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

So one can say: The objection from the point of view of the natural sciences, the objection of thorough, careful physiological science, that the consciousness of spiritual research could also be based only on illusions or the like, one can fully understand it. But it does not apply if the consciousness of spiritual research is developed in the right way. And here it will also be of particular advantage if the spiritual researcher is not, I might say, partly too proud or too lazy to get involved in what natural science now gives, not only in theories but also in practical instructions, in order not to lead the soul life into all kinds of extravagances. And one can even say: the more spirit-scientific education strives to apply the beautiful, the careful results of justified natural scientific practice, the better it will be for this spirit-scientific education. What spiritual research strives for - precisely because it strives into the realm where mere natural science can never enter - that which spiritual research will always carry with it will be: complete respect for the legitimate claims of natural science itself and of that which arises for life from natural science. That will have to be striven for between the two, which can be described as complete harmony. And for someone who, I might say, is familiar with the nature of the soul behavior in healthy natural science on the one hand and in healthy spiritual research on the other, it is only now that complete harmony is revealed. But he will also realize that, seen from one side or the other, objections and antagonism can arise in a completely understandable way. Opposition also arises from the side of one-sided spiritual science, which believes it can fight natural science without knowing its actual core. So, for example, one hears - of course I do not blame it when someone who knows the scientific methods speaks of an unjustified materialism - and knows how a one-sided criticism of spiritual science is directed from these scientific methods. And indeed, we see that many who want to be scholars of the humanities speak about the materialism of the natural sciences from one or other point of view, from a point of view that they consider “sublime”, and believe that, without knowing what the natural sciences achieve in terms of methods and intellectual discipline, they are hitting the nail on the head when they reproach materialism in some aspect of the natural sciences. Natural science has developed its methods over the centuries and has developed these methods by not exceeding its limits. It has developed these methods by strictly adhering to material processes.