4. The Eternal Forces of the Human Soul in the Light of Spiritual Science

In contrast to this, the objections of the natural scientific view of the present will always be justified. I have already pointed out the meaning of these objections several times and can therefore briefly indicate them again today. It can rightly be said: If we look at the course of this soul life, see how it develops from its dim appearance in early childhood to maturity, see how it develops from maturity towards the old age conditions of the human being, we will see how this development, called spiritual, goes completely parallel with the bodily-physical development, how with the formation of the nervous system and the other organism of the human being from childhood on, the spiritual abilities also gradually develop, how they in turn decay with the physical decay. It can truly be said that anyone who looks at this with a proper scientific attitude today will see that the spiritual life, as it manifests itself in everyday life and also in science, really does appear like the flame that cannot be there without the candle being there, that is dependent on the candle and must disappear with the candle itself. One can definitely assert such a parallelism between the spiritual life, which seems to flare up from the functions of the physical body, and the physical body. And especially when one looks at those clinical studies that show how mental abilities are switched off when the human nervous system is diseased, how certain mental expressions are no longer there when this or that organ is diseased, if one looks at it, one cannot do but say: No matter how much we would like to believe the conclusions of some psychologists, the scientific view is so strong that we can hardly avoid giving our full approval to what is presented by the aforementioned side.