Where and How Does One Find the Spirit?

GA 57 — 10 December 1908, Berlin

Superstition from the Perspective of Spiritual Science

Some time ago, when I was staying in a small town in Germany, I made the acquaintance of a poet, a playwright, and during the time we knew each other, he was busy finishing a drama. One afternoon, as I noticed during a visit I had to make, he was working on the completion of his drama as if powered by steam. It was impossible to talk to him, because his only concern was to get the job done as quickly as possible. In the evening, shortly before eight o'clock, I went for a walk. I met my good playwright as he was racing along on his bicycle at breakneck speed; he was rushing to the post office and was unstoppable. But I was interested—you will soon see why—in why he was rushing to the post office so quickly on that particular day. It was shortly before eight o'clock, when the post office closed. When he returned, I asked him why he had been in such a hurry to get to the post office today, and he told me that there was a special reason.

You will understand this reason best if I first mention that, according to a fashion that was just beginning at the time but quickly became dominant, the playwright in question was one of the freest spirits of the present day and expressed what he described as his worldview in the freest phrases. He was very advanced. With the following addition, I would like to show that I am not being indiscreet. If he were here, he would be quite pleased to hear me recount this story. Now we can form an opinion about what he said when he came out of the post office: "I went to the post office so quickly because I wanted to mail my play today. Today is the last lucky day. If I had waited until tomorrow, I would have run the risk of the theater management rejecting the drama. “Have you actually finished it?” I asked, because it seemed impossible to me. “No,” he said, “but I have written a letter asking them to send the drama back to me so that I can rework the last scenes.” So — that was the free spirit!

I had to remember a lady who had been working on a dress many years ago and wanted to have it finished and wear it on Thursday. If she had worn it for the first time on Friday, it would certainly have been to her misfortune. We don't usually take into account, to the extent that we should, what it means for our feelings and thoughts in the present when a free spirit carries out a mission, like the poet rushing to the post office to send the unfinished drama and then have it sent back so that he could finish it. You see that what is called superstition can, in fact, be something quite remarkable. It may be something that is completely banished from a person's worldview, insofar as he expresses it, and he may vehemently protest against having anything to do with such superstition. But when it comes down to it, there are back doors through which this superstition can creep in quite easily.

We live in a time when all kinds of superstitions are talked about in the most dismissive way. At the same time, however, it happens in the present that those who talk about superstition sometimes have no idea through which back door superstition is creeping in, especially in their own lives. For it does not have to be an old form of superstition, as in the case of this playwright speeding along on his bicycle. All kinds of new forms of superstition can also arise. And it is perhaps precisely those who speak of the old forms of superstition with a shrug of the shoulders who are most exposed to some new forms of superstition. It may be difficult to come to terms with these concepts of superstition in our time, because in our time there is such a strong tendency to consider everything one believes oneself to be the only reasonable thing and to deny everything one does not believe oneself. Thus, this way of thinking in our time will open the door to many new forms of superstition. Therefore, it will probably not be possible to continue with the common talk about superstition if we want to thoroughly engage with what may be called superstition from a spiritual scientific point of view.

Many old traditions have come down to our time, many things that our ancestors believed, many things that were considered strictly scientific by our ancestors and the scholars of ancient times and which today are relegated to the realm of superstition. We ask ourselves: Shouldn't those who shrug their shoulders at the old traditions, which today seem scientifically advanced, be able to entertain the thought that what is believed today may be erroneous? Could it not be that a few centuries later, our descendants will regard this as the most ridiculous superstition? Certainly, those who believe they stand on the firm ground of natural science will, for example, be easily inclined to dismiss as superstition anything that is expressed from a standpoint that assumes a spiritual world alongside the physically perceptible one. On the other hand, it is easy to understand that, perhaps just as unfounded — this cannot be denied — the superstition of natural science is challenged and characterized from a theosophical or spiritual scientific point of view. The fact that one party or the other describes or perceives this or that as superstition can never be a characteristic of the actual nature of superstition. Many things that have come down to us from ancient times show us that when it is really a matter of tangible superstition, it is much less a question of human logic and human reason than of human habits of thought, of what people have been accustomed to think.

How much of what passes through our popular literature and daily press today seems to run counter to enlightened thinking! For example, there is a city in Germany—not far from Berlin—where you would search in vain for a taxi numbered 13. The person who used to have it no longer got any passengers. It was omitted, the number 13. In hotels, too, you can often find that the number 13 is missing from the room numbers. You can also find in bathing establishments, where there are only enlightened doctors, that the number 13 is omitted from the bathing cabins because no one wants to go in there. And this is right in the middle of and alongside the thinking of today's literature and daily press. But anyone who is even a little bit of a soul reader will find that superstition is something that creeps very quietly into people's thoughts and feelings.

There is a popular little book about superstition, which contains some sensible and some absurd things. But then, after the author slaughters astrology, astronomy, and other forms of superstition, he argues that in earlier times there were astrologers who drew up horoscopes for people and determined their fate from the moment of birth. To his knowledge, such astrologers no longer exist; midwives now perform this task. Not in Berlin, but in the rest of Germany it happens. — That is a sentence that actually appears in this little book about superstition. I don't think anyone can describe it as anything other than another superstition, because otherwise they would have to say that there are many astrologers today who draw up horoscopes. What the man says is completely untrue; it is therefore pure superstition. Any investigation could show him the opposite of his claim. Similar things creep into people's consciousness every day, even if they are less obvious and it would be considered paradoxical if I spoke of superstition.

For some time now, a view has emerged in certain circles of scientific observation that everything that occurs in the mental and spiritual realm of human beings as memory must be sought in physical causes, and possibly physical causes in a very specific area, the sexual realm. Not only that, but there are numerous writings and brochures that examine the great minds in terms of their mental state. Until recently, a scholar from Leipzig took the special trouble to examine a whole series of great minds, including Goethe, Schopenhauer, Scheffel, and Conrad Ferdinand Meyer, to determine to what extent they were actually afflicted with this or that mental illness and whether their genius was related to this or that mental illness. On the other hand, a person's susceptibility to physical illness is linked to heredity, and hardly a single event in our daily lives escapes such an interpretation. We are dealing here with a superstition that is just now emerging, but which is plaguing our education. Future generations will not understand how it was possible for science to indulge in such superstition for a time. And if our descendants were to repay us in kind, judging what science believes and teaches today in the same way that we judge what our ancestors believed in earlier times, then those who are active in this field today would come off very badly. So we can already see, by looking at the facts impartially, that the old forms of superstition are rightly being thrown out the window, and on the other hand, new forms are creeping in that are simply not recognized as such.

Anyone who is a little familiar with science knows how many demons of superstition creep in here and there, which fortunately only have a short life span, but can be no less harmful for that. Fashion trends are sometimes not far removed from what can be called superstition. I would like to give an example of this. During my work as a teacher, I was able to make many observations that were only possible because I was able to cultivate a large field in relation to human development. More than twenty years ago, it was customary to give small children – around two, three or four years old – red wine, or wine in general. It was possible to see how, due to a certain fashion trend in medicine, children of this age were given a glass of red wine at every meal. Anyone who observes such things may be observing too short a period of time in relation to the effect of these things. If you compare people who are now twenty years old, who were children between the ages of two and five at that time, with others who did not receive wine for strengthening at that time, the difference between those who received wine and those who did not is clearly evident in their current nervous constitution — as one might express it in materialistic terms today.

At that time, there was a superstition that wine contained a strength. It was a fashionable superstition. This opinion was propagated in the same way as any other superstitious opinion is propagated. Now we can disregard all this and move on to some other areas where superstition is no longer talked about, although the psychological situation in people is exactly the same. If we were to talk about the strange idols, fetishes, and slogans that people pursue in social and political life, just as others pursue certain idols in other areas, and the amount of superstition contained therein, then you would see that when the amount of superstition is not lived out in one area, it transfers to another area. So if people rise above superstition in one area, it quickly finds expression in another area where it is not so noticeable.

Now that we have characterized the situation a little, we can perhaps try to get to the actual source of superstition, to the peculiar state of mind in which a person finds themselves that we might describe as superstitious. First and foremost, it must be said that a person's bias in one direction or another plays the greatest possible role in the development of this state of mind. The same fact will be interpreted in one way or another, depending on a person's way of thinking. Let us try to visualize a specific case. The now much-mentioned French physiologist Richet had the following experience: He was walking down the street, and on the other side of the street there was another person walking. At that moment, he had the thought: It is strange that Professor Lacassagne is in Paris today. But it is not so strange after all. Two weeks ago, Professor Lacassagne sent me an article and wrote that he would be here in two weeks. Richet was about to cross the street to greet him when he remembered that he wanted to go to the editorial office, and that the other man would probably go there too. At that very moment, it occurred to him how similar the professor looked to an ophthalmologist he knew. Richet went to the editorial office, and an hour later Professor Lacassagne appeared there. Richet said to him, “I saw you on the street an hour ago.” The professor replied, “That's not possible. I wasn't there an hour ago, but somewhere else entirely.” There is no doubt that Richet could not have seen him. It is peculiar how two people often relate to each other when they have two different ways of thinking. Richet saw a person and had the distinct impression that he was seeing Professor L. But when he saw Professor L. in front of him, it seemed quite foolish to him to have mistaken another person, who was tall and blond, for Professor L., who is of medium height and has a dark mustache. Richet is a person who believes in occult phenomena and telepathy. He told himself that Professor L. was in Paris and had thought about going to the editorial office—and at that moment, he saw this thought through telepathy!

A Danish researcher who wrote a book on “Superstition and Magic,” Lehmann, thinks differently. He says: "Richet believes in telepathy; that is why he sees something mystical in this very ordinary experience, which is supposed to prove the correctness of his belief, but in doing so he completely overlooks the circumstances that explain the matter in a perfectly natural way. I have experienced several such cases myself, and since I do not believe in thought transmission, I have always sought and found an obvious cause for the phenomenon."

Here you have two people who assess the same event in very different ways depending on their way of thinking. I myself would agree with the Danish researcher Lehmann, because those who approach occult matters with inadequate means are most likely to overshoot the mark and, as in this case, use it to explain all kinds of things in the world. But you can see from this how the bias in which a person finds themselves with regard to their way of thinking causes them to color another person they see in front of them in such a way.

Now think how things are reflected in the human soul when they are not thoroughly understood. This brings us to what must be said in a spiritual scientific sense about the actual nature of superstition. Today you can read countless writings and discussions about the superstition of alchemy, the ill-fated art of making gold, to which so many have devoted themselves. Those who wrote about it were, for the most part — according to today's understanding — extraordinarily capable, positive researchers in other respects. With their writings, in which the art of making gold is communicated in one way or another, they occupy an outstanding place. But what you read there seems to you for the most part to be the most utter madness, the most absolute nonsense. And besides, in numerous cases it appears to be such an obvious hoax that it is very easy to see how, at that time, when people believed such things, error upon error was spread in this field. Even though chemistry developed out of alchemy, we must be infinitely glad that we finally have true chemical science, in contrast to those fables and errors to which our ancestors devoted themselves in the field of alchemy. Now, perhaps the easiest way to understand what is a deception here is to consider a few simple cases to show how this played out. Let us now disregard the number thirteen, but you know that for some people the number seven evokes something horrible, that it is considered by some to be a lucky number, but sometimes also an unlucky number, with which magical effects are associated. I need only mention something that can lead you to what is associated with the number seven. I do not want to mention only that the number seven is also found in purely physical nature—seven colors, seven tones, and so on—which has already been mentioned here many times and from which one can conclude that this or that is connected with the number seven. But let us leave that aside today. Let us draw attention to something else.

There is a disease, pneumonia, which grows for seven days and then subsides. The crisis only occurs on the seventh day, so that anyone treating such a patient must pay particular attention to this physical rhythm. So we have linked a very specific process to the number seven, something that can be observed in every single case. Now, today's materialistic science does not accept any explanation of this process. If we were to trace medicine back to ancient times, in which you should by no means see it as merely a sum of errors, as you find it presented today in the history of medicine, it would become clear that the ancient physicians and naturalists knew how all life proceeds in a certain rhythm, that there is a connection in rhythm between what happens in human beings and some of what happens outside in the great nature, in the macrocosm. Because human beings are actually born out of the macrocosm and their lives proceed in certain external processes, human life also proceeds in a certain rhythm. Anyone who knows the rhythm of human life knows very well that in an organ such as the lung there is an up-and-down rhythm lasting twenty-eight days, that is, four times seven days, in which certain functional strengths and weaknesses occur. Once this basis is recognized, it is not surprising that lung disease becomes particularly dangerous when it collides, so to speak, with the rhythm that characterizes all life phenomena. In short, if we were to look into this from the perspective of spiritual research, with a deeper understanding of human nature and not in any superstitious way, but in a way that can be described as strictly lawful, we would see why a particular crisis for pneumonia is ripe after seven days. But in our materialistic age, people do not want to deal with such things, which can only be pursued by means of Spiritual Science.

There was a time when doctors not only knew that pneumonia goes through this crisis on the seventh day, but also knew why this is so. They knew how this was connected with the healthy rhythm. But this spiritual science knowledge has been forgotten in everyday life. The actual law is no longer known; it has been lost to humanity. All that remained was the dry number seven. Ultimately, no one knew anymore why pneumonia decides to show something very special after seven days. And then, of course, one takes such a thing out without being able or willing to understand it further. One applies it because one sees something special in the number itself. One says to oneself that something special is connected with the number seven. Somehow one can apply it here or there. As long as one sticks to outward appearances and does not look into the matter, one has no reason to apply it here or there. So you apply it where there seems to be a reason to do so. And above all, there is a human law at play here that is only too understandable: in all cases where you have established such a thing out of abstraction, where you apply it and see that it fits, that's how it goes; but if it doesn't fit, you overlook it.

The same is true of some farmers' rules. Anyone who grew up in the countryside will know exactly how the first thunderstorm in spring can be used to predict this or that. If the prediction comes true, it is accepted as law; if it does not come true, it is forgotten. Nevertheless, some farmers' rules contain profound wisdom, and it would be worth exploring some of them for their deeper meaning. Then again, it is important not to apply the purely superficial aspects of superstition, but to really get to the heart of the matter. Certainly, I also liked it when, among other farmers' rules, this one was repeated: If the rooster crows on the dung heap, the weather will change, or it will remain as it is. This shows a healthy trait that must be individualized rather than generalized. And that is the essence of what should matter in our mental and spiritual development.

In a similar way, though not so transparent, many things have happened in relation to alchemy. Some of you who have listened to these lectures in previous years will know that when the Rosicrucian initiation and the philosopher's stone were discussed, it was shown how, in the real Spiritual Science of all ages, the philosopher's stone is understood to mean something that, when we delve into it, can certainly exist beyond our current modern thinking. Among the various methods that lead people to higher knowledge, namely to Rosicrucian initiation, there is also one that is called the “preparation of the philosopher's stone.” This preparation of the philosopher's stone is understood to be something connected with the regulation of the breathing process. Among the various methods by which human beings work their way up into the higher worlds is a certain awareness and breathing regulated according to spiritual laws at certain times. Those who become disciples of Spiritual Science in the positive sense breathe according to very specific instructions.

This breathing has a very specific effect on the entire organism, which external science can no longer investigate because it knows nothing about the matter. Through the instrument of their own body, human beings develop something very specific within themselves, something that really occurs in their lives, even in their bodies, and which then enables them to see the world in a completely different way, because breathing has an effect that is expressed even in the mineral composition of the physical body. Thus, by regulating the rhythm of breathing in the human being himself, through his own instrument, we have created something that has been called the philosopher's stone or the wise stone. It is what is necessary to create in the human organism if the human being is to grow into the higher worlds. The process can be described precisely, but it cannot be communicated to just anyone. For, by its very nature, only those who do so in a completely selfless manner, without any personal considerations, can apply this process.

Once, when I was speaking in a small circle about how this could already be done today, as I would also indicate without reservation in one of my lectures — only the last part could not be mentioned, because it would require referring to spiritual scientific training itself — someone said afterwards: But it would be quite good if this method of creating a special mineral in humans were made public. For this mineral would be very useful if it could be produced in large quantities. I had to reply: The fact that you ask this question is the reason why it must not be made public. As long as such questions are asked, it is impossible for it to be made public. You can find it in literature, but it is veiled there. It is only understandable to those who have learned the mode of expression through the preparatory school. “Mercury,” “philosopher's stone,” “silver” mean something completely different. And when one speaks of the combination of mercury and its addition to some other product, ‘mercury’ and “philosopher's stone” mean something completely different here than the presentation of external things.

However, these things exist in literature. Those who have no idea what the expressions mean in this case, and in particular the symbols associated with them, simply take the matter literally. Taken literally, however, it is utter nonsense. For example, a Danish researcher on superstition happened to read something about strange personalities of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, about Raimundus Lullus and others. Everyone is free to consider him a swindler, a charlatan, or the greatest sage of his time, depending on how they understand him. Now, it is said that Raimundus Lullus succeeded, after thirty years of study—an uncomfortable undertaking for most people—in finding the philosopher's stone, and that this enabled him to make gold by using part of the stone to transform a certain amount of mercury into a powder that still had all the properties of the stone. If you take a small amount of this, it in turn acquires the property of transforming mercury. A small amount is then taken from this, and so on, until finally gold is produced.

If someone were to try this, taking what they find in the book, mixing certain substances and adding them to mercury, it would be the most absolute nonsense imaginable. Everyone has every right to laugh at it. The Danish researcher does just that. He laughs at it. But anyone who understands how to interpret the expressions will find that the “philosopher's stone” is just as present in literature as it is in the writings of Raimundus Lullus, and that is how he achieved his goal. The wonderful thing about this is that the statement has been known for centuries and is still true today. This shows those who know something about it how magnificently correct it is. For them, it is then clear that Raimundus Lullus truly possessed the soul of one of the wisest men of his age. Those who, on the other hand, cling only to the outward expression are really talking nonsense.

This nonsense was also made by many who believed that the wise alchemist had imitated external gold, and they also lost their minds, although I believe that a little of it was already lost when they began the story. Psychiatrists, however, claim that they lost their minds as a result. They may have lost their fortune, because in the end they did not find gold. Therefore, one cannot entirely blame the writer who describes alchemy as nonsense, because — what he could understand of it is indeed nonsense. In fact, however, no nonsense is so great that it cannot be believed by one person or another.

This is related to an addiction that you can experience every day in the field of Spiritual Science. You will easily experience the following: if you confront this or that person with a natural phenomenon that needs to be explained, and try to explain such a phenomenon in connection with its spiritual background, and claim to trace an everyday phenomenon back to its spiritual basis, then you will not arouse any particular interest in most people of our time. Many people today are not looking for the explainable, but for the inexplicable. They are happy when they can find something that remains inexplicable to them. Tell someone that something has happened here or there for which no one knows the explanation, and they will be satisfied. People want to be pointed directly to the inexplicable. They do not want to penetrate what is offered to them, but to increase the miraculous. Try to explain something to a person about the development of plants, enabling them to grasp it from the foundations of development and look deeply into nature, then be led from the sensory, where one touches the spirit at one end, deep into the spiritual – then they cannot believe in a spiritual world! But tell such a person that a hand has been lost from a statue, found in another city, and replaced, and they will say: No human being can explain that, therefore I believe in a spiritual world. — It is so that people want to remain ignorant of the spirit because they believe that it cannot be fathomed. In doing so, however, they open the door to superstition in all corners.

If people do not strive for impartiality with what is available to them in their reason and logical thinking, then the moment they do not want to rely on this, as soon as something occurs that is different from what they are used to, they are already at the mercy of all kinds of superstition. For example, one could see — forgive me for saying this, even though I am fully grounded in Spiritual Science and theosophy — how often it is precisely those who are grounded in theosophy who reject what could lead to enlightenment in the spiritual scientific sense. When the theosophical movement began in the world, there were two significant human personalities who first revealed this wisdom to humanity. Those who received this wisdom did not generally behave as... [gap]. This has been characterized countless times here. For how could one have behaved toward a truth that had been received from an unknown source? The first mediators of the theosophical worldview said: We have received the wisdom that we have entrusted to this or that book from personalities who remain in the background. — One could have said the following: Well, these are honorable people who bring this wisdom, but we want to examine this wisdom ourselves." It is always emphasized that only those who have acquired special abilities can research the higher worlds. But when wisdom is communicated in such a way that it can be tested, what then? In many cases, the testing of wisdom has not taken place. Some have accepted the matter in good faith because they have been told that it came from higher individualities. Others, however, said: Whether it is well-founded or not is irrelevant; what matters is whether the higher individualities exist at all; and if we do not know for sure whether these higher individualities exist or not, then we reject the whole of theosophy.

But could there never have been anyone who said to himself: Whatever the origin of this wisdom may be, I will examine it to see whether and how it fits in with the phenomena of life, whether it proves itself true in life; above all, I will examine it to see how it relates to what the common worldview, based on positive science, gives us. One might then perhaps come to the conclusion: How poor is what the worldview based on positive science gives us compared to what has come from theosophy. One does not have to accept it on faith, but one can examine and understand it, and upon examination it will become clear whether those from whom this wisdom has come are greater than those who stand on the ground of so-called scientific facts. We have no reason to assume that H. P. Blavatsky received her worldview from a cloudburst. Wisdom that has been found to be reasonable must come from somewhere. And whether it can be called great depends on what emerges when this worldview is compared with one that is already recognized as great. —

Such an examination would have been reasonable. But that is the only thing that truly honors the human spirit: not accepting something in good faith, nor rejecting it in good faith, but examining it without prejudice. Certainly, not everyone can do research. Research is for those who can develop their mental powers in a special way. But anyone can examine something impartially. If only they did not seek the inexplicable instead of the explicable and were satisfied in spirit when they found the inexplicable. As long as one tells them to make an effort to fathom the spirit, they do not want to go along with it. But when one tells them something that is completely incomprehensible, they go along with it because it is more convenient. This is particularly characteristic of what exists as a state of mind for people.

There is another case that has occurred. Again, I am not speaking as if there is any truth behind it, but I am speaking of the human state of mind that has come to light in the process. It was said that in certain parts of Asia there are people who can do the following: they spread out a cloth, take a rope, throw the rope into the air, let a small child climb up it until it disappears from view; they then climb up themselves, and after a while the child's limbs fall down in pieces. Then the fakir comes down, takes a sack, puts the limbs in it, shakes the whole thing, then shakes out the sack, and — the child is completely restored. I do not want to decide what is behind this, but only to talk about the nature of people's superstitions. At first, the process seems to people to be something that is difficult to believe. A certain Mr. Ellmore wrote about it in the Chicago Tribune, and a painter drew strange illustrations that accurately depicted the various stages: the rope thrown up, the child climbing up, and so on. S. Ellmore himself also provided photographs that were particularly cleverly arranged, because you could only see the fakir and the spectators, who were looking up and down. But you couldn't see the rest. $. Ellmore provided an explanation for the whole thing, so that it was easy to understand. He believed that the person performing the act must be a very skilled hypnotist, who was so attuned to suggestion that he could suggest the process in question to an entire audience. People then told themselves that the process was not superstition, but suggestion, and it seemed explainable that everyone was hypnotized. However, one person found this suggestive process even more improbable than the original event. They thought that there might be things in the world that cannot be explained by our laws, and said to themselves: We already know a lot about suggestion, but there is still much to learn about the powers of the soul. This person then turned to S. Ellmore to find out where he had witnessed such a mental image. Now the truth came to light. S. Ellmore explained that the whole story was fictitious, as his pseudonym already indicated: S. Ellmore = sell more (deceive more). He had dressed up the story in this way because he could not believe the original event, but found the form of suggestion acceptable to the modern consciousness.

So you see that it really depends on the state of mind, on what is going on in our own souls, if we want to gain some understanding of the concept and nature of superstition. Whether something is right or wrong must ultimately be decided by completely different factors. But what can protect us all from any aberrations that become superstition can only be the pursuit of real knowledge, of seeing through things. Those who do not really want to penetrate the depths of things will always fall prey to superstition in some field. The fact is that this desire for a certain amount of superstition is very much alive. And with that I am expressing the basic law of superstition, as I indicated earlier, namely: as long as human beings remain only in the observation of the physical environment, as long as they do not want to advance to Spiritual Science, to real knowledge of the spiritual origins of things, as long as they live, a certain need for superstition lives within them.

Take, for example, a modern-day physician: even if he rejects all forms of superstition in his thinking, anyone who is unbiased can easily prove how he amply satisfies his need for superstition in other forms. This is the law of compensation in human souls. From this you can see how characteristic this law is.

Here you have a person who certainly wants to transcend ancient superstition in every respect, but how much superstition does Haeckel record in his “Lebenswunder” (Wonders of Life) and “Welträtsel” (Mysteries of the World)! Those who know me know that I recognize Haeckel in everything because he is a great researcher. Those who know me also know that I always point out the positive things Haeckel has accomplished. But because he has discarded the old superstitions and does not want to go back to the spiritual background of things, he applies them to another field. There he becomes the most superstitious person in the other field. In the realm of force and matter, as he conceives it in his mental image, atoms dance and whirl. He calls this his God. He attributes to the dancing and whirling of atoms the ability to create conditions that represent simple living beings, and that these in turn combine to form more complex structures, which ultimately come together to form the human brain. Everything that man can then feel and want, all ideals and morals, indeed all religions themselves, are then, for those who can judge the matter impartially, only the dance of atoms. For him, there is no difference between the dance of atoms and the great fetishes of African savages. Whether the African savage worships his wooden block and regards it as a god, or whether Haeckel lets his little atoms dance and regards them as little gods—in terms of superstition, there is no difference between the two. Both superstitions stand on the same footing. There was a time—in a sense, it is already behind us—when one could see this superstition gradually emerging. Over time, new discoveries were made in natural science, particularly in chemistry. New compounds became explainable by recording the differences in weight of the smallest particles in space. Many things were explained by the law of atomic weights. It seemed a fruitful idea to construct such an atomic theory. Later, people forgot that this atomic theory had been constructed in the mind. Atoms became real idols that were worshipped.

As a schoolboy, I was made aware of the superstition surrounding atoms by a school principal. A long time ago, when the new atomic theories emerged, a school principal calculated all phenomena in physics and chemistry as movements. He did not yet calculate thinking, but he did make calculations that extended into chemical phenomena. The little book that contained these things is called: “The general movement of matter as the root cause of all natural phenomena.” This was something that could fascinate anyone who looked into it. I would like to give this little book to everyone. However, it has not been available in bookstores for a long time. It may still be found in libraries. Here we see superstition emerging in the omnipotence of the atomic vortex.

Now we have seen all possible forms of superstition in science appear in turn. Just think that we actually have a certain direction in science that speaks of the omnipotence of natural breeding. Everywhere you can see that everything that speaks for one theory or another is gathered together once the researcher in question is fascinated by a buzzword that acts like an idol on him. We see similar cases in our own time, if we are willing to keep an eye out for them. At the beginning of this lecture, I mentioned how things creep up on us that will reveal themselves in the not too distant future as terrible superstitions of the times.

Where, then, is the cause of superstition itself? There is always the possibility that superstition will take the place of what alone can prevail as a fruitful thought, as a fruitful opinion. When the original thought, the original opinion, is forgotten and only the outward appearance is taken, then we forget the essential, as in the case of the crisis that occurs after seven days in pneumonia. If the number seven is taken out of context and held onto, there is a possibility that this will turn into superstition. There you have the reason why ancient sages were able to demonstrate great natural phenomena.

This is what Spiritual Science will bring to human beings: that they will not seek the inexplicable, but will want to seek the explanation. Otherwise, if they remain in the realm of the environment and do not want to rise to the higher standpoint from which they can see what is justified or unjustified in one area or another, then they will only find themselves in a rearrangement of superstition. Those who remain in the physical world leave one superstition and enter into another. Only when he rises above himself and above superstition does he see what is right in both. Jean Jacques Rousseau already noted that it makes no difference whether one is more or less intelligent. He said: The clever and the intelligent have their prejudices just as much as the stupid, even if the clever and intelligent know more and have more prejudices than the stupid. The stupid, on the other hand, cling all the more tenaciously to the little they know. This is a law that anyone who observes human life can confirm in numerous cases. Thus, we see that, fundamentally, there can be no cure for superstition other than rising to a higher point of view, from which the world becomes comprehensible in its spiritual foundations.

Many superstitions will still arise, and many are creeping into our thinking today. We are on a path of development where people actually have no real sense of removing superstition from public life, unless it has been passed down from ancient times. Oh, what an old story tells us is certainly true in many areas of our time. Call it an anecdote, but it is true, and it represents the truth better than many other things. In a certain region of Spain, on the border between two provinces, an epidemic once broke out. It was near two universities. One university had a medical faculty that was particularly enthusiastic about bloodletting. The other university was enthusiastic about opposing bloodletting. And now there were two doctors in the unfortunate area where the epidemic broke out. One was trained at one university, the other at the other. One prescribed remedies, and the other performed bloodletting. It turned out that one doctor kept all his patients alive, while the other doctor's patients all died. Even though one doctor kept all his patients alive and the other doctor's patients all died, both were proceeding correctly according to their theory; one was wrong in practice, but correct in theory.

When you hear a story like this, it may seem silly. But when you see things day after day, you realize that the anecdote is not wrong, and you even find it necessary. Therefore, when talking about superstition, it can only be said that Spiritual Science truly has the least reason to propagate this or that superstition. It is based on the principle that the spiritual can be researched and that there are ways and means of penetrating into the spiritual world, through which one can view the world from a higher perspective. This leads people beyond superstition and also beyond the damage that superstition can cause in human life. What applies here can be expressed in a quote from Goethe that reveals the truth in a comprehensive, yet simple way: “Wisdom is eternal, and it will prevail, and it will elevate humanity in all of us amid the most diverse turmoil.”