The Rudolf Steiner Archive

12. Galileo, Giordano Bruno, and Goethe

[ 1 ] [Beginning missing.] Galilei turned away from books and mere written symbols and back to nature. He sought answers throughout the book of nature with the help of his own direct observation. Like theosophy, these three—Galileo, Giordano Bruno, and Goethe—no longer wished to rely on ancient traditions, such as religious texts, but sought instead to turn their gaze directly toward the spiritual world. They are like shining stars in the sky of human thought.

[ 2 ] Medieval knowledge is not the same as modern science. Before Galileo and Giordano Bruno, all knowledge was based on books, on Aristotle, who lived 400 [years] before Christ. People always asked and wondered: How did Aristotle think and solve the problem? Galileo and Giordano Bruno brought about a major shift in the revelation of the divine in nature itself. Aristotle was the Bible of the Middle Ages. But his wisdom was acquired in a different way than it was later.

[ 3 ] Before Aristotle—going all the way back to Plato—people arrived at knowledge in a completely different way, and human beings also had a very different state of mind; consciousness was entirely different. Before Aristotle, knowledge was attained through the awakening of the soul’s powers. The soul was transformed in a profound way. It came like an epiphany—as did what has been handed down to us from Plato.

[ 4 ] Two qualities in particular stood out: first, rising above sympathy and compassion for the environment. When one allows one’s own feelings to flow into the realms of nature, compassion is heightened and the soul is transformed. Second: One should rid oneself of all fear and devote oneself carefree to all things in the world.

[ 5 ] In the mystery temples, God was found within one’s own breast. Ancient tragedy was the reflection of the drama of insight within the human soul. Aristotle did not live to see this come to pass, but he still had knowledge of it. He said of it: The portrayal on stage arouses pity and fear for the purpose of purification (catharsis). Lessing sought an explanation for this statement, but only spiritual science can provide the answer. Aristotle stood at the threshold between the old and the new world. Before him, the supersensible world was not a matter of debate; it was not open to dispute, just as one cannot dispute the existence of plants today. Aristotle was the last who could give an account of the spiritual world. He believed that the nerves originate in the heart. Galileo observed nature and saw that the nerves originate in the brain. However, even in Galileo’s time, people drew proof from Aristotle’s writings. Depending on one’s perspective, Aristotle’s passages were interpreted one way or another, and thus he was either understood or misunderstood. Today’s nerves are something different from what Aristotle described based on the ancient clairvoyant, supersensory insights he had adopted from ancient wisdom. The animator of the nerves is the etheric body, and it is animated from the heart. There are currents flowing from the heart toward the brain. These are not merely physical truths.

[ 6 ] Galileo and Giordano Bruno were the first to oppose the misunderstood Aristotle. They conducted their research into the sensory world with an open mind. Galileo drew his inspiration from nature itself. It was a shock to the sensibilities of people at that time to hear that the Earth revolved around the Sun. Literally, the ground was pulled out from under people’s feet. Galileo laid the philosophical foundation for the modern era; he understood the world mathematically. For example, he compared the oscillations of a lamp to a pulse, and so on. The telescope was invented in Holland; it was used to discover Jupiter and its five moons, the lunar mountains, Saturn’s rings, and sunspots. Galilei was the first to hypothesize the existence of sunspots and to study them. It was not a thoughtless observation.

[ 7 ] Copernicus presented a mathematical reinterpretation of the starry sky. Driven by the principle of intellect, nature always follows the simplest paths. Simplicity is beautiful; nature is beautiful—this is what Copernicus saw. In this, he stood in opposition to the medieval Aristotle. People still turned their gaze away from nature and the spiritual world; they looked instead to Aristotle and to tradition. The simplicity in nature was so compelling in the Copernican system. Galileo, too, saw how the simple is beautiful, how nature is beautiful. We must hold fast to independent thought, which flows slowly through time. Everyone must slowly add one thought to another, even within the mathematical framework that, from one perspective, unravels nature everywhere. Behind things lies the intellect, the mind, says Galileo. It encompasses things in an instant, without a before or after. Clairvoyant perception was a thing of the past. Galileo recommended sticking to sequence; he saw the ideas behind things. Human beings must limit themselves to thoughts. Thus, Galileo emerges as a leading figure in the new era. One must proceed from thing to thing, without skimming over them, in order to grasp the full content. Our fundamental attitude should be one of humility toward human knowledge, and we must recognize that it is impossible to penetrate the spirit of things in a single stroke.

[ 8 ] Giordano Bruno embodied the enthusiastic foundation—or the spiritual disposition—of the Renaissance man. He was a Dominican friar and became the forerunner of modern pantheistic systems. He sought to perceive the divine soul through the senses. How simply and beautifully Copernicus explained to us that divine beauty gazes upon us from every angle. Hence the distinctive nature of Giordano Bruno’s worldview. – For Aristotle, there are three spheres: first, the subterranean or lunar sphere; second, the planetary sphere, extending to the fixed stars; and third, the eternal divine sphere, which is within us and belongs to us.

[ 9 ] Giordano Bruno is the author of these timeless statements: It is not fitting to attribute to God the intelligence that governs things of its own accord; rather, God pours His own form into nature. External matter is like a swarm of mosquitoes to our perception; seen from a distance, it is a mist; seen more closely, they are individual mosquitoes, like monads. Humans and animals are compositions of many, many souls or monads, governed by a principal monad, the human soul. Such monads are spread throughout the entire world. The principal monad—the actual soul—attracts other secondary monads. The gathering of monads by a specific principal monad is birth. The expansion and release of the monads is death. This is how Giordano Bruno speaks of repeated earthly lives. Thus, the whole of nature is to be conceived as animated, as the fulfillment of beauty. There is also the possibility that the soul evolves toward higher knowledge as it develops from stage to stage. This is imagination. The third stage is free intellect, more concrete than abstract reason. The fourth stage is true reason. It is a process of the human being immersing themselves in their innermost being. Powers of cognition slumber within the human soul. If one cannot recognize something, one should develop toward the higher stages of cognition and then penetrate the essence of things. Giordano Bruno sees the World Intellect as the foundation of the world’s beauty. Within the World Intellect are thoughts and ideas. Things are images of ideas; concepts are shadows of divine ideas. Giordano Bruno leads humanity to the Spirit. As a culmination, he declares: “It is not fitting for God to act as an external intellect.”—As if a translation of Goethe were lying before him! For Giordano Bruno, worldview is enthusiasm; the soul expands to encompass all things.

[ 10 ] Goethe seeks the divine and spiritual everywhere—not in a pantheistic sense, not in abstractions—but by moving from form to form. His “Hymn to Nature”: seeing the good in the particular details of nature. Everything in it is genius; “she invented death in order to have abundant life.” (The brain is the transformation of the vertebral bone.) Goethe seeks the idea in every individual thing; he penetrates to what Giordano Bruno generally expresses regarding the transformation of spiritual archetypes. Goethe is Giordano Bruno on a grander scale; he moves from thing to thing, perceiving the idea as it manifests beauty, truth, and goodness. In beauty, at a higher level, the thought of goodness manifests in nature because it has passed through the human spirit.

[ 11 ] In drama, the same truth and wisdom that permeate nature are expressed in a different way. Goethe perceives the divine through the sensible world; he is the pioneer of a new spiritual worldview, even in his works on the natural sciences. In Goethe, we find the fulfillment of what was present in Galileo and Giordano Bruno. He conducted his research in the concrete realm and directed his gaze directly toward the spiritual world. Milton visited Galileo in 1638 and said: “Be that as it may, whether the Earth revolves around the Sun or the Sun around the Earth, be that as it may: leave the unfathomable mystery to God, whom you ought to fear.”

[ 12 ] A poet had a wonderful insight while standing at Galileo's tomb:

Dust [lies] in the sanctuary of Santa Croce, making it even more sacred. Here rests Galileo's radiant wreath.