Twenty-ninth Lecture

Rudolf Steiner: Today's physicists would be very surprised if they could design their airships in such a way that they could go to the place where they suspect all kinds of gas to evaporate and the like, while the matter is quite different. So, for example, one would have to say that even empty space still has an intensity, namely the intensity of zero. Take any intensity for a substance, let's say for air; air has a certain intensity, water has a greater intensity, earth an even greater intensity, and if you then go back again, you come to the so-called empty space, it has the intensity zero in relation to the effectiveness. Just as you can arrive at zero in your wallet and then, if you go further, incur debts and arrive at a negative figure, so intensity can also become negative, that is, holes can be drilled into outer space, so that you do not have space there, but negative intensity, hollowed-out space. Physicists would find it in the sun if they could travel there. But in doing so, you have already pointed out something that naturally precludes explaining the prominences in the way that today's physics explains them. So these things lead so far afield, and I can of course only hint that one should try here to get involved in spiritual science. Because that does not actually belong to our immediate path here, otherwise we would have to deal with the whole of anthroposophy here, and that is impossible.