Knowledge of Soul and Spirit

GA 56 — 17 October 1907, Berlin

Natural Science at a Crossroads

In the introductory lecture I had the honor of giving here eight days ago, I already pointed out the two basic prerequisites of so-called Spiritual Science or, if you will, theosophy. It was said that Spiritual Science rests on two columns: first, that human beings are aware that behind our sensory world, which we can see with our eyes and touch with our hands, there is a spiritual, supersensory world of facts, events, and beings; second, that human beings can become capable of intervening in this spiritual world with their knowledge and, at a higher level, also with their actions. That there is a spiritual world and that it is accessible to human beings — this is how we can briefly express the conviction of Spiritual Science.

This spiritual science will be examined from a wide variety of angles in the course of these winter lectures. Today we will take a look at its relationship to what is called natural science. Those of you who have come to these lectures specifically to learn about the results of Spiritual Science itself and experiences in the higher worlds may perhaps see today's lecture as a kind of deviation from the regular course. True theosophists generally believe that they have found their relationship to the findings of natural science, and so the discussion of such things, as well as the relationship of Spiritual Science to other findings derived from natural science, sometimes seems a little boring to them. However, in the next lectures we will be dealing with such specifically spiritual scientific topics that today's interlude may well be tolerated, especially in view of the fact that the sharpest attacks and also the strongest misunderstandings with regard to Spiritual Science come precisely from those who claim to stand firmly on the ground of natural science. Above all, please be aware that today's lecture is not being given from a position opposed to natural science. Given the great influence that scientific mental images exert on our contemporaries today, it would truly be a difficult undertaking to enter into opposition to natural science. For time and again we hear that natural science is based on facts and experience, and that anything that does not correspond to these facts and experiences must be relegated to the realm of fantasy. This is the response given by many to the kind of things that will be discussed in these winter lectures on Spiritual Science.

In view of the general state of education in our time, it will be most appropriate if today's lecture presents the relationship between natural science and Spiritual Science as objectively as possible, without taking sides in the pros and cons. But it should be noted from the outset that Spiritual Science as such cannot have any interest in dealing with natural science in particular where it is really only a matter of scientific facts. That could not be its task at all. Who would ever think of attacking the edifice of strict facts in any way? Who would think of objecting to anything that has been established through experiment and experience in the field of natural science? Spiritual Science itself is based entirely on experience. Admittedly, they are based on experiences as they were characterized last time, on experiences in the higher, spiritual worlds. In terms of methodological principles, however, they are entirely in line with what is so often demanded today with regard to natural science. They are in complete agreement with natural science in that all knowledge is ultimately based on experience. Thus, the introduction to a series of lectures on Spiritual Science will be less about commenting on specific contemporary scientific findings — because this is not necessary — and more about pointing out how we must view the natural scientist in his scientific thinking. It is important that we follow the scientific thought process as it is presented to us.

It will be very good to take a brief look back at German intellectual life, which offers a picture of the entire intellectual life of the last decades. One thing in particular comes to mind: today, natural science has become something for many people that it never was before. Slowly and gradually, over four centuries, this has been in preparation. But it was in the 19th century that what had been slowly preparing came to a head. Natural science has become something that could be described as a kind of religion, a kind of creed, or rather, individual people have believed that they could form a kind of creed, a kind of religion, from the scientific findings of our time. Much more important than disputes about scientific facts is for Spiritual Science to take a look at the way in which a kind of new religion, a kind of new creed, has come about on the basis of supposed scientific facts. Anyone who looks at our spiritual life with an open mind cannot fail to see that today people oppose the assumption of a spiritual world, oppose religious feeling, by claiming that any reference to a spiritual world has been refuted by the new findings of science. In certain circles, people actually believe that the findings of science have dispelled any reference to a spiritual world. A hundred years ago, no one would have thought of drawing such a conclusion from scientific facts. Certainly, there have been radical materialistic beliefs in the past, but they never claimed that, according to “true science,” the world could only be explained in materialistic terms. And the words “true science” have an indescribable magical power for our contemporaries!

Much is said about earlier dark times of religious fury, religious disputes, and religious persecution. There is no intention whatsoever to gloss over or defend what this entails. But when we take an unbiased look at the development of the human soul and compare the thinking and feeling of our time with that of earlier times, we find something peculiar in the fact that these things, which truly degraded humanity in its thinking and feeling, occurred in earlier centuries. Anyone who thinks impartially will find confirmation everywhere of what is now to be presented only as an assertion.

Many times have been dark and intolerant, but an intolerance with an enormous conceit of infallibility has remained in our time! This inner intolerance does not commit any external excesses or persecutions, although it is already possible to experience the police and the public prosecutor being called in against those who speak about the spiritual world. But these are exceptions; outwardly, our time is tolerant. Only in terms of thinking is anyone who cannot share the creed of those who say, “Based on scientific facts, it is impossible to say anything about the spiritual side of the world,” considered a fool, a fantasist, or at least unreasonable. This has been slowly developing. In the 19th century, it reached its peak. There are good reasons why this happened. And if we search for the reason, we must say that it is one that is connected with the great and tremendous progress of humanity. We see how, in recent times, people have explored the outer physical world with every conceivable instrument and ingeniously developed methods, which gradually border on the miraculous in their own way. We see how it began with astronomy and with the view of the astronomical structure of the world, how then, piece by piece, the physical world was conquered by what could be explored with the armed eye and understood with the mind. And in the 19th century, it became apparent that this kind of research was not only capable of looking into inanimate nature, but also shed light, deeply and significantly, on living nature.

Anyone who is able to observe spiritual life with an objective eye knows that it was a tremendous advance when, in the 1830s, Schleiden discovered the smallest part of the animal and plant world as a living being, so to speak: the cell. It suddenly became clear that the facts now discovered through the microscope and new research methods meant that a whole series of earlier assumptions had to be discarded. Much thought was given to what this organism, which makes up our living beings, actually is inside. Now they had discovered something that was very much in line with 19th-century thinking and feeling: they could see how the organism was made up of countless, extremely small living beings. They could now see how they interacted and formed the human organism. What had been the subject of much speculation and thought was now available for actual research.

Once this insight into the world of life had been gained, it was a great step forward when Kirchhoff and Bunsen introduced spectral analysis. This wonderful instrument, the spectroscope, now made it possible to prove that the same substances that make up our earthly world are also present in the rest of the world. This could be seen from the facts provided by the spectroscope. And then Darwin came along with a wealth of facts showing how living beings change under the influence of external conditions and depend on the place where they live, and he succeeded in actually researching the remains of ancient living beings found in the layers of our earth, and when paleontological research, which forms a bridge between history and natural science, was added to this, something extremely essential was given to this feeling and thinking of the 19th century. It was given what could be called a firm, secure support.

In Germany in particular, people felt the blessing of such a firm, secure support. In Germany, in particular, there was a great, idealistic-philosophical intellectual worldview associated with names such as Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel. There was a series of bold, outstanding attempts at thinking behind them. People now believed that these attempts at thinking had something subjective and arbitrary about them, something that everyone else could participate in or not. What Hegel and Fichte thought, they thought for themselves; others may think differently. This, it was believed, leads us into a confusion of worldviews. But that only happens when we leave the secure ground of facts, when we fail to see, for example, how the smallest organism is composed of the smallest living creatures. For then we would discover that thousands who look into the microscope see the same thing and describe the same thing. Everyone who knows the layers of the earth's formation must describe them in the same way. That is the safe, solid ground of facts.

It did not stop at saying: Those who stand on this ground of facts are safe, and we will leave everything else untouched. If we had remained on the ground of facts, confessions, even religious problems, could never have arisen. True natural science, which is based on observation and excludes the supernatural world, will always be safe, even if it is limited to the senses. It will arrive at certain facts. But these facts have had a suggestive, even hypnotic effect! From these scientific facts, a kind of atheistic or materialistic religion based on natural science, a kind of creed, has been created. Now one could say that through every creed it is possible for man to be firm and strong in life, that the right thing will be found in the course of human development, that it does not matter how man stands to the questions of the supersensible world. But it is precisely this that will become clear to us in the course of these lectures, that it is not right to think that it is indifferent how man feels and forms his mental image. We will demonstrate that feeling and mental image are a real world, and that the future not only of the earth but of the entire human race depends on how people think.

We will see how profound and true this statement is in the course of the winter lectures. Spiritual Science is not concerned with theoretical squabbling, but with working in a useful way that corresponds to human nature. Whether the individual material body consists of atoms or not, whether the individual material organism is composed of individual cells or not, whether the other bodies in the universe are made of the same substances as on Earth or not, these are all purely factual questions. But deciding these factual questions never says anything about the fate of what we call the soul or spirit in human beings. And if we stick to stating and describing the facts and do not cross this boundary into the realm of the soul, then there can be no conflict between natural science and spiritual science. But it did not stop there. Theories were developed and mental images constructed with which no soul being, no spiritual existence can be reconciled.

We need only look back at a few decades of development. Today, it is almost forgotten how the so-called theory of force and matter emerged in the 19th century; but it would be good, especially for those outside the Spiritual Science, to consider the actual reason for the theory of force and matter.

Let us imagine the image of the dry theory of force and matter as it was at that time. Philosophically, it emerged from what the facts of natural science had brought to light. It had been discovered that human beings consisted of individual cells. Chemical and physical processes had been discovered, and it was said that all our bodies consisted of molecules and atoms, and that the phenomena around us arose through the interaction and movement of atoms. Those who are now in their forties and fifties and have completed their academic education vividly remember the time when the so-called heat theory dominated everything. The great discoveries in the field of thermodynamics had reached such a stage that people had in their minds the mental image of a gas consisting of millions of tiny particles, molecules and atoms, which were in an infinitely complex motion, colliding and rebounding, thereby producing the phenomena of heat. What was heat? Nothing more than the result of what exists out there in space as a manifold interplay of atoms moving and colliding in disorder. At that time, it was stated bluntly: what you perceive as heat is nothing more than a movement performed by the smallest particles of matter, and the degree of heat depends on the strength of the collisions and the intensity of the movement. Thus, for the theory of heat, there was nothing in the outside world but swirling atoms, and what was meant by the word “heat” was a subjective sensation, an effect on the human organism or on the brain, which was also imaged in a material way. But not only heat, everything was imaged as such a movement of atoms! That must be noted. For once one arrives at the materialistic mental image, it is like a Moloch: it devours the spiritual, just as molecules and atoms have devoured it.

If you pick up books from that time about light phenomena, you may find the dry statement: What you call red or blue is only an effect on your nerves, it is only within you. Outside in the world there is no light and no color, there is only the ether permeating the whole world, and the peculiar movement of this ether acts on you and causes the sensation of color. So objectively, outside in the world, light exists as the movement of the world ether, and what you perceive is actually nothing. — In short, the actual reality became empty space, filled with atoms in motion. It was assumed that all phenomena arose from this. Someone who wanted to express themselves radically could have said the following: Imagine all human brains were gone, what would remain? Nothing but empty space, filled with atoms, for my part with atoms of ether and weighty matter in a certain motion. But everything that is perception, sensation in you, what is smell, taste, warmth sensation, that is no longer there, that is subjective and not objective.

Only people like Bächner and Vogt in the mid-19th century showed the consequences of this assumption. In my book “Welt- und Lebensanschauungen im 19. Jahrhundert” (Worldviews and Views of Life in the 19th Century), you will find the merits of these men highlighted because they had the iron consistency to draw the conclusions of such a view. If there was nothing else outside for the phenomena of color and sound than moving atoms and molecules, then it was a natural consequence that the thinker would say: Then there is nothing else in humans either but matter, consisting of atoms and molecules that move. — It was only natural to draw the absolutely clear conclusion that Vogt drew: through the movement of brain molecules, thoughts are secreted like other things through the liver and kidneys and so on. — This statement, which caused a lot of bad blood, was basically only a consequence of assumptions that others also made, but who did not go so far. This necessarily meant that this world of atoms and molecules, which was regarded as absolute, was divided into substances that could be discovered. It was believed that all matter was merely movement and could be divided into atoms and molecules. Even living things, life itself, were regarded as nothing more than a complicated movement of atoms in living bodies. It was recognized that individual bodies could be broken down into their simple parts, water, for example, into hydrogen and oxygen, sulfuric acid into hydrogen, sulfur, and oxygen. — But now there is a limit where the research methods of chemistry do not allow further decomposition. Where does this come from? It comes from the fact that our substances are based on simple elements. There are about seventy of them, and it is said that all our substances are combinations of these seventy elements, which in turn consist of atoms and molecules.

How is water formed? By its elements, oxygen and hydrogen, which otherwise lie apart from each other, pushing into each other. This was the main basis for the materialists of the 19th century, who assumed that there was a specific number of elements. You can find them in any chemistry book: hydrogen, oxygen, carbon, sulfur, phosphorus, fluorine, chlorine, bromine, iodine, and so on. Everything living and non-living arises from the more or less complicated arrangement of molecules, and the complex that is called the human soul—everything that humans have in themselves in terms of feelings, sensations, mental images, ideals, and so on—was also regarded as nothing more than the result of the interaction of its complexly assembled atoms and molecules. Admittedly, individuals such as Haeckel have said that it is absurd to explain what we call the soul as merely the result of the interaction of inanimate small atoms. Haeckel therefore formed the view that the atom itself has a soul. He believes that all these atoms that make up such an organism have a small soul and that the many small souls make up the human soul.

Well, it is probably the boldest, most adventurous superstition to speak of such an atomic soul! This is the beginning of a chapter of scientific superstition that then leads into what is called the cell soul, soul cell, and the like. To pursue this further would take us too far. For us, it is a matter of characterizing the meaning and spirit of natural science as it has presented itself. But we look back to the time when a kind of materialistic creed was attached to the scientific suggestion. This has truly enormous spiritual consequences. Those who do not take these matters seriously can easily overlook them. But it is true that this scientific creed excludes any independence of the soul and spirit, that it excludes any talk of spirit and soul. According to this view, what the human soul experiences begins with the first activity of the organism and disappears with the decay of the organism. Human beings are nothing more than constructed machines which, during their sixty to eighty years of existence, produce phenomena such as thoughts, sensations, and feelings, and when they decay, that is the end, because all these phenomena are nothing more than the combination of molecules.

This was the thinking of Vogt and all those who drew bold, radical conclusions from the premises of natural science. Then another party entered the field of natural science. One of its members is the famous Du Bois-Reymond. He gave a significant lecture at a natural science conference in Leipzig, in which he brought up something that, basically, has been and still is the subject of much discussion. He said: We have progressed so far in natural science that a scientific ideal has developed within us, which consists of attributing everything that exists, for example, the phenomena of light, color, and sound, to the action of atoms and molecules. Everything else is appearance; but these are the realities. Everything that comes into being comes into being and exists because the atoms present in the world accumulate, collide with each other, and enter into vibrating motion. If it were possible, according to Du Bois-Reymond, to specify the corresponding motion and position of the atoms for every phenomenon, then the world would be explained scientifically. But with this scientific explanation, something is not explained and cannot be explained. Du Bois-Reymond also pointed to the teachings of the great German philosopher Leibniz. Suppose, Du Bois-Reymond explained, that you could clearly dissect and describe a human brain in all its movements, and now imagine it enlarged so that you could walk around inside it like in the machinery of a factory. Look inside the whole thing: you will see enormously complicated movements, you will find complexities that cannot be compared to anything else in the world; but you will only see movements. The transition that makes it possible to say, “I smell the scent of roses” — natural science will never be able to explain that. Here lies an insurmountable limit to knowledge. How human nature becomes conscious cannot be explained. That is why he says “ignorabimus”: we will never know. In other words, he is saying that there will never be a possibility of crossing these boundaries, that humans will never know how consciousness arises from movement.

Du Bois-Reymond presented the world with not only this one mystery, but six others as well. In “The Seven World Mysteries,” you will find that he admits to not understanding how life came into being and how the first distribution of matter came about. He admits that matter must have been distributed and intertwined from the beginning. When asked where movement comes from, he says: We can never know! Du Bois-Reymond counts all of this among the seven mysteries of the world, and in Haeckel's book “The Riddles of the Universe,” you can read that it was written as a kind of response to Du Bois-Reymond's “Seven Riddles of the World.” It goes on to say: It is true that there are seventy elements consisting of substances that are quite different in relation to the individual elements; but everything arises from the accumulation of atoms and molecules. — One thing was taken for granted: the immutability of atoms. What is an atom remains an atom. This is a statement that Büchner emphasizes again and again: The movement of atoms changes, but what is an atom of sulfur, an atom of oxygen, and so on, remains an atom of sulfur, an atom of oxygen. This is what was now proclaimed as the immutability of substances in the elements, the eternity of atoms. In “The Riddles of the Universe,” Haeckel emphasizes nothing more strongly than the eternity of matter. That was the one thing that was established. And the other thing that Du Bois-Reymond established was that there are limits to natural science: it will never be possible to understand how consciousness arises.

On the basis of these assumptions, different groups, so to speak, formed. Some said: Whatever the case may be, we will stick to our old religious beliefs. We'll let the researchers think what they want, we believe; but when it comes to science, we stick to the established facts.“ The others, who were bolder, said: ”Certainly, if what is truly real are the atoms in motion, the seventy elements and the ether atoms in between, then everything else is a phenomenon that only exists as long as a form of motion exists. — That is no longer science, that is confession! That is something that extends to everything that concerns the spiritual world, which for such a confession is nothing more than a manifestation of purely material facts.

It was already a bold venture when, at the Lübeck Natural Scientists' Conference at the end of the 1880s, the chemist Wilhelm Ostwald gave a lecture entitled “The Overcoming of Scientific Materialism.” Ostwald showed that, for logical thinking, the concept of matter does not break down into anything at all. It is very easy to develop this logical and consistent thinking: What do you see in the world? You see bodies! What are these bodies? They are something that has a certain color, a certain shine, a certain warmth, something you can hear, smell, and taste. Try to hold on to everything you perceive in such bodies. If you then take away what you perceive as smell, taste, touch, and so on, what do you have left? Absolutely nothing! From the perspective of logical thinking, a body is nothing more than a conglomerate, the sum of its properties.

What was the basis of light and color? Nothing but ether movement! The entire space was filled with ether. Anyone familiar with theoretical physics knows how to calculate ether waves and so on, and that everything found there is the result of calculations. Ether can never be the subject of direct observation. If it is supposed to produce perceptible things, how should one perceive it itself? Ether was the most fantastic idea one could possibly conceive. Thus, natural science is based on something purely imaginary. There has never been anything other than a mathematical result. The most absolute and certain thing that should exist for scientific thinking was nothing more than something calculated. In my “Philosophy of Freedom” you can read how this idea cancels itself out, so that it can be compared to Münchhausen pulling himself up by his own hair. This is made clear there. But logical reasons and real facts never have an effect on people, no matter how precise they believe themselves to be; instead, it is suggestions that have an effect. All kinds of concepts that pass through the souls through a thousand and a thousand channels have an effect. Thus, the elements and atoms had become a self-evident prerequisite even for those who had no way of understanding the matter and who did not even know why such things were accepted. It was a general suggestion.

It was during this period that one of the greatest and most beautiful advances in human research into nature took place, namely the study of living organisms, as popularized by Darwin. The beautiful, infinite wealth of facts that became known to the world was such that one had to say: Had it fallen into a spiritual age, when it was known that all material phenomena are based on spirit, then one would have found countless reasons for the workings and essence of spirit in these very facts. In the transformation and reshaping of organisms, one would have found the rule and workings of spirit. Darwinism never gave rise to materialism. The materialism that arises from the mental images I have just characterized has made Darwinism materialistic. It has also made a thinker and researcher as highly intelligent as Ernst Haeckel materialistic. While Haeckel could have achieved great things for spiritual science through his beautiful research, he was led into materialistic waters by the suggestive influences of his time.

If this were still the case today, it would be unthinkable to talk about Spiritual Science, and for the time being it is still impossible to convince those who stand on the ground of scientific explanations. They must be allowed to go their own way, and the spiritual researcher must also go his own way. If things were still the same today as they were then, one would have to say: Spiritual research can be content with itself. — But things have changed. Precisely those who have gone along with everything that is considered natural science have also been able to see how, albeit slowly, the greatest upheaval is taking place precisely in the field of natural scientific thinking. There will come a time when it will be impossible to understand how anyone could ever have thought what is still popular today. It may well seem as if natural science is triumphantly advancing in our time with this materialistic worldview, as if well-prepared experiments will succeed in creating living beings from protein in the laboratory. Then they would say that we can produce the living matter of which entire living beings are composed, and there are indeed facts that are downright delightful for the natural scientist, which show that inanimate substance can be treated with certain toxic substances, resulting in effects similar to those of poisoning. The resulting substances look like living crystals: their shape gives the impression that they are alive, even though they are not yet. So one might think that we will eventually be able to show how life and, on the other hand, the spirit arise from molecules and atoms.

That seems to be the case on the one hand. And on the other hand, what is there? Something that will have a stronger effect than anything Ostwald said against materialism from the point of view of scientific logic. Here we see how a different scientific way of thinking is slowly developing and how this is becoming a necessity. In the mid-1890s, Becquerel, the great physicist, discovered the presence of certain emissions in certain substances containing uranium. These have very specific effects, which manifest themselves in making the air electrically conductive or causing a certain change in photographic plates, such as X-rays. You know that recently such rays have also been found in connection with what is called the element radium. But as interesting as it is that there is something that was not known before, the whole nature and mode of action of these rays was so strange, so completely different from the mental images that people had previously, that many today have already come to be shaken in their view that atoms are something absolute, that they last forever and only accumulate in and on each other. We have substances that behave very strangely in the context of the world, such as radium and uranium. They emit radiation, especially radium, but their radiation is virtually inexhaustible. All this would be consistent with the old view; but the most important thing is that a substance such as radium can be made to emit radiation, that certain parts can be separated off and some retained; that, for example, there are emissions which electrify the air and which can then be separated off in such a way that their effect is visible on a photographic plate. It is possible to separate the different properties so that one has substances that no longer have the original properties. One property is taken away from one substance and given to another. You can find treatises on this subject in any bookstore today.

But that is not the important thing. What is important is that rays are endlessly separated and go out into space again. However, certain reasons force us to assume that these rays will eventually be exhausted. It can already be proven today that certain substances diminish in a short time, in a time that is almost impossible to express, but that the substances that can detach themselves are strangely transformed into completely different substances, so that for a large number of researchers, the fact is that radium emissions are transformed into what is known as helium.

We see that radium sends its emissions out into space. According to the old theory, what should happen? At most, the atoms could detach and separate if they are something unchangeable. But we see that they continuously emit radiation, and we can now assume nothing other than that the atoms decay and splinter into the smallest particles. Others show us clearly that this disintegration of atoms is possible for a large number of substances. So we see that what was considered the most permanent, the absolute — while everything else was considered only a result of it — is also disintegrating today. It is atomizing today. And there is good reason to hope that this will happen to all atoms. So what will the atom be in the future? It will be something that arises and forms. Every atom forms, has a certain lifespan, and dissolves again after a certain time. There you have what was the most solid thing for materialism, the atom, transformed into a being that arises and passes away. When we see that radium transforms into the element helium, we see that matter is transformed into matter. This leads us to conclude that the old alchemist's dream of transforming one substance into another is indeed a reality.

In some books, we already find hints that modern scientific research suggests something that alchemists dreamed of. There are already natural scientists who have made interesting observations about certain processes. In the past, it was said that there are copper salts, for example, which are composed of copper and chlorine. When these are separated, you have copper and chlorine again. This shows that the atoms are bound together, and when you separate them again, you have chlorine and copper. However, some people who have begun to think about this have noticed something essential, which the Spiritual Scientist must emphasize again and again: When you recombine the substances that you have separated as copper and chlorine, this cannot be done without generating heat. When these two substances combine, heat is released. The fact that heat appears is just as real and tangible as the combination of copper and chlorine. If you want to separate these two again, you have to add heat again. We perceive the heat. No one has ever perceived atoms and molecules. But can't we see from the phenomenon what is present? When you bring copper and chlorine together, it is as if you were squeezing out the heat, like flour from flour sacks. If you want to fill the flour sacks again, you have to put flour back into them. Heat would therefore be a filling. - We have thus attributed reality to heat and made it clear that not only must molecular effects be taken into account, but that these substances themselves are only possible through this heat.

If we now consider that the atoms are disintegrating under our hands, we must ask ourselves: Does this natural science, at its crossroads, where the atoms — hitherto the most certain thing — are disintegrating, lead us to recognize what it previously regarded only as an external expression, as an appearance? That is what natural science is leading to today! The entire atomistic theory, which has long been the foundation of natural science, is now faltering. Today, the facts are such that theories that are not based on facts must fall. Atoms and molecules are not real, but imagined. If this falls because it is itself an effect, we must ask: What is it an effect of? First, people will try to get back to the idea that something else is at the root of it. Today, they are already talking about liquid electricity. What the English minister Balfour said is very nice: When we form a mental image of atoms today, we can only say that something flows through the world like a liquid, and the atoms are in it like lumps of ice in water. — That is a beautiful mental image. But where does it lead? Try to take it further. It leads to natural science recognizing as real and actual what it previously denied, what was previously only an appearance to it. It was a strange belief that what color is and what I call red exists only in my head, that outside there are only small globules that collide and press against each other, thereby producing the sensations of light, color, and sound. These mental images will soon have to disappear through the power of facts. It will become clear that what we see and hear is reality, and that it was a fantastic fantasy to think of a material world behind this world. This material world will disintegrate and decay. What lies behind it will be recognized. Then what one experiences and can experience will have to come to the fore. Then it will be recognized that the atom can be nothing other than frozen electricity, frozen heat, frozen light. And then we will have to go even further, recognizing that everything is condensed and formed spirit. Matter does not exist! Matter is to spirit as ice is to water. Melt the ice and you have water. Dissolve matter, and it disappears as matter and becomes spirit. Everything that is matter is spirit, is the outer manifestation of spirit.

It will be a long time before we have to draw the final conclusion that it is not the eye that formed the light, but the light that formed the eye, and the sounds we hear that formed the ear. Then we will come to realize that all matter is born out of spirit, and we will transfer the true scientific facts, without logical interruption, into Spiritual Science. The most beautiful foundation for Spiritual Science will be the scientific facts. Those who stand on the spiritual-scientific point of view look with admiration at science at the crossroads. Suggestions have led them to believe that matter is the only thing that exists. They have not been content to investigate the material world, but have invented another world to go with it. That was the tragedy, the impossibility. The spiritual researcher fully recognizes the natural world that exists. The imagined and fantasized world of unchanging atoms and vibrations of the imagined ether, this dreamt and fantastical world of materialism, can never be accepted by the spiritual scientist. He rejects it as superstition. And superstition was the belief in material atoms behind our perceptions. It was said that every atom could be perceived if one had the instruments to do so. Nothing lies behind what we perceive except the spirit and the spiritual world into which we penetrate! That is what we seek behind appearances. It is not a chaotic world of atoms that we seek in the world of sensory appearances, but the world of the spirit. Those who believe they can find another material world behind external phenomena are on the wrong track. Those who still rely on this as fact today will have to correct themselves. The time will come when this fantastic superstition will be recognized as such, and when much of what is considered superstition today will prove to be true.

The correct basic principle of natural science, remaining grounded in facts, leads natural science itself to a crossroads where it becomes apparent whether the facts prove the theories right. And the facts do not prove them right; the theories vanish into thin air! What has been regarded as the most solid foundation, that from which one has sought to explain the spirit and consciousness: the element and the atom, is disintegrating. What we want is certainty, and we can only obtain it by perceiving the spirit within ourselves.

Thus, natural science will merge into Spiritual Science. Today it stands at a crossroads. Some do not yet recognize it, others can see it. The time will come when there will be a wonderful harmony between the knowledge of scientific facts and what Spiritual Science asserts. It will never assert anything that contradicts what science has found. Spiritual Science still admires the works of the spirit in materialism today, but it does not build castles in the air. Spiritual Science wants to understand the world in order to work within it. About a hundred years ago, Germany had a natural science that led full sail into the materialism of the 19th century, a natural science that began to recognize nothing but what could be seen with the eyes and touched with the hands. The result was that even what was conceived became material, concrete. The great philosophies, which moved in expressions and concepts that were not to everyone's liking, were pushed aside. However, the people who condemn Hegel and Schelling generally understand nothing about these minds, which saw so deeply into the world that hardly any of those who today believe themselves to be beyond them can even imagine it. Admittedly, they operated with highly sublimated concepts, thin concepts.

Goethe stood right in the middle between these two parties. He could therefore foresee how natural science would sail into materialism, and on the other hand he found an opportunity to delve into the problems and build a bridge between religion and natural science. That is why he was able to say so beautifully that the time would come when philosophy and natural science would unite. But, he added, for a while they would still have to go their separate ways. They have gone their separate ways, without one current understanding the other. Today we also have two currents: materialism, which has outlived itself, which through its own method sees its most solid, most absolute foundation crumbling in its hands, which is destroying itself; and a philosophy that leads to theosophy or Spiritual Science; which seeks to present not the abstract spiritual, but the concrete spiritual, the facts of the higher world of humanity, which will no longer exist as abstract Spiritual Science, but as concrete Spiritual Science.

In the not too distant future, we will witness that beautiful alliance between the scientific and spiritual-scientific view. We will see how scientific facts will be useful for the spiritual view and how the spiritual view will be useful for science. That is why the bridge is being built. The human spirit can only flourish when its modes of activity are in harmony with each other. The spirit would be crippled if natural science remained without Spiritual Science and Spiritual Science had to content itself with the thought: You cannot bring natural science over to the spiritual realm after all. — But the course of world development will bring peace. It will build a bridge between faith and knowledge. It will bring infinite progress and harmony between faith and knowledge.

How many people today long for external peace, external harmony, and external happiness! But everything external is a manifestation of the internal, and external human life can only be a consequence of internal life. A happy external human life will arise when there are hopeful souls who are confident about the future. They will know how to establish true social peace, and external peace will come from inner peace. Therefore, it seems important to consider this natural science at a crossroads and to show how one will lead to a dead end, while the other must clearly lead into the realms that are also those of Spiritual Science. In this way, they will work together in the future, and the structure of the world will be enriched from two sides. There will be a great, perfect harmony, and this will be the inner harmony of the soul in human beings, which is the ultimate goal of Spiritual Science.