Results of Spiritual Research

GA 62 — 12 December 1912, Berlin

6. Natural Science and Spiritual Research

Among the accusations that are currently being made against spiritual science and spiritual research, one of the most significant is that these spiritual science or spiritual research would be in opposition to the well-established results of natural science, the natural science that is rightly called the pride of our present spiritual life, indeed of our entire present cultural life. Should the accusation be substantiated that spiritual science and spiritual research intend to oppose these established results of natural science, then, it can be said, spiritual research would truly be in a bad way. Not only would its possibility of finding access to the understanding and heart of the modern human being be in doubt, but its very justification would be in question. Therefore, in addition to everything that has been said in the previous lectures about the relationship between spiritual research and natural science, today this particular episodic consideration may be added about the relationship between spiritual research and natural science, before the next time we look at a figure who is only accessible to spiritual science in the eminent sense: the figure of Jakob Böhme.

Spiritual research, as it is meant here in these reflections, undoubtedly presents itself as something that often appears new in the face of the habits of thought and spiritual aspirations of our time, as something that falls outside the usual ways of thinking, the modes of representation of contemporary spiritual life. And the question suggests itself: how is it that precisely at a time when the educated person who is interested in spiritual questions at all places all hope in what science can give – how is it that at such a time this spiritual science wants to gain recognition, that it places itself in the middle of the triumph of scientific thinking?

Perhaps the easiest way to answer this question is to take a brief look at intellectual life in the last third or perhaps the second half of the nineteenth century. This was the time when not only did scientific research rise to its zenith, experiencing victory after victory, but it was also the time when hopes grew ever greater that all possible information about the meaning of what can be called spirit and spiritual life would come from the natural sciences. Anyone who was fully aware of the intellectual life in the last third of the nineteenth century, or let us say, anyone who was able to let the great hopes of this intellectual life of the nineteenth century take effect on them, for example in the eighties nineteenth century, could not fail to notice how questions were coming from all areas of scientific research, questions that seemed to force all human thought to be placed on a new footing that broke with the old. Only one point will be emphasized. In the 1770s and 1780s, anyone interested in intellectual life could become acquainted with what was more or less new in the field of natural science at the time, for example, the mechanical theory of heat. Those who were familiar with natural science recognized that something like the mechanical theory of heat was an enormous achievement of the human mind. But perhaps we are less interested in the point of view of such a person than in the point of view of someone for whom the question of spiritual knowledge was of primary importance. What did such a person see?

Such a person might have noticed that among the many sensory impressions that assail the human being when using his senses, there is the sensation of what is called heat or, let us say, heat and cold. Like color, like light and like sound, warmth is, after all, also a sense impression. Through his senses, man feels that the world around him is in a certain state of warmth, and he perceives this warmth first as an impression on his sensation. At that time, as has just been mentioned, it was considered a fact proven by research at that time that what man calls warmth, what he believes to be the case, and what he perceives as being spread out in space, permeates bodies and affects beings, that this objectively out there in nature is nothing other than the movement of the smallest parts of the body. So you could say to yourself: When you put your hand into lukewarm water and perceive a certain state of warmth, this sensation of a state of warmth is only an appearance. What appears to you as an immediate impression is only an appearance, it is only an effect on your organism that is caused by something outside. It is only a small kind of movement; you do not perceive the movement. The smallest parts of water are active, but you do not perceive the activity, the movement. Rather, because the movement is so fast, you do not perceive it as such, but it gives you the impression of warmth. When books appeared at that time, such as “Heat, considered as a form of motion,” it was considered a great achievement of the time, and we younger people at that time had to study how the smallest molecular parts move in a liquid, in a gas gas, bumping into the walls, colliding with each other internally, and it was clear that what is going on internally is, in sensation, what gives the appearance of what is called heat. From there, a certain habit of thinking emerged, a certain way of looking at natural phenomena, and I myself still remember how, when I was a little boy, my school principal, enthusiastic about this scientific achievement of his time , regarded all natural forces, from gravity to heat and chemical and magnetic forces and so on, as mere appearances and saw the truth in those movements, in those fine states of motion inside the body. That school director, Heinrich Schramm his name was, saw gravity, the force of falling, for example, only as a movement of the smallest parts of the body. In the light of such a view of nature, there was indeed something that could lead one to say: So everything “real” is just, let us say, space extended to infinity, matter situated in this space and divided into the smallest parts, and the movements of this matter! And the hope could well arise that, just as heat, electricity, magnetism and light could be explained as a fine activity of the smallest particles of matter, so too would one day the activity of thinking, the activity of the soul, be able to be explained as a fine activity of that matter which composes the human or animal body.

There then followed a number of phases in the development of the scientific-theoretical way of thinking. For example, in the 1880s, if you were a physicist, you had to understand light and the whole world of colors as a kind of glow and study infinitely complicated, fine movements and motions within matter and the ether. Then, in the course of the 1880s, it became apparent that people were becoming skeptical of these fine motions and limited itself more to considering the phenomena, the facts, as they present themselves, to express them through the calculation, to describe them, and not so much to speculate about what is supposed to be imperceptible, but only supposed to underlie everything: about the finer activities of matter and ether. That was more in the field of physics.

In the field of physics, there was no real possibility of getting out of the habitual thinking that arose when one considered these fine movements of matter in relation to something that was supposed to make it possible to grasp the spirit in its immediacy. Something was holding us back, so to speak, from the natural sciences, from looking at the spirit in the way that was asserted in the last lectures here. In addition, there were quite different things. Anyone who was involved in the development of natural science at that time was not only confronted with what has just been characterized, but also with the repercussions of all that had been revealed, for example, by the great discoveries of Schleiden and Schwann in the first half of the nineteenth century, through which the smallest parts, the cells, were found within the plant and animal organism. This did not prove the reality of atoms and molecules, but the organic forms were reduced to their smallest building blocks, to cells whose forms were only accessible to the microscope. Then there was the fallout from what was associated with the name Darwin, and one was further under the impression of the great deed of Ernst Haeckel, who in the 1860s had extended Darwin's theory to include humans.

Thus, a scientific approach was adopted that started with the simplest things in the plant and animal world and observed how, from the imperfect to the more perfect beings and up to to man, the individual organs themselves arose in such a way that, by comparison, one could, as it were, determine the process by which the individual organs, which were more complicated, developed from the simpler ones. An enormous amount of material was collected. The breadth and scope of this material was so great that, for example, in the 1870s, one of the most important comparative anatomists of the present day, Carl Gegenbaur, was able to say in his “Comparative Anatomy” (1878) that, especially in the last few decades, an enormous amount of individual knowledge had been collected that showed how related living beings are in terms of their organs, and that one had to wait for the possibility - so Gegenbaur thought - to raise knowledge to “insight”; and he promised himself from the Darwinian method that it would be possible to show what the comparison of the organs of the highest living beings with those of less perfect beings would irrefutably reveal, that there is also a so-called physical descent of the perfect living beings from the imperfect ones. Thus, as it were, the chain was seen to close in the evolution from imperfect living beings to more perfect ones, even up to man, and it could be said that the most complicated being we know, the human body, arises through a kind of summation of those forces and activities prevail even in the simplest creatures, and even through a summation of the forces and activities in inanimate nature itself, the most complicated being we know, the human body, would ultimately come into being.

Enormous hopes were pinned on this scientific ideal. In fact, at that time it was difficult to distinguish between what were scientific facts and what was thought or speculated into the facts, because for anyone who thought deeply, a distinction between facts and theories did indeed exist. The difference was that one could say to oneself: If one proceeded as carefully and subtly as Darwin himself, especially in his earlier years, one would find an enormous amount of material on the mutual relationships and points of comparison between the individual living creatures, from the imperfect ones of the animal and plant kingdoms up to man. But there is a difference, one could say, between what emerged as a fact from the similarity of the external structure and from the similarity of the internal processes, and what could only be imagined: the hypothesis, the assumption of the descent of the perfect living beings from the imperfect ones, because this descent could not be traced according to the facts known so far. One had before one the sum of living beings, more perfect and less perfect. But for anyone who could think thoroughly, descent as such always remained only a hypothesis if one wanted to remain on scientific ground. But the material was impressive.

The results of scientific research penetrated deep into the soul, sometimes with a shattering effect due to the magnitude of the insights that could be gained. In addition, there were many other things. Today's introductory lecture must refer to many individual aspects. For example, reference must be made to the tremendous discovery made by Helmholtz in the field of light phenomena and the effects of light on the human organ of sight, and also made by Helmholtz in relation to sound and tone phenomena and the effect of sound and tone on the human ear and the human organ of hearing. In this way, knowledge of the visual process, which had previously remained mysterious, was acquired. We also learned to recognize what happens in the ear, for example, what a complicated miracle, one might say, a piano-like apparatus is located in the ear. In place of much of what previously seemed merely imagined, there now came a more precise knowledge of the structure of the human organs. One could say to oneself: What appears on the outside as mere movement and activity is transformed — such a transformation, as we have just seen, essentially resulted from the mechanical theory of heat — by the wonderful workings in the organs, in relation to the perceptions that live in the soul. And the inner life of the soul is ultimately built up from what our organs shape out of the workings of matter and space.

In many cases, the whole spiritual process that took place in the souls at that time can actually be described by saying that the souls were stunned by everything that was found there, both on a large and on an individual scale. One had to say to oneself: an earlier time knew nothing of all this. Many traditions about the human soul life seemed obsolete now that one was only beginning to study the effect of matter and its movements on the human organism, to study it scientifically in the true sense of the word.

For the spiritual scientist, the whole thing was, let us say, less important because of the details than because one had to admit: in order to enter into the wide perspectives that are opened up into a world of pure fact, something is needed that one does not initially believe to be present in the old considerations of the soul or spiritual life. In many souls that experienced all this in the last third of the nineteenth century, the following feeling arose, for example. These souls could say to themselves: Of course, in the old days many things were thought about the big questions, for example, about the change from sleep to waking and back, about the question of the immortality of the human soul, about the questions of life and death, about the origin of existence, and so on. But if we compare the entire methodical way of thinking, the entire way of conducting spiritual research in those ancient times, from which such traditions of soul research arise, and compare it with the strict, conscientious way of modern scientific research, then what has come down to us from those ancient times simply falls short of the strict and conscientious method of today's scientific research. Even if the spiritual researcher was not affected by the results of natural research, and perhaps was not even carried away by the results, the one thing that had a tremendous effect on the spiritual researcher was the rigor of scientific thinking, the conscientiousness, the tremendous sense of truth in scientific thinking.

In the face of such facts, anyone who was at all concerned with science, whether natural science or the humanities, had to develop the urge that can be characterized as follows: Science in the most serious sense of the word, which can set the tone for the spiritual life of the present day, can only seek its salvation in the strict thinking, in the truly conscientious research that can be learned from natural science. Such an urge gradually transforms itself, and also had to transform itself, into a kind of scientific conscience in the spiritual-scientific researcher. One could say to oneself: Certainly, as in all ages, so also in modern times the soul has the urge and the impulse to get to know its own nature and essence, and above all to get to know the processes that reach beyond birth and death. But only that which presents itself in the form of a scientific way of thinking can make an impression on the culture of our time for those who look clearly and impartially. One certainly saw many things about all kinds of psychological questions that one would like to say today — appear on the spiritual market. One saw many things that were and are truly quite far removed from conscientious methods of thinking developed through natural science; but one could say: Such things may sometimes make an impression here or there for a while, due to the carelessness and convenience of contemporary thinking make an impression here and there for a while, but such an impression cannot endure, for even the most casual will eventually ask themselves: What can conscientious thinking, trained in natural science, say to that which has supposedly been researched about the spiritual world?

Thus, the need arose for the soul researchers to conduct research entirely according to the model of natural science. One might say that psychology, the doctrine of the soul by Franz Brentano, who has already been mentioned here, is a kind of ideal that has not been fully realized, a psychology that was intended to fill many volumes. But of all these volumes, only one appeared, the first, in the spring of 1874. And although it was promised that the next volume would appear in the fall of the same year, it has not appeared to this day.

Brentano did not proceed according to the pattern of those psychologists of whom it was said last time that they completely exclude the great questions, for example, about the nature of the alternation of sleep and waking, the question of the immortality of the human soul, and the like, but he wanted to treat all these questions entirely according to the pattern of strict scientific methodology. He failed. And why did he fail? Franz Brentano could never bring himself to take the path that has shown itself to be necessary for the present precisely because a mind like Brentano's failed after he did not want to take it. This path has been characterized in the past lectures and especially last time. From this path it was shown how it alone is suitable to lead us into the higher regions, into the spiritual regions of existence, into that which also reaches beyond birth and death. Franz Brentano could not bring himself to go this way. That one must go this way if one wants to reach an end, a goal, he has literally proved negatively by the fact that his psychology stopped at the first volume, which has nothing to do with any of the great questions just mentioned, that he could not yet approach the great questions, as he wanted to.

I have tried to give you a picture of the spiritual life of the 1880s, the period in which anyone seeking access to the spiritual realms would have found themselves. If one allowed everything that has been mentioned to take effect, one could not so easily be satisfied with the then emerging, initially sporadic products of the burgeoning spiritual science. I will only point out, how a work like “Esoteric Buddhism” by A. P. Sinnett came at the same time into the middle of not only scientific research itself, but also into the scientific education of the time.

I do not want to discuss the title question, that here Buddhism has nothing to do with the Buddha and with Buddhism as it is meant as a religious confession, but note that with this book, which in German-speaking areas in the eighties years of the nineteenth century, was initially an overview of world phenomena, of the great course of cosmic events and also of the questions that arise in connection with the nature of man, as well as in the relationships beyond birth and death. What was communicated in this book could at first seem striking. For anyone who turned their gaze to spiritual things could, as such, agree with much of what was written in Sinnett's “Esoteric Buddhism” in a certain respect. Much of it did not contradict what one could and was allowed to think, even if one stood strictly on the ground of natural science. But there was one thing that contradicted the scientific education of the time, one thing that made it impossible to simply accept this book as an interesting product of its time: the way in which the book was presented, the way in which it summarized things and the way in which these things were, for example, sources, was in no way justified before the strict scientific education and truthfulness, and that a person educated in natural science, no matter how much he agreed with the individual results and messages of this book, had to feel repelled by the whole way of presenting them.

The same applied to many other works that appeared in this field. It was even the case with the book by A. P. Blavatsky, who was justifiably famous to a certain extent, that appeared at the end of the 1880s and the beginning of the 1890s: “The Secret Doctrine”. Anyone who had to do with these things could say to themselves: There is profound knowledge and insight into spiritual things in this book, but the whole way of presenting it is so chaotic, so mixed up with scientific dilettantism, which is particularly evident in the refutation of scientific theories and hypotheses, that those who have been scientifically educated cannot go along with this book at all.

Thus, two things emerged, so to speak: for someone who had a heart and mind for the existence of a spiritual world, on the one hand there was the scientific way of thinking, the whole scientific way of conceiving things. He could use it to develop his scientific conscientiousness, to free himself from all dilettantism, if he seriously engaged with it. But he could also learn from it how to conduct rigorous research into the factual, and how, through such research, to arrive at verified results that really intervene in life, that are not only foundational for a theory but for the facts of life. On the other hand, however, he could say to himself: But where one seeks to gain something for a spiritual interpretation of life's phenomena from natural science itself, where natural science tries to do so through itself, little can be squeezed out of it for the spiritual, and the less so the more rigorously it proceeds in the realm of the factual. Therefore, someone in such a position had good reason to look back a little at the history of the development of mankind. There he could learn that, even if one disregards spiritual-scientific research, something is gathered together in the various spiritual documents of the peoples and epochs, something purely externally documentary lies there that encloses a grandiose spiritual core of knowledge, which, if one looks at it more closely, is not to be taken lightly take it lightly, but the more one delves into this compilation, the more it offers in the way of insights into spiritual life, even if one cannot approach the way it is presented, or even the way it must be found according to this way of presentation.

Only for those who approach the subject superficially can what ancient Egyptian or Chaldean wisdom contains be no more than a collection of human musings. Those who delve deeper will not find musings, but will actually see how plausible ideas about the nature of the spirit and its effectiveness are contained in these things in a variety of forms that look grotesque to today's world. And just as with Egyptian or Chaldean wisdom, this turns out to be particularly true for ancient Indian wisdom, as far as it has been handed down. Of course, one will not be able to see something like Indian wisdom with the grandiose, significant impression that it must make on everyone, for example, with the eye of a modern philosopher like Deußen, but one will have to immerse oneself in it without prejudice in terms of certain spiritual connections that are obvious from within. But one thing is striking: from the way the whole is presented, it is evident that spiritual knowledge of the kind that we encounter here is not gained in the same way and by the same method as our present-day research methods, by which natural science strides from triumph to triumph. If one is open-minded enough to confidently recognize natural science on the one hand and, on the other, to how a spiritual achievement and spiritual work from ancient times resound, then one will be able to let the overwhelming insights into the spiritual life sink in, and at the same time one will see how completely different the methods must have been with which those spiritual-scientific insights were gained in ancient times.

Now spiritual research itself shows us how very differently that which we can properly call, for example, ancient Indian wisdom, is gained. This wisdom reveals insights that penetrate deeply into the essence of things. We find that this wisdom was not gained through external observation, not through the kind of thinking we call natural science today, but through a kind of soul self-knowledge similar to the one we have been able to characterize here for modern times. Yoga methods, methods of self-education of the soul, were used. These led the soul to see and perceive and recognize not only in the way one perceives and recognizes in ordinary everyday life, but to feel that higher powers of knowledge are emerging within it, which can see into the spiritual worlds that open up around us if we only open up the organs for them within us. But for our existence within the physical life, everything that confronts us as soul activity is, in a certain way, bound to the instrument of the physical body. And now spiritual research shows us how the ancient Indian research was itself connected to the instrument of the physical body in a different way than our present research, as it is common practice in science. Today, science conducts research through the senses and through the mind, which is connected to the instrument of the brain. What did the yoga method lead to? What it brought him to can only be briefly indicated here, because we only want to orient ourselves about the relationships between natural science and spiritual science.

Yoga method initially led people to a certain extent to switch off the brain's thinking instrument, even to switch off everything that the rest of the higher nervous system conveys. In the yoga methods, the instrument of that strictly inward vision was made precisely that part of the human nervous system which today appears to us in science as a subordinate part, but which is in the strictest sense bound up with the workings of the human organism itself, that which we call the solar plexus and the sympathetic nervous system. Just as our present-day scientific research is connected with the higher nervous system, so these ancient methods of enlightenment were connected with the nervous system that we today even regard as a lower one, in a sense. But because this subordinate nervous system is connected to the forces of existence and the life forces and is intimately related to that through which the human being is immersed in the divine-spiritual existence, because it is thus related to the sources of human existence, one recognized not only the penetration of the human organism by spiritual forces, but just as one looks with the eye into the worlds of light, so with the instrument of the sympathetic nervous system one looked into the spiritual worlds, beholding concrete facts and entities in them. Anyone who is able to understand how a person who is able to penetrate into his own depths, even to the instrument, is able to relate to the universe also understands how that ancient oriental wisdom has come to us. If we follow the old wisdom, we find it discovered everywhere, coming to the surface of human thought through ancient methods of research, through ancient yoga methods. We find the most diverse wisdoms among the most diverse peoples, and by merely occupying ourselves with them, we penetrate more and more into their depths and recognize how people came to have them in those times when they knew relatively little about today's physical astronomy, anatomy, physiology, and so on. The ancient wisdom of India did not know as much as we do today about the workings of the human physical body, but it was possible to place oneself in the position of the organism by applying the deeper-lying nervous system. And it was the same with other peoples.

Now, by letting one's gaze wander, so to speak, over everything that was effective as such old wisdom up to the sixth century BC, one can penetrate as far back as, for example, ancient Greek times. There we find, apart from everything else, an outstanding thinker, a thinker who has been misunderstood just as often for the good as for the bad: Aristotle, who was active only a few centuries before the founding of Christianity. He still seems strange to us today. If we take him at his word, then we find in him, first of all, in many fields, something of what is today called natural science. For in the old wisdoms, natural science in the modern sense is not present. Even in the nineteenth century, people who wanted to stand strictly on the ground and only on the ground of natural science spoke in the most laudatory terms about what Aristotle had contributed to natural science. So we find in Aristotle the starting points of what can be called scientific research even today. In addition, we find in his works a well-developed doctrine of the human soul.

We shall not go into the details of his psychology, but merely point out how Aristotle's doctrine of the human soul relates to what has been handed down from ancient times about the human soul and its connection with the great spiritual worlds. One can only understand what Aristotle wrote about the soul if one realizes that all this is given to him as a tradition of ancient, primeval thinking, gained in the way just described. Aristotle is no longer familiar with the research methods of ancient times; they are foreign to him. But what he was able to say about the structure, the organization of the human soul, about the difference between what is bound to the physical body and thus to death and what, after death, participates in a spiritual life in eternity, what Aristotle is able to say about all this, that is like something handed down from ancient times, which he knows in terms of content, which he has received in such a way that he could say: it makes sense to my mind. But he only knows the individual parts, what he calls, for example, the vegetative soul, the spiritual soul, and so on. But how the individual parts are connected with the spiritual world, that he no longer knows. He can enumerate the parts, describe them rationally and classify them, and make them plausible to the intellect, but he can no longer show how these parts of the human soul are connected with the spiritual world.

Aristotle's way then passed over to later times. Natural science became more and more developed. Of course there was the medieval low and the new dawn of natural science at the beginning of the modern age, but if we disregard that, we can say that natural science became more and more developed.

What is the basis of man's relationship to science and to the objects of science? If we consider what it would mean for the individual human being if he were alone with his senses, if he could not open his senses and, as it were, attach them to the realms of nature that are poured out around us, what would individual human life be without its integration into nature? Let us look at the matter very fundamentally. We could perhaps squeeze our eyes if we could not connect them with nature, and would thereby be able to have something that would be like a shining of the inner light. But compare the poor inner life in the whole physical world, which man could only have through himself if he could not connect with the realms of nature. Compare it with the rich life that opens up when man opens his eyes and the other sense organs to the riches of nature and its impressions. We are human beings not only by living within ourselves, but by opening the organs to the riches of nature that are poured out around us, and by interacting with these riches. If we knew only what the eye, what the other sense-organs can produce for themselves, how poor in content we would be as human beings here in the physical world! Compare this with what the life of the soul gradually became in the times when natural science was just emerging and leading from triumph to triumph.

In relation to the life of the soul, what Aristotle had given was, so to speak, continued. They only occupied themselves with the observation of the phenomena of the soul itself. But this is the same as allowing the senses to be active only within themselves - and up to our time, official soul science has done it that way. Up to our time, the content of official soul science is nothing other than what can be compared to the mere inner activity of our sense organs or our brain when the brain's thoughts are not directed out into the world. But we have already seen in the previous lectures how, through the methods of spiritual science, and this was also the case with the old spiritual science, the soul is attached to spiritual realms above, which are just as concretely and internally structured as the realms around us in the physical world, to which the sense organs are attached.

These spiritual realms, these very concrete spiritual facts and entities, were not accessible for a certain period of time, which was precisely what allowed external scientific research to mature. As a result, knowledge of the soul's life became increasingly impoverished because of the lack of a spiritual perspective that provided concrete confirmation of the spiritual world. At best, the soul was still investigated in its inner life, as Franz Brentano did in the 1870s, as you can see for yourself in his “Psychology”. But his research is like investigating the eye only in terms of what it can do by itself, and not in terms of what it can do when it is directed towards the facts of nature.

Now it may be said that precisely because of the ever more precise examination of the physical processes of the human being, the view was diverted from the spiritual worlds with which the soul is connected. — On the one hand, the soul is connected with these spiritual worlds, which it enters when it has passed through the gate of death, or when it enters another world through sleep. But the soul is connected to the physical world through its organs, through the entire nervous system and through the entire blood circulation. The fact that natural science has become more and more significant in its methods has directed people's attention to the connection between the soul and the physical world. The results of natural science were so magnificent in this respect that it completely filled people, for example, with how the soul lives out in its connection with the bloodstream and so on. Every new triumph of natural science was in a sense detrimental to directing the gaze of the soul to the connection with the spiritual world.

Nothing else applies either. If you want to get to know a clock, you will get to know it poorly in its entirety as an organism if you say: “There I see how the hands of the clock move forward, there may be a little demon inside that moves the hands forward.” If someone who says something like this still felt so exalted above someone who merely studies the mechanism of the clock,

you would be laughed at, because you only get to know the clock if you really study its mechanism. And it is a different matter again to get to know the spiritual life of the watchmaker or the person who invented the watch through the mechanism of the watch. You can go both ways: examine the mechanical operation of the clockwork and get to know the human train of thought that led to the invention of the watch. But it would be nonsense if someone wanted to infer the existence of demons that set the whole clockwork in motion.

This was gradually lost to mankind for the study of mankind, which in the case of the clock would correspond to the tracing of the ingenious mechanism back to the thoughts of the inventor. For it would correspond to the human soul to trace thoughts back to the entities of the spiritual world. In natural science, on the other hand, it went triumphantly from fact to fact, which corresponds to the clockwork. It is interesting to note that the knowledge handed down from ancient times is usually lost to mankind in those epochs in which a particular piece of knowledge can be precisely investigated by natural science. It is remarkable that at the end of the sixteenth and the beginning of the seventeenth century, we see that the philosopher Cartesius still had a certain idea that something similar to a spirit in the human being works from the heart to the head, to the human being's head. Cartesius still speaks of certain spirits of life that are not of a physical nature, but whose forces play between the heart and the head. Then we see how such knowledge increasingly disappears in the spiritual life of humanity.

Those who wonder why this is so can get the following answer. We see that, historically, at the same time as this disappearance of knowledge of spiritual processes related to the heart, the knowledge of the physical organism of the heart and of blood circulation emerged. At the beginning of the seventeenth century, we see first the English physician Harvey publishing his discovery of blood circulation, and Marcello Malpighi in Bologna, as an anatomist, showing for the first time the blood circulation of the frog, how artful the whole blood circulation is. Thus, attention was drawn to the sensory process. Knowledge of spiritual facts was, so to speak, pushed down by the exact knowledge of the sensory process. While it is a triumph for natural science that Francesco Redi, born in 1624, formulated the proposition that contradicted many assertions of earlier times, “everything alive comes from living things.” While this proposition is a triumph, we can say: By reducing the organic to its germ, to the physically indeterminate organic germ, humanity lost sight of how the spiritual itself, independently of the organic germ, intervenes in evolution. Humanity lost its understanding of the spiritual germ. It was step by step. The more science advanced, the more the view of the spiritual world was lost.

Such things are not just coincidences, nor are they something that can be blamed or criticized, but they are necessary developmental processes in the shaping of humanity as a whole. That is how it has to be. Often, while one thing rises and develops upwards, another thing goes down. What we today admire in natural science, indeed recognize as necessary, presents itself to us, if we are true connoisseurs of natural scientific development, in such a way that we say: spiritual science has not the slightest reason to fight natural science in any way, provided it keeps within its limits, nor has reason to complain about the one-sidedness of natural science. For it is only by refraining from mixing all kinds of speculation into scientific research and instead keeping one's gaze calmly fixed on physical and sensory processes that the great achievements of science have been achieved to date. Yes, one can see, especially at the dawn of the newer spiritual life, how only through resistance to Aristotelianism, and also to the justified content of Aristotelianism, such minds as Galileo or Giordano Bruno came to their successes, by refusing to mix anything into their research other than what spread out before their senses and was instructive enough.

Today, the humanities researcher must confront the natural sciences researcher in such a way that he says: the more natural science research itself is kept pure from all speculation and all philosophy, the more one turns one's gaze purely to the facts and does not invent all sorts of spiritual essences, but only takes what one can actually research, the better it is for natural science. The spiritual scientific researcher in particular would like to advocate keeping the scientific facts pure of all scientifically or spiritually speculated talk. Therefore, on the one hand, one can be a spiritual scientific researcher today and, on the other hand, advocate the authenticity and soundness of scientific research. And it is only a prejudice to believe that the spiritual researcher has to turn against natural science.

It is a different matter when there are numerous theories that are already approaching spiritual science and that one would like to derive from natural science theories. In this case, the natural science researcher himself enters the path of spiritual science, in which he is, in most cases, only very little familiar. But one thing remains, even for spiritual science and spiritual research, from natural science knowledge: that is the conscientious method, the conscientious sense of truth, which we have already characterized in the past lectures and also characterized, and which is to remain with the facts.

How do these facts arise? We have seen that through the fact that certain powers unfold in the human soul, which from this soul also reveal the connection with the higher worlds, just as the senses reveal the connection with the physical world. Just as the senses are meant to fathom the facts of the physical world and leave them at that, not to distort them by speculation, so it is important not to philosophize and speculate about the results of clairvoyant observation, but to take the strict standpoint of the facts here too. Then one stands quite firmly on the standpoint of spiritual science, but quite similarly in its field, as one stands firmly on the ground of natural science in relation to it. That is the kind of spiritual science as it is represented here.

This is the only thing that can be the subject of a spiritual research that feels responsible for the spiritual needs of our time. And this is also the case with strict scientific research into the facts that are available to spiritual science, which is immediately apparent when science, understanding itself, reaches its limits.

This again, purely from the facts, gives rise to very strange results. I would just like to remind you of what results when we take the views of the great naturalist Du Bois-Reymond, as expressed in his speeches. Perhaps the most significant speech was the one on the “Limits of Natural Knowledge”, which he gave at the forty-fifth meeting of German naturalists and physicians in Leipzig on August 14, 1872. There is a passage in it – and I still remember the deep impression this passage made on me as a very young person when I first heard the speech – a passage that roughly says: When we have a person before us in their waking life, science cannot say anything about how sensation, perception, desire, passion or affect arise from the activity of the smallest parts of the brain. “What conceivable connection exists between certain movements of certain atoms in my brain on the one hand, and on the other hand the original, not further definable, undeniable facts for me: “oh feel pain, feel pleasure; I taste sweet, smell the scent of roses, hear the sound of an organ, see roses, and the certainty flowing just as directly from it: ”so I am?” — It is quite and forever incomprehensible that a number of carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, etc. atoms should not care how they lie and move, how they lay and moved, how they lie and will move.

Du Bois-Reymond considered it impossible to understand the soul life in a natural scientific way in the waking state of man. Therefore, he said: When we have the sleeping human being before us, in whom the life of sensations, of perceptions, desires, affects, passions has been extinguished, then we can explain the sleeping human being scientifically; then we have something before us that we can call an inner organic activity. But as soon as this organism is awakened and life, sensation, desire, imagination, etc., are infused into it, it is different. Then this life, this soul content, cannot be explained scientifically from what the scientist can recognize. Sleeping man, Du Bois-Reymond believes, is scientifically comprehensible, but not waking man.

That is one side of the story. On the other hand, read the more recent treatises on the nature of sleep: you will find it admitted everywhere that natural science, so to speak, knows nothing about the reasons for sleep, that it knows nothing about the sleeping person, who, according to Du Bois-Reymond, should be fathomable after all. On the one hand, we see indications of the brilliant progress of natural science, but we also see it admitting its limitations by admitting that the waking human being with his or her soul life cannot be scientifically understood. On the other hand, however, we have, as in our days, the confession that man's sleep cannot be explained to this day. Why not? Not because sleep belongs to those areas where the spirit plays into ordinary life, because we cannot explain sleep if we cannot explain waking.

In one of the first lectures of this winter semester, I pointed out how, at best, a mechanism can be conceived scientifically that automatically, after a certain period of time, causes the urge to switch off consciousness and sensory activity in order to eliminate fatigue. But as I said, if we want to limit ourselves to the fact that sleep is brought about by a kind of independent process in the organism that happens automatically, then we have no explanation for the reindeer that did not work but still takes its afternoon nap, nor do we have an explanation for the sleep of the small child that sleeps the most. On the other hand, I have pointed out that sleep can only be explained if we assume that in the sleeping person we have only the physical body and the etheric body lying in bed, and that when they fall asleep, a spiritual element, namely the astral body and I, moves out of the human being's being. What happens when, during sleep, the soul-like part of the human being is, as it were, outside the physical body and the etheric body? We will talk about these things in more detail. Today, only the following should be mentioned.

As the soul-like part goes out of the physical body and its animator, something is evoked that is opposed to the waking activity of the soul. In its waking activity, the soul is active. No limb moves without the soul knowing it. At the very least, representations are evoked without the soul making use of the brain as an instrument. The soul must be active in the waking state. The opposite is the case in sleep. We can say that the soul enjoys its own body in the sleep-life. If we proceed according to spiritual research, we have, according to the difference, soul activity and soul enjoyment in wakefulness and in the state of sleep, and we understand the interrelation between soul work and soul activity and soul enjoyment, which must pour into soul activity if it is to continue in an appropriate way. Now it is no longer the reindeer taking its afternoon nap that confounds us, although it is not at all tired, but we know that the soul, when it enjoys its body, can exaggerate, and that one can sleep when one is not at all tired. We understand it when we know how, in certain constitutions, the enjoyment of the bodily can be experienced to an exaggerated degree.

All this can be understood if we know how to explain sleep from a spiritual scientific point of view. That is to say, there is an area in which natural science believes itself to have unlimited sway, and where spiritual science has only so much to say, namely that spirit permeates everything, including natural processes. But then there begins an area where there is no longer anything that science can investigate. There are facts, but they are facts that can only be seen when the seeing is not a sensual seeing but a supersensible beholding. If spiritual science proceeds with the same conscientiousness and becomes accustomed to thinking as strictly in its field as natural science in its, then it cannot come into conflict with natural science. But with that, spiritual science stands on ground that in many respects contradicts what has gradually emerged in the course of humanity's spiritual life.

Thus we see how those who can be regarded as forerunners of genuine spiritual research, Goethe for example, had to fight against what was opposed to spiritual research activity. We see it most clearly when we look at how Goethe once defended himself against Kant. It was Kant who first sought to determine how the knowledge that has emerged in modern times is bound to the instrument of the brain, how it must be limited to external experience and cannot penetrate into the depths of the world with which our spiritual and soul life is connected. Hence Kant's strict boundary between “science” and what he calls “belief”; and for Kant, higher realms are only accessible through belief. Therefore, he replaces knowledge about a world of eternity or of the divine-spiritual with a belief that is to be based on the “categorical imperative”. Thus, he decrees that what should be knowledge in spiritual science is mere belief. But Goethe says in his beautiful essay on “Contemplative Judgment” with reference to Kant: “If one can already feel one's way in the intuited sense into a spiritual region in which the divine-spiritual is rooted, from which the moral arises, why should the human spirit, when it rises into this spiritual region, not also really pass the adventure of reason? For Kant called it a “daring adventure of reason” when man wants to penetrate into regions in which, according to Kant, knowledge cannot exist. For Western thinking, the question is: how do you get from science to the humanities? The fact that you do not have to fight science, but that you fully recognize it, yes, you can be a loyal recognizer of its successes, nevertheless, you can expand human knowledge to those areas, according to the model of scientific research, with which the soul is connected in its spiritual foundations in those impulses that give it life even after it has left the physical body and is preparing for a new form of a later physicality.

It will be the task of true spiritual research to increasingly move away from the unjustified mocking or refutation of the legitimate claims of science in our time. Of course, this will depend on spiritual research being recognized only as justified if it is familiar with the state of scientific research at present, and if it therefore does not act in an amateurish way against what can be legitimately demanded from the scientific education of the present day. But just as the natural scientist cannot stop at investigating only the inner nature of the eye, the ear, the sense of warmth, and so on, but must direct what the senses are able to experience within themselves outwards to the rich concrete environment of the physical, so the soul must be recognized by the soul living together with that with which it is connected in the spiritual, and that only begins where scientific research has its limits.

This is precisely the relationship between natural science and spiritual science, but it also offers the possibility of real continuity and peace and mutual understanding between natural science and spiritual scientific research. If what has already been said in this respect in the previous lectures is combined with what I was able to sketch out today about the relationship between scientific and spiritual scientific research, it will be possible to gain understanding for the legitimacy of spiritual scientific research, and also for the possibility of spiritual research to stand on an equal footing with natural science in our time. And it may be hoped that the justified objections and the justified doubts which still exist on the part of natural scientists today will gradually disappear when natural scientists see not only all kinds of confused stuff, as well as arbitrary assertions and superstition, in the field of spiritual research, but how spiritual research is well acquainted with what the present-day scientific education demands.

If this happens, then spiritual research will appear more and more justified before the scientific conscience of the present, and then, from what arises within the facts of spiritual life, one will gradually be able to understand that spiritual research is really possible and really justified, and that the objections against spiritual research actually belong to an area in relation to which one can say something similar to what Goethe once said in relation to another area, namely in relation to rising above all ignorance and all illogic.

In summarizing the relationship of the spiritual researcher to those who appear as enemies of spiritual scientific research, I would like to end with a few words that are comparative and remind you of something that Goethe once said in reference to something quite different. Goethe was thinking of an old Greek doctrine and exposition on motion, which, however, still influenced much of more recent philosophy. This doctrine says: If any object moves, it can be observed as being at rest at every moment, and at every moment, even at the shortest point in time, it is at rest. It is at rest, even if only for a moment. Thus there could be no such thing as “movement,” because at every moment a moving body is at rest and therefore has no movement. Such is the Zen conclusion of movement, and such is how Greek thought came to haunt us until recent times.

Goethe found this objection to movement very strange, and he once said the beautiful words:

Enemies may eye each other,
You remain calm, remain silent;
And if they deny you movement,
Go around in front of their noses.

I cannot help but think of this saying when I see how much has been said in recent times to the effect that 'spirit', what you call 'spirit', is the result of purely material activity, material processes and movements; that spirit arises from matter. Just as movement, in the sense of what has just been said, only emerges from rest and is nothing real, so spirit is nothing real apart from matter.

If, in the sense in which we are attempting to penetrate into the spiritual world in these reflections, one tries to gain knowledge of the spiritual and thus really enters into the nature of what the spiritual is, then one may well describe what spiritual scientific research brings to light about the spirit in its relationship to opponents and enemies of spiritual science enemies of spiritual science, then, with a slight alteration of the words of Goethe just quoted, one might perhaps describe it in the following way, and with this I would like to summarize today what I have to say about the relationship between natural science and spiritual science:

Adversity may arise,
But thou shalt remain calm, remain cheerful!
And even if they deny the spirit,
Thou shalt not brood over it,
And in the end thou shalt prove them right:
Their spirit is in a bad state indeed.