4. The Spirit, Soul, and Body of Man

Whether one approaches people who think in a natural scientific way, or other researchers of the soul, and presents them with the results of spiritual science, one experiences the same thing, only in a different field, as told in Galileo's biography. Until Galileo's time, the old prejudice that the nerves originate in the heart, which had been perpetuated throughout the Middle Ages by a misunderstanding of Aristotle, still prevailed over physical phenomena. Galileo had told a friend that this was a prejudice. The friend was a staunch believer in Aristotle. He said that what Aristotle wrote was true, and Aristotle wrote that the nerves originate in the heart. Galileo then showed the friend a corpse and explained how visual observation taught us that the nerves originate in the brain, not the heart, and that Aristotle had not noticed this because he had not yet been able to make such observations on a corpse. The Aristotle believer remained skeptical nonetheless. Although he saw that the nerves originate in the brain, he said that the evidence speaks in your favor, but Aristotle says otherwise, and if there is a contradiction between Aristotle and nature, I believe Aristotle rather than nature. This really happened. And so it is still today. Go today to those who want to establish soul research in the old sense from a philosophical point of view, go to those who want to establish soul research in a natural scientific way, and they will claim that what originates from the spirit or body and underlies mental phenomena can only be explained somehow from the mental; and no matter how much one points to the facts of spiritual observation — which is not as easy to carry out as our scientific observation, and spiritual anatomy will be more difficult to pursue than physical anatomy — one will be answered today from the same spirit: If there is a contradiction between what Wundt or Paulsen or any other authority says and what spiritual science shows through spiritual observation, we do not believe spiritual observation, but rather what is written in the books to which we are accustomed in this age of no authority. For today, people no longer believe in authorities, but—though they do not realize it—in what is somehow officially stamped. Spiritual science will prevail, just as natural science has prevailed with regard to physical research.