# Monism and Theosophy

## GA 51 — 8 October 1902, Berlin

### Monism and Theosophy

*Lecture by Rudolf Steiner at the Giordano Bruno League*

Dr. Steiner first emphasizes that a man of common sense would not speak publicly about such a topic in the current German intellectual climate, because there is hardly any other topic that is more likely to compromise him, and then continues: "Theosophy is a name often used by people who want to explore their destiny in spiritualist circles. And even though there is a whiff of fraudulence about it, I speak about the subject in its connection with German intellectual life with full awareness. I much preferred to be in my chemical laboratory than in any spiritualist circle, and I know that one can literally get one's hands dirty in such circles, but I have also washed my hands and hope that I will succeed in introducing you to the word theosophy as a serious worldview. It must be clearly stated that a serious worldview can only be sought on the basis of modern science, and I will never deviate from the idea that salvation can only be found in it. However, natural science still fills minds and hearts with its materialistic worldview, and even if individual enthusiasts claim that we have long since moved beyond the age of Büchner and so on, if we cannot construct an ideal worldview based on natural science, the materialism of the 1950s will continue to conquer the world. Virtually all contemporary natural scientists are materialists, even when they reject it.

Natural science has shown us how creatures gradually came into being and perfected themselves until humans appeared. But here, according to Haeckel in the 22nd link of his organic ancestral chain, it came to a halt. David Friedrich Strauss praised the fact that natural science has freed us from wonder, from wonder in the sense that Linnaeus still said in the 18th century: “There are as many miracles as there are species of animals and plants originally created side by side by the Creator.” Natural science has dispelled these miracles with the magic word “evolution”; this magic word has transformed spatial coexistence into a clear temporal succession, but it has not yet been able to dispel the miracle that is man himself. We must try to apply the methods of natural science to the coexistence we see in the Hottentot and the genius; we must, in a sense, discover the spiritual primordial cell that connects the two. But the method of natural science required for this will be different again, just as natural science has always had to model its methods according to its purposes. The geologist could not just collect minerals in order to understand the history of the earth; Haeckel would not have discovered his biogenetic law if he had treated his animal bodies with chemical reagents in the laboratory; nor will the chemical examination of the brain provide the soul researcher with insights into the life of the soul. But despite the tremendous progress of natural science, it has not yet been able to discover this method, and as a result, a deep gulf has developed between natural science and religious sentiment, greater than ever before. This was not the case in ancient cultures and their theologies. There is no such conflict there; theology is nothing more than the expression of the scientific thinking of the time. What was presented as a worldview was so noble, grand, and divine that it was religion translated into feeling. Today, however, we are faced with the fact that theology and science are two completely separate things, and in this sense Adolf Harnack says that one feels relieved by the thought that science will never be able to fulfill religious needs. On the other hand, the Englishman Ingersoll says of natural science, for example: “We have reached the point where, for us, the expressions of the mind are only a scientific fact; our thoughts are nothing more than a transformation of the food we take into our organism; the creation of Hamlet is nothing more than the transformed food that Shakespeare consumed.”

How can we restore the harmony that existed for the ancient religions, and even for the early Middle Ages? With St. Augustine, this discord gradually emerged, leading to the two great dualistic currents in the contrast between scholasticism and Galileo and so on. Science was like a son who returns home from abroad and can no longer be understood by his father, and Protestantism is nothing more than the father's declaration that he wants to disinherit the son, and Kantianism is the conclusion, the last phase of this process!

The first great attempt to overcome this dichotomy was made by the German idealist philosophers Fichte, Schelling and Hegel. Three years after Hegel's death, Fichte's son published a book on human self-knowledge. It deals with this as a task that natural science itself has set. I.H. Fichte says something like: When we observe natural beings, we see their eternal laws. But when we regard the human soul itself as a natural process, we are faced with a change in our understanding. The laws of nature lie outside our personality in the natural basis from which we have emerged, but in our soul we do not see finished natural laws; we are natural law ourselves. There nature becomes our own deed, there we are development. We do not merely recognize, we live. We now have the task of creating eternal iron laws, no longer merely recognizing them. I.H. Fichte then suggests: at this point, man not only lives in his knowledge of nature, at this point he realizes and lives the divine, the creative, at this point philosophy passes over into theosophy!

This is how the concept of theosophy appears in German intellectual life. We can now perhaps see more clearly that theosophy is nothing other than the ultimate demand of a true monism between knowledge of nature and knowledge of the self. This gives us a perspective for reconciling the contradictions between religion and science. We now know that there is no other divine power that can elevate the worm to man; we know that we ourselves are this divine power.

One may ask: But what is the use of such knowledge? Well, I would reply, what significance does the simple recording of facts have, which is usually called knowledge? Those who I would call cosmic loafers are satisfied with that.

Those who understand the concept of theosophy in this way will also understand Feuerbach, who says that man has created God in his own image. We are quite willing to admit that the concept of God is born of the human heart, and that God, as a symbol of an inner ideal, can develop man beyond man.

In this way we shall gain a divine wisdom that will express the divinity of nature. We are now living in a time that could become an important turning-point in the spiritual development of Europe, as it was for the age in which Copernicus, Giordano Bruno and Galileo lived and founded modern natural science. But the latter has not known how to celebrate its reconciliation with religion. We are faced with this task, we must fulfill it. No matter how inadequate these attempts may be, there are currents in modern intellectual life that are moving in this direction. Religions are not founded as such, and so there are no religious geniuses in the sense that there are scientific and artistic geniuses. But there are personalities who express the content of knowledge of their time as religious feeling. I am well aware of the great defects and errors of the theosophical movement. Duboc has called theosophy a feminine philosophy. We can change that by making it a masculine one in critical Germany.

I know that there can be no salvation outside of science, but we must find new methods of soul research based on natural science in order to do what all the old religious views were able to do: establish a great unity between religious need and science. Theosophy in the sense I have characterized it has nothing to do with the reports of facts of hypnotism and somnambulism that are often lumped together with it; indeed, one could reject these and still be a theosophist, but these appearances of abnormal mental life are not to be rejected at all, and in the scientific interpretation of these facts, undertaken particularly by French and English scholars, I see the first tentative attempts at real soul research.

Dr. Steiner concluded his programmatic lecture with a reference to a painting by the Belgian Wiertz, “Man of the Future”. It shows a giant holding cannons and other attributes of the culture of our time, smiling as he shows them to his wife and children, who have shrunk to the size of pygmies in comparison. It will be our task to ensure that we do not appear so pygmy-like in front of the man of the future.