Paths and Goals of Spiritual Man

GA 125 — 26 August 1910, Munich

VI. The Present State of Philosophy and Science

If I want to make an attempt today to point out the current state of philosophy and science with a few sketchy strokes, the reason for this is that in the broadest context of spiritual-scientific views, clarity does not prevail everywhere as to how an anthroposophist can correctly relate to what otherwise exists in the present in terms of spiritual and scientific endeavors. I have occasionally included philosophical material in the courses of lectures on spiritual science, linking them to specialized fields. I have spoken specifically about Hegel's philosophy and its connection to the present. Today I would like to take a somewhat broader approach and speak in general about the current situation of philosophy and science. Since I have announced the subject to you and the participants in my courses are already aware of the form that such philosophical digressions take, you will not be surprised if I say from the outset that I will not impose any particular constraint on myself with regard to popularity. I would rather evoke the feeling of how, as a strictly scientific person, one can find the relationships between spiritual science and other spiritual endeavors of the present. It is not surprising that there is not much awareness of this in the field of Theosophical literature – something that has to be said in a lecture like today's. As a rule, Theosophical writers are not really philosophers and are not at all familiar with the difficulties that arise for the philosopher when he, with his basic scientific character, wants to approach the field of spiritual science.

Naturally I can only touch on individual points, but I will pick them out in such a way that when I have finished you will have some idea of the relationship I have referred to. First of all, I want to say that it can make a certain impression on a receptive soul from the outset when there is talk in the field of spiritual science of supersensible knowledge, of the progression from seer research to supersensible knowledge. But anyone who believes that he must approach these things from the presuppositions of contemporary philosophy can and must immediately, if there is any mention of such a thing, consider the fact that the objections which philosophy has to make against many things that it calls direct experience, direct perception, must apply in the same way to everything that we produce in the field of spiritual science, so to speak. As long as we, for example, clothe our seer experiences in such words that when we speak them out we make use — perhaps without being aware of it — of spatial or temporal conceptions, as soon as it can be shown to us that we do this, as soon as we are not able to shape our terminology in such a way that we do not secretly insert spatial and time into our findings, a Kantian or some other contemporary epistemologist can always come and object – either in the old form or in the various forms that these theories have taken in more recent times – that, from an epistemological point of view, space and time themselves are mere categories or forms of our imagination. Even if we clothe our visionary results in such forms, taken from time and space, we would nevertheless thereby give something that is bound to our ability to imagine. So basically – I know that the expression is contestable here – we would then express only something subjective with all our visionary results. That is a possible objection that can always be made. I will mention it as an example of numerous other objections that can be rightly formulated from an epistemological point of view.

If we, as spiritual scientists, can raise such objections ourselves, then we have only then gained the full inner right to make certain statements. This does not justify the fact that we should not devote ourselves to certain communications out of our inner sense of truth. We should do so, for the inner sense of truth can guide us aright. But we shall only be armed for the spiritual movement of the present when we can make such objections ourselves and — at least within our own elaboration — overcome these objections.

We must distinguish between two kinds of objections. Of course, objections to spiritual science will come from all sides. If we are able to know what is coming from all sides, to be able to sort it out ourselves, and then simply not be heard with what we have to say about it, then the blame lies with the others, then we can wait – as we must – until people have matured enough to understand our ideas. But if our views are characterized by dilettantism in the face of the spiritual movements of the present day, then it is our fault if we cannot consolidate our teaching in the appropriate way. We must be able to do this: to distinguish between what is our fault – and in many, many areas it is only our fault, it lies in the theosophical literature, lies in the ease with which some believe that they field, we must therefore distinguish between the things for which we are to blame and the things where we can wait calmly because we can tell ourselves exactly what the spiritual movements of the present have to object to from their point of view. But if we want to do something like this, then we must first of all be clear in our own minds as to what the inadequacy of the spiritual movements of the present actually lies in. We must be able to ask ourselves a little about how these spiritual movements of the present have developed.

You know from my lectures that I do not like to put my opinions on the market. The opinions of an individual are actually of little value. I always strive to let the facts speak for themselves, even in the field of spiritual science. That is why I do not want to present theories rooted in opinions today either, but let the facts speak. I would like to present a fact that allows us to see how, in the course of the 19th century, a lack of intellectual rigor developed. In a certain deeper way, however, thinking can penetrate if it draws conclusions that are truly sharp and truly given by its presuppositions. Theosophy often proves to be so spineless in the face of the objections that are made to it because its intellectual weapons have become blunt.

If we speak only of the intellectual side – I know everything that can be objected to what is said now, but the matter will present itself to everyone who penetrates into the spiritual development of the 19th century – if we start with the purely intellectual, then we have to say that in terms of the sharpness of thought, in terms of the crystallization of thought in the soul, a certain peak of philosophical development was indeed reached through Hegel. One misunderstands Hegel when one speaks so carelessly about him, as his opponents in the second half of the 19th century did. They imagined that Hegel's aim was to spin out everything he had to say about the world from pure thought of content. They just did not take into account that Hegel nowhere claims that the human subject wants to lift anything of real world content out of pure thought. One must take into account that Hegel's standpoint is that thought itself, the inwardly living thought, the active and productive thought, is what draws the content of the world out of itself, and that we, with our cognitive subject, are nothing more than the scene on which thought works. If we take the matter as it actually presents itself in the course of intellectual life, we must say: in this tendency of Hegel's lies his entire monumental greatness. But it also means that this is the source of the entire weakness of Hegelian philosophy. Its greatness lies in the fact that Hegel can, in a previously unimagined way, become the teacher of a discipline of thinking for anyone who really wants to penetrate with him, and that we cannot acquire this discipline in any other way. The Theosophist in particular should acquire this strong discipline of thinking. After all, a vast number of errors and misconceptions arise simply because our thinking cannot achieve the crystalline clarity of a discipline of thought, such as can be learned through the Hegelian system. One can educate oneself through the Hegelian system. One should, so to speak, be imbued with the results of such a discipline of thought in every lecture where one feels a responsibility towards knowledge and truth. One should get into the habit of never using a word in any context that has not first been felt and experienced by us in its full scope and content. When one, penetrating through what seems so abstract, so dry and sober to many, penetrating through Hegel's logic, inculcates oneself with this discipline of thinking, then one never speaks of the word being, becoming , existence as in such places where these words may be inserted in the overall structure of the lecture, because one has first followed the entire development of the content of such concepts, from the simplest, most empty concepts to the most substantial. In this inner discipline of thought, the philosophical lecturer of today and all of today's literature are, in fact, very far removed. I could easily show you that in world-famous contemporary philosophical books, the authors are not even able to capture the content of a concept concisely and accurately in three lines, and then after three lines, they use a concept that they used before in a completely different way. It is quite natural that an inner confusion of the whole structure, which is our thoughts, must then occur. It would be easy, as I said, to prove this to you with contemporary world-famous philosophical books.

Now Hegel's opponents have believed that they could easily beat him out of the field by not understanding this weaving and essence of thought on the stage of our cognitive subject, but by believing – which never occurred to Hegel – that he wanted to spin the content of the world, so to speak, out of the immediate content of thought of the cognitive subject. That this cannot be, that one can never spin any substantial content of knowledge out of the respective subject of knowledge, if the latter remains only in concepts, one must be clear about that. Therefore, in terms of the productive progress of intellectual life, Hegelian philosophy had to remain unproductive for the very reason that its basic idea, that thought itself is what works out of itself, can be correct, but it does not follow from this that the subject of knowledge itself must produce the objective content of the world. How is it possible for the cognitive subject to gain cognitive content out of itself? This is possible only if the subject of knowledge fertilizes itself, makes itself capable of producing cognitive content. But this self-empowerment can never take place on the level of mere thinking. Through mere thinking, one gains a kind of overview, a kind of larger retrospective view of what the human spirit has produced in the course of world history. One can survey the thoughts produced from a certain center. But one cannot gain new knowledge. Hegel's opponents sensed this. They based their opposition on false premises. But this means that mere Hegelianism achieves two things: an almost immeasurably magnificent discipline of thought, but not productive knowledge. In other words, Hegelian philosophy cannot continue to be productive through itself. This is where the productive powers of knowledge must begin, where Hegel's subject of knowledge, elevated as it is to the level of thought, must decide to let in what you find presented, for example, as a means of fertilization of the subject of knowledge in my book “How to Know Higher Worlds”. $$c = \frac{a}{b}$$ $$\frac{mv^2}{2}$$

Thus I would say: if we start from the directly perceptible existence and from the processing that the human mind undertakes with it, we arrive at the level that can be described as the life and activity of the cognitive subject in the realm of the thought-plan. But then further progress is possible only if, from the other side, from the side opposite to the sense-perceptible existence, there comes the fertilization through those means which are presented in this book, 'How to Know Higher Worlds'. In the literature with which I have tried to point to these things step by step — first as prepared by my previous writings, summarized in my “Philosophy of Freedom” — you will find a path that can be taken from external sense perception, from the external processing of the material of existence, up to the realm of thought. There you will also find a characterization of the peculiarities of the realm of thought as well as the significance of pure thinking for the cognitive subject. In the following writings, which are in the actual field of spiritual science, you will find the other side of the world characterized with its forces that fertilize knowledge. You will find epistemologically characterized the seer research, the scope of seer research, which thus flows from the other side, as it were.

If we wanted to draw a picture of the matter, we could say: if we characterize the thought plan with the subject of knowledge on this thought plan, then everything that can be gained through the senses in terms of external, sensory material flows from the side of sensory perception. Within the thought plan, we sense the Hegelian self-weaving, that which is called the dialectic of pure thinking. But then, if we take only this path, we have to stop. We have to wait until we are able to let that which we can receive on the path characterized by my writing “How to Know Higher Worlds” flow into us from the other side. Thus you see that these things join together, and that the Hegelian system was for a certain time a wonderful résumé of the human spirit, but that, when this was given, something had to happen, quite naturally, to which the Hegelian system cannot rise. The plan is fixed where the subject of knowledge must stand; it cannot be repealed, it can only be described from the other side with what can be equally established epistemologically. So that we do not remain one-sided, but acquire the possibility of seeing the strict epistemological method also where mere sensuality is left.

If we consider all this, we can ask: How is it that philosophy itself shows such reluctance to deal with those logical forms by which what comes from the other side can be established just as much as what comes from one side can be established epistemologically? The reason for this is that this philosophy of the nineteenth century and into the twentieth century has so far failed to take the step that should have been taken from a properly understood Hegelianism. And so it comes about that this philosophy of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries could not find a connection to that which lies beyond the plan of thought. The deeper reason for this, however, is to be found in the fact that Hegel's philosophy has been little understood by the further developing philosophy. For when one rises to the pure plan of thought, then it is quite inevitable — because one stands at the boundary of the supersensible world — that one can also feel those logical foundations that, as something justified, reveal the inflow of the supersensible world. You can feel this very strongly when you encounter this elevation of the human power of cognition to pure thought and then the illumination of the higher worlds in the lectures of our dear Dr. Unger, which cannot be overestimated. Therefore, it must be emphasized: it is a great blessing that we are able to have such a person among us as Dr. Unger is, who is able to elaborate in detail and carry out the theory of knowledge of pure thinking of the knowing subject, which lies as I on the thought plan, in this spiritual-philosophical field. And so, in these lectures, you have provided what can give you points of reference to gain strength in the relationship between spiritual science and other intellectual endeavors.

If you follow this philosophy, which has already been partially gained in Dr. Unger's remarks and will be partially gained, and if you continue on the path you have taken, then you will see that this philosophy as a philosophy will have a completely different character than what exists today as contemporary philosophy. Only recently, a truly remarkable thinker said something about the latter that basically cannot be disputed. If you let your eyes wander without prejudice over what is being brought to light in Germany and other countries, you can see that what this thinker said is really true, namely that today we have metaphysics without transcendental conviction, a theory of knowledge without objective meaning, a logic without content, a psychology without soul, an ethics without commitment, and a religion without a rational basis. That is one characteristic of our time, as perceived by a not insignificant contemporary philosopher. As I said, I would like to let the facts speak, let what is happening speak. Whether it must be said that he does not feel like embarking on the spiritual scientific path, or whether he cannot do so according to his thought suggestions, may be left open — but it must be said that someone who is fully immersed in the hustle and bustle of contemporary life, but who cannot find the way out of the element of thought to a supersensible content, can think like that. Certain intellectual prerequisites must be fulfilled, which are actually found today not in any other philosophy but in what I have attempted to establish in my book on 'Truth and Science', in what is given in 'Philosophy of Freedom' and in Dr. Unger's carefully developed thought operations. There, in the field of spiritual science, the approach to an active philosophy is given, which avoids mixing theosophy into its explanations, which wants to be strictly philosophical and which, precisely because of this strict scientific approach, will fulfill its task in the future.

But now we ask ourselves: how is it that, after it was believed that Hegelism had been done away with, 19th-century thinking in all civilized countries could not rise to such a philosophical processing of the thinking in our subject of knowledge – how did that come about? It is not my intention to go into the profound cultural-historical reasons for this — I do so in some places — but today I would like to remain in the realm of purely philosophical characterization. This is because facts have taken place, that anyone who has attentively followed the course of intellectual life in the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s cannot fail to notice how, basically, only in one single area of intellectual development in the 19th century has thinking itself remained strong, while everywhere else it has become too dull to draw the conclusions that lie within itself. Only in one single field does the science of the nineteenth and early twentieth century demand the greatest respect even from the strict thinking of the spiritual scientist, and this is none other than mathematics. Everything that has been achieved in the field of mathematics bears the traces of sharp, penetrating thinking. Therefore, even those who, for example, did their scientific theoretical studies in theoretical physics and chemistry towards the end of the 19th century could feel that it was not the mathematicians' fault that complicated formulas were handed down to them, which they had to complete when they approached, for example, the theory of heat, the vibration theory, the Clausius theory, and so on. If you had gone through that, had a philosophical mind, you had the feeling: it's not the mathematicians' fault — mathematics had become a wonderful instrument for working out everything in finely chiseled systems; but the intellectual weapons were blunt. So when you worked with mathematical formulas in the various fields of physics and chemistry, you could have the feeling that as long as you remained purely within the mathematical, you felt secure everywhere, but as soon as you came to the philosophical characteristic of what you were actually calculating, the ground was shaky everywhere. Thus he proved himself to be out of touch with the minds of those who spoke philosophically at the time. There was no sense of anything other than the purest philosophical dilettantism, which was particularly evident when natural scientists began to philosophize, as for example Da Bois-Reymond did in his “Seven World Mysteries” or in his lecture “On the Limits of Knowledge of Nature”. But that has not improved. So we may say: We have experienced the peculiar phenomenon that the thinking, as it must necessarily be demanded of spiritual science, has remained strong and exact only within mathematics. — The strict demands on thinking are not satisfied today in any other field of research — the strict demands that we make from the spiritual-scientific point of view — than in the mathematical field.

Now I do not want to get into a discussion here of certain contributions – or the characteristics of these – that can be applied to the field of knowledge from a mathematical point of view. I will only point out the symptomatic nature of these things, pointing out that it is precisely in the field that has retained its wonderful inner strength, in the mathematical field, that it has become most apparent how the thinking of the 19th century has matured to the point of bursting the shell that seals off the human subject of knowledge from the transcendental world. And even if they are only hypotheses, sometimes boldly asserted, which have been pursued purely mathematically, we must take what has happened in the mathematical field as an expression of the longing of human knowledge to go beyond the sensual world. And there we have seen this longing realized precisely in the mathematical field. After all, mathematics in its forms, where it is called geometry, has held certain things to be unshakable since ancient Euclid! Who could have believed, for example, that there is anything more unshakable than the theorem that the three angles of a triangle equal 180 degrees, or the other theorem that if you have a straight line here and a point next to it, then in the sense of Euclidean geometry you can only draw a single parallel to the straight line through this point. That is, in the sense of Euclidean geometry, the sum of the angles of a triangle is equal to 180 degrees, and in its sense, only one parallel can be drawn to this line. This follows from the assumptions of Euclidean geometry. Who could now believe that this could be different! Nevertheless, and this is the significant thing. As I said, I could say many things for and against the content, but I am only addressing the symptomatic aspect of it, the longing to get out of the sensual realm; I just want to characterize it. The strange thing is that in the 19th century we saw the emergence of geometries other than Euclidean geometry. So it tried to crystallize out of itself a geometry — or geometries — that would be valid apply to something other than our ordinary sensory space, because for this space it is true that the three angles of a triangle together add up to 180 degrees, and that through a point next to a straight line you can only draw a parallel. And in the 19th century, we acquired geometries that do not want to apply only to our sensory space, no. Riemannian and Lobachevskyan geometry are two real geometries, born out of human thought according to strict mathematical laws.

According to the Lobachevsky theory, the three angles of a triangle together are always smaller than 180 degrees, while according to the Riemann theory they are always greater than 180 degrees. According to the latter, you cannot draw a single straight line parallel to another straight line through a point, but according to the former you can draw two straight lines. And these things are not to be taken lightly. For if the mathematician sets a certain constant equal to zero in certain formulas, by which every special relationship given in the Lobachevsky theory can be expressed, he obtains Euclidean geometry as a special case of Lobachevsky geometry. You can extract Euclidean geometry from Lobachevsky geometry.

I do not want to point out that the determinations of neither one nor the other of the two geometries are correct with the results of the visionary research. They are only proof that thought operations can lead beyond the area that immediately encompasses our space. But it must be said that if one understands the implications of these geometries, one can imagine that there are completely different factual connections than in the sensory world. For the latter is ultimately expressed in the formulas of geometry. If different formulas apply to a world than those of Euclidean geometry, then this world is a different world from ours. And we can say: with Riemannian and Lobachevskian geometry, the geometer's yearning to go beyond the world of the senses, to grasp something intellectually that does not lie in the realm of the sensual world at all, is fulfilled. That is why these non-Euclidean geometries are symptomatically significant for our century.

And no less significant is the fact that the Frenchman Poincare has very ingeniously processed these various theories in an epistemological way. However, if you stick to the mere utilization of these non-Euclidean definitions, without wanting to take the step into the field of the humanities, which is where Poincaré came to: to see nothing in all our geometric observations but formulas that our cognitive faculty has to grasp the facts in the most convenient way possible. And this is very clearly elaborated by Poincaré. And the German reader also has the opportunity, through the commendable translations of these books by the Munich mathematician Lindemann, to gain an insight into the significance of what actually underlies the whole matter.

Thus we must say, even if we can only hint at it, that in our time the acuteness of thinking has really been exhausted in one field and that this acuteness of thinking is characteristically enough present in such attempts – however dreary and hypothetical they may rightly appear to the individual: a yearning for knowledge from the world immediately before us.

It is useful in any case to be familiar with at least that rigor that man can acquire through mathematical training. For everything that is legitimately produced in the field of spiritual science must, insofar as a thinking element is involved, be imbued with this rigorously disciplined thinking. This may disappear behind the facts, but anyone who produces in the field of spiritual science should be aware that this thinking should be in the background. Otherwise spiritual science will be something that can easily be trampled to death by those who live outside the spiritual. And we will not be able to say everywhere that there is bad will when we are not understood. In the field of spiritual science, it must become more and more apparent that we place the same demands on our own thinking as, one might say, the strictest mathematician places on himself. The fact that we have seerical research at our disposal will protect us from building mathematical structures into the wind, so to speak. I say this because there are also many arguments to be said against the building of Riemann's and Lobachevsky's geometry. I just wanted to characterize the desire for knowledge. But that it would be useful to be familiar with mathematical structures, I tried to show in my “Philosophy of Freedom”. There is a chapter in it that I would like to call “On the Lustwert of Life”. Until I had written this chapter on the pleasure value of life, there was much talk in philosophical circles of the pleasure balance of life, and one put the 'world of facts in such a way that, for my sake, all the pleasure of a life was summed up as an a and all the displeasure of the same life as a b, and the difference was called the pleasure balance, the excess of pleasure over displeasure. If you put pleasure and displeasure into a formula, you have chosen a difference, you have chosen what you can call the mathematical formula of subtraction. The important thing in that chapter is that I showed how it is impossible to summarize pleasure and displeasure in such a way that they are brought into a relationship of minuend and subtrahend. What you get out of it will never match real experience. I have shown that you only get the pleasure value if you do it this way: if you divide the a by the 5, then the quotient c gives you the pleasure value:

If you conscientiously examine the facts of life, you will find this to be true everywhere. To be able to do what is expressed in this formula in an abstract way about a fact of life, you have to have at least a little grasp of what can follow from the mathematical structure.

Take the question: how can the pleasure value – if the formula is like that – become zero, in other words, how can complete disgust with life arise? – By no other fact than when the fraction has an infinity in its (b) — its denominator. Because if you form a quotient, you can only get a zero if there is infinity in the denominator, as long as there is only (1) in the numerator. That is, this premise is true in a very different way from the facts of life. The latter shows you – even if a person indulges in illusions – a certain zest for life everywhere. It is present wherever there is life.

Thus we see how useful it can be to apply arithmetic formulas in the right way. If you apply the wrong formula of difference, then you can easily get some excess of displeasure and say: Weariness of life is justified as a quantity. There you also see how useful it is to be able to make strict mathematical logic your ideal.

If we disregard mathematics and look at the various individual fields of philosophy, we have to say that everywhere we look – even in the field of logic, although it has again received some fertilization from the mathematical side through probability theory – we find the impossibility of self-contained thinking drawing its own consequences. And here I would like to point out to you the most important fact in the development of our spiritual life through the 19th century, a fact in spiritual science that took place with a certain impact in the spiritual life around the middle of the 19th century.

At that time, Julius Robert Mayer, and later, independently of him, Helmholtz, discovered what has since been called the doctrine of the mechanical equivalent of heat, the so-called conservation of living force. Now, soon after that had happened, Helmholtz built another theory on this theory of the conservation of living force, which was then also widely accepted and is still considered indisputable by many today: namely, that in the interplay of living the interplay of living forces in the universe, there is a constant conversion of some other, let us say, of the processes in the world-leading living forces, be they the forces of magnetism or electricity, be they other purely mechanical forces, into heat. Now, in the sense of the so-called Carnot cycle, it is never possible to completely carry out the process of converting energy into heat while maintaining the same energy quantum. It must be said that it is never possible to convert all heat back into living force. Incidentally, if I wanted to describe this so-called second law of thermodynamics, I would have to give a few lectures on it. But today I only want to characterize it. It is not important that everything you can learn about it is also said here. In the sense of the second law of the mechanical theory of heat and in the sense of what Hermann Helmholtz made of it in the 1850s, it is the case that in all the processes of our existence, ultimately, in the conversion of heat into power, there must be a quantum of heat that can no longer be converted back into another power. Consequently, all our physical-mechanical processes must ultimately proceed in such a way that their forces are converted into heat. And since there is always a residue of heat, these processes must ultimately come to an end in a goal that consists in all other forces having been converted into heat, that all living forces, so to speak, will ultimately have been converted into heat. We would thus have reached what we can call the heat death of our earth. Of course, no other process could take place if everything were converted into heat. Thus, so to speak, physical thinking up to the middle of the 19th century runs into this law, runs into the statement that, if one consulted what could be physically thought at that time, was actually quite correct: it runs into the statement of the heat death of our earth. And the only consolation that Helmholtz found was this: It is still a long time away, and no one has to fear that the heat death will affect them so soon. And everything we can observe shows us this process to such a small extent that we can hope that life will continue for millions of years without the heat death affecting the Earth. For those who proceed with more thorough knowledge, this remains just a philistine consolation.

But I only wanted to characterize what I could characterize with numerous other examples: how, so to speak, from the progress of scientific thought up to that point - the lecture in which Helmholtz presented the matter was given around 1852 - the configuration of thought had to come to certain results.

In 1856, a Hegelian, Karl Rosenkranz, spoke out against this lecture. He brought to bear all the weapons he could muster from the arsenal of Hegelian philosophy. And anyone who knows Karl Rosenkranz, the sincere, one might say warmly sincere Hegelian, a little better, knows that Karl Rosenkranz is not to be taken as lightly as one very often wants to take him. He brought up everything he could muster from the arsenal of the Hegelian school. So we have the other current there, namely the one that took place in the line of thought. This ran in this direction, as I wanted to show. What physical thinking has come to can be seen in Helmholtz; where philosophical thinking has arrived, in Rosenkranz. There we see that important objections are raised against the mechanical theory of heat. Rosenkranz criticizes Helmholtz for thinking only in terms of analogies. His law must be abstracted from the processes that take place in a clock, a windbox or other things. It is true for the steam engine that some of the living forces that we evoke are lost to the environment and cannot be brought back. As long as we start from such processes, I might say from all sides provided with finite surroundings, so long we cannot avoid the conclusion that such results are achieved as Helmholtz achieved in his treatise on the mechanical theory of heat. Karl Rosenkranz rightly points out that it does not follow that as soon as we go beyond the immediate conditions on earth, there would be no possibility that the heat radiated into space would have to be lost in the same way as with the steam engine. Completely different facts could be present. Today I cannot go into what spiritual science has to say when it comes to the theory of heat. That is where the safe ground lies, which I was able to characterize in the lectures I have now given on the biblical creation story. The Hegelian remained barren because he could not find the transition to this ground. So warmth remained for him nothing more than an inner tremor. Nevertheless, with the concepts that are simply given when one thinks in the strictly disciplined way of so-called finite mechanics, which only applies to the immediate environment, with all its formulas, including the formulas

— all these formulas apply to our immediate circumstances —, with these concepts he turns to absolute mechanics. In the ascent of his scientific system, Hegel has gone through the process from so-called finite mechanics to absolute mechanics, which he applies to the movement of the heavenly bodies. The formulas change so much that the formulas obtained from the steam engine, from our ordinary thermal conditions in the Helmholtz sense, simply cannot be applied to processes that involve larger spatial entities. But to even grasp such a thought, to grasp the possibility that one can ascend from a finite mechanics to an absolute one, requires an internally self-directing logic, which was precisely what 19th-century philosophy and Karl Rosenkranz lacked. For, despite all his objections, there is a strong and constant suggestion to which he is also subject, and which emanates from the overwhelming natural scientific conceptions of the 19th century. They suppress much thinking. To pierce through these natural scientific conceptions, one really needs self-directing thinking. I could easily prove that the correct understanding of the law of the so-called conservation of matter, which plays such a great role, is only possible if one knows the inner structure of thinking. I could show that this law, as it exists in physics today, is nothing more than a projection into space of one's own laws of thinking, whereby thinking still works with blunt weapons. Here we see what we know today in the field of spiritual science: that in higher spheres what appears to us objectively is what is within ourselves — I am not even talking about the conservation of energy — that in a broader sense what I myself have now stated with regard to the conservation of matter still applies. Thus we see how, through the suggestion of scientific findings, in contrast to which one should remain on purely factual ground, in this field the human element of thinking has proved dull, because philosophy was not in a position to pierce the cover that is formed not from scientific fact-finding, but from the interpretation of the facts that have been researched. Spiritual science is fully grounded in the facts of natural science. I would consider it one of the greatest shortcomings of spiritual science if it did not want to go hand in hand with genuine research into the facts of natural science. But the interpretation of the facts is something else. When natural scientists tell us what they have established in the laboratory as facts, then we must gratefully accept their findings. We are then accepting the utterances of nature itself, and to deny them would be to succumb to nonsense. If we do not surrender to them, then we show that we have no sense of truth. But if we were to take the so-called monistic considerations and let them impose themselves as facts, then we would be taking the opinions of men as facts. This happens, however, because the opinions of men have insidiously, I might say, crept into popular literature, but no one is to blame for this but fanatics. For twenty cents we can get not only scientific facts handed down to us, but also the opinions that appear as if they were facts, underlined in such a way that if a person does not believe in them, he does not believe in the scientific results. But one can hold on to the latter and still say that the interpretations are nothing more than interpretations made by blunt thinking weapons.

Just as this thinking is blunt with regard to the simplest physical-chemical things, so of course this thinking must prove to be all the more blunt when higher areas come into consideration, such as those of physiology. The days are long gone when an anatomist as brilliant as the old Hyrtl could bring the anatomical structure of the human being to life for his students in the early years of their medical studies. Today we are dealing with a field that is, above all, not at all aware of itself. To characterize this field, I would like to give it a slightly different guise.

In the sense of what I myself must regard as a spiritual scientific movement, it is my most urgent wish that those who have a background in physiology and medicine should familiarize themselves with the facts of spiritual science to such an extent that they can work through the results of physiology in terms of their factual character. Next spring, I myself will only be able to draw the basic lines of this spiritual scientific physiology at most. A great deal of work needs to be done. Our physiological literature contains the most wonderful material, one has only to know it. But one must also know the borderlands, and one must know how physiology is influenced by a true psychology, which today is very much buried in the rubble. It would be a longing of spiritual research that those of us who are trained in physiology should take a strictly exact look at certain physiological-anatomical results of recent times. Indeed, anyone familiar with the factual material knows that in certain areas that are needed at the moment, nothing has been done. But anyone who appropriates what has already been achieved in this field can easily do so; by appropriating it, they adopt it productively. Then, if he is imbued with spiritual knowledge at the same time, he will not be in a position to create such a basis of physiology where, in the dissection of the organism, each organ is regarded as having the same value. What is the essential thing that prevents today's physiology from coming to the fore? It is that the organism is dissected. We have heart, lungs, liver and so on; we study them all as if they were organic members with equal rights. But that is not the case. All these individual members have different antecedents of their values. And in a piece of liver, you do not have the same matter in your hand as you do in a piece of heart muscle and the like. The point is that, in addition to what is provided by purely external sensory perception, a certain factor is added, which I cannot describe other than as a certain objective value of the organ in question. This will become clear to the physiologist once he undertakes the work of comparing an organ in the fully developed human organism with actual embryology. He will then realize that embryology today works so one-sidedly because it only follows an ascending process and not a parallel descending one. One only proceeds in the right way when one brings out in each stage of embryological development, as in a mathematical function, a factor of decadence and another of productivity. And when we are able to apply what we have learned about valence to the organ in its full form in the organism, when we do not simply juxtapose the heart and liver as equivalent organs – they are of a different qualitative valence – then we will stand before the moment when the great results of our world of physiological facts will receive the greatest light.

What I have characterized for physiology, I could characterize for biology, for history and cultural history. There you see a field of work that lies ahead of us, that needs to be cultivated. There you see the situation of contemporary philosophy and science in relation to what we have, I would say, through the favor of circumstances, through our human karma, in terms of positive results. All around us, the most beautiful results have been achieved through research into facts. Anyone who familiarizes themselves with these facts will see a wonderful development. What is missing is the sharp urgency, the energy of philosophical thinking, which only when it is applied – but courageously applied to the facts – can then present these facts in their true light. This was stated epistemologically in my fundamental epistemological writing 'Truth and Science'. There you will find references to the kind of epistemology that takes into account that our epistemology does not remain without objective significance, but must occur in such a way that there is a fertilization of our epistemological subject in the epistemological results, so that it can submerge into what is given to us by the rest of the situation of science. If we work in the right way with seriousness and dignity in this field, as in all fields of science, on the basis of the beginnings that should develop out of our spiritual scientific movement, if we do not remain with a certain theosophical dilettantism, but immerse ourselves strictly in what is also scientifically given, we shall arrive at having a metaphysic which, through the weapons of a productive theory of knowledge, invades the supersensible through the outer field of sense perception, instead of having, as is really the case today, a metaphysic without transcendental conviction. Then it will have conviction because it will rest on a theory of knowledge, because it will be able to fertilize the human cognitive subject. Logic will acquire its content because the laws of thinking will become world laws. Ethics will also be able to have what one could call bindingness, because productive knowledge pours into our impulses. We will have an ethic with bindingness. Then we will also have what is not a psychology without soul, but a psychology with the soul, because the human desire for knowledge is based on the questions about the soul and its destiny in the world.

This was intended as a weak attempt to show you where we actually stand when we let our gaze wander from what we can feel spiritually within us to the periphery of what has been scientifically researched and what exists around us. If I wanted to characterize every single thing that exists scientifically, I would have to give many lectures. But in the course of time many things will arise. I only wanted to show what the tendency of our spiritual science can be if the possibilities it contains are not sought merely for selfish reasons, to satisfy our immediate personal goals, but if they are sought in order to collaborate on the spirit, on the cultural process of humanity.