The Rudolf Steiner Archive

7. Science at a Crossroads

[ 1 ] Ladies and gentlemen! Allow me to speak to you this evening about two things: first, the worldview that has taken shape quite clearly over the past 50 or 60 years, one that seeks to base itself on what are called the scientific findings of recent times. The first, then, is what is commonly referred to as the scientific worldview. The second, which I wish to discuss in connection with this tonight, is what is known as spiritual science—a term that, for certain reasons in recent times and decades, has also come to be called “theosophy.”

[ 2 ] In this day and age, there is no need to speak of the triumph of the natural sciences and of the way of thinking and conceptualizing that has emerged from these scientific achievements. But it may be worth pointing out what is actually meant by “spiritual science” or “theosophy.”

[ 3 ] Not many of our contemporaries—at least, relatively few—have gained any precise understanding of what these words [denote and] what, as a seemingly new current of thought that in truth, however, runs through all human thought, is striving toward the present.

[ 4 ] As I said, few people have engaged more explicitly and clearly with this profoundly important worldview, with this spiritual movement. But even some of those who have heard a little about it here and there have formed a very mistaken impression of it. These days, all sorts of things are associated with the name “Theosophy.” Some believe it is a rehash of Eastern—say, Buddhist—spiritual currents; others think that when people speak of Theosophy or the Theosophical movement, they are referring to some other religious sect—something to do with all sorts of superstition, fantasy, and daydreaming. We could compile a long, long anthology of all sorts of erroneous opinions currently circulating about this theosophical world movement. All these prejudices, however, can only be dispelled through a more precise and intimate acquaintance with this spiritual movement.

[ 5 ] Now, it is by no means easy for people today to grapple with this school of thought, for anyone who today engages with a worldview that appears to derive such wondrous conclusions from the facts of natural science absorbs a way of thinking, a mode of conception, that makes it extraordinarily difficult for them to grasp the way in which spiritual science thinks. Thus, while the Theosophical movement has its representatives and adherents in nearly all educated, cultured countries of the present day, when we look at Europe, we find Theosophical societies in Scandinavia, England, Holland, France, Belgium, Italy, and Germany. There are also such societies in Switzerland. Even in Hungary and other European countries, one can find followers to a greater or lesser extent. We find this school of thought particularly widespread in America and extensively so in India, but also in Australia and South Africa. Everywhere, we already have adherents and those who have somehow come into contact with this worldview.

[ 6 ] If we wish to characterize this worldview, setting aside all prejudices, we must first and foremost place two fundamental insights of this worldview at the forefront of our considerations. What is called theosophy or spiritual science rests upon two solid pillars.

[ 7 ] The first is the fundamental insight that everything around us that is perceptible to our senses exists in the physical world, yet everything has its source, its essence, in a superphysical, spiritual realm.

[ 8 ] The other principle on which spiritual science is based is that it is possible for human beings to actually investigate and recognize these spiritual foundations of things—these supraphysical entities that lie behind the physical world.

[ 9 ] Spiritual science in the modern sense has nothing to do with reviving any kind of Buddhist conceptual framework. For if one wishes to go to the very roots of things, it is not necessary to rely on ancient traditions. In every age, it is possible for the discerning human spirit to penetrate to the facts—and here we are dealing with the spiritual fact itself. Whether elements of this spiritual science have come to light in any other worldview or in Buddhism is of no concern to him whatsoever. All the less is this spiritual-scientific movement a religious sect; it has nothing to do with sectarianism. It has nothing to do with justifying any religious creed. Even if, by exploring the spiritual foundations of things, it can arrive at the firmest basis for religious truths, it has, as such—as an investigator of spiritual life—nothing to do with religious institutions or sects. It is a science like other sciences, except that it does not address individual scholars or experts, but rather the whole of humanity, for all of humanity has an interest in knowing what spiritual “fundamental causes” lie behind what we perceive through our senses.

[ 10 ] However, this spiritual science cannot possibly come into any conflict with the true facts that natural science has bestowed upon humanity for a very, very long time. Let it be emphasized from the outset that no one acknowledges the tremendous progress of natural science more than the spiritual scientist. It would not merely be a mistake; it would be ridiculous to try to object to what natural science has presented to us in the findings of sensory research over the centuries, particularly throughout the nineteenth century.

[ 11 ] So there can be no question of these scientific facts either. Therefore, what is at issue when we speak of a contrast between the spiritual sciences and the natural sciences is something else entirely. Over the past 60 or 70 years, a kind of religious creed, a kind of faith, has emerged on the basis of the scientific worldview—something that appears to a large number of our contemporaries as self-evident, as if it had become second nature; though the term may sound outdated today, it is still appropriate to use it: a kind of materialistic way of thinking, a kind of religious belief based on scientific facts.

[ 12 ] Now, the scholar of the humanities knows better than anyone that various necessities arise in the course of human development, and that among the stages through which human development had to pass, such a materialistic belief was bound to emerge at some point. But it is not the spiritual scientist who could ever find himself in contradiction—not even with the one-sided view of the natural sciences. Rather, what is at issue is precisely what stands in the way of the spread of spiritual science—namely, that very way of thinking which is not a mere presentation of scientific facts, but which has developed into a kind of creed, a kind of faith based on scientific facts.

[ 13 ] The scholar of the spiritual sciences, ladies and gentlemen, seeks nothing other than what can be explored in the world that lies behind physical facts; this is what he wishes to communicate to people, just as the natural scientist communicates to people what he has discovered in sensory facts. He relies entirely on the fact that, when he seeks to communicate truths, he will gradually be understood. Human beings are predisposed to truth. In every human heart there is a sensation, a feeling, and an intuition for the truth even before it can be recognized. The spiritual scientist knows that he will gradually find an echo in the hearts of people.

[ 14 ] This is where the true scientific commitment lies. Anyone capable of evaluating the natural sciences and the humanities in their present form must, in a certain sense, understand that the natural scientist must not regard what the humanities scholar has to say merely as erroneous, but even as something superstitious, fantastical, and dreamlike.

[ 15 ] The question we are to address today is this: Given the course of development in the natural sciences over the past few decades, how should one approach this human science—someone who is open-minded toward both fields and who truly knows how to properly assess what lies within the natural sciences as the foundation for future education?

[ 16 ] Spiritual science, ladies and gentlemen, is in fact regarded by those who today cast a superficial glance at its publications as something entirely fantastical and dreamlike. This evening I will have much to say to you that—I am fully aware of this—must seem to many of our contemporaries as something downright foolish, as something that reaches the very pinnacle of the fantastical. But the truth must be spoken. For the truth is destined to be incorporated into all of humanity. Everything that is truth in a given era has, in earlier times, been regarded to a greater or lesser extent as something fantastical, as something that contradicts the views of a particular era. This will have to happen to spiritual science to a far greater extent than may otherwise have been the case.

[ 17 ] The fundamental insight of spiritual science is that behind our physical world—beyond what our senses perceive—lie other worlds, worlds of spiritual existence. In what sense, ladies and gentlemen, do we as spiritual scientists speak of other worlds? Not in the sense that other worlds are to be found somewhere in an unknown afterlife. We speak of other worlds in a completely logical, plausible sense. Theosophy, or spiritual science, speaks of other worlds in the same sense that, for example, Johann Gott[lieb] Fichte once spoke of other worlds when he addressed his audience at the newly founded University of Berlin from 1811 to 1813. There he once said: What a higher wisdom is able to find in the world appears to the person who is willing to accept only what the senses perceive in the surroundings, and what the intellect can deduce from what the senses perceive—to such a person, what higher wisdom has to say appears as what a person born blind, who knows objects only through touch, must imagine the world of color, the world of light, that surrounds the one who sees with physical eyes. – I am using a parable from Fichte. He, Fichte, believes that when someone who holds such wisdom in mind enters the company of people who are willing to accept only sensory perception, he is truly like a sighted person entering a group of blind people who know the world only through the sense of touch. Under certain circumstances, they may regard what the physically sighted person perceives as the world of light—the world of colors—as mere fantasy.

[ 18 ] Now, Fichte says: The world of light, the world of colors, is constantly all around us. The man born blind does not see it, even though it is all around him. The moment we are able to operate on him, the moment we can give him a physical eye, the world that surrounds all of you here today, my esteemed audience, would also be there for him.

[ 19 ] What can we learn from this? The only possible, logical conclusion: that it depends on us—on our powers of perception—whether or not we can regard the world that exists around us as our own. As many senses as a person has, so many worlds can he perceive around himself. – The spiritual scientist asserts nothing other than this: just as the world of colors and the world of light exist around the person born blind, so too do other spiritual worlds—worlds of a higher nature, of a superphysical nature—exist around those people who, through their sensory perceptions, believe that other worlds are there, that they must be there.

[ 20 ] And now the spiritual scientist goes on to assert that, while not every person born blind can undergo surgery, there are inner, spiritual faculties lying dormant in every human being without exception that can be developed into what Goethe calls “spiritual eyes and spiritual ears.” The worlds that surround us thus become apparent to those who develop their spiritual organs of perception. And just as in that crucial moment when a person born blind experiences his eye physically regaining sight and he steps out of the darkness and gloom that surrounded him into the world of colors, the world of light and radiance, so too, for the person who awakens the soul’s dormant capacity within themselves, there is a moment—far greater than that of the physical eye regaining sight—[there are] far greater moments when the worlds that are constantly all around us open up to the spiritual sense of development, if we may use that contradiction. And human beings do not belong only to this physical world; they also belong to the spiritual worlds that surround us.

[ 21 ] Now, of course, some will object today—and this has often been objected to—that the natural sciences make everything in the world comprehensible in and of itself. The natural sciences have made truly remarkable progress, and they have made many things that previously seemed incomprehensible understandable to us. It will make further progress, so say the opponents of the humanities. Then it will easily explain all the phenomena around us based on physical facts; then the humanities scholar will have it easy, as natural science might say—he will indeed have it easy; for if we can explain the world based on physical facts, on the interaction of various material things, then we no longer need a spiritual cause.

[ 22 ] Then there are those among our contemporaries who reject outright the idea that the world can be explained in and of itself, that it will ever be fully explainable, and who refuse to look toward a spiritual world. For them, the following principle applies: The ideal of all science rests on explaining the phenomena around us in terms of themselves, without taking into account any spiritual realities lying behind them. – There is a great deal of suggestive power in this judgment that some of our contemporaries have formed. Logically, ladies and gentlemen, this judgment is by no means sound. Take the clock, for example: it can be explained purely mechanically, through mechanical and physical laws, from within itself. There is nothing in this clock that cannot be explained by mechanical, physical laws. Does that mean the clockmaker is unnecessary? No, ladies and gentlemen; the fact that something can be explained by its own nature—this fact, this ideal—in no way renders the spiritual powers behind it superfluous.

[ 23 ] The spiritual scientist is just as clear about this as anyone else; he believes he can deduce from scientific facts that one day it will be possible to explain the structure of the world on its own terms, just as one can explain a clock on its own terms. But he is equally aware that, just as the watchmaker stands behind the watch, so too do spiritual powers and spiritual beings stand behind this world. We can only come to understand human beings when we bring what lies behind the physical facts into account in explaining them.

[ 24 ] And here, ladies and gentlemen, we come to the crux of the matter: first we must familiarize ourselves a little with the entire spirit of spiritual science’s mode of explanation; only then can we grasp the development of the natural sciences in this regard—in their relationship to spiritual science, in their outlook and prospects for the future as we stand now—and only then can we compare the two.

[ 25 ] What is a spiritual scientist? This is the question we wish to answer above all else. The material existence of what has come to be—beginning with the stone as a real, material object and extending all the way up to the complex structure of the human being—what does all this material existence mean for spiritual science? Nothing other than an expression of a revelation of the spiritual world. If we may speak in general terms—and there are as yet no expressions in our language, even in everyday speech, that can be used for the facts of spiritual science, because our language is intended for material things—if we may speak in general terms, then we can say, that all material occurrences, all things, are for spiritual science a kind of condensation, a kind of revelation of an underlying spiritual reality; and if we wish to draw a comparison, we may say: Just as ice relates to water, so does all that is material relate to the spiritual.

[ 26 ] A child might come and bring you a piece of ice. You say to the child: “Dear child, this is nothing more than water in another form.” – The child says: “But that’s not water—it’s ice.” – Then you will try to make the child understand that it is water in a different form, that water can appear in a different, solid form, such as ice. This is roughly how a scholar of spiritual science will respond when we ask him about material existence: Sensory things and physical-material processes are nothing other than spiritual existence in other forms, just as ice is nothing other than water in a different form. And for those who delve deeper and deeper into spiritual science, this becomes not only a fundamental conviction but a fundamental insight: that everything—everything spiritual—has, as it were, undergone a process of condensation in the world and has become what appears to us as finished existence.

[ 27 ] Let us apply this fundamental insight to human beings; [then] we see: What constitutes physical existence—the physical human body that you can see with your eyes and grasp with your hands, which for many people with a materialistic outlook is the sole aspect of human existence—this physical human body is, for the spiritual scientist, merely one aspect of the entire human being.

[ 28 ] Since the purpose of my lecture today is different, it is not my task to present even a rough outline of the entire field of spiritual science. I have already done that once before in a lengthy lecture on the enigmatic questions of existence, which I had the privilege of delivering in Basel. Today’s lecture, on the other hand, is intended only to characterize, very superficially and very briefly, the views of spiritual science with regard to the whole human being.

[ 29 ] For the scholar of the humanities, this physical human body is an aspect of human nature. This physical human being shares many characteristics with all the seemingly lifeless beings around us. The spiritual scientist is well aware of the objections that have been raised—and can be raised—against this view based on the current state of natural science. However, it is not possible to address all of these objections in a short lecture; one can only briefly touch upon those that pertain to the spiritual scientist.

[ 30 ] Now, spiritual science recognizes aspects of human nature that extend beyond the physical human body. It states: The same substances, the same elements that exist in the physical world, in physical nature, are also present in the physical human body, just as everything else exists in the physical realm and, indeed, in the life of every living being, every plant, every animal—no matter how complex their composition or how diverse their structure—so that the physical bodies would disintegrate within themselves if only physical forces and substances were at work.

[ 31 ] In every living being—and above all in human beings—there is a constant struggle against the decay of the physical body, and this fighter against the decay of the physical body is called the etheric body or life body, the second member of the human being. As mentioned, the student of spiritual science is fully aware of the objections that, from today’s perspective, can seemingly be raised with such force against the existence of this etheric body.

[ 32 ] The natural scientist overlooks the second part of the human being, which is a constant fighter against death. For what is death to the spiritual scientist? Nothing other than the physical body being left behind by this etheric body. Then the physical body—which then becomes a corpse—is subject to physical and chemical forces. The fact that, at [every] moment of your existence, your physical body is not subject to these physical and chemical forces is prevented by the fighter within you against the decay of the physical body: the etheric body. This is the second member of the human being that humanity—all of humanity—shares with the entire plant and animal world.

[ 33 ] Now we come to the third aspect of the human being. We can best visualize this by reflecting on what lies within the person standing before us—within his or her skin—and what is much closer to him or her than anything else in his or her physical life.

[ 34 ] What does a person know, to begin with, about the mysteries of their blood circulation, about the mysteries of their nervous fluid that pulses through the body, and so on and so forth? But closer to a person are those things we call their drives, their instincts, their feelings, their pleasure and suffering, their pain and joy. Close to them are their thoughts, their feelings; close to them are all those things, my dear friends here present, that we call soul experiences. The bearer of these soul experiences, the bearer of all instincts, drives, and passions—from all desires up to the most sublime ideals that influence us—is what we call the astral body.

[ 35 ] Human beings no longer share this astral body with plants; they share it only with animals. The fourth member of the human being is that which makes the human being the crown of earthly creation—a member that the human being no longer shares with any other being—and we can best grasp this member of the human being by telling ourselves the following: There is a name—this is a simple consideration, yet very few people give it deep thought—that differs from all other names. Anyone can call a bottle a “bottle,” a glass a “glass,” a clock a “clock,” a table a “table,” and so on. There is only one name you cannot use in the same way. The name belongs to no one but oneself; it can be spoken by no one but the being itself.

[ 36 ] This is the fourth aspect of human existence—that we refer to the human being [as] “I.” “I” is a name that can never reach our ears from outside. It can be spoken only by the being itself. When the name “I” resounds within a human being, it is the world that alone has access to the deepest inner core of the human being that speaks; it is the divine power speaking within the human being—God within man.

[ 37 ] Now, of course, someone might say: When people speak of spiritual science in this way, it is as if spiritual science were turning human beings into gods.

[ 38 ] Now, ladies and gentlemen, if someone explains that a drop of water taken from the sea is of the same substance and essence as the entire sea, is he then claiming that the drop of water is the sea? When spiritual science explicitly emphasizes that what is designated as the “I” within us is of the same substance and essence as the divine foundation of the world, it does not claim more than that it is a drop of this foundation, that it relates to it as a drop relates to the entire ocean. But just as you recognize the sea—the essence or substance of the sea—in the drop, so you find in your “I” the essence of the Divine in the world. This is the fourth component of human being, so that, in the spiritual-scientific sense, we compose the human being of the “I,” the astral body—the bearer of all instincts, sensations, all pleasure and all suffering, the bearer of pain and joy; then we recognize as the next element the life body or etheric body, which is a constant fighter against death, and the physical body, that which we can see with our eyes and grasp with our hands.

[ 39 ] And now let’s take a moment to clarify something: A fundamental state that we all experience every day—the so-called human state of sleep—is something that natural science can point to on its own, but for which, even if its premises prove to be correct, it can never find an explanation from the perspective from which it frequently proceeds today. Here, in relation to the state of sleep, lies an important point in the development of natural science in the nineteenth century, and here we touch upon something that will help us reach our actual goal today: the crossroads of natural science.

[ 40 ] What is sleep in the context of spiritual science? You see, ladies and gentlemen, when a person passes away, the physical body remains in the physical world, but only in terms of its physical matter and forces. The etheric body and the “I” pass into other worlds that always surround us—just as the world of light and colors surrounds those born blind—but which we come to know more closely only when the spiritual eyes and ears, in the sense that Goethe meant, are discovered within us.

[ 41 ] But when a person sleeps, the relationship among these various bodies is fundamentally different. When a person sleeps, the physical body and the etheric body lie in bed, separated from the astral body and the “I,” because the astral body is the bearer of all sensations of pleasure and suffering, of pain and joy. With the astral body, all pleasure and all suffering subside; all sensations carried by the astral body fade away, as if into the unconscious darkness of the night. In the morning, when the astral body re-enters the physical body, it uses the sense organs—the eyes and ears—and perceives the physical objects around it, for the body that perceives is not the physical body.

[ 42 ] Fichte spoke on this as well: Although we see with the eye and hear with the ear, it is not the eye that sees; rather, it is the astral body that sees through the instrument of the eye and hears through the instrument of the ear. Thus we see how the true human being—the one who is closest to us—can be separated in the sense of spiritual science; every night, this being is separated from the physical and etheric bodies. For spiritual science, the physical and etheric bodies really are to the astral body just as ice is to water. Ice is water in another form—water that has been transformed. The physical and etheric bodies are nothing other than the transformed astral body—that is, as it were, the condensed astral body.

[ 43 ] And when we go back to the distant past, to a time long ago, then, ladies and gentlemen, we do not yet find in today’s human beings this physical body or this etheric body; rather, in accordance with spiritual science, we trace the origin of the human being to a different spiritual source. What is within the physical body today is the true predecessor of our present form. In the distant past, the human being was an astral being, and the physical human being was created by the astral being—which is the creator of the physical body. And when we consider the course of development of our worlds, we understand this course of development in the following way, in accordance with spiritual science. In the distant past, what is today the physical condensation of the spirit did not yet exist; the spiritual as such existed. The origin of the physical lies in the spirit. Gradually, the spiritual passed into physical form.

[ 44 ] But on the path toward ever higher and higher physical forms, the astral human body—which is as old as anything else we can trace in the history of the Earth’s development—left behind, at every stage, the stages of its own development in the form of beings that have preserved the developmental stages on which humanity once stood. This gives us the history of human development, which takes into account all the scientific facts of the present, has justified all the scientific facts of the present, but is grounded in the spirit and the spiritual being. In the distant past, we still see humanity as spirit. Those forms that remained at this first stage and took on material forms are the lowest animals. Humanity, however, moved on and formed higher and ever higher forms, and those beings that have remained at these stages are the more highly developed animals. Thus, one animal species after another emerged until humanity itself rose to that physically perfected form it possesses today.

[ 45 ] From the perspective of spiritual science, we must not say that human beings are descended from higher forms of animals; on the contrary: their nature is the synthesized essence of everything that surrounds them. From this essence have emerged the physical entities that exist all around us. Thus, in concrete terms, we trace human beings back to a spiritual origin. This can only be outlined here.

[ 46 ] Today, in the natural sciences, we have reached a point where science itself is showing us how, step by step, it will be compelled by its own research findings to move toward precisely this view that has just been outlined. This is a very special and interesting moment in the development of science in our immediate present. How does this manifest itself? You will receive an answer to that: When we look back at the development of scientific doctrine as it has taken shape over the last half-century, we see how a kind of very crude materialism took hold in the mid-nineteenth century. However, we must not look down on this crude materialism. Rather, we must admire those who, at that time, boldly drew conclusions from many things to which others had no answers, and names such as [Büchner, Moleschott], or Vogt, who truly made a mark on the intellectual development of the nineteenth century—a mark made by the immense boldness with which they drew conclusions that were obvious to draw at the time. For natural science had made admirable progress—progress that, so to speak, could not help but have a suggestive effect on people.

[ 47 ] The moment when modern instruments allowed us to peer into the tiniest components of living beings was truly surprising. It was an overwhelming experience when the microscope taught people that every living being, no matter how insignificant it may appear at first glance, consists of tiny cells. When these cells were discovered in the late 1830s, it was a tremendous achievement. This had to lead the human spirit to say to itself: If you explore the small—the constituent parts of living beings—only then will you see that which must be recognized as the foundation of the world. – One must simply be fair; one must recognize where the human spirit is led by such powerful awakenings.

[ 48 ] And then let’s consider all the scientific advances that the following years brought, bit by bit, to humanity as a whole. Let us remember that about 50 years ago, the great, momentous discovery of spectral analysis took people by surprise—a discovery that enables us to look out into outer space and explore the forms and nature of what lies in the celestial sphere, and for the first time, through an instrument and by means of this wonderful scientific method, could see how the same substances found on Earth also occur in outer space. This discovery was something extraordinarily powerful. It had to direct people’s attention to the material nature of beings and diverted them from the spiritual background of existence.

[ 49 ] And then there was what was presented to humanity through the research as presented by Darwin. Today, it has become almost trivial to describe this powerful transformation in intellectual life; but anyone who delves into that era can understand what it means for the kinship among living beings to be presented to the human soul in a more or less tangible form.

[ 50 ] Thus, from various perspectives—and much more could be cited—humanity had gained remarkable insights into material existence. Is it any wonder that the belief arose that, through the study of matter and the understanding of matter, one would be able to solve all the mysteries of the world!

[ 51 ] Just as a house is composed of many stones, so too does the complex organism consist of cells of various forms. In connection with this, a mode of representation—not historical, but psychological—began to take shape, namely, the idea that the beings around us could be explained in terms of the smallest parts of material existence. Thus, ladies and gentlemen, what we now call the atomistic way of thinking took shape—a way of thinking that derives all matter from a grouping, from a composition of atoms. What was gradually discovered was that substances, which were different from one another, could be understood in terms of their relationships—their overall chemical relationships. About 70 substances had been discovered. These distinctions between substances are called chemical elements. What, then, was a chemical element? A chemical element was something composed of certain types of atoms; oxygen was oxygen because this substance consisted of identical smallest particles—the so-called oxygen atoms. Hydrogen is composed of hydrogen atoms, and so on.

[ 52 ] What was considered eternal was assumed to be the solid foundation of the atom. People spoke of the eternity of matter and came to the conclusion that in these smallest particles there was, in fact, the primordial [gap on several pages].

[ 53 ] Can we still speak of the immutability of the atom in this context? Does it not seem [far less] like a mere fantasy that all matter can be traced back to something spiritual, to spiritual transformations that can be transformed into these [atoms]?

[ 54 ] Thus, the atom—which the materialist thinker envisioned behind sensible things as the solid, the real, [as the] only truly observed entity, as the only reality—disintegrates under the scrutiny of natural science into something that can dissolve and transform into something entirely different: [One can] no longer [speak] of the immutability of the atom. We are only at the beginning of this theory, which necessarily followed from the study of nature.

[ 55 ] Well, this way of thinking, I would say, has been increasingly present in the views of those who reflect a little more deeply, yet who still cannot break free from materialistic notions. Some time ago, it was easy to explain, for example, the [material] combination of two substances; admittedly, one could see in this combination of substances what the individual elements were, how the atoms interlocked, and that where such atoms interlocked, heat emerged—for heat was nothing other than motion, just as light is said to be nothing other than the motion of elements, which knocks and hammers repeatedly at our eyes and appears as light. Nor did anyone concern themselves with the fact that, if this heat can separate such a composition of substances again, then this heat behaves exactly like any other real thing in our environment that can be added when elements are merely supposed to arise through transformations.

[ 56 ] Now some people, who are still attached to material concepts and have a peculiar idea, have said: If we have an element with 100 atoms before us, we must think of the atoms, as it were, as puffed-up sacks, and heat is the carrier of these sacks; thus, we must [think of] the atoms as small sacks. When the two substances are combined in their elements, the atoms interlock; what the sacks contained flows out and appears as a kind of combustion process. Then, within the compound, there are not puffed-up sacks, but rather inflated sacks—emptied sacks. When you have chlorine and copper, the chlorine atoms—because they contain heat—are inflated bags; when you form the compound of chlorine and copper, the atoms—these emptied bags—nest within one another; and when you separate the two again—chlorine and copper—heat is once more necessary, and it must inflate the bags again.

[ 57 ] Now, ladies and gentlemen, it is precisely phenomena such as the discovery of radium that have shown that what was once considered the most solid and unchanging thing—the atom—transforms into something else. When we consider this idea in conjunction with many other achievements of our time, the atom disappears from our entire way of thinking, and we are reminded that reality is something that underlies the facts—such as what is happening around us—in both the physical and the spiritual realms.

[ 58 ] Thus, natural science will increasingly come to recognize that such a reality behind things—as [it] has imagined to exist behind the atoms, does not exist at all—that in truth, what we can physically perceive—humanity will once again learn to regard warmth as something in itself, as an independent entity within us; to regard light as something we truly see; and finally, to regard electricity as something that is real. Physics has already reached this point with regard to the latter; when it allows an electric current to flow through a vacuum tube, the physicist today already regards what flows through the tube in a wondrous phenomenon as a kind of current matter, and he already speaks of what flows there as so-called “electrically flowing electricity,” and he speaks today of such freely flowing electrical electricity, of a substance flowing like matter—something that was formerly regarded as a mere property of the element. He speaks of an electrical fluid, of freely flowing electricity, and the physicist today associates what appears to him as an atom with a certain kind of mechanical electricity.

[ 59 ] The fact itself led to this way of thinking. Now, a great thinker—though he is, of course, better known as a minister than as a thinker—the English Minister Balfour, had already uttered this important statement some time ago: “The scientific way of thinking will eventually come to regard every atom as something like solidified electricity.” They conceived of this in material terms, just as water is solidified in ice. What appears to us as material is, for a physical thinker, in truth a solidified element—one that was, among other small elements. Physics will advance and come to understand that there is condensed light and condensed heat, and that what appears as material reality is nothing other than the condensed quality perceived by our senses.

[ 60 ] Today, this may well seem like something fantastical, something dreamlike—and those who know it know this best of all. Yet, ladies and gentlemen: Through their own facts, the natural sciences will lead us to converge with the humanities. The atom crumbles, shatters. Radium is an element through which physicists today are able to teach that atoms have become something and can be dissolved by something else. It has already been stated that what we today conceive of as an atom is nothing other than a condensation.

[ 61 ] Natural science is at a crossroads, and as it must abandon the path it has followed thus far—where the physical [is explained] [in such a way that] behind a world of atoms [exists], conceived behind reality—by acknowledging these imagined things as mere figments of the imagination—it will of its own accord have to gradually arrive at what truly lies behind physical reality; it will have to arrive at the spirit; it will have to find the spirit.

[ 62 ] Through the spirit, we can perceive and recognize higher things. We can find it by developing the abilities that still lie dormant within us. However, we have no right to investigate things that we conceive in terms of the qualities of the senses, which we call atoms. To spiritual science, this scientific way of thinking—with its atomic vortices and its atomic fetishes—is something dreamlike, something fantastical.

[ 63 ] The atomistic way of thinking, which for a time seemed to hold the firmest ground—and appeared, at least to many, to be the most elegant hypothesis—will disappear. But then the ground will be laid precisely for spiritual science and for that goal of spiritual science which natural science, on its own, sought in vain to attain. That is why spiritual science is emerging—so that where natural science loses all ground for its creed, where what the bold thinkers of the mid-nineteenth century fought for is accepted by human understanding—there the truth, the higher reality, is recognized as the reality that truly manifests itself in this characteristic way behind everything spiritual. People will learn to believe that there is no imagined atom behind the qualities of the senses; then they will also understand that behind the sensory appearance of the human being as he now stands, there stands the spiritual [human being], who is the true origin of the human being.

[ 64 ] This will be the path to understanding the spiritual origin of humankind. We will find that what meets our material, physical eyes is the ultimate manifestation of condensed sensory qualities—indeed, of condensed spirit itself. Then no one will be able to insist any longer that human beings, as they exist today, be composed of all manner of parts; for the very same way of thinking that has designated every substance and every material composition as an atom—the complex human being composed of what has gradually emerged in the course of physical development throughout the history of the world— that same mode of thinking has composed the human being from what has gradually emerged in physical evolution over the course of world history: first the lower animals, then adding somewhat more highly developed beings, until finally the human being arose. Spiritual science places the human being, as a spiritual entity, at the pinnacle of worldly existence and posits that precisely what the [animals] are emerges from human development, from the very essence of the human being. I have been able to sketch this human development only very briefly.

[ 65 ] The humanities scholar never allows himself to imagine atoms beyond sensory facts; for him, these atoms were always something fantastical. If one denies that [transcript breaks off.]