Darwin and the Supersensible Research
Berlin, 28 March 1912
On 13 October 1882, a dying man went from a
hotel in Turin to the railway station. He still died on the way
to the railway station, lonely, not surrounded by friends who
wanted to meet him as agreed in Pisa again. A strange man whose
death, one would like to say is symbolically typical for the
way, in which he lived. Lonely he died in Turin on the way from
the hotel to the railway station, at that time, actually, only
nursed by the hotel director who had foreseen his bad bodily
condition. Lonely the man died, as he had lived lonely long
with the best that he had owned, lonely in his soul in a varied
life. A strange man. He inquired his pedigree. Now we may
acknowledge his inquiries more or less as historical truth,
their result became effective in his consciousness as we shall
recognise at once, and we can recognise his work as
intermingled with the impulses which he got from these
inquiries of his pedigree. He led his pedigree back to the
ninth century, to a Viking, Ottar Jarl, and led his pedigree
further back to Odin himself. One would like to say, a proud
consciousness might have arisen from the result of such
inquiries. With the personality that I mean here, with Arthur
de Gobineau (1816–1882), this consciousness changed into
far-reaching, significant ideas that have become principal and
indicatory for the complete intellectual development of the
nineteenth century.
When in 1853 Gobineau's most important work appeared
(Essai sur l'inégalité des races humaines,
English:
An Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races)
which contained the
results of his study of ideas, the few people who understood
something of its contents could gain the knowledge that in this
man not a single one but the consciousness of Western humanity
had spoken in a particular time of its development. Ideas were
contained in it that were odd to many people. But for those who
try to consider it spiritual-scientifically the work is
fulfilled with ideas that point more than something else does
to the way in which an excellent man had to think at the middle
of the nineteenth century.
This work was inspirited by the views that
Gobineau received with his many posts as diplomat, above all in
the East. The idea had arisen to him from an exceptional wealth
of observations that were done with the keenest urgency that
humanity took its origin from some original human types, which he saw at the starting
point of human evolution, at different places of the earth,
human types of different figure and different value. To each of
these human types he ascribed as it were a certain inner wealth
of developmental contents which it has or had to develop with
the further evolution from its inside, and to bring to the
enclosing life on earth. Gobineau saw the ascending development
in the fact, that these original human types, as long as they
remained unmixed, got their original predispositions and
unfolded them more and more about the earth, so that the
results of this development appeared as world history. But to
such an extent, Gobineau said to himself, as the members of
these original human types intermingled a certain equality of
the singles begins spreading out about the earth; but he saw
everything great, immense, elementary and continuing to have an
effect in the human culture in that which arises from the
different, unequal human types or races. After his view the
idea of equality flooded humanity in the course of time, the
inequality of the races was overcome. But at the same time
Gobineau regarded that as the impulses for the decadent
cultures.
Hence, he imagined the human progress in
such a way that that what should happen will happen most
certainly that the human beings will more and more intermingle
that with this mixture the human beings become equal, indeed,
but also worthless as Gobineau means.
In particular, Gobineau believes to realise
that the Christian culture with its ideas of equality and
general humaneness has, indeed, infinite value for the further
development of humanity, but it adapts the human beings
gradually to each other. That is why, he characterises
Christianity as the religion that can never change into a
Christian civilisation. Sharply he expresses from that
viewpoint that Christianity leaves the outer garb to the
Chinese or to the Eskimo that it leaves the basic structure of
his religious being to the Eskimo and to the Chinese even if he
accepts Christianity. Since Gobineau regards Christianity as a
religion which is not “from this world,” that means
it gives the human being something that can be effective inside
his soul but that it cannot change in such a way that it steps
outwards, that it becomes impulses which change the outer
civilisation and outer civilised behaviour. He thinks that
everything that appears in the outer civilisation and civilised
behaviour were original tendencies of the races that were
unequal at the starting point of human evolution on
earth.
From this view, Gobineau got his strange
pessimism. While he realises that the contrasts of the original
human types can be equalised as humanity takes up Christianity
more and more, that something just develops in humanity in the
future gradually that what is the
holiest, the most important Christian view which can become no
impulse for the outer civilisation. However, for it the
Christian view will lead, while it equalises the human beings,
to degeneration at the same time, so that less and less strong
impulses will be there for the progress of humanity, and
civilisation will become more and more decadent. Once the earth
will outlive the human race that will become extinct on it,
because it has set out everything that it contained
embryonically in itself and has no other life impulses in the
future. That is why Gobineau believes that once the earth stays
behind as a living planet. Humanity becomes extinct, and the
portents of this extinction are all those impulses that balance
out the differences between the human beings.
Surveying this line of thought, we have to
admit that it corresponds to all requirements of the
intellectual life of the nineteenth century which is given only
in such a way as these requirements of the intellectual life
were reflected in a great, ingenious man who felt the urge to
think the ideas of his time not only to a quarter or half, but
to pursue them in their ultimate consequences really. But as
significant his ideas are in the just characterised sense, they
could settle only a little in the consciousness of his time.
One may say that, the name Gobineau was known to few people
only, also after the huge work
On the Inequality of the Human Races
had appeared.
Few years ago, the consciousness of time
appeared quite different, again with a person in whom not only
the individuality, but also the whole time expressed itself. In
1853, the two first volumes of the just mentioned work by
Gobineau appeared, in 1855 the two last. In 1859, the work of
Charles Darwin (1809–1882) appeared
On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or
The Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life.
At first, we can see in the effect, which
the work had, that in this work of Darwin something significant
was thrown into the mental development of humanity. How did it
work, for example, in Germany? As something significant it has
worked at first, it also worked, while the leading scholars who
believed to enclose the whole science with their logic related
to Darwin's work at first in such a way that they laughed at
him, because he believed to be able to speak of the
transformation of animal forms on account of observations of
the phenomena of the animal realm. One was used up to then to
put them side by side without remembering how they relate to
each other, and without remembering to bring the idea of
becoming into the idea of the continual being. But it took few
years only, and the work of Darwin showed its effect, in
particular within the German research. There the courageous
Ernst Haeckel (1834–1919) took the ultimate consequence from
the Darwinian requirements on the naturalists' meeting in
Stettin (now Szczecin) in 1863 that also the
evolution of the human being is to be brought together with the
evolution of the animal forms. Those do not stand only in the
world side by side, but have developed from imperfect to more
and more perfect ones.
Not only had this taken place but something
quite different had happened. The leading ideas of the
Darwinian view penetrated into the entire scientific research,
settled down in such a way that within a few decades the
complete scientific literature was interspersed with that which
Darwin alleged as an idea. Today we realise that those who have
not yet understood that Darwinism just leads beyond itself in
the serious research, even found an entire worldview, one may
say found a “religion,” on the Darwinian idea.
Strange difference of the destinies of these two persons: the
little known Count Gobineau, and the famous name of Darwin
whose ideas settled down in the minds. So that one can say,
Darwin transformed the thinking of many people within few
decades.
Someone can doubt the last sentence only
who did not familiarise himself with the current ideas, which
penetrate the public thinking, and at the same time with ideas,
which controlled the public thinking before Darwin. In the
answer to the question, why the destinies of both persons are
so much different, something is contained of that which makes
us aware of the task and the significance of spiritual science
in the present.
If we look at that which was brought in a
part of the human consciousness with Darwinism, we have to say,
Darwinism is completely based on the thought that scientific
consideration of the becoming can originate only from outer
sensory facts and the treatment of these outer sensory facts by
the thinking that is bound to the brain. Everything that would
exceed such a scientific direction would be unscientific or
would belong to mere belief in the sense of the Darwinian way
of thinking that should have no impact on science. Those who
look at the course of the events will say lightly, well, what
in former times people have thought about the becoming of the
human being corresponds just to imperfect human research;
science was able to construct a worldview strictly by real,
knowledgeable investigations only in the nineteenth century
.
Hence, these thinkers say, science itself
makes the human being refrain from all supersensible and
confine himself to the course of events that arises if one
limits science only to the sensory facts and to that which the
intellect can make of them. — That is why some people probably
believe that science and its thinking make reject simply any
supersensible research. Is it this way? Today a lot depends on
the answer to this question! If it were really in such a way
that science forces us to omit anything supersensible from the
observations, then someone who takes science seriously would
have to take this consequence without fail. But we ask, what is
this scientific necessity based upon which has arisen to the
matured humanity only in the nineteenth century?
For Darwin and the next Darwinians was the
reason, why they attached the human being not only as a
perfected bodily but also as a spiritual-mental being directly
to the animal realm, that a striking resemblance appears
everywhere, for example, of the skeleton, but also of the other
organ forms and of the activities of the single beings, if one
looks at the human being and also at the animal realm.
— In
particular, Darwinians like Huxley (Thomas H., 1825–1895)
stressed that the human skeleton is like that of the higher
animals. This leads, one said, to the assumption that really
that which the human being carries in himself has, all in all,
the same origin as the animal realm, yes, has developed
gradually from the animal realm by mere perfection of animal
qualities and organs. We ask ourselves, is the human reason
forced to take the just characterised consequence from these
events?
Nothing is more instructive to the answer
of this question than the fact that before Darwin Goethe in a
peculiar way became a precursor of Darwin. You find the whole
Goethean worldview not only in my book, directly
entitled
Goethe's World View,
but also in the preface which I wrote in the eighties of the last
century for the Goethe edition of the
German National Literature.
If we see how Goethe occupied himself urgently with the animal and
human forms to get to a particular result, and if we consider the
significant fact that he was stimulated to the basic ideas by
Herder (Johann Gottfried H., 1744–1803), then we must say, a
person with another way of thinking, with a quite different
scientific disposition and spiritual condition than Darwin
could also get to the same results, nay, could also feel the
necessity of these results.
In relatively young years, Goethe
endeavoured against the dictum of all leading naturalists of
his time to show that an outer difference does not exist
between the bodily frames of the human being and of the higher
animals. Strangely to say, one had assumed such a
difference details. One had stated,
for example, that the higher animals differ from the human
being because they have the so-called intermaxillary in the
upper jaw in which the upper incisors are, but the human being
would not have this bone, that his upper jaw would consist of
one piece. This was the opinion of the most significant
naturalists at Goethe's youth that between the higher animals
and the thinking human being must be a difference that appears
also in the outer frame.
Goethe went about his work really with
scientific conscientiousness when he proved that the human
being as embryo, before birth, has the intermaxillary just as
the animals have, save that this bone grows together with the
human being, so that it does no longer appear in the full-grown
state. This discovery seemed to be significant to Goethe. We
see in particular in the way in which he wrote to Herder at
that time that he also regards the importance of this
discovery, because he writes on 27 March 1784: “You
should be also glad, because it is like the keystone of the
human being, it is not absent, and it also exists! And how! I
have thought it also in the context with your whole how nice it
becomes there.” The fact that one has really to ascribe
this to no materialistic attitude, but to the opposite one
proves that Goethe just regarded his discovery, in full
harmony with Herder, as confirmation and consequence of a
worldview based on spiritual facts that the spirit prevails
everywhere from the lowest creatures to the highest ones and
pursues the same basic plan everywhere.
It was Goethe's intention to prove this,
and the result just was evidence of the effectiveness of the
spirit. Hence, it was to him also evidence of the effectiveness
of the spirit when he discovered something that, actually,
natural science found again in the second half of the
nineteenth century that one has to consider the cranial bones
as transformed vertebrae. Goethe meant that this spiritual has
a basic form in the dorsal vertebra that transforms it in such
a way, that this form encloses the organ of the brain. It was a
quite miraculous fact to me in certain respect when I found a
notebook of Goethe during my several years' studies in the
Weimar Goethe and Schiller Archive one day. There Goethe had
put down with a pencil that the whole human brain is, actually,
only a transformed ganglion, in any ganglion that is already
included as it were embryonically which the spirit transforms,
so that it becomes the complex organ of the brain.
There we realise that that which the
Darwinians later regarded as evidence of the fact that one has
to look only at the sensory facts if one wants to explain the
becoming of the human being became evidence of the universally
working spirit as to Goethe which conjures up, so to speak, the
most complex forms from the simplest ones and develops the work
of nature gradually this way. Are we allowed to assert compared
with such a fact that scientific observations would have forced
the human being to found a kind of materialist-monistic
worldview on Darwinism? We are on no account allowed to do it,
because we realise that with Goethe the same course of research
leads to an idealistic spiritual result. What may it depend on
that in the second half of the nineteenth century on basis of
Darwinism that we can downright call a kind of Goetheanism in
relation to the sensory facts, a Darwinian-materialist
worldview or even religion develops? That does not result from
the facts which urge the researchers, but only from the
habitual ways of thinking, because to a man who is spiritually
different from those who develop a Darwinian-materialist
worldview from the results of Darwinism, just the same
scientific way of thinking serves as basis of a quite different
worldview. This is the important fact that we have to consider.
Then we also understand that the materialist-monistic way of
thinking is something that captivates the human beings in the
second half of the nineteenth century that intervenes deeply in
the thinking of the human beings regarding themselves as
advanced, and we understand that this way of thinking also
intervenes where one does not want to be Darwinian.
A researcher offers a significant example
who is certainly not enough appreciated today who has, indeed,
something unpleasant in his behaviour who is still,
significant his
scientific results for the present. I mean Moriz Benedikt
(1835–1920, Austrian neurologist) whom I have also called here
in the course of the years. Moriz Benedikt is no Darwinian, but
a development theorist. He admits a development, even if not in
the sense of the Darwinians. One single result from the wealth
of Benedikt's results should be stressed here. Benedikt
intended to examine morally defective persons, criminals.
Before in a more popular way Lombroso (Cesare L., 1836–1909,
Italian criminologist) pointed to such facts in a dilettantish
way, Benedikt had done such investigations already some years
before. He examined brains of criminals, of murderers. He
discovered that all the brains had something characteristic. A
quite strange fact appeared to him that certain furrows, which
are, otherwise, at the surface of the brain, run more inside
with the criminal's brain, were covered by the cerebral mass
and did not run outwardly. But he also examined brains of
murderers who made, otherwise, the impression of good-natured
persons. There appeared everywhere that in the back of the head
certain irregularities were that the lobes did not completely
cover the hindbrain, and that with such persons the form of the
brain was like the brains of apes in a way. Hence, Benedikt got
to the result that strictly speaking in this physical
organisation of the human being, in the fact that it was not
completely developed the reason would be of his unusual
actions, so that as it were the lower animal from which the
human being originated is expressed in the inner forms of the
brain. Because the human being bears that in himself, which he
should exceed, he becomes a criminal. Thus Moriz Benedikt
founds his whole view of law, of morality and punishment upon
the fact that, actually, with the criminal something is to be
found as heirloom of those times, when the human being was
still below with his original being among the higher
animals.
As I have said, Moriz Benedikt is no
Darwinist, but he also does not get further with his thinking
than believing that one has to stick to ascribing such an
organisation to the criminal that forces him to his actions
from the physical. In anthropology, this researcher of the
nineteenth century searches that what he believes to need for
the understanding of criminal actions. Thus, we see that
everywhere the mere belief comes along in the decisive of the
outer sensory facts and of that science which founds itself on
these outer sensory facts. We also are not surprised that
Darwin's results were interpreted in a materialist-monistic
way. Not Darwin's results demand this interpretation, but the
habitual ways of thinking in the second half of the nineteenth
century. One may say, if it had been possible that Darwin would
have done research in another age, it would be also conceivable
that his results would have been interpreted in an ideal
spiritual sense as Goethe did it, that the creative, prevailing
spirit uses the transformation of the forms to let the manifold
phenomena arise from few basic forms.
This is the peculiar fact that the age,
which is just over, had to bring the deepening in the outer
sensory facts that for a while humanity had to divert its
attention from everything that turns the view to the
supersensible worlds, so that the whole web of the sensory
facts can once work on the human soul. Thus, we recognise the
necessity of the materialist-monistic way of thinking in the
whole human evolution as it were, we realise that the
nineteenth century was destined to divert the attention for a
while from the supersensible and to look only at the sensory.
If we consider the deeper sense of this fact, we have to ask
ourselves whether humanity has gained something significant for
its spiritual life by deepening in the sensory
world.
Answering this question, we have to
consider something that I have already mentioned in these talks
that an enormous amount of important facts could be really
investigated only, while one looked impartially at this world
of facts. One did not let the view be clouded by any kind of
assumptions of the supersensible world, but turned it only to
the outer world. That is much more important and essential
compared with the prime concern of Darwinism that significant,
great connections were explaind between the organs of the
single animal forms and plant forms. We have seen in these
talks that Darwinism has overcome itself that, actually, the
facts demand to speak no longer as simply as Ernst Haeckel once
spoke of a connection of the animal realm with the human being.
However, in spite of all that if one surveys the immense amount
of research results which have come about just under the
influence of Darwinism, one finds enlightenment of a big,
immense basic plan of the animal and plant realms.
Thanks to this research, we see into
connections today, which would not have arisen in such a way if
one had approached them with preconceived ideas of an old
supersensible research. Thanks to the materialistic
one-sidedness, we have results, which one once will interpret
in the right way, but which could be found only with
one-sidedness. Thus, we must not misjudge the big merit of
Darwinism and not neglect the fact that it is significant if
Haeckel, starting from his
General Morphology of the Organisms
(1866) to his extensive
Systematic Phylogeny
(1896), puts together the resemblance of the animal
forms and plant forms to construct, so to speak, a pedigree of
life from it. It may be that his pedigrees are wrong — they are
not —, one may abandon them, the idea of descent may be quite
wrong with Haeckel, we can
disregard what arises as theories with him, and look at that
what shows resemblances and connections between the forms in a
way unexpected in former times. This is the significant.
How does the supersensible research place
itself besides it? In such a way that it shows how the human
being can experience, indeed, a certain development in his
inside, can turn the sight into supersensible worlds, can find
a supersensible world of facts, and that in this the true
causes are to be found of the sensory facts. We have realised
how the human being finds somethimg enclosing mental-spiritual
with supersensible self-knowledge already in himself which
lives not only in such a way in him as he grasps it with his
normal consciousness, but exists as something real behind the
normal consciousness that we have to search in a spiritual
form, long before the human being enters the earthly
existence.
We have to search it this way that that
what comes from father and mother connects itself with that
which comes from a spiritual world while it experiences the
events in the time between birth and death. Entering the
spiritual world by his Imaginative, Inspirative and Intuitive
self-knowledge, the human being gets to know the creative being
that still works on us before the consciousness appears which
constructs the human body where the human being could not yet
work with his consciousness on himself because this work goes
into the finer organisation and configuration of the body. The
ego just works there, which comes from the spiritual world, on
the finer development not only of the brain, but also of the
whole body.
Thus, the human being is able to recognise
without going through the gate of death that a spiritual world
shines through the sensory world, which is as real for
supersensible knowledge as the sensory world is for the sensory
knowledge. If he knows his spiritual-mental essence working,
and if he knows that this gets the forces and impulses from the
spiritual world to create a new life and a new earthly
embodiment, then he can also easily get that knowledge which
connects the views about the human nature with moral ideas
which brings together the views of the spiritual-mental being
with that which the human being needs as a force for life, as
consolation and security in life and so on.
All questions whether the human being sees
his relatives and friends again can be affirmed in a quite
appropriate way that the human being lives with his true being
not only in the physical body, recognising and acting, but can
also live disembodied where then everything that he founded in
the physical life lives on in the spiritual world and forms the
bases of a new incarnation. Those relations from human being to
human being remain important in the spiritual world and almost
form the starting point of our next incarnation, so that we
meet the same human beings whose connection arises if we are
disembodied, while we feel attracted to them, and get the
forces to be able to meet them in a new incarnation
again.
The human being is led by spiritual
research into the sphere of a spiritual world, so that he does
no longer find his origin in an animal form of the past world,
but he finds his origin and that of the animals in the
spiritual world. Spiritual science will show this more and
more. With it, it positions itself beside what the
materialist-monistic culture has done in the course of the
nineteenth century. If we realise that a common plan of the
evolution of living beings forms the basis that we can really
see basic ideas and basic forces that develop from imperfect to
perfect stages of life, then such a result gets its real
significance just in the light of spiritual science. Today we
can draw attention in this comprising talk only by a simile how
the indicated gets significance.
If we see the human being in a later age
and compare him with that who he was, for example, as child,
then we say to ourselves, our spiritual-mental essence has
worked on our outer organisation. The same that I realise if I
become aware of that which produces thoughts, feelings and will
impulses from dark soul depths has worked on my body when it
could not yet produce this, when I was dreaming into my life.
This body was still an imperfect tool for the mind and became a
more perfect one only later. That which is purely supersensible
what lives only in my thoughts, feelings, and mental pictures
has worked as a real being first on my physical body, but I
could become aware of it only later.
If one understands that in its basic
meaning, one has also understood how the spirit has worked for
millions of years only to produce the whole range of living
beings in their ascending forms to produce the human being of
the present in the end. As that which we are as a 30-year-old
human being must arise in its internal spirituality by the fact
that we work first on our imperfect organism of our childhood,
the human cultural life could arise only because this
spiritual-mental essence which is yet the starting point of any
spiritual becoming prepared the human organism only slowly and
gradually in the whole range of organisms as well as the single
human being prepares his organism in the childhood which should
be later the tool of the developed mind. As it is the same ego
which thinks, feels and wants at the age of thirty years and
which works on the outer body in the first years, overcomes it
and transforms it into the tool of the mind, one can also
imagine that the human being had to overcome with his mental
life which faces us developed in the animal realm. The actions
of the human mind which prepares itself only to that which it
should become in the outer animal or generally organic figure,
face us while we survey the connection of the outer
creations.
What has the Darwinian attitude of the
nineteenth century done without knowing it? While it has
developed the outer forms so admirably, it has shown the
actions of the human spirit when it worked on the outside
world, before it could penetrate to its inside and unfold its
own being and becoming. This will be the progress in the human
development the intellectual culture
that one will recognise that in that what the Darwinian
attitude has given the whole action of the human spirit is
contained. It has prevailed in it as our ego prevails in the
childish organism. Darwinism has studied the divine actions of
the human spirit up to now, without knowing it. One appreciates
correctly what was created on basis of Darwinism if one beholds
the creative human spirit in all details which are brought to
light if one admires what the human spirit had intended, before
it has got its conscious, historical creating. Thus, something
great has been prepared that one only misunderstands, as if it
is effective from itself, while it is the plan that the
creative divine spirit pursued on its way to humanity. With it,
the human being can progress a certain step and can only
recognise really, what was done, actually, in the second half
of the nineteenth century.
Now we turn our glance once again back to
the Count Gobineau. There we find how the ingenious mind of
this man realises that what presents itself in the outer world,
but he sees it with the proud consciousness of a person who
knows something about the fact that the human being is
descended from the spiritual. As fantastic this may appear
today, one has to appreciate in this context that there was
such a person in the nineteenth century to whom that was a
personal fact what is only a theory, maybe religious conviction
for other people that we come to something spiritual if we go
back to our origin. One only appreciates the unique personality
of Count Gobineau if one can put his consciousness in the right
light which says to itself, if I trace back what I am what
lives in my abilities and qualities as they are handed down to
me by my ancestors, there I find that the line of heredity goes
back to the Viking Ottar Jarl, to the descendants of the God
Odin, and that it does not end with a physical, but with a
supra-physical being like Odin himself.
However, in this line of thought no hint to
that spiritual-mental essence was included which works in the
human being, not within the line of heredity or race only, but
works in the human being from incarnation to incarnation which
is independent of the outer physical form and configuration.
Thus, Gobineau looks only at the appearance, which does not
enclose the spiritual-mental essence of the human being. That
is why he stands there as just a courageous man who does not
stop at a half measure, but takes the ultimate consequences of
his requirements, saying to himself: surveying the world, I
recognise a decline of the appearance; humanity on earth
becomes extinct, and the earth will outlive
humanity.
This idea is there, as if a plant would
express it, a plant that has developed blossoms and cannot
realise that it can take up something from without that flies
to it, that it can take up the pollen from another plant for a
new figure. Gobineau cannot imagine that in the human being in
his race existence a spiritual core lives which can take up a
new spiritual element at a suitable time which is not in the
original races and the intermingling ones, but in the
spiritual-mental essence which the individualities take up and
which fertilises the spiritual-mental essence of the human
being from the spiritual world and continues the human being if
his appearance drops.
So Gobineau could properly imagine the
outer appearance in such a way that it is on the way of
decline. However, he still lacked the view at that
spiritual-mental essence of the human being who arises to the
supersensible research. He could still substitute it by his
consciousness of his personal connection with the divine world.
But he remained lonesome with it. However, humanity had
arrived at that stage where it found looking back the sensory
facts only as starting point of its origin; it found its
ancestors in the animal realm, while, indeed, the animal realm
is to be imagined as I have just characterised it.
But if the human being can understand what
works there in him, regardless of all outer forms which the
natural sciences of the nineteenth century explained so
magnificently if he looks at the spiritual world and notices
the resemblance of his spiritual-mental essence, then he also
admits that the spiritual-mental essence is fertilised
repeatedly, so that the pessimistic idea changes into the
wonderful idea of a human development in the future. If we look
with Gobineau at that which was given to the races originally,
that dies, indeed, which one can see externally, but inside
that lives which can take up new impulses which becomes more
and more full of contents, and walks from the earth which it
leaves as the spirit leaves the
corpse at death —
to new creations, to create a new existence
from the spirit. We realise that, so to speak, in Gobineau a
courageous, energetic, and ingenious thinker projects from a
past time who thinks the idea through to the end what has to
originate from humanity if we turn our glance to the appearance
only. Thus we recognise that humanity, after it has come to
these consequences, needs something in another idea that
invigorates the becoming in such a way that the everlasting is
recognised in it which carries the essentials over to other
ways of life, even if the outer cover drops from the essentials
and really takes the way which Gobineau
predetermined.
Any force develops by overcoming the
opposing force. Gobineau had still received the fulfilment of
his thinking with a divine-spiritual from his personal faith in
his origin. Finally, Darwinism expelled everything that
was no sensory fact from the views about the human origin and
about the spiritual origin of the organisms. From the counter
force which the popular Darwinism develops from the mere
looking at the only outer world of facts the longing for the
supersensible world will arise which already approaches and
works in the human minds. The number of the human beings will
become bigger and bigger who feel this longing who feel that
the old thinking leads even in the most ingenious thinkers to
such consequences as Gobineau or the popular Darwinism have
taken them. But if the human beings realise that they can stop
impossibly at that which is so seemingly firmly founded in the
outer science, then they will ask for supersensible research,
and then one will realise more and more that the supersensible
research can proceed as logically and conscientiously as the
outer science proceeds.
If we survey the connections that way, we
recognise the necessity of supersensible research in our time,
and then we easily recognise what this supersensible research,
actually, intends. An idea of that which it intends I wanted to
awake in these winter talks too. The whole cycle of talks was a
hint to that which I have summarised today, and I just wanted
to show with it in detail how spiritual science positions
itself quite consciously in the present cultural life to serve
it appropriately. Hence, one has not to be surprised that this
spiritual science is so often misunderstood today. One has
repeatedly to experience that this or that objection which I do
here are later are put forward as their own objections by those
who have listened here, so that one does not regard that that
which may be argued, spiritual science has already removed. But
someone who understands the course of the human culture, will
not become chicken-hearted about the judgements which spiritual
science experiences today in the outer world, but he will be
able to point to the many examples that that which was regarded
as a matter of course, for example, Darwinism itself, caused
the strongest opposition at first. Examples of this kind are
many.
The true spiritual scientist will always
concede: even if some things will not last, it is not different
from any other science, but the basic truths remain and settle
down, because every true sight to our life shows the necessity
of spiritual science.
Just if we look at the greatest men like
Count Gobineau and the confessors of Darwinism, we notice that
it is necessary to insert the
supersensible research to the cultural life of our time, and
that supersensible research almost corresponds to the longing
of those people who want the true progress of the cultural life
in our time.
Indeed, in the next time one will more appreciate various
sensational things which happened here and there or even happen
— if at all one cares about spiritual science or anthroposophy
— as outgrowths of spiritual science. You can
easily regard spiritual science as something fantastic, absurd,
maybe also as folly if you limit yourself to its outgrowths,
but it will be just more comfortable for a certain public to
mock at the outgrowths than to deal seriously with the
scientific research within spiritual science. You must concede
at least that I have tried in these talks to apply the same
logic, the same scientific thinking to this spiritual science
as they rule in the outer science. The German biographer of
Count Gobineau also said that against the ideas of Count
Gobineau some people had something to argue; what Gobineau
meant could be easily disproved, because any pupil of a high
school could know this and could understand his ideas. But you
have to require that thoughts of a pupil are not sufficient to
understand Count Gobineau, and that you have to exceed what you
believe to own as firm logic and must not stop at the logic of
a pupil if you want to touch the nerve of spiritual
science.
Even if the evaluation of spiritual science
and its results will take place long in the way I have just
indicated, there will be always single human beings who will
yet realise that at least one tries to go forward in spiritual
research with the same conscientiousness and with the same
strict logic as they are usual with the education of thinking
during the last centuries. Spiritual science should be
recognised by this intention, not by some mistakes and
outgrowths that maybe appear within it. The few human beings
who will realise this will form the core of that thinking and
willing whose necessity one recognises just if one goes back to
the most logical thinkers of our time. That is why I have gone
back today not only to Darwin, but also to Count
Gobineau.
Those who form the core of such a human
thinking and willing may still be alone today. Lonesome were
all those who became bearers of such ideas which were matters
of course in a later time. In the time in which science bore a
materialist-monistic religion from its bases, you must not be
surprised if spiritual science also makes the human being
lonesome in a way.
For many people regard the real object of
spiritual science as a non-existent object or deny the
possibility of a knowledge of this object at least. But the
human being cannot stay without knowledge of the spiritual.
With it, spiritual science appears on the scene so that he does
not remain without this knowledge of the spirit. We have to
consider the outer sensory world like a shell of a crustacean.
The spiritual appears as that which has overcome the shell,
which creates itself by itself, by spiritual science. The outer
science teaches what had to be overcome, and what still serves
as tool that we have to use. But spiritual science will
urgently teach that the knowledge of the outer shell of the
being must not remain limited. It will show that we have to see
the actions of the spirit in the outer figure that it lives in
its results, and that it is the same if it withdraws into its
place of origin, in its inside but that it has something in
this place of origin that gives it a perspective to eternity.
Spiritual science will renew and raise — this was the
program of these winter talks — a
certain Goethean view which has given the whole program of
these talks with a deep conviction with which Goethe faced the
natural sciences of his time when from one of its
representatives, Haller (Albrecht von H., 1708–1773), the words
sounded:
No created mind penetrates
Into the being of nature.
Blissful is that to whom
She shows her appearance only.
Goethe replied what spiritual science
always answers to an outer knowledge and conviction that wants
to limit itself to the outside world. Spiritual science
answers: you also recognise this outside world in its true
figure only if you behold the real spirit. You will recognise
what Darwinism has created in its true figure if you regard it
as actions of the active spirit. — Spiritual science
makes the human being completely aware of the fact that one
also recognises the shell only if one recognises it as the
expression of the spirit, and because one recognises the spirit
only if one grasps it in its creating as it already promises in
the current existence to raise new creations from the bosom of
the future that it must become creative in its inside. The
outer shell shows what the spirit has created. Therefore,
spiritual science answers to the words:
No created mind penetrates
Into the being of nature.
Blissful is that to whom
She shows her appearance only.
with Goethe:
Examine yourself above all,
Whether you are kernel or shell.
With it, I would like to close these winter
talks. I would like to hope that spiritual science really finds
its goal and solves its task so that it does not remain a mere
theory, a mere sum of thoughts, but an elixir of life that
works in the human being. It does not work only in the
knowledge of the outer shell, but above all is inside effective
so that the human being recognises whether it is a kernel or a
shell, so that the impulse arises from a strong will not to
remain a shell, but to be always a kernel and become a
kernel.
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