The Rudolf Steiner Archive

29. Monism and Theosophy

Lecture by Rudolf Steiner at the Giordano Bruno Society

[ 1 ] Dr. Steiner begins by emphasizing that a man who is, in the ordinary sense, worldly-wise would not speak publicly about such a topic in the current German intellectual climate, because hardly any other topic is more likely to cause serious embarrassment, and then continues: “Theosophy is a term often claimed by people who seek to explore their destinies in spiritualist circles. And yet, even though it carries a whiff of fraud, I speak on the subject in its connection to German intellectual life with full awareness. I much preferred being in my chemistry laboratory to being in any spiritualist circle, and I know that one can literally get one’s hands dirty in such circles, but I have also washed my hands and hope that I will succeed in introducing you to the term ‘theosophy’ as a serious worldview. It must be clearly stated that a serious worldview can be sought only on the basis of modern natural science; I will never deviate from the belief that salvation lies solely within it. However, natural science still fills minds and hearts with its materialistic worldview, and even if a few dreamers claim that we have long since moved beyond the age of Büchner and so on, if we cannot construct an ideal worldview based on natural science, the materialism of the 1950s will continue to conquer the world. Virtually all contemporary natural scientists are materialists, even when they deny it.

[ 2 ] Natural science has shown us how living beings gradually came into being and became more perfect until humans appeared. But here, at the 22nd link in his organic lineage according to Haeckel, it came to a halt. David Friedrich Strauss praised the fact that natural science has freed us from the miracle—the miracle in the sense that Linnaeus still spoke of in the 18th century: “As many species of animals and plants as the Creator originally created side by side, so many miracles there are.” Through the magic word “evolution,” natural science has dispelled these wonders; this magic word has transformed spatial coexistence into a clear temporal sequence, but it has not yet been able to dispel the wonder that is humanity itself. We must try to apply the methods of natural science to the coexistence we see before us in the Hottentot and the genius; we must, so to speak, discover the spiritual primordial cell that connects the two. But the scientific method required for this will be yet another, just as natural science has always had to shape its methods according to its purposes. The geologist could not simply collect minerals to learn the history of the Earth; Haeckel would not have discovered his law of biogenetic succession if he had treated animal carcasses with chemical reagents in the laboratory; nor will the chemical analysis of the brain provide the researcher of the soul with insights into the life of the soul. But despite the tremendous progress of natural science, it has so far been unable to discover this method, and as a result, a chasm has opened up between natural science and religious sentiment that is deeper than it has ever been. The situation was different in the ancient cultures and their theologies. There, this conflict does not exist; theology is nothing other than the expression of the scientific thought of the time. What was presented as a worldview was so noble, grand, and divine that it was religion translated into feeling. Today, however, we are faced with the fact that theology and science are two completely separate things, and in this sense, Adolf Harnack says that one feels as if redeemed by the thought that science will never be able to fulfill religious needs. On the other hand, speaking on behalf of the natural sciences, for example, the Englishman Ingersoll says: “We have reached the point where, for us, the expressions of the mind are nothing more than a scientific fact; our thoughts are nothing other than the transformation of the food we take into our organism; the creation of Hamlet is nothing other than the transformed food that Shakespeare consumed.”

[ 3 ] How can we restore the harmony that existed in the ancient religions, and indeed even in the early Middle Ages? With St. Augustine, this schism gradually took hold, leading—through the opposition between Scholasticism and Galileo, and so on—to the two great dualistic currents. Science was like a son returning home from abroad whom his father could no longer understand, and Protestantism is nothing other than the father’s declaration that he intends to disinherit his son, while Kantianism is the conclusion, the final phase of this process!

[ 4 ] The first major attempt to overcome this dichotomy was made by the German idealist philosophers Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel. Three years after Hegel’s death, Fichte’s son published a book on human self-knowledge. It treats this as a task set by the natural sciences themselves. I.H. Fichte says, for example: “When we observe natural beings, we see their eternal laws. But when we regard the human soul itself as a natural process, we are faced with a paradigm shift.” The laws of nature lie outside our personality in the natural foundation from which we have emerged; but in our soul we do not see ready-made natural laws—rather, we ourselves are natural law. There, nature becomes our own act; there, we are development. There, we do not merely recognize; there, we live. Our task now is to create eternal, ironclad laws, not merely to recognize them. I.H. Fichte then suggests: at this point, human beings do not merely live in their knowledge of nature; at this point, they realize and live the divine, the creative; at this point, philosophy transitions into theosophy!

[ 5 ] Here we encounter the concept of theosophy in German intellectual life. Perhaps we can now see more clearly that theosophy is nothing other than the ultimate requirement of a true monism between knowledge of nature and self-knowledge. This gives us a perspective that reconciles the opposites between religion and science. We now know: there is no other divine power that elevates the worm to the level of a human being; we know that we ourselves are this .

[ 6 ] One might ask: But what purpose does such knowledge actually serve? Well, I reply, what significance does what is commonly called knowledge—the mere recording of facts—have? Those whom I would like to call “cosmic corner-standers” are content with that.

[ 7 ] Anyone who understands the concept of theosophy in this way will also understand Feuerbach, who says that man created God in his own image. We readily admit that the concept of God is born of the human heart, and that God, as a symbol of an inner ideal, can help humanity develop beyond itself.

[ 8 ] In this way, we will once again gain a divine wisdom that will reveal the divinity of nature. We are living today in an era that can become a crucial turning point in Europe’s spiritual development, just as the era in which Copernicus, Giordano Bruno, and Galileo lived and laid the foundations of modern natural science was. But modern natural science has failed to celebrate its reconciliation with religion. This is the task before us, and we must fulfill it. However imperfect these attempts may be, there are currents in modern intellectual life that are moving in this direction. Religions are not founded as such, and there are therefore no “religious geniuses” in the same sense that there are scientific and artistic geniuses; yet there are indeed personalities who express the body of knowledge of their time as a religious sensibility. I am well aware of the great shortcomings and errors of the Theosophical Movement. Duboc has called Theosophy a “feminine philosophy.” We can change that by making it a “masculine” one in critical Germany.

[ 9 ] I know that there can be no salvation outside of the natural sciences, but we must find new methods of psychological research based on the natural sciences in order to achieve what all ancient religious views were able to do: establish a great unity between religious need and science. Theosophy, in the sense I have defined it, has nothing to do in and of itself with the accounts of phenomena related to hypnotism and somnambulism that are often conflated with it; indeed, one could reject these and still be a theosophist, but these phenomena of abnormal mental activity are by no means to be rejected, and in the scientific interpretation of these facts undertaken particularly by French and English scholars, I see the first tentative attempts at genuine research into the soul.”

[ 10 ] Dr. Steiner concluded his keynote address by referring to a painting by the Belgian artist Wiertz titled “The Man of the Future.” It depicts a giant holding cannons and other symbols of our modern culture in his hands, smiling as he shows them to his wife and children; they appear pygmy-like in comparison to his immense stature. It will be our task to ensure that we do not appear so pygmy-like in the eyes of the man of the future.