The Circular Flow of Man's Life within the World Of Sense, Soul And Spirit

GA 68b — 17 January 1909, Pforzheim

36. Natural Science at a Crossroads

In their simplicity, legends and fairy tales often express the yearning and searching of the human soul better than the problems, philosophies and questions that the mind poses. Therefore, perhaps we may be permitted today, when we want to reflect on the relationship between the scientific creed and the spiritual scientific worldview, to recall a fairy tale that is, however, far removed from us, a Mongolian fairy tale that can really awaken in us a sense of what man longs for in all his knowledge and research. This Mongolian fairy tale says: A woman who has an eye on her forehead, that is, no second eye, only one eye, wanders the wide world, and everything she encounters, every stone, every object, is taken up by her, lifted to the one eye, looked at and then flung far away, and a feeling of bitter disappointment is expressed on the woman's face. The fairy tale goes on to tell us that the woman has lost her only child, which has largely caused her to lose her mind, and now she is wandering the wide world, searching for her child again. She believes she can pick up her child in every stone, in every object, and again and again she has to realize how she has been deceived, and out of her disappointment she hurls the object far away from her.

With a certain wistfulness, this fairy tale can evoke in our soul that mood that a person can often develop, that mood that comes from the human soul's search and yearning for truth. A person is searching for something; he knows that in a certain respect he cannot live without the object of this search, that this object is connected with what is most important and meaningful to him. And he searches and searches the whole world. He seizes on all things because he senses that something mysterious must be hidden behind all things, which should finally reveal the truth to him. And again and again, it may be that man, through the objects he finds here and there and through which he wanted to find the answer to the riddle of life, sees that he has been deceived and has to throw these objects away again.

And if you look at things superficially – and it is said with care – you could almost be tempted to believe that, since the development of humanity, the human soul itself has been a seeker like the woman in the Mongolian fairy tale when it comes to deeper truths. In particular, today, in contrast to what the culture of our time can offer people in their striving and searching for truth, today in particular, such a mood will be able to arise in many, because we live in a time in which, in the broadest circles, that satisfaction and that bliss have vanished from the hearts of people, which once came over people when they sought answers to the great riddles of existence from the old traditions, from the religious traditions.

Many of our contemporaries say to themselves, oh, what people believed about spiritual, about soul worlds behind physical existence, that was nothing more than childish fantasies, humanity has now entered into manhood , in the stage of maturity; admirable results have been given to the human spirit by external science, especially in the last century, and it is only fitting for man today to build a worldview on the basis of these certain results of natural science. And all old beliefs and prejudices, all old fantasies of nations, must fade. And we have heard of many a genuine and honest striving for truth in the time when so-called enlightenment has taken hold in the widest circles, that he who looks at the results of natural science can do no other than throw overboard the old, traditional views of nature and adhere solely to what the solid ground of facts shows.

But many a soul has never been able to overcome the feeling that, however admirable and magnificent the results of natural science may be, and however profound and incisive the thoughts of the bold minds that have drawn from these facts may be, these external sciences have increased rather than decreased the riddles for man. And so many a person, when they pick up some popular book on these things, for example Haeckel's “Welträtsel” (World Riddle) or his “Naturliche Schöpfungsgeschichte” (Natural History of Creation), stands there and says to themselves: Yes, actually what is offered to me here is not a solution to the great riddles of existence, but an even greater riddle itself.

On the other hand, however, we must say – and it is important that we do not ignore it – that anyone who today immerses themselves in the field of natural science and honestly and sincerely strives to gain a world view from this field of natural science, that such a person basically has a very difficult time with anything that, to a certain extent, is based on different premises than natural science. In our time we see two directions: one is that which wants to form a world building solely on the basis of external scientific facts. And we see another school of thought, which is almost the spiritual-scientific, or - as one has become accustomed to calling it - theosophical, a school of thought which in turn wants to point to the spiritual facts and spiritual entities behind the physical-sensual world. This spiritual science tells us: Certainly, the great achievements of natural science are admirable, and particularly in the nineteenth century, magnificent, admirable instruments and methods have been invented through which man is able to look into the most distant regions of the heavens. All this is certainly admirable, but all of it lacks one instrument: the one through which man can look into the spiritual world.

Such an instrument does exist, but this instrument must be prepared no less carefully than any instrument of the external sciences if it is to be of use. This instrument is none other than man himself.

All spiritual science is based on two principles: firstly, that there is a spiritual world behind the sensual one; secondly, that man is able to penetrate into this spiritual world with his capacity for knowledge. However, one should not penetrate into this spiritual world if one takes the view that one wants to remain as one is. For this it is necessary that man first awakens certain powers and abilities that lie dormant in his soul for ordinary life, that he first develops himself up to these abilities, to the point of view that we cannot otherwise describe than as that of “awakening”.

There may come a great moment for a person when, in terms of the soul and spirit, they will be like a blind person who has been born and is operated on.

If we were to bring a blind person into this room, they would see none of the light and colors that surround us. But if we were lucky enough to give them their sight here, they would suddenly see a world around them that was also there before, even if they were unable to perceive it – a physical awakening to the ability to see would have occurred for them.

In no other sense does spiritual science assert the reality of the spiritual world than when the blind man is surrounded by a world of light and colors, even if he does not perceive them. The spiritual world, the higher world, is also around us, within our ordinary world. It is only a matter of man learning to see it, of him penetrating to what Goethe calls the eyes of the spirit, the ears of the spirit. Then the human being becomes an instrument for seeing new things around him, so to speak.

If we speak of the spiritual world in this sense and then communicate what the seer, the awakened one, sees in this spiritual world, what he learns to recognize, what he learns as the very foundations of this existence there, then the person who today stands firmly on the ground of natural science has great difficulties of understanding in the face of such communications. But it would be completely unjust to assume ill will or something similar in the person who considers the spiritual scientist to be a dreamer or fantasist. Because what is called “staying on the ground of natural science” makes it very difficult for a person to let go of their thought habits and to acknowledge what must first be acknowledged in spiritual science.

Of course, you can say: What use is it to us when individuals make themselves into such an instrument and tell us this or that from the spiritual world, what use is it to you if you cannot see it for yourself? But now ask yourself: has the person who studies natural science actually seen everything they learn? That is certainly not the case. Just as one relies on the accuracy of the methods, how one adheres to what one perceives through the instruments, the microscope and so on, so it could well be in spiritual science. But things are not even like that. In spiritual science, it is even made easier for a person than in ordinary natural science. It cannot be emphasized enough that one can only research and investigate in the spiritual world if one applies the method that must be applied for this research and that is described in “Lucifer - Gnosis” in the essay “How to Obtain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds”. If you apply this to yourself, you will already notice how little it is fantasy or reverie.

So one comes to see the spiritual world behind the sensual one. Certainly, one can do it, but when those who have applied this to themselves tell the results, tell what they have seen and experienced, then the quite ordinary, unprejudiced human understanding is enough to grasp it too. Research and investigation are only possible after this method has been applied to oneself. To recognize that what is being said is correct, all that is needed is an unprejudiced, healthy human understanding. This human understanding, however, must not be clouded by all sorts of suggestions and prejudices. Basically, spiritual science makes it easier for people than natural science. It demands only that what the seer has to tell be examined without prejudice and logically, and then one will find that it is internally consistent and stands up to logical examination.

Nevertheless, it is difficult to accept the results of spiritual science if one stands on the ground of a more materialistic world view. This can become clear to us in a certain respect through our present consideration.

First, let us consider the difference between the two schools of thought that are relevant to our present situation: spiritual science and natural science, the science that is based on mere external facts.

Let us start from one point. Let us start from that which is connected with our own human development. Through tremendous progress, the nineteenth century has managed to prove that there is a relationship between humans and higher animals. Who would want to object to the comprehensive sense of fact and the tremendous talent for combination of Charles Darwin? Who would deny that Ernst Haeckel has achieved something tremendous in penetrating the inner facts in the development of living beings up to the point of man? As far as facts are concerned, we must fully recognize from a spiritual-scientific point of view what great and significant work has been done. To object to facts would not be to pursue science, but to be insane.

But now something else comes into consideration. Nineteenth-century natural science has derived from this sum of facts a kind of creed, a creed which, when it comes right down to it, is not at all a necessary result of the facts, but is believed by many as such. It says: Man, with the perfections that we recognize in him, has developed out of the lower animal world, and the line is traced from the simplest, most subordinate living creature up to man. And it is to be shown that these simplest living beings, up to man, are increasingly structured and receive more and more organs, and that man has developed in this way through the external penetration of facts.

The aim is to link the human being more and more to the animal world. The aim is to bring his expressions of life, his soul and spirit, closer to what is also found in the animal world. Even the human being's feelings and will impulses should only be higher results of animal ancestors, perfection brought about at a higher level by our organs, a variation of what is also found in the animal kingdom. Yes, even the moral life of man is said to be only an elaboration of certain instincts. Some have even gone so far as to derive the origin of religious aspirations in man from the attachment of animals.

We can say: Those who are grounded in external science think of the development something like this: If we look at our environment today, we see animals of different kinds up to man. We trace the development back and we come further and further back to more and more imperfect and imperfect human beings, finally to people who stand at a very low level of human culture. Then finally further backwards we would urgently come to beings that cannot yet be called people. We would come to beings between people and ape-like animals, then to epochs where man was not yet present, but where everything that was physically present on earth had developed into man. And one would like to say: If such an observer could take a chair and place it in outer space, and sit on it, he would believe he could see how all this has happened purely externally. That is the picture of this view.

Let us now ask: What is the picture from the point of view of spiritual science? We want to see what this conclusion looks like from the point of view of spiritual science. We will involve ourselves as little as possible in the mere telling of the facts today, but also point out how this spiritual science proceeds quite scientifically in terms of its conclusions and thoughts. For the time being, it must be assumed that spiritual science regards the spirit, the actual spiritual, as the original, and it regards everything material as an effect of the spiritual. So it says: Let us assume that a large cloud or water is spread out in front of us. Because it is transparent, it cannot be seen at first. So someone who stands there and wants to rely on nothing but his own eyesight would not see the cloud. Now let us assume that the parts of these water masses become compressed through some process into ice blocks, then the person who relies only on appearances would see how pieces of ice come out of nowhere and would say: There is nothing around the ice blocks, they are the reality.

Spiritual science says: the spiritual world is all around us, and in a much wider sphere than the physical world, the spiritual world is full of facts, full of realities. This spiritual world is a real one. Out of it emerge, as if through a condensation, the facts, events and happenings of the physical-sensual world. Now, the one who relies only on the physical senses sees only the effects, but not the causes. The physical-sensual materiality is like a condensation of the spiritual. In the spiritual, spiritual science sees the cause of the physical-sensual.

And now we want to tie in with a well-known fact in order to explain how spiritual science thinks about these things. Let us take two feelings of the human soul that everyone knows: fear and shame. Fear occurs in the human soul and makes a person pale. What has happened here? The fact that a person has been overcome by fear has caused a change in the processes of his blood. The blood has receded. So an inner feeling, the person's feeling of fear, has brought about a rearrangement of his material parts. A material event is the consequence of its psychological cause. It is the same with the feeling of shame. When the soul wants to hide something within itself, then a blush appears on the face, which is again a rearrangement of the blood. Physical processes are thus directed by soul and spiritual processes. Here we have something on a small scale, on an extremely small scale, which shows us how physical and sensory processes can be the effect of soul and spiritual processes.

Spiritual science now says: What we encounter today in these two examples, that soul-spiritual causes physical processes, is a last remnant of ancient spiritual-soul processes that, in a broader sense, represented the same thing. It now shows – how it shows this is not our concern today – it also shows this in accordance with facts that still exist today. She says: If we go back into the far, far reaches of the past, we are dealing with simpler material processes than today, but with more comprehensive spiritual-soul processes. Today, man is a physically and sensually complex being. Today, through his emotional agitation, man can only direct physical processes on such a small scale as in the case of shame and fear. But if we go back far, far into the development of the earth, we find that now the spiritual-soul not only evokes processes, events and facts, but that it has also, through its own condensation, brought forth matter itself out of itself. And going still further back, we come to ancient times when only the spiritual-soul was present in man. And then we see the physical form emerging from the spirit in a simple way at first – the physical was directed by the spiritual-soul – and because the spiritual is complicated, the physical has gradually become more and more complicated.

Natural science says: If we go back in time, we will arrive at a point in the not too distant past when humans did not yet exist, when only animals were present. And then humans developed from the higher animals.

Spiritual science says: Yes, if we go back far enough in the development of the earth, we do see that physically and sensually the earth is only populated by animals and plants. Man, in the time when he does not yet appear as a physical and sensual being, is connected spiritually and soulfully with the earth. Our earth was surrounded by our spiritual and soul, as we are surrounded by the air today. We are going further and further back in time. We do not come from a time when the earth was without people, because humans have been connected to our earthly body far earlier than all other beings: animals, plants, minerals.

How did animals, plants and minerals come into being at all? Originally there was actually nothing but the potential for human beings. Yes, let us form a picture of how the lower creatures actually came into being in the course of the earth's development. The process is a very complicated one and is described in detail in my book 'Geheimwissenschaft'. We assume that there are lower and higher civilized peoples on earth. We do not want to argue about the difference now; we take it as it is in ordinary life. Let us take a specific example, such as the decline of the Native Americans and the Europeans. Those who think in terms of today's more materialistic approach will say that all the people who live today in nations that are at a higher cultural level originally belonged to nations that were at a lower cultural level, and they have simply developed to a higher cultural level.

Spiritual science says: Those peoples who are today “primitive”, so-called wild peoples, would never be able to develop directly as peoples to a higher level of culture, but the fact is that in the progress of human development, certain peoples had the potential to develop higher. They waited, so to speak, to develop until a later time. They kept their abilities more inwardly and only brought them out at a later time. Those peoples who remained at a lower level entered the dense earth sphere too early, so to speak. They lost themselves too soon in the physical-sensual existence, they held nothing back. They remained standing with all their abilities, the others progressed. Yes, we have to say: the less developed a human species is, the less it could expect to descend into the physical, while others waited until favorable conditions existed on earth.

Now we apply this thought to the whole of earth's development: let us look at the time when our earth was still at the beginning of its development and man was spiritual and soul-like. Now, certain spiritual-soul abilities cannot wait for favorable earthly conditions to arise; they come into existence too early and become lowly beings. Others wait and come into existence at a certain time, and so we see that at a certain time those beings from which our ape race developed descended too early into physical development. And further, we see that man is the being that has embodied itself the latest, that has preserved its spirituality the longest. The other lower beings have been left behind because they entered physical, sensual existence too early.

Thus we see that man is spiritually and psychically more advanced than all other creatures, but that he waited the longest before entering into physical existence. He developed out of the spiritual, but later than the other beings, which also developed out of the spiritual. The differentiation that the beings are at different levels of development is rooted in the spiritual. We must not say that man developed from a lower animal form, but we must say that man comes directly from the spiritual, and that the lower animal forms also developed from the spiritual, but entered physical existence too early. This also helps us to understand the relationship between animals and humans. Animals must bear the same forms and traits as humans, because they have undergone the same line of development, but have condensed too early.

This is, of course, a picture that is very difficult to understand for those who only want to accept physical and sensual facts about human development. Another example, a second fact, is given to show how completely different natural science and spiritual science facts are.

You all know for certain that the course of scientific creeds in the nineteenth century – especially towards the middle of the century – led to the construction of a so-called atomistic worldview. Let us recall in all simplicity how this atomistic creed came about. A person hears a sound and says to themselves: I hear the sound with my ear, and I realize that the air is in a certain vibration. A cannon has been fired somewhere far away from me. The vibration has propagated. My ear perceives this air vibration as sound. You can also say: Take a string and stroke it with a bow, and you can prove that the string vibrates in a regular manner, and you perceive the vibrations as a tone. If we allow these vivid facts to enter our soul, it is easy for us to say: Apart from myself, there is nothing at all except vibrating matter, and the ear and hearing perceive the vibrating air as a tone.

But the course of the scientific creed has been such that this fact has gradually been transferred to the field of vision, that is to say, to the field of light and colors. In numerous writings, you can read again and again how that which is color is something that does not exist outside of us. Outside of us, science says, there is nothing but moving matter. Just as the air vibrates when we hear sounds, so fine matter, called ether, vibrates when we perceive colors and light. This ether makes certain movements and our eye perceives a certain number of vibrations as blue, as red. Outside of us is not blue or red, outside of us is not light, outside of us is vibrating matter, and what we perceive as color and light is caused by us in that these vibrations reach our eye and propagate to the brain.

Similar things have been claimed for other areas, for example, in what occurred in the last third of the nineteenth century as the so-called mechanical theory of heat. For example, when our hand comes into contact with gas and we feel heat, the heat of the gas is not outside of us. In the gas itself there are millions upon millions of parts that move, and this movement causes the feeling of warmth inside us. Thus a strange doctrine could develop that could be called an atomistic world view.

If you follow this doctrine to its ultimate conclusion, you end up saying to yourself: everything we perceive, all the sounds that rise and fall, all the colorful and wonderful carpet of color and light, all the warmth and cold, everything we perceive through our senses, all this is only something we experience within ourselves, and outside of us there is nothing but moving matter, vibrating atoms. If there is nothing else outside, what must the next conclusion be? Then there is nothing in our brain but vibrating matter. Well, what does that get us?

We have filled the perceivable space with atoms and think that they vibrate, that they dance, that they swirl together into the most diverse tissues, that they affect our eyes and ears and evoke sounds and colors. This naturally leads to the conclusion that the world of reality is composed of atoms, that it is nothing but a world of atoms in motion. And in this world of moving atoms, what is seen as the inner life of different beings arises as a phantom.

If such a theory is put forward as a science, it may be useful in some respects; but if it is put forward as a worldview, then one would also have to draw the consequences, and these cannot be anything other than that the only reality in the world is a world of atomic motion, and then man would also be nothing more than a sum of moving atoms.

What remains of a person when they die? When they die, these atoms scatter, nothing remains of the person, nothing of what their soul was, nothing of what their spirit was, only the atom is eternal. The atoms are the only thing that is eternal and indestructible. Thus this train of thought, when thought out, becomes a creed of the eternity of the most indifferent: the little atomistic idol.

It was basically only out of a certain feeling of inadequacy that Du Bois-Reymond said in his famous speech: Natural science can lead to nothing other than an explanation of all the facts of the world through the movement of atoms. He said: To explain the human being scientifically means to understand these atomic movements down to the last detail. But he found the inadequacy of this explanation, and he said to himself: But it is something else whether I see movements, moving atoms, or whether I experience the unique fact in myself: I see red, or I smell the scent of roses, or hear the sound of an organ.

Du Bois-Reymond was drawing attention to something that the German philosopher Leibniz had already said: Imagine the human brain as a giant machine, so big that you can walk around in it. While I am thinking, “I see red,” you are observing what is going on. Like the wheels and belts of a machine, you can all see the movements of the atoms in my brain while I am thinking this. But what the soul experiences while these movements are taking place, you cannot see. The fact does not become clear to you why I feel: “I see red”. Du Bois-Reymond felt the same way, and he said: natural science can give no other explanation for any inner experience than the movement of atoms and molecules – and he called that the astronomical realization of man. He said that it is impossible for science to advance from what are merely movements of atoms to a real explanation of what is present after all as certain ideas in the soul. Why should a group of atoms not care about how they are arranged or will be arranged, how they swirl and dance? Why should they evoke the ideas that cannot be denied: One time I see red, the other time blue, and so on? Never will science be able to bridge the gap from external perception to my inner imagination, Du Bois-Reymond said.

That was the one confession of the natural scientist about the limits of science at the time. At the same time, it was the confession that struck this atomism in FCSSCII'I.

Now, where natural science ends, spiritual science begins. What does spiritual science have to say about all this? It has this to say: Yes, no matter how much you state that there is only moving air out there, when you hear a sound, you must not conclude from this that the ear creates the sound. That is about as clever as the following: suppose I receive a telegram from America: “Send me immediately such and such,” and I go and examine the wire and find material processes going on in it and want to conclude from that: So my own inner being or the telegram official creates the content of the telegram.

The wire, the material, is used here – reasonably – to mediate between the recipient and the sender. We never have the right to believe that only this material process exists as reality when we see it. We must not judge a field for which we have not yet created the organs of perception; we have no more right to do so than a blind person has to judge color and light.

Spiritual science says: Sound belongs to the real world, and it was the sound that caused the vibrations of the air.

What is an atom? How do we know that a thing is in front of us in space and has a material existence? We know it first of all through our external sensory perception, in that it appears to us with a certain color or a certain shine, or in such a way that it can make a sound, or shows us a certain warmth, smells or tastes; we perceive it through its properties, which it reveals to our senses and through which it stimulates us to have sensations of color, sound, smell, taste and warmth.

What then is an atom? An atom is not a real thing in space. It has no inherent warmth, because warmth arises only from the movement of atoms; it has no inherent color, because color is only produced by the movement of atoms; it has no other properties either, because all these properties are only produced by the movement of atoms. This atom, which has no reality, is nothing at all for the one who thinks in real terms. It is something that has been invented in addition to things, a unit of account for research, a human thought that makes it possible for us to understand the world from a certain perspective.

The world of atoms is a dreamy, purely imaginative world, not even as real as color and light, but only thought of in addition to everything.

Spiritual science is thus completely grounded in Goethe, whom very few people know was as great a naturalist as he was a poet. And just as he saw reality in what is before our senses, so does the person who thinks in spiritual terms. He sees nothing in the sensory world but a compilation of what we experience in the spiritual world.

When we see a rose and it is yellow, we see a certain shape, a color, perceive a certain degree of warmth, a particular smell and so on, and then we have to say to ourselves: if you want to look behind things, you must not examine the atoms that you have invented, but the spirit that stands behind things and that your soul can experience. The phenomenon itself is the reality, the spirit in it, that is what we can seek in the expanse of space. Just as ice condenses out of water, so the physical world has condensed out of the spiritual.

Natural science and spiritual science are opposed to each other: spiritual science does not invent fantastic atom dances behind the physical-sensual world, but sees spiritual entities behind colors, behind sounds, behind warmth and so on.

It is difficult to achieve an understanding between the two currents, but only if one remains on the ground of materialistic thinking. If we approach the world of facts by way of an example, we find that precisely as scholars of spiritual science, as true confessors of the spiritual world, what has been considered the firm foundation for the scientific creed has crumbled away piece by piece in recent years. Just two years ago it was claimed that man descended from higher animals.

Let us consider the question: What about the descent of man from the higher animals, from the apes? There is a certain similarity between the body of a human being and that of a higher ape. This has led Huxley, in his more superficial consideration, to say that there is less difference between the structure of a human being and that of a higher ape than between the higher and lower ape species. In recent years, however, it has become clear that it is impossible to base the human build on the ape build. In some respects, however, humans do bear a great similarity to gibbons, except that gibbons have terribly large front feet, almost touching the ground. In this respect, they are much more similar to much lower-ranking ape species than to gibbons.

If you wanted to stick with the idea that humans descended from gibbons, you would think: Well, the story goes like this: First, they, the apes, have short hands, but then, when the gibbon ape was created, they got long hands, and then they became short again in humans. So they gradually came to the conclusion that, although the gibbon is most similar to humans in terms of certain characteristics, this human being must in turn have descended from a lower-ranking ape, and the gibbon would only be a kind of side line that had developed particularly long hands.

This is a simple case; but in relation to such comparisons, it has been shown that it is quite impossible to derive man from the higher apes. You would have to go back to lower apes, so that all higher apes would be only side lines. But it still does not want to be right. Yes, important voices have been raised that man would have to go back to much lower animal forms, and one has been forced, so to speak, to move those groups of animals that are closest to man further and further away from man. This path will continue, and it will be found that everything that is directly related to man is not found, and the line of development will have to be traced further and further back, and it will be realized that the being from which man is derived was not physical at all, but spiritual.

Natural science does not yet know this, but the facts have pushed it onto the path that is mapped out by spiritual science. The physical world of facts will increasingly prove to be a confirmation of spiritual science.

And now we ask ourselves: What about our other example, the atomic world? On the basis of certain more penetrating theories, a more recent naturalist, the chemist Ostwald, has rejected the whole atomic theory. At the Lübeck Naturalists' Conference at the end of the 1880s, Ostwald had spoken about overcoming materialism and pointed out the contradictions of it. He did not advocate the view of the eternal material atom, but rather said: “Everything that occurs as atoms is a center of energy.”

He used an analogy and said: “When I receive a blow with a stick, am I not affected by the matter of the stick and only the force with which I received the blow, the essence? The energy that is released on you? Everywhere there are forces, energies, and when man perceives the forces as filling space, then he perceives matter.

That was still speculation, others have already been further developed by the facts. Let us assume that copper and chlorine combine. These combine under the appearance of fire. Heat occurs. If you now want to separate these bodies again, you have to supply the same heat again. So this heat proves to be something very real, which is supposed to be only movement.

Certain researchers who thought more deeply about this said to themselves: heat occurs when certain atoms combine and come into contact with each other; if you want to separate them again, you have to add heat again. From this they concluded: we must imagine the atoms in a similar way to children's balloons filled with air. When you squeeze them, the air comes out. If you want them to be plump again, you have to let air in. Heat in atoms is like the air in these children's balloons, they reasoned. We have to imagine atoms and molecules themselves as a kind of sack, and heat is what fills the sacks, like flour in flour sacks. When copper and chlorine are free, these sacks are completely filled with heat. But when these bodies combine, these sacks are pressed together and the heat is expelled. If we separate them again with something, then we also have to add the heat again.

Such thinkers have been forced to recognize heat – something that is otherwise only seen as a movement – as something real, although it is still supposed to be in a shell. The humanities scholar would now say: So you are reckoning with warmth as something real and tangible, and you are only adding the shell so that you can still save your atom. I'll give you the shell too. — The humanities believe that the atom and molecule are nothing more than the condensed quality of warmth itself, and not only the filling, but also the sacks for it. If we leave out the shell, what remains is shaped warmth, and we imagine nothing other than the shaped sensation under a material particle. That is then what is really real.

Others have gone a step further. If you conduct an electric current through pumped-out glass tubes, so-called Geissler tubes, light phenomena occur in them.

This led to the assumption that it was not just moving matter inside, but it has been shown that one cannot think otherwise than that electricity detaches from matter and continues to flow independently. It has been seen that electricity flows at all. What was previously regarded as just a property of matter was now seen as something independent. The property itself flows in electricity and such flowing electricity was called electrons.

In a speech in 1904, the former British Prime Minister Balfour pointed out that such views must lead to significantly different ways of looking at matter... /Lücke] that matter is nothing more than electricity frozen in a certain way.

Does this revolution in thinking not clearly show us how science is on the way to the theosophical teaching that spirit is the original and the rest is only condensed spirit?

Thus, what used to be considered merely the movement of matter is now seen to be something else entirely: flowing electricity. Matter itself is basically condensed, flowing electricity.

But the crowning achievement in all this is a discovery that has only emerged in recent years: radium. What has radium research shown? You all know that radium has drawn people's attention to the fact that certain substances – radioactive substances – have strange radiations that can only be detected by their effects, for example, that they make the non-conductive air electrically conductive and that they affect the photographic plate. These emanations of radium could not be explained in any other way by the thinkers concerned than by assuming that the emanation goes right into the atom. The atom itself emits these emanations, and indeed one has been forced to the idea that the atom gradually radiates itself completely in its effects. We see that the atom is completely broken down and fragmented, so that we can only perceive it in its effects, in its properties.

Yes, we see even more. The ingenious English physicist Ramsay showed that a certain radiation, an emanation of radium, can be transferred to another substance, another element, helium. Physicists are beginning to calculate when the properties of such a substance will cease altogether, when such an atom will completely fragment. We see how it is calculated today – I do not want to talk about the correctness of the calculation, but only about the transformation of the way of thinking – how certain substances will be so far in 5000 million years that they have lost all their properties, that they will no longer be there as material substance, but will have dissolved into space. Only the chemical elements, the atoms are eternal, everything else passes.

These new research results now bring facts into people's view, the factual results that show how that which had been considered the most solid, the atom, dissolves, splinters, how the body of this atom disintegrates in the hands of the natural scientist into the properties that should have been created by its movements alone. Thus the idea of an eternal atom had to be shattered; it is transient, it disintegrates, and nothing remains in the hands of those who want to be atomists in the old sense.

Thus, in our time, science is at a crossroads. Either it can continue to build on its old theories and then have theories that increasingly contradict the facts, against which the facts are almost a mockery, or it can go the way that gradually leads to moving further and further back from the ancestors of man, into the spiritual and soul, and dissolving matter more and more - and the last product of dissolution will be the spirit. Thus we see how spiritual science is a pioneer, working ahead of the future, and before us in this future stands something that we can express with the words: We foresee peace between natural science and spiritual science, between what is the knowledge of nature and what, through the knowledge of the spirit, can fill man with certainty and bliss.

Of course, more than 100 years ago it was still too early for such a connection between these two currents, and Schiller was right when he said: Both would still have to go separate ways and only in later times could they unite.

The nineteenth century has now shown the way: the science of the external, the sensory, has found facts and produced results that themselves go beyond the purely sensory-real. Alongside this, theosophy has developed. It, theosophy, will be able to show the way to the facts from within itself, from its spiritual knowledge. It will be able to show how the external sense world is an expression of the spiritual. In this way spiritual science will lead philosophy down, knowledge of the supersensible, which a hundred years ago still lived only in abstract concepts, hovering in cloud-like heights. It will lead philosophy down so that it does not just deal with abstract concepts and ideas alone, but points to the real, concrete knowledge of facts in the spiritual, and natural science will rise and find its way from the purely external sense phenomena to the spirit, and so the two will meet, while more than a hundred years ago the philosophy of concepts could not come down to the facts of concrete reality.

Time had to pass for that. It has now passed. The spirit presses down into reality and wants to be applicable and fruitful in this outer reality as well. And so we can present a beautiful horizon, a beautiful perspective of the spiritual world, and can say: Just when we realistically face the facts, both the sensual and the spiritual world, we see how natural science and spiritual science converge to give something that is life for the human being, that will transform in the human soul and give the human being strength and security and confidence in themselves in life and what will also give them strength to feel and sense and recognize that which can only be recognized through the spirit: the eternal in the human soul.