23. The Influences of the Sun and Moon on Man

The question now is, how can we approach things from a spiritual-scientific point of view in order to gradually move towards a spiritual-scientific view of these things, towards a spiritual-scientific illumination of external conditions? Here again I must mention to you something that Goethe - truly a spirit who is closest among modern thinkers and researchers to what we call Theosophy - attempted in relation to similar areas as others have attempted in relation to ebb and flow. Namely, when I had studied Goethe's scientific and other works in detail in Weimar, after having dealt with them for years, for seven years with the most diverse preparatory works that Goethe had done, there were also countless tables with an incredible accuracy. For today's Goethe researchers, especially for those who write Goethe biographies - well, they really are among the most terrible people today; today we have seen that an Englishman has written the latest Goethe biography, which is praised throughout paper Germany as something incredibly high, a book that only shows us how, when such an inferior spirit describes Goethe, it also makes him an inferior spirit; No man can rise above himself, and it is only too understandable that the same thing happens to Goethe when such a man takes aim at him - well, people naturally have no idea how precisely and diligently Goethe worked where it mattered to him to establish great scientific facts. There are endless rows of tables, set out in drawings, where Goethe tried to determine the air pressure for the most diverse places in Europe. He wanted to show that the barometer reading did not depend on random air currents and external influences from the moon and celestial bodies, but that the barometer reading showed a regular level, so that the air on the whole earth became thinner (at one point) and denser (at another point). And Goethe wanted to show this through the barometer reading by tracking the fall and rise in tabular form.