What
Has Astronomy to Say about the Origin of the World?
Berlin, 16 March 1911
Who
could doubt that one can look at astronomy hopefully if the
talk is of the world origin? For astronomy is rightly a science
for which we not only have high respect because it leads us
with weighty knowledge in the vastnesses of the universe. It is
also something that speaks in spite of any abstractness and
roughness most intensely to our souls and minds. So one can
say: one can understand that the human soul hopes to get
explanation of the deepest secrets of existence looking up at
the starry heaven, which speaks so deeply to our mind if we
open ourselves to it at night.
We
want to ask ourselves from the viewpoint of spiritual science,
what has astronomy to say about the origin of the universe?
Perhaps, that what results from these considerations appears to
somebody in such a way, as if a flower of hope is picked to
pieces in a certain way. Someone who gets this impression,
nevertheless, consoles himself with the fact that astronomy has
just brought such miraculous results to us in the last decades
that we have enough reason to be very glad about these results
as such — also intellectually. However, we are led by
this deeper knowledge of the newer time in this field to the
fact that just this deepening of astronomy makes us less
hopeful if we try to get explanation about the big questions of
origin and development of the universe directly. There we can
point to the fact that just to that what the physical research
experienced as an immense deepening since Copernicus by
observations or by courageous speculations in the course of the
nineteenth century something was added that introduces us in a
before unexpected way in the material character of the
universe. Whereas one had once to confine oneself to state out
of the boldness of the human thinking that if we look at the
stars worlds face us at which we should look similarly as at
our own world, the spectral analysis by Kirchhoff and Bunsen
enabled us to investigate the material nature of the stars
directly by the physical instrument. Hence, one can venture an
assertion reasonably based on immediate observation that we
detect the same materials with the same qualities in the
different suns, in the nebulae and in the other things that
face us in space as we find them on our earth.
That is why one can say that since the middle of the nineteenth
century our science was seized by the knowledge: we rest here
as human beings within a material world with its laws, with its
forces. From the effect which these material laws of the earth
show in the so-called spectroscope, and because the same
effects are sent from the most distant space to the
spectroscope, one can conclude that in the whole space, as far
as the material world is considered, the same materiality and
the same laws of materiality have poured forth. While it was
once in certain respect only a kind of geometrical calculation
to investigate the movements of the stars, the brilliant
connection of spectral analysis with the so-called Doppler
effect enabled us to observe not only those movements which
happen before us in such a way that we recognise them as on a
surface drawn as the movements of the stars. But since that
time we can also include the Doppler effect, a little shift of
the spectral lines, in those movements of the stars because the
stars come closer or go away from us; while it was only
possible once to calculate really what happened in a plane
which stands vertically to our line of sight. Such a principle,
as it is the connection of the Doppler effect with spectral
analysis, is the basis of tremendous achievements of astronomy.
What now the human being could invent as a kind of worldview as
it turns out if we consider the space filled with suns,
planets, minor planets, with nebulae and other things and their
intertwined movements and their lawful affecting each other
— about this worldview we say: we can understand that
such a picture appeared to the human mind that strove for
knowledge as a model of clearness, of inner substantiality, if
one pursues to encompass reality with the thinking.
If
we visualise what it means to calculate a thing that fulfils
the space: the big and the small things move in such a way, the
one has an effect on the other. If we visualise, what it means
to be able to think such a clear thought in the space, we
visualise it comparing it to any other physical effect that we
see in our surroundings, for example, with the turning green of
the trees in the spring or with the blossoming of a plant. Some
people who stand or stood vividly in science know how bitter it
is if they are compelled at first on the ground of completely
outer consideration repeatedly to reach for concepts that can
be thought by no means to an end if it concerns, for example,
imagining a growing, developing plant, apart from more complex
phenomena like animal organisms. Even already in the phenomena
of chemistry and physics of our earth evolution some rest
remains to us in the effects of heat et cetera even if we want
to understand things, which our eyes see, and our ears hear,
with clear concepts. If we look at space and can comprise it in
such a picture that expresses itself in clear changes of
location, in mutual relations of movement, then it is
comprehensible that this has a beatific effect on our inside.
Then we say to ourselves: such explanations that we can give of
the movement of the stars in space and their mutual effect are
very clear in themselves so that we can generally consider them
as an example of explanations. Small wonder, hence, that this
thought of the fascinating clarity of the astronomical
worldview seized numerous human beings. It was very instructive
for someone who pursued the theoretical science of the
nineteenth century that the excellent spirits of the nineteenth
century used approaches that were predetermined by the just
characterised fascinating sensation.
Excellent spirits of the nineteenth century thought possibly in
that way, we see out in space, see the mutual relations and
movements of the stars, if we transform them into thoughts, a
picture of miraculous clearness originates. Now we try to see
into that little world into which, however, only the
speculating thought can see which one built up as hypotheses in
the nineteenth century more and more: the world of atoms and
molecules. One imagined that every material consists of
smallest parts which no eye and no microscope can see which one
has to assume, however, hypothetically. Thus, one assumed that
— as one has many stars in space — here are as it
were smallest stars, the atoms. Then from the mutual
arrangement of the atoms, as they are grouped together, arises
— indeed, only hypothetically — that what can wake
the picture in us in microcosm: here you have a number of
atoms, they relate to each other in a certain respect and move
around each other. If the atoms relate to each other and move,
this means that the material, which composes these atoms, for
example, is hydrogen or oxygen. All materials can be referred
to small atoms of which they consist. These small atoms are
grouped again, and then certain groups form the molecules.
However, if one could look into these atoms and molecules, one
would have in microcosm an effigy of the clearness, which we
have outdoors, where the space is filled with stars. It was
attractive for some thinkers of the nineteenth century if they
could say to themselves, all outer phenomena, light, sound,
elasticity, electricity and so on lead back to such effects
that are caused by the movements and forces of atoms that
happen as the forces and movements on the large scale if we see
out into space. A strange picture originated in some spirits:
if we look into the human brain, it also consists of materials
and forces, which we find in the world outdoors. If one were
able to look into the smallest things of the human brain, in
the circulating blood, one would recognise something like
smallest atomic and molecular worlds that are effigies of the
big universe in microcosm. One believed if one could pursue
mathematically what arises from the atoms and their movements,
then one would be able to recognise that a certain kind of
atomic movements — working on our eye — cause the
impression of light, another kind the impression of warmth.
Briefly, one imagined to be able to reduce all phenomena of
nature to a small, tiny astronomy, to the astronomy of the
atoms and molecules. Almost the word had been stamped which
played a big role in the sensational talks that during the
seventies Emil Du Bois-Reymond (1815-1896, German naturalist)
held about the “limits of the knowledge of nature,”
the word of the “spirit of Laplace.” This had
become a kind of catchword and meant nothing else than that it
would have to be the ideal of a physical explanation to reduce
everything that we see round us to astronomical knowledge of
the movements of atoms and molecules. Laplace was that spirit
who surveyed the celestial mechanics. That spirit who could
bring in this overview of the stars in space in smallest
molecular and atomic things would approach, so to speak, more
and more the ideal to recognise our nature astronomically.
Hence, we can say that there were people who believed: if I
have the impression, I hear a tone, or I see red, a movement
goes forward in truth in my brain. If I could describe these
movements as the astronomers describe the movements of the
stars, then I would understand what it concerned understanding
the natural phenomena and the human organism. Then we would
have the fact in our consciousness: I hear the tone C sharp, I
see red. However, in truth it would be in such a way: if we
perceive red, a little atomic and molecular universe takes
place in us, and if we knew how the movements are, we would
have understood, why we perceive red and not yellow, because
with another movement yellow would happen.
Thus, astronomical knowledge became an ideal in the course of
the nineteenth century, penetrating any physical knowledge with
the same clear concepts, which apply to astronomy. One can say,
it is interesting largely to pursue how under the influence of
such a thought the theoretical natural sciences developed. I
would like to point to something that faced me many years ago.
I knew a headmaster who was an excellent man, also as a
headmaster. However, he occupied himself during his remaining
school activity to invent such a physical system along which
one can also get without the attractive or repulsive forces
valid since Newton's time. Thus,, that headmaster —
Heinrich Schramm — whose works are rather significant,
tried in his book The General Movement of Matter as a Basic
Cause of All Natural Phenomena to get rid of the
gravitational force except that what already the astronomical
knowledge had removed.
It
was very interesting what this man tried in a certain ingenious
way at first. For if we believe that light, sound and heat are
nothing else than movements of the smallest mass particles, if
astronomical knowledge is able to shine everywhere, why should
we still assume those weird, mystic forces reaching from the
sun to the earth through the empty space? Why should one not
also be able to assume instead of this mystic gravitational
attraction in which one had believed up to now such a force
between the atoms and molecules? Why should one not be able to
shake this too? Indeed, this man succeeded — without
considering a special attractive force — in understanding
the attraction of the heavenly bodies and the atoms. He showed:
if two bodies are confronted in space, nevertheless, one does
not need to suppose that they attract each other, because
someone does not assume such an attraction — so Schramm
meant — who does not believe in such a thing like hands
shaking in space. The only thing that one is allowed to assume
is that small moved mass particles which push from all sides
like small balls, so that from all sides small balls push the
two big balls. If one exactly calculates now and does no
mistake, one finds that simply because the hits between both
balls and those that are caused from without result in a
difference. The forces, which one assumed, otherwise, as
attractive forces from without can be substituted by hits from
without, so that one would have to replace the attractive
forces by pushing forces, which attract the matter.
With tremendous astuteness, you find this thought carried out
in the cited writing. I could bring in later writings of the
same character; however, Schramm treated the thing first. Thus,
Schramm could show how completely according to the same law two
molecules exercise attraction just like the biggest heavenly
bodies. Thus, astronomical knowledge became something that
gained ground in the biggest space and worked into the
smallest, assumed particles of matter and ether. This stood as
a great ideal before the thinkers of the nineteenth century.
Who did his studies in this time knows that one applied this
ideal to the most different phenomena that astronomical
knowledge was just a radical ideal. One is allowed to say that
everything was suitable — at first during the seventies
— to promote this ideal, because to that all the results
of the more precise investigation of the conditions of heat
were added. In the sixties, one recognised more and more what
Julius Robert Mayer had shown already during the forties of the
nineteenth century ingeniously: the fact that heat can be
transformed into other natural forces according to particular
numerical ratios. The fact that this is the case, we realise if
we touch a surface with the fingers intensely, for example, the
pressure changes into heat. If we heat a steam engine, the heat
changes into the locomotive forces of the machine. As heat
changes into motion or compressive force into heat, the other
natural forces, electricity et cetera change likewise into
natural forces of which one thought that they are
transformable. If one connected this thought with the laws of
astronomical knowledge, one could say, what faces us there
differs in relation to reality only because a certain form of
movement within the world of the atoms and molecules changes
into another. We have a certain form of movement in the
molecules, a little, complex astronomical system, and the
movements change into other movements, one system into another
system. Heat is transformed into locomotive force et cetra that
way.
One
believed to be able to figure everything out this way. So big
and tremendous was the impression of astronomical knowledge
that it provided such an aim. We have now to say that at first
still a little was gained concerning a theory of world
evolution with all these thoughts. Why? There we have to look
around at the ideas of those people who were in the immediate
cultural life and ideals of their time. For I do not want to
start immediately from that which spiritual science has to say
and what can be easily contested by its opponents. We can
convince ourselves the easiest how these things happened if we
look a little closer at that speech About the Limits of the
Knowledge of Nature that Du Bois-Reymond held on the
Conference of German Naturalists and Physicians in Leipzig on
14 August 1872.
There Du Bois-Reymond spoke highly of this ideal of an
astronomical knowledge and said that true natural sciences
exist only where we can lead back the single natural phenomena
to an astronomy of atoms and molecules, anything else is not
valid as an explanation of nature. Thus, somebody would have
explained the human soul life scientifically if he had
succeeded in showing how after the model of astronomical
movements the atoms and molecules must form a group in the
human being to let appear a human brain. At the same time,
however, Du Bois-Reymond drew attention to the fact that we
have done still nothing for the explanation of the soul and its
facts by such an astronomical explanation. For he said,
assuming that the ideal is fulfilled that we can really say,
the movements of the atoms happen within the brain after the
model of astronomical movements: by the perception of the tone
C sharp this movement complex arises, by the perception of the
colour red another — then we have satisfied our need of
causality scientifically. However, no one, Du Bois-Reymond
emphasised, could realise, why a certain kind of movements just
changes into the experience of our soul: I perceive red, I hear
organ tone, and I smell rose smell or such.
For
Du Bois-Reymond drew attention to something that already
Leibniz had stressed and that nothing can be objected. If we
imagine — if it depends only on movement — a
gigantic human brain, so that we could walk in it like in a
factory where we can observe all movements of the wheels and
belts and could show: there is a certain movement — we
draw it nicely and calculate it as we can calculate the
movements of the planets around the sun. However, nobody would
know if he did not know it from other things that this
movement, which I observe there, corresponds in the soul to the
experience: I see red. He would not be able to figure this out,
but he would be able to find out only laws of movement and can
say to themselves, the movement runs this or that way, this and
that happens in space. However, he would not be able to find
the connection between these movements thought according to the
model of astronomy and the peculiar experience: I see red, I
hear organ tone, and I smell rose smell. If he did not know
from anywhere else where from these experiences are, he would
never be able to conclude them from the movements of the atoms.
Du Bois-Reymond even said rather crassly: “Which
conceivable connection exists between certain movements of
certain atoms in my brain on the one hand, and, on the other
hand, with the original, not further definable, undeniable
facts: I feel pain, I feel desire, I taste sweet, smell rose
smell, hear organ tone, see red, and the immediately flowing
certainty from that: so I am? It is absolutely and forever
incomprehensible that it should not be irrelevant to a number
of carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen etc. atoms in which way
they lie and move in which way they lay and moved in which way
they will lie and move.”
What Du Bois-Reymond said there did not completely comply with
natural logic; for just in this crass expression we can see
that it is not irrelevant to a number of molecules — to
material parts — in which way they lie and move. For you
know that it is not irrelevant to sulfur, saltpetre and coal in
which way they lie side by side. If they lie side by side under
certain conditions, they yield gunpowder. It is also not
irrelevant in which relation one has brought the carbon to the
hydrogen; but it concerns whether the material is led with the
movement to another material with which it is used and can
maybe form an explosive force. This quotation was overshot if
it also had a shade of correctness. However, already Leibniz
had recognised the correct thing: the fact that there no kind
of transition exists between the astronomical movement of the
molecules and atoms and between the qualities of our experience
and our inner soul life. It is not possible to bridge this
abyss with the bare astronomical science as a
“movement.”
We
have to get out this clearly from the various mistakes in the
speech of Du Bois-Reymond. Nevertheless, this is the valuable
of this speech: it was something like a reaction, like a
feeling against the omnipotence and the infinite wisdom of the
astronomical knowledge. If we take into consideration what we
are able to make evident so clearly, we find the possibility to
transfer it to the big astronomical knowledge. If we assume
what is certainly justified that one cannot find the bridge to
the experiences of soul and mind from the astronomical
knowledge of the movement of the smallest mass particles
anyhow, then, however, one cannot bridge from that what the big
astronomy offers to any effects of soul and mind which fill the
space! If it is true and we imagine the human brain so
increased that we could walk in it and look at the movements in
it like at the movements of the heavenly bodies, and if we
could perceive nothing of mental counter-images in these
movements of our brain, we do not need to be surprised if we
stand in such an enlarged brain — namely in the universe
— and cannot find the bridge between the movements of the
stars in space and the possible mental-spiritual activities
which cover the cosmic space. They would also relate to
movements of the stars like our thoughts, sensations and soul
experiences relate to movements of our own cerebral mass. When
Du Bois-Reymond spoke this, everybody who could think could
conclude what was never done up to now: if that is right which
Du Bois-Reymond showed with some certainty, one must also say,
if anything mental or spiritual fills the space, no astronomy,
no astronomical knowledge can say anything against or for that
spiritual or mental filling the space, because one cannot
conclude anything spiritual from movements.
With it, it was necessary to say, the astronomer must restrict
himself at the description of that what goes forward in the
universe. He cannot at all judge about the fact that on a large
scale soul experiences of cosmic kind belong to the movements
of the stars as our soul experiences belong to the movements of
mass particles in the brain. With it, already in the seventies
of the nineteenth century astronomy was limited. However, one
would have had to ask quite different from Du Bois-Reymond
asked, namely, is there any possibility to penetrate in another
way to find the mental and spiritual beings filling the cosmic
space? — Therefore, spiritual science points in contrast
to astronomy to something that we discussed repeatedly in these
talks: the fact that the human being is able to develop his
cognitive forces to higher levels than he has them in the
normal life. If these cognitive forces have been lifted to a
higher level, it is possible to find other things in space and
time than that at what one looked as the ideal fulfilment of
space and time in the nineteenth century: the astronomic
movements of forces and atoms in space.
However, we must not think too poorly about what the external
natural sciences have to say concerning the evolution of the
world. For the scientific facts, which have led, indeed, to a
certain radical ideal of an astronomical molecular and atomic
knowledge, developed something that we have to regard almost as
a model of a scientific, deeply in the secrets of existence
shining fact. Even if it has a limited significance,
nevertheless, it is a fact of very first rank. Today it can be
indicated only because what it concerns is the answer of the
question: “What has astronomy to say about the origin of
the world?”
In order to answer this question, one has to point
to the fact that within the scientific thinking, research and
experimentation it is clearly proved that it is right, indeed,
in general that we can transform natural forces into each other
that we can transform, for example, heat into work or if we
have done any work this into heat. However, that is right with
a quite weighty restriction. While on one side it is valid:
heat can be transformed into mechanical work, into kinetic
energy and kinetic energy again into heat — we must say
on the other side that if one wants to transform heat back into
work, in kinetic energy, this cannot happen unlimitedly. We
realise this the clearest with the steam engine. We produce the
movement by heat, but we cannot at all transform all heat into
kinetic energy. Some heat gets always lost, so that we always
have to calculate with all processes in nature where heat is
transformed into movement with a loss of heat, as it is sure
with a steam engine. For even with the best steam engines we
can only transform about one quarter of the heat into movement,
the other is emitted into the cooler, into the surroundings et
cetera. We are able to do it only in such a way that we must
realise that a part of the heat — as heat — is
emitted in the cosmic space.
The
knowledge that, indeed, kinetic energy can be completely
transformed into heat but heat cannot completely retransformed
into kinetic energy has also become in exterior relation one of
the most fruitful knowledge for the science of the nineteenth
century. Since thermodynamics is based merely on this
knowledge, so that a big part of our present physics is built
on it what has been characterised just here as the knowledge
that heat cannot be retransformed completely into kinetic
energy, but that always a rest of heat remains which is
emitted. This has been shown apodictically by such
investigations as for example those of the famous physicist
Clausius (Rudolf C., 1822-1888, German physicist) who
generalised this sentence that with all processes in the
universe this sentence must be applied. Hence, we deal with all
conversion processes where heat plays a role, with a
transmission of heat in that work which is just considered with
the facts of our nature. However, because always by the
transformation a rest of heat remains, one can easily
understand that the final state of our material development
will be the transformation of all kinetic energy, of all other
work in nature into heat. This is the last that must result:
every physical process must convert itself into heat because
always a rest of heat is left. Thus, all world processes run in
such a way that heat will become bigger and bigger which
results as a rest and at last the result must be that all
movement processes will have been transformed into heat. Then
we would be concerned with a big world chaos that exists only
of heat, which can no longer be retransformed. Every life
process that the sun causes on earth leaves rests of heat; at
last, everything that shines from the sun to us tends to pass
over to a general heat death.
This is the famous “Clausius's heat death” into
which any material development of the universe must discharge.
Here physics delivered a knowledge for that who generally
understands something of knowledge that is quite apodictic
against which one cannot argue. Our material universe heads the
heat death in which all physical processes will once be
buried.
There we have something from physics that we can transfer
immediately on the entire astronomy. If we were only able to
see movement changing into heat, we could say, the universe
could be infinite forwards and backward, does not need to end.
However, physics shows in the second law of the mechanical
theory of heat that the material processes of the universe head
the heat death. One can be convinced: if it were not so
difficult, if one must not have such a lot of mathematical
prior knowledge and go into difficult physical processes, much
more people would know something of Clausius's heat death than
it is really the case.
There we have brought something in our astronomical worldview
that signifies development as it were. Imagine how fatal it
must be for a materialistic knowledge to open itself to this
apodictic result! Someone who only considers the spiritual and
mental as concomitants of the material movements must suppose
immediately that everything mental and spiritual is buried in
the heat chaos, which our material world heads. Thus, all
culture for which the human beings strives, all beauty and
effectiveness of the earth would once meet their death with the
general heat death at the same time. — One can now say
that in particular this general heat death has become somewhat
fatal for the astronomical knowledge. Not all astronomers take
the easy way out like Ernst Haeckel in his Riddle of the
Universe. He means, the second law of the mechanical heat
theory contradicts, actually, the first one that all heat is
convertible. Indeed, one cannot deny — Haeckel also knows
this — that our solar system hastens to such a heat
death, but he consoles himself saying: if the whole solar
system is doomed to die the heat death, it will once collide
with another world system, then heat originates from the
collision again — and then a new world system originates!
— However, he does not consider that a clash of the slags
and rests is already considered in the general heat death, so
that one cannot hope for consolation from that.
There are also serious people who feel urged to get the
possibility from the physical-astronomical knowledge to
understand the world development almost try to come beyond the
general heat death. There the attempt of the Swedish researcher
Arrhenius (Svante A., 1859-1927) may be mentioned who refers in
his book The Becoming of the Worlds (1908) in manifold
way just to such questions from the viewpoint of physical
chemistry, physics, astronomy, and geology. One can say, here
the attempt is already done in somewhat wittier way than
Haeckel did to overcome the theory of the general heat death.
However, if one regards everything that Arrhenius tries to
adduce, one must say, it is persuasive in no way. Only briefly,
I would like to characterise what is taught from this side
about the overcoming of the general heat death. Of course, one
cannot deny that our solar system heads the general heat death.
However, besides it Arrhenius represents another idea that is
based on certain assumptions of Maxwell (James Clerk M.,
1831-1879, Scottish physicist) and his so-called pressure of
radiation. This is something that is opposite to the former
attraction of the world masses that perpetually radiates from
the single heavenly bodies into space to the other heavenly
bodies generating pressure caused by various natural
forces.
This pressure which as it were the heavenly bodies send into
space is able — because it is a force radiating in the
cosmic space — to carry the smallest particles of matter
which are pushed off by a heavenly body. Arrhenius now tries to
show by all kinds of considerations that it is natural that, as
long as special conditions do not take place, these phenomena
caused by the radiation pressure prevent the general heat death
by no means. But Arrhenius believes that such special
conditions are caused by the fact that as it were this cosmic
dust becomes nebulae which are in particular material states
— for example, by the fact that in such nebula any star
drives from anywhere, would have compressed the matter that it
has taken away, and increased the temperature that way. If it
were possible that such a star that meets the matter drives in
such a nebula, attracts the matter and compresses it, increases
the temperature, we would have something that causes an
increase of temperature in the cosmic space again, and we would
have something that could be transformed again into work.
Arrhenius shows wittily that the cosmic dust that approaches to
such a nebula is in another position — as it were, it is
carried away in such a position in which it escapes from the
general trend of the heat death.
I
could indicate only briefly, what is also indicated too briefly
in Arrhenius's writing. However, someone who goes into that
which has led to the assumption of the general heat death
cannot help admitting that the possibility is only virtual,
that in a nebula, even if the temperature rises, the heat death
could be detained. Since, nevertheless, these are only
fallacies, and the law of the general heat death is such a
general one that we must admit if we properly proceed:
according to the physical laws the stars, which collide with a
nebula, have only to bring the rest of their former existence
with them. Thus, these processes, which happen in the nebula,
must also be included in the trend of the universe to the
general heat death.
Now
it is typical that Arrhenius still goes on and includes the
possibility in his idea of the radiation pressure that a
heavenly body could push seeds of living beings to the other by
the radiation pressure. Indeed, one can prove — with a
big appearance of correctness — that the cold through
which certain plant seeds and animal gametes would be carried
would work preserving on them, so that one could suppose by
calculation only that life was carried from one heavenly body
to the other heavenly body by the radiation pressure. One could
work out this, for example, for the distance from the earth to
Mars. Then one spares the earth — instead of saddling the
earth with it — the possibility, as one wants it,
otherwise, in physics, geology et cetera, to have produced life
because then one can say: the earth does not need to have
produced life, because it can have flown to it from other
heavenly bodies. — Besides, it does not issue a lot. For,
will one attain anything special with it that one moves the
question of the origin of life to other heavenly bodies? There
we have the same difficulties, only that on the earth the
conditions hinder us to accept the origin of life on other
heavenly bodies. Generally, these matters can show how
apparently materialistic prejudices influence well-intentioned
enterprises of the present, which start from the eternity of
life. Since the whole line of thought is materialistic, so that
one does not take into account that life could have its origin
here as well as in that what could be thought as radiation from
one heavenly body to the other. This shows that in the present
even well-intentioned thoughts suffer from placing themselves
on the ground of materialism.
Thus, the same faces us everywhere: the study of physical laws,
material laws, material forces is used, so that as it were
everything that physics finds is transferred to the big world
edifice, and one tries to imagine the origin of the universe
with these forces. We have realised that such thoughts exceed
the limits of the astronomical knowledge everywhere. Since the
astronomer cannot at all conclude anything that deals with the
forces, which cause the becoming of the world from that what he
has before himself. We can realise again that our thinking and
feeling are mental processes which cause material processes
quite certainly, for example, in our brain, even in our blood.
Someone who feels sense of shame to whom the blush rises in his
face can convince himself of the fact that mental processes
entail material processes. However, someone who admits that the
mental-spiritual causes material processes in us has to say to
himself, if I stood in the human brain and studied the outside
movements, I would only see movements in the movements; there I
would not at all anticipate that I include the movements that
are caused by the spiritual-mental processes. I ignore the
spiritual-mental causes. — May it not seem comprehensible
that the astronomer studying the heavenly bodies is urged to
develop the causes one or the other way that any star moves one
or the other way? Are we allowed to conclude from the bare
movements or from the dynamic laws: the sun must be positioned
in a certain way to the earth, the moon must be positioned in a
certain way to the earth, must orbit the earth in a certain
way, and thereby these movements can result? Astronomy can
generally decide nothing in what way they are caused in the
mental-spiritual. Therefore, we can come just from the field of
astronomy to the necessity to point by quite different means to
the true causes also of the universe. There I can point —
today just only with a few words — to the connection of
earth, sun and moon.
Their mutual life and their relations of motion have developed,
as these three heavenly bodies relate to each other. If we want
to recognise why the sun, earth and moon relate to each other
just as they relate today, we must not only move up from those
forces on earth which we recognise as the physical-mechanical
to the space, but we must still move up from other processes
which happen on earth. Most certainly we have if we look at the
human being something before us that belongs to the whole earth
and its connection with the sun and moon as the blossoming of
flowers or any other process — or as an electric process
in the air. Certainly, the human being belongs with all that he
is to the earth, and it is an abstraction if one only thinks
the earth as the geologists do, as an only inorganic, inanimate
thing, but one has to include the human beings in the whole
processes of the earth.
At
first, we have the difficulty that we must distinguish two
things if we want to understand the difference between human
being and animal in the right way. With the animal, the type
predominates, so that an individual ego is not effective in its
whole development between birth and death in so determining
way, as this is the case with the human being with his
individual ego, which expresses itself in education and the
cultural life. This distinguishes the human being from the
animal with which the type predominates. Now it is in such a
way that such things go over by transitions into each other.
With the animal, the type predominates, but the type goes into
the human nature.
The
further we to go back in time, the more we find that the human
being is also a generic being, and we see the individual more
and more originating from the type. On the ground of the type,
the individual emerges. We have the ideal of a human future
before ourselves, which says to us, the individual, the
ego-nature of every human being will be victorious over the
type in the course of the earth development. Nevertheless,
going back we just realise the type on the ground of human
development. Going back, we have also approached another
condition of consciousness more and more in which the human
being was connected dream-like, vividly with a spiritual world.
That is why we must regard these two things as related: the
type and the pictorial, dreamlike consciousness of the ancient
times on the one hand and, on the other hand, the development
of the individuality and our individual consciousness by that
what the human being has to obtain in the course of the times.
Such an emergence of the individuality from the type, the
intellectual from the clairvoyant-dreamlike must be searched in
its origins within the whole world development. Since, so to
speak, as the stone which falls to the earth is controlled by
the general world laws, this emergence of the human
individuality and intellectuality from the human type and
clairvoyance is also connected with the big cosmic laws which
work everywhere in space. We have already done a step in this
direction when we characterised the significance of geology for
spiritual science.
We
could show there that we can trace back the earth to a
condition in which such processes are earthly, telluric, which
only happen today if our thoughts and sensations work like
decomposing in our organism, so that we find — if we go
back to the earth origin — such epochs in which the earth
was in a process of decomposition. That knowledge shows —
what is shown more exactly in the Occult Science —
which has been characterised in these talks that as it were the
whole earth has sheltered from too extensive a decomposition
process by the fact that it has separated the moon. The moon
had to be separated from our earth so that that condition could
be overcome which can be described as a decomposition process
within the earth evolution.
We
do not only have a mechanical-physical process, but we have to
regard the extrusion of the moon as such a process that became
necessary because the earth sheltered, while she expelled the
moon, from too extensive a process of decomposition. The earth
could thereby get a new relation to the sun directly. Since
while it had the moon in itself, this decomposition process was
so that the effect of the sun could not penetrate the
terrestrial atmosphere — if we imagine the terrestrial
atmosphere at that time. Therefore, only a new condition had to
be caused, so that earth and sun could catch sight of each
other. With it, with the cleaning of the terrestrial atmosphere
— what became only possible with the extrusion of the
moon — the condition of forces came into being which
gradually transformed the old generic consciousness into the
self-consciousness, into the intellectual consciousness. Thus,
the extrusion of the moon, the cleaning of the terrestrial
atmosphere and the direct relation of earth and sun are
connected with the entire human development. We could now go
back even further and would find such a condition of our earth
development in which the earth was still connected with the
sun.
We
would also find that the separation of sun and earth happened
in order to make the existence of conscious beings generally
possible on earth. Only by the repulsion of the earth from the
sun that force system came about which made it possible that
beings could become conscious. Thus, the ancient clairvoyant
consciousness became possible by the repulsion of the earth
from the sun — and the advance to a higher consciousness,
an intellectual consciousness by the extrusion of the moon from
the earth. If we ascend clairvoyantly to that what external
astronomy cannot give, we have to regard the cosmic forces as
the reasons of the separation of the sun and the remaining
planets from the earth — that is we come to spiritual
causes.
I
could only indicate the principle. Of course, everybody could
ask, did the human being already exist, when earth and sun
separated? Indeed, he existed, only under other conditions. It
is a matter of course that the human being, as he lives under
the current conditions, would not be possible if the sun were
together with the earth. However, this would be no objection.
We receive spiritual causes for the movements of the heavenly
bodies. Now we do no longer stop at that to which astronomy
pointed more than one century ago at the mere utilisation of
physical laws saying: the earth was once connected with the sun
in a big gas ball, that started rotating, and thereby the
planets and also the earth were separated and later also the
moon from the earth. - Now, we do no longer get around to
asserting that such a thing happens only due to
mechanical-physical laws, but inner, spiritual reasons must be
there why the earth separated from the sun.
The
earth was separated from the sun, so that the human being was
raised to the conscious experience, and the moon was separated
from the earth, so that he can advance to his higher
consciousness. Briefly, we start bringing that in the
astronomical worldview what we must bring in — namely
into the astronomical worldview of the small brain that what we
must bring in if we want to go over from the mere movement of
the cerebral atoms to the conclusion: I see red, hear organ
tone, I smell rose smell et cetera. — Thus, we must go
forward if we want to find the transition from that what the
popular astronomy can give us, to that what the causes of the
events are in space. Hence, those who want to stop at the
ground of external physics should confine themselves to
investigate this only what movements or what forces are what is
to be recognised astronomically. They should confess that
another progress of knowledge is necessary if astronomy wants
to come to an explanation of the becoming of the universe,
should confess that they would have to stop as representatives
of a rationalistic and empiric astronomy at the explanation of
the becoming of the universe.
Considering this, it turns out that the great and significant
results of modern astronomy fit in our spiritual-scientific
world edifice quite wonderfully. Take the Occult
Science. There is shown how our earth has gradually
developed, how it goes — just like the single human being
in the successive earth-lives — through developmental
stages how, so to speak, a planet goes through developmental
stages. There our earth is led back to a former planetary
stage, this stage to an earlier one, so far, as one can trace
back it, up to a stage, which is called “Old
Saturn” with which, however, not our today's Saturn is
meant, but a planetary predecessor of our earth.
The
same cognition that is quite independent of any outer physics
and any speculation, shows that a planetary predecessor of our
earth, just this Old Saturn, was mere heat and that spiritual
forces intervened in this condition of heat, so that spiritual
forces took possession of the heat chaos. All development is
thereby caused up to our earth. In addition, spiritual science
shows that really the material under our feet is dying off. In
the talk What Has Geology to Say About the World
Origin?, we have shown that geology has advanced so far to
agree with us that the earth crust is dying off. We understand
everything that we know of the earth crust only well if we
understand it as dying off. However, in this fact is contained
that the spiritual becomes free from the material. If among us
the planetary material dies off, the spirit gets free from
it.
We
have another possibility now! We can point to the nebula
— there we have no speculations after the model of the
physicists, nevertheless, do not stop at the heat death —
and can say, indeed, there we have the things in which all
remaining processes are transformed into heat. However, as with
the beginning of the earth spiritual powers seized the heat
state, spiritual powers lead the nebulae into which by the heat
death the solar systems discharge from the heat death to new
solar systems. There is, actually, nothing more astonishing
than the accordance of one of the most admirable laws of the
nineteenth century in its application to astronomy — like
the application of the second law of the mechanical heat theory
— with the positive, actual results of astronomical
observations.
If
you do not take the speculative inventions of all kinds of
radiation, but if you start from that what one can obtain from
the spectroscope or from the photography of the astronomical
phenomena, you realise that everything complies down to the
last detail with that what one can obtain as evolution of the
worlds from spiritual science. For it shows how that what one
sees as an astronomical spatial picture is the result - the
spiritual result — of spiritual beings. We can say
different from the modern astronomical physicists: the human
being has no reason to fight against the heat death or to be
afraid of it, because he knows that from it new life will
blossom as from the old heat chaos life blossomed which we have
now before ourselves. Because a real repetition and increase of
life is possible this way — not only from that what
Arrhenius assumes that life is winded up like in a clockwork
anew and takes place in the nebula anew, but development is
only possible if a spiritual element works from one heat state
to the other. If our world substance is buried in the grave of
heat, the spirit has advanced a step and conjures up higher
things, higher life from the heat chaos. Hence, the final state
of the earth embodiment — the Vulcan stage — is in
the Occult Science that which points to this what looks
out as a new life from the grave of the heat death. Therefore,
the name “Vulcan” is used. If we challenge
astronomy, we can just realise that the external science
complies deeply with that what spiritual science has to
give.
Indeed, people will say repeatedly, you spiritual scientists
are daydreamers, because the right result of exact science
absolutely contradicts what you believe to get from spiritual
science. — Anybody could then say, you have seriously
spoken even of Moses, but we know that all that is overtaken.
Since the glorious natural sciences have taught us long since,
we are way beyond the world development of Moses —
natural sciences have shown this. — Those speak that way
who only are present from without. However, let us ask the
others who were present not from without, but more from within.
There I know a very significant physicist who has considerable
share of the development of optics, Biot (Jean-Baptiste B.,
1774-1862), who said, either Moses was as deeply experienced in
sciences as our century, or he was inspired.
A
leading physicist of the nineteenth century said this. Now
those who write popular books about worldviews maybe mean,
indeed, a physicist thinks that way who deals only with the
outside of the phenomena. Nevertheless, those who go deeper
into the being of the organic show that one was chased away
from the spirit in the course of the nineteenth century where
one searched the natural causes. -- How did Liebig (Justus von
L., 1803-1873, chemist) think, who deeply penetrated into the
being of the organic, about the relations of the world, to
which he had dedicated his research efforts, to the spiritual
world? He says that these are the opinions of dilettantes who
derive the authorisation of their walks on the border of the
fields of physical research to explain to the unknowing and
gullible audience how world and life originated, actually, and
how far, nevertheless, the human being has come concerning the
investigation of the highest things. — People may say:
have you never heard that Lyell (Charles L., 1797-1875) founded
a geology? Have you never heard about the big progress, which
came with him, that he overcame those worldviews, which still
count on spiritual forces? — I could bring writings by
Lyell forward to you that make deep impression today. However,
just Lyell said once, in which direction we pursue our
investigations, everywhere we discover the clearest proofs of a
creative intelligence, of its providence, power and wisdom.
The
founder of the newer geology says this. Now the people could
come and say, nevertheless, Darwin (Charles D., 1809-1882,
English naturalist) has overcome the influence of any spiritual
forces. Darwin showed how by purely natural processes the
evolution of the organisms happens. — However, Darwin
himself wrote: “I opine that all living beings that ever
have been on earth are descended from a prototype into which
the creator breathed life.” — So people can also
not quote Darwin who says there, we are daydreamers if we speak
of spiritual beings and spiritual forces. Then still people
maybe come and say, do you not know the basic nerve of any
scientific development of the nineteenth century, which has
deeply influenced any development? Do you know nothing about
the basic law of the transformation of the natural forces?
— We have just spoken of it today, have realised that the
transformation of the natural forces does not contradict what
spiritual science has to say.
However, the people could want to refer to Julius Robert Mayer
(1814-1878, German physician and physicist), to the founder of
the law of the mechanical heat equivalent as well as of the
transformation of the natural forces. However, Julius Robert
Mayer did the strange dictum: I exclaim wholeheartedly, a right
philosophy can be nothing else than propaedeutics for the
Christian religion! — The things are different everywhere
if one goes back to the origins and to those who created these
origins who are the great pathfinders on the way of human
knowledge, and not to their followers, nor to those who want to
find lightweight ideas — like the newer astrophysicists
— and want to encompass the whole world with it. If one
goes not to the latter but to the former, one can say,
spiritual science completely agrees with the great
pathfinders.
Hence, spiritual science knows that it can position itself in
the development of the human mind, and that it advances
harmoniously with the development of humanity with everything
that has promoted the human development. If a merely external,
physical astronomy wants to devise the evolution of the
universe, one may remind those who act in such a way of a
general quotation in the Xenien by Goethe and
Schiller:
To infinite heights the firmament extends,
However, the little mind also found the way to them.
We
must shelter from the fact that the little mind finds its way
to the firmament. For we can show that just as little as the
consideration of the brain leads us to a spiritual-mental life,
but that this is separated from the mere movements and this can
go beyond them, just as little the consideration of the
external movements and laws is able to penetrate in the spirit
of the universe. Hence, there it remains true in a certain way
what Schiller means speaking to the astronomers:
Do not chat to me so much about nebulae and suns!
Is nature only great, because she gives you to count them?
Your object is the most elated, admittedly, in space;
But, friends, the elated does not live in space!
Schiller means that. It is right if one regards the movable
appearance in space only. It is not right if one goes into what
— as a spiritual — emits the laws of space. —
Thus, the words remain true: ascending with the mind to the
stars always causes the notion of the spiritual-divine in every
mind. If we want to ascend, however, with our cognition, our
cognition has to go the way: per aspera ad astra —
through severity to the stars, through the thorns to the
roses
However, this is the way of spiritual knowledge. Just the
spiritual-scientific way to the stars shows that it brings
along the human being to say to himself: as my materials and
those which are in my surroundings are spread out in the whole
universe — as the spectroscope shows--, the spiritual
that lives in me is spread out in the whole universe and
belongs to it. My corporeality is born out of the universe
— my soul and mind are born out of the universe. It
remains true what should be characterised here once again with
some words which I already stated on another occasion: it
remains true that the human being can only come to the entire
world consciousness if he gets clear about the question which
astronomy cannot answer: the question of his share of the world
and his destination in the world. It is true that the answer to
this question can give him security of life, optimism, hope of
life if he knows from the spiritual-scientific knowledge what
the words mean:
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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