8. The Harmony Between Spiritual Science and Natural Science and the Misconceptions about the Former and the Building Dedicated to it in Dornach

In this context, dear attendees, it is important to note that the spiritual researcher must, in a certain respect, actually be a true believer in the scientific way of seeking truth and knowledge. And this is also the case with the one who has recognized the true nerve of spiritual research; he sees what it actually means for the spiritual development of the world that such profound and exact scientific methods have emerged in the course of recent times, methods that are so suitable to eliminate all that may be illusion about the world, all that may be fantasy about the world, simply by developing a certain sense of fact, which can only lead to spiritual research if a sense of fact becomes a fact [fanaticism]. That inner discipline of the soul that humanity has been able to acquire by bringing thinking so close to the external objective course of facts, this inner discipline of the soul is highly recognized by spiritual research as something exemplary. For in this way something enters into the whole structure of thinking by which the soul says to itself: You must not follow as truth that which lives subjectively in you, that which you would like to believe to be true, that which you like; you must refrain from all that which speaks in you out of your liking, out of your sympathy, out of your affections: you must let purely the world of facts itself speak for itself. In particular, by moving from mere observation in natural science to experiments - whereby nature expresses its secrets in compiled facts and one is only a spectator - in particular, by doing so, humanity, which has gradually absorbed the scientific attitude into its world view, has earned a certain respect for the fact - and, connected with that, for the inner discipline of truth-seeking.