4. The Human Soul and the Human Spirit

This can also be seen when a person, who believes that he must have a different worldview from that of spiritual science, and that precisely because of the certain results of natural science, lets himself go and replaces what he is only deluding himself about with what lives in him in a natural way. Yesterday I spoke about a thinker, and from what I said you will have gathered that I have the highest regard for this thinker. He is the Austrian philosopher Bartholomäus von Carneri. I respect Carneri because he, with such a strong spirit, tried to develop an ethic, a moral teaching, out of Darwinism. But he stands on ground that produces thoughts which naturally oppose what spiritual science says, because he himself does not understand, because he presents things that contradict what he asserts. Let us assume that such a man lets himself go and inwardly lives what he only thinks out in a way that is misleading to himself. Let us assume that such a man comes to a moment when he abandons himself to life and not to his crooked thinking. Let us assume that he would surrender to life in an elementary way and speak from inner strength, the same strength that had led him to his warped thinking. We can observe this in Carneri. Carneri had actually been born a cripple, with a warped spine, had grown up in great agony and had become a very old man. Life was truly agony for him. He could only write with his left hand, his right hand had been completely paralyzed throughout his life, and the same applied to the whole of the right side of his body, which was unusable in certain respects. In addition, there were the constant breathing disorders associated with such an organism. And yet, the man was standing on solid Darwinian ground and at the same time sought to found a world view for ethics that disregards what is misunderstood as dualism. After all, one could also claim that water is only one unit. But water is not a unit because it consists of hydrogen and oxygen. You are not really breaking with tradition when you speak of body, soul and spirit, but Carneri believed that. We can take him at his word.