Addenda

1. To Chapter I-4 Paragraph 5: To speak of a vital force was still regarded a short time ago as a sign of an unscientific mind. Today there are here and there among scientists some who are not averse to the once entertained idea of a vital force. But anyone who examines the course of modern scientific development will, nevertheless, perceive the more consistent logic of those who, in view of this development, refuse to listen to anything about such a vital force. Certainly, vital force does not belong to what are called today forces of nature. Anyone who is not willing to pass from the habits of thought and the conceptions of modern science to a higher mode of thinking should not speak of vital force. Only the mode of thinking and the presuppositions of spiritual science make it possible to deal with such things without inconsistency. Further, those thinkers who seek to form their conclusions purely on the ground of modern science have abandoned the belief that obtained in the latter half of the nineteenth century, namely, that the phenomena of life could only be explained through references to the same forces that are at work in inanimate nature. The book of such a noted naturalist as Oskar Hertwig, The Development of Organisms; A Refutation of Darwin's Theory of Chance, is a scientific phenomenon that sheds its light far and wide. It opposes the assumption that the inter-workings of mere physical and chemical laws are able to shape the living thing. It is also significant that, in so-called Neo-Vitalism, a view is becoming prevalent that also admits the activity of a special force in living things much after the manner of the older theory of vital force. In this domain, however, we shall never be able to get beyond shadowy abstract concepts unless we recognize that the only possible way of reaching what in life transcends in its activity the inorganic forces is by means of a mode of perception that rises to supersensible vision. The point is that the kind of knowledge modern science has been applying to the inorganic cannot be carried over into the region of life, but that an entirely different kind of knowledge must be acquired.