Eighth Lecture

It must be emphasized again and again: it is not enough for something to be logical. Einsteinism is logical, but it is not in touch with reality. All relativism is not in touch with reality as such. Thinking in touch with reality begins only where one can no longer leave reality by thinking. Isn't it true that today man reads, or listens, I should say, quite calmly, when Einstein says, as an example: What would happen if a clock were to fly out into the cosmos at the speed of light? Yes, a person today listens to that quite calmly. A clock flying out into the cosmos at the speed of light is, for someone who lives in reality in his thinking, lives in reality in his soul, roughly the same as if someone were to say: What happens to a person when I cut off his head, and in addition, his right hand and his left hand, or his right arm and so on? He simply ceases to be a human being. In the same way, what one is still justified in imagining when one talks about a clock flying out into the cosmos at the speed of light immediately ceases to be a clock! It is not possible to imagine that. If one wants to arrive at valid thinking, the reality must be adhered to. Something can be logical and ingenious to an enormous degree, but it does not necessarily follow that it is in accordance with reality. And it is thinking in accordance with reality that we need in this age. For abstract thinking ultimately really leads us to no longer seeing reality at all because of all the abstractions. And today humanity admires the abstractions that are presented to it in this way. It does not matter whether these abstractions are somehow logically substantiated or the like. What matters is that man learns to grow together with reality, so that he can no longer say anything other than what is actually spoken from reality.