has just as little significance as for that which
the outer sensory objects say. However, one has to attain this
knowledge if one wants to be entitled to call the statements of
the spiritual world “science.” These winter talks
shall be again a proof that we are permitted to call the
considerations about the investigation of the spiritual world
science.
Thus, one must say, spiritual science is founded on that what
the human soul can investigate if it has come in its inner
struggle and experience to a point where the personal does no
longer have a say in the case of the considerations of the
spiritual world, but where it lets the spiritual world say its
peculiarities. If one compares spiritual science to the natural
sciences, some people maybe say, then, however, spiritual
science lacks the important characteristic that it can make a
persuasive impression on all human beings, which the natural
sciences have. Since one has the consciousness, wherever
scientific results appear, even if you had not investigated and
seen them yourself, you would be able to do it if you went to
the observatory or to the laboratory and used the telescope and
the microscope and you would recognise them in the same way as
someone who imparted them to you. He could say: if in the way
of spiritual science the proof is an inner one, and the soul
struggles with itself, until it says: now you give nothing of
your personality to that what the objects say to you, —
nevertheless, it is a single struggle. One would have to say to
someone who attains certain results this way, or whom the
spiritual-scientific researcher informs of these results: these
results remain an unknown land to me, until I myself ascend to
the same point!
Also this — this will still appear to us — is a
wrong objection. Indeed, this lonesome struggle of the human
soul, this uncovering of forces slumbering in the human soul is
necessary in order to reach the spiritual world where it speaks
objectively to us. However, the spiritual world is in such a
way: after the spiritual-scientific results have been informed,
the results are effective.
What someone, proved by spiritual-scientific research,
communicates to his fellow men can be checked by everybody
again, in a certain sense, however, not in such a way that one
can see in the laboratory what the other has found, but in such
a way that one can accept it. For in every soul a sense of
impartial truth, a healthy logic, a healthy reasonableness
lives. If the results of the spiritual research are dressed in
healthy logic, in that what speaks as our healthy sense of
truth, then in every soul or at least in every impartial soul a
string can sound or resonate with the informing soul. One can
say, any soul has the disposition — even if it has not
still dedicated itself to the lonesome struggle — to take
up by an impartial logic and by a healthy sense of truth what
spiritual science informs. Even if one has to admit that also
within the spiritual-scientific movement the communications of
spiritual research are not always accepted with this healthy
sense of truth and healthy logic, but this is a lack of every
spiritual movement. However, in principle, this is right what I
have said. In principle, one should even consider that it must
lead to mistakes about mistakes if one accepts light-heartedly
and with blind faith what is often brought as spiritual science
to humanity today. Who really stands on the ground of spiritual
science feels strictly obliged to inform logically and
reasonably what he has to say, so that one can really check
with a healthy sense of truth and with any logic. - Thus, we
have explained the being of spiritual science showing how one
has to find its results.
Only this science can prove that there is such an objective
fact of the spirit. However, I want to call attention to the
fact that this science just leads to the real contents of the
spiritual world, to contents that are fulfilled vividly with
such essentiality as for example a human being is fulfilled
with essentiality. From this viewpoint, spiritual science gets
clear about the fact that at last a spiritual world forms the
basis of any physical-sensuous existence that the human being
as well as all the other things is born and developed out of
this spiritual world. It states also that behind the
sense-perceptible world, behind the physical outer existence
the region of the spiritual world extends. If now spiritual
science goes over gradually to showing from its observations
how it looks in this spiritual world how the spiritual world
underlies our sense-perceptible world, then the aversion just
arises in many circles as it was characterised at the beginning
of this talk. In wide circles of the present, spiritual science
is a quite unpopular thing. It is difficult by no means to
understand that spiritual science still meets an immense
opposition today. It is a matter of course because that what is
incorporated as something new to the cultural life like
spiritual science was always forced back in a certain respect
like all small and big achievements of humanity. However,
because there are many mental pictures, which the human being
gets from the scientific observation, which cause just the
necessity that someone who believes to stand completely on the
ground of natural sciences is involved in nothing but
contradictions if he hears what spiritual science says. Someone
who stands on the ground of spiritual science does not doubt at
all that with a certain right hundreds upon hundreds of
disproofs of this spiritual science can be brought up.
Only as in brackets I would like to insert that I myself hold
two talks in the next time at different places and also here
once, so that clearness is brought in this question. The first
of them reads: How Does One Disprove Theosophy? and the
other: How Does One Found Theosophy? For a test, this
should happen in order to show how that who stands on the
ground of spiritual science can really gather everything that
can be alleged as disproofs against spiritual science. Yes, I
would like to say even more than that what has already been
stated in this case that the disproofs of spiritual science, as
one normally speaks today of disproofs, are not so particularly
difficult in relation to its various results at all. It is easy
to disprove the spiritual-scientific researches.
I
would not like to compare these disproofs directly, but to make
clear what I want to say, and go back to something that often
strikes one if one reads works of certain philosophers about
Hegel's philosophy. — I do not want to speak here about
the importance of Hegel's philosophy about what is true and
what is wrong; we want to leave this undecided. — There
will be few people among the experts of Hegel, who do not
recognise that Hegel is a significant spirit. In Hegel's
writings, one finds a strange sentence that can make, so to
speak, a deep impression on those who want to disprove Hegel
light-heartedly. This sentence reads, “Everything real is
reasonable!” Imagine which inner laughter such a sentence
must cause in someone who disproves with pleasure! A
philosopher should be great who speaks such nonsense:
“Everything real is reasonable!” One needs only to
cast a single glance at the world and sees how unreasonable
this sentence is! There is an easy method to disprove the
correctness of this sentence, and it consists in the fact that
someone himself gets up to mischief. Since one can state then
that it is certainly not reasonable.
Should the fact that a disproof becomes easy also lead to the
fact that it is simply taken easy and is easily taken as
important? This is another question, which answers itself maybe
by the fact that one considers the following: should Hegel
really have been so silly — one may relate to Hegel as
one wants — that he would not have realised that this
sentence is easily disproved? Should he have thought really
that no one could get up to mischief? Should one not feel
compelled to consider in which sense Hegel could have meant
this sentence and that one does not meet what he meant with
such a disproof at all?
In
the same way, it may also be with many things of spiritual
science. We go back to something concrete: spiritual science
has to assume that the nervous system and the brain as the
tools of thinking, imagination, feeling, and will-impulses are
built by a spiritual. Brain and nervous system are tools of
something essential that one cannot show in the sensory world,
but that one has to investigate with the characterised methods
of spiritual science. Spiritual science has to go back from
that what science, resting on the sense-perceptible phenomena,
knows to say about the brain and nervous system to something
working in the human being mentally-spiritually that can no
longer be investigated with the senses that can be investigated
only on the inner ways of the soul. One can very easily now
disprove what the spiritual research tells about something
supersensible that forms the basis of the human brain.
One
can say, all that you talk is only a product of the brain. If
you do not realise this, consider once how the spiritual
abilities rise in the evolution. With the lower animals, the
spiritual abilities are still imperfect, with the higher
animals and especially with the higher mammals they are quite
significant and more perfect, and with the human being they are
most complete because his brain has attained the biggest
perfection. This shows that the spiritual life grows out of the
brain. If you do not yet believe this, then turn once to
someone who can show you how in certain cases of illness
certain parts of the brain can become ineffective and the human
being can no longer exercise certain abilities, so that, as it
were, certain parts of the brain are demolished and the
spiritual life is disabled. There you see how a
sense-perceptible organ can demolish your spiritual life! Why
do you still speak about the spiritual beings that should stand
behind the sense-perceptible things?
One
can make this objection very easily. The fact that it is done
not from the scientific results, but from the suggestion which
is formed for many people from certain scientific theories,
must seem to us natural in the present. All that is connected
with the fact that our time stands under the suggestive power
of that opinion that one can only gain truth, knowledge if one
directs the senses outwardly and ignites the reason by the
gained observations. Even if — this must be said
concerning spiritual science — these results deliver as
many disproofs as possible, nevertheless, one can say that on
the other side in our present a deep need, a deep longing
exists for hearing something of those lands about which
spiritual science knows to report something. A deep longing for
it has developed at the same time and is alive with a group of
human beings. With a big part of the human beings it slumbers,
so to speak, under the surface of consciousness, however, it
will appear more and more.
The
need for spiritual-scientific results will become bigger and
bigger. This longing, this need for spiritual-scientific
results occurs as an outgrowth beside the admiration, the
devotion of the scientific achievements. Just because the
scientific achievements must necessarily face the human being
outwardly, like a counter-pole the longing for
spiritual-scientific results emerges. Concerning that, we have
reached another viewpoint in the nineteenth and our centuries
than humanity had hundred years ago. If one wants to speak of
the worth of the spiritual-scientific researches of the
present, it is important to realise that a century ago even
greater spirits did not yet feel the need of speaking of
spiritual-scientific results in the way as this should happen
today in the sense of this course of lectures. Because the
great individualities have the greatest say for humanity, in
certain sense they only express what the need of the whole time
is, also of the minor individualities, such a thing can present
itself clearly, if we look at the greater individualities.
There one can say rightly, such a human being like Goethe felt
the need to express himself about spiritual-scientific results
by no means a century ago as this happens today on the ground
of spiritual science. Where the question arose to speak about
something that lies beyond the sense-perceptible, Goethe
referred also like so many human beings often to the fact that
this should be a thing of faith but not of strict science. He
also often said that strictly speaking the communication of
generally valid results on this ground could be hardly very
fertile if one person communicates them to the other.
We
are so advanced in the course of a century concerning the whole
development of humanity not only that Goethe lived in an age
which had no telegraphs, phones, railways and no such prospects
as they come up to the aeronautics; we also face results of the
spiritual development which are different from those at
Goethe's lifetime. You can see this in a concrete case. There
is a nice conversation that Goethe had with a certain Falk
(Johannes Daniel F., 1768-1826, poet) at the occasion of
Wieland's death (Christoph W., 1733-1813, poet and writer).
There he expressed himself about the fields that deal with that
which goes beyond birth and death of the human being that is
not frail with his sensuous cover, which is immortal. The
immediate occasion of the death of Wieland, very respected by
him, urged Goethe to express himself in popular way towards a
person like Falk who met him with understanding. What he said
there is extremely typical if we go into the question of the
significance of the spiritual science for the present.
“You know for a long time that the ideas which are
without a firm foundation in the sensory world do not convince
me in spite of their remaining value because relating to nature
I want to know and not to suppose and believe only. Concerning
the personal continuation of our soul after death, it is like
that: it does not at all contradict the long-term observations,
which I have done of the state of our and all beings in nature;
on the contrary, it arises from it with new strength of
evidence. However, it is another issue how much of this
personality deserves to continue, we must leave that to God.
Provisionally, I want to note this only at first: I assume
different classes and hierarchies of the primeval components of
all beings, as it were, of the starting points of all phenomena
in nature which I would like to call souls, because the
ensoulment of the whole starts from these, or even monads
— let us maintain this Leibniz expression! To express the
simplicity of the simplest being, there would be no better one.
Now some of these monads or starting points are — as
experience shows — so small, so slight that they are
suited at most only for a subordinated service and existence;
others against it are strong and tremendous. Hence, the last
capture everything into their circle that approaches them and
transform it into a body, into a plant, into an animal, or even
into something higher, into a star. They continue doing this,
until the small or the big world whose intention lies
spiritually in them also appears bodily. I would like to call
the last only souls. It follows from this that there are world
monads, world souls, like ant monads, ant souls, and that both
in their origin even if they are not completely one, however,
are related in their primeval being. Every sun, every planet
carries a higher intention, a higher mission in itself, so that
its developments must come about as regularly and according to
the same law as the rosebush develops leaves, stalks and
blossoms. You may call this an idea or a monad as you want, I
also have nothing against it; it is enough that this intention
exists invisibly and earlier than the visible development in
nature...”
In
certain sense, Goethe speaks at that time of that about which
we shall often speak in these talks here: about the
reincarnation of the human soul. He remarks: after all what he
has formed as a view of the human world, animal world et
cetera, and such a view would not contradict what he built up
as science. One can now easily consider what Goethe's quotation
means if one reflects that Goethe had made a discovery in 1784
which would be sufficient to keep his name until the most
distant times, even if he had performed nothing else: the
discovery of the so-called inter-maxillary in the upper jaw of
the human being. There is in the upper jaw of the human being
— as with the animals also — an intermediary bone.
Just at that time, one denied this when Goethe entered the
natural sciences. One looked only for externally discerning
attributes where it concerned the differentiation of human
being and animal, and had the opinion that the animals would
have an intermediary bone in the upper jaw that would not exist
with the human being. This differentiates the animal
organisation from the human one. Goethe did not want to admit
it, he could not believe that in this subordinated state the
difference is to be given between human being and animal, and
attempted with all available means to show that the human
inter-maxillary grows together, indeed, already shortly after
the birth, but exists as rudiment and is not absent with the
human being. He succeeded in proving the fact that there is no
outer difference between the human being and the animal.
From this starting point Goethe looked around in all fields of
the natural sciences and knew the scientific way of thinking of
his time very well. Yes, he was so far ahead of his time that
today Darwinists who want to reinterpret Goethe in the sense of
Darwin can allege: Goethe is a precursor of Darwin. Although
Goethe is rooted in the scientificity of his time this way and
goes beyond it, he can say, nevertheless, what he has formed as
a view of the immortal part of the human being what is
reminiscent of reincarnation and is compatible with his
scientific ideas. What Goethe could say at that time, every
human being could say to himself. Other researchers who tried
to gain knowledge for life scientifically were in the same
position.
It
is typical for it that one refers on Haeckel's ground to a
great action of Kant, to the foundations of the mechanical
worldview by Kant, and to the General Natural History and
Theory of the Sky or Attempt of the Constitution and the
Mechanical Origin of the Whole World Edifice that Kant
wrote in 1775. You need only to take the Reclam booklet
(cheap edition) and to examine the end. Then you ask,
how do those who stand on the ground of mere Haeckelism face
Kant if he speaks of the immortality of the human soul where he
speaks about the great secrets of the human soul, about the
prospect of the habitability of other heavenly bodies and of
the human soul living on on other planets? How do such
followers of Haeckel position themselves to the possibility of
the reincarnation of the human being as it appears in this
writing by Kant? Today one refers to things so that one is
surprised, if those who refer to Kant would have really read
these things!
The
things are quite different in the present from those one or one
and a half centuries ago. At that time, the tendency prevailed
that one spoke about the matters of the spiritual life in a
certain way, which wanted to have nothing to do with science.
Since one felt that one speaks there of something that does not
contradict what science can claim. Everybody who opens himself
to the science of that time feels if he takes up anything
scientific only by the popular portrayals that he can speak
like Goethe: the convictions which I have formed of a spiritual
life may they be like a personal faith, however, they
contradict in no point what is science today. The things have
changed and become very difficult compared with science. One
must consider that after Goethe's death the big discoveries of
the human and animal cells by Schleiden (Matthias Jacob Sch.,
1804-1881, botanist) and Schwann (Robert Sch., 1810-1882,
physiologist) happened, and that an elementary organism
presented itself to the senses first. What does one need to
talk of a “life on other heavenly bodies” et
cetera, if one can see the bodies building themselves up with
an animal or a plant by cooperation of the wholly material,
sense-perceptible cells?
Then there came the other immense achievements. We only need to
consider the impact on the human thinking, when Kirchhoff
(Gustav Robert K., 1827-1884, physicist) and Bunsen (Robert
Wilhelm B., 1811-1899, chemist) brought the spectral analysis
that extended the view of the human being to distant worlds.
From this spectral analysis, one could conclude that the
material existence, which we find on the earth, is the same
also on the most distant heavenly bodies, so that one was
allowed to speak of a unity of the material in the whole
universe. Every day increases what can face us in this field. I
could point to hundreds and hundreds of such things that worked
revolutionary. That is why the conviction originated that one
has to speak of the results of the scientific method in the
following way, wait for what the scientific research has to say
about the reasons of life, about the origin of the intellectual
life from the brain activity, and do not talk of a spiritual
world fantastically that should form the basis of all! -- One
can understand this very easily.
Thus, the sight of the scientific has changed for the human
power of persuasion. Goethe is in this respect really a
predecessor of Darwin. Nevertheless, he rose according to the
spirit of his time from his physical-scientific researches,
from the development of the living beings from the imperfect to
the perfect, to a wholly spiritual worldview that searches the
supersensible, the spiritual behind everything sensuous. The
human beings who go forward in the same way in our time believe
that the scientific results urge to stop at that what these
scientific results should be, and that every spiritual region
originates from the sensuous background. The human being today
cannot say in the same way as a century ago that that does not
contradict the scientific results what he knows by his personal
religious conviction or believes to know or has appropriated of
the supersensible world, but it seems that it contradicts even
very much. It seems not only to this or to that serious
researcher of truth and striving human being in such a way.
If
this is the case, we must say: for our present that persuasive
power, the reasons of conviction which could be still presented
a century ago or still later, without contradicting the
external scientific results, are no longer immediately
authoritative. Today it requires more serious impulses in order
to maintain what is said about the supersensible world compared
with the strict scientific results of science. We must be able
to dress what we are authorised to believe about the spiritual
world in the same way, to gain it in the same objective way, as
the scientific results — only on other ground — can
be attained. Only of a spiritual science which works with the
same logic, with the same healthy sense of truth as the natural
sciences one will feel that it can position itself beside the
immensely advanced natural sciences. If one considers this, one
understands in which sense spiritual science has become a
necessity for our present. One also understands that this
spiritual science can meet solely the longings of which I have
spoken. And these longings exist because unconsciously works
with many human souls what has just been characterised —
just with the best seekers of truth and in a field where one
does not anticipate it at all — if one quotes how the
human thirst for knowledge strives out of that which one always
said in the scientific field once.
Indeed, the mathematical field, the field of geometry seems to
be confirmed concerning its application to the sensuous world.
Who would like to believe, so to speak, light-heartedly that
anybody can allege that the statements of mathematics, of
geometry could be shaken anyhow? Nevertheless, it is typical
that there were spirits in the course of the nineteenth century
who have soared to invent geometries, mathematics purely
mathematically, by strict mathematical investigations that do
not apply to the sensuous world, but to quite different worlds.
That means there were mathematically thinking people who felt
that they could exceed what there has been up to now as
mathematics and geometry and could invent a geometry that
applies to another sensuous world! There are not only one, but
also several such geometries. Mathematically trained people
know something about the names Riemann (Bernhard R.,
1826-1866), Lobatschewski (Nikolaus L., 1793-1856), Bolyai
(Johann B., 1802-1860). We do not want to go into that closer,
because it matters only that such a thing can originate from
the human recognising. — There are, for example,
geometries, which do not acknowledge the sentence: the three
corners of a triangle amount to 180 degrees but for which the
triangles have another quality, so that, for example, the three
corners of a triangle are always less than 180 degrees. Another
case: in our Euclidean geometry, one can draw only one parallel
through a point to a given line. Geometries have been invented
where one can draw endlessly many parallels through a point to
another line. That is, there were spirits who felt urged not
only to be keen on other worlds but also to invent geometries
for them! This is very indicative that even in mathematical
heads a longing prevailed to exceed what is in the immediately
surrounding world.
I
want still to state one thing only that our time needs
something that one can obtain from spiritual science. It will
turn out
-
That, indeed, the real
spiritual-mental nature of the human being repeatedly
appears in renewed lives on our earth,
-
That reincarnation is a similar fact
in the spiritual-mental field as the theory of evolution on
a subordinated stage for the animal realm,
-
That the human soul has developed
through incarnations that it experienced during past lives,
and experiences in future lives.
Indeed, the art of disproving will very vehemently oppose such
things in the present. However, one can already state that the
present has a deep need for such results that are connected
with that by which the human being can orientate himself about
his determination, his position to the outer world.
The
human being has only started for short time to position himself
properly as a historical being in the world evolution. This has
happened by the external educational means. Think of the
limited scope of view of the humanity of the fourteenth,
fifteenth centuries, before the art of printing spread the
educational means. Questions did not yet arise to the human
heart like that: how can our soul face with satisfaction what
we recognise as the historical progress? Here is the origin of
a question that has become a question of the heart for many
human beings today. The historical progress shows that new
achievements, which are also valuable for the inner development
of the soul that new facts enter the stream of the progressive
humanity. There the human being must ask himself, what is the
innermost nature of the human being? Were the human beings of
the past condemned to have experienced their lives in a vague
existence and not to take interest in the products of a later
progress? What is the share of the human being of the
successive developments of the human race?
Against this question, one may object many things. Here should
be talk of the fact only that, indeed, from a deep feeling of
the human soul the question, the riddle originates: is it
possible that today a human soul lives which cannot integrate
achievements which are stamped on the stream of the human
evolution in future because its life is enclosed between birth
and death?
This question gets a basic meaning for the confessors of
Christianity. He, who stands on the ground of a purified
Christianity, differentiates the pre-Christian epoch and the
post-Christian epoch in the evolution of humanity and speaks of
the fact that a stream of new spiritual life flowed from the
Christ event, which was not there earlier for the earthly
humanity. There the question must arise for such a human being:
what about the souls, which have lived before the Christ event,
before the announcement of that which streamed out of the
Christ event?
The
human being can put such a question. Spiritual science answers
to it not only theoretically, but in such a way that it is also
adequate to him. For it shows that the same human beings who
took up achievements of the pre-Christian time, are
reincarnated, after the stream of the Christian development had
begun, so that nobody can lose what enters the culture. Thus,
something grows out of history for spiritual science that is
not only abstract ideas, but spiritual science speaks of
history as of something in which the human being is involved
with his innermost being everywhere. Because the human horizon
has expanded by the modern educational means, now one puts this
question in another sense than a century ago when the scope of
view of the human beings was more limited. A desire for answer
exists which spiritual science can only satisfy.
If
we take into consideration this — and we could continue
speaking for hours that way and could bring in many examples
that are indicative that spiritual science has significance for
the present because the present must ask very much for its
results -, then we get an idea of the significance of spiritual
science for the present. All talks of this winter shall serve
only to collect material from the most different sides to show
the spiritual-scientific results and their significance for the
human life, as for the satisfaction of the highest need of the
human being generally.
I
would only like to say at the end, today one of the most usual
allegations against spiritual science is that one says,
fortunately, the natural sciences have succeeded in getting a
uniform principle to explain the world monistically. Spiritual
science is almost a term that causes antipathies by itself in
many people because it puts up a sort of dualism compared with
this epistemologically beneficial monism!
One
sins a lot with such catchwords. Is the principle explaining
the universe uniformly broken because two currents co-operate
in the universe, an outer one, and an inner one, which meet in
the soul? Is it not allowed to assume that what approaches the
soul from two sides — namely from the sensory experience
on one side and from the spiritual-scientific research on the
other side -, is still based on a uniform existence and appears
only for the human view at first in two streams? Has one to
take monism definitely superficially? If this were the case
that the monistic principle would be thereby broken, then
somebody may also state that the monistic principle is broken
if he concedes that water consists of hydrogen and oxygen.
Hydrogen and oxygen can still have a uniform origin even if
they combine to water. The sensuous and the supersensible
worlds can also have a uniform origin even if one is also
forced by the facts of the natural sciences and spiritual
science to say: in the human soul two streams unite, one of
which from the sensory side, the other from the spiritual side.
Then, indeed, one cannot show the uniform, the monon (the
only), straight away, but it does not contradict the view of a
monistic world. What appears from two sides that way attains
the strength of the full reality only if we recognise it
consisting of two currents. If we look at the outside world, we
get a worldview by our senses and our reason that does not show
its origin: the spirit. If we go the ways of the
spiritual-scientific research and experience the impetus in our
soul, we find the spirit. Matter and spirit meet in the soul.
Joining spirit and matter within our soul delivers the true
spiritual reality only!
Thus, you allow me to summarise the just said in the words,
which give the same possibly in poetic form what all human
beings felt at all times who impartially endeavoured to obtain
a view of spirit and matter. Spiritual science relating to
natural sciences teaches us to recognise that it is true:
The wealth of materials approaches the human sense
Mysteriously from the depths of the universe.
The spirit's word flows clarifying
In the soul's grounds from cosmic heights full of contents.
They meet in the human inside to reality full of wisdom.
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