4. The Spirit, Soul, and Body of Man

Natural scientists such as Du Bois-Reymond and others speak of science having to stop where the supernatural begins. I have already pointed out the error that is apparent here in an earlier lecture. How did it arise? People have sensed—and Du Bois-Reymond senses it quite clearly—that the human being is rooted in something spiritual. But this spiritual element must first be recognized, through the development of spiritual scientific methods, as the soil from which the human soul springs. If I have a tree in front of me and see how its roots reach into the ground, I may be indignant that it hides its roots from my view, and I want to have a clear view of the tree. Today's science wants to make things clear by focusing on what is sensually visible, because the roots in the spiritual soil elude it. Science acts like someone who, in order to have a clear, vivid view of a tree, pulls it out of the ground or digs it up. They then have a clear view of it, but the tree withers. In this way, modern science, which does not want to engage with the spirit, has uprooted the tree of knowledge. But just as the tree torn from its roots, even though it can be clearly seen, withers away, so too does knowledge wither away when it is torn from its spiritual soil. A statement such as that of Du Bois-Reymond, that science ends where the supersensible begins, will in the future be transformed into the opposite conviction. People will recognize that if one does not want to acknowledge the supersensible even in natural phenomena, one uproots the tree of knowledge from its soil and causes knowledge to wither. In the future, people will not say that science ends where the supersensible begins, but if they want to base science on removing it from the soil of the supersensible, they will learn that where the supersensible ends in human spiritual life, science cannot flourish, that no real science will arise outside the supersensible, but that where the supersensible ends, there will only be a dead science.