The Rudolf Steiner Archive

33. Science at a Crossroads

[ ] [ 1 ] Often, simple myths and legends reveal to us a deep, deep wisdom and truth—more so than even the wisest scholarship ever could. It seems as though an eternal truth from the human heart speaks directly to our soul when we hear a very simple yet deeply moving Mongolian fairy tale. This fairy tale goes something like this: There is an old woman. This old woman has only one large eye at the top of her head; she has no other eyes with which she can see. She walks all manner of paths through the world, and everything she encounters along the way, she picks up—every stone, every plant, everything, everything; and then she brings what she has picked up to her single eye to look at it, and when she has looked at it, something like immense horror is expressed on her face. Then she throws the object far away from herself. This story goes on to tell us: This old woman once lost her only child, and now she searches all over the world for that one child, believing she will find it in every stone, in every object she encounters. When she raises an object to her eye again and realizes once more that it is not the one that belongs so deeply to her, disappointment appears on her face, and she throws the object away.

[ ] [ 2 ] Now, if we were to interpret fairy tales and legends, we might find profound wisdom precisely in this fairy tale, which lived in the most primordial folk consciousness. We do not wish to do that now. In such fairy tales, one can indeed find many, many interpretations; but it seems to us that this fairy tale expresses a longing in every human heart. Every person, when they become clearly and distinctly aware of their deepest spiritual values, feels that they must seek something in the whole world—something that is most deeply connected to the innermost core of their soul, something they must believe can reveal itself in every stone, in every being. And every person feels that what they are actually seeking cannot be seen with their physical eyes or perceived directly. Every person feels within themselves a higher spiritual eye with which they walk through the world, and they sense that what meets the physical senses is merely the means of expression for something that lives behind it; and so they walk through the world like that woman, looking at every object. As long as they view it only with their physical senses, it gives them something that, when held up to the eye of their longing, deeply disappoints them. And he casts it aside, saying to himself: Again, again not that which I feel, that which must live in all external things. For it is indeed the spirit behind all sensory, physical beings that human beings seek unceasingly and eternally—the spirit of which they know lives within them, and of which they know they must somehow find it even behind external objects. It is spiritual science that points people toward what lies behind sensory things and what can truly satisfy their spiritual gaze.

[ ] [ 3 ] If one looks at things objectively, this spiritual science—despite its short history—has, in recent decades, found quite widespread acceptance among the educated people of our world. Nevertheless, among many people who deal with this subject only superficially, the strangest prejudices are circulating. We constantly hear: “Theosophy seeks nothing more than to transplant some Eastern worldview into Europe.” We hear that it is a sect, that it leads to the most blatant superstition.

[ ] [ 4 ] Not a trace of all this corresponds to reality. It does, however, require that people today engage more and more deeply with this spiritual science if they want to see what it is capable of offering humanity. If it truly offers the spiritual and satisfies that characteristic human longing, then it is more than what mere curiosity can satisfy. It is something that human beings need for their lives. It restores clarity to people that the spirit is the origin, the seed, and the source of everything, including the physical world; and if that is the case, then through the spirit it simultaneously gives people strength—the very sources of life itself. Those who engage with it more deeply find this to the fullest extent.

[ ] [ 5 ] Nothing is as fundamental, as significant for this spiritual science, as the statement that the spiritual within us—our thoughts, sensations, and feelings—are realities that have a profound effect and significance for our external life. If we apply this specifically, if we single out one aspect, we can say: True, genuine thoughts of the spirit give a person contentment and inner harmony. But inner harmony and contentment—if the spirit is truly a force—mean health in their effect on the physical organism, whereas doubt and isolation from the spiritual world cause a person inner insecurity, hopelessness, and an inability to work. It gnaws at their very core. And because thoughts are facts, doubt and hopelessness affect their health in such a way that they weaken it. This is, for now, a claim. However, anyone who delves deeper into the matter will gradually be able to convince themselves of its validity.

[ ] [ 6 ] Today, there are manifold obstacles for anyone who wishes to approach this spiritual science. Anyone who is himself immersed in this spiritual science is by no means inclined—if he views things impartially—to underestimate the serious obstacles that stand in the way of those who wish to come to an understanding of spiritual science. Among these manifold obstacles is something that is specifically connected to the greatest advances and most significant achievements of our age: natural science. But not the facts of natural science! For it is madness to claim that spiritual science—or any pursuit of truth, for that matter—could conflict with the facts of natural science. Facts are facts. And there can be nothing that in any way conflicts with scientific facts.

[ ] [ 7 ] But when we speak of natural science today, for most people who draw on it, it is not merely a matter of facts, but rather a commitment, a kind of faith derived from natural science. And it was particularly the late 1960s and 1970s that gradually gave rise to a kind of scientific commitment for many people. This conviction is expressed in the fact that many people say it is impossible for modern humans to speak of the spirit or of a divine-spiritual background; they claim that past ages, with their childish and fanciful views, spoke of the spirit or the soul. For today’s mature humanity, it is impossible to speak of these things, for the facts of natural science compel us to think otherwise. And what is spreading today as this “scientific religion”—and gaining more and more followers—captures the imagination of so many to such an extent that it is simply true that many who are caught up in this mindset must regard what spiritual science has to say as sheer nonsense, as mere daydreaming.

[ ] [ 8 ] The spiritual scientist must understand what is at stake here. We can certainly observe the following: The spiritual scientist presents what he believes he can say based on faithful observation of the spiritual world—a variety of teachings about what lies beyond the physically perceptible. After all, these things have often been discussed here—discussions of what we call the higher aspects of human nature, of the human destiny between death and rebirth, and of worlds other than the physical one. To many who today profess a kind of scientific doctrine, what is said here must seem like fantasy, if not something far worse. And today our discussion is devoted specifically to this fact: What must someone—who, over the course of the last sixty years, has come to embrace what is not directly provided by scientific facts, but what has developed as a result of them—what must such a person think of Theosophy or spiritual science, or what might he easily think of it?

[ ] [ 9 ] Before we address the position of those contemporaries who believe they adhere to a scientific worldview, we must clarify what is essential to the points in question in the spiritual sciences. The aim of spiritual science is to demonstrate in all things that the spirit is the primary reality, while matter is the derivative—that is, what appears as the effect of the spirit. For the spiritual scientist, therefore, substance, matter, and sensibility are also spirit, but spirit in a different form. Take a child, for example. The child comes to you with a piece of ice. You say to the child: “This is water—real water—just in a different form.” The child will say: “But this ice isn’t water!” Then you will say: “Once you become familiar with the nature of ice, you will understand.” In the same way, when the spiritual scientist sees matter—anything sensory—before him, he will say: “This is spirit in another form.” — The materialist will then say: “But that is matter.” And the spiritual scientist will reply, just as you would to the child: “You must first familiarize yourself with the extent to which matter appears as spirit in another form.”

[ ] [ 10 ] And this—which has now been presented to your soul in such an abstract way—is what spiritual science seeks to clarify in detail; for example, to show that what you, as a sensory human being, perceive—what you see with your eyes and touch with your hands—that this outer, material human being is nothing other than the result of a spiritual human being. Just as ice is water in another form, so the physical human being is a spiritual human being in another form.

[ ] [ 11 ] Now, of course, when we outline something like this in a few strokes today, we must recall what has been said in other lectures. For those who have not heard these lectures, it is difficult. This spiritual science shows that if you go further and further back in time from the present, you will find different forms in the course of evolution—increasingly simpler and simpler outer physical human forms. If you were to go back far enough, these physical human bodies would appear increasingly simple to you, until—if you went back far enough—you would find very simple, primitive human forms. But the further back you go, the more primitive the physical forms become, and the more you find a superphysical, invisible human form linked to this physical form. And if you go back even further in time, to when the physical human being becomes smaller and smaller, the physical body becomes imperceptible, but the spiritual human being is still there, and it is the creator of this physical human form. And if you go back even further, the human form disappears entirely, and you arrive at the original human being from whom the physical form coalesced. That is a spiritual human being.

[ ] [ 12 ] Let’s use an analogy to illustrate how human development takes place today. Take a certain amount of water. Let a small amount of it freeze into ice. Now there is a small amount of ice in the middle, surrounded by water. Now let more of it freeze. You will then have a more complex ice formation. Even though there is less water than before, the water has been transformed into ice. The more water that freezes, the less water remains. More and more ice is formed until we reach the point where we have frozen almost all the water into ice, so that what was once water is now expressed in the hard, tangible form of ice.

[ ] [ 13 ] This is roughly how we must imagine human evolution if we stick to this analogy. We can still see only the water; we can no longer see the spiritual human being. From within it begins to shine the first primitive, original human form, which stands at the lowest level of organization. This spiritual human being is all around us; it is becoming more dense. This process has continued to the present day. The human being of today, as he stands before us, has been formed from the spiritual human being into the physical realm. The spiritual form has become increasingly material. The human being of today is the expression, the revelation, of the invisible human being who has become visible.

[ ] [ 14 ] Now let’s consider another line of thought: suppose we hadn’t allowed just one such lump of water to solidify, but rather several. Suppose we had allowed one to solidify at the very first stage, and then removed it. It now remains as it was, showing us the stage of development that existed at a certain phase. Now let’s say we had allowed a second lump to freeze at a higher stage. We then remove it. It remains as it is. A third one as well. Finally, we can now lay out the entire long series of development, in which more and more water freezes into ice, until a point is finally reached where there is only one lump of ice. We have pieces of ice that have lost the ability to form any more ice, because we have separated them from the water. So, you see, this is how, in the spirit of spiritual science, one conceives of human development in relation to the animal world.

[ ] [ 15 ] Once upon a time, there was a spiritual human being; he originally developed primitive bodies. The part that retained and further developed the spiritual human being made its way up to present-day humanity. But wherever a stage of development broke away, it came to a halt. Thus, at the first stage—when the spiritual human being had developed the primitive form—a small, gelatinous sphere broke away, remained behind like that little piece of ice, and formed today’s lowest animals. They have lost their spiritual foundation. At a later stage, other beings were left behind: the worms. Later still, others remained behind—the fish form, then amphibians, and so on—until finally, in a period that is not long by the spiritual researcher’s standards, the ape species broke away from the spirit, so that it could no longer keep pace. Humanity has also advanced beyond this stage.

[ ] [ 16 ] Thus, you can never say that human beings are descended from any form that exists today. Rather, it is the other way around: The forms out there, the ones that surround you everywhere—these forms represent stages of evolution that humankind has overcome, because it retained within itself the original spiritual human being, because it did not tear what had become physical away from the spirit. When human beings look out at their surroundings in this way, they say to themselves: I am the first in our evolutionary series; back when even the most primitive animals did not yet exist, I was already here. I have gone through all these stages; I see my own stages reflected in my surroundings.

[ ] [ 17 ] This is how the spiritual researcher views the evolution of humankind, which descended as a spiritual being from the bosom of the Divine, continued on its path while the animals fell behind and were forced to remain at an earlier stage because they had lost the Source. Thus, when we look at any physical beings, we see how they are formed out of the spirit.

[ ] [ 18 ] But the spiritual researcher goes further. He sees in everything around him—not only in living beings, but in all material things—spirit that has, as it were, solidified. Atoms are nothing other than solidified spirit. For him, the spiritual is the original, the material the derivative. When we see a stone outside, how should we conceive of it? As even this stone being condensed spirit.

[ ] [ 19 ] This view has nothing to do with the extreme view that, for example, would seek to deny matter. By tracing all matter back to spirit, one does not deny it, for what matters in existence is not that one cannot see spirit, but that one becomes aware of its effects. Of course, the condensed spirits within matter have different properties than the spiritual beings themselves—that much is clear; one need only think these things through to their logical conclusion. This fundamental fact of spiritual science is now being challenged by the doctrines that have emerged from the natural sciences since the 1860s, which regard only the sensory as primary and refuse to acknowledge the spirit.

[ ] [ 20 ] Who doesn’t remember the two other lines of thought that confront us in today’s world when what has just been said is brought up! Who does not recall what appears today as the monistic theory of evolution, in which animals related to humans are not viewed as having split off, but rather as if only the lower animals had originally existed, so that humans are the composite product of the individual building blocks of animals? It is pointed out that once upon a time, only a simple organism existed. According to this alternative theory of evolution, a higher being is said to have developed all the way up to the human being. Thus, in terms of its entire inner significance, the human being would have simply emerged from the lower animal realm.

[ ] [ 21 ] And who doesn’t remember the other thing that is said? When we look at an object as it appears before us, what is it made of? Of the tiniest particles of matter—molecules and atoms, they say. And these tiniest particles of matter are the only things that are truly real. All beings have come into being solely through the interaction of these [particles of matter]. For many people today, these two ideas are so firmly established—they are such evocative concepts—that many people cannot make any sense of other ideas at all. We must do them justice. These two lines of thought are connected to the most fruitful developments of the nineteenth century.

[ ] [ 22 ] We do not want to go too far back, but we will recall two fundamental facts of natural science—facts that are related to one another—the two great achievements of Schleiden and Schwann. In his studies of plants, Schleiden concluded that they consist of the tiniest parts—cells—and that every plant body is composed of cells, the smallest living organisms; from this, the idea took hold: one has truly studied the plant when one has studied the nature of the cell, for these are the truly real entities. The plant is merely a composition of them. When Schwann discovered the same thing for the animal kingdom, this view—that one can understand a being by studying the parts of which it is composed—became the guiding principle for the animal kingdom as well. The wonders that unfolded through microscopic research were remarkable. What was discovered through this is something great and magnificent. But other things followed. There were major discoveries in the fields of chemistry, physics, and biology.

[ ] [ 23 ] I would like to mention just one thing: how Darwin made a great impression when he demonstrated the capacity for transformation in animals and plants. With immense diligence and great scientific rigor, he compiled facts that clarified the kinship among animals and plants, all the way up to humans. We need only recall how, through spectral analysis, humankind was now able to look out into the heavens and discover that the substances of the celestial bodies are the same as those of our Earth. The discoveries of Kirchhoff and Bunsen, which revealed the composition of the universe, are rightly called great. Yet these were just as much facts that bound these human minds to the material world.

[ ] [ 24 ] Anyone who can look back even a little on the development of spiritual life knows how this came about—how, before Schleiden and Schwann, people attempted to comprehend the entire plant by applying intellectual powers, and how they then realized that the primordial organism was, after all, the cellular organism that could still be perceived by the senses. The eye had conquered such wonders that people believed there was nothing else beyond them. Through a process such as spectral analysis, the human spirit had to be bound to matter. It had looked into the material events of the universe. It was therefore no surprise that it forgot that spirit is also present within, so that precisely these campaigns of conquest at the end of the nineteenth century gave rise to atomism—the view that one need only go down to the smallest material entity and ever smaller ones, and find the explanation in the smallest material entity.

[ ] [ 25 ] If this had remained merely a theory, it would not have had such great significance for the spiritual path of humanity. But it could not remain so. In those bold minds of the nineteenth century who unabashedly embraced crude materialism, we see where such thinking, bound to matter, must lead. There we have minds such as Büchner, Moleschott, and so on. Today, much is said in their condemnation, but that is only half the story, not the whole. People claim to have moved beyond them. They make the most extreme assertions, yet stand on the same ground as they did. They fail to see that this ground has merely been developed more consistently.

[ ] [ 26 ] Only the humanities are called upon to overcome this. We need only recall what Carl Vogt once said: that thoughts are waste products of the brain, just like any other metabolic processes. Just as the kidneys excrete certain substances, so the movement of brain particles produces thoughts. Such a notion cannot remain mere theory if it is believed. If that is the case—if human thoughts and feelings are products of the material movement of brain parts—then with death, when the substances that make up the human being dissolve, all of the human being’s innermost essence vanishes; then there is not the slightest possibility of speaking of spiritual and soul entities that outlive the human being. If the smallest material particles are the essence, then Vogt’s line of reasoning is consistent; then one lays a person in the grave, the body decays, and nothing is allowed to remain of him. These thinkers drew these conclusions and were, in essence, much more consistent than many who wanted to be idealists at the time but who, deep down, actually thought materialistically. Characteristic of the way in which the mindset of that time was corroded by materialism was a dispute between Vogt and a Munich scholar who clung to the concepts of soul and spirit and published articles in a Munich journal in which he opposed Vogt. This man’s name was Wagner; and Vogt wrote a witty little book against him. It was easy to refute the man with his spiritual doctrine of faith and his materialistic way of thinking. For how did this Wagner imagine the transition of the soul from parents to children? As if a measure were divided into eighths. That is, believing in a substance of the soul, just as if one could weigh it. Something like that was easy to refute. That is what matters—not whether one has a doctrine of faith that is spiritual, but whether one can truly live one’s way into the spirit. Those who held spiritual beliefs at that time were unable to do so. The material achievements of that era held them in such a firm spell that, little by little, everything around us became, for people, an expression of the movement of the smallest material particles.

[ ] [ 27 ] In the realm of living beings, people were no longer satisfied with cells; instead, they posited that living beings were composed of atoms. Life was now seen as nothing more than a complex process of movement involving the tiniest particles. This complex movement was then the movement within our brains; and what this movement manifested as were human thoughts and sensations. And even those who, only twenty or thirty years ago, studied physics and physiology in this field experienced something that has now become rarer: what is called the reduction of all experiences to the processes of moving atoms. It was said: Apart from us, there is only matter. What do you call color? It is nothing other than a certain movement of atoms that vibrate. The vibrations reach the eye. One form of vibration, one speed, appears to us as red; another as blue; a third as green. Red, blue, and green are nothing other than subjective impressions of what exists outside. And out there, there are only vibrational processes in the tiniest ether particles. If you turn your eye toward them so that what is vibrating out there can reach you, it enters your consciousness as the impression of red, blue, or green. If you turn away, then nothing else exists but a vibrational process.

[ ] [ 28 ] There, the students were tormented with the mechanical theory of heat. What causes one to burn one’s fingers is nothing more than a subjective impression. Objectively speaking, what exists are the oscillating atoms. Imagine billions of tiny particles of a gaseous substance inside a vessel. They oscillate chaotically, move, collide with one another, bounce off the walls, and bounce back. This immense, internally structured form of motion constitutes what manifests as a sensation of heat when one places one’s hand on it. Apart from us, nothing of what we experience actually exists—only the motion of the tiniest particles. There is no such thing as heat; there is no such thing as light—only the motion of the tiniest particles. There is no such thing as electricity—only the motion of atoms. Thus, for those people, atoms had become the only reality, the only thing that truly exists. When we have a human being before us and ultimately break him down into his constituent parts, then everything we see in him is a subjective impression. The person before us is nothing more than an immensely complex process of movement. What remains are the atoms, which, when the person dies, transition into other processes of movement and form new groups. The eternal, the imperishable, has become the atom!

[ ] [ 29 ] By then, chemistry had identified a number of substances—some 70 of them. These substances were characterized by the fact that, at first glance, they could not be broken down any further into simpler ones. Water can be broken down; oxygen cannot, so it is a simple substance. What was such a simple substance? In their nature, they were something eternal; but how eternal? Every element represents the cohesion of the smallest particles. These were jumbled together in the universe in the most diverse ways—simpler here, more complicated there. But the world was always and only the intermingling of the 72 different “eternal” elements. They were the only reality. At most, one might also acknowledge the forces. For those who think materialistically, the following must hold true: An eternal entity is the individual atom. It must have existed since time immemorial and must remain into time immemorial—that is the eternal. The indifferent atom, the unconscious atom—that is the original building block. And if everything is merely the jumbled interweaving of atoms, it was only logical to regard everything else as illusion and mist, as something insubstantial that rises like a fog. This is a concept that exerts great suggestive power. There have always been people who knew what a monstrosity it is to assert, in this way, the eternity of matter as the cornerstone of all worldviews. It caused quite a stir when, at a meeting of natural scientists, Du Bois-Reymond delivered his “We Cannot Know.” What did he mean by that? He said: Yes, suppose you had advanced so far that you knew, whenever you entertain a thought, how the atoms in your brain move—would you then have grasped anything other than movement? Have you grasped why certain atoms move this way and others that way? What you experience internally: “I see red,” “I smell the scent of roses”? — He had taken up a statement by Leibniz: From a certain point of view, the brain is a material composition of atoms. “Let’s assume,” says Du Bois-Reymond, “that we could see its composition; let’s assume the brain were so enormous that you could walk around inside it, that you would understand the entire mechanism of the brain.” Imagine someone trying to understand it: If there is such a movement, what does the person to whom the brain belongs actually experience in his soul during this movement—whether, when the parts move in this or that way, he has this or that sensation! We see movements; we see mechanical processes! We can never perceive the transition from this mechanical process to the inner experiences of the soul.

[ ] [ 30 ] Du Bois-Reymond went even further. He said: If a person is asleep and you examine the movements of his brain, the fact that “I see red” or “I smell the scent of roses” is not present in that person. This sleeping person, he argued, can be understood. But as soon as he wakes up, scientific understanding based on that mechanism comes to an end.

[ ] [ 31 ] This was an instance where theosophy, or spiritual science, looked in through the window of the view of nature. The spiritual researcher shows, after all, that when we sleep, the physical and etheric bodies lie in bed, and outside of them is the astral body with the “I”—that the spiritual and soul aspects of the human being are lifted out of the physical body. Du Bois-Reymond finds a way to explain what remains. However, there is still a flaw in this: life has been overlooked. You see, here you have the first outpost of theosophy, but at the same time something that expresses the desolation of such a scientific view of nature: “We will not know,” says Du Bois-Reymond. Even if it is true that one cannot comprehend it, there is nevertheless never any explanation other than that derived from the movements themselves. This means renouncing any explanation of the spirit.

[ ] [ 32 ] There is another matter. A chemist named Ostwald spoke at the Natural Scientists’ Congress in Lübeck about overcoming materialism from his chemical-physical perspective. He showed that it makes no sense to speak of “matter.” He made a crude comparison. If someone strikes another person with a stick, the person being struck—since the stick is matter—is unaffected by it. What you feel, he said, is the force acting upon you. —In this way, Ostwald attempted to justify the view that everything consists of individual forces. What matters is the force we perceive.

[ ] [ 33 ] What were atoms? In the past, they were considered the smallest particles. For Ostwald, they were a small aggregation of forces; when they crystallize, they become atoms, matter. There we have the first step away from atomism. Admittedly, a man like Ostwald is incapable of rising to the view that everything is spirit. He said that everything is force, and that the particles of matter coalesce out of force. — That was speculation. But countless reasons supported it. At that time, one could recall something that had long since been said. And I, in particular, pointed out the following in the strongest possible terms back then: Goethe, who is as great a natural scientist as he is a poet, was the one who said: If only people did not seek anything behind the phenomena! The phenomena themselves are the lesson.

[ ] [ 34 ] For a view of the world in the spirit of Goethe, the following principle applies: What we perceive is reality. — What are atoms in such a view? What is an atom? Can we form a concept of it? What we imagine are the properties of things. It is through properties that we perceive things. Does the atom possess such properties? Does it have a color? According to the atomic view: no. Color, after all, arises only through movement. Do they have a smell or a taste? No! For these, too, arise only through movement. Do they exhibit a specific temperature? No. All properties around us must be denied to the atom. What is the atom to sound reasoning without these properties? A fanciful construct, nothing more. It is denied every property possessed by what lives in the surrounding world. The atom is a mental construct, like a lump in space, yet it is denied all the properties it ought to possess. This is the defining characteristic of atomist theory—the very foundation of materialism—that this theory is the most fantastical thing one can conceive, pure daydreaming. What has been recognized as the eternal is a fabrication; it contradicts all sound reasoning.

[ ] [ 35 ] Materialism attempts to conjure up such a fantastical reality into space. Without realizing it, materialism has constructed the most blatant superstition. There is no difference between fetishism, which worships pieces of wood, and materialism, which worships small material lumps. At least the “savage” sees his log; the materialists imagine billions of tiny idols that can never appear in experience. Atomism has established the idolatry of the atom, built on purely fanciful ideas. The 72 elements exist for us insofar as they possess properties. If we imagine them to consist of atoms, this amounts to the most blatant materialistic superstition. All these jumbled-up atoms, all these chess pieces, are invented; they are the fantastical foundation of a thought.

[ ] [ 36 ] Now, as I said, a man like the chemist Ostwald had at least pointed out that it makes no sense to speak of a pure substance, that everything dissolves into force. We perceive force; we do not perceive matter at all.

[ ] [ 37 ] That was the state of affairs in the 1980s and 1990s. Since then, things have changed completely. Up until that point, despite all efforts to overcome materialism, one had to rely on sound reasoning. Now, while that is certainly the surest way to overcome it, it doesn’t help much in our age. Anyone who, like the one speaking before you, had to think through all the great formulas used, for example, to calculate the red light rays—the motion of ether atoms—and who had to witness how everyone believed in them: “The waves of the ether move in such-and-such a way, and then one perceives red; when the molecules are tossed back and forth as in a gas-filled vessel, then this degree of heat arises, and so on”—whoever has witnessed this has something to say about the physiology of these things; and he knows that it can be difficult to achieve anything in this realm with sound reason or with genuine spiritual science. That was how it was in the early 1890s. Today, things are different.

[ ] [ 38 ] A remark made several years ago by an English thinker—who is a physicist, and indeed a good one—namely, Minister Balfour, is most curious. He is an extraordinarily astute thinker in the field of physics. He said: If we are to conceive of what an atom is according to the latest views, what exactly is the atom? — He saw in it something that had solidified as if from flowing electricity, much like ice from water. Balfour saw something more in the atom than Ostwald did. He saw flowing currents of electricity in which the individual particles of matter arise from condensed electricity. So atoms are actually condensed electricity. You see, we still do not have the sound perspective that the physical is condensed spirit; but we have already reached the point where we can hear that the physical is something condensed. Just imagine the tremendous progress! What was electricity until recently? An atom! The little fetishes had movement, and the expression of that was electricity. Now the atom had already become condensed electricity. This is the reality. That is an interesting reversal. On what was this reversal based? It was not founded merely on the experience of the spiritual researcher or on sound thinking, but on specific experience. Physics itself, in its progress, had compelled people to think this way. This includes the phenomena observed in evacuated glass tubes through which electricity is conducted—Crookes tubes. Phenomena were discovered that led to the realization that what flows in such a tube is flowing electricity; that electricity flows through space at all. What had previously been merely a property was now something real, something actual.

[ ] [ 39 ] Of course, the matter was not settled in a single step. For the humanities scholar, heat is just as real as electricity, and light is just as real. Matter arises just as much from the solidification of light and heat as from the solidification of electricity. In twenty years, it will no longer be nonsense to say this. People will speak of what heat is, what light is; they will no longer claim that these little fetishes called atoms are the original substance, but rather solidified properties, solidified perceptions. What surrounds us is an outflow, a manifestation of the spirit. Today, this is still nonsense to the physicist; in twenty years, it will be an established fact.

[ ] [ 40 ] This is the path toward gradually arriving at the realization that all material things are solidified spirit. Physical thinking is moving directly in this direction, which leads to seeing spirit condensed within matter. This direction continues in this way. It then causes materialistic thinking a headache. But it must be said: Today, spirit does not so easily break free from the atomistic way of thinking among materialists. People have noticed that when chlorine and copper are mixed, something strange happens. Chlorine, in their view, is an element consisting of vibrating atoms; and these atoms are considered to be something primordial. The copper atoms, in turn, are also considered to be something fundamental. When the compound is formed, the atoms are pushed together, and copper chloride is produced. But now something strange happens. When chlorine and copper actually combine, it happens with the appearance of fire. Heat is generated. This heat is just as real as copper and chlorine. That it is something highly real becomes evident when we try to separate the copper chloride again. Then we must introduce heat again—the same amount that was released.

[ ] [ 41 ] This is what certain people—who cannot break free from materialistic atomism—have come up with. They arrived at the following: Well, if we have chlorine on its own and copper on its own, both consisting of atoms, then we must imagine these atoms as bags that have been puffed up by heat; and now, when we bring chlorine and copper together so that they combine, the heat is driven out, and the empty bags are now pressed together. When the bodies are combined, the bags are squeezed out. When the elements are driven apart, the heat puffs up the bags.

[ ] [ 42 ] You see, the atom has already vanished; the heat has become something very real. If we don’t want to talk about sacks—the materialists have done that themselves; we might have needed the image of the balloon—then we must say: When the shells are separated again, they are refilled.

[ ] [ 43 ] What we see here is that the elements that actually make up the atom have already been reduced to a very small size—to the shell. What gives the atom its size is the heat it absorbs. That is extremely interesting. It won’t be long before these shells are finally eliminated. For why shouldn’t we be able to imagine that, if heat can expand, we might be able to do without it altogether? Why shouldn’t it be conceivable to imagine the atom as solidified heat? We will arrive at that. Let’s consider further. Even more interesting is the next step that natural science has taken. After the point at which the atom had, so to speak, dissolved into fluid properties, came what began with Becquerel’s discoveries—which led to the magnificent and momentous discoveries in this very field, namely the discoveries concerning radium. What do we have before us here? We do not wish to judge the extent to which the ideas to which physicists have been led are correct. It is our task to note that physicists have been forced to a crossroads by the phenomenon of radium. Radium emits various types of rays—electrical and so on—whose effects are visible on a photographic plate. But above all, it emits what is called an emanation. These emanations have certain properties—properties that differ from those of radium itself but are nonetheless similar to it—which fade over time, so that the emanation transforms into something else. It expels particles of its own substance. These particles lose their original properties and become something else. Physics has even had to accept the fact that it has been proven that this emanation transforms into helium. Oh, what do we have here! Something flows out of the element radium and has different properties; it flows out and, in turn, transforms into an element. This led chemists to say: The atom itself decays, decays into something entirely different, so that it can transform into a completely new atom—even into a different element!

[ ] [ 44 ] Just imagine what that means! The parts of an element, called atoms, are supposed to be the most solid. Now the experiment shows before our very eyes that these atoms crumble in our hands, becoming something entirely different. It’s as if the alchemists’ dreams were coming true—that one substance could transform into another! All of this is still in its early stages today, but already natural scientists are forced to admit: The atom is not something primordial; it came into being and will dissolve again. Long ago, all those atoms—which people used to speak of as the smallest of fetishes—did not exist. They gradually came into being and will pass away again, as radium demonstrates by gradually causing its atom to crumble. Today, the physicist’s atom disintegrates right before our eyes. It will become nonsense to speak of the atom in the old way. This is now something different from what Ostwald proposed. He still relied on conclusions; today, the facts speak for themselves; today, the world of facts itself destroys the fantastical construct known as the “atom.”

[ ] [ 45 ] This brings us to an important point. Imagine the consequences of the atom—this solid foundation—falling apart. It dissolves not only in thought, but in appearance, in space, in reality. The atom ceases, before our very eyes, to be what it has been presented as. Just as ice melts away, so does the atom. Today, materialistic thinkers cannot yet go far enough; they can conceive of electricity as condensing; but the path leads to the realization that the original source is the spirit. This is the first step that has been taken today.

[ ] [ 46 ] Thus, if it is to understand itself correctly, natural science today stands at the beginning of a way of thinking that leads directly into the spiritual sciences. It cannot do otherwise. When the cloak falls, the duke follows. What led to the materialistic theory of evolution were thoughts that could not break free from matter. It posits that human beings are composed of animal species. If we can come to understand that what happens out there in the physical world arises from the spirit, then we will also be able to grasp the concept discussed at the beginning of this text—that of the spiritual primordial human being who has condensed into physical form. This understanding depends on our habits of thought. Physicists will compel people to see condensed spirit in all material things. Then, once we know that the atom is not eternal but has come into being and is transforming into the spiritual, we will also be able to understand that human beings come from spirit and return to spirit. All of this will lead to such an understanding. One must view what is happening today in the world of natural science from within. Those who speak of it cannot yet renounce this trend of development, which is tainted by materialistic ideas.

[ ] [ 47 ] But the facts themselves guarantee that the natural sciences will converge with the humanities, that the two will celebrate their reconciliation. It is the humanities that must stand before humanity to proclaim the spirit as the cause of the physical. The science of the spirit will be needed when the natural sciences can no longer proceed on their own; then the natural sciences will be ready to merge with the science of the spirit. The latter is the outpost that sets forth what people will need to know when the facts are ready to unite with the facts of spiritual science. On its own, natural science would lead to the incomprehensible. At best, one would see only frozen electricity within the atoms. To grasp the ultimate consequences, spiritual science is essential.

[ ] [ 48 ] When we look back on centuries of thought and feeling, we must say: A hundred years ago, what is called natural science was just in the process of sinking down into the coarsest material realm. By the middle of the nineteenth century, the lowest level had been reached. In Vogt and his assertion that thought is a secretion of the brain just as bile is a secretion of the liver, the goal of eradicating all spirit and explaining it away as a subjective phenomenon had been achieved. This was the path natural science was following; it was not yet ready to turn its gaze upward toward the spirit. Spiritual science—where was it a hundred years ago? It was immersed in abstractions, in concepts that shed light deep into the spirit. But there was one thing it was unable to do: to bring the great concepts of the spiritual world down to an immediate understanding of what presented itself externally.

[ ] [ 49 ] Today we have a natural science that has delved deep into matter, where the atom now speaks for itself—a natural science in which the atom disintegrates right before our eyes. In theosophy, we have a spiritual science that descends to the most concrete facts, revealing in the physical body something that the astral body, the etheric body, and the ego have formed—a spiritual science that extends into the physical world. We have a natural science that reaches up to the boundaries of spiritual science, and a spiritual science that has descended to the boundaries of natural science. This is the course of development.

[ ] [ 50 ] A hundred years ago, Schiller, reflecting on two currents—a natural science that did not extend high enough to reach the science of the spirit, and a philosophy that did not extend low enough to reach natural science—said: “Oh, you are called to walk a single path one day, but for now you must still walk separate paths, so that each may become strong enough to help the other.”—This has come true quickly. Natural science is, in a certain sense, strong through its weakness, in that it overcomes itself through its own facts. It will flow upward. And spiritual science is strong because it can encompass the material. What Schiller recognized and hoped for seems to be coming true. Hopefully, there will soon be many people who, with that one spiritual eye—like the woman in the fairy tale told at the beginning—will no longer have to take in external beings and cast them aside because they mean nothing to them; rather, there will be people who take every stone in their hand, hold it up to their spiritual eye, and recognize it as an expression of the spiritual world, because all matter comes from the spirit and proclaims it. For materialism, there was only matter; there, nothing was found, and things were thrown away. Spiritual science, united with natural science, will reveal the spiritual in every material thing to human beings. We will come to love everything again, because everything is an expression of the spiritual world.

[ ] [ 51 ] Natural science stands at a crossroads. It must either go one way and be lost, or the other, where, united with the humanities, it will now stand as the one worldview; so that, united, the two will lead humanity itself to a way of life in which the spirit permeates life, so that through this union—brought about by the facts themselves—a great goal for the good of humanity will be achieved. We see it before us today. Let us try to make what we see before us more vividly apparent through the cultivation of the spiritual sciences. Then we will see that we are not engaging in something that merely satisfies curiosity, but in something that removes all inner doubts and makes us strong, vigorous, and healthy for life. This will be the fruit of the union of natural science with spiritual science: health, strength, and security in life!