55. On the Materialism that Appears to Have Been Overcome in Science

Today, many people who turn away from the so-called scientifically recognized points of view state as the reason that the materialistic views of this science cannot give them any nourishment for mind and heart. They demand an explanation of the nature of the soul; but science, they claim, completely denies the existence of the soul and regards it only as a phenomenon of bodily processes, just as it regards, for example, the advancing of the hands of a clock as the result of the clock mechanism. Now, the representatives of this “recognized” science object to such an assertion by saying that there can no longer be any talk of materialism in science today, that the age of Büchner and Vogt is long past. These “scientists” never tire of emphasizing that it would never occur to anyone who is currently at the cutting edge of research to subscribe to the old sentence: “The brain secretes thoughts like the liver secretes bile.” When Lehmann wrote his “History of Superstition” not long ago, he also addressed this fact. He said that many claim that spiritualism has only spread so rapidly because those striving deeper felt repelled by materialistic science. Now, however, Lehmann also believes that there can no longer be any talk of such materialism in science today. This accusation against science is therefore completely unjustified.

Now it is undoubtedly true that at present every scientifically minded person, unless he belongs to the veterans of Büchnerianism, regards the materialistic ideas of force and matter as obsolete, declares them to be hasty, etc. But is that what matters? Can those who demand an insight into the spiritual and the soul be satisfied with that? Certainly, the scientific facts that have been revealed to us in recent years make an interpretation of world phenomena in a materialistic sense quite impossible. Even the great stimuli of Darwinism are being completely transformed by new discoveries. And only very backward people, who still limit their knowledge to the botanical and zoological facts that were known fifteen years ago, can still escape a spiritual interpretation of life phenomena. Anyone who follows current germinal history, the findings regarding animal and plant life, the facts of cultural history and so on, as they have brought us in recent years, knows that this whole “scientific” approach must move quickly towards the spiritual-theosophical worldview if it does not want to lose itself completely. It will either have to admit its complete inability to contribute anything to the solution of the great questions of existence, that is, it will end up in complete ignorance, or it will automatically lead to gnosis and theosophy. The representatives of this latter world-view are only advanced posts, which already see which is the course of development of spiritual life. That they still find so little understanding stems solely from the fact that our contemporaries are hypnotized by the thought habits of the age that has just passed, and therefore cannot yet reconcile the old thoughts with the new facts.

The question is: even if the representatives of “recognized science” and their followers today assure us that they have “gone beyond” materialism, do they have anything to offer to those who are truly seeking the higher knowledge of spirit and soul? And this question must be answered in the most decided negative. You cannot satisfy a man by taking away from him; you must give something. Materialism, in spite of its limitations, gave its adherents something that the thinking man needs: a rounded world view. It was even an historical necessity in its time of appearance. For it was only natural that people hypnotized by the achievements of the purely material world should also seek the solution to the world's riddles in the laws of matter. But where should someone turn today who is seeking the same thing? To our philosophers and learned “soul researchers”? To Wundt, to Lipps, to Höffding? There he finds nothing but abstract ideas, rather empty concepts, formed under the influence of a self-overestimating and also overturning “science”. He finds nothing for mind and heart. These thinkers have developed their thinking habits on the purely material phenomena, and now look at the spiritual with these thinking habits. They lack what alone can give here: direct spiritual and mental experience. These spiritual movements are now called to give this in the present time. They do not want to refute “materialism” alone; they want to convey the knowledge of the spiritual from those trained in spiritual experience to their age.